Works by Prosek and others are juxtaposed with natural objects in an illuminating interrogation of the artificial boundaries we create between art and nature Award-winning artist, writer, and naturalist James Prosek (b. 1975) has gained a worldwide following for his deep connection with the natural world, which serves as the basis for his art and numerous popular books. In this cross-disciplinary catalogue, Prosek poses the question, What is art and what is artifact—and to what extent do these distinctions matter? Drawing on the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Prosek places man- and nature-made objects on equal footing aesthetically, suggesting that the distinction between them is not as vast as we may believe. In more than 150 full-color plates, objects such as a bird’s nest, dinosaur head, and cuneiform tablet are juxtaposed with Asian handscrolls, an African headdress, modern masterpieces, and more. Artists featured include Albrecht Dürer, Helen Frankenthaler, Vincent van Gogh, Barbara Hepworth, Pablo Picasso, and Jackson Pollack, as well as Prosek himself, whose works depict fish, birds, and endangered wildlife. Also included are an incisive essay by Edith Devaney and texts by Prosek that explore the magnificent productions of our wondrous interconnected world.

Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) is celebrated as an American Master in his native United States, particularly on the West Coast, where he lived and worked for much of his career. Highly sensitive to his environment, Diebenkorn used a palette and colour composition influenced by the light and location of his studios and the geographic environments in which he worked - whether abstract or figurative, his works powerfully evoke the Californian coast from San Francisco to LA. This volume is a focused exploration of his ever-changing, always compelling career across four decades, and his shifts in style and subject-matter in both painting and works on paper. It covers the three distinct periods of his career, which saw him gain recognition as a leading abstract expressionist in the early 1950s, then turn his attention to figurative painting, before, in 1967, embarking on a long and highly successful period of abstract paintings and drawings, known as the Ocean Park Series. Sarah C. Bancroft has held curatorial positions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, and the Orange County Museum of Art, California, for which she curated Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series (2011-12). Edith Devaney is curator of contemporary projects at the Royal Academy of Arts. Steven Nash is former Executive Director of the Palm Springs Art Museum (2007-15). He has written widely on Richard Diebenkorn. SELLING POINTS: * Explores the intriguing shifts in style and subject-matter that characterised Diebenkorn's oeuvre * Highlights the artist's virtuosic ability to capture the light and atmosphere of the West Coast 150 colour

Assembles a collection of the painter's oversized landscape paintings inspired by the English countryside, along with essays that discuss his life, creative process, influences, and use of technology in his work.

Born in 1885 to a working-class family in Connecticut, Milton Avery left school at 16 to work in a factory. Intending to study lettering but soon transferring to painting, he attended evening school for fifteen years before moving to New York in the 1920s to pursue a career as a painter.0Although he never identified with a particular movement, Avery was a sociable member of the New York art scene. He became a figure of considerable influence for a younger generation of American artists, including Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman. His talent was praised by Rothko, who said 'the poetry penetrated every pore of the canvas to the last touch of the brush'.0Edith Devaney introduces Avery and his work, while Erin Monroe looks at Avery's early years in Hartford, and Marla Price examines Matisse's influence upon his art. A conversation with the artist's daughter March Avery Cavanaugh and an illustrated chronology by Isabella Boorman complete the book.00Exhibition: Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (16.07. - 16.10.2022).

Armenian American artist Arshile Gorky (c. 1904-48) made his first mature works in New York City in the mid-1920s, by which point the traumatic history of the 20th century had already made him a genocide survivor and an exile from his homeland. Channeling his study of the modern masters through his own painful experiences and poignant memories, in two decades Gorky produced a huge body of deeply personal, emotionally intense lyrical abstractions that had a huge influence on his contemporaries. Arshile Gorky explores the strength of Gorky's artistic voice throughout the stages of his remarkable, though tragically short, career. Featuring more than 80 paintings and works on paper drawn from public and private collections around the world, this volume presents a comprehensive retrospective survey of the artist's work. New essays by curators Edith Devaney, Gabriella Belli and Saskia Spender, the artist's granddaughter and President of the Arshile Gorky Foundation, explore the artist's life, work and subsequent influence. Tracing how Gorky interweaved motifs, references and painterly flourishes in paintings and elaborate works on paper, Arshile Gorky reveals the artist's unique position as a bridge between Europe and America, between surrealism and abstract expressionism. He remained a pivotal figure after his untimely death, influencing many other artists; Willem de Kooning acknowledged Gorky as a "driving force" among his generation of painters.

Origins & Innovations brings together David Smith's (1906-65) early paintings, drawings and sculptures, alongside seminal later works that reimagine the possibilities of abstraction in three dimensions. This presentation investigates the origins of a renowned artistic innovator, highlighting Smith's exploration and embrace of diverse sources that inspired a radically new language for sculpture. Shown not as a linear narrative but as a rich and dynamic whole, the publication reveals surprising juxtapositions that shed new light on Smith's lasting artistic legacy. In a new essay, Edith Devaney, Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, explores Smith's practice as it relates to and goes beyond the relevant movements of his time such as cubism and abstract expressionism. His willingness to approach artmaking from multiple vantage points--drawing, painting, photography and, of course, sculpture--was the basis of his artistic method and the source of his oeuvre's dynamism.

British poet Stephen Spender (1909-95), through his life spanning the 20th century, befriended, collected or was otherwise connected to a pantheon of artists such as Arp, Auerbach, Bacon, Freud, Giacometti, Gorky, Guston, Hockney, Moore, Morandi, Picasso and others. Including examples of their work as well Spender's poems chosen by Auerbach, this publication is addressed to what Spender termed the "shared subject matter" of art and literature. Interweaving poetry, essay, artwork and generous archival photographs, The Worlds of Stephen Spender: I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great takes for its inspiration themes that preoccupied Spender and which have taken on a renewed urgency: art's movement across borders; collaboration between artists and writers; solidarity against their censorship; and the moral responsibility of the creative individual in times of social crisis.