This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features National Book Award-winning author Edward Ball talking about his new book “The Inventor and the Tycoon.” The book tells the story of the relationship between photographer (and murderer) Eadweard Muybridge and railroad tycoon Leland Stanford, one of the Big Four who built the western half of the transcontinental railroad. Stanford famously commissioned Muybridge’s famous ‘animal locomotion’ pictures and stood by his man even as Muybridge faced a murder charge. Ball’s book weaves together the story of their lives, their success and their eventual enmity into a rollicking-good narrative.
Ball won the National Book Award in 1998 for “Slaves in the Family,” which examine’s his family’s ownership of slaves in South Carolina.
On the second segment, David Maisel discusses his new book “Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime,” which is just out from Steidl. An exhibition by the same title of Maisel’s work is on view at the University of Colorado Art Museum through May 11.
How to listen: Download the show to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or RSS. See more images of art discussed on the program.
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features National Book Award-winning author Edward Ball talking about his new book “The Inventor and the Tycoon.” The book tells the story of the relationship between photographer (and murderer) Eadweard Muybridge and railroad tycoon Leland Stanford, one of the Big Four who built the western half of the transcontinental railroad. Stanford famously commissioned Muybridge’s famous ‘animal locomotion’ pictures and stood by his man even as Muybridge faced a murder charge. Ball’s book weaves together the story of their lives, their success and their eventual enmity into a rollicking-good narrative.
Ball won the National Book Award in 1998 for “Slaves in the Family,” which examine’s his family’s ownership of slaves in South Carolina.
On the second segment, David Maisel discusses his new book “Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime,” which is just out from Steidl. An exhibition by the same title of Maisel’s work is on view at the University of Colorado Art Museum through May 11.
How to listen: Download the show to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or RSS. See more images of art discussed on the program.
This is the cover for the catalogue for “Photography and the American Civil War,” which opens Tuesday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Amazon offers the book for $32, about 35% off the cover price.
The book and show survey photography of and related to the war between the states, including battlefield daguerreotypes, post-battle scenes and intense pictures of the dead and wounded. Jeff Rosenheim, the curator of the exhibition and the author of the book that accompanies it, is the lead guest on this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast.
The show isn’t up for a couple of days, but the book is out and it’s an absolute winner. While it’s plenty focused on the Civil War, readers will repeatedly find themselves thinking about how subjects and formats that emerged during the Civil War era are still a part of photography today.
How to listen: Download the show to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or RSS. See images of art discussed on the program.
Check out the best art books I’ve read in 2012. You’ve heard from many of the authors on The Modern Art Notes Podcast, and we’ll hear from one more in a few weeks!
Have you ever wondered if you could download yourself a boyfriend? A new book, published to iTunes by Badlands Unlimited, tells you how! Titled “How to Download a Boyfriend,” the book is available here and includes contributions from artists Paul Chan, Tony Conrad and more.
Also among the contributors to the book is artist, occasional stand-up comic and digital prankster Cory Arcangel, who was the guest on Episode No. 25 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast.
To download the program directly to your mobile device/PC, click here. To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. For images of the works discussed on this week’s show, click here.
Image: The cover of the e-book.
The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has named “Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs” the photography book of the year. It’s the UK’s top award for photography books.
Huntington curator Jennifer Watts was my guest on Episode Eight of The Modern Art Notes Podcast. The Huntington has the second largest Watkins collection in the world. Watts’s essays in the book (and our conversation on The MAN Podcast) spotlight two of Watkins’s less-celebrated — and best — series: his California missions photographs and his pictures of southern California and Kern County.
Click here to download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, and click here to see images of the art discussed on the show.
The art: Steve Wolfe, Untitled (In Cold Blood), 1992. Oil, screenprint and modeling paste on wood, 7 × 4 1/4 × 3/4 in.
The news: “Has Kindle Killed the Book Cover,” by Betsy Morais for TheAtlantic.com.
The source: Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Cover of “Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism,” by Craig Harbison. Just released by Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press. Image on cover is a detail of The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, ca. 1435. Collection of the Louvre, Paris.
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast is devoted to Jan van Eyck, the greatest painter of the northern Renaissance.
Remarkably, there’s only one English-language monograph on van Eyck’s career in print. Titled “Jan Van Eyck: The Play of Realism,” it was written by my first guest, Craig Harbison. The book, which was first published in 1991 and has now been revised and expanded to reflect new research on van Eyck’s work, is a wonderful read. It’s smart and detailed, but reads lightly. It’s a too-rare example of a top art historian willing to allow his sense of wonder at his subject’s work to infuse every page.
To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly, click here (or on the book cover above). To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. You can stream the program and see images of the art discussed on this week’s show here.
The art: Edward Burtynsky, Shipbreaking #11, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000.
The news: “Katherine Boo goes ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’ in Mumbai,” by Jessica Gelt in the Los Angeles Times. Boo’s book is here. I got to know Boo a little bit a number of years ago. Sure, you need to have intellectual heft to write a book such as this, but you also have to have a big heart. She has both. The book is available here for 40% off.
The source: EdwardBurtynsky.com.
Nota bene: Burtynsky took his shipbreaking photographs in Bangladesh, not India, which is also the site of much industrial recycling. I’m pairing his photograph with their shared subject — the third-world underclass — because of something Burtynsky said to me on the occasion of a profile I wrote about him in the early 2000s. As we sat in his Toronto office one afternoon, Burtynsky pointed at this picture and described the life expectancy of the people who break down the ships, which results in a soup of PCBs, asbestos and mercury. “They’re all dead now,” he said. The life expectancy of shipbreakers wasn’t much more than 18 months. Boo and Burtynsky explored the same topic, one in letters, the other in art.
The art: Joe Deal, Hemet, California from “The Fault Zone,” 1979.
The news: “Rough-Hewn Land by Keith Meyer Meldahl,” a book review by Bettina Boxall in the Los Angeles Times. The book, which follows the history of geologic processes in the American West, is 35% off here.
The source: Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Today on Modern Art Notes: It’s MAN’s list of the best art books of 2011! We’ve got books about photography, painting, biography and more. Click through for great holiday gift ideas too!
The art: Gerhard Richter, Uncle Rudi, 1965.
The news: “World War II From the Ground Up,” by Richard J. Evans in The New York Times Book Review. Evans’ essay is a review of Max Hastings’ new book “Inferno: The World at War 1939-45,” which Evans says is an “account of the war that concentrates on the lived experience of the men and women who took part in it,” men like Richter’s Uncle Rudi.
The source: Collection of the Pamatnik Lidice/Lidice Memorial, Lidice, Czech Republic. Uncle Rudi is included in “Gerhard Richter,” a retrospective exhibition on view now at the Tate Modern.
Related: On Modern Art Notes, I detailed how and why Uncle Rudi is one of the most influential paintings of the 20th century.
The art: Kara Walker, Untitled (John Brown), 1997.
The news: “On the Road to Harper’s Ferry,” by Kevin Boyle in the New York Times Book Review. Boyle reviewed Tony Horwitz’s new book “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War.”
For over 100 years Brown has remained one of the most enduring subjects in American art. Check back often today as Third of May features a series of artworks depicting John Brown.
The source: Collection of the Brooklyn Museum.![The art: Barnaby Furnas, John Brown, 2005. [Related, also by Furnas: The Surrender of John Brown, 2007.]
The news: “On the Road to Harper’s Ferry,” by Kevin Boyle in the New York Times Book Review. Boyle reviewed Tony Horwitz’s new book “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War.”
For over 100 years Brown has remained one of the most enduring subjects in American art. Check back often today as Third of May features a series of artworks depicting John Brown.
The source: Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lty0iakcwn1qe0into1_500.jpg)
The art: Barnaby Furnas, John Brown, 2005. [Related, also by Furnas: The Surrender of John Brown, 2007.]
The news: “On the Road to Harper’s Ferry,” by Kevin Boyle in the New York Times Book Review. Boyle reviewed Tony Horwitz’s new book “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War.”
For over 100 years Brown has remained one of the most enduring subjects in American art. Check back often today as Third of May features a series of artworks depicting John Brown.
The source: Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
The art: Horace Pippin, John Brown Going to His Hanging, 1942.
The news: “On the Road to Harper’s Ferry,” by Kevin Boyle in the New York Times Book Review. Boyle reviewed Tony Horwitz’s new book “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War.”
For over 100 years Brown has remained one of the most enduring subjects in American art. Check back often today as Third of May features a series of artworks depicting John Brown.
The source: Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
