Amazon.com Review
In the 1960s, the American artist Lee Bontecou was heralded as one of the most important young artists of her time. Painstakingly crafted from castoffs--Army surplus and canvas conveyor belts from a neighboring laundry--her wall reliefs evoked a fearsome sci-fi world of black holes and bared teeth, a mysterious doom-filled terrain no one had ever seen before. In the mid-'70s, however, Bontecou disappeared from the art scene, declining to take part in exhibitions.
Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective revisits five decades of this extraordinary artist's work. The texts include Elizabeth A.T. Smith's overview of Bontecou's career, Robert Storr's nuanced analysis of the cultural context of the work, Donna De Salvo's remarks about the otherworldly drawings, and a pivotal essay from 1965 by the sculptor Donald Judd. Especially intriguing is Mona Hadler's brief discussion of Bontecou's personal interests (insect life, model airplanes) and political beliefs. No one has much to say about the critically disparaged vacuum-formed plastic sculptures of fish and flowers from the 1970s. But Bontecou's intricate drawings and recent series of suspended sculptures, which Smith describes as "something between a helicopter and an insect," continue to explore a natural realm that combines delicacy and menace.
Lee Bontecou, which contains 175 full-color illustrations, accompanies an exhibition of the same title at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through Jan. 11, 2004, which travels to Chicago and New York.
--Cathy Curtis
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
One of the most acclaimed figures in the New York art world during the 1960s, Lee Bontecou dropped out the galley scene in the mid-1970s, choosing, instead, to work on her sculptures alone. This catalogue, which is timed to coordinate with major exhibitions of Bontecou's work in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, aims to reassert the reclusive woman's place in art history-and succeeds. The catalogue's full-color plates cover all of Bontecou's career, from the welded-steel and canvas boxes that made her name in the 1960s to the intricate porcelain and wire sculptures that comprise her latest series. Bontecou's work is deeply organic-many of the sculptures resemble catfish or seagulls or flowers. As early as 1971, one critic dubbed her a "strange naturalist." Other interpretations of her work can be found in this book's five essay-length monographs. In the first, "All Freedom in Every Sense," curator Smith provides a career biography of the artist. Storr's "Seek and Hide" attempts "to situate her sculpture within a context that was contiguous with but outside the American mainstream." Judd's monograph argues that Bontecou's work derives its force from its rejection of solipsism, skepticism and irony. As the first comprehensive book on Bontecou, this catalogue has great scholarly importance. And the traveling exhibition should generate press coverage, such as Calvin Tompkin's profile the August issue of the New Yorker, which may make this book popular with a wider audience as well. 175 color illustrations.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
