Painter. Adventurer. Visionary. French artist Jules Tavernier (1844 1889) was one of the American West's foremost talents, with a natural ability that many believed was second to none. After arriving in the United States, he and fellow Frenchman Paul Frenzeny were commissioned by Harper's Weekly to travel by rail from New York to San Francisco, producing illustrations of the rapidly changing American frontier along the way. The images were dramatic American Indian customs, the emerging cattle trade, the decimation of native wildlife and had rarely been seen by a popular audience. These scenes established Tavernier's reputation as a bold and daring painter and influenced the work of subsequent artists. Tavernier's reputation continued to grow in California, where he flourished in the budding social scene. He became a member of San Francisco's newly established Bohemian Club, hosting elaborate parties and taking part in celebratory outdoor revels, and his studio in Monterey became a hub of the peninsula's developing art colony. The strange grandeur of the Monterey coastline appealed to Tavernier's imagination, and it was during this period that he produced some of the most audacious work of his career, featuring a host of mysterious themes and images. Always on a quest for new and "untouched" subject matter (and weighed down by significant debts), Tavernier moved on to Hawaii, where he was fascinated by the island's dramatic scenery. "There is material here for a lifetime," he wrote to a friend, and, indeed, it was in this preindustrial paradise, with its lush greenery and churning beds of lava, that the artist's turbulent and creative life seemed to find its perfect visual embodiment.

Jules Tavernier Artist and Adventurer

Scott A. Shields

and Alfred C. Harrison Jr. Claudine Chalmers

Arts & Photography

Pomegranate

At heart a storyteller, Hansen sought subjects that were broadly consequential, depicting scenes, characters, and activities specific to the Monterey Bay region but that conveyed universal themes of physical labor, hardship, danger, bravery, and loss. He rendered these scenes in oil, on the etching plate, and in watercolor, charcoal, and pastel. Celebrated especially as an etcher, Hansen earned a reputation as one of America's finest practitioners of the medium, which on a national level surpassed his renown as one of California's preeminent painters. Released in conjunction with the exhibition organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art in collaboration with the Crocker Art Museum, Armin Hansen: The Artful Voyage presents over two hundred reproductions and photographs, as well as a detailed biography and chronology, depicting Hansen's artistic legacy and his love for Monterey's fishermen and the setting in which they worked.

Armin Hansen: The Artful Voyage

Individual Artists

Written by Scott A. Shields and published in conjunction with the exhibition organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art in collaboration with the Crocker Art Museum, E. Charlton Fortune: The Colorful Spirit presents more than one hundred fifty reproductions and photographs of Fortune's paintings and church furnishings, as well as photographs and a detailed chronology outlining her unconventional life. An essay by Julianne Burton-Carvajal examines Fortune's work as a liturgical designer. Published on the occasion of the exhibition E. Charlton Fortune: The Colorful Spirit Pasadena Museum of California Art: August 20, 2017-January 7, 2018 Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento: January 28-April 22, 2018 Monterey Museum of Art: May 24-August 27, 2018

E. Charlton Fortune: The Colorful Spirit

History & Criticism

Audiences today generally know Richard Diebenkorn s career in terms of three major evolutions: the Sausalito, Albuquerque, Urbana, and early Berkeley periods of Abstract Expressionism (1947 1955); the Berkeley figurative/representational period (1955 1966); and the Ocean Park (1967 1988) and Healdsburg (1988 1992) series of abstractions. Yet Diebenkorn s earliest paintings and drawings remain little known. This catalogue, compiled to accompany a traveling exhibition of the same name, focuses on Diebenkorn s evolution to maturity. It features nearly two hundred paintings and drawings, many from the collection of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, that precede his shift to figuration. These early pieces evolved rapidly from representational landscape scenes and portraits of military colleagues, to semiabstract and Surrealist-inspired depictions of topography and the human form, to the artist s mature Abstract Expressionist paintings. Many of these pieces will be unfamiliar to the public, yet they offer a fuller picture of Diebenkorn s precocious achievements and set the stage for what was yet to come.

Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942-1955

Granville Redmond (1871–1935) produced paintings capturing California’s diverse topography, vegetation, and color. Representing both northern and southern parts of the state, these range from contemplative Tonalist works that evoke a quiet calm, to dramatic and colorful Impressionist scenes. Redmond ultimately became best known for colorful Impressionist depictions of California hillsides and meadows ablaze with poppies and other native flora. Silent film star Charlie Chaplin, Redmond’s friend and supporter, said of these paintings, “There’s such a wonderful joyousness about them all. Look at the gladness in that sky, the riot of color in those flowers. Sometimes I think that the silence in which he lives has developed in him some sense, some great capacity for happiness in which we others are lacking.” Today, Redmond is considered one of California’ss top early artists. Based on an unpublished manuscript by the late Mildred Albronda (1912–1998), this book was written and compiled by Scott A. Shields and published in conjunction with the exhibition Granville Redmond: The Eloquent Palette, organized by the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

Granville Redmond: The Eloquent Palette

This book I picked up at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento, California during a Mel Ramos exhibit. Since I am not much into this type of painting, I decided to sell it to someone who is. He has many nudes with common food items and such. High quality printing of his paintings.

Mel Ramos: 50 Years of Superheroes, Nudes, and Other Pop Delights

Modernism Inc.

Learn more about the interconnected band of bohemians who created an artists paradise along the Pacific coast, south of San Francisco and north of Los Angeles, in this collection of contemporary writing and vintage articles. 
 This unique publication (the book, a writer's journal, and a slipcase printed with original art), was created in conjunction with the California Preservation Foundation annual conference. 
This book explores California s Monterey Peninsula as a crossroads of art, culture, architecture, literature, and society in the first half of the twentieth century. A group of prominent academics and historians has contributed essays, articles, and excerpts that discuss the lives and artistic endeavors of notable residents of the region during this fascinating period. 
 Among those discussed in the text are Robinson Jeffers, Lincoln Steffens, George Sterling, Ambrose Bierce, Mary Austin, Sinclair Lewis, Joaquin Miller, Charles Stoddard, Upton Sinclair, Richard Neutra, Arnold Genthe, William Keith, Arthur Mathews, Anne Bremer, E. Charlton Fortune, Armin Hansen, Clark Hobart, Mary DeNeale Morgan, Xavier Martinez, Helen Bruton, Margaret Bruton, Jeannette Maxfield Lewis, Paul Whitman, Charles Sumner Greene, John Cunningham, Johan Hagemeyer, Edward Weston, R.M. Schindler, and Pauline Schindler.

Bohemian Crossroads: Art & Culture Collide Then Subside on the Monterey Peninsula

Susan Shillinglaw

Ted Wells

Barbara Lamprecht

David Weir

John Crosse

Barbara J. Klein

Guardian Stewardship Editions

A full-color exhibition catalog features a selection of vibrant Impressionist paintings by Benjamin Brown, a historical Plein Air painter who was one of the first artists to settle and paint in Pasadena.

Benjamin Chambers Brown, 1865-1942: California Colors

Pasadena Museum of California Art

California Impressionism at the Crocker Art Museum

Crocker art museum

Looking back over the last two decades it is hard to determine where the greatest change lies: is it in Jian Wang, the artist who left China in 1986 to develop his career in the US, or is it in the China Jian Wang left behind? Jian Wang was born into a China that was emerging from a terrible famine in 1958, he grew up during Mao s Cultural Revolution, and he took a leap of faith in 1986 to leave his professional life in China as an Engineer to pursue the artistic life of his youthful dreams. In a reversal that would have seemed just as startling then as one that launched his life as a successful Contemporary American artist, Jian has recently returned to China, to find a new freedom and prosperity fueling a globally recognized resurgence in the Arts a resurgence that has swept him into a new phase of his life as an artist, with exciting and ongoing consequences. Jian Wang, as an artist, has always been characterized by the sharp contrast between the background of his life, and the way he chose to live that life. He brought his Chinese experience to this country, and now he has taken his acquired American-ness back to China. The result is a fresh perspective a uniqueness of vision that enlivens everything he creates. Jian Wang was looking west in an east-facing crowd, now he looks east again from his western vantage point. Recognized for the uniqueness of his talent over a decade ago by Dawson Cole Fine Art, Jian has enjoyed the support of the artistically intuitive MacDonald family. He has garnered a strong and loyal following of collectors, and has been formally recognized for his accomplishments. In 2007 the California State named him as one who had made Outstanding Contributions to the Arts, echoing a 2006 resolution by the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors honoring his local achievements. What his illustrious mentors, like Wayne Thiebaud, Fred Dalkey and David Hollowell recognized long ago as Jian studied for his academic degrees in Fine Art in the United States, was recently discovered by the influential Director of the National Art Museum of China, Fan Dian. The National Museum hosted Jian s first exhibition in China during the Bejing Summer Olympics, and has since dedicated the maximum allowable funding for the acquisition of Jian s work for the Museum. Plans are underway to dedicate a permanent hall in the National Museum to Jian Wang. This recognition has brought the attention of international collectors, and has led to Jian s work being taken into important private collections in Japan, Korea, and Europe. Loyal American collectors are seeing their early support of Jian Wang s originality and exceptionalism validated in the most concrete and enduring way possible. Jian Wang established a studio in Bejing in 2007, and found the art scene alive with heady mix of newfound freedom, opportunity, patronage, and prosperity. The massive influx of Chinese youth from the countryside provided Jian with a fascinating subject: fresh-faced country girls adopting western styles of make-up and fashion a stunning mix of traditions and modernity, full of new possibilities. In a bustling beehive of over 90 artist s studios Jian found conversations about art and politics and life that set the wheels of his mind turning at a accelerated pace. The years of dedication in America, of persistence and hard work, were being overlaid by a newfound exhilaration and ease in the exciting atmosphere of his Bejing studio. The brilliance of the new work reflects this new and rewarding phase of the artist s life. Jian Wang seeks to hold a mirror up to a society that is changing rapidly, affecting each one of its members, and the entire world, with the energy of its growth and its embrace of individuality. -Leanne Reinhold

Jian Wang 2009: Contemporary Art

Di'an, Fan

PH.D.

Director of the National Art Museum of China

Hebei Education press

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Books by Scott A. Shields