MAJOR EXHIBITION CATALOGUE PUBLISHED IN CONJUNCTION WITH MODERNSTARTS: PEOPLE
The Museum of Modern Art publishes a major catalogue to accompany ModernStarts, the first of three cycles of millennial exhibitions entitled MoMA2000. ModernStarts: People, Places, Things is written and presented to complement the exhibition, and to serve as a resource for in-depth exploration of the Museum's collection of works from the early modern period.
ModernStarts: People, Places, Things
This challenging study of the early decades of modernism is primarily authored by John Elderfield, Peter Reed, Mary Chan, and Maria del Carmen González, and includes essays by several other MoMA curators.
As does the exhibition ModernStarts, the catalogue focuses on works from 1880 to 1920, incorporating examples from later periods. Works are grouped thematically, removed from their usual historical and stylistic categories, in order to allow new juxtapositions and associations. The catalogue is organized into three main sections––People, Places, and Things––recalling the division of genres that existed before modernism, still prevalent during the period from 1880 to 1920, and challenged during this time as never before.
In-depth essays by MoMA curators explore facets of the Museum's collection within the three thematic divisions. For example, within the section on People, The Language of the Body, by Ms. Chan and Starr Figura, discusses how modern artists employed gesture, posture, and facial expression to convey inner psychological states. Ms. Chan also contributes a short essay on the abstract wall drawing created by Sol LeWitt. Composing with the Figure, by Ms. González investigates how the human figure--often decomposed or fragmented--appears as one element in complex, layered compositions. Judith B. Hecker's essay Ensor/Posada examines the apocalyptic figures rendered by two artists, working independently in different locations, who produced similarly macabre works. Posed to Unposed: Encounters with the Camera, by M. Darsie Alexander, explores the distinctions between planned and spontaneous photographs of people. Figure and Field, by Elizabeth Levine, examines the postures and placements of the human figure in relation to the field around it. Expression and the Series: Rodin and Matisse, by Beatrice Kernan, is an intensely focussed study of Rodin's studies for his Monument to Balzac, and Matisse's heads of Jeanette.
Mr. Elderfield contributes Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, which looks at sculpture, primarily of the single figure; and Actors, Dancers, Bathers, which demonstrates the early modernists' special interest in representing those who pose or perform. In addition, Mr. Elderfield writes a wide-ranging introduction to People entitled Representing People: The Story and the Sensation, which discusses figural language, composition, and representation.
Four hundred and fifty-six illustrations, 235 in color, represent works from all parts of the Museum's collection: painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, illustrated books, architecture and design, photography, film, video, and contemporary installations.
Body Language
An additional publication in conjunction with ModernStarts, Body Language explores a primary subject of all art, the human face and body, and their infinite variety of gesture and expression. Five authors, M. Darsie Alexander, Mary Chan, Starr Figura, Sarah Ganz, and
Maria del Carmen González, each present one of five sections: Faces, Gestures, Postures, Pairs, and Groups. Eclectic and provocative images, all drawn from the Museum's collection, comprise a mixture of well-known and lesser-known works. Ten short essays each examine of a pair of images, suggesting unexpected relationships between works, and ways of looking at these compelling images.
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ModernStarts: People, Places, Things. John Elderfield, Peter Reed, Mary Chan, and Maria del Carmen González. 456 illustrations, 235 in color. 360 pages, 9 1/2 x 12". Clothbound $55, paperbound $29.95.
Body Language. M. Darsie Alexander, Mary Chan, Starr Figura, Sarah Ganz, and Maria del Carmen González, introduction by John Elderfield. 115 illustrations, 51 in color and 64 in duotone. 144 pages, 7 x 10". Paperbound $24.95.
These titles are distributed in the United States and Canada by Harry N. Abrams and are available in The MoMA Book Store.
