<< previous :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: next >>


Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has 0 book(s) available
click on logo to visit publisher's site

OUT OF STOCK Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art This exhibition catalogue explores the influence and impact of the baroque, both as a style and as a period, and the aftermath and legacy of the colonization of the Americas. It features sixteen of the most dynamic and innovative young artists working in the Americas today. This younger generation of artists shares an interest in revitalizing existing artistic languages and forms, infusing their work with a gamut of local and global references and re-evaluating the baroque as an important cultural metaphor in contemporary art. In addition to extensive color images, the catalogue contains several essays that trace the baroque from its 17th Century origins to its postmodern manifestations, all of which appear both in English and in Spanish. CONTEMPORARY ART 2000, 8 x 10 inches, 202 pp, 103 illus. Softcover, ISBN 0-934418-56-x code: msd ub E-7

OUT OF STOCK Francis Bacon: The Papal Portraits Of 1953 Throughout his long career, Francis Bacon (1909-1992) steadfastly focused on the human figure as the subject of his paintings. Even as he extended the tradition of figuration, however, he invented startling new ways of portraying people: the inhabitants of his painterly world are distorted and grotesque, in order to, in his words, “unlock the valves of feeling and therefore return the onlooker to life more violently.” Bacon’s most recognizable image is the screaming pope of ‘Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X of 1953’. This catalogue beautifully documents the MCASD exhibition that brought together all eight of Bacon’s ‘Papal’ paintings. As the title states, the series was inspired by Diego Velázquez’s extraordinarily lifelike portrait of a powerful and unscrupulous pope who duplicitously took the name Innocent. Painted in 1650 at the height of the Baroque period, Velázquez’s work satisfied his demanding papal client with a flattering, beautifully rendered portrait while at the same time passing on for the ages the unmistakable hint of corrupt character and deep-seated deceit. Bacon updates the classical image by transforming the Spanish artist’s pope into a screaming victim. Trapped as if manacled to an electric chair, the ludicrously drag-attired subject is jolted into involuntary motion by external forces or internal psychoses. One could hardly conceive of a more devastating depiction of postwar, existential angst or a more convincing denial of faith in the era that exemplified Nietzsche’s declaration that God is dead. PAINTING 1999, 8 x 10.5 inches, 80 pp, 55 illus. Hardcover, ISBN 0-934418-59-4 code: msd fb E-7

 

denotes new books