Clemente: A Retrospective (Guggenheim Museum Publications) [Hardcover]

Lisa Dennison (Author), Raymond Foye (Contributor), Jotindra Jair (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Guggenheim Museum Publications | Publication Date: January 2000

Francesco Clemente (b. 1952) has, since the 1980s, been a leading artist in the international revival of expressionist figure painting and sculpture. Clemente's subjects -- rooted in both the physical and the surreal, spiritual worlds -- create a vast body of work that appeals to diverse audiences. This stunning book is published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition.

Clemente draws upon a pan-historic web of impulses, mediating among the myriad cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, Byzantium, Europe, India, and America. Stylistically his work recalls the Italian Renaissance, Indian miniatures, European Romanticism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. Clemente's widespread cultural interests and nomadic lifestyle -- New York is his home but he spends part of each year in Italy, India, and the New Mexico desert -- have deeply affected his art.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This finely wrought, lush, 500-page volume does justice to the wide-ranging oeuvre of one of the most open-minded, ambitious, and productive artists of the late 20th century. The catalog of an exhibition at New York's Guggenheim Museum in the fall of 1999, it contains a wide range of writings, including Robert Creeley's haunting poetry, a thorough chronology, and half a dozen essays, including the introductory "Once You Begin the Journey You Never Return," by the Guggenheim's Lisa Dennison. In accordance with Clemente's paintings and drawings, the book touches on themes from Indian mysticism, prayer, the body's pores and orifices, family bonds, and a number of metaphysical and physical concerns, being and nothingness among them. In the essay "Rooms," Francesco Pellizzi draws a long thread through cave painting, Meister Eckhart's sermons on the soul, Renaissance Rome, and Clemente's wall paintings to arrive at "the transmodern sense of a shifting place of origin; every step, every station, is the first and last in this vortex, a maelstrom animated by an eros that is enveloping and inevitable but also, in the end, joyous...."

Clemente's art, which lays bare his obsessions with sex, self, and spirituality and explores them with a constantly surprising range of intense color and formal invention, stands in bracing, deeply pleasurable opposition to the desiccated, design-bound, theory-driven work that has dominated so much art of the last 25 years. Art historian James Elkins has described making graduate students copy, stroke for stroke, works by Monet and other painters, to give them a feel for "What Painting Is" (as he titled his recent book). Clemente raises the stakes a notch, demonstrating what painting might be, if we were to allow ourselves to be drenched in its myriad possibilities. --Peggy Moorman

Language Notes

Text: Italian, English --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams; illustrated edition edition (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810969173
• ISBN-13: 978-0810969179
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,290,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must have for any collection of art and book lovers, September 21, 2003

By 

Nichole Beaulieu (new york, ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clemente: A Retrospective (Guggenheim Museum Publications) (Hardcover)

I was lucky enough to catch his show at the Guggenheim several years ago and have been desperately coveting this book since. Clemente works on a large scale, so capturing his imposing imagery can be tough (to be mild). However, in an endeavor to capture the man through his works, this large-scoped voluminous edition works wonders at the foot of the mountain. The best of the attempts, it's like a conversation with the man himself.

A must have for art lovers, a must have for romantics, a must have for any library or coffee table. It's a lovely book, full true color, and a ripe collection of his works. A good work, and well worth anyone's time.

4.0 out of 5 stars heavy selection, October 28, 2008

By 

Nico (subterranean) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Clemente (Hardcover)

Francesco Clemente is my Patron Saint of Paint! So why four instead of five stars shining bright in the night sky? It's missing a whole series of pastels that happen to be a favourite. I count 16 of them. Otherwise, this collection outweighs everything else.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars art, love, and beauty, July 19, 2001

By 

William W. Hsu (New Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clemente: A Retrospective (Guggenheim Museum Publications) (Hardcover)

Clemente quoted De Chirico once in an interview with Vanity Fair, "What Shall I love if not the enigma." Clemente's paintings, indeed, exhibit a mysterious charm that invites the viewers into the artist's inner world of Indian mysticism and physcial beauty. Juxtaposed with Robert Creeley's poetry, this volume of fantastic and sensual paintings clearly is a must for all Clemente fans. From Napoli to New York, Clemente has wooed the jet-setters on both sides of the Atlantic, establishments such as the Guggenheim in New York, and me, a Yale College student.