Art & Architecture Collections

Notable Acquisitions: 1995-1998

1. Delacroix, Eugene. Le voyage au Maroc. Paris: Editions du Sagittaire, 1992. 6v.

Art Locked Stacks, Small ND553 .D33 A2 1992

Facsimiles of sketchbooks, journals, and other materials made by the French painter Delacroix (1798-1863) on an extended trip to North Africa from January to July, 1832. The picturesque and colorful world that Delacroix discovered in Morocco had a profound effect on his art and supplied him with subject material for the rest of his life. The centerpiece of this collection of facsimiles is the ensemble of the four sketchbooks from Delacroix's journey that have survived intact. Three are now in the collection of the Louvre; the fourth is owned by the Musée Chantilly in Condé. Three additional Delacroix sketchbooks from the Moroccan trip were sold at the posthumous auction of the contents of his Paris studio in 1864 but have since disappeared.

2. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. Dlia golosa [For the voice]; konstruktor knigi El Lisitskii [constructed by El Lissitzky]. Berlin: Tip. Lutze & Vogt, 1923.

Art Locked Stacks, Small PG3476 .M3 D57 1923

Considered to be El Lissitzky's most spectacular achievement in book construction, Dlia golosa contains a selection of Vladimir Mayakovsky's best-known poems. Lissitzky (1890-1941), Soviet Russia's premier graphic designer, proposed an architecture of the book whereby the design and structure of the book would be determined by its purpose and content. The visual components were not to be simply illustrative, but serve as a graphic guide to the contents. This approach can be most readily seen in Dlia golosa in the thumb-indexing of the individual poems, where each thumb tab contains a small Constructivist emblem unique to that poem. The bold use of two-color printing and graphic construction conveys an insistent rhythm and an echo of the excitement not only of Mayakovsky's poetry, but of the revolutionary period in which both he and Lissitzky lived. Lissitzky said of this book: "My pages stand in much the same relationship to the poems as an accompanying piano to a violin. Just as the poet unites concept and sound, I have tried to create an equivalent unity using the poem and typography."

3. Lissitzky, El. Union der Sozialistischen Sowjet-Republiken: Katalog des Sowjet-Pavillons auf der Internationalen Presse-Ausstellung Koln 1928. Koln: M. Dumont Schauberg, 1928

Art Locked Stacks, Small PN5274 .U4 1928

The catalog of the exhibitions in the Soviet pavillion at the 1928 International Press Exposition in Cologne, Germany, is a notable expression of Constructivism, an art movement developed by the Russians in the early 1920s. Constructivism sought to extend the formal language of abstract art into practical design work. It is marked by the dynamic use of geometric forms and, in exhibition design, by the integration of three-dimensional display structures with photomontage and lettering. Both the Soviet pavillion and its catalog were designed by the artist, El Lissitzky (1890-1941), a leading Constructivist. An almost startling feature of the catalog is its 91-inch, accordion-fold photomontage, whose scenes, depicting daily life, work and industry in the USSR, are keyed with superimposed numbers to passages in the catalog's text.

4. Ware, Isaac. The Plans, elevations, and sections, chimney-pieces, and cielings [sic] of Houghton in Norfolk, the seat of the Rt. Honourable Sir Robert Walpole. [London]: Published by I. Ware, 1735.

Art Locked Stacks, Large NA7625 .H65 P57 1735 F

Houghton Hall, a country house built between 1720 and 1735 for Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), is the greatest extant example of Palladian domestic architecture in England. Palladianism, the architectural style based on the work of Andrea Palladio (1508-80) of Vicenza, the most influential architect of the late 16th century, underwent a resurgence in the early 18th century in England, where its simplicity and rationality appealed to Whig politicians, like Walpole, who were then in power. Walpole hired Colen Campbell, the foremost Palladian of the day to be lead architect on the project. Ware's book, with its splendid plates, drawn by him and William Kent and engraved by Pierre Fourdrinier, celebrated the completion of Houghton Hall and was the first monograph on a British country house.

 

5. VVV [poetry, plastic arts, anthropology, sociology, psychology]. [New York,

s.n.] 4 numbers.

Art Locked Stacks, Small BH301 .S75

With the emigration of several noted European artists to the United States in the years preceding and including World War II, the avant-garde spirit passed from Europe to the United States. In January, 1938, the Exposition International du Surréalisme was held in Paris. By 1942, André Breton, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp, and many other noted Surrealists, were living in New York City. Breton, who realized the value of a publication for holding the group together, spearheaded the formation of VVV, a journal devoted to poetry, art, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. The first issue, with a cover design by Max Ernst, included contributions by Claude Lévi-Strauss, William Carlos Williams, André Masson, and Robert Motherwell. The inclusion of Williams and Motherwell signaled that an American presence was not only welcome, but critical to the publication's success. VVV not only gave Breton a platform from which to publish his "Prolegomena to a Third Manifesto of Surrealism--or else," but also provided an outlet for younger American writers, including Harold Rosenberg, who became one of the leading critical voices for the New York School of painting, and the photographers Frederick Sommer and Clarence John Laughlin. Although limited to four numbers, VVV's linking of the European Avant-Garde with American artists had a profound impact on the post-war American art scene, especially regarding the formation of the New York School.

Photography

6. America 1935-1946: the FSA/OWI photographs [microform]. Cambridge, Eng.: Chadwyck-Healey, Ltd., 1980.

HC106.4 A63 1981 -- GUIDE

MFICHE 2268

The Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information photographic collection contains some of the most famous images in the world, its photographs depicting living and working conditions in urban, suburban and rural America from the depths of the Depression to the outbreak of World War II. Directed by Roy Stryker, the photographic section operated under the auspices of the Resettlement Administration (1935- 37), the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942), and later the Office of War Information (1942-43). This microfiche set reproduces all 87,000 prints from FSA-OWI negatives in the Library of Congress collection. Among the photographers who worked for Stryker's photographic section were Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein, and Marion Post Wolcott. These photographs were not only used by the government to publicize and promote a variety of New Deal programs, but were also disseminated through picture magazines such as Life and Look, as well as numerous books, including Archibald MacLeish's Land of the Free (1938), Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor's An American Exodus (1939), and James Agee and Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). Collectively these images present a photographic patchwork quilt of American life from 1935-1943, raise numerous questions regarding the role of government-sponsored propaganda in a free and democratic society, and demonstrate the creative power of several of this country's greatest photographers.

7. Blossfeldt, Karl. Urformen der Kunst. Berlin: Wasmuth, 1929. 2d ed.

Art Locked Stacks, Medium NK1560 .B48 1929

Karl Blossfeldt, a self-taught photographer who was a professor of art in Berlin, felt that the forms of the natural world, specifically those of plants, revealed an inherent order that could also be seen in in the best of art. Thus an artist who thought and acted creatively would be subject to the same natural forces as a poppy or a fern and would be similarly compelled to produce the highest artistic forms. In his search for the perfect forms of nature Blossfeldt photographed plants for 33 years. His photographic work was first published in 1928 in both book and portfolio format: 120 high-quality photogravure prints, titled Urformen der Kunst. The work proved so popular it was reissued in 1929 in Berlin, London, and New York with the photogravure plates, and later in a popular edition (Volksausgabe) of 96 lesser quality plates in 1935, 1936, 1941, 1948, and 1953. Blossfeldt's photographic work strongly influenced the international development of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) in photography, a style which utilized certain unique qualities of the photographic process, such as Blossfeldt's sharply focused close-up views of plants. Interestingly, he did not consider his photographic activity to be artistic work.

 

8. Bosquet, Alain. Les Americains. [Textes réunis et presentés par Alain Bosquet. Photos. de Robert Frank.] Paris: R. Delpire, 1958.

Art Locked Stacks, Small E169.1 .B763

Produced during a Guggenheim-Fellowship-funded cross-country trip in 1956-57, the photographs that comprise Robert Frank's Les Americains deliver an outsider's less than complimentary portrayal of 50's America, an endless view of highways, jukeboxes, and outcasts, a photographically truncated chaos. Unable to find a publisher for his work in the U.S., the Swiss-born Frank had to rely on the French publisher Delpire to produce the book. With a cover illustration by Saul Steinberg and texts drawn from an unlikely range of French and American writers (Simone de Beauvoir, F.R. de Chateaubriand, Alexis de Tocqueville, George Washington, Richard Wright, Harry Truman, etc.), the French edition was the first to reveal Frank's detached skepticism to the public but was not widely seen in the U.S. The following year (1959) the avant-garde American publisher, Grove Press, brought out a U.S. edition without the French text, but with the same pictorial sequencing, and with an introduction by Jack Kerouac. It was resoundingly criticized, both for its seemingly un-American portrayal of the U.S. and for Frank's casual aesthetic. It has since become one of the most influential photography books of all time.

 

9. Stryker, Roy E. Roy Stryker papers, 1912-1972 [microform] Louisville: University of Louisville Archives and Records Center, 1978-1982.

MFILM N.S. 14323

Roy Stryker, a Columbia University economics professor, was one of the mostinfluential figures in the history of American documentary photography. Not a photographer himself, his tenure as director of the photographic section of the Farm Security Administration (originally the Resettlement Admininistration, and later absorbed by the Office of War Information) from 1935-1943 produced one of the greatest photographic surveys of the modern era. After the disbanding of the unit in 1943, Stryker, utilizing many of the former FSA photographers, organized a large-scale documentary effort on behalf of Standard Oil of New Jersey, that operated from 1943-1950. He later led a similar effort for Jones & Laughlin Steel. Stryker's archive includes extensive correspondence regarding the FSA photographic section in its various manifestations, and with the numerous photographers with whom he worked during his career.

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