Forrest Bess

Forrest Bess PDF Author: Chuck Smith
Publisher: powerHouse Books
ISBN: 1576876756
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Painter, fisherman, pseudo-hermaphrodite—Forrest Bess lived his life in obscurity at an isolated bait camp off the east coast of Texas. From 1949 through 1967, Bess showed at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City, alongside superstar artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Rediscovered after his death in 1977, Bess's small visionary paintings are now prized by museums and collectors for their primal beauty, and can fetch over $200,000 apiece. Bess's treasured canvases were only part of a grander theory—based on alchemy, Jungian philosophy, and aboriginal rituals—that proposed that hermaphrodism was the key to immortality. As an artist, Bess could never equivocate, and in 1960 he underwent an operation to become a pseudo-hermaphrodite. For the first time ever in print, Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle combines the beauty of Bess's art with the drama and tragedy of his personal life. Using Bess's own hauntingly sincere words (in letters to Betty Parsons, Meyer Schapiro, and others) the book traces the life and logic of this forgotten artist and explains how a love of beauty and a desire for wholeness lead Bess to self-surgery and, ultimately, a mental hospital. Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle is a fascinating look at one of America's most notorious cult visionaries—a man who truly believed that art could save his life.

Forrest Bess

Forrest Bess PDF Author: Chuck Smith
Publisher: powerHouse Books
ISBN: 1576876756
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book

Book Description
Painter, fisherman, pseudo-hermaphrodite—Forrest Bess lived his life in obscurity at an isolated bait camp off the east coast of Texas. From 1949 through 1967, Bess showed at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City, alongside superstar artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Rediscovered after his death in 1977, Bess's small visionary paintings are now prized by museums and collectors for their primal beauty, and can fetch over $200,000 apiece. Bess's treasured canvases were only part of a grander theory—based on alchemy, Jungian philosophy, and aboriginal rituals—that proposed that hermaphrodism was the key to immortality. As an artist, Bess could never equivocate, and in 1960 he underwent an operation to become a pseudo-hermaphrodite. For the first time ever in print, Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle combines the beauty of Bess's art with the drama and tragedy of his personal life. Using Bess's own hauntingly sincere words (in letters to Betty Parsons, Meyer Schapiro, and others) the book traces the life and logic of this forgotten artist and explains how a love of beauty and a desire for wholeness lead Bess to self-surgery and, ultimately, a mental hospital. Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle is a fascinating look at one of America's most notorious cult visionaries—a man who truly believed that art could save his life.

FORRSET BESS PB

FORRSET BESS PB PDF Author: John Doe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780956798855
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
Published on the occasion of the first Forrest Bess solo exhibition in the United Kingdom at Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London (3 October - 1 December 2018).This catalogue includes a broad selection of paintings dating from 1948-1970 and representing all four of the decades that define the 'visionary' period for which Bess has come to be known.Accompanying the works is a new essay by Professor Mark Turner, King's College London, on Bess's life, his theories and art.Frequently relegated to the peripheries of art history, both as a Texas native and a rarely understood queer man, Bess might nevertheless be re-located at the heart of American Modernism.Between 1949 and 1967 he showed at least five times at Betty Parsons' New York gallery, on the same walls that debuted Barnett Newman, Richard Tuttle, Ellsworth Kelly, and other focal figures of twentieth-century abstraction.Simultaneously he engaged in correspondence with sociologists, psychotherapists, art historians, and even NASA, to communicate a series of radical medico-mystical theories he had devised that were, he believed, of critical importance to Mankind.

Midcentury Modern Art in Texas

Midcentury Modern Art in Texas PDF Author: Katie Robinson Edwards
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292756593
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Before Abstract Expressionism of New York City was canonized as American postwar modernism, the United States was filled with localized manifestations of modern art. One such place where considerable modernist activity occurred was Texas, where artists absorbed and interpreted the latest, most radical formal lessons from Mexico, the East Coast, and Europe, while still responding to the state's dramatic history and geography. This barely known chapter in the story of American art is the focus of Midcentury Modern Art in Texas. Presenting new research and artwork that has never before been published, Katie Robinson Edwards examines the contributions of many modernist painters and sculptors in Texas, with an emphasis on the era's most abstract and compelling artists. Edwards looks first at the Dallas Nine and the 1936 Texas Centennial, which offered local artists a chance to take stock of who they were and where they stood within the national artistic setting. She then traces the modernist impulse through various manifestations, including the foundations of early Texas modernism in Houston; early practitioners of abstraction and non-objectivity; the Fort Worth Circle; artists at the University of Texas at Austin; Houston artists in the 1950s; sculpture in and around an influential Fort Worth studio; and, to see how some Texas artists fared on a national scale, the Museum of Modern Art's "Americans" exhibitions. The first full-length treatment of abstract art in Texas during this vital and canon-defining period, Midcentury Modern Art in Texas gives these artists their due place in American art, while also valuing the quality of Texan-ness that subtly undergirds much of their production.

The Mind's Eye

The Mind's Eye PDF Author: Jeremy Frommer
Publisher: powerHouse Books
ISBN: 1576877302
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Omni was a jewel among popular science magazines of its era (1978–1998). Science Digest, Science News, Scientific America, and Discover may have all been selling well to armchair scientists, but Omni masterfully blended cutting edge science news and science fiction, flashy graphic design, a touch of sex, and the images of a generation of artists completely free and unburdened by the disciplines of the masters. Created by the legendary Bob Guccione, better known for founding Penthouse than perhaps any of the other facets of his inspired career in business, art, and literature, Guccione handpicked the artists and illustrators that contributed to the Omni legacy—they in turn created works ignited by passion and intellect, two of Guccione's principal ideals. The Mind's Eye: The Art of Omni is the very first publication to celebrate in stunning detail the exceptional science fiction imagery of this era in an oversized format. The Mind's Eye contains 185 images from contributing Omni artists including John Berkey, Chris Moore, H.R. Giger, Rafal Olbinski, Rallé, Tsuneo Sanda, Hajime Sorayama, Robert McCall, and Colin Hay among many more, along with quotes from artists, contributors, writers, and critics. Omni lived in a time well before the digital revolution. The images you see on these pages have taken years to track down and brought the editors in touch with many esteemed artists, amazing photographers and dusty storage lockers. Their quest is far from over; you'll notice an almost decade-long gap in the material, the contents of which were either lost or destroyed. Efforts to search throughout the universe for any images will continue and will be shared with the world at the all-things-Omni website, omnireboot.com. Stay tuned... Collected in book form for the first time ever, the striking art from this extraordinary magazine will delight fans who remember seeing the work years ago and newcomers interested in the unique aesthetic of this genre's biggest artists. "Omni was a magazine about the future. From 1978 to 1998 Omni blew minds by regularly featuring extensive Q&As with some of the top scientists of the 20th century—E.O. Wilson, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk—tales of the paranormal, and some of the most important science fiction to ever see magazine publication: William Gibson's genre-defining stories 'Burning Chrome' and 'Johnny Mnemonic,' Orson Scott Card's 'Unaccompanied Sonata,' novellas by Harlan Ellison and George R. R. Martin, 'Thanksgiving,' a postapocalyptic tale by Joyce Carol Oates—even William S. Burroughs graced its pages." —Vice magazine, Motherboard "Omni is not a science magazine. It is a magazine about the future...Omni was sui generis. Although there were plenty of science magazines over the years...Omni was the first magazine to slant all its pieces toward the future. It was fun to read and gorgeous to look at." —Ben Bova, six-time Hugo award winner

Finding Jung

Finding Jung PDF Author: Frank N. McMillan
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603446966
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Available electronically in an open-access, full-text edition from the Texas A&M University Libraries' Digital Repository at http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/146844. Frank N. McMillan Jr., a country boy steeped in the traditional culture of rural Texas, was summoned to a life-long quest for meaning by a dream lion he met in the night. On his journey, he followed the lead of the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, and eventually established the world’s first professorship to advance the study of that field. McMillan, born and raised on a ranch near Calvert, was an Aggie through and through, with degrees in geology and petroleum engineering. As an adult working near Bay City, Texas, he was lunching in a country café when by chance he met abstract expressionist painter Forrest Bess, who was ecstatically waving a letter he had received from Jung himself. The artist’s enthusiastic description of Jung as a master psychologist, soul doctor, and healer led McMillan to the Jung Center in Houston, where he began reading Jung’s Collected Works. McMillan frequently said, “Jung saved my life.” Finding Jung: Frank N. McMillan Jr., a Life in Quest of the Lion captures McMillan’s journey through the words of his own journals and through reflections by his son, Frank III. David Rosen, the holder of the first endowed McMillan professorship at Texas A&M University, adds insights to the book, and the late Sir Laurens van der Post, whom the elder McMillan met at the Houston Jung Center in 1979, authored a foreword to the book before his death. This is a story that sheds light on the inner workings of the self as well as the Jungian understanding of the Self. In often lyrical language, it gives the human background to a major undertaking in the dissemination of Jungian scholarship and provides a personal account of a life lived in near-mythic dimensions.

So Death Will End

So Death Will End PDF Author: Lucy Talbot Allen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781648411397
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
A graphic biography told in the form of a reverential letter, we take a look at how outsider artist Forrest Bess painted a future that no one could yet dream of in the 1920s. While largely unexplored outside of their art, Bess conceptualized important, early ideas around gender, such as genital autosurgery, homosexuality, and gender as more than a pre-determined binary. These largely overlooked and misunderstood aspects of the artist's life are lovingly examined in this comic honoring an important queer icon.

Bamboo in Japan

Bamboo in Japan PDF Author: Nancy Moore Bess
Publisher: Kodansha International
ISBN: 9784770025104
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This is a fully illustrated guide to the art, craft and design of bamboo, as demonstrated by the Japanese. It demonstrates how to use inexpensive materials to create sophisticated effects in the home and garden. A list of bamboo collections, gardens and research sources is included. For centuries, bamboo has fascinated legions of craftspeople, plant lovers and devotees of the handcrafted object. And nowhere is bamboo used more elegantly and distinctly than in Japan. Its presence touches every part of daily life-art, crafts, design, literature, and food. Its beauty

The Outlaw Bible of American Art

The Outlaw Bible of American Art PDF Author: Alan Kaufman
Publisher: Last Gasp
ISBN: 9780867198218
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Outlaw Bible of American Art is a 700 page revolutionary art world shocker: a Who's Who alternative canon of marginalized or famed audodidactic paint-slinging loners who followed their own outrageous, sometimes catastrophic visions to the heights of fame or the depths of Hell. Documenting movements from the Post-war to the present, this anthological barbaric yawp contains manifestoes, essays, interviews and biographies from some of the most cutting edge American art writers plus hundreds of full color and black and white images and rare photos that bring together everything from NO! artists, Blackstract Expressionists, Beats and Beckettian Distortionists to Dystopic Futuristic Pranksters, Subcultural Gonzo Anthropologists and Self-Mutilating Visionary Unigenderists in a rollicking visually gorgeous celebration of the reclaimed no-holds-barred spirit of American Art. Includes Boris Lurie, Forrest Bess, Gertrude Stein, Tom Wolfe, Dash Snow, Carlo McCormick, Annie Sprinkle, John Yau, Allen Ginsberg, R. Crumb, Claes Oldenberg, Thomas Nozkowski, Richard Kern, Joe Coleman, Molly Crabapple, Nick Zedd, David Wojnarowicz and hundreds more.

Forrest Bess

Forrest Bess PDF Author: Forrest Bess
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Painting, American
Languages : en
Pages : 66

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Book Description


Outliers and American Vanguard Art

Outliers and American Vanguard Art PDF Author: Lynne Cooke
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226522272
Category : Art and society
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Some 250 works explore three distinct periods in American history when mainstream and outlier artists intersected, ushering in new paradigms based on inclusion, integration, and assimilation. The exhibition aligns work by such diverse artists as Charles Sheeler, Christina Ramberg, and Matt Mullican with both historic folk art and works by self-taught artists ranging from Horace Pippin to Janet Sobel and Joseph Yoakum. It also examines a recent influx of radically expressive work made on the margins that redefined the boundaries of the mainstream art world, while challenging the very categories of "outsider" and "self-taught." Historicizing the shifting identity and role of this distinctly American version of modernism's "other," the exhibition probes assumptions about creativity, artistic practice, and the role of the artist in contemporary culture. The exhibition is curated by Lynne Cooke, senior curator, special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art.--Provided by publisher.