Gordon Onslow Ford

This substantial volume is the first major resource on the life and work of Gordon Onslow Ford (1912-2003), the British-born painter who was the youngest member of André Breton's surrealist group in Paris, and who spent more than 50 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. Marked by an initial interest in automatist techniques, Onslow Ford's painting gradually developed through studies of Eastern philosophy, mysticism and ecology resulting in complex and varied works that incorporated cosmic charts and biomorphic abstraction. In this superb publication, a series of thoroughly researched essays, previously unpublished archival material and over 200 color illustrations trace Onslow Ford's time spent in Paris, stints in New York and Mexico, culminating in his move in 1947 to the Bay Area. Organized and published by the Lucid Art Foundation (cofounded by Onslow Ford in 1998), this is a long-overdue and impressively executed survey.

Ur-Surrealist Yves Tanguy belonged to the inner circle of the 1920s Parisian avant-garde, alongside such figures as Salvador Dal', Max Ernst, and Alberto Giacometti, making essential contributions to Surrealist manifestoes, magazines, and exhibitions. Tanguy's artistic obsession was the world of imagination, of dreams and reveries, and his cryptically codified imagery continues to perplex audiences today. His paintings seem to exist in a hazy, oddly beautiful limbo dimension beyond time and space, a world at once vertiginous and calm, disturbing and breathtaking. The central focus of Yves Tanguy and Surrealism is the Surrealist mode, to which Tanguy dedicated himself like no other painter of his time, cementing the movement's place in the history of visual art. On the basis of previously unpublished documents and works, authors discuss Tanguy's otherworldly oeuvre in all its aspects--from his development as an artist to the reception of his work in the United States. With stunning reproductions in full color as well as black and white, Yves Tanguy and Surrealism is an extensive overview of the work of an artist whose forays into the creative unknown continue to resonate.

A stunning collection of homes and studios of 15 extraordinary artists, from painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú home and sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s Japanese retreat to new discoveries such as Gordon Onslow Ford’s California haven. Noted photographer Leslie Williamson’s latest book presents the homes and studios from a group of renowned artists, ranging from Barbara Hepworth to Joan Miró. Documented in her inimitable atmospheric style, the images capture how these artists lived and worked. Williamson’s images reveal not only these artists’ creative process as viewed through their studios, but also shows how they manifested their creativity in the stylish interiors and the personal touches in the spaces they called home. The spaces featured range from Vanessa Bell’s proto–shabby chic home Charleston in southern England to Andrew Wyeth’s Yankee-chic farmhouse in Pennsylvania. Taken together, Still Lives is a must-have document to inspire and illuminate for art lovers, interiors enthusiasts, and the cultured reader.

Consists of essays about the avant-garde journal Dyn, which was produced in Mexico in the 1940s - and its editor, Austrian painter and theorist, Wolfgang Paalen.

Wolfgang Paalen was a central figure in internationalist surrealist circles in the late 1930s. Artist and intellectual, he was a European whose fascination with archaic cultures led him finally to Mexico, where he founded the influential magazine DYN in 1941. In the bold texts from DYN that make up Form and Sense, we encounter a unique artistic mind and an oracular voice. Paalen’s book is an intellectual delight with essays on cubism, surrealism, the universality of forms in architecture, and the relationships that exist between art and science. He weaves together the new ideas and archaic inspirations in twentieth-century painting and sculpture. His nuanced and original considerations of some key figures—Mondrian, Kandinsky, Picasso—marked Paalen in turn as a significant thinker in the world of modern art. This painter’s book, illustrated with carefully chosen examples of the art he examines, makes us not only understand but also experience the rich interplay between idea and image that informs the art of our own time. A new introduction by the scholar Martica Sawin examines Paalen’s career, particularly his influential writing on surrealism and abstraction.