Books by J. Richard Gruber
Dusti Bongé, Art and Life: Biloxi, New Orleans, New York
The art of Dusti Bongé was influenced by her experiences in three distinctive American cities: Biloxi, Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; and New York, New York. In developing her artistic practice in these vibrant urban settings, she portrayed a unique sense of place in her work. In Dusti Bongé, Art and Life, which includes over 500 color images, J. Richard Gruber documents Dusti Bongé's full career and her key role in the twentieth-century art world and in a highly creative family, including her husband, Archie (1901‒1936); her son, photographer Lyle Bongé (1929–2009); and her grandson, photographer Paul Bongé (b. 1963).
Born in Biloxi in 1903, she died there in 1993, living on the family property where she was raised. After graduating from Blue Mountain College in 1922, she moved to Chicago and became an actress, and then moved to New York to act on stage and in silent movies. She married artist Archie Bongé in 1928 and lived in New York until they moved to Biloxi in 1934 with Lyle.
Following Archie’s premature death in 1936, Dusti dedicated herself to working as an artist. Initially, she exhibited in New Orleans and Biloxi, and then in New York, where she became affiliated with the famed Betty Parsons Gallery in 1946. There she was given a series of one-person exhibitions in the years from 1956 to 1975. Her art achieved national recognition through her shows at the Parsons Gallery, when New York replaced Paris as an international art center and Abstract Expressionism became a leading influence in the art world.
Dusti Bongé, Art and Life explores the full range of the artist’s creativity, extending from her stage acting to her activities in painting, sculpting, printmaking, sewing, writing, and poetry.
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Missing New Orleans
by J. Richard Gruber, Jim Rapier, Mary Beth Romig
Though thirty years in the making, Phillip Collier's Missing New Orleans was almost another treasure lost to Hurricane Katrina. Final proof was due at the New Orleans printer August 31, 2005, just days after floodwaters breached the levees. To the principals of the book, "missing New Orleans" took on personal, devastating meanings.
This pictorial history of New Orleans from the early 1700s to the present offers over 250 images as well as stories of places, entities, and events that were at one time a vital part of the city. Each lost gem tells a unique narrative: the Claiborne Avenue Oaks, the French Opera House, Pontchartrain and Lincoln Beaches, the Gypsy Tea Room, Tulane and Pelican Stadiums, Mr. Bingle, and D. H. Holmes. Images celebrate grand historic structures that once stood along New Orleans thoroughfares, including the St. Louis and St. Charles Hotels from the mid-nineteenth century and the five downtown railroad stations and the Rivergate from the twentieth century.
Through the photographs, postcards, posters, maps, and line drawings gathered by New Orleans graphic designer Phillip Collier, those enamored of the Crescent City can explore a time when West End Park and Spanish Fort were lakefront resort destinations, when boxing and horse racing ruled the city's sporting world, when street vendors plied their wares, and steamboats packed the wharves.
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American Landscapes: Meditations on Art and Literature in a Changing World (University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses Series)
by J. Richard Gruber, Ann J Abadie, University Press Of Mississippi
American Landscapes: Meditations on Art and Literature in a Changing World is a major contemporary survey of landscapes in art and literature of the United States, especially the American South. Inspired by William Dunlap’s extraordinary landscape Meditations on the Origins of Agriculture in America and a collection of forty paintings and photographs by Southern artists, this volume brings together artists, authors, and scholars to present new perspectives on art and literature both past and present.
The volume includes art and text from artists John Alexander, Jason Bouldin, William Dunlap, Carlyle Wolfe Lee, Ke Francis, Linda Burgess, Randy Hayes; photographers Sally Mann, Ed Croom, and Huger Foote; museum directors Betsy Bradley, Jane Livingston, and Julian Rankin; and authors W. Ralph Eubanks, John Grisham, J. Richard Gruber, Jessica B. Harris, Lisa Howorth, Julia Reed, Natasha Trethewey, Curtis Wilkie, Joseph M. Pierce, and Drew Gilpin Faust. This diverse group explores major eras of American history portrayed in Dunlap’s painting, a landscape that evokes the displacement and genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, the Civil War, and William Faulkner’s fiction. They examine the history of landscape art in America, connecting art with the works of major writers like William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Natasha Trethewey, and Jesmyn Ward.
In eighteen new essays written during the pandemic and since the events of January 6, 2021, the essayists emphasize how the key issues Dunlap addressed in his 1987 artwork have become part of the national discourse and make his work even more vital today.
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$50.00
A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana
by J. Richard Gruber, Michael Sartisky, John R. Kemp
A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana is a handsome, unprecedented, commemorative hardcover edition limited to approximately 3,000 copies. This large-format volume encompasses 450 color pages featuring approximately 275 artists and photographers. For art collectors and enthusiasts, for followers of Louisiana history, and for keepers of Louisiana pride, this dazzling book is testimony to the state's vibrant artistic culture.
Coeditors are Michael Sartisky, PhD, president of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, and J. Richard Gruber, PhD, director emeritus of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art; John R. Kemp, former deputy director of the LEH, is serving as associate editor. Written by scholars from around the country, the entries include all genres (painting, sculpture, photography, folk art, decorative art, furniture) and periods, from colonial to contemporary. Private collections and major archives such as the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Louisiana State Museum, the Historic New Orleans Collection, and the Louisiana State University Museum of Art, among others, contribute a comprehensive library of images.
Every entry in the book will be linked to fully articulated entries on each artist and genre in KnowLA: Encyclopedia of Louisiana History (https://64parishes.org/encyclopedia), which also will have the capacity to include a much more extensive image gallery for each artist and genre.
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To Paint and Pray: The Art and Life of William R. Hollingsworth, Jr.
by J. Richard Gruber, Robin C. Dietrick
William R. Hollingsworth, Jr. (1910-1944) remains one of Mississippi's most significant artists. To Paint and Pray explores Hollingsworth's life, from his childhood in Jackson, through his studies at the University of Mississippi and the Art Institute of Chicago, to his adulthood in Jackson as an artist. Hollingsworth was prolific in his work, capturing the landscapes and people of central Mississippi in watercolors and oil. In 1958 Eudora Welty stated of Hollingsworth that the accuracy of his eye, turned on the home scene, is as marvelously reliable as that of another Mississippi William in another line of work."
To Paint and Pray contains a biographical essay by curator Robin C. Dietrick and a critical essay by scholar J. Richard Gruber, along with an extensive timeline of the artist's life and career. The book includes more than 120 illustrations from Hollingsworth's poetic paintings to notes jotted in his private sketchbooks and intimate family photographs. To Paint and Pray is the most extensive publication on William R. Hollingsworth, Jr., to date. During his lifetime, the artist received numerous national awards for his art and exhibited across the country, from San Diego to Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis, Atlanta, and New York, among others. Working at the time of the great "regionalists" Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood, Hollingsworth exhibited alongside those masters and was building a name for himself nationally at the time of his death. Recently, with renewed interest in southern art, Hollingsworth's enduring artwork is again growing in popularity.
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