Ahmanson

Monochromes: From Malevich to the Present (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Books)
$36.95
The first comprehensive study of the modern history of monochrome art, Monochromes traces the development of single-color artwork--painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installations--up to the present. With almost 160 full-color reproductions, this stunning book examines fundamental aesthetic issues raised by the monochrome in a historical context. The authors ask whether the monochrome is the last and most radical phase of abstract painting or instead a point of departure for installations and environments. Among the many artists featured in this book are Alexander Rodchenko, Georgia O'Keeffe, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Robert Irwin, and Isamu Noguchi. The book includes writings on the monochrome by twenty-six artists, from Kasimir Malevich to Warhol, and from Carl Andre, Reinhardt, and Donald Judd to Ben Nicholson, Robert Ryman, and Anish Kapoor. In an engaging essay, Barbara Rose deftly surveys the divergent complex issues raised by the monochrome.
Additional Essays by Gladys Fabre, Christopher K. Ho, and Vincenzo Trione. Edited by Valerie Varas and Paula Rispa

Art and Artists of Twentieth-Century China (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Book)
$90.00
This visually stunning book focuses on the rebirth of Chinese art in the twentieth century under the influence of Western art and culture. Michael Sullivan, recognized throughout the world as a leading scholar of Chinese art, vividly documents the conflicting pulls of traditional and Western values on Chinese art and provides 364 illustrations, in color and black-and- white, to show the great range of artistic expression and the historical processes that occurred within various movements. A substantial biographical index of twentieth-century Chinese artists is a valuable addition to the text. Sullivan discusses artists and their work against China's background of oppression and relaxation, despair and hope. He expertly conveys the diverse and at times bizarre intertwining of Chinese cultural history and art during this century. Included are the intense debates between traditionalists and reformers, the creation of the first art schools, and the birth of the idea shocking in ethnocentric Chinathat art is a world language that obliterates all frontiers. The scholarly traditions of classical Chinese painting, the belated discovery of Western modernism, the artistic upheaval under Communism, and China's rethinking of the very nature of art all have a place in Sullivan's fascinating history. Michael Sullivan has known many of the major figures in China's modern art movement of the 1930s and 1940s and has also gained the confidence of younger artists who rose to prominence following the 1979 "Peking Spring." This long- awaited bookrichly documented and abundantly illustratedis a capstone to Sullivan's work and will be enthusiastically welcomed by art lovers everywhere.

Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Ahmanson Murphy Fine Arts Imprint)
$60.00
This art history book, suitable for undergraduates and accessible by anyone with a college course or self taught in art history, taught me new things. One new thing was that the meaning of the word "propaganda" has changed over time. Applied to a portion of the Catholic church in the 17th century, the College of the Propaganda was formed by Pope Gregory XV to oversee foreign missions. By the middle of the 19th century the common noun had come to mean any association, systematic scheme, or concerted movement for the propagation of a particular doctrine (OED). Nowadays it has a mostly negative connotation. So the Baroque propaganda referred to in Prof. Levy's book is the message of the church conveyed through art, not a negative value judgement by the author about that message.

Another thing I learned was the use of multiple forms of art as propaganda. Before I understood the older definition of propaganda I instinctively thought of written works only. But early in the book Prof. Levy demonstrates how various factions through history have used visual art and architecture as part of the delivery of their particular doctrine.

This book is not light summer or airplane reading. But the reader interested in extending their view of art history who is willing to read carefully and thoughtfully, and maybe even go to a reference or two, will enjoy this book.

Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: An Anthology (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Books)
$31.95
The essays in this wide-ranging, beautifully illustrated volume capture the theoretical range and scholarly rigor of recent criticism that has fundamentally transformed the study of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Readers are invited to consider the profound issues and penetrating questions that lie beneath this perennially popular body of work as the contributors examine the art world of late nineteenth-century France--including detailed looks at Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, C���zanne, Morisot, Seurat, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. The authors offer fascinating new perspectives, placing the artworks from this period in wider social and historical contexts. They explore these painters' pictorial and market strategies, the critical reception and modern criteria the paintings engendered, and the movement's historic role in the formation of an avant-garde tradition. Their research reflects the wealth of new documents, critical approaches, and scholarly exhibitions that have fundamentally altered our understanding of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. These essays, several of which have previously been familiar only to scholars, provide instructive models of in-depth critical analysis and of the competing art historical methods that have crucially reshaped the field.
Contributors: Carol Armstrong, T. J. Clark, Stephen F. Eisenman, Tamar Garb, Nicholas Green, Robert L. Herbert, John House, Mary Tompkins Lewis, Michel Melot, Linda Nochlin, Richard Shiff, Debora Silverman, Paul Tucker, Martha Ward