James A. Porter: Modern Negro Art (1943/1969)

cover of 1943 edition

“Called the ‘father of African-American art history’, James A. Porter (1905-70) was not only a distinguished art historian but also a successful painter in his own right. His groundbreaking survey Modern Negro Art was the result of ten years of collecting and collating documents about the history of African-American art, from its inception to the early forties. This seminal work made visible many little-known artists, especially Porter’s contemporaries associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the African-American social, literary, and artistic movement that had been gathering force since the end of World War I.”

First published by Dryden Press, New York, 1943
Reissued by Arno Press and the New York Times, New York, 1969
viii+272 pages

Review: John Fabian Kienitz (College Art J 1944).

WorldCat

PDF (74 MB)
PDF (low res, 27 MB)

Glória Ferreira (ed.): Crítica de Arte no Brasil: temáticas contemporâneas (2006) [BR-PT]

A collection of 91 texts by 80 authors that represent a multidisciplinary universe of ideas and opinions regarding the visual arts of Brazil from 1946-2006. The essays are divided into 7 main topics: Constructive Tradition; Avant-Garde / Experimentalism; Art Criticism; Circuits; Return / Permanence of Painting; Images and Media; and Transitive Situations.

The authors include Mário Pedrosa, Ferreira Gullar, Aracy Amaral, Décio Pignatari, Mario Schenberg, Frederico Morais, Paulo Sérgio Duarte, Hélio Oiticica, Reynaldo Roels Junior, Murilo Mendes, Fernando Cocchiarale, Cildo Meireles, Walmir Ayala, Ronaldo Brito, Antonio Dias, Jorge Guinle, Paulo Herkenhoff, Waldemar Cordeiro, Haroldo de Campos, Roberto Pontual, Arlindo Machado, Wilson Coutinho and Joaquim Ferreira dos Santos.

Publisher Funarte, Rio de Janeiro, 2006
Pensamento crítico series
ISBN 8575070797, 9798575070795
575 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (32 MB)

Destruktion af RSG-6: en kollektiv manifestation af Situationistisk Internationale (1963) [DK/FR/EN]

Catalogue for an Internationale Situationniste exhibition held at the Galerie EXI in Odense, Denmark, 22 June-7 July 1963.

“The name of the exhibition is an homage to Spies for Peace’s Official Secret – RSG6 action, in which the anti-war activist group revealed that, in the event of a nuclear attack, the British government had conceived a plan to house key central government personnel in a secret bunker known as Regional Seat of Government number 6 (RSG-6). The intent was to insure continuity of law and order in the event of a nuclear holocaust. The information was published in the Danger! Official Secret RSG-6 pamphlet, of which 4,000 copies were produced, then mailed to key officials and distributed on the streets.

The catalogue includes photographic portraits of Guy Debord, Michele Bernstein, J.V Martin and Jan Strijbosch, as well as reproduction of original artwork by these members of the S.I. It also serves as the first edition of Guy Debord’s important text ‘Les Situationnistes ou les nouvelles formes d’action dans la politique ou l’art’, published in the original French as well as in Danish and English translations.

Featured pieces – all the result of some form of detournement – include Debord’s “Directives”, Bernstein’s “Victories”, and J.V. Martin’s “Thermonuclear maps” (paintings representing various regions of the globe during World War III), among others. All the artwork is shown in a gallery setting that invokes a post-nuclear world – one area, for instance, was a reconstruction of an oppressive nuclear bomb shelter.

This catalog is particularly scarce because most copies (and, in a rather ironic twist of the fate, the bulk of the artwork shown at EXI) were destroyed by a fire bomb on 18 March 1965.” (Source)

Publisher Galerie Exi, Odense, [1963]
26 pages
via Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Exhibition review: Else Steen Hansen (Swedish, 1963).
Commentary: Frances Stracey (2006), Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen (2011).

PDF (15 MB)
JPGs