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Annotated Bibliography
Alÿs, Francis. "Interview with Francis Alÿs." Interview by Gianni Romano.
<http://www.postmedia.net/alys/interview.htm>. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2009.
In this Interview, Francis Alÿs explains a little bit of his process and ideas in his sign painting work and performance art. He says that his interests and mission happened to lead him to art, and because does not have developed skills in any one medium, he prefers to dabble in each of them and use the help and collaboration of others. I am drawn to his drawings, animations and paintings for their relation to my work and research this semester. He says about his paintings, “I tried to create painted images that could become equivalents to the action, souvenirs without literally representing the act itself. Most of the time, I would try to imagine a more domestic situation that could translate a similar situation, but also function as an autonomous painting on the wall.” Some of these paintings recall his sign paintings; flat, visually simple, and graphic. However, the attention payed to simple objects and their combination in the paintings in such a stiff, flat manner begins to arouse speculation and questions as to what meaning and messages can be derived from the work. This applies to his drawings as well, some of which have been displayed in groups, some overlapping and spreading out over the wall in all directions. This repetition and visual connection alludes to a narrative in the work, though it seems non-linear and open to many interpretations.
Benson, A. LeGrace G, David H. R. Shearer, and Wayne Thiebaud. "An Interview With Wayne Thiebaud." Leonardo 2.1 (1969): 65-72. JSTOR. Web. 22 Nov. 2009.
In this interview, Thiebaud discusses his influences, his painting processes, and the process of how he came to paint pies and cakes. He says that two of his main influences are Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin and Giorgio Morandi. Chardin was influential in his careful choice of materials, and his painterly description of objects. Chardin, Thiebaud explains, was very interested in the common, everyday object. To the contemporary viewer these objects are no longer common; rather they are antique and different. They carry the culture of their time and place, as will, Thiebaud says, his paintings of pies and cakes. Morandi is influential to Thiebaud in his placement of still life objects. Thiebaud says that it seems that Morandi was interested in the space between objects, as though he wanted to shove all the objects close together within the picture plane so the viewer sees the crowding of objects yet feels the empty space around them as well. Thiebaud designs many of his paintings so that space is felt just as strongly as the objects themselves. Thiebaud says he is also influenced by Pop Art, and particularly in the attention payed to particular objects in Pop Art, recognizing how those objects, labels, or logos were special and beautiful despite their repetition in commercialism.
Brusati, Celeste. “Natural Artifice and Material Values in Dutch Still Life.” Looking at Seventeenth Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered. Ed. Wayne Frantis. pp144-157. U of Cambridge, Cambridge: 1997.
Brusati discusses the symbolism and intent in Dutch Still Life paintings in the context of realism. She states that still lives are the artist’s manipulation of materials in the service of accurate imitation, including physically impossible arrangements or combinations of objects which “tend to be perceived either as symbolic (because not strictly realistic) or as simply inaccurate” such as flower paintings. “In other words, what realist interpretations of still life generally fail to acknowledge is that, contrary to the fictions the paintings purvey, still lifes do not record as much as they remake the material world for particular kinds of visual consumption. In this essay I argue that the persuasive power of these pictures lies precisely in the capacity of the still-life painter’s artistry both to exploit and naturalize this representational transformation. Typically, artists draw attention to this naturalizing artifice by emphasizing particularizing details such as the tiny veins delicately enumerated on the petal of a flower, the complex play of light as it passes through and reflects off of glass and metalware, or the telling highlight that reveals the differentiated textures of lemon peel, grape skin, nutshell, engraved silver, or plush velvet. These highly formulaic elements all conspire to give these pictures the appearance of having been carefully observed and faithfully recorded. It is through such means that Dutch still lifes invite us to believe the fictive truth of their “eyewitness” testimony and to imagine that it is natural world stilled, objectified, and assembled in the ways that still life presents it to us” (145).
Bryson, Norman. Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting. Reaktion Books, London: 2001.
In four essays, Bryson analyzes the roles of still life paintings and the roles of the objects within those paintings. He begins with the ancient Roman still life paintings, called “xenia,” and moves into the subsequent works of the Dutch and European still life and genre paintings. These essays contain rich visual analyses of such genre paintings as well as describe their intrinsic value of a vehicle for conveying meaning and values important to the artist and the context of their time and location through the objects as symbols. Bryson explains that the potential loss of meaning in a still life painting comes from the viewers to overlook and scan over the objects; once the viewer has identified the objects the gaze is discontinued. However, in the process of actively looking and observing the viewer can note the intensities, subtleties and narratives within the work in the subjects of the painting.
Cameron, Dan; Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn; Coetzee, JM. William Kentridge. Phaidon Press. New York: 2001.
In this book, Dan Cameron interviews William Kentridge about his past, family, influences, processes, and goals for his work. Kentridge was raised and currently lives in South Africa. His parents were European immigrants to South Africa and were involved in the political action during the conflict there, against the apartheid. Kentridge draws from theater experience and influence in his work, as well as from European artists. Kentridge describes his drawing process as a thinking process, which gives animation and form to his charcoal drawings as he changes them over time to portray narratives through human figure characters and symbols.
Douglas, Sarah. “Kojo Griffin: Mitchell-Innes & Nash”. ARTnews v 103 no 8 (September 2004). p 142-3.
Friedlander, Walter. Caravaggio Studies. Princeton U., Princeton: 1955.
Gomez, Edward M. “ARTS IN AMERICA; The Doughnut Hole as Muse, No Irony Intended.” New York Times. Wednesday, April 21, 1999. p 2. Web. 22 Nov. 2009. <http://nytimes.com.>
In this article Edward Gomez talks with Emily Eveleth about her paintings of donuts, her influences, her own and others’ reactions to her work, and how she came to paint donuts. She explains that all of these aspects tie into her chosen medium, paint, and the way she renders her subjects in paint. She says, ''Some people think it's funny...but the thing they don't understand is that what they're responding to is the fact that it is a painting. It's the language of painting that allows them to respond the way they do.'' Eveleth painted landscapes in college and later studied the “...portaits by the 15th-century Flemish painter Hans Memling and to the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and Zurbaran.” She studied under George Nick and focused on “found still lifes” of everyday objects that she would rearrange. The donut appealed to her because of “...Its beautiful, perfect form” and began painting it starting on a small scale and working up to larger paintings. In her own reflections about her work, she states that the donuts are neither ironic nor cynical, contrary to many modern artist agendas. She curated an exhibition at the Danforth Museum with her paintings and her selections from the museum collection, allowing her work to be showcased in comparisons with work such as a “ 19th-century tableaux of a stolid bourgeois gentleman and his wife by the American artist Erastus Salisbury Field.” She also says that, ''Everything I have to say about painting is said in paint...I'm just grateful that what I'm trying to say in paint, people seem to understand.''
Hibbard, Howard. Caravaggio. Harper & Rowe, New York: 1985.
Hibbard is motivated to revisit the discussion about Caravaggio’s historical influence as an artist both in the context of his time as well as today. He attempts to portray Caravaggio in the proper light, neither taking all the credit for the influence of art as it is today nor brushing off his importance. He also attempts to discuss Caravaggio’s work as Hibbard believes it was made chronologically, giving criticism and interpretations on meanings and Caravaggio’s source material.
Hirsch, Faye. “Working Proof: Print Reviews”. Art on Paper v. 7 no7 (May/June 2003). p 64-7.
Israel, Nico. Exhibition Catalogue. Boston, MA: Howard Yezerski Gallery, 1999. N. pag.
Web. 22 Nov. 2009. < HYPERLINK "http://livepage.apple.com/" http://www.emilyeveleth.com/yezerski.shtml>.
Nico Isreal points out many of the tensions and oppositions in Eveleths works that make the paintings successful. He explains how they “conceal as they reveal”, that they are “theatrical and restrained...open as a wound and yet somehow private, they seem to invite the viewer’s gaze, acknowledge it, and then absorb it, folding it into their won particular dramas. They are monumental and bold but maintain a strong sense of discretion.” He comments on the banality of the donut and its power of temptation. He points out too the tension between their weightiness in the paintings yet their light, weightless impressionistic traits. Because of their monumental size and stylistic elements, placement in couples and groups, clear foregrounds and backgrounds, the paintings appear as narratives with donut characters. It is hard to get a clear reading on emotion in the work, the donuts could be “wounded” or embracing, the viewer cannot be sure. Nico states that the titling of the work fits in with the ambiguity as well, such as “Exposure” which could denote shame and embarrassment or intimacy. Nico concludes by saying, “Perhaps one can attribute this tension between dramatic action and technical dexterity to Eveleth’s own interest in the history of still life painting – of, for example, the Spanish masters Juan Sanchez Cotan or Francisco de Zurbaran – in which a grape or a chalice can appear at once remarkably detailed and replete with urgent meaning and yet also nothing other than a blob of paint. Perhaps, too, we notice something of Rembrandt: the series of dark, lonely self-portraits spring immediately to mind.”
Jackson, Sandra D. “Kojo Griffin”. Thelma Goldin with Christine Y. Kim, Hamza Walker...[et al.]. Freestyle: The Studio Museum in Harlem. p 34. New York: 2001.
This book contains several reviews of contemporary artists including Kojo Griffin, an artist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Griffin paints scenes with animal and rag doll characters in compromised circumstances and situations of violence, teasing, hurt, and lust. In some of these scenes certain characters reference creatures or deities of hinduism or African folklore, and the bright, aesthetically pleasing colors contrast the dark themes in the work. I was initially drawn to Griffin’s paintings for their narrative qualities as carefully rendered and colorfully painted scenes, but I have recently been much more interested in painted still lives as a means for narrative, and I was not interested in the kind of narrative Griffin’s work seems to tell exclusively of pain and brokenness.
Koplos, Janet "Emily Eveleth at Danese." Art in America 91.7 (2003): 88. Humanities International Complete. EBSCO. Web. 23 Nov. 2009.
Janet Koplos describes Eveleth’s donut paintings as “sublime” and “spiritual”, comparing the donut bodies to clouds, pillows, whales, and flesh, and the jelly to smeared lipstick. Koplos is much more enthusiastic in her review about Eveleth “going back” to pastries than she is about Eveleth’s portraits of bald men’s heads. Koplos also relates Eveleth’s works to late Guston paintings and Henri Moore sculptures.
Kellogg, Carolyn. “Eric Joyner paints robots. And donuts.” Los Angeles Times. Jan. 24 2009. Accessed Feb. 16, 2010. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/01/eric- joyner- pai.html
Landes, Emily. “Mr. Roboto.” The Wave Magazine. Vol. 03, Issue 24, 2003. Accessed Feb. 16, 2010. http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?articleid=24353&pagename=article
Contains an interview with Joyner where he discusses some of his process and source materials, including pop-culture and literature, art history, and science fantasy. He also explains a bit about his background in illustration.
Langdon, Helen. Caravaggio: A Life. Harrar, Straus & Giroux, New York: 1998
Mayer, Musa. Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston. Penguin Group, New York: 1990.
Musa Mayer, the daughter of Philip Guston and the author of this memoir relays her story of learning about her father’s history in his family, education, friendships and influences, as well as the process of his painting styles and subjects. I am interested particularly in his choices of still life objects toward the end of his career, when he began to incorporate representational form in his paintings again. Such objects were ‘everyday’ genre items such as shoes, cigarettes and such, which in themselves were not particularly visually interesting objects save their meaning and decisive inclusion in his paintings.
McCaig-Welles Gallery. “Eric Joyner Press Release.” 2008. http://mccaigwelles.com/ model_individual.php?t=Past%20Exhibition&model=97
This press release from the Gallery describes Joyner’s work, describing it as “decidedly realist” and its emotive qualities. I am curious about how Joyner’s paintings fit into the Realist tradition as his scenes are very inventive and imaginative, though the objects themselves are based in life studies. Joyner’s background is in illustration and he’s located in CA -- both similar points to Thiebaud. This article does not go into any information about the San Fransisco Realists or how Joyner could relate to them.
McGough, Stephen C. Thiebaud Selects Thiebaud: A Forty-Year Survey from Private Collections. Crocker Art Museum, Sacrament: 1996.
Includes an interview with Thiebaud where he discusses his use of color and creating “halos” around his objects and subjects, his interest in manipulated, manufactured items that relate to his specific society and culture.
Nash, Steven A., Adam Gopnik. Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective. Thames & Hudson, New York: 2000.
This book contains many largecolor prints of Thiebaud’s paintings of still life objects, landscapes, and people. I had researched Thiebaud a little bit at the beginning of the semester, but I wanted to delve in a bit more with his work and understand it formally. The book also has two essays on Thiebaud and his paintings, contextualizing his work in American Realism and Pop art based on his style of observation and rendering of his subjects. Nash discusses that for all of Thiebaud’s ties to modernity, however, his work is still heavily depends on tradition which harkens back to Chardin, who too used painting as a means to observe and depict culture through materialism and “consumed goods.” Instead of a cynical commentary on consumerism or sense of irony of the Pop artists, Thiebaud was very interested in the skills of commercial artists. Looking continually at Thiebaud’s paintings I am becoming more interested in his object selection and the way he works his compositions with positive and negative space. I am also increasingly interested in the relationships between his paintings of people, landscapes, and objects, particularly in how he seems to treat people and objects the same in the way he paints; people become more like objects and objects become more like people.
Nemerov, Alexander. The Body of Raphaelle Peale: Still Life and Selfhood, 1812-1824. U of CA Press, Los Angeles: 2001.
In this book, the author goes into extensive detail about Raphaelle Peale’s still lives in comparison to still lives by his contemporaries (including his brothers’) and in analyzing them formally as well as symbolically. The essays are not Peale’s own reflections or interpretations so one cannot be sure that the author’s analysis and thoughts mimic his own during the painting process, but the essays do offer some excellent reads on the pieces. Some especially good points for my work have been discussions on the object anthropomorphized through painting and rendering, the gaze and phenomenology, and implied narrative through the works.
Nochlin, Linda. Realism. Penguin Group, New York: 1990.
Nochlin discusses the movement of Realism in the late 19th Century, the attitudes of the time, and the mindset of the Realists. In four parts she focuses on “The Nature of Realism”, “Death in the Mid Nineteenth Century”, “‘Il Faut etre de son temps: Realism and the Demand for Contempoaneity”, and “The Heroism of Modern Life.” Nochlin explains that Realism wasvpreceded by romanticism, followed by symbolism. dominant movement from 1840--1870-80. The Realist’s aim was to give a “truthful, objective and impartial representation of the real world, based on meticulous observation of contemporary life” (13). Issues with the terminology included the ambiguous relationship to the “highly problematic concept of reality”(13) often simplified notion that realist artists had no style or transparent style.“In painting, no mater how honest or unhackneyed the artists vision may be, the visible world must be transformed to accommodate it to the flat surface of the canvas. the artist’s perception is therefore inevitably conditioned by the physical properties of paint and linseed oil no less than by his knowledge and technique -- even by his choice of brush-strokes -- in conveying three-dimensional space and form on a two-dimensional picture plane”(14-15). The Realists would stress “...the importance of confronting reality afresh, of consciously stripping their minds, and their brushes of secondhand knowledge and ready-made formulae” (20). “Zola called the young Monet, Bazille, and Renoir Les Actualistes -- ‘the painters who love their times from the bottom of their artistic minds and hearts. . . . They do not content themselves with the ridiculous trompe l’oeil; they interpret their era as men who feel it live within them, who are possessed by it, and who are happy to be possessed by it. . . . Their works are alive because they have taken them from life and they have painted them with all the love they feel for modern subjects.’” (28) Realism was also linked to the instantaneity of impressionism “Realist motion is always motion captured as it is ‘now’, as it is perceived in a flash of vision” (29). “For the Realist, horror -- like beauty or reality itself -- cannot be universalized: it is bound to a concrete situation at a given moment of time.”(33) “For Champfleeury, the essential Realist formula was ‘sincerity in art’ -- the artist’s duty to represent only what he had seen and experienced, without any alteration and without any conventional response or aesthetic affectation.” (36) As for Realism and the portrayal of death Nochlin describes the attitude towards death - more as a fact, rather than a tragedy, focusing on the formalistic qualities of something to access meaning (rather than the other way around). “”...the artist’s need to record objective reality itself, that all-devouring thirst for truth to the facts as conveyed by sense perception” (63). “For Monet, the overwhelming impulse to record sense impressions, at the expense of feelings, psychological implications or even the creation of a recognizable image of his dead wife, carries Realist veracity to its ultimate conclusion: the scrupulous notation of isolated phenomena. Indeed, the pathos of painting arises from precisely the contrast between the objective notation of sense perceptions which create the image and the understood context of emotional stress under which they must have been recorded: for the act of perception determines the imagery here, in the case of the dead Camille, just as it would for the poppy field or water lily. The image of the dead woman hovers on the surface of the canvas as the water lily on the surface of the pond or the paint strokes themselves on the surface of the canvas: nothing more is implied beyond this surface.” (63) This contrasts how I approach the theme of death in my paintings, focusing on emotion more than fact. For Realists the dead become more object-like, whereas I make my objects more people-like. This text is crucial in helping me understand the context of my work, and figuring out how I fall into this tradition and how I diverge.
Prose, Francine. Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles. Harper Collins, New York: 2005.
Ragland, Samantha. “Kojo Griffin-- Desperate Chimera Acts”. The International Review of African American Art. v 22 no 2 (2008). p 7.
In this article Samantha Ragland describes some of Griffin’s older work of the painted narrative scenes as well as his influences. Griffin says he approaches his art the same way an MC approaches music, and he incorporates this mindset in his work as he pulls from multiple sources of inspiration including his favorite hip-hop artists, his childhood, his background in psychology, and his roots in graffiti art. He also expresses that in some ways he is glad that he does not have formal art training as he believes having a knowledge of art history is like having “baggage.”
Rathbone, Eliza E., George T.M. Shackelford, Mary Hannah Byers ... [et al.]. Impressionist Still Life. H.N. Abrams, New York: 2001.
This book contains five main essays highlighting certain artists and themes of impressionist still life painting and many smaller essays on individual paintings themselves. I first got this book before I knew I would be deciding on still life painting, but the works in it appealed to me immediately and thought it would be a good reference tool. Reading through the essays has been rewarding as well, as I am learning much more about the works of Manet, Chardin, Millet, Cezanne, Monet, Renoir and more in their dealings with still lives. In the case of many of these artists, I had not seen their still life paintings and how they compare with each other and with their other work, such as portraiture and landscape paintings. The book describes technique, inspiration, goals, symbolism, narrative, and composition, all of which will be helpful for me as I continue to arrange, paint, and evaluate my own work.
Stomberg, John. Painting in Boston 1950-2000. Lincoln, MA: DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, 2002. N. pag. Web. 22 Nov. 2009. < HYPERLINK "http://livepage.apple.com/" http://www.emilyeveleth.com/ stomberg.shtml>.
Stomberg describes Eveleth’s works as taking objects that are “monumentally mundane”. He says that the objects such as donuts or the backs of heads are the “tabula rasa” on which she can build a theater where “comedy and tragedy vie to dominate the theme” and that there is a constant tension between the two extremes. Stomberg goes further to explain how in Shelter (1998) Eveleth paints a simple junk food that acts as temptation and “cautionary tale”. He also describes the donuts as having biblical significance, with both body and blood, corpses on the slab. He concludes to say, “Eveleth’s paintings restlessly shift across a spectrum of meanings, covering along the way all the distances between opposing significances; prosaic and profound, profane and scared, banal and intriguing, to say nothing of the axis between cool asexuality and gushing, if veiled, sexuality.”
Thiebaud, Wayne. Vision and Revision. Chronicle Books, San Fransisco: 1991.
This book contains Thiebaud’s watercolors and prints rather than his oil paintings, and he discusses how this process allows him to explore composition and color in editions of prints. I am drawn specifically to his sugerlift etching of three Ice Cream Cones in its playful, eerie presence in color.
Weintraub, Linda. In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art. Distributed Art Publishers, New York: 2003.
William Kentridge. Harry N. Abrams. New York: 2001.