Singular Spaces II
From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments
Published on 23. January 2024
Book
Hardback
1072 pages
979-12-5460-018-4 (ISBN)
Description
This two-volume set marks Jo Farb Hernandez's fifty years of scholarship on art environments and the capstone of her work on self-taught artists who have built art environments in Spain. Singular Spaces II evolved from her 2013 book, Singular Spaces. Together these works constitute an encyclopaedic exploration of Spanish art environments and an epic narration of the stories of those who made them.
Singular Spaces II introduces and examines 99 artists and their intriguing and idiosyncratic sculptures, homes, and gardens, most of which have never been thoroughly documented or previously published. The author has cast a wide net to ensure all regions of Spain are represented, as are all kinds of spaces assembled with all kinds of materials.
These sites are developed organically, without formal architectural or engineering plans: they are at once evolving and complete. Often highly fanciful and quixotic, the work is frequently characterised by incongruous juxtapositions, the result of a dynamic approach to creation that may appear impulsive and spontaneous. But these artists and their works have much to teach us about the process of creation and also about the confidence to undertake a path radically different from the one they had followed during the prime of their working lives.
Hernandez combines detailed case studies of the artists and their work with contextualised historical and theoretical references to a broad range of interlocking fields, including art, art history, anthropology, vernacular architecture, Spanish area studies, and folklore, complemented with compelling visuals of each of the artists and their artworks. Breaking down the standard compartmentalisation of genres, she reveals how most creators of art environments, building within their own personal spaces, fuse their creations with their daily life in a way generally unmatched in any other circumstances of making art, in the process providing an open self-reflection of their life and concerns. The universality of the need to create, and the issues that are confronted when one does so in a public and non-sanctioned way, are relevant to art and artists worldwide.
Singular Spaces II introduces and examines 99 artists and their intriguing and idiosyncratic sculptures, homes, and gardens, most of which have never been thoroughly documented or previously published. The author has cast a wide net to ensure all regions of Spain are represented, as are all kinds of spaces assembled with all kinds of materials.
These sites are developed organically, without formal architectural or engineering plans: they are at once evolving and complete. Often highly fanciful and quixotic, the work is frequently characterised by incongruous juxtapositions, the result of a dynamic approach to creation that may appear impulsive and spontaneous. But these artists and their works have much to teach us about the process of creation and also about the confidence to undertake a path radically different from the one they had followed during the prime of their working lives.
Hernandez combines detailed case studies of the artists and their work with contextualised historical and theoretical references to a broad range of interlocking fields, including art, art history, anthropology, vernacular architecture, Spanish area studies, and folklore, complemented with compelling visuals of each of the artists and their artworks. Breaking down the standard compartmentalisation of genres, she reveals how most creators of art environments, building within their own personal spaces, fuse their creations with their daily life in a way generally unmatched in any other circumstances of making art, in the process providing an open self-reflection of their life and concerns. The universality of the need to create, and the issues that are confronted when one does so in a public and non-sanctioned way, are relevant to art and artists worldwide.
Reviews / Votes
"It is an extraordinary achievement to follow up that first book with two more on the same large scale featuring another largely unknown 99 visionary environments around the Spanish mainland and islands." - Raw Vision "Snapshots presents Jo Farb Hernandez on 'Singular Spaces II: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments'." - Fulbrighter "Personal and Professional: Jo Farb Hernandez's Singular Spaces II, From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments. Jo Farb Hernandez is an emerita faculty member (Art and Art History) from San Jose State University - read her interview in the newsletter." - CSU-ERFSA "...in the latest volume of 'Singular Spaces', a huge inventory that catalogs 144 environments and authors with a common denominator: the taste for artistic expressions that travel on the periphery of classical patterns..." [Google translate from Spanish] - La Rioja "Jo Farb Hernandez, a Californian art historian and curator, has spent 23 years trying to get recognition for a group of self-taught builders. Call them "outsider architects."" - The New York Times "An exhaustive and innovative study of artistic environments created by self-taught artists from all over Spain, documented by San Jose State University academic Jo Farb Hernandez, director emeritus of the world's most important archive on these monumental places." - Nova Ciencia "'Singular Spaces II': a talk with Jo Farb Hernandez." - Hyper Media MagazineMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Milan
Italy
Dimensions
Height: 285 mm
Width: 240 mm
Thickness: 85 mm
Weight
6848 gr
ISBN-13
979-12-5460-018-4 (9791254600184)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jo Farb Hernandez, Director Emerita of SPACES and the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery at San Jose State University, is an internationally-recognised scholar in this field, and an award-winning author, curator, and photographer. Her work has illuminated - and preserved via documentation - the creative lives of individuals who, working outside of the commercial spheres, may have otherwise gone unnoticed, and bodies of work that often cease to exist after the artist is no longer alive to care for it. In a field wherein each artist's work is ongoing, organic, and accumulative but also impacted by real world elements, this kind of long-term study is critical - and too rarely done. Hernandez has been dedicated to the field of self-taught artists and vernacular art environment builders for five decades and is one of very few scholars to dedicate their careers to this under-recognised community of makers. She was among the early pioneers in the United States, and has become a singular force in her work on the self-taught artists of Spain. In conjunction with her first volume on this subject (Singular Spaces. From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments, Raw Vision 2013), Singular Spaces II provides an encyclopaedic treatment of the field.