{"product_id":"the-art-of-joan-brown-9780520214699","title":"The Art of Joan Brown","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe prolific talents of painter Joan Brown (1938-1990) inform every page of this shining testament to a singular artist. For Brown  art was a means of self-revelation and self-investigation  a fact made abundantly clear by the autobiographical nature of her work. In the first book to fully explore Joan Browns artistic career  Karen Tsujimoto provides an overview of Browns life from her San Francisco childhood to her years as a mature artist and teacher. Jacquelynn Baas focuses on Browns use of universal and personal symbolism by analyzing one of her most celebrated paintings  The Bride. Both authors make extensive use of interviews that let Joan Brown speak for herself about art and the creative process.  Brown greatly admired her teacher  Elmer Bischoff  and his style of Bay Area figuration. But she also was attracted to the freedom found in abstraction as expressed by de Kooning  Picasso  and Matisse. Finding her own way  she used images of family  animals  water  romantic relationships  and self-portraits to explore the complexities of human nature  often hiding her rigorous self-reflection beneath a facade of painterly spontaneity. She had a lifelong interest in philosophy and religion  and much of her later work reflected universal themes and symbols.  Serious  full of energy and passion  Brown approached both her personal and her professional life with characteristic intensity. Married four times  she was a devoted mother  a competitive swimmer  and an outspoken opponent of the art worlds growing commercialism. Many issues she dealt with early in her career anticipated similar concerns raised by the womens movement in the 1970s.  In 1990  while installing an obelisk she had created for the Eternal Heritage Museum in Puttaparthi  India  Joan Brown was instantly killed when a concrete turret fell on her. What lives on in her work is her fascination with the human condition and a determination to record its essence as reflected in her own life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45279868682293,"sku":"ByrdShop_0520214692","price":62.97,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780520214699.jpg?v=1780614768","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-art-of-joan-brown-9780520214699","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}