Mark Rothko, Hockney, Goya, Twombly & Country Roads

Mark Rothko: The Essential

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) is generally considered, along with Jackson Pollock, the preeminent artist of the group of painters who, during the 1940s and 1950s, re-invented American art and became known as the Abstract Expressionists. Yet despite his success--people cried when they stood in front of his sublimely spiritual canvases, he suffered from intense anxiety and depression, and eventually took his own life.
This concise but very informational book is a must for anyone interested in the works of Mark Rothko, and for those who want to know about the rise of abstract expressionism. There are full color illustrations provided which add greatly to the narrative! The margin notes have a wealth of background material, without being too bogged down in minutia.
This work has been a wonderful addition to my art library as I am certain it will be to others.
The Essential Mark Rothko by Klaus Ottmann
ISBN: 0810958260

Hockney's People by Marco Livingstone

Hockney's People showcases the large and central body of work based on the artist's personal relationships, explored in revealing and at times playful artworks. For the past fifty years, David Hockney's most persistent subject matter in paintings, drawings, collages, and photoworks, has been portraiture of people, usually those very close to him, as well as self- portraits.
These are works that reflect the intimate and often intense stories of this artist's life. They also explore different formal methods of representing the passage of time and the unavoidable but marvelous stillness of portraiture. The book includes fascinating sequences as David Hockney paints certain subjects on and off for decades; the special qualities attached to depictions of lovers; and the range of celebrities, writers, and artists - Billy Wilder, Armistead Maupin, W. H. Auden, Henry Moore, Christopher Isherwood - who have been part of a very full life. Several new watercolors, never before published, are included.
Marco Livingstone is an art critic and curator who has written extensively on the work of David Hockney, including his most recent "Sitting for Hockney: David Hockney: Paintings on Paper."
Hockney's People by Marco Livingstone
AOL Time Warner Book Group, 2003

Francisco Goya: A Life

From the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of Son of the Morning Star and Deus Lo Volt! , a biography that breaks the mold - recounting with stunning immediacy the dark genius behind the renowned Spanish painter.
Francisco Goya's protean talent sends connoisseurs barking in various directions. He was a master whose image of Saturn bloodily devouring his son is as unforgettable as his peerless rendering of the gentle light caught in the white satin gown of a countess. Most critics agree that Francisco Goya changed Western art forever, although the nature of his influence has been widely interpreted. Degas, for one, lamented that because of Francisco Goya he was condemned to painting a housewife in her bathtub.
This enigmatic artist is a brilliant choice of subject for Evan S. Connell, whose literary histories and penetrating novels have placed him amongst our greatest writers. With his famous wit, erudition and prodigious research, this biography brings to life an artist whose imagination is unsurpassed, and his brutal times - Spain in the clutches of the Inquisition. In a colloquial, wry style, Connell introduces a wealth of detail and a comic cast of weird and eccentric characters - dukes, duchesses, royalty, politicians and artists; as lewd and incorrigible a group as history has ever produced. As he charts the arc of Goya's career, he keeps pace with the tumultuous times as well as shrewdly sifting through two centuries of commentary, from Claudel's shock and dismay that he sought to avoid the eyes and the image of God, to Baudelaire's deadly accurate comment that "he painted the black magic of our civilization."
Connell has conjured Francisco Goya, his art, and his times with fierce originality and imagination. This is an unforgettable biography from an American master. Writer Evan S. Connell - long recognized as one of the most important literary voices of our time - is author of eighteen books, including Deus Lo Volt!, Mrs. Bridge, Mr. Bridge, and Son of the Morning Star. Connell has received numerous awards including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Francisco Goya: A Life by Evan S. Connell
Counterpoint Press, 2004

Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper

Cy Twombly's gestures are some of the most beloved in 20th century art. The painter, graphic artist, sculptor and photographer is prized above all for the sweeping, scribbled marks that he makes with his drawing instruments.
Though mostly indecipherable, at least on a literal level, Twombly's colorful, dense gestures are compellingly articulate in their rhythm, line, allusion and mood. Deeply sophisticated and sensual, they follow in the footsteps of Western tradition while speaking resolutely in the hushed and tentative tones of the modern age, defying prevailing stylistic clichés and mediating between the old and new worlds. This exceptional volume presents fifty years of drawings by the artist, most taken from his own personal collection. Foreword by Mikhail Piotrovsky.and a introduction by Simon Schama.
Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper: The Drawings at the Hermitage by Simon Schama and Mikhail Piotrovsky
ISBN: 1891024841

Country Roads and Fields

The exhibition presents the finest and most characteristic examples of landscape paintings, drawings and watercolours by Dutch artists of two bygone centuries. They have been selected from numerous public and private collections in the Netherlands and other countries. The artists share an intense love of nature, a love no less fervent than that of their predecessors of the Dutch Golden Age, to whom the Rijksmuseum devoted the exhibition Masters of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting in 1987-88. Now, ten years later, it is the turn of the generations that followed.
The catalogue of On country roads and fields runs the gamut of such varied phenomena as the painted wall decorations of the 18th century, the Romantic landscapes of Koekkoek and Schelfhout in the middle of the 19th century, the impressionist renderings of the Hague School, represented by Roelofs, Mauve and Weissenbruch, and ending around the turn of the century with the innovatory ideas of artists like Toorop, Van Gogh, Sluijters and Mondriaan. No matter where the artists found their inspiration - in Italy, in the Dutch polders or simply in a view seen through a window - each and every one of the more than hundred masterpieces radiates a profound and intimate relationship with the landscape.
On Country Roads and Fields: The Depiction of the 18th-and 19th-Century Landscape by Wiepke Loos
V and K Publishing, 1998

More information

Arts Main Page
Francisco Goya: Black Paintings
Francisco Goya: Old Man