Art History

Looking at the Renaissance by Charles R. Mack

Material Witness by Ted Leigh

Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London by Keith Holz

Looking at the Renaissance: Essays toward a Contextual Appreciation

Charles R. Mack

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

The product of more than three decades of teaching and research about the nature of the Italian Renaissance, Professor Mack attempts to identify the underlying qualities that give a distinct and revolutionary character to the period. While doing so, the author argues in favor of the now-disputed notion of "historical periods" while continuing to uphold the importance of the antique revival in shaping the cultural character of the age. He also defends the primacy of Italy and asserts the leadership of Florence in creating a new and powerful "urge to unify." It is this harmonizing hallmark that Mack sees as the essential "common denominator" which separated the Renaissance from its medieval past.

Charles R. Mack is Professor of Art History at the University of South Carolina.

Spring 2005
216 pages

Material Witness: The Selected Letters of Fairfield Porter

Ted Leigh

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

Material Witness is a revealing, intimate look at the life and art of painter Fairfield Porter as revealed in his letters. Porter's correspondence with many leading figures in American art and literature provides a rich portrait of American cultural life in the mid-twentieth century.

Porter, whose commitment to representational techniques dimmed notice of his work during the abstraction-crazed 50s and 60s, is now regarded as a towering figure of American painting's 20th century. Justin Spring's biography of him took a prize at the New York Book Show, and a one-man show of his work toured in 2001.

Porter's many correspondents include John Ashbery, Clement Greenberg, Kenneth Koch, Ron Padgett, Larry Rivers, and James Schuyler, among other writers, critics and artists. Most of the letters appear here for the first time, and they contain fascinating personal details along with the theoretical insights for which Porter was already highly respected as a writer of art criticism. Porter's intimate discussions of his and others' art, his travels (which included an interview with Trotsky in the Soviet Union), politics, and other social issues reveal a brilliant and independent mind that will captivate a large and varied audience.

Fairfield Porter (1907-75) was an artist and critic, considered by John Ashbery to be "perhaps the major American artist of this century."

Ted Leigh is an independent scholar and artist who studied under Fairfield Porter and holds an MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Spring 2005
368 pages

Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague and London: Resistance and Acquiescence in a Democratic Public Sphere

Keith Holz

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

"In this exciting and carefully researched book, Keith Holz shows how modern German art continued to evolve outside the borders of the Third Reich during the 1930s and 1940s. An array of important and politically engaged artists—including Oskar Kokoschka, John Heartfield, Otto Freundlich, Josef Breitenbach, and Max Ernst—made major contributions to modern art and helped educate foreign audiences about Nazi Germany. This is the definitive study of the exiled artists' associations in Paris, Prague, and London, and their important discourse about contemporary art."
—Jonathan Petropoulos, author of The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany

From 1933 to 1940, as the National Socialists assumed control of Germany and its art world, scores of dissenting artists and critics fled the Reich. Though the United States was often thought to be the haven of choice for these exiles, the greatest concentration of artists and critics first relocated to the nearby, democratic capitals of Paris, Prague, and London. Through press and archival research, Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London examines the public activities of the four exile artists' groups and demonstrates the obstacles and competition each met trying to educate local and international audiences about recent German art. The story situates the artistic and critical endeavors of the exiles amid the turbulent international political events that led to World War II.

Fall 2004
384 pages