If cliché leads us to believe that art is made out of suffering, there are few circumstances in which the language of art could be more direct, more profound, or more moving than art made in the European concentration camps of World War II. While Auschwitz itself has come to represent the evil that is often considered a paradigm and example of modern barbarity, art and culture played significant roles there. In the extreme and physically threatening circumstances that would seem to thwart creativity, art functioned as a survival strategy, catharsis, documentation, and, at times, a means of psychological escape. Auschwitz functions as a symbolic and historical focus for this exhibition and catalog. It serves as a thematic focal point and a common thread that touched so many victims of various nationalities and disparate backgrounds. While the exhibition presents art that was created at Auschwitz, as well as art produced at other sites, including Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, Gurs, and the Lódz Ghetto, all of the artists in The Last Expression: Art and Auschwitz were ultimately victims at Auschwitz. The catalog includes reproductions of some 300 artworks; each tells a piece of an incredible history. Each remnant of these personal journeys and individual travails contributes to our understanding of the victims of the Holocaust, their experiences, the nature and function of the camps, the strategies of the perpetrators, as well as the will and need to create art.

The Last Expression : Art and Auschwitz

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Block Museum

Chicago-born architect Marion Mahony Griffin (1871-1961) is known primarily for a magnificent drafting style that incorporated architectural plans into dramatic and stylized landscapes. Yet standard histories of early twentieth-century architecture have not fully recognized her pioneering work, which went far beyond her early contributions to the Prairie School. Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature is the first book devoted to Mahony Griffin's graphic work and presents a new critical interpretation of her art. Marion Mahony Griffin was the second woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in architecture and the first woman licensed to practice architecture in Illinois. After years of freelance drafting and design--most famously for Frank Lloyd Wright--she and her husband, architect Walter Burley Griffin, embarked on a career that catapulted them from Chicago to Australia in 1914 after winning the international competition to design the Federal Capital of Australia at Canberra. Marion Mahony Griffin's graphic art is defined by her innovative representations of nature. Her presentation drawings clearly illustrate that architectural design and forms of the natural landscape are inseparable. Botanical forms are also woven into her children's book illustrations and murals and are the subject of the series of Forest Portraits she made in Australia. The many illustrations in this book include vintage photographs of Mahony Griffin's life and work and commercial illustrations that have previously never been published, new photographs of her public murals, full-page color plates of her architectural renderings and Forest Portraits, as well as an exclusive color facsimile of the Forest Portraits and captions as found in the New-York Historical Society's copy of Marion Mahony Griffin's unpublished memoir "The Magic of America."

Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Catalogue for exhibit at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum.

Architects' Drawings: From the Collection of Barbara Pine

Pine, Barbara

Architecture

Brucke German Expressionist Prints

Heller, Reinhold

Individual Artists

Product Details
Paperback: 99 pages
Publisher: Block Museum; 1 edition (April 30, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0941680096
ISBN-13: 978-0941680097
Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 10.2 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: Be the first to review this item
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,911,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

The Modernist Tradition in Watercolors: 1911-1939

Kushner, Marilyn

Painting

This volume explores the vast array of printmaking activity in Germany during a period of profound social transformation. Between the end of World War I and the Nazi ascendancy to power, printmaking took on an unprecedented significance in Germany. Printmakers created works in a wide variety of styles to satisfy the already established art market for quality "art prints" and the rising new market for prints that communicated political ideology. The catalogue includes reproductions of 143 woodcuts, lithographs, etchings and linoleum cuts from private and public collections worldwide. Works by prominent artists and printmakers including Max Beckmann, George Grosz, and Kaethe Kollwitz, as well as lesser-known printmakers, are featured. Reinhold Heller provides an interpretive essay, illuminating the conditions and concerns of German printmakers during this period.

Stark Impressions: Graphic Production in Germany, 1918-1933

Graphic Design

Second Sight: Printmaking in Chicago 1935-1995

Yood, James

Winner of the 2019 Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators Up Is Down: Mid-Century Experiments in Advertising and Film at the Goldsholl Studio is the first illustrated guide to the innovative work of Goldsholl Design Associates and its impact on design and film. Headed by Morton and Millie Goldsholl, the studio worked at the intersection of art, design, and media, producing trademarks, corporate identities, print advertisements, television commercials, and films for such clients as Motorola, Kimberly-Clark, Revlon, 7-Up, and the National Football League. The Goldsholls and their designers were compared to many of the most celebrated design firms of their day and are being rediscovered by many contemporary designers. Inspired by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, with whom they had studied at Chicago’s School of Design, Morton and Millie Goldsholl fostered a culture of exploration and collaboration in their studio. The firm became known for its imaginative “designs-in-film,” applying avant-garde techniques to commercial productions. Its groundbreaking work in the new media of television helped redefine the look of everyday visual culture in mid-century America. The trailblazing work of Goldsholl Design Associates remains an unexplored contribution within American design and advertising. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, this volume’s research explores how a new visual language emerged from Chicago’s cross-fertilization of avant-garde aesthetics, business, and cutting-edge media.

Up Is Down: Mid-Century Experiments in Advertising and Film at the Goldsholl Studio

Portrait of a Child is an illustrated guide to the fascinating story of the mummy known to archaeologists as "Hawara Portrait Mummy No. 4." Discovered in 1910 by British archaeologist Flinders Petrie at the Roman-Egyptian archaeological site of Hawara, the mummified child had been buried with a luminous painted portrait which has captivated viewers ever since. This book tells the story of what cutting-edge research has revealed about her life and death. The centerpiece of a 2018 exhibit at Northwestern University's Block Museum of Art titled "Paint the Eyes Softer: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt," the mummy was the focus on intense, multidisciplinary research. University researchers used CT scan technology to investigate the cause of the child's death and identify the method and materials used in mummification. Traveling to the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, the mummy then became the first ever analyzed using Advanced Photon Source synchrotron technology, where a high-brilliance X-ray beam revealed more details about her bone matter and the materials she was entombed with. Accompanied by a wealth of color images, maps, and diagrams, Portrait of A Child, shares new scientific findings, as well as the conservation, ethical, and museological considerations weighed by the researchers and curators. Written for the knowledgeable general reader, the book presents recent multidisciplinary research that explores the mummy, the economic and cultural history of Hawara within the Roman Empire, as well as the life of a girl in Egypt at the turn of the second century.

Portrait of a Child: Historical and Scientific Studies of a Roman Egyptian Mummy

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Books by Block Museum

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

The Last Expression : Art and Auschwitz

Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature

Architects' Drawings: From the Collection of Barbara Pine

Brucke German Expressionist Prints

Brucke German Expressionist Prints

The Modernist Tradition in Watercolors: 1911-1939

Stark Impressions: Graphic Production in Germany, 1918-1933

Second Sight: Printmaking in Chicago 1935-1995

Up Is Down: Mid-Century Experiments in Advertising and Film at the Goldsholl Studio

Portrait of a Child: Historical and Scientific Studies of a Roman Egyptian Mummy