EXHIBITIONS · CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION
George T. M. Shackelford
Also known as: George T.M. Shackelford, George M. Shackelford
Vincent van Gogh was a complete and utter failure in everything that seemed important to his contemporaries.
— from Vincent van Gogh, 2001
Most acclaimed
Monet
"The world's appearance would be shaken if we succeeded in perceiving the spaces in between things as 'things'." These words from the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty apply to the core of Claude Monet's art in the years between 1880 and the beginning of the twentieth century. While interest usually lies only on the early and late work of this exceptional artist, the catalogue, containing more than fifty works of art, traces the development between these two periods. Accompanied by texts by well-known art historians, the reader is invited to follow Monet's unusual treatment of reflections and shadows in his paintings. It allowed him to break loose from the modalities of representational logic and the pictorial object. And they made room for an aesthetic that helped to do justice to perception itself and to enforce a painting's self-reflexive momentum. Exhibition: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland (22.01.2017-28.05.2017).
Degas
1986
This substantial new monograph on the work of Edgar Degas (1834-1917), one of the most significant artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, is a decisive contribution to the literature on the French Impressionist artist. An innovative and groundbreaking book, with underlying discussions related to "dance, politics and society," it pays special attention to issues of gender, identity, labor, race and the representation of women. Degas worked in various mediums, and, at the end of his life, left around 6,000 works, including 2,000 related to the world of dance and ballet. The contradictions and ambiguities of his art, especially the way he straddles both tradition and modernity, reaffirm both his uniqueness and significance in the history of Western art. Degas: Dance, Politics and Society includes ten essays, never before published, by experts around the world, and also features a visual essay of black-and-white photographs of the bronze sculptures, including Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, by the Brazilian artist Sofia Borges. Through her camera, Borges reinterprets and conceives new images of Degas' most cherished and classic sculptures. Borges' extraordinary photographs reveal, transform and revisit Degas' works in an innovative and radical manner. Exhibition: Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil (12.04.2020-08.01.2021).
Vincent van Gogh
2001
"A volume which explores Van Gogh's oeuvre through two fundamental aspects of his artistic identity: his love for the countryside and his attachment to the city. Admired for his light-filled landscapes as much as for his impassioned portraits, Vincent van Gogh was an impetuous painter with a cavalier disregard for convention when it suited him. At the same time he was a sophisticated thinker, fluent in several languages, and trained as an art dealer. Though often plagued by several doubts about his work, he was immensely ambitious and ultimately had a clear sense of his oeuvre as a whole and the place it was to take in the history of art. Such apparently contradictory positions define much of Van Gogh's life and artistic output. They are also at the basis of this volume, which explores Van Gogh's oeuvre through two fundamental aspects of his artistic identity: his love for the countryside as a stable, never-changing environment and his attachment to the city as the center of fast-moving, modern life. The catalog features works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Jean-Francois Millet, Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, Charles Francois Daubigny, Anton Mauve; prints after Daubigny, Daumier, Millet, that Van Gogh himself collected and copied as well as etchings and aquatints by Pissarro and Cezanne; and five letters written by Van Gogh to friends, colleagues, and art critics. It accompanies an exhibition at Complesso Monumentale del Vittoriano that begins on February 20, 2011." --Publisher's website.