Judy Sund

A fascinating survey of the enduring human love affair with the exotic and the strange, and its impact on Western culture Exotic explores our obsession with the lure of distant lands and their promise of the weird and wonderful, the beautiful and grotesque. Through a host of evocative images, this book shows how the absorption of 'the foreign,' through arts, design, architecture, and other cultural elements, has consistently enriched Western society, contributing to it cultural dynamism and artistic energy. Exotic's focus is especially relevant to the modern globalized world in which our engagement with cultures and traditions from around the globe is easier – and potentially more fraught – than ever before.

A Fetish for the Foreign

Exotic

Vincent van Gogh

Lawrence W. Nichols

Dorothee Hansen

Vincent van Gogh found tranquility and stimulation in the landscape about him, and in his paintings of fields and meadows he sought to represent eternal truths about humanity and nature. The challenges of depicting fields provide keys to understanding the development of Van Gogh's unique creative process. This book was published to accompany the Toledo showing of the exhibition VAN GOGH: FIELDS, February 23-May 18, 2003. The exhibition brought together 27 selections of the artist's landscapes from each phase of his short, intense career.

Fields

Van Gogh

Vidya Dehejia

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) has become, in the century following his death, a man on first-name terms with the world. His brief but eventful life has inspired the scrutiny of other painters, filmmakers, psychologists and novelists, and his personal celebrity outstrips even the substantial fame of his works. While the popular appeal of such pictures as Sunflowers or Starry Night resides in their seemingly emotion-fuelled spontaneity, they are in fact the products of a reflective and idea-driven man who was profoundly interested in and inspired by all manner of literary, musical and artistic sources. Spanning his early work in the Netherlands, the period of experimentation in Paris, and the evocative landscapes and vibrant portraits made in Provence and Auvers, this survey makes extensive use of Van Gogh's own correspondence to illuminate his artistic development and the personal vision that lies behind his work.

Judy Sund

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