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Author Meyer, Richard, 1966- author.

Title Master of the two left feet : Morris Hirshfield rediscovered / Richard Meyer.

Publication Info. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022]

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 Manchester, Main Library - Non Fiction  759.13B Q MEYER    Recently Returned
Description 319 pages : illustrations (colour) ; 34 cm
Summary "An account of the life and work of Morris Hirshfield, an immigrant to the US in the 1890s; a successful tailor and shoe designer; and then a celebrated self-taught artist, beloved of the surrealists"-- Provided by publisher.
A garment worker and slipper manufacturer with no training in art, Morris Hirshfield was never expected to make history. Against all odds, his wildly stylized paintings of female figures, often nude, animals, and landscapes became internationally known in the 1940s. Admired by Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and the French surrealists, his peak moment of visibility occurred in 1943, when the Museum of Modern Art mounted a one-man show of his work. The exhibition was widely reviewed--though mostly reviled--by the press, who jeeringly crowned Hirshfield "Master of the Two Left Feet" for his tendency to display the female body in that unorthodox fashion. After the artist's death in 1946, his work was largely forgotten, but in Master of the Two Left Feet, art historian Richard Meyer rediscovers Hirshfield for twenty-first-century audiences, offering full-color reproductions that capture the vibrant imagination and sheer visual pleasure of Hirshfield's paintings. The book also features a catalog of works compiled by curator Susan Davidson which provides the most comprehensive documentation of the artist's work ever assembled. Ten years in the making, Master of the Two Left Feet presents Hirshfield's unlikely career as a painter not only as a missing episode in the history of twentieth-century art but as a case study of the ways in which artists go missing from historical knowledge and public memory. By looking closely at Hirshfield and his milieu in 1940s Brooklyn, Meyer demonstrates how much we have yet to learn, and to see, of the visual past. The book accompanies the exhibition "Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered," at the American Folk Art Museum, New York City, September 22, 2022-January 27, 2023 -- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references.
Subject Hirshfield, Morris, 1872-1946.
Outsider artists -- United States -- Biography.
Hirshfield, Morris, 1872-1946 -- Catalogues raisonnés.
Outsider art -- United States -- Catalogs.
Surrealism -- United States -- Catalogs.
Hirshfield, Morris, 1872-1946. (OCoLC)fst00250984
Outsider art. (OCoLC)fst01049257
Outsider artists. (OCoLC)fst01742720
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Genre/Form Biographies. (OCoLC)fst01919896
Catalogs. (OCoLC)fst01423692
Catalogues raisonnés. (OCoLC)fst01920771
Added Title Morris Hirshfield rediscovered
ISBN 9780262047289 hardcover
0262047284 hardcover
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