Books published by Yale University Press

"The catalogue has been published in conjunction with the exhibition Truth: 24 frames per second, on view at the Dallas Museum of Art from October 22, 2017, to January 28, 2018."

Hungarian-born French artist Nicolas Schöffer (1912-1992), though relatively unknown today, was during his lifetime a significant presence in the art world. His 1956 piece CYSP 1 is considered the first cybernetic sculpture, making use of motors, microphones, and photo-electric cells to create a work based on feedback loops and responsiveness to its environment. For Schöffer, cybernetics enabled a crucial artistic exploration of the boundary between the living and the technological. This important reevaluation of Schöffer's work features sculptures, paintings, and drawings, including unpublished pieces from the artist's studio and archive, as well as documentation of his interdisciplinary and experimental collaborations with architects, musicians, choreographers, scientists, and industrialists. Particular attention is paid to the innovative work he created between 1945 and 1975, which takes on particular resonance in our current, digitally saturated world. >Distributed for Mercatorfonds Exhibition Schedule: Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (02/23/18-05/20/18)

"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Modern Times: American Art 1910-1950, Philadelphia Museum of Art, April 18-September 3, 2018"--Colophon.

A unique and intimate look into Claude Monet's outstanding personal collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures by fellow artists Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the founder of French Impressionism and remains one of the world's best-known and most beloved painters. His works are on view in many of the finest museums, and details of his storied life are well documented. Less well known are Monet's activities as an art collector; Monet as Collector is a sumptuously illustrated volume that traces this history, and in the process reconstitutes the artist's private collection. The masterpieces he assembled throughout his life form an outstanding, unique ensemble, one that has never before been analyzed in its entirety. The collection includes paintings, drawings, and sculptures by such artists as Delacroix, Corot, Boudin, Jongkind, Manet, Renoir, Caillebotte, Cezanne, Morisot, Pissarro, Rodin, and Signac, and offers a new kind of insight into the artistic tastes and vision of this legendary artist.

While the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are understood to be related texts, the sacred scripture of Islam, the third Abrahamic faith, has generally been considered separately. Noted religious scholar Gabriel Said Reynolds draws on centuries of Qur'anic and Biblical studies to offer rigorous and revelatory commentary on how these holy books are intrinsically connected. Reynolds demonstrates how Jewish and Christian characters, imagery, and literary devices feature prominently in the Qur'an, including stories of angels bowing before Adam and of Jesus speaking as an infant. This important contribution to religious studies features a full translation of the Qur'an along with excerpts from the Jewish and Christian texts. It offers a clear analysis of the debates within the communities of religious scholars concerning the relationship of these scriptures, providing a new lens through which to view the powerful links that bond these three major religions.

This is the first fully comprehensive study of the trombone in English.

"The spiritual in contemporary art is everywhere evident, yet rarely examined in scholarly research. Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art addresses the subject in depth for the first time since Maurice Tuchman's seminal 1986 The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. It significantly broadens the scope of previous scholarship to include new media and non-Western and Indigenous art in addition to that of the West. Encountering the Spiritual presents art from diverse cultures with equal status, promotes its cultural specificity, and moves beyond previous notions of "center and periphery," celebrating the plurality and global nature of contemporary art today. This unprecedented book--a valuable reference for years to come--integrates different ways of exploring the spiritual in art. Essays based on cultural affinities are rhythmically interspersed with thematic categories. These themes demonstrate greater diversity and hybridity of artists' sources of inspiration and their emphasis on art-making as spiritual process. Finally, selected artists' statements further expand the knowledge of an academic and general audience"--

Landscape art in the early 19th century was guided by two rival concepts: the picturesque, which emphasized touristic pleasures and visual delight, and the sublime, an aesthetic category rooted in notions of fear and danger. British artists including J.M.W. Turner and John Constable raised landscape painting to new heights and their work reached global audiences through the circulation of engravings. Thomas Cole, born in England, emigrated to the United States in 1818, and first absorbed the picturesque and sublime through print media. Cole transformed British and continental European traditions to create a distinctive American form of landscape painting. The authors here explore the role of prints as agents of artistic transmission and look closely at how Cole's own creative process was driven by works on paper such as drawings, notebooks, letters, and manuscripts. Also considered is the importance of the parallel works of William Guy Wall, best known for his pioneering Hudson River Portfolio. Beautifully illustrated with works on paper ranging from watercolors to etchings, mezzotints, aquatints, engravings, and lithographs, as well as notable paintings, this book offers important insights into Cole's formulation of a profound new category in art--the American sublime. Published in association with the Thomas Cole National Historic Site Exhibition Schedule: Thomas Cole National Historic Site (05/01/18-11/04/18)

Describing drawing as her "primary activity," for over thirty years Roni Horn (b. 1955) has created innovative and experimental works on paper marked by both conceptual and technical complexity. This carefully curated survey of the artist's drawings from the early 1980s through 2016 explores works revolving around the mutability of identity and the fragility of place, time, and language; it also delves into Horn's unique approach to mark-making and her process of cutting up and reassembling words and images. With sumptuous illustrations, this catalogue features an insightful look at and selected details of Horn's large-scale--sometimes over ten feet tall--works on paper; the artist's series of cadmium red drawings; and her cut-and-pasted word drawings that combine well-known literary texts by Gertrude Stein and William Shakespeare with colloquial expressions. >Distributed for The Menil Collection Exhibition Schedule: The Menil Collection, Houston (02/15/19-09/01/19)

"This book accompanies the exhibition Analog Culture: Printer's Proofs from the Schneider/Erdman Photography Lab, 1981-2001, on view at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from May 19 through August 12, 2018."

This engaging publication examines the prodigious body of work of American sculptor Manuel Neri (b. 1930) through the unique perspective of one of Neri's former students. A near-contemporary of other notable California-based artists Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud, Neri is best known for his large-scale figurative sculptures that combine classical figuration with the dynamic mark-making of Abstract Expressionism. The book traces the compelling yet often contradictory thematic arcs of Neri's powerful work and his greater impact on the field of sculpture. At the heart of the publication are Jock Reynolds's personal reflections on Neri and his legacy as a teacher, adding insight and intimacy to the scholarly understanding of the artist. Photographs of Neri in his studio, archival images, and installation photos of the related exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery round out the book. With its blend of art history and personal reflection, this unique book offers valuable insight into an important, understudied California artist. >Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Schedule: Yale University Art Gallery (03/02/18-07/08/18)

"The extravagant gardens of the 16th- and 17th-century British aristocracy are well-documented and celebrated, but the more modest gardens of the rural county gentry have rarely been examined. Jill Francis presents new, never-before published material as well as fresh interpretations of previously examined sources to reveal gardening as a practical activity in which a broad spectrum of society was engaged - from the laborers who dug, manured, and weeded, to the gentleman owners who sought to create gardens that both exemplified their personal tastes and displayed their wealth and status. Enhanced by beautiful and compelling illustrations, this book contributes to a broader understanding of early modern society and its culture by situating the activity of gardening within the wider social and cultural concerns of the age, reflecting the anxieties, hopes, and aspirations of people at the time."--

A ground-breaking account which shows how the public sector must adapt, but also persevere, in order to advance technology and innovation

Living in the region between the Lubudi and Kasai rivers in south central Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Luluwa people are known for their elaborately carved male and female figure sculptures, masks, and decorative arts. Constantine Petridis draws on first-hand accounts of numerous explorers, missionaries, colonial servants, anthropologists, and art historians who visited the region between the 1880s and the 1970s, to comprehensively situate the Luluwa's ornate art in its original environment of production and use. Through a close study of published and unpublished sources as well as museum objects and archival photographs, this book sheds new light on the historical context of one of central Africa's most spectacular artistic legacies, whose creation presumably dates back to the second half of the 19th century. >Distributed for Mercatorfonds

"With a rigorous approach and self-imposed limitations to both scale and composition, Tomma Abts (b. 1967) has reinvigorated painterly abstraction and its relevance within contemporary art. Using a fixed canvas size and a vertical format, Abts deploys basic formal elements such as arcs, circles, planes, and stripes to create powerful works that are at once subtle and eccentric. This extraordinary book, designed in collaboration with the artist herself, is a substantial and deeply insightful treatment of her career to date and features sixty works made over the past decade. Essays not only contextualize Abts's work within an art-historical framework of methods, process, and style, but also examine her paintings' philosophical and psychological dimensions and their embodiment of a creative process that transcends the specifics of any particular work. The beautifully designed and illustrated exhibition catalogue examines both the art-historical framework of Tomma Abts's painting as well as its deep philosophical and psychological dimensions. James Rondeau is president and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lizzie Carey-Thomas is head of programs at the Serpentine Galleries in London. Kate Nesin is an independent art historian. Juliane Rebentisch is a professor of philosophy and aesthetics at the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Berlin"--

Discover the extraordinary woman behind one of the most famous images of motherhood in Western art