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Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships considers global feminist coalitional practices in the contemporary visual arts through three key frameworks: transnational solidarity, archives, and kinships and care. The edited volume features emerging and established scholars and artists whose diverse perspectives inspire connections as well as critical points of divergence over the meanings of “feminism,” “transnationalism,” and “art.” Representing grassroots activism, artistic practice, and scholarly and curatorial inquiry, the diversity of approaches, writing styles, and chapter lengths depart from conventional modes of academic writing and provide pedagogical opportunities for students and scholars to use these contributions in a variety of learning environments not limited to the traditional classroom.

 

By 1950, forward-looking New York painting was seen as synonymous with abstraction, especially charged, gestural Abstract Expressionism. But there was also a strong group of dissenters; artists, all born in the 1920s and many of them students of Hans Hofmann, who never lost their enthusiasm for recognizable imagery, without rejecting Abstract Expressionism's love of malleable oil paint. Although most of them began as abstract artists, they all evolved into painters working from observation, using a fluid, urgent touch to translate their perceptions into eloquent, highly individualized visual languages, almost always informed by the hand; that is, unlike the Color Field and Minimalist artists, these artists remained, for the most part, "painterly" painters. In light of their important contributions to twentieth-century American art, The Artist Book Foundation presents the cataloge for the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center's eponymous 2020 exhibition, Figuration Never Died: New York Painterly Painting, 1950–1970.

These rebellious artists include Lois Dodd, Jane Freilicher, Paul Georges, Grace Hartigan, Wolf Kahn, Alex Katz, Albert Kresch, Robert de Niro Sr., Paul Resika, and Anne Tabachnick. The compelling figurative work they made between about 1950 and 1970, in contrast to the prevailing Abstract Expressionism of the time, constitutes a significat chapter in the history of recent American Modernism. Their work not only greatly expands our conception of the story of New York painting, but it also presages and contextualizes today's multiplicity of artistic concepts and processes. Given both the aesthetic diversity of today's New York art world and the dependence of many younger artists on digital media or the appearance of digital media, it seems an appropriate moment to reconsider the work of these daring pioneers, as both precursor and opposition to current norms.

“[A] spirited and deeply researched project…. [Benkemoun’s] affection for her subject is infectious. This book gives a satisfying treatment to a woman who has been confined for decades to a Cubist’s limited interpretation.” — Joumana Khatib, The New York Times

Merging biography, memoir, and cultural history, this compelling book, a bestseller in France, traces the life of Dora Maar through a serendipitous encounter with the artist’s address book.

In search of a replacement for his lost Hermès agenda, Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When it arrives, she opens it and finds inside private notes dating back to 1951—twenty pages of phone numbers and addresses for Balthus, Brassaï, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, and other artistic luminaries of the European avant-garde.

After realizing that the address book belonged to Dora Maar—Picasso’s famous “Weeping Woman” and a brilliant artist in her own right—Benkemoun embarks on a two-year voyage of discovery to learn more about this provocative, passionate, and enigmatic woman, and the role that each of these figures played in her life.

Longlisted for the prestigious literary award Prix Renaudot, Finding Dora Maar is a fascinating and breathtaking portrait of the artist.