Heat waves in a swamp : the paintings of Charles Burchfield

Offering a comprehensive overview of American watercolourist Charles Burchfield's work, this book presents the artist's expressive paintings, provides a definitive account of his career and a critical reappraisal of his life's work. Working almost exclusively in watercolour, Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) focused on his immediate surroundings--his garden, the views from his windows, snow turning to slush, sudden atmospheric changes or the forest at dusk. Although aware of the art of his time he spent his working life immersed in his local landscape, steadfast in his belief in what he once described as "the healthy glamour of everyday life." This catalogue presents a wide range of Burchfield's work drawn from major private and public collections. Organised chronologically, the book includes drawings from his early 1917 sketchbook, Conventions for Abstract Thoughts; early watercolours from 1916-18 that were the focus of the first one-person exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1930; camouflage designs from his tour in the army and designs for wallpaper from the 1920s; the artist's unique technique of expanding and reworking his earlier watercolours by pasting large strips of paper around them to dramatically increase their size; and finally Burchfield's large, transcendental watercolours from the 1950s and 1960s. AUTHOR: Robert Gober is a sculptor whose work has been shown widely internationally. In 2001 he was chosen to represent the United States in the 49th Venice Biennale, and in 2007 the Schaulager in Basel, Switzerland presented a thirty year retrospective. Cynthia Burlingham is Deputy Director of Collections and Director of the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. ILLUSTRATIONS 130 colour images *… (more)