An exploration of the artistic and cultural influences that shaped writer and illustrator Edward Gorey
The illustrator, designer, and writer Edward Gorey (1925–2000) is beloved for his droll, surreal, and slightly sinister drawings. While he is perhaps best known for his fanciful, macabre books, such as The Doubtful Guest and The Gashlycrumb Tinies, his instantly recognizable imagery can be seen everywhere from the New Yorker to the opening title sequence of the television series Mystery! on PBS. Gorey's Worlds delves into the numerous and surprising cultural and artistic sources that influenced Gorey's unique visual language. 
Gorey was an inveterate collector--he called it "accumulating." A variety of objects shaped his artistic mindset, from works of popular culture to the more than twenty-six thousand books he owned and the art pieces in his vast collection. This collection, which Gorey left to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art upon his death, is diverse in style, subject, and media, and includes prints by Eugène Delacroix, Charles Meryon, Edvard Munch, and Odilon Redon; photographs by Eugène Atget; and drawings by Balthus, Pierre Bonnard, Charles Burchfield, Bill Traylor, and Édouard Vuillard. As this book shows, these artistic pieces present a visual riddle, as the connections between them―to each other and to Gorey's works―are significant and enigmatic. The essays in Gorey's Worlds also examine the artist's consuming passions for animals and ballet.
Featuring a sumptuous selection of Gorey's creations alongside his fascinating and diverse collections, Gorey's Worlds reveals the private world that inspired one of the most idiosyncratic artists of the twentieth century.
Exhibition Schedule: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, February 10 - May 6, 2018

Gorey's Worlds

Arts & Photography

Monroe, Erin

History & Criticism

Princeton University Press

Andrew Wyeth: Looking Beyond has been produced to accompany the exhibition of the same title held at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, March 24 - July 22, 2012. Andrew Newell Wyeth was one of the most celebrated yet criticized American artists of the twentieth century. His lengthy career spanned nearly eight decades, but works from the 1940s and 1960s especially reveal an immensely productive period when Wyeth transitioned from watercolor painting to painting in egg tempera, which then became his primary medium. Coinciding with this shift, he honed a signature style: distinct and unusual perspectives applied to everyday subject matter. Andrew Wyeth: Looking Beyond takes inspiration from Wyeth's use of windows, half-opened doors, and views through rooms. These traditional romantic emblems of transition and yearning are given new meaning in Wyeth's somber and solitary images. In addition, a lesser known side of the artist is explored through a close examination of his creative process. When working through an idea for a composition, Wyeth utilized different media, such as pencil, watercolor, dry-brush watercolor, and ink. He employed varied techniques and styles to build an evocative image over time. The catalogue consists of two essays: In the first Erin Monroe presents an overview of the history of the Andrew Wyeth works in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and closely examines Wyeth's working methods and his use of windows and open doors to invite viewers to look into a distant realm--be it emotional or physical. In the second, Patterson Sims places Wyeth's art within the tradition of Northern European representational paintings up to the early twentieth century. Sims offers a fresh interpretation of the artist by further positioning him in a larger historical and artistic framework, including the American Regionalists, the Abstract Expressionists, the Magic Realists, and contemporary art.

Andrew Wyeth Looking Beyond

Wadsworth Atheneum

An essential overview of the beloved master colorist and pioneer of American modernism 
Born in 1885 to a working-class family in Connecticut, Milton Avery left school at 16 to work in a factory. Intending to study lettering but soon transferring to painting, he attended evening school for 15 years before moving to New York in the 1920s to pursue a career as a painter.Although he never identified with a particular movement, Avery was a sociable member of the New York art scene. He became a figure of considerable influence for a younger generation of American artists, including Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman. His talent was praised by Rothko, who said of his work that “the poetry penetrated every pore of the canvas to the last touch of the brush.”With more than 100 color reproductions, this volume is the first overview of Avery’s pioneering work in many years. Edith Devaney introduces Avery and his work, while Erin Monroe looks at Avery’s early years in Hartford, and Marla Price examines Matisse’s influence upon his art. A conversation with the artist’s daughter March Avery Cavanaugh and an illustrated chronology by Isabella Boorman complete the book.Milton Avery (1885–1965) was born in upstate New York and studied at the Connecticut League of Art Students and the Art Society in Hartford before moving to Manhattan, where he began his career, in 1925. His works are in museum collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Art, Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Milton Avery

Price, Marla

Devaney, Edith

Cavanaugh, March Avery

Wajahat, Waqas

Royal Academy of Arts

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