Books by Elsa Smithgall

William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master

by Elsa Smithgall, Erica E. Hirshler, Katherine M. Bourguignon, Giovanna Ginex, John Davis

A landmark retrospective that examines William Merritt Chase and his lasting contribution to the history of modern art

The history of modern art owes a great debt to William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), one of America’s influential artists and educators. Chase was a leading member of the international artistic avant-garde and was best known for his mastery of a wide range of subjects in oil and pastel, including figures, landscapes, urban park scenes, interiors, and portraits. As a teacher and founder of the Shinnecock Summer School of Art and the New York School of Art, Chase mentored a new generation of modernists, including Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Joseph Stella.

A century after his death, the breadth and richness of Chase’s career are celebrated in this beautifully illustrated publication. Five essays by prominent scholars of American art offer new insights into Chase’s multi-faceted artistic practice and his position in the international cultural climate at the turn of the 20th century.

Published in association with The Phillips Collection

Exhibition Schedule:
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
(06/04/16–09/11/16)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(10/09/16–01/16/17)
Ca’Pesaro-Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Venice
(02/11/17–05/28/17)

Kandinsky and the Harmony of Silence: Painting with White Border

by Elsa Smithgall

Russian artist and theoretician Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a significant figure in 20th-century abstraction. His masterwork Painting with White Border (1913; Guggenheim Museum), inspired by his native Moscow, emerged during an intensely creative period in his artistic development. Kandinsky and the Harmony of Silence presents a rare, in-depth examination of the painting and more than fifteen preparatory studies in watercolor, oil, and pencil, along with closely related works made during this influential chapter in Kandinsky's career.
This handsome book includes essays illuminating how Painting with White Border also relates to Kandinsky's writings, including Concerning the Spiritual in Art (published 100 years ago) and his autobiography Reminiscences. A jointly authored essay by conservators at the Phillips and the Guggenheim presents the results of a recent conservation analysis of the painting and its related oil sketch (1913; The Phillips Collection), revealing important new discoveries about the artist's creative process, materials, and methods.

Published in association with The Phillips Collection

Exhibition Schedule:
The Phillips Collection (06/11/11 – 09/4/11)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (11/04/11 – 01/29/12)

Jacob Lawrence The Migration Series

by Leah Dickerman, Elsa Smithgall

In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just twenty-three years old, completed a series of sixty small tempera paintings with text captions about the Great Migration. Within months of its making, Lawrence's Migration series was divided between The Museum of Modern Art (even numbered panels) and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (odd numbered panels). The work has since become a landmark in the history of African-American art, a monument in the collections of both institutions, and a crucial example of the way in which history painting was radically reimagined in the modern era. In 2015 and 2016, marking the centenary of the Great Migration's start (1915-16), the panels will be reunited in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art and then The Phillips Collection. Published to accompany the exhibition, this publication both grounds Lawrence's Migration series in the cultural and political debates that shaped the young artist's work and highlights the series' continued resonance for artists and writers working today. An essay by Leah Dickerman situates the series in relation to heady contemporary discussions of the artist's role as a social agent; a growing imperative to write - and give image to - black history in the late 1930s and early 1940s; and an emergent sense of activist politics. Elsa Smithgall traces the exhibition history of the Migration panels from their display at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1941 to their acquisition by MoMA and the Phillips Collection a year later. Short commentaries on each panel explore Lawrence's career and painting technique and aspects of the social history of the Migration portrayed in his images. The catalogue also debuts ten poems newly commissioned from acclaimed poets written in response to the Migration series. Elizabeth Alexander (honoured as the poet at President Obama's first inauguration) introduces the poetry project with a discussion of the poetic quality of Lawrence's work, as well as the impact and legacy of the poets in his orbit including Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.

Jacob Lawrence The Migration Series

by Leah Dickerman, Elsa Smithgall

Lawrence's landmark series on African American migration in context

In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just 23 years old, made a series of 60 small tempera paintings on the Great Migration, the decades-long mass movement of black Americans from the rural South to the urban North that began in 1915-16. The child of migrant parents, Lawrence worked partly from his own experience and partly from long research in his neighborhood library. The result was an epic narrative of the collective history of his people. Moving from scenes of terror and violence to images of great intimacy, and drawing on film, photography, political cartoons and other sources in popular culture, Lawrence created an innovative format of sequential panels, each image accompanied by a descriptive caption. Within months of its completion, the series entered the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (today The Phillips Collection), Washington, DC, each institution acquiring 30 panels.

The Migration Series is now a landmark in the history of modern art. Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, now in paperback, grounds Lawrence's work in the cultural and political debates that shaped his art and demonstrates its relevance for artists and writers today. The series is reproduced in full; short texts accompanying each panel relate them to the history of the Migration and explore Lawrence's technique and approach. Alongside scholarly essays, the book also includes 11 newly commissioned poems, by Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams and Kevin Young, that respond directly to the series. The distinguished poet Elizabeth Alexander edited and introduces the section.