ARS267: Watercolor Painting
Finding Infomation on Contemporary Artists
Fall 2005 - Susan Heideman
Reference Contact: Barbara Polowy x2941

GETTING STARTED

Art & Architecture Library Subject Page
Provides links to resources covering a wide variety of art and architecture topics (some resources are available only to members of the Smith College community).

Hillyer Art Library: Location of Art Materials
Guide to the subject arrangement of the books, catalogs, and other resources in the art library stacks to aid browsing.

Art Reference N31.D5 1996 and Groveart.com, the online version
The Dictionary of Art. New York: Grove's Dictionaries, 1996.
Excellent survey articles on major art and architecture movements, the art and architecture of countries and regions, artistic mediums (for example, Watercolour), and the life and work of individual artists and architects. Artist/architect entries include biographical, critical, and contextual information (for example, Winslow Homer, R.B. Kitaj). Each article is supplemented by a bibliography of major sources and usually includes links to illustrations available on the Internet.

Biographical Sources

Contemporary Arts Series and St. James Guide Series (St. James Press)
Each volume includes entries for 500 to 600 major artists, providing basic biographical information, lists of major commissions, bibliographies of publications by and about each subject, and brief critical and description essays on artists and their works. Titles include:

Art Reference N6490 .C6567 1996
Contemporary Artists. Edited by Joann Cerrito. 4th ed. New York: St. James Press, 1996.

Art Reference N8354 .C66 1999
Contemporary Women Artists. Edited by Laurie Collier Hillstrom and
Kevin Hillstrom. Detroit: St. James Press, 1999.

Art Reference N40 .S78 1997
St. James Guide to Black Artists. Edited by Thomas Riggs. Detroit : St. James Press, 1997.

Art Reference Z5938.F73 1997
Freitag, Wolfgang M. Art Books: A Basic Bibliography of Monographs on Artists. 2nd ed. New York: Garland, 1997.
Bibliography of 15,000 treatises, dissertations, biographies, catalogues raisonnés, bibliographies, and artists' writings, and exhibition and sales catalogs on approximately 2,100 artists from all time periods. Very good coverage for modern artists.

Art Reference N6536 .W5
Who's Who In American Art. New York [etc.] R. R. Bowker. Biennial.
Brief biographical entries and directory information for over 11,000 living American artists, art "administrators, conulstants, critics, curators, dealers, historians, educators, lecturers, collectors, librarians, and publishers."

FINDING BOOKS, CATALOGS & OTHER MONGRAPHS

Five College Library Catalog
The online catalog provides access to the combined library holdings of Smith, Amherst, Hampshire, and Mount Holyoke Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Useful Library of Congress subject headings for finding information about contemporary artists and arts include:

• [artist's name], eg. Yarde, Richard, 1939- | Bleckner, Ross | Scully, Sean, 1945-
  Clemente, Francesco, 1952- | Shatter, Susan, 1943-
  -- Exhibitions | Criticism and Interpretation | Catalogs | Interviews
• Art, Modern -- 20th century | 21st century
• Painting, Modern -- 20th century | 21st century
• Watercolor Painting -- 20th century

FINDING ARTICLES & REVIEWS IN PERIODICALS

Browsing

Recent issues of all periodicals are available in the Current Magazines area on the first floor of the art library. Back issues are housed on the cellar level of the art library at the call numbers listed. The following is a selected list of periodicals that cover contemporary arts.
Afterimage. Art Periodical TR1 .A35
Art in America. Art Periodical N1 .A43
Art AsiaPacific. Art Periodical N7260 .A78
Art Journal. Art Periodical N81 .A887
Art New England. Art Periodical N6515 .A7
Art on Paper. Art Periodical NE1 .O67
Artforum International. Art Periodical N1 .A814
ArtNews. Art Periodical N1 .A6
Artweek. Art Microforms N1 .A86
Coagula Art Journal. Art Periodical NX511.L67 C63
Flash Art. Art Periodical N1.A1 F532
Frieze. Art PeriodicalN6480 .F754 and current issues online
Grey Room. Art Periodical NA100 .G74 and current issues online
Luna Cornea. Art Periodical TR28 .L86
Modern Painters. Art Periodical N6480 .M63
Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Art Periodical NX587 .N54
October. Art Periodical NX1 .O25 and current issues online
Parkett. Art Periodical NX456 .P358
Woman's Art Journal. Art Periodical N72.F45 W64
Women in the Arts. Art Periodical NX164.W65 N45

Indexing & Abstracting Services for Art Periodicals

Art Abstracts
Covers all aspects of the visual arts throughout the world providing cover to cover indexing of over 400 periodicals published throughout the world. Art Abstracts covers 1984 to the present and is updated monthly.

ARTbibliographies Modern
Provides access to information about late 19th- through 21st-century fine arts, decorative arts, design, and photography in periodicals (500 regularly indexed, 2000 selectively indexed), dissertations, exhibition catalogues, and books published throughout the world. Covers 1974 to the present and is updated bi-monthly. Abstracts are provided for all records.

Full-text News

Newspapers are an excellent source of current reviews of recent exhibitions and popular opinion on art issues. Most sources listed here provide full text (without images).

Lexis/Nexis Academic
Covers daily and weekly newspapers from around the world including the New York Times and major papers from other large American cities.

Boston Globe (1980- ) Select "Massachusetts Papers"
Daily Hampshire Gazette
Los Angeles Times
New York Times (requires registration)
Springfield Republican (1988- ) Select "Massachusetts Papers"

FINDING IMAGES

Find Images
Descriptions and links to image databases available at Smith, both free and licensed (i.e., accessible only to the Smith community). Databases include works of art, historical and news photos, editorial photography, and a wide variety of cultural materials. Also includes citations to key print reference tools for finding images in books and periodicals.

Major Art Image Databases

ARTstor
ARTstor is a library of more than 300,000 digital images of works of art and other cultural materials includes ranging from standard art history survey material to a variety of specialized collections.

Insight Database
Smith's INSIGHT database includes digital images of more than 100,000 works of art in major musuems, 3,000 works in the Smith College Museum of Art, and more than 17,000 images used for teaching and study from the Smith College Image Collections. Contact Kevin Kanda, for information on registering as an Insight user.

artnet.com
This commercial database is a useful source for finding images of well-established contemporary artists. "artnet is the place to buy, sell and research fine art online. Our online Gallery Network is the largest of its kind, with over 1,000 galleries in 250 international cities, more than 150,000 works by over 25,000 artists from around the globe." Use "Advanced Fine Arts Search" to locate artists by name, region and country, style or movement.

CONTACT THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN

Contact Barbara Polowy, the instructor for your library session: bpolowy@email.smith.edu,
121 Hillyer Art Library, X2941.

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