Thursday, November 14, 2013

Thursday's Three on Art

Today, Thursday's Three highlights art and photography books deserving of attention.

Studio: 50 Sonoma County Artists ~ In partnership with the Arts Council of Sonoma County, California, the immensely talented Bob Cornelis undertook a project to photograph a diverse group of visual artists in their studios. (By no means are all the artists in Sonoma County featured. Cornelis says some of his choices were intentional, others "random".) His unfussy, down-to-earth portraits, all in black-and-white, are at once intimate and revealing. You come away from viewing them knowing these are artists who work for a living. Cornelis says that the style he's adopted to make his engaging portraits was influenced by the great portrait photographer Arnold Newman (1918-2006).


All sales of the book, which includes three commissioned essays (one by artist Chester Arnold, who writes about the importance of the art studio; one by art historian Jennifer Bethke, who discusses portraiture as art genre; and one by gallery director Michael Schwager, who assesses the regional art scene), benefit the local Arts Education Alliance that supports K-12 arts programs. 


Cornelis's project is ongoing. See his portraits, beginning here. Spend some time viewing each so you don't miss seeing what's in the studios—the objects on tables and shelves that clue us in to possible sources of inspiration, as well as the physical work spaces themselves (their size, their arrangement, their order or disorder).

✭ Originally published in 1974, Goya 67 Drawings by A. Hyatt Mayor is available once again in a print-on-demand version from Yale University Press.


Hyatt (1901-1980) was an American art historian and curator of prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1946 to 1966.


✭ Published at the end of last month, Keith Davis's Emmet Gowin (Aperture) surveys the career of the internationally exhibited and influential photographer known for his extraordinary environmental landscapes.

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