Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

Eastern Encounters examines the relationship between British and South Asian rulers over four centuries as told through paintings and manuscripts now held in the British Royal Collection. Each century is documented in a single chapter that recounts the political, economic, and social contexts of cultural activity from the earliest days of the East India Company and its eventual dissolution to the assumption of territorial control of India by the Crown and Indian independence in the 20th century. Through a detailed presentation of the long, and relatively unstudied, history of collection building, Hannan (curator, Royal Collection Trust) reveals the sharp contrasts--for example, the instability, on the one hand, of the British monarchy in the 17th century and the contemporaneous Golden Age of the Mughals as the backdrop for the numerous transactions (including diplomatic gifts, trophies of military conquest, and purchase) that gave rise to the collection. The four chapters are supplemented by an extraordinary catalogue focusing on 86 works. Including stunning reproductions of each work, ample notes, and an insightful bibliography, this well-documented work will be invaluable to those studying the history of collecting and the circulation of works on paper, British and South Asian history, and the history of art, specifically paintings and manuscripts of the Indian subcontinent.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

This meticulously researched volume carefully follows the many diverse themes, personalities, ideas, and opportunities for expression in O'Keeffe's life, career, and art. Grasso (Graduate Center, CUNY) looks at the myriad sources that provided a historical, intellectual, and cultural context for the focused feminism that informed the artist's thought and art. O'Keeffe's feminism was deeply rooted in emerging modernist thought, which nourished ideas and behaviors that marked O'Keeffe as an independent, creative artist and individual liberated from past and existing traditions. O'Keeffe's commitment to her singular feminism was nourished and influenced by her relationships with classicist Mary Beard, writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, political scientist Arthur MacMahon, photographer Anita Politzer, and, of course, her husband, advocate, and patron, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Throughout Grasso provides salient references to topics in the evolution of feminism in the US and emerging traditions in American art. The bibliography reveals the author's command of the archival materials and of primary and secondary sources that illuminate O'Keeffe's singular odyssey as an artist, feminist, and independent woman. This is a magisterial and perceptive study.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

This substantial exhibition catalogue complements a 2017-18 show of the same name at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Curated by Bambach, the show included about 200 works--mostly drawings by Michelangelo, the largest number ever assembled for a public display. With important objects borrowed from more than 50 institutions, the exhibition was billed as a once-in-a-lifetime event, which is likely to prove correct. Worthy of the spectacle, this lavishly produced, well-illustrated publication features eight chapters by Bambach detailing Michelangelo's life and art. Five additional essays follow, written by other leading scholars and focused on more specialized areas of Michelangelo studies. A concluding compendium provides essential facts and a bibliography pertaining to the exhibited objects, albeit without critical commentary. Standing out in the vast literature on Michelangelo, this impressive publication provides a benchmark for students of all levels to explore Michelangelo as a draftsman and designer.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Marked by engaging prose, mastery of the primary and secondary sources, and an impressive array of images (231, most of which appear in stunning color), this is the definitive work on the conversation piece, a mode of portraiture that has long been understood as central to 18th-century British art, even as ambiguities have pervaded the subsequent reception of these intimate group portraits. By stressing how these pictures underscore the polite sociability of their sitters, Retford (Birkbeck, Univ. of London, UK) makes a compelling case for their innovative and modern achievement within a largely consumerist Georgian society. She productively draws on 18th-century connotations of "conversation" to address not only speech (the very thing that seems rarely to be pictured in these portraits) but larger conceptions of behavior, manners, and the company one keeps. William Hogarth, Arthur Devis, Joseph Highmore, Thomas Gainsborough, and Johan Zoffany are central, but Retford also makes important observations about the impact of French and Netherlandish art in Britain. Indeed the book not only provides an extremely satisfying account of conversation pieces but makes a significant contribution to the understanding of British art and the 18th century more broadly.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Smart, elegantly written, and generously illustrated,Transatlantic Encounters breaks new ground in scholarship on 20th-century art and artists from Latin America. Based on Greet's extensive research in personal, commercial, institutional, and print archives on both sides of the Atlantic, the volume traces the experiences of Latin American artists in Paris--the cradle of the early-20th-century avant-gardes and, until WW II, the center of the Western art world. In the book's ten chapters Greet (George Mason Univ.) details where and when artists from Latin America, once in Paris, trained, exhibited, and sold their work and were reviewed in print. Interspersed throughout are case studies of key artists' engagements with movements such as cubism, surrealism, and what became known as the "return to order," and their interactions with European colleagues and teachers. In sum, Transatlantic Encounters fully integrates Latin America into the history of Western modernism. The author makes clear that cultural misconceptions--primitivist fantasies of an irrational, indigenous essence informing art from Latin America--and nationalist prejudices circumscribed critical responses to New World modernists. Latin American painters and sculptors, however, skillfully maneuvered their way into, and contributed significantly to, the interwar Parisian art world.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.