An atlas of drawings : transforming chronologies /

Perez-Oramas (curator, Museum of Modern Art) notes various themes and motifs in contemporary drawing--faces, movement, tectonics, digital, figures, and construction--and tracks them through the MoMA drawing collection. He examines each theme and explores visual relationships, and presents his conclusions in the accompanying six portfolios. Although an exhibition catalog, this creative book of text and six continuous foldout packets in a box should be welcome in any collection of the art of book making ("artist's books"). Beyond that, the catalog is interesting testament to a main thread of discourse in modernism, specifically, the discourse of formal visual continuities, parallels, and transformations. All of this is the opposite of conventional chronological art history. The author shows how this mode of thinking is derived from the library and thinking of Aby Warburg and his disciple Erwin Panofsky. This highly original catalog would be an appropriate addition to undergraduate college libraries. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; professionals. J. T. Frazer emeritus, Wesleyan University