{"title":"Michael Brenson","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"acts-of-engagement-book-michael-brenson-9780742529823","title":"Acts of Engagement","description":"Acts of Engagement brings together writings spanning the extraordinarily eventful ten-year after the author left The New York Times, where he had been an art critic from 1982 to 1991. The writings fall into three broad areas: art, art criticism, and arts and cultural institutions. In each area, Brenson finds it imperative to consider issues such as responsibility, creativity, process, and voice-issues that have taken on increasing urgency as corporate culture has overcome almost every aspect of American life. If we are to understand and come to terms with the violent shift from multiculturalism to privatization and the difficult if not precarious situation American art and culture are now in, we must engage the key words that define the book's four sections: language, identity, audience, and power. In Brenson's catalogue and book essays, and in his short addresses and comprehensive lectures lie a wealth of historical knowledge, connoisseurship, political and social commentary, philosophical speculation, and an impassioned dedication to the value of artists and the visual arts. The book ranges from a detailed examination of a single popular masterpiece, to an appreciation of the potential everyday impact of artists as people, to analyses of the art world system and of sweeping social and institutional changes. Acts of Engagement addresses the fundamental humanity and necessity of the visual arts: what they are about, why they matter, and the challenges and dangers they face.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49725593387281,"sku":"CIN0742529827A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52481893138705,"sku":"NLS9780742529823","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0742529827.jpg?v=1751199477"},{"product_id":"visionaries-and-outcasts-book-michael-brenson-9781565846241","title":"Visionaries and Outcasts","description":"Visionaries and Outcasts documents and analyzes, from hopeful creation to bitter end, the most ambitious experiment in artistic funding in American history. Through the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, this country provided financial support for visual artists without exerting the stringent controls that patronage in the past required. That all ended thirty years later, as the NEA’s funding for individual artists was eliminated while the agency was at the center of a political, cultural, and moral firestorm. Michael Brenson chronicles the “NEA years” with interviews from dozens of artists and scholars with firsthand knowledge of the NEA’s lightning-rod individual fellowship program.  Brenson, the former New York Times art critic, vividly captures the eloquent verve with which Congress supported the public funding of artists in 1965 and contrasts that with the political climate in 1995, when fellowships to individual artists were ended and nary a person of political or cultural power came to the artists’ defense. This examination of one of the most controversial government programs of our time is essential to the discussion of the place of the artist in America.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50124614500625,"sku":"CIN1565846249G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50317184008465,"sku":"CIN1565846249VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50814276927761,"sku":"GOR014083261","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52688895017233,"sku":"NLS9781565846241","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1565846249.jpg?v=1751309078"},{"product_id":"david-smith-book-michael-brenson-9780374281465","title":"David Smith","description":"The landmark biography of the inscrutable and brilliant David Smith, the greatest American sculptor of the twentieth century.The artist David Smith once wrote, \"'Humanism' is a useless word in my time.\" A member of the abstract expressionist generation, he would do more than any sculptor of his era to bring the plastic arts to the forefront of the American scene. Central to this project was his desire to explode the logic that equated representation and harmony with humanistic values in the postwar era - instead, Smith sought out the unbalanced and unexpected, creating works of art that seem to undergo radical shifts as the spectator moves from one point of view to another. So groundbreaking and prolific were his contributions to American art that by the time Smith was just forty years old, Clement Greenberg was already calling him \"the greatest sculptor this country has produced.\"Michael Brenson's David Smith: The Art and Life of a Transformational Sculptor is the first major biography of this epochal figure. It follows Smith from his upbringing in the Midwest, to his heady early years in Manhattan, to his decision to establish a permanent studio in Bolton Landing in upstate New York, where he would create many of his most significant works - among them the Cubis, Tanktomems, and Zigs. It explores his at times tempestuous personal life, marked by marriages, divorces, and fallings-out, as well as by deep friendships with the likes of Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell. His wife Jean Freas described him as \"Salty and bombastic, jumbo and featherlight, thin-skinned and Mack Truck. And many more things\" - and this was true of his work as well. He was a bricoleur, a skilled welder, a painter, and a writer, and he entranced critics and attracted admirers wherever he showed his work. With this book, richly illustrated with more than one hundred photographs, Brenson has contextualized Smith for a new generation of fans and confirmed his singular place in the history of American art.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50170428653841,"sku":"CIN0374281467G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50350663926033,"sku":"CIN0374281467A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50350666907921,"sku":"CIN0374281467VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374281467.jpg?v=1751102503"},{"product_id":"artist-in-society-rights-roles-and-responsibilities-book-acker-et-al-kathy-9780964785502","title":"Artist in Society: Rights, Roles and Responsibilities","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50292396720401,"sku":"CIN0964785501VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50373275549969,"sku":"CIN0964785501G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53370813677841,"sku":"CIN0964785501A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0964785501.jpg?v=1750705909"},{"product_id":"raw-color-book-michael-brenson-9780300207910","title":"Raw Color","description":"Raw Color addresses the relationships between landscape, industry, and the works David Smith (1906–1965) realized between 1961 and 1963. The Circle series was his most ambitious attempt to pair painting and sculpture. Painted in raw, inorganic colors but constructed to stand in concert with the dramatic Adirondack landscape in which he lived, Smith's sculptures confront viewers with a conflict. How are we to be modern, responsive to the materials and the technologies of our time, and yet also remain conscious of our respective locales and nature? To demonstrate the importance of place in Smith's practice, historical photographs of Smith’s Circle series at his Bolton Landing, New York, home and studio are complemented by new photographs of the sculptures installed at the Clark's Lunder Center at Stone Hill. Noted artist Charles Ray contributes an essay that explores how time, memory, and landscape are embedded in Smith's sculpture.     Distributed for the Clark Art Institute  Exhibition Schedule:  The Clark Art Institute \t(07\/04\/14–10\/19\/14)","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347927765265,"sku":"CIN0300207913G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300207913.jpg?v=1751259720"},{"product_id":"david-smith-book-michael-brenson-9780847819287","title":"David Smith","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50365157409041,"sku":"CIN0847819280G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52816906289425,"sku":"CIN0847819280A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0847819280.jpg?v=1751171114"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-michael-brenson.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}