ART HISTORY
RELOCATIONS: Selected Art Essays and Interviews
May 2008
by Matthew Kangas
ISBN 978-1-877675-69-0; 480 pp; paper; color illust.; $28.00
ISBN 978-1-877675-70-6; 480 pp; cloth; color illust.; $36.00
This book is one of the few essay collections dealing with the history of a remarkable and often overlooked art center: Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Concentrating on the final quarter of the 20th century with focused studies of the 1920s through the 1960s, Relocations is ideal reading for artists, critics, teachers, collectors and curators interested in how regional art centers evolve and thrive. Kangas presents his canon of major and minor figures of the period in an accessible intelligent style that captures the excitement and intensity of Seattle's growth from pioneer backwater to international seaport and nexus of high technology with a rich visual arts culture.

As they stand together, the current essays and interviews are a blend of art criticism and art history. They deal with artists who have relocated to the Pacific Northwest and Seattle, or who have visited here for periods of time, or who have brought their own prior regional sensibilities to the geographical region of the U.S. farthest away from New York. Critical opinion about non-Northwest artists has been relocated, too, . . . put into perspective within the context of local artists who, like Robert Smithson and Buster Simpson, may not have ever met, but who shared much more with one another than one might ever have imagined. So it is with all the artists discussed in Relocations.

THE UNPICTURELIKENESS OF POLLOCK, SOUTINE & OTHERS:
Selected Writings & Talks by Louis Finkelstein
March 2008
by Louis Finkelstein
ISBN 978-1-877675-67-6; 224 pp; paper; illust,; $28.00
Louis Finkelstein was a great lecturer, teacher, painter and writer. When he spoke, his text didn't come out of books but out of his experience as a painter, out of argument and out of just talking. He is remembered best as a man of ideas as Andrew Forge, Professor Emeritus, Yale University says "Ideas poured out of him and they were often difficult. He delighted in the puzzlement of his audience and would pile obscurity onto obscurity until the moment of resolution when all became clear and light poured in, often with fanfares of laughter."

MAX ERNST'S LINES FROM A MARRIAGE
April 2008
by Bowdoin Davis, Jr.
ISBN 978-1-877675-61-3; 44 pp; paper; illust.; $12.00
The title derives from a Swedish film, "Scenes from a Marriage" by Ingmar Bergman, a gripping study of the psychological interactions between the partners to a marriage. This book's scholarly examination and interpretation is based on Ernst's statements found on lines of text attached to several artworks created during a period when his marriage to Louise Straus-Ernst was coming apart. When scrutinized they reveal his underlying dissatisfaction and taken together with Louise's comments in her Memoir (The First Wife's Tale, 2004) confirm a mutual awareness that the marriage is disintegrating.

The complex image of the artworks distracts the viewer from the incisiveness of the phrase written below it, and then disregards the discord between image and phrase and quickly dismisses the writing as just another Dada diversion. Thus Ernst can verbalize his feelings without full disclosure to the viewer, only indirectly referencing the growing gulf between them, thus correcting the accepted story of his sudden abandonment of Louise.

BEUYS IS BOYS: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Artists, Architects, Works of Art & More . . .
April 2008
by Susan Ford
ISBN 978-1-877675-73-7; 84 pp; paper; $10.00
As annual museum attendance reaches never before imagined numbers (for New York's MoMA it was way over 2 million last year) and artists' names are regularly mentioned in newspapers and magazines, the need to know how to pronounce their odd sounding names is essential. Here, in this easy to carry book, is all you need to know. The names are broken into easy syllables with the stress in boldface. It lifts words from print to the ear to reliable and acceptable articulation. For instance, Modigliani is just moh-deel-yah-nee.