Books by Jennifer L. Roberts
Transporting Visions: The Movement of Images in Early America
Transporting Visions follows pictures as they traveled through and over the swamps, forests, towns, oceans, and rivers of British America and the United States between 1760 and 1860. Taking seriously the complications involved in moving pictures through the physical world―the sheer bulk and weight of canvases, the delays inherent in long-distance reception, the perpetual threat to the stability and mnemonic capacity of images, the uneasy mingling of artworks with other kinds of things in transit―Jennifer L. Roberts forges a model for a material history of visual communication in early America. Focusing on paintings and prints by John Singleton Copley, John James Audubon, and Asher B. Durand―which were designed with mobility in mind―Roberts shows how an analysis of such imagery opens new perspectives on the most fundamental problems of early American commodity circulation, geographic expansion, and social cohesion.
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Scale
Scale is perhaps the most spectacularly overlooked aspect of artistic production. As photographic and digital reproductions have essentially dematerialized art, critical and historical research dealing with scale--both within the American critical tradition and abroad--has become scattered and insufficiently theorized. However, by posing a specific challenge, such research forces a heightened recognition of both the properties of materials and the deep technical knowledge of makers. A reconsideration of scalar relationships in American art and visual culture therefore reveals original insights.
Scale is the second volume in the Terra Foundation Essays series. With eighty color illustrations and a wealth of new research from Glenn Adamson, Wendy Bellion, Wouter Davidts, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Christopher P. Heuer, Joshua G. Stein, and Jason Weems, it explores viewers' physical relationship to Barnett Newman's abstract canvases, the arduous engineering behind the creation of Mount Rushmore, and the charged significance of liberty poles in the landscape of eighteenth-century New York, among other topics that range from studies of specific works of art to significant conceptual and theoretical concerns.
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Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible
by John Yau, Briony Fer, Jennifer L. Roberts, Ruth Asawa, Makeda Best, Taylor Davis, Ruth Erickson
Revealing rarely seen work alongside her iconic looped-wire sculptures, this catalogue celebrates Ruth Asawa’s unique vision and intimate subject matter.
Known for her intricate and distinct artistic language, Asawa produced numerous sculptures, drawings, and prints that are built on simple, repeated gestures that accumulate into complex compositions. Her works on paper and “continuous” looped-wire sculptures suggest a field of fluctuating positive and negative forms, a means of reshaping how we perceive the world. Personal motifs reappear throughout in the most comprehensive look at the artist’s oeuvre to date––ceramic casts of faces of her family, friends, and neighbors; the carved front door Asawa and her family made for their home; and drawings of her children, grandchildren, and husband sleeping––all providing an expansive look into the artist’s life.
A document of the breathtaking and surprising exhibition Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible, organized by Helen Molesworth, this book records and expands upon the show, offering new insight from writers and curators with a selection of sixty-four works from Asawa’s spectacular oeuvre. With an introduction by Molesworth, this book features focused texts from Makeda Best, Taylor Davis, Ruth Erickson, Briony Fer, Jennifer L. Roberts, and John Yau.
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