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   Book Info

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Defying Gravity: Contemporary Art and Flight  
Author: Huston Paschal
ISBN: 379132926X
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review

Book Description
Inspired by the centenary of the Wright Brothers’ historic feat at Kitty Hawk, this catalog of the North Carolina Museum of Art’s kaleidoscopic exhibition shows how the human obsession with flight provided fertile ground for contemporary artists in every imaginable medium. One of the earliest and most sustained dreams human beings have nurtured has been the wish to fly. And although flight and aircraft have figured prominently in contemporary art, until now this intersection has not received much critical attention. The NCMA exhibition and this sumptuously illustrated catalog will undoubtedly rectify that omission. Defying Gravity features approximately ninety major works of art in varying styles and themes by forty-seven individual artists and four pairs of collaborators, including such internationally renowned figures as Jonathan Borofsky, Vija Celmins, Chris Drury, Andreas Gursky, Malcolm Morley, Panamarenko, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Frank Stella, and Wayne Thiebaud. Younger artists like Doug Aitken, Vera Lutter, and Rosemary Laing are also represented. From Icarus’s tragic flight and the cumbersome contraptions of early aviation to the gleaming might of contemporary bombers and the sobering anxiety with which many regard aircraft since the World Trade Center attacks of 2001, the images collected in Defying Gravity are both arresting and provocative, comical and dreamlike. Together with commentary by the curators—including entries on each artist in the exhibition—and an essay by the highly regarded cultural historian Robert Wohl, this beautifully produced book leads to an artistic understanding of the distinctly human impulse to defy limitation, and of the wondrous and terrible results that impulse can yield.




Defying Gravity: Contemporary Art and Flight

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Inspired by the centenary of the Wright Brothers￯﾿ᄑ historic feat at Kitty Hawk, this catalog of the North Carolina Museum of Art￯﾿ᄑs kaleidoscopic exhibition shows how the human obsession with flight provided fertile ground for contemporary artists in every imaginable medium.

One of the earliest and most sustained dreams human beings have nurtured has been the wish to fly. And although flight and aircraft have figured prominently in contemporary art, until now this intersection has not received much critical attention. The NCMA exhibition and this sumptuously illustrated catalog will undoubtedly rectify that omission.

Defying Gravity features approximately ninety major works of art in varying styles and themes by forty-seven individual artists and four pairs of collaborators, including such internationally renowned figures as Jonathan Borofsky, Vija Celmins, Chris Drury, Andreas Gursky, Malcolm Morley, Panamarenko, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Frank Stella, and Wayne Thiebaud. Younger artists like Doug Aitken, Vera Lutter, and Rosemary Laing are also represented. From Icarus￯﾿ᄑs tragic flight and the cumbersome contraptions of early aviation to the gleaming might of contemporary bombers and the sobering anxiety with which many regard aircraft since the World Trade Center attacks of 2001, the images collected in Defying Gravity are both arresting and provocative, comical and dreamlike. Together with commentary by the curators￯﾿ᄑincluding entries on each artist in the exhibition￯﾿ᄑand an essay by the highly regarded cultural historian Robert Wohl, this beautifully produced book leads to an artistic understanding of the distinctly human impulse to defy limitation, and of the wondrous and terrible results that impulse can yield.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

This book is a fitting companion for an exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) through March 2004, which celebrates the centennial of the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. The sense of exuberance and invention this feat inspired is sustained throughout the pages of this handsome book, which offers three short essays, catalog entries accompanying reproductions of the exhibited art, and a very useful "Exhibition at a Glance" section of thumbprint reproductions. It is difficult to find any relationship beyond a common interest in flight among the artists in this ambitious and diverse group. The show includes approximately 50 artists, some well known (e.g., Ed Ruscha, Frank Stella), with 90 works in media ranging from stamps to film to wax. Essays tracing the evolution of aviation and art through the 20th century to the present are perfunctory and tend (like the exhibition's title) toward the obvious. If this enterprise feels a bit lightweight, editors and NCMA curators Paschal and Dougherty do assemble interesting art projects (not all of which unconditionally embrace technological advances in the sky) that may send avid flight and art enthusiasts on to more research. Recommended for larger libraries that collect widespread museum publications.-Prudence Peiffer, Cambridge, MA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

     



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