James Macdonell Retrospective 2004-2024 - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

James Macdonell Retrospective 2004-2025 is a museum catalogue/artist monograph representing 20 years of the artist's practice since relocating to Louisiana from New York. This book is Inspired by the artist's lifelong friendship with noted and celebrated artist Robert Rauschenberg. As a youth James was best friend's with Rauschenberg's nephew. James was a trusted family confidant and was hired by Rauschenberg to deliver art to famed dealer Leo Castelli in Soho, New York at the height of Rauschenberg's career. This book represents a unique trajectory, voice and signature of an artist who is important and relevant and should be mentioned in the same breath as Rauschenberg and the giants of assemblage, collage and photo montage. In 2025 the Frank Gehry designed The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum Of Art in Biloxi Mississippi is exhibiting a solo retrospective of James Macdonell's work that's featured in this book.

Review Quotes

"James Macdonell is an artist who has an uncanny gift to "put it all together" in sculpture, in photography, in things we might name later. That "all" includes traces of apparitions and moments that he has found the generosity to reveal for us." - Mel Chin is a Conceptual artist and recipient of multiple awards from many organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, Art Matters, Creative Capital, Pollock/Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Rockefeller and the Nancy Graves Foundation Award.

"A mid-career shift impacted the nature of James Macdonell's material output. His acute consciousness of time itself, combined with disciplined devotion to the creative journey, gave shape to a near-extinct world where art and life are a harmonic union, a land where discarded found objects become transformed treasure." - Dawn DeDeaux is a Visual Artist. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MASS MoCA, Hammer Museum, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, New Orleans Museum of Art and Ballroom Marfa.

"James Macdonell continues to mine the worlds of sight and sound in acts of open-ended creativity. His visual compositions combine the conceptual and the tactile to create objects and environments that always engage and delight." - David Houston curator and art historian, is the Executive Director of the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art, the former Director of Curatorial at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Bo Bartlett Center, College for the Arts and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

"One of the most prolific artists I know" - Richard 'Dickie' Landry photographer, musician, composer, artist. Landry has performed at Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, The Kitchen, Metropolitan Opera House, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Leo Castelli Gallery, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Moder n Art, National Gallery, Washington, DC as well as the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City.

"James Macdonell is an artist of many disciplines. Timeless and important work." - Robert Tannen is an artist, urban planner and one of the founders of the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans.

About the Author

As a teenager James Macdonell began working summer jobs on the island of Captiva, FL for celebrated, noted and famed artist Robert Rauschenberg. For James, this was the beginning of a transformative period that reshaped his perceptions, worldview, and aesthetic vision. He observed, firsthand, Rauschenberg's practice and processes; mainly the technical dynamics of producing large integrated structural paintings (Combines). In assemblage, James absorbed the symbolism, interpreted values, and developed a sense of place and order for his own work. This association of being in the inner circle and their friendship spanned more than three decades until Rauschenberg's death in 2008.