Yale Press Log

Abstract city

During the early 1960s, New York City endured a rapid physical and economic transformation. Small shops were exchanged for office towers. Crooked streets made way for massive highway construction. It was in this upheaval that artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg gathered the relics of their outmoded city and raised them up to the level of art. Old ale cans. Tires. Retired license plates. In The Disappearance of Objects, art historian Joshua Shannon examines the work of four artists living in New York City, arguing that these halting alternatives to the cool steel and glass of the rising capitalist city were the artists’ tools for making sense of an increasingly abstract world. 

Though abstraction is still very much at work in today’s New York, the city appears to be turning back to its less congested roots. Just last month, city officials shut down parts of Times Square to traffic, signaling an apparent change in tack. Today’s artists may indeed reflect these changes as well, but no matter what direction we’re heading, a book like The Disappearance of Objects will always serve to illuminate where we’ve been.

New York Times calls Scrapbooks best gift book of the year

If you're looking for a great gift book for the holiday season, Jessica Helfand's Scrapbooks: An American History may be your answer. The New York Times recently called the volume the best gift book of the year, praising its stunning, evocative visuals that "work to bring the world into our hands in such a way that text is, largely, superfluous." Filled with memorable artifacts as diverse as pressed flowers, telegrams, and locks of hair, Scrapbooks offers its readers a rare glimpse into America's vibrant past through the lens of a "virtually unexplored visual vernacular, a world of makeshift means and primitive methods, of gestural madness and unruly visions, of piety and poetry and a million private plagiarisms."

To find out more about Scrapbooks, visit the YUP website or check out the author's videos on Amazon.com.

"Railway" exhibit leaves WSJ reporter "wanting more"

Today's Wall Street Journal features an enthusiastic review of the Nelson-Atkins Museum's exhibit "Art in the Age of Steam: Europe, America, and the Railway, 1830-1960," in which the author praises the "outstanding" essays collected in the accompanying catalog published by the Yale University Press. With more than 250 illustrations, The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam chronicles the life- and landscape-altering effects of the railroad and its influence on the artistic community as artists adapted their idyllic pastoral scenes to make way for the meandering steel tracks of the Industrial Age.

The Journal's review praises the catalog as a substantial companion to an exhibit that left the author "wanting more." He also notes that essays from Professors Matthew Beaumont of University College London and Michael Freeman of Oxford University provide additional perspective on this powerful engine of change. For more information on the exhibit and to see samples of the collected works, click here.

YUP snags two spots on Amazon's Top 100 Best Books of 2008 list

The new year is still two months away, but Amazon.com has already compiled its 100 Best Books of 2008 list, featuring two Yale Press titles: Ivan Brunetti's An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Vol. 2 and Jessica Helfand's Scrapbooks: An American History. Scrapbooks was chosen as the number one selection in Arts and Photography, while the second volume of Brunetti's Anthology came in third among graphic fiction titles. Make sure to pick up these great books when you're reading through all of 2008's best.

To get a glimpse into a few of Scrapbooks' beautiful and intimate worlds, check out Jessica Helfand's Daily Scrapbook, featuring pages from precious schoolgirl diaries to assemblages of memorable artifacts and forgotten records salvaged from the rich history of America.

"Anthology of Graphic Fiction": Now on video

A video produced by artist John Kuramoto and narrated by Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Vol. 2 editor, Ivan Brunetti, has been making the rounds on the blogosphere, earning attention from the likes of the Fantagraphics blog FLOG!, Newsarama, and, most recently, Largehearted Boy

And click here to see Bookgasm's glowing review.

Drawn to Enchant wins 2008 Connecticut Book Award for Design

At the Seventh Annual Connecticut Book Awards held in the atrium of Hartford Public Library on September 21, 2008, Drawn to Enchant was awarded the 2008 Connecticut Book Award for Design in praise of its imaginative and colorful arrangement. The Connecticut Center for the Book, which presents the awards every year, celebrates the books, authors, and readers who cultivate the life of the imagination and the literary tradition of the State of Connecticut. A lavishly illustrated collection of over 200 original artworks assembled from books, original illustrations, manuscripts, and ephemera preserved at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, Drawn to Enchant guides the reader through an epic journey to rediscover the vibrant images found in the treasured books of childhood literature. Designed by Howard Gralla, this volume not only presents an assortment of compelling, vivid images from many of our cherished favorites but also chronicles the gradual evolution of American children's literature from the era of our Founding Fathers to the present day.

To listen to a podcast interview of Timothy Young, curator of the Betsy Beinecke Shirley Collection of American Children's Literature, click here.

Remembering Robert Rauschenberg

Invention and bold experimentation are the legacy of Robert Rauschenberg's legendary art career. On May 12, 2008, he died of heart failure in his Florida home and studio.

Considered a man of many talents, he had his hand in every thinkable artistic medium, and his notoriety stems from his ability to challenge assumptions about art and its categories. His works meld together sculpture, painting, installation, performance, choreography, and more, and he has placed his mark on over a half-century's art movements, both fleeting and lasting. Open source lovers, who find art in the everyday, have Rauschenberg to thank for reinterpreting the questions of Marcel Duchamp and embodying the spirit of Dada in more contemporary terms. The prefix "neo-" is invariably attached to descriptions of his work.

"People ask me, 'Don't you ever run out of ideas?' In the first place I don't use ideas. Every time I have an idea it's too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven't run out of curiosity."

 

For a retrospective on the life and work of this remarkable artist, consider the contribution of Yve-Alain Bois, whose book Robert Rauschenberg: Cardboards and Related Pieces locates one exhibition, Cardboards, within the broader scope of Rauschenberg's oeuvre. Bois creates a thorough and precise panorama through both detail and fresh interpretation.

Art historian Robert S. Mattison also delivers original insights on Rauschenberg in his book Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries. Mattison focuses on the man himself, his work process, and his astonishing influence on areas not limited to the arts. Enthusiastic praise for this book has labeled it a "tour de force."

As important artists go, Rauschenberg is undeniable.

--Michelle

New York Magazine calls Superheroes a "genuinely cool book"

New York Magazine got their hands on an advance copy of Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton. They decided to do an early preview of the exhibition, which premiered at the Met this past Wednesday.

New York Magazine called Superheroes a "genuinely cool book," and found it an eye-opening companion to the opening gala gossip: "For all the jokes one can make about the gala's red carpet being graced with celebrities awkwardly decked out in Catwoman leather or Captain America capes (per hostess Anna Wintour's request that attendees take the theme seriously), a look at what's actually being shown at the exhibit is rather illuminating." Read the entire preview here.

And the blog mblankier.com reviewed Superheroes, noting the "very provocative and interesting parallel" between superheroes and fashion. "All the essays, costumes, and clothing in the book," the blogger writes, "are really fantastic and really inspiring." Read the full review here.

Featuring designers including John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier, and many more, this innovative book examines how the style of superheroes’ dress has influenced street wear and high fashion.

Books on the beauty of nature and the nature of humanity

Two reviews of Yale Press titles appeared in the April 17th edition of the New York Review of Books.

Andrew Butterfield reviewed Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions, edited by Pierre Rosenberg and Keith Christiansen. Butterfield praises the "ravishingly beautiful exhibition, ... one that attempts to renew our understanding of the artist." He particularly admires the essay by Willibald Sauerländer, calling it "brilliant." Read the entire review here.

This beautiful catalogue presents the first in-depth examination of Poussin’s landscapes. Featured here are more than 40 paintings, ranging from the artist’s early Venetian-inspired pastorals to his grandly structured and austere works, designed as metaphors or allegories for the processes of nature. Also included are approximately 60 drawings and essays by internationally renowned scholars who examine the painter’s visual, literary, and philosophical influences as well as his relationships with his patrons and his place in the art-historical canon.

Heckscher's Creating Central Park discusses the creation of recreation

The New York Sun and the New York Observer, both running pieces on Creating Central Park by
Morrison H. Heckscher, have decided to emphasize different parts of the story: one real estate, the other art.

The Real Estate section of the New York Observer contained a Q&A with Heckscher about the book.  Heckscher begins, "I would like to start by saying that the whole issue of the park has to do with open space in Manhattan. Central Park is, shall we say, the conclusion of 50 years of political machinations of how to provide, for the city and Manhattan, open space mostly for health reasons—for air and space for the health of the public, and recreation." Read the entire interview here.

And the New York Sun ran a piece, "Creating Central Park," in their Arts section, with Heckscher discussing the great minds behind the creation of Central Park.

The year 2008 marks the 150th anniversary of the design of Central Park, the first and arguably the most famous of America’s urban landscape parks. In October 1857 the new park’s board of commissioners announced a public design competition, and the following April the imaginative yet practicable “Greensward” plan submitted by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted was selected.

This book tells the fascinating story of how an extraordinary work of public art emerged from the crucible of New York City politics. From William Cullen Bryant’s 1844 editorial calling for “a pleasure ground of shade and recreation” to the completion of construction in 1870, the history of Central Park is an urban epic––a tale not only of animosity, political intrigue, and desire but also of idealism, sacrifice, and genius.