Graham Nickson: Dual Natures captures the essential core of Graham Nickson's paintings of the past 30 years: the figure in the landscape, in particular the coastal landscape. The long, low-lying horizon that sharply divides the picture is in stark contrast to the nearly always uprightness of the figures. An unstated proposition arises: Do nature and man co-exist or is man simply a passing moment, an incident that marks time?
 The text by Andrew Forge and Harold Cooper address this question and examine the profound scholarship of and homage to certain key figures in art. Obvious references include Cezanne's Bather, the quiet and solemn paintings of Picasso's blue period, Matisse's color and light, the sculptures of Rodin and Degas. Nickson straddles the depictive and abstract in a way that brings vigor to the work, using enigma and ambiguity to engage the viewer in the drama of a moment.

Graham Nickson: Dual Natures

Arts & Photography

Forge, Andrew

Nickson, Graham

Charles and Emma Frye Art Museum

Cooper, Harold

Painting

Frye Art Museum

Lundin (art, U. of Washington) provides a thoughtful, illuminating introductory chapter to this catalogue, prepared to accompany a 2002 exhibit at the Frye Art Museum, for which he was guest curator. One hundred and forty-two drawings are presented. An interesting controversy is briefly described: Lundin favored presenting the images unencumbered by text so that visual engagement would be paramount, while Debra Byrne (a director at the Frye Museum) was reluctant to omit contextual information such as author biographies and info about the media and format. The compromise (which is effective): text is unobtrusively presented at the end of the book, after the images have had their say. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Perception of Appearance: A Decade of Contemporary American Figure Drawing

Lundin, Norman

History & Criticism

William Beckman (b. 1942) paints himself, loved ones, and the land he has lived upon, creating edgy portraits and landscapes. His subjects, whether mother or lover, are delivered to the viewer with gripping details, without embelishment. 
He creates his figurative art using a unique method. He applies paint, then shaves of layer after layer from the surface with a razor, repainting and polishing the canvas to create lustrous, absorbing images. His realism is stripped of sentiment, his idealized portraits scrupulously rendered, and his expansive tracts of Minnesota farmland theatrically scaled. Each painting is epic in significance and matter-of-fact at the same time. 
This is the first book that offers a comprehensive view of Beckman’s art and career. Essays--Boxes, Diana, Couples, Self Portraits, Landscapes, and Drawings and Studies--cluster the work according to subject matter, describing the many ways Beckman has found to bond form and content and enabling the reader to grasp the unfolding shape of his artistic thought.

William Beckman

Belz, Carl

A survey of paintings from the 1970s to the present by artist William Beckman are found in this catalog, which accompanied an exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle in 2002. Using an intensely realistic style, Beckford paints portraits, self-portraits, and rural landscapes, featuring farms in the painter's native Minnesota as well as New York. Belz's essays describe the artist's biography and stages of his career. Distributed by the U. of Washington Press. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Swiss-born artist Albert von Keller (1844-1920) was a founding member of the Munich Secession, one of Europe's most influential artists' associations. Highly regarded as an artist in both Europe and America at the turn of the last century, Keller was a flamboyant figure known for his fascination with the occult. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker places Keller's modern treatment of enigmatic subjects within the cultural mileau of fin de siecle Germany, particularly the investigation of the occult undertaken by scientists, artists andintellectuals. She also documents for the first time the critical reception to Keller's work in America, tracing the artist's participation in exhibitions in Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, New york, and Saint Louis and his presence in important private collections of German art in America. Swiss art historian Gian Casper Bott examines each painting by Keller in depth and places the artist's works in the art-historical context of the era. The book includes magnificent color reproductions of Keller's paintings from the collection of the Kunsthaus Zurich. It includes key works by Keller from the late 1870s to the beginning of the First World War, a period that coincided with the scandal of his elopement with the beautiful banker's daughter Irene von Eichthal, the tragic death of his only child, and the death of his wife only months later in a state of profound grief.

Seance: Albert Von Keller and the Occult

One of the most controversial artists of the late nineteenth century, Gabriel von Max (1840-1915) "set hearts beating violently" with his paintings of a somnambulant, crucified woman with a full-blooded swain at her feet and an anatomist pulling back diaphanous cloth from the alabaster corpse of a beautiful young woman. Max's portrayal of the biblical tale of Jairus's daughter being raised from the dead, his polemical depiction of vivisection, and his paintings of melancholic monkeys engaged in various humanlike endeavors stirred the emotions and public debates of his day. 
This first publication in English to focus on Gabriel von Max reintroduces the artist's accomplishments and examines the reception of his work in the New World that so fascinated him. Essays by leading European art historians are accompanied by extraordinary illustrations of Max's work and his fictitious account of an adventurous journey to America.
Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker is director of the Frye Art Museum in Seattle and former director of the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich and the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada. Other contributors include Karin Althaus, Susanne Boller, Ales Filip, Helmut Hess, and Roman Musil.

Gabriel von Max

In a few short years, Isaac Layman (b. 1977) has established himself as an exceptional talent. In Paradise, Layman expands his practice of constructing large-scale, psychologically charged photographic-based visions of the spaces and objects found in his Seattle home. His most recent photographic constructions explore the desire to fabricate escapes, destinations, and monuments and the role discontent plays in driving the need to create imagined perfection.

Isaac Layman ― Paradise

Nufer, Doug

Danzker, Jo-Anne Birnie

Artists at the Fry describes the background to works in the Fry art Gallery, Saffron Walden, Essex. The gallery s North West Essex Collection is based on the artists of Great Bardfield includi ng  Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, Michael Rothens tein, John Aldridge and Kenneth Rowntree, who live d in this small Essex village between 1930 and 197

Artists at the Frye: A Guide to Works in the Fry Art Gallery

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Celebrating American Poetry: An Exhibition of Contemporary Letter Arts

Carlo Maria Mariani The Mysterious Enchantment of Beauty

Raphael Rubinstein

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

Books by Frye Art Museum

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

Graham Nickson: Dual Natures

The Perception of Appearance: A Decade of Contemporary American Figure Drawing

William Beckman

William Beckman

Seance: Albert Von Keller and the Occult

Gabriel von Max

Isaac Layman ― Paradise

Artists at the Frye: A Guide to Works in the Fry Art Gallery

Celebrating American Poetry: An Exhibition of Contemporary Letter Arts

Carlo Maria Mariani The Mysterious Enchantment of Beauty