Architects of Being
The Creative Lives of Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Born just nine years apart in Ukraine and Siberia, respectively, Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina were both children of Jewish families who fled Russian governmental repression and conflict. Both made early marriages of convenience or convention that were short-lived. Both went to New York in the 1920s, struggling to become artists amid the Great Depression. Both overcame the accepted modes of making, moving between art forms in expansive, category-defying ways. The parallels are poignant, including their similarly fearless devotion to abstract art in an era that had yet to fully embrace it. Architects of Being pays homage to these two women who were direct and dauntless.
Fittingly, this book draws its title from Nevelson's insight that "there's something very important about character: character is structure. Character is the architecture of the being." The connection between inner self and outward manifestation—both one's art and one's self-fashioning—is at the heart of Architects of Being. This richly illustrated and expertly researched exhibition catalog celebrates Nevelson's and Slobodkina's artistic journeys and architectural affinities, expanding our understanding of how these pioneering figures dissolved boundaries between art forms in ways that prefigured what we see throughout the art world today.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Contents
- Director’s Foreword
- Lenders to the Exhibition
- Introduction. Catherine Walworth
- One. Creative Self-Fashioning: Clothing as Armor and Art Form
- Two. Architectonics of the Ancient and Avant-Garde: The Art of Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina
- Three. Artist as Architect: The Constructive Spirits of Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina
- Four. From Dreaming to Being: Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina’s Self-Actualized Assemblage
- Exhibition Tour
- Acknowledgments
- Selected Bibliography
- Contributors
- Exhibition Checklist
- Index
- Copyright Page