Work Standing Up
The Life and Art of Paul Fontaine
by Paul Fontaine
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Pub Date Jun 30 2013 | Archive Date Oct 12 2013
Fontaine Archive LLC | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Members' Titles
Description
Work Standing Up: The Life and Art of Paul Fontaine is about the ingredients for living one’s life artfully and fully present. It’s a story about one man’s decision to be deliberate in his choices about where he lived and how he lived it. It is a testimony that where one comes from has almost nothing to do with what one can achieve; that it is truly possible to make a good living as an artist.
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Fontaine discovered early a talent for drawing and painting, and not much else. He was a product of the Depression, yet managed to graduate from Yale, paint in the Virgin Islands, and paint in Italy as a soldier during World War II. Rather than returning to the United States, he remained in Germany as the art director for Stars and Stripes—and stayed for 25 years, painting and exhibiting with the finest European and American abstractionists, such as Willi Baumeister and Alexander Calder. In 1970, he moved with his family to Mexico for another 25 years, and finally Austin, Texas, for the last four years of his life. He and his wife were expatriates but also essentially ambassadors for America’s cultural aesthetic. Whether holding court among his peers, living in a tent, or buying art, Fontaine’s approach was to study, immerse, and act.
Art historians Margaret Stenz, Mary Brantl, and Robert Linsley each provide investigations into Fontaine’s art during the different periods of his working career: the Depression era, postwar Germany, and finally Mexico. In this first book-length treatise on Fontaine, readers will experience his work and, through previously unpublished photographs, also his community of artists that survived the war in Europe. Fontaine’s daughter, Claudia Chidester, offers a biographical section, which is centered around the lessons learned from Fontaine—on topics from marrying well to obtaining valuable press credentials.
Taken altogether, this extraordinary book sets forth an intimate and detailed portrait of a global artist who lived and worked for most of the twentieth century.
Edited by Claudia Fontaine Chidester with contributing essays by Claudia Fontaine Chidester, Margaret Stenz, Mary Brantl and Robert Linsley.
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Fontaine discovered early a talent for drawing and painting, and not much else. He was a product of the Depression, yet managed to graduate from Yale, paint in the Virgin Islands, and paint in Italy as a soldier during World War II. Rather than returning to the United States, he remained in Germany as the art director for Stars and Stripes—and stayed for 25 years, painting and exhibiting with the finest European and American abstractionists, such as Willi Baumeister and Alexander Calder. In 1970, he moved with his family to Mexico for another 25 years, and finally Austin, Texas, for the last four years of his life. He and his wife were expatriates but also essentially ambassadors for America’s cultural aesthetic. Whether holding court among his peers, living in a tent, or buying art, Fontaine’s approach was to study, immerse, and act.
Art historians Margaret Stenz, Mary Brantl, and Robert Linsley each provide investigations into Fontaine’s art during the different periods of his working career: the Depression era, postwar Germany, and finally Mexico. In this first book-length treatise on Fontaine, readers will experience his work and, through previously unpublished photographs, also his community of artists that survived the war in Europe. Fontaine’s daughter, Claudia Chidester, offers a biographical section, which is centered around the lessons learned from Fontaine—on topics from marrying well to obtaining valuable press credentials.
Taken altogether, this extraordinary book sets forth an intimate and detailed portrait of a global artist who lived and worked for most of the twentieth century.
Edited by Claudia Fontaine Chidester with contributing essays by Claudia Fontaine Chidester, Margaret Stenz, Mary Brantl and Robert Linsley.
A Note From the Publisher
ISBN 978-0-9888358-1-8 paperback, $65.
ISBN 978-0-9888358-1-8 paperback, $65.
Advance Praise
Fontaine was an inventive artist who never failed to generate new compositions and new arrangements of color and form. His work is always “up,” and his buoyancy and constant productivity make him exemplary of the true spirit of modernism. There is so much variety in his work that to extract themes, as I have done—for example, abstract imagery, the abstracting power of grids or of indeterminate fields, Mexican imagery—is to reduce and limit the artist. There is always more, and always another way to see. This amplitude is, in fact, reflected in how he worked, by always discovering new possibilities in the artistic process. And this copiousness is why even the most comprehensive account will always fall short. The best a critic can hope for is that the motifs he or she selects are the most vivid for the viewer of today. Paul Fontaine was the best kind of modern artist—he had a clear identity, but no limitations.---From the essay by Robert Linsley
Fontaine created an extensive oeuvre that does not fit neatly into any art historical category. Fontaine’s work highlights many of the challenges of contextualizing an artist according to purely formal or geographic characteristics. It should remind us to be cautious about placing artists firmly within a particular genre or region and instead to approach their output from a more encompassing point of view. Fontaine’s oil and acrylic paintings, drawings, prints, and watercolors should be accessible to all viewers, regardless of their background in art, and this book will enrich their experience of his singular vision. ---From the foreword by Katie Robinson Edwards
Fontaine created an extensive oeuvre that does not fit neatly into any art historical category. Fontaine’s work highlights many of the challenges of contextualizing an artist according to purely formal or geographic characteristics. It should remind us to be cautious about placing artists firmly within a particular genre or region and instead to approach their output from a more encompassing point of view. Fontaine’s oil and acrylic paintings, drawings, prints, and watercolors should be accessible to all viewers, regardless of their background in art, and this book will enrich their experience of his singular vision. ---From the foreword by Katie Robinson Edwards
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780988835801 |
| PRICE | $125.00 (USD) |
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