Eye Contact: Modern American Portrait Drawings from the National Portrait Gallery
- ISBN-10
- 0295982675
- ISBN-13
- 9780295982670
- Series
- Eye Contact
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography / General
- Pages
- 256
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2002
- Publisher
- National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
- Authors
- National Portrait Gallery, Wendy Wick Reaves
Description
Conventional wisdom suggests that portraiture lost its relevance in the twentieth century, that it was too tied to representation and biographical narrative to compete. Why then, the vitality of the the National Portrait Gallery's twentieth-century images in " Eye Contact?" Far from confirming a moribund tradition, these pictures are variously adventurous, assertive, witty, monumental, or confrontational, and all reflect modern aesthetic concerns. Fifty graphic masterpieces representing the American artistic tradition from the 1880s to the 1980s are showcased in this volume, including the work of such renowned artists as Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. Life portraits of well-known Americans, from politicians and inventors to writers, artists, and musicians are represented. Theodore Roosevelt, W.C. Fields, Alice B. Toklas, Igor Stravinsky, Stokely Carmichael, Truman Capote, and Robert F. Kennedy number among them.
In her introductory essay for " Eye Contact" Wendy Wick Reaves analyzes the history of twentieth-century portraiture in America and the changing role of drawing within it. Bernard F. Reilly Jr follows with an essay about the intellectual developments that influenced artists' conceptualization of the figure. The volume also contains in-depth essays by Reaves and twelve other art historians on each of the highlighted National Portrait Gallery treasures. What emerges are rich wonderful stories; Gaston Lachaise capturing the exuberant Hart Crane dancing nude with his hands clapping over his head; William Zorach drawing Edna St. Vincent Millay for "Century" magazine just after the young poet won the Pulitzer Prize; Beauford Delaney remembering James Baldwin after an intense, decades-long, mentoring friendship; Andy Warhol and Jamie Wyeth portraying each other, relishing their supposedly antithetical roles as the "Patriarch of Pop" and the "Prince of Realism."
The National Portrait Gallery's drawings prove that twentieth-century artists refused to abandon the figure. Despite critics' preoccupation with abstract and nonfigural art, artists continued to produce innovative portraiture, updating old traditions for the modern era. The term " Eye Contact" implies a bold, contemporary engagement between one person and another, but also a different, often challenging relationship between a work of art and its audience. Modern themes, in other words, as much as modern styles underlay the nontraditional look of these pictures. Monumental or intimate, confrontational or serenely detached, the drawings featured here demonstrate the uninterrupted vitality and inventiveness of the twentieth-century portrait.
Wendy Wick Reaves is curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2012-09-13
- 352 pages
- Paperback
- Hodder & Stoughton
Similar books
-
The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake
By Henry TimberlakeThe Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake
-
Interviews with William Carlos Williams: "speaking Straight Ahead"
By William Carlos WilliamsDr. Williams discusses his own work and that of such contemporaries as Pound and Eliot and reveals his thoughts on a wide variety of twentieth-century concerns
-
雪球：巴菲特傳（最新增訂版）
By 艾莉絲．施洛德巴菲特畢生唯一授權傳記 全球首富與世人分享最慷慨的資產 除了股票，巴菲特更教你投資自己 ｜最新增訂版｜新增第63章危機、第64章雪球 ...
-
遇見安徒生
By 安徒生（H.C.Andersen）、葉君健本書內容分三部分:一為葉君健所寫評論安徒生其人其文的文章;二為安徒生所寫小故事;三為安徒生繪圖作品
-
Alta California, 1840-1842: The Journal and Observations of William Dane Phelps, Master of the Ship "Alert"
By William Dane Phelps276-9 , 403-3 ) ; William Richard Cutter , Genealogical and Personal Memoirs relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts ( N.Y. , 1908 ) , II , pp . 867-69 ; William Bentley , The Diary of William Bentley ...
-
Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of a Citizen of New-york, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853,...
By Solomon NorthupTwelve Years a Slave: Narrative of a Citizen of New-york, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853,...
-
Behind the Scenes. by Elizabeth Keckley. Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.
By Elizabeth KeckleyBehind the Scenes. by Elizabeth Keckley. Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.
-
Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) in Washington Jail
By Daniel DraytonPersonal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) in Washington Jail
-
Journalists of the United States: Biographical Sketches of Print and Broadcast News Shapers from the Late 17th Century to the...
By Robert Bingham Downs, Jane B. DownsWhen the Press folded after eighteen months , Cooper went to the Indianapolis Sun , as a police reporter . In 1901 he became Scripps - McRae's Indianapolis correspondent and then manager of the Indianapolis bureau , supplying news to a ...
-
Give Us Each Day: The Diary
By Alice Moore Dunbar-NelsonGive Us Each Day: The Diary