Although most modern art historians viewed the figure as regressive, early-20th-century American sculptors embraced the human form. Curator of American Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fort presents a wide selection of works from this period, not as a movement from the naturalistic to the abstract but as a reflection of a rapidly changing American society. While she sees much modern American sculpture as rooted in the works of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), she shows how the figure?whether represented in genre, primitive, folk, archaic, or classical styles?allowed artists to criticize or praise modern society. Fort's selection of minority and female artists for the work is especially refreshing, and the biographies at the end of the book are useful because several are not well known. Unfortunately, the mostly black-and-white plates are small and cannot properly represent the lines and textures of the pieces. Regardless of the quality of the photographs, this highly original work complements Donald Martin Reynold's Masters of American Sculpture (LJ 4/1/94) and is recommended for fine arts collections and academic libraries. ǂb --Review by Julie C. Boehning from Library Journal.

INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards -- 2014 GOLD Winner for Art This book is a celebration of figurative art, essential to those interested in both traditional techniques and the latest developments in the art of the figure. An expansive survey of contemporary figurative art, The Figure showcases work by acclaimed artists including Jenny Saville, Eric Fischl, and Will Cotton alongside emerging talents. Artists’ texts and essays by distinguished critics, writers, and thinkers chart the evolution of figurative techniques, from the atelier to the use of photography, Photoshop, and 3D-modeling programs. Centered on the renowned New York Academy of Art—where many of the featured artists are alumni or instructors—this collection reflects the institution’s mission to instill the rigorous training of past generations within the lively dialogue of the present day. Championed by artists, scholars, and patrons of the arts, including Andy Warhol, since its founding in 1982, the Academy continues to serve as a creative and intellectual center at the vanguard of representational art. With a wealth of imagery displaying some of the finest examples of the genre in all mediums, this richly illustrated volume attests to the enduring appeal of the art of the human figure.

The exploration of the human figure has been the pursuit of artists for millennia. Manuel Neri (b. 1930), a California native and former student of Richard Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliveira, has spent a lifetime accentuating the gesture, surface, and materiality of the figure. He renders his work in several different mediums that include plaster, marble, bronze, and paper. This exhibition, drawn from and celebrating gifts donated to the museum by The Manuel Neri Trust, provides a glimpse into the artist's creative process and his quest to define the figure on his own terms. Manuel Neri is known for his prolonged artistic engagement with the figure in a variety of materials, starting with plaster in the late 1950s and moving into bronze and marble. The seven sculptures in the outdoor installation reference Neri's origins with plaster and his expressionistic manipulation of the medium. By casting plaster in bronze, tactile surfaces are preserved and enhanced.

Collects the best artwork created before, during and following the Civil War, in the years between 1859 and 1876, along with extensive quotations from men and women alive during the war years and text by literary figures, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. 15,000 first printing.

How did the United States become not only the leading contemporary art scene in the world, but also the leading market for art? The answer has to do not only with the talents of American artists or even the size of the American economy, but also--and especially--the skills and entrepreneurship of American art dealers. Their story has not been told...until now. Landscape with Figures is the first history of art dealing in the United States, following the profession from eighteenth-century portrait and picture salesmen in the colonies to the high-profile, jet-set gallery owners of today. Providing anecdotal and carefully researched biographies of the prominent dealers from more than two centuries of trade, author Malcolm Goldstein shows how magnanimous personalities and social networking helped to shape the way Americans have bought and valued art. These dealers range from Michael Paff, whose enthusiasm often overshadowed his expertise but nonetheless helped him sell faux Old Master paintings to major collectors in the early nineteenth century; to the imperious Joseph Duveen, dealer to magnates like Henry Clay Frick; to visionary Leo Castelli, who helped to usher in a revolution in modern art during the 1960s by showing such avant-garde artists as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. Goldstein also shows that the American art trade, while male-dominated, has been galvanized by female dealers, including the inimitable Edith Gregor Halpert, Peggy Guggenheim, and Mary Boone. Their fascinating stories unfold in the context of world art history, the rise of major art institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum, and the growing zeal of art collectors who would eventually pay millions for individual works of art. Unprecedented and critical to understanding today's art world, Landscape with Figures is a must for artists, art history students, and art lovers.

This engaging publication examines the prodigious body of work of American sculptor Manuel Neri (b. 1930) through the unique perspective of one of Neri's former students. A near-contemporary of other notable California-based artists Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud, Neri is best known for his large-scale figurative sculptures that combine classical figuration with the dynamic mark-making of Abstract Expressionism. The book traces the compelling yet often contradictory thematic arcs of Neri's powerful work and his greater impact on the field of sculpture. At the heart of the publication are Jock Reynolds's personal reflections on Neri and his legacy as a teacher, adding insight and intimacy to the scholarly understanding of the artist. Photographs of Neri in his studio, archival images, and installation photos of the related exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery round out the book. With its blend of art history and personal reflection, this unique book offers valuable insight into an important, understudied California artist. Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Schedule: Yale University Art Gallery (03/02/18-07/08/18)

The Necessity of Sculpture brings together a selection of articles on sculpture and sculptors from Eric Gibson’s nearly four-decade career as an art critic. It covers subjects as diverse as Mesopotamian cylinder seals, war memorials, and the art of the American West; stylistic periods such as the Hellenistic in Ancient Greece and Kamakura in medieval Japan; Michelangelo, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and other historical figures; modernists like Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, and Alberto Giacometti; and contemporary artists including Richard Serra, Rachel Whiteread, and Jeff Koons. Organized chronologically by artist and period, this collection is as much a synoptic history of sculpture as it is an art chronicle. At the same time, it is an illuminating introduction to the subject for anyone coming to it for the first time.

Offers advice on using tools and constructing armatures as well as shaping human figures, portrait heads, and bas reliefs from clay, plaster, wood, stone, and metal

Beyond Grief explores high-style funerary sculptures and their functions during the turn of the twentieth century. Many scholars have overlooked these monuments, viewing them as mere oddities, a part of an individual artist's oeuvre, a detail of a patron's biography, or local civic cemetery history. This volume considers them in terms of their wider context and shifting use as objects of consolation, power, and multisensory mystery and wonder. Art historian Cynthia Mills traces the stories of four families who memorialized their losses through sculpture. Henry Brooks Adams commissioned perhaps the most famous American cemetery monument of all, the Adams Memorial in Washington, D.C. The bronze figure was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who became the nation’s foremost sculptor. Another innovative bronze monument featured the Milmore brothers, who had worked together as sculptors in the Boston area. Artist Frank Duveneck composed a recumbent portrait of his wife following her early death in Paris; in Rome, the aging William Wetmore Story made an angel of grief his last work as a symbol of his sheer desolation after his wife’s death. Through these incredible monuments Mills explores questions like: Why did new forms--many of them now produced in bronze rather than stone and placed in architectural settings--arise just at this time, and how did they mesh or clash with the sensibilities of their era? Why was there a gap between the intention of these elite patrons and artists, whose lives were often intertwined in a closed circle, and the way some public audiences received them through the filter of the mass media? Beyond Grief traces the monuments' creation, influence, and reception in the hope that they will help us to understand the larger story: how survivors used cemetery memorials as a vehicle to mourn and remember, and how their meaning changed over time.