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Life Magazine and the Power of Photography

History

Princeton University Art Museum

This handsomely designed book brings together for the first time the outstanding work of four Swiss engineers and their teachers who form the most impressive group of structural artists in the twentieth century: Wilhelm Ritter (1847–1906), Robert Maillart (1872–1940), Othmar Ammann (1879–1965), Pierre Lardy (1902–1956), Heinz Isler (b. 1926), and Christian Menn (b. 1927). David P. Billington, who has written widely on these engineers, argues that it is important to consider them as artists, for aesthetics played a major role in their design philosophy. He explains that their shared approach to design was developed while they attended the Federal Technological Institute in Zurich: Maillart and Amman studied with Ritter there, and Isler and Menn studied under Lardy. Billington focuses on the engineers’ artistic approach to bridge design and construction, and he discusses their impressive individual contributions to structural engineering. Generously illustrated, this book features many newly commissioned photographs, including images of important new structures such as the Charles River Bridge in Boston, completed by Menn in 2002.

The Art of Structural Design: A Swiss Legacy

Arts & Photography

Billington, David P.

Architecture

Human animals-such as centaurs, satyrs, sphinxes, sirens, and gorgons-as well as other composite creatures like Pan, Triton, and the Minotaur are extremely common in Greek myth, literature, theater, and the visual arts. Understanding the phenomenon of combining human and animal elements into composite creatures is central to our knowledge of the Greek imagination. This landmark book is the first to investigate representations of these human animals in early Greek art (ca. 850-450 B.C.). The Centaur's Smile discusses the oriental antecedents of these fantastic creatures, examining the influence of Egyptian and Near Eastern models on the formation of Greek monsters in the early Archaic period. Essays also explore the nature and origin of horse-men (centaurs and satyrs) and the ways in which they are represented in early Greek art. Furthermore, the book surveys the broader range of Greek composite creatures and discusses their evolving forms and changing roles and meaning. Over one hundred exquisite objects-all beautifully reproduced in color-are described and analyzed in detail. Among the featured works are reliefs and statuettes in stone, bronze, and terracotta; jewelry and metalwork in gold, silver, and electrum; engraved sealstones in rock crystal, jasper, and cornelian; and painted ceramic vases from Athens, Corinth, Rhodes, Miletus, Cyprus, and Etruria.

The Centaur's Smile: The Human Animal in Early Greek Art

Padgett, J. Michael

The Princeton University Art Museum’s collection of American drawings and watercolors is impressive in both scope and quality, providing a comprehensive overview of the nation’s artistic traditions. This lavishly illustrated book highlights seventy-seven master drawings and watercolors chosen from the museum’s extensive collection. The selections, which range from the eighteenth century to the present, are by such eminent American artists as Benjamin West, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Andrew Wyeth, Georgia O’Keeffe, Lee Bontecou, and Tom Wesselmann. A group of outstanding works by Hudson River School and Ash Can artists also distinguishes the collection.
Each of the selected drawings and watercolors is reproduced in full color and is accompanied by an in-depth catalogue entry. The book also features an introduction by John Wilmerding describing Princeton’s history of collecting American art, as well as an essay by Kathleen A. Foster on the historiography of American drawings and watercolors. A useful checklist of the Museum’s entire collection of over 1,300 American drawings and watercolors, selectively illustrated in color, concludes the book.
This beautiful and informative volume clearly demonstrates that the holdings of the Princeton University Art Museum represent an extraordinary resource for students, scholars, and those with a love of American art and art history.

American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: Volume 1: Drawings and Watercolors

Wilmerding, John.

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

The “Wu Family Shrines,” one of the most important cultural monuments of early China, comprise approximately fifty stone slabs from the so-called Wu cemetery in Shandong province. Depicting emperors and kings, heroic women, filial sons, and mythological subjects, these famous carved and engraved reliefs may have been intended to reflect such basic themes as loyalty to the emperor, filial piety, and wifely devotion; centuries later, they vividly bring to life the art, social conditions, and Confucian ideology of the Eastern Han.This generously illustrated book examines the stone slabs and their rubbings as artifacts with a complex cultural history from the second century to the present, and addresses questions about the traditional identification of the structures as Han dynasty shrines of the Wu family. Written by a team of distinguished scholars in the fields of Chinese art and history, the book includes a novel examination of Han burial items in relation to burial belief, pictorial carvings, and funerary architecture.

Recarving China’s Past: Art, Archaeology and Architecture of the "Wu Family Shrines" (American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum S)

Cary Y. Liu

Michael Nylan

Anthony Barbieri-Low

History & Criticism

The appearance during the first millennium A.D. of small, exquisitely carved artifacts of walrus ivory in the Bering Strait region marks the beginning of an extraordinary florescence in the art and culture of North America. The discovery in the 1930s and 1940s of world-class carvings of animals, mythical beasts, shape-shifting creatures, masks, and human figurines astounded scholars and excited collectors. Nevertheless, the extraordinary objects that belong to this fascinating, sometimes frightening, world of hunting-related art remain largely unknown.
Gifts from the Ancestors examines ancient ivories from the coast of Bering Strait, western Alaska, and the islands in between―illuminating their sophisticated formal aesthetic, cultural complexity, and individual histories. Many of the pieces discussed are from recent Russian excavations and are presented here for the first time in English; others are from private collections not usually open to the public. The essays, written by an international group of scholars, adopt a refreshing interdisciplinary approach that gives voice to the various competing, and now sometimes cooperating, stakeholders, including Native groups, museums, archaeologists, art historians, art dealers, and private collectors.

Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of Bering Strait

The art world is currently enthralled with contemporary Chinese art. This thoughtful book argues, however, that American audiences have been exposed only to a narrow range of what is available―with the majority of attention having been given to “avant-garde,” “experimental,” or politically charged art. Outside In discusses contemporary Chinese art in a far wider range of styles and subject matter and substantially expands on our understanding of this work. 
The book features six artists―Arnold Chang, Michael Cherney, Zhi Lin, Liu Dan, Vannessa Tran, and Zhang Hongtu―all of whom are American citizens yet are widely diverse in age and experience as well as geographical and ethnic origins. In addition to extensive personal interviews and artists’ statements, there are essays that challenge the categorization of art into such focused genres as “Chinese,” “contemporary,” and “American,” and reexamine the factors that shape the development of “Chinese art” in America.

Outside In: Chinese x American x Contemporary Art (Publications of the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University)

With a vast collection of works spanning ancient to contemporary art - including Roman ceramics and mosaics, Chinese bronzes and calligraphy, Mayan ceramics, Old Master prints, and early Renaissance through modern and contemporary paintings, works on paper, and sculptures - the Princeton University Art Museum is one of the leading museums in the country. This comprehensive guide provides the first detailed look at the museum's extensive holdings and its fascinating history. With beautiful illustrations that present masterpieces from all areas of the collections - Ancient, Asian, American, ancient American, African, European, decorative arts, prints and drawings, and photography - it includes engaging descriptive texts on each work written by the museum's curatorial staff and guest authors. Among the many featured highlights are a bound set of Albrecht Durer's engravings of the Passion, paintings by John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, and photographs representing the medium's major movements and historical trends.

Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections

Princeton University. Art Museum

Presenting the first formulation of the central subject, this volume challenges major assumptions long held by Western art historians and provides new ways of thinking about, looking at, and understanding Byzantine art in its broadest geographic and chronological framework, from A.D. 300 to the early nineteenth century. 
Byzantine art abandoned classical ideals in favor of formulas that conveyed spiritual concepts through stylized physical forms. Scholarship dealing with Byzantine icons has previously been largely focused on depictions of holy figures, dismissing representations of architecture as irrelevant space-filling background. Architecture as Icon demonstrates that background representations of architecture are meaningful, active components of compositions, often as significant as the human figures. The book provides a critical view for understanding the Byzantine conception of architectural forms and space and the corresponding intellectual underpinnings of their representation. 
Introduced by four thought-provoking essays, the catalogue divides the material as included in the exhibition into four categories identified as: generic, specific, and symbolic representations, and a final grouping entitled “From Earthly to Heavenly Jerusalem.” This handsomely illustrated volume addresses various approaches to depicting architecture in Byzantine art that contrast sharply with those of the Renaissance and subsequent Western artistic tradition.

Architecture as Icon: Perception and Representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art

Announcing the new Princeton University Art Museum Monograph Series: Princeton University Art Museum Monographs is a new series of in-depth explorations of the museum's rich collections. Beautifully designed and produced, these books by leading and emerging scholars offer new insights and perspectives on a single work or group of works from Princeton's distinguished permanent collection. Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Indiana, and Alex Katz have all come to define the Pop art movement that emerged in America in the 1960s. This handsomely illustrated book focuses on 40 understudied and rarely seen late paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by these influential artists in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum. Pop Art offers fresh insights into the ways in which artists radically transformed the mediums of painting and sculpture. For example, Lichtenstein is repositioned as a classical “studio artist”; Wesselmann is shown to be playfully preoccupied with academic genres; and Indiana is interpreted less as a Pop artist than as a folk artist in a mass-cultural context. This important book also features an engaging introduction by Hal Foster that places these new interpretations in the context of the history of Pop art and its critical literature.

Pop Art: Contemporary Perspectives (Princeton University Art Museum Monograph Series)

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Books by Princeton University Art Museum