Knowing and Seeing - (Regional) by Douglas Cooper (Hardcover)

About the Book

A Renowned Pittsburgh-Based Muralist Reflects on His 50-Year Career

Book Synopsis

In Knowing and Seeing, muralist Douglas Cooper reflects on his long career as a muralist in various cities around the world. Part memoir and part an examination of his art, Cooper looks back on his half-century career from two points of view. First, through personal anecdotes on site sketches and finished works, and secondly, on the intellectual roots of the works. Though the core ideas of his work began in Pittsburgh, Cooper has exhibited work and produced murals, up to 200 feet long, in Cologne, Rome, San Francisco, Seattle, Qatar, Frankfurt, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington DC.
Memory has been a recurring theme in his art. All of Cooper's works are driven by a desire to combine his conception of place with his perception of it--knowing and seeing. Knowing and Seeing features personal essays and more than 240 color images, including early Christian and Renaissance paintings as well as contemporary murals and other illustrations of Cooper's unique work.

Review Quotes

"Douglas Cooper's mesmerizing new book . . . catalogs every stage of his career and also every laborious stage of his most famous works. It's as though a seven-floor Cooper museum has been artfully crammed into one big gorgeous book.-- "Pittsburgh Quarterly"

An acutely gifted draftsman, Doug Cooper employs his panoptical vision not only to record and rearrange the lay of the land, but also to infuse it with a distinct psychological flavor. His many representations of Pittsburgh mirror the city's intensely built, verdantly wrinkled face, memorializing it with affection.--Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation

About the Author

Douglas Cooper teaches drawing in Carnegie Mellon University's architecture program. Using unusual materials for public art--charcoal on paper--he has produced large (up to 200-foot-long) panoramic murals in Frankfurt, Germany, and in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.