Books by Helen Molesworth
Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time
A renowned jewelry expert recounts her career working with nature’s most extraordinary treasures—gemstones—and traces these rare jewels from ancient Egyptian records through the high-stakes auctions of today.
Helen Molesworth has been captivated by precious stones since early childhood but she struggled to join the gemstone industry, having no connections to the few family-run companies that have dominated the field for centuries. She persevered, and more than two decades later, Molesworth is now an international authority hired to appraise the extraordinary jewelry of such clients as the British royal family. Precious is packed with inside stories about fabulous jewels associated with generations of celebrities, from Cleopatra (emerald) to Catherine, Princess of Wales (sapphire); from Marilyn Monroe (pearl) to Beyoncé (garnet); from Jackie O (pearl) to Lady Gaga (diamond); and from Marie Antoinette (pearl) to Elizabeth Taylor (pearl, ruby, and emerald)!
As Molesworth tells it, the history of gemstones is the history of humanity. And so she journeys the world, navigating African diamond mines, Colombian emerald mines, and the sapphire-rich rivers of Sri Lanka to study gems at their source. She has selected ten of nature’s most dazzling gems, tracing their discovery to when these cut-and-polished masterpieces first adorned empresses and kings.
From the stories of a priceless emerald watch hidden under floorboards for centuries to the common quartz fashioned into world-famous royal jewels, and diamonds selling for multi-millions, Precious is not just a chronicle of archeology and geology, high society and high finance, it’s the story of our timeless ambition to make—and wear—something beautiful.
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$30.00
The Dada Seminars (CASVA Seminar Papers)
by Matthew Witkovsky, Helen Molesworth, Hal Foster, David Joselit, George Baker, T.J. Demos, Uwe Fleckner, Marcella Lista, Arnauld Pierre, Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Amelia Jones
This volume of 12 essays fills a broad gap in Modernist art history. Taken together, these case studies on artists and concepts present Dada as a coherent movement with a set of operating principles. Among the “ tactics” elaborated are the hyperbolic mimicry of dominant social and linguistic conventions, the performance of gender and other aspects of identity, the usurpation of the modes of a new media culture and the marketplace, and the recycling of history and memory in a world traumatized by war. The Dada Seminars developed out of a series held by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, in advance of 2005's major traveling exhibition on international Dada. Contributors include George Baker, T.J. Demos, Leah Dickerman, Uwe Fleckner, Hal Foster, Amelia Jones, David Joselit, Marcella Lista, Helen Molesworth, Arnauld Pierre, Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew S. Witkovsky.
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Louise Lawler (October Files)
Essays and interviews that examine the work of an artist whose witty, poignant, and trenchant photographs investigate the life cycle of art objects.
Louise Lawler has devoted her art practice to investigating the life cycle of art objects. Her photographs depict art in the collector's home, the museum, the auction house, and the commercial gallery, on loading docks, and in storage closets. Her work offers a sustained meditation on the strategies of display that shape art's reception and distribution. The cumulative effect of Lawler's photographs is a silent insistence that context is the primary shaper of art's meaning. Informed by feminism and institutional critique, Lawler's witty, poignant, and trenchant photos frequently pay attention to a host of overlooked details—almost Freudian slips—that ineffably and tacitly shore up what we conventionally think of as art's “power.”
This book includes the earliest published text on Lawler's work; an examination of her ephemera (Lawler produced, among other things, matchbooks and paperweights); a rare interview with the artist, conducted by Douglas Crimp; a conversation between George Baker and Andrea Fraser on Lawler's work; and essays by writers including Rosalind Krauss, Rosalyn Deutsche, and Helen Molesworth, the volume's editor. The book traces the changing reception of Lawler's work from early preoccupations with appropriation to later discussions of affect.
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Kerry James Marshall: Mastry
by Dieter Roelstraete, Ian Alteveer, Helen Molesworth, Abigail Winograd
The definitive monograph on contemporary African American painter Kerry James Marshall, accompanying a major traveling retrospective. This long-awaited volume celebrates the work of Kerry James Marshall, one of America’s greatest living painters. Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts riots in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience. Best known for large-scale interiors, landscapes, and portraits featuring powerful black figures, Marshall explores narratives of African American history from slave ships to the present and draws upon his deep knowledge of art history from the Renaissance to twentieth-century abstraction, as well as other sources such as the comic book and the muralist tradition. With luscious color and brushstrokes and highly detailed patterning, his direct and intimate scenes of black middle-class life conjure a wide range of emotions, resulting in powerful paintings that confront the position of African Americans throughout American history. Richly illustrated, this monumental book features essays by noted curators as well as the artist, and more than 100 paintings from throughout the artist’s career arranged thematically by subject: history painting; beauty, as expressed through the nude, portraiture, and self-portraiture; landscape; religion; and the politics of black nationalism.
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Cartier
by Helen Molesworth, Rachel Garrahan
From Tiaras to the Tank Watch: the ESSENTIAL book on Cartier
Few jewellers are as celebrated as Cartier, and even fewer have as many instantly recognizable designs--some of which, such as the Tank watch, Love bracelet, and Trinity ring, have become iconic.
Glamorous, witty, beautiful, and beloved of stars from Elizabeth Taylor to Grace Kelly, over 150 dazzling Cartier pieces are featured here.
Published in association with Cartier, this book presents jewels from superlative collections, including the V&A and the Royal Collection, as well as Cartier's own private collection, and it celebrates the history of the company King Edward VII called the "Jeweller of Kings and King of Jewellers."
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Njideka Akunyili Crosby
by Jason Rosenfeld, Helen Molesworth, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jareh Das, Drew Thompson
The first monograph on the internationally celebrated Nigerian American painter who blends her personal history and African diasporic identity in layered compositions
“Critics have often (and rightly) marveled at the care and finesse with which Akunyili Crosby assembles vast multiplicities of time and place into singular sites of visual contestation.” —Frieze
Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s work unites multiple places and temporalities, reflecting both personal and universal dimensions of contemporary life and, in particular, the intricacies of the African diasporic identity. This first monograph on Akunyili Crosby brings together nearly fifty paintings, made from 2010 to 2023, that chart her methodical practice of layering painted representations of people, locales, and aspects of her own experiences with transferred images sourced from her personal collection, Nigerian publications, and other outlets. Akunyili Crosby reveals and revisits distinct realms, from lush gardens to domestic, interior worlds related to motherhood, family, marriage, the body, and personal identity.
New texts from Jareh Das, Helen Molesworth, Jason Rosenfeld, and Drew Thompson focus on a range of themes in Akunyili Crosby’s work, including her visual language and material practice, her mixing of Western and Nigerian imagery and forms, and her use of photography in portraiture and figuration.
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Noah Davis: In Detail
by Helen Molesworth, Franklin Sirmans, Noah Davis
Designed as a companion to the hugely successful monograph Noah Davis, this volume offers further insight into the impact and legacy of the revolutionary Los Angeles artist and activist.
“Embedding his dreams on canvas and in the community, visionary American artist Noah Davis created a mighty legacy.” — Rachel Willcock, ArtReview (2022)
Looking to literature, film, architecture, and art history, Noah Davis imbued his ethereal paintings with emotion and imagination. Muted colors, fantastic scenes, and blurred subjects create an intoxicating vision. Attuned to the power of his medium, Davis layered his paintings—figuratively and literally—using a unique dry paint application to depict quotidian life at an enigmatic, almost magical remove. Featuring sumptuous close-ups throughout, this important new book brings into focus the rich, painterly variety and luminous detail of Davis’s canvases.
With a special focus on the groundbreaking Underground Museum, which Noah Davis co-founded with his wife, Karon Davis, Noah Davis: In Detail includes a special conversation, moderated by Helen Molesworth, between Fred Moten, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Lax, and Julie Mehretu. This renowned group of artists and thinkers share personal experiences of the powerful and emotional impact of The Underground Museum and its connection to the larger artistic environs of Los Angeles. Franklin Sirmans contributes a new essay and Lindsay Charlwood, a lifelong friend of Noah’s, authors a chronology of his life, contextualizing his artistic and social achievements.
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