Art in Our Time: A Pictorial History, 1890-1980

Arts & Photography

Peter Selz

History & Criticism

THAMES HUDSON LTD

Nathan Oliveira

Nathan Oliveira's (1928--2010) passion for continuing an inner-directed artistic tradition attached to the human subject persisted throughout his more than forty years as a painter and master printmaker. His art represents an ongoing dialogue with artists from Rembrandt to Goya to Munch, Beckmann, Giacometti, and de Kooning--whom he recognized for their insights into the human condition. The human touch, so often absent in contemporary work, is distinct in Oliveira's art. His paintings and monotypes bear the mark of his brush in the tactile quality of the paint and the unique printed surfaces of his monotypes. He lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was professor emeritus of art at Stanford University, Oliveira is widely regarded as a key figure in American art, and his paintings, monoprints, drawings, watercolors, and sculpture have attracted an international audience. This book is the most comprehensive study to date of Oliveira's career as artist and teacher. Generously illustrated with 172 images, more than 100 in color, and including valuable, previously unpublished biographical and bibliographical information, Nathan Oliveira accompanied the major traveling exhibition of the same name. Peter Selz's authoritative text weaves key moments in Oliveira's professional life together with compelling readings of the paintings themselves. Selz, who curated the exhibition, succeeds brilliantly in establishing a sense of where Oliveira came from, what inspired him, and how he thought of himself as an artist. Selz discusses Oliveira's beginnings as the son of Portuguese immigrants, his early exposure to Bay Area artists, and his formative experience of studying with Max Beckmann. Selz also traces the artist's affinity to his older contemporaries, his search for an expressive relationship between form and space that found resonance in presentation of the single figure, and the exhibitions and collaborations that shaped his career. Susan Landauer's introduction provides an overview of the artist's work, while Joann Moser considers Oliveira's prints and drawings. Gary Carson's chronology, bibliography, and list of Oliveira's solo exhibitions complete this landmark publication, which fills an important gap in bringing Oliveira's powerful paintings and prints to the attention of a much larger public.

University of California Pr/San Jose Museum of Art

The San Francisco based artist John DiPaolo (b. 1946) is one of the U.S.'s leading, contemporary abstract artists. Over the last forty years, he has pushed the limits of abstract painting that move and engage viewers rather than cater to the style's most common presuppositions. In doing so, he has imbued a storied, mid-20th century artistic movement with new energy and life, rendering it relevant and fresh in the immediate moment.A native of Brooklyn, New York, DiPaolo moved to San Francisco in 1971 to attend San Francisco Art Institute and, later San Francisco State University. Though many Northern California artists such as David Park and Elmer Bischoff had largely abandoned pure abstraction in favor of figuration by the 1960s, a strong contingent was influenced by artists and teachers such as Sam Tchakalian, Julius Hatovsky, and Jack Jefferson, DiPaolo grew interested in exploring abstraction and materiality as a means of expanding the boundaries of his own art practice. Moving beyond limiting contours of the visible world, DiPaolo saw how abstraction's raw, elemental architecture could potentially mobilize the type of physical, experimental engagement he sought in his art.Published on the occasion of DiPaolo's seventh solo exhibition with Dolby Chadwick Gallery, John DiPaolo; A forty-Year Retrospective takes readers through key events in DiPaolo's life and career. A collection of over seventy images presents a stunning visual record of paintings made between the 1970s and 2012. This book serves as an important testament to the formal and critical trajectory of DiPaolo's impressive career.

John DiPaolo : A Forty-Year Retrospective

Frances Malcolm

John DiPaolo

San Francisco: Dolby Chadwick Gallery, 2012

Shows and describes Beckmann's self-portraits from age fourteen to sixty-six, and discusses what they reveal about his development as an artist

Max Beckmann: The Self-Portraits (Publications / Gagosian Gallery, 4)

Individual Artists

GAGOSIAN GALLERY

Drawn from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Color &amp; Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000 accompanies a major touring exhibition on the history of ceramic art in the second half of the twentieth century. Illustrated with more than 250 color photographs, Color &amp; Fire explores the roles of key artists and the major stylistic movements they developed during the decades of pioneering innovation. Based on the premise that the history of studio ceramics can be regarded as a series of breakthroughs or milestones, Color &amp; Fire highlights the moments when talented artists came together to produce work in clay that challenged traditions and promoted aesthetic freedom. In the early years of the twentieth century, pottery was primarily mass-produced in factories, where specialists in wheel throwing, glazing, and kiln firing worked under a system of divided labor. In the 1930s and 1940s, ceramists such as the renowned team of Gertrud and Otto Natzler began to perform all of these exacting functions-from mixing clay to firing kilns-in their own studios, creating one-of-a-kind pots, breathtaking in design and construction. Since that time, ceramic art has followed a metaphorical journey from the earth to the air, as concerns with utility, materials, and techniques have given way to abstract conceptual considerations. In Los Angeles in the 1950s, Peter Voulkos and his students upset the traditional values of craft pottery and the Bauhaus- inspired "form follows function" doctrine by creating nonfunctional, oversized, off-kilter vessels with cracks and holes, along with massive Abstract Expressionist monuments. In the 1960s in northern California, Robert Arneson and his students shattered taboos against clay as a sculptural medium in the oversized, off-kilter vessels with cracks and holes, along with massive Abstract Expressionist monuments. In the 1960s in northern California, Robert Arneson and his students shattered taboos against clay as a sculptural medium in the hands of potters with their radical, irreverent, and satirical "Funk" pieces. Today, no longer confined to the decorative arts or other craft categories, ceramic artists around the world explore an unlimited range of influences, styles, and ideas, engaging in a graceful and inventive dialogue with centuries of ceramic tradition. A celebration as well as a valuable art-historical survey, Color &amp; Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000 showcases the finest works form the unparalleled collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Accessible to the novice as well as to the enthusiast, the book includes essays by Grechen Adkins, Garth Clark, Jo Lauria, Rebecca Niederlander, Susan Peterson, and Peter Selz.

Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000

Susan Peterson

Garth Clark

Jo Lauria

Gretchen Adkins

Rebecca Niederlander

Travel

Rizzoli

Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Caricatures are often the truest history of the times." The American Presidency in Political Cartoons: 1776-1976 is the work of a seminar co-sponsored by the Departments of History of Art and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Under the direction of Professor Emeritus Thomas C. Blaisdell, Jr. and Professor Peter Selz, thirteen students spent a year's time studying the history of American political caricature, focusing on the office of the Presidency. Their efforts resulted in this publication, which accompanied an exhibition of the same name held at the University Art Museum, Berkeley in January/February 1976. The cartoons are discussed chronologically.

The American Presidency in Political Cartoons, 1776-1976

Thomas C. Blaisdell Jr.

Gibbs-Smith Publisher

Sam Francis: Blue Balls (an exhibition catalogue)

Painting

This 2009 catalog accompanied Mitchell Johnson exhibitions on the Stanford University Campus and at the Royal Danish Embassy in Washington, DC. It features 30 color plates of a diverse range of paintings and an interview conducted by art historian Peter Selz in Johnsons Palo Alto studio. Mitchell Johnson s paintings have appeared in ARTnews, Art in America, the NY Times Magazine, American Artist, Oprah s Next Chapter, The Mindy Project, Southwest Art, San Francisco Magazine, Provincetown Arts, Cape Arts Review, ArtScope, Art Ltd., Modern Painters, The NY Times T Magazine, Sunset Magazine, Gentry, The Huffington Post, American Contemporary Art, and many feature films including The Holiday (2006), It s Complicated (2009), The Lodger (2009), and Crazy Stupid Love (2011). Based in Silicon Valley, Mitchell Johnson moved to California in 1990 after completing his MFA at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Johnson was heavily influenced by his NY teachers Paul Resika, Leland Bell, Larry Rivers, Robert DeNiro, Sr., John Heliker and Nell Blaine many former students of Hans Hofmann. Johnson divides his time between his California studio and his favorite painting locations in Italy, France, Cape Cod and Denmark. His paintings can be found in over 700 collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Frederick R. Weisman Museum at Pepperdine, New Britain Museum of American Art, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art and the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. Johnson s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Helena, Portland, New York, Oakland, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Washington, DC and Kansas City. He is represented by I. Wolk Gallery, Ma(i)sonry Napa Valley, Schoolhouse Gallery and FilmArt LA. All thirteen of his publications are for sale at Amazon.com. He is married to the writer, Donia Bijan.

Peter Selz Interviews Mitchell Johnson (2009)

Mitchell Johnson

Royal Danish Embassy Washington, DC

8vo, stiff pictorial wrappers. 57 pp, 23 illustrations (13 in color) + 2 text photographs, portrait, detailed chronology, bibliography. Exhibition September 15 - October 30, 2010.

Botero in LA: Drawings, Paintings, Sculpture

Tasende Gallery

This massive 288 page monograph includes over 250 color plates and is published to accompany an exhibit of Mitchell Johnson's paintings at the Bakersfield Museum of Art in 2015 as well as several San Francisco exhibitions. Essays written by Alexander Nemerov, Jennifer Samet, John Seed, John Goodrich, Claude Pichevin, Marilena Pasquali, Sofie Filt Læntver and Peter Campion establish a context for Johnson's color and shape driven work. The book also includes a 2009 interview by Art Historian Peter Selz from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Numerous color reproductions of paintings by Bonnard, Vuillard, Morandi and Josef Albers explore Corot's relationship to Modernism and contemporary painting and suggest a separate branch to 20th century art history as first identified by Fairfield Porter.

Mitchell Johnson: Color as Content (2014)

Peter Campion

John Seed

John Goodrich

Alexander Nemerov

Jennifer Samet

Sofie Filt Læntver

Claude Pichevin

Marilena Pasquali

Menlo Books

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Books by Peter Selz