New Books: Fine Arts (Art, Music, Theater)

Modern low brass instruments--trombone, tuba, and euphonium--have legions of ancestors, cousins, and descendants in over five-hundred years of history. Douglas Yeo provides a unique, accessible reference guide that addresses a broad range of relevant topics and brings these instruments to life with clear explanations and the most up-to-date research.

Inspired by the artist's long-standing fascination with mirroring and doubles, this book provides an original perspective on Johns's work and its continued relevance. Curators, academics, artists, and writers offer a series of essays--including many paired texts--that consider aspects of the artist's work such as recurring motifs, explorations of place, and use of a wide array of media. The various themes are further explored in a series of plate sections that combine prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures.

The last great master of the Renaissance, Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614), known as El Greco, 'The Greek', holds a singular place in the history of art. Born in Crete, trained in the Byzantine tradition, El Greco continued his apprenticeship in Italy, in contact with Venetian aesthetics and Roman mannerism. It was in Spain, where he settled in the 1570s and where he imported his Italian influences (Titian, Tintoretto, Michelangelo) that he revealed the extent of his talents. His work is still viewed today with the eye of modernity, seducing a wide audience of lovers of ancient and contemporary art.

Robert Ebendorf (b. 1938) has been one of the most influential artists in the studio jewelry movement from its beginning in the 1960s to today. Objects of Affection traces his development from the Scandinavian modernism of his early work to his first use of found objects such as tintype photographs in the 1960s; juxtapositions of colored acrylic and precious metals in the 1970s; use of found newspaper and other textual elements in the 1980s; his pivotal incorporation of animal parts in the 1990s; and the remixing and further development of many of these approaches.

The African diaspora has generated a wide array of artistic achievements. This book concentrates on how these works, often created during times of major social upheaval and transformation, use Black culture both as a subject and as context. From musings on 'the souls of Black folk' in late nineteenth-century art, to questions of racial and cultural identities in performance, media, and computer-assisted arts in the twenty-first century, this book examines the philosophical and social forces that have shaped a Black presence in modern and contemporary visual culture.

Early Jazz is an overview of the beginnings of jazz from its nineteenth-century roots through 1929, when elements of the Swing Era began to emerge. With a broad definition of jazz that encompasses the artistic and the commercial, the book's inclusive tone allows for a wide spectrum of musicians, including not only pioneering African American and white musicians but also those who are commonly skipped or skimmed over in jazz history textbooks--lesser-known sidemen, prominent instrumentalists, entertainers or novelty performers, women, vocalists, and American jazz musicians who introduced jazz on their travels around the world.

Through close encounters with over a hundred carefully selected works, spanning nearly a thousand years, and ranging from Jain manuscripts and Pahari and Mughal miniatures to Company School paintings, B.N. Goswamy unlocks the many treasures that lie within Indian painting. In an illuminating introduction, and as Goswamy relates the stories behind each work and deciphers the visual vocabulary and language of the painters, he brings to life the cultural, social, and political milieu in which they were created.

This book is the first to tell the definitive story of the birth of pop, from the invention of the 78 rpm record at the end of the nineteenth century to the beginnings of rock and the modern pop age. Covering superstars such as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra, alongside the unheralded songwriters and arrangers behind some of our most enduring songs, Stanley paints an aural portrait of pop music's formative years in stunning clarity, uncovering the silver threads and golden needles that bind the form together. Bringing the eclectic, evolving world of early pop to life--from ragtime, blues and jazz to Broadway, country, crooning, and beyond--Let's Do It is essential reading for all music lovers.

With more than 200 illustrations, Rauschenberg/Art and Life is a richly impressive portrait of the artist. In addition to the scores of works of art reproduced (paintings, combines, floor and wall constructions, prints made at U.L.A.E., and more), are personal photographs of Rauschenberg and his friends and family, creating an intimate portrait of the legend.

Examine any phase of America's history, and artisans are there: from the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's "maker movement." Craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. These artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union.