The art of Dusti Bongé was influenced by her experiences in three distinctive American cities: Biloxi, Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; and New York, New York. In developing her artistic practice in these vibrant urban settings, she portrayed a unique "sense of place" in her work. In Dusti Bongé, Art and Life, which includes over five hundred color images, J. Richard Gruber documents Dusti Bongé's full career and her key role in the twentieth-century art world and in a highly creative family, including her husband, Archie (1901&#8210;1936), her son, photographer Lyle Bongé (1929-2009), and her grandson, photographer Paul Bongé (b. 1963). Born in Biloxi in 1903, she died there in 1993, living on the family property where she was raised. After graduating from Blue Mountain College in 1922, she moved to Chicago and became an actress, then moved to New York to act on stage and in silent movies. She married artist Archie Bongé in 1928 and lived in New York until they moved to Biloxi in 1934 with their child, Lyle. Following Archie's premature death in 1936, she dedicated herself to working as an artist. Initially, she exhibited in New Orleans and Biloxi, then in New York, where she became affiliated with the famed Betty Parsons Gallery in 1946. There she was given a series of one-person exhibitions in the years from 1956 to 1975. Her art achieved national recognition through her shows at the Parsons Gallery, when New York replaced Paris as an international art center, and Abstract Expressionism became a leading influence in the art world. Dusti Bongé, Art and Life explores the full range of her creativity, extending from her stage acting to her activities in painting, sculpting, printmaking, sewing, writing, and poetry.

Dusti Bongé, Art and Life: Biloxi, New Orleans, New York

Arts & Photography

Gruber, J. Richard

Individual Artists

University Press of Mississippi/Dusti Bongé Art Foundation

William Christenberry: The Early Years, 1954-1968

Presenting for the first time this major body of paintings and constructions, The Early Years places Christenberry's work and his life in the South in significant new context. Nationally recognized as an artist, photographer, teacher, and arts advocate, William Christenberry has lived and worked in Washington, D.C., since 1968, when he became a professor of painting at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art. Although Christenberry is well known as a photographer and sculptor, relatively little has been known about his early paintings and his career in the South prior to 1968. Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1936, Christenberry is closely identified with the culture and environment of his native South, specifically with the region around Hale County, Alabama, the same region memorialized by James Agee and Walker Evans in the classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. That book, first discovered by Christenberry when it was reissued in 1960, served as a major influence upon his early aesthetic development, including the creation of his "Tenant House" series of paintings, photographs, and studies (1960-1964). Throughout The Early Years, Christenberry's work is presented as part of an evolutionary series of developments that began with Christenberry's immersion in the Abstract Expressionist philosophies and techniques taught at The University of Alabama during his years as a student there (1954-1959) and continued through his abandonment of painting on canvas (1964) and his inclusion of signs and found objects in the three-dimensional constructions he created in Memphis (1964-1968)..
Many of the pieces featured in The Early Years were in storage in Christenberry's attic for nearly three decades. Now part of a national touring exhibition, they richly deserve the close attention J. Richard Gruber here gives them.

University Alabama Press

This book was published in conjunction with the exhibition "The Dot Man: George Andrews of Madison, Georgia," organized by the Morris Museum of Art.

The dot man: George Andrews of Madison, Georgia

Morris Museum of Art

Presenting for the first time this major body of paintings and constructions,The Early Years places Christenberry's work and his life in the South insignificant new context. Nationally recognized as an artist, photographer, teacher, and artsadvocate, William Christenberry has lived and worked in Washington, D.C.,since 1968, when he became a professor of painting at the Corcoran GallerySchool of Art. Although Christenberry is well known as a photographer andsculptor, relatively little has been known about his early paintings andhis career in the South prior to 1968. Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1936, Christenberry is closely identifiedwith the culture and environment of his native South, specifically withthe region around Hale County, Alabama, the same region memorialized byJames Agee and Walker Evans in the classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.That book, first discovered by Christenberry when it was reissued in 1960,served as a major influence upon his early aesthetic development, includingthe creation of his "Tenant House" series of paintings, photographs,and studies (1960-1964). Throughout The Early Years, Christenberry's workis presented as part of an evolutionary series of developments that beganwith Christenberry's immersion in the Abstract Expressionist philosophiesand techniques taught at The University of Alabama during his years asa student there (1954-1959) and continued through his abandonment of paintingon canvas (1964) and his inclusion of signs and found objects in the three-dimensional constructions he created in Memphis (1964-1968)..Many of the pieces featured in The Early Years were in storage in Christenberry'sattic for nearly three decades. Now part of a national touring exhibition,they richly deserve the close attention J. Richard Gruber here gives them. 

Though thirty years in the making, Phillip Collier's Missing New Orleans was almost another treasure lost to Hurricane Katrina. Final proof was due at the New Orleans printer August 31, 2005, just days after floodwaters breached the levees. To the principals of the book, "missing New Orleans" took on personal, devastating meanings.
This pictorial history of New Orleans from the early 1700s to the present offers over 250 images as well as stories of places, entities, and events that were at one time a vital part of the city. Each lost gem tells a unique narrative: the Claiborne Avenue Oaks, the French Opera House, Pontchartrain and Lincoln Beaches, the Gypsy Tea Room, Tulane and Pelican Stadiums, Mr. Bingle, and D. H. Holmes. Images celebrate grand historic structures that once stood along New Orleans thoroughfares, including the St. Louis and St. Charles Hotels from the mid-nineteenth century and the five downtown railroad stations and the Rivergate from the twentieth century.
Through the photographs, postcards, posters, maps, and line drawings gathered by New Orleans graphic designer Phillip Collier, those enamored of the Crescent City can explore a time when West End Park and Spanish Fort were lakefront resort destinations, when boxing and horse racing ruled the city's sporting world, when street vendors plied their wares, and steamboats packed the wharves.

Missing New Orleans

Rapier, Jim

Romig, Mary Beth

History & Criticism

University Press of Mississippi/Ogden Museum of Southern Art

Benny Andrews is a painter, printmaker, cultural leader and arts advocate. His work is in the permanent collections of well over 30 major museums, including the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institute. 
Born into a sharecropper family in 1930 in Madison, Georgia, he is an African American who considers himself a product of his American social and cultural environment. Though he has lived in New York City for the past 40 years, his art still reflects the experiences and memories he associates with his family life in the South (he still maintains a studio in Georgia).

American Icons: From Madison to Manhattan, the Art of Benny Andrews, 1948-1997

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

This lushly illustrated volume for the first time focuses specifically on the strong influence the South had on Benton's explorations of America and on his career as an artist. Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), a widely recognized American painter, muralist, printmaker, and illustrator, first attained prominence during the 1920s and 1930s as an artist, teacher, critic, writer, and outspoken art world personality. By 1934, when he was the first artist featured on the cover of Time magazine, he had become one of the most recognized artists in the United States. Beginning in the 1920s and continuing throughout his career, Benton traveled the breadth of the country, sketching and recording the details of the changing daily life he encountered on the backroads and in the isolated cultural pockets of America. Inspired by his early campaign travels in Missouri with his father, who had been elected to Congress as a Populist in 1897, and driven by his own conviction that the nation was sacrificing its unique culture and history in its rush to become a new, modern society, Benton set out to capture the essence of contemporary America. The American South held a special fascination for Benton, and from his travels and sketching trips throughout the region came many of his most noted images of America. Representing both the drawings Benton made during his travels to the South and the major paintings and murals that later incorporated details from these sketches and finished drawings, Thomas Hart Benton and the American South is a feast to the eye and reveals much about the artist and the South that so captivated him.

Thomas Hart Benton and the American South

Trained at the University of South Florida, Robert Stackhouse was born in Bronxville, New York in 1942. By the 1980s Robert Stackhouse was regarded as one of America's most prominent young sculptors and his massive, ribbed installations were known nationwide. He taught at the Corcoran gallery and later returned to live in New York; by the 1990s his installations were going in large public places nationwide, then worldwide.--Covers the first thirty years of Stackhouse's rise to prominence 1969-1999--Provides an early biography along with a progression of his work--Offers family pictures that personalize this catalog--His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Australian National Gallery in Canberra

Stackhouse

Catalog for January 2000 exhibition. Illustrated. 12p. Bibliography. Essay by J. Richard Gruber. Morsberger's figurative paintings were heavily influenced by the political climate and pop art trends of the 1960s. Measures 9x12 inches.

Philip Morsberger: Paintings and drawings from the sixties

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gruber, J. Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gruber, J. Richard

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gruber, J. Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dusti Bongé, Art and Life: Biloxi, New Orleans, New York

William Christenberry: The Early Years, 1954-1968

The dot man: George Andrews of Madison, Georgia

William Christenberry: The Early Years, 1954-1968

Missing New Orleans

American Icons: From Madison to Manhattan, the Art of Benny Andrews, 1948-1997

Thomas Hart Benton and the American South

Stackhouse

Philip Morsberger: Paintings and drawings from the sixties