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The Resource Hyman Bloom : matters of life and death, Erica E. Hirshler ; with an essay by Naomi Slipp

Hyman Bloom : matters of life and death, Erica E. Hirshler ; with an essay by Naomi Slipp

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The item Hyman Bloom : matters of life and death, Erica E. Hirshler ; with an essay by Naomi Slipp represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Colby College Libraries.
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Author

Contributor

Summary

Hyman Bloom (1913-2009) was a contemporary of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Arshile Gorky. This new study focuses on Bloom's paintings and drawings of autopsies, anatomical studies, and archaeological excavations from the 1940s and 1950s. He often returned to these subjects throughout his career, using thickly applied paint in rich colors as he aspired to present both the physical and the spiritual on canvas. Insightful curatorial essays accompanied by beautiful full-color reproductions explore this difficult but compelling work, considering themes such as the life, death, and rebirth of Bloom's artistic reputation; the growing divide between figuration and abstraction at this defining moment of American art; earlier artistic traditions of representing mortality; the relationship between these works and Bloom's Judaism, interest in eastern religions, and belief in reincarnation; and the artist's desire to find beauty and meaning within death and decay. In these drawings and paintings, as Bloom himself asserted, "the paradox of the harrowing and the beautiful [can] be brought into unity." -- publisher's description
"With bold gestural strokes and layers of brilliant color, Hyman Bloom explored the confluences between beauty and horror, life and death, figurative art and abstraction. His images of the body belong to a long tradition from Leonardo to Rembrandt to Francis Bacon in which painters study the dead in order to bring art to life. Brilliantly reproduced in this book and accompanied by insightful essays, Bloom's harrowing yet compelling postmortem paintings and drawings join depictions of knobby squashes, skeletal trees, archaelogical excavations, brilliant chandeliers, Jewish brides, and Christmas trees to evoke a circle of birth, death, and regeneration."

Language

Work

Publication

Boston, Massachusetts, MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2019

Edition: First edition

Extent: 111 pages

Note: Published in conjunction with the exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, July 13, 2019-February 23, 2020

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Index
Director's Foreword
Preface
A Body of Work
Painting the Dead
Naomi Slipp
Life After Death
Plates
Notes

Isbn: 9780878468614

Instance

Label: Hyman Bloom : matters of life and death

Title: Hyman Bloom

Title remainder: matters of life and death

Statement of responsibility: Erica E. Hirshler ; with an essay by Naomi Slipp

Language

Summary

Hyman Bloom (1913-2009) was a contemporary of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Arshile Gorky. This new study focuses on Bloom's paintings and drawings of autopsies, anatomical studies, and archaeological excavations from the 1940s and 1950s. He often returned to these subjects throughout his career, using thickly applied paint in rich colors as he aspired to present both the physical and the spiritual on canvas. Insightful curatorial essays accompanied by beautiful full-color reproductions explore this difficult but compelling work, considering themes such as the life, death, and rebirth of Bloom's artistic reputation; the growing divide between figuration and abstraction at this defining moment of American art; earlier artistic traditions of representing mortality; the relationship between these works and Bloom's Judaism, interest in eastern religions, and belief in reincarnation; and the artist's desire to find beauty and meaning within death and decay. In these drawings and paintings, as Bloom himself asserted, "the paradox of the harrowing and the beautiful [can] be brought into unity." -- publisher's description
"With bold gestural strokes and layers of brilliant color, Hyman Bloom explored the confluences between beauty and horror, life and death, figurative art and abstraction. His images of the body belong to a long tradition from Leonardo to Rembrandt to Francis Bacon in which painters study the dead in order to bring art to life. Brilliantly reproduced in this book and accompanied by insightful essays, Bloom's harrowing yet compelling postmortem paintings and drawings join depictions of knobby squashes, skeletal trees, archaelogical excavations, brilliant chandeliers, Jewish brides, and Christmas trees to evoke a circle of birth, death, and regeneration."