Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art

by Sharon Hecker (Editor), Silvia Bottinelli (Editor)

Overview

Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art is the first edited volume to critically examine uses of lead as both material and cultural signifier in modern and contemporary art. The book analyzes the work of a diverse group of artists working in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, and takes into account the ways in which gender, race, and class can affect the cultural perception of lead.

Bringing together contributions from a distinguished group of international contributors across various fields, this volume explores lead's relevance from a number of perspectives, including art history, technical art history, art criticism, and curatorial studies. Drawing on current art historical concerns with materiality, this volume builds on recent exhibitions and scholarship that reconsider the role of materials in shaping artistic meaning, thus giving a central relevance to the object and its physicality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350196452
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	03/25/2021
Series:	Material Culture of Art and Design
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Sharon Hecker is an art historian and curator specializing in modern and contemporary Italian art. A leading authority on Medardo Rosso, her books include A Moment's Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture (2017), Postwar Italian Art History Today: Untying 'The Knot' (co-editor, 2018), and Finding Lost Wax: The Disappearance and Recovery of an Ancient Casting Technique and the Experiments of Medardo Rosso (2020).

Silvia Bottinelli is Senior Lecturer in the Visual and Material Studies Department of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, USA. She is a widely published scholar of modern and contemporary art. Her recent books include Double-edged Comforts: Domestic Life in Modern Italian Art and Visual Culture (2021) and The Taste of Art: Cooking, Food, and Counterculture in Contemporary Practices (co-editor, 2017).
Sharon Hecker is an art historian and curator specializing in modern and contemporary Italian art. She is the author of A Moment's Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture (2017), and co-editor of Postwar Italian Art History: Untying the Knot (2018) and Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art (2021). For her work on Italian art, Hecker has received fellowships from the Getty, Fulbright, and Mellon Foundations
Silvia Bottinelli is a Modern and Contemporary Art historian who teaches in the Visual and Critical Studies Department at Tufts University. Silvia received her PhD from the University of Pisa in 2008. Her research on 20th century art has been widely published in scholarly publications, such as Art Journal, Modernism/modernity, Public Art Journal, Art Papers, Sculpture, Predella, Ricerche di Storia dell'Arte, among others. Silvia authored two monographs about postwar Italian Art in 2007 and 2010, and recently received grants from the American Philosophical Society and the Center for Italian Modern Art to work on a new book, which analyzes the representation of the domestic in Italian art and visual culture from the 1940s to the 1970s. Silvia's co-edited volume The Taste of Art. Cooking, Food, and Counterculture was published in 2017. The Food Studies Research Network awarded Silvia with an International Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2016.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction: To Be Continued... Silvia Bottinelli (Tufts University, USA) and Sharon Hecker (independent scholar)
1. A Most Insidious Poison Taking Advantage of our Necessities: A Brief Historical Introduction to Lead and Lead Poisoning, Christian Warren (Brooklyn College - The City University of New York, USA)
2. Lead's Historic Transformations, Spike Bucklow (University of Cambridge, UK)
3. In the Backyard at Burcroft: Henry Moore's Experiments in Lead, Rowan Bailey (University of Huddersfield, UK)
4. The Weakness of Lead: Materiality and Modern American Sculpture, Marin R. Sullivan (Harry Bertoia Foundation&Cheekwood Estate and Gardens, USA)
5. Due Process: Richard Serra's Early Splash/Cast Works, Jeffrey Weiss (The Institute of Fine Arts, USA)
6. Exorbitant Matter: Materiality According to Lynda Benglis, Luke Naessens (Princeton University, USA)
7. Lead in the Lexicon of Gilberto Zorio's Sculpture, Elizabeth Mangini (California College of the Arts, USA)
8. The Stopping Power of Lead: Luciano Fabro, Giuseppe Penone, and Marisa Merz, Sharon Hecker (independent scholar)
9. “Mankind needs some lead so as to be somewhat heavier”: Beuys, Alchemy, and Duchamp, Claudia Mesch (Arizona State University, USA)
10. A Conversation with Remo Salvadori, Sharon Hecker (independent scholar) and Silvia Bottinellii (Tufts University, USA)
Critical Introduction by Rosalind McKever (Victoria and Albert Museum, UK)
11. Two Views of Anselm Kiefer: In the Studio and In the Museum
Kiefer Speaks About Lead with Karl Ove Knausgaard
Loaded Lead: Anselm Kiefer in the Collection of the Israel Museum, Sharon Tager and Adina Kamien (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem)
12. Anthony Caro: Lead and Wood Sculptures. 1980–1989, Karen Wilkin (independent scholar)
13. The New British Sculpture and the Poetics and Pragmatics of Lead, Jon Wood (independent scholar)
14. Organizing Against an Invisible Threat. Lead According to Futurefarmers and Mel Chin, Silvia Bottinelli (Tufts University, USA)
15. An Interview with Daniela Rivera: The weight of lead and painting beyond the surface, Silvia Bottinelli (Tufts University, USA) and Sharon Hecker (independent scholar)
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

[Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art] includes fifteen contributing essays which are rich in insightful observations about lead as a resource and about the artists they are discussing.” —Sculpture Journal

“This fascinating book concerns that alluringly contradictory element, lead. Malleable, easily melted, strikingly heavy, insidiously toxic, its threats and promises have attracted those sculptors committed to addressing what Emily

Dickinson termed the "hour of lead".” —Anne M. Wagner, Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley, USA

“This important volume offers fresh ways of thinking about materiality in modern sculpture. Its wide-ranging explorations of artists' fascination with the physical substance and symbolic meanings of lead make for a genuinely intriguing and illuminating study.” —Alex Potts, Max Loehr Collegiate Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, USA

“The editors must be congratulated on the eclectic yet coherent contents, and on choosing people who not only have things to say, but who can actually write, not always the case in such collections. Lead may have sat splashed, dull and almost sullen in the corner of a gallery like an artist come too late, or early, at a vernissage, but goodness me, in this book, in a process of remarkable transformation, it becomes a catalyst beyond platinum: a catalyst for thought about process and materials in general.” —Leonardo Reviews

From the Publisher