The Guardian has a slideshow of Syrian childrens’ art in a refugee camp in Turkey. It serves as a timely reminder of the real world importance of helping victims of trauma find a way to express themselves to process their experiences. Art therapy can serve as a healing force for many issues, as seen by the sampling of books in our collection below. To learn more about studying Art Therapy, take a look at SVA’s Master of Professional Studies in Art Therapy program.
Art as language : access to thoughts and feelings through stimulus drawings / Rawley Silver – BF723.D7 S57 2001
Art as therapy with children / Edith Kramer ; introduction by Laurie Wilson. – RJ505.A7 K7 1993
Healing the inner city child : creative arts therapies with at-risk youth / edited by Vanessa A. Camilleri.
Handbook of school art therapy : introducing art therapy into a school system / by Janet Bush ; with a foreword by Myra F. Levick – RJ505.A7 B87 1997
The use of art in counselling child and adult survivors of sexual abuse / Maralynn Hagood – RC489.A7 H34 2000
Art therapy and social action / edited by Frances F. Kaplan – RC489.A7 A771 2007
To accommodate students who need a place to study during the finals period, the Visual Arts Library will be open for extended hours.
From Monday, April 16th through Sunday April 29th:
* Monday through Thursday 8:30am until 12 midnight
* Friday 8:30am until 10pm
* Saturday 12 noon until 8pm
* Sunday 12 noon until 10pm
Today’s ever useful Google doodle for highlights that it’s the 182th birthday of Eadweard Muybridge (née Edward James Muggeridge), ground breaking photographer and inventor of the Zoopraxiscope, a proto-film projector variation on the Zoetrope.
While working on a project to film galloping horses at high speed (proving that all four feet of a trotting horse come off the ground in their strides), Muybridge refined his automatic shutters to the point that his ‘system of magnetic releases… gave an exposure two-thousandths of a second.'(The Film 100, p.112) Muybridge’s work on the mechanisms involved in capturing a sequence of images at high speed helped spur the development of the motion picture camera in Edison’s lab. The actual images have provided untold inspiration to animators, photographer and anatomists, as well as becoming part of our collective visual vocabulary.
To explore Muybridge’s work and legacy further:
Animals in motion / Eadweard Muybridge – QP301 .M83 1994
The male and female figure in motion : 60 classic photographic sequences / Eadweard Muybridge – QP301 .M86 1984
Muybridge’s human figure in motion / Eadweard Muybridge. – QP301 .M85 2007 CD-ROM
Eadweard Muybridge / Marta Braun – TR849.M87 B73 2010
Landmarks of early film – V-F B573 Lan DVD
River of shadows : Eadweard Muybridge and the technological wild west / Rebecca Solnit – TR849.M87 S55 2003
It’s that time of year: Prom Night approaches. NPR has a slideshow of prom portraits by Mary Ellen Mark, taken with ‘a 400-pound Polaroid 20×24 Land Camera’ for incredibly detailed images.
A small sampling of Mary Ellen Mark’s work in the Visual Arts Library:
Portraits / Mary Ellen Mark – TR681.F3 M38 1997
Mary Ellen Mark : American odyssey, 1963-1999 / poem by Maya Angelou – TR654 .M3655 1999
Seen behind the scene : forty years of photographing on set / Mary Ellen Mark – TR681.F3 M38 2008
Falkland Road : prostitutes of Bombay / photographs & text by Mary Ellen Mark – TR681.P73 M3 2005
And for another photographer’s take on prom portraits:
Prom night / Elissa Stein – GV1746 .S74 2005
MFA Photo student Ilona Swarzc has posted an impressive series of portraits of young American girls with their American Girl brand dolls. The dolls “were conceived to be anti-Barbie toys modeled on the body of a nine-year old.” But while the products may avoid imparting sexualized body ideals to young girls, “the branding behind the doll perpetuates domesticity and traditional gender roles.”
Sex and the Office: Evolving Depictions of Working Women, a slideshow of advertisements and illustrations, explores representations of women in the office, from the 1890s to the 1960s.
For more on representations of women in art and culture:
Mirror images : women, surrealism, and self-representation / edited by Whitney Chadwick – N8354 .M57 1998
The art of reflection : women artists’ self-portraiture in the twentieth century / Marsha Meskimmon- N71 .M45 1996
In her own image : women’s self-representation in twentieth-century art / Danielle Knafo – N8354 .K58 2009
Idols of perversity : fantasies of feminine evil in fin-de-siècle culture / Bram Dijkstra – NX652.W6 D55 1986
Facing beauty : painted women & cosmetic art / Aileen Ribeiro – NX650.F45 R53 2011
Nan Goldin interview / slide show : >>I’ve been taking pictures of children since the early 1980s, and it’s become increasingly important to me. I see a continuum in the children of my friends, some of whom have died. It’s about hoping that my friends will bring up a new species of people.<<
In the Visual Arts Library (and much, much more):
The beautiful smile : the Hasselblad Award 2007 / Nan Goldin – TR680 .G65 2007
The ballad of sexual dependency / Nan Goldin – TR680 .G65 1986
Influences – Bourdin, Cassavetes, Strömholm, Petersen, Sander:
Guy Bourdin : Polaroids – TR647 .B67 2009
Faces / written and directed by John Cassvetes – V-F C369 Fac DVD
Arbus, Model, Strömholm / edited by Anna Tellgren – TR655 .A73 2005
Frenchkiss / Anders Petersen – TR820.5 .P45 2008
People of the 20th century : a cultural work of photographs divided into seven groups / August Sander – TR680 .S22613 2002 v.01-07