History of art Books

Book SynopsisThe most comprehensive book to date on the innovative multimedia artist Doug Aitken. Defying definitions of genre, Doug Aitken has explored every medium, from architecture and film to installations and interventions. While Aitken’s work varies in both theme and context, his installations share a common thread in their ability to use technology to evoke meaningful personal reactions from the viewer, encourage audience interaction, and inspire communal gatherings. His films often explore themes of displacement and temporality, and through his keen awareness of motion, sound, and color he creates dreamlike landscapes and the futurist aesthetic for which he has become known. This beautifully designed book features visual essays by the artist and surveys his work in all mediums. The monograph is organized thematically into the four most prevalent ideas connected with his work, inspires thought, and will leave readers examining their own relationship to the world around them.Trade Review"The book....weaves together various visual essays by the artist and surveys of his work." -S Style"None of the images are identified with captions, making flipping through the book a peculiar experience. The reader is left to interpret and synthesize the works for herself. This immersive format is a fitting presentation for Aitken's work..." -ArtInfo

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Book SynopsisRichard Phillips’s new work hinges on the self-awareness of real-life subjects, using collaborative forms of image production to reorder the relationship of pop art to its subjects. For Richard Phillips, critique is as much an intrinsic material in the conception and staging of his work as the materials of their making. His conflating of subject and genre continues to provide challenging commentary on the condition and reach of contemporary art. His first two films, Lindsay Lohan (2011) and Sasha Grey (2011), are erotically posed motion portraits. The notorious actresses pose erotically—Grey in a modernist John Lautner home, and Lohan in an aquamarine infinity pool. First Point (2012) marks his second collaboration with Lohan and third collaboration with legendary surf filmmaker Taylor Steele. In addition to working with Lohan and Grey, Phillips has collaborated with Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima to create a series of paintings that depict her against backdrops of icon

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Book SynopsisHighlights from the palatial Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, are beautifully reproduced in an accessible volume celebrating the museum's 250th anniversary. For 250 years, the State Hermitage Museum has been one of the world's most palatial and significant museums. The Hermitage collections were developed beginning in 1764 by Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, and now encompass more than 3 million works of art and artifacts displayed within a spectacular architectural ensemble, the heart of which is the famed Winter Palace. Now, on this important anniversary, this stunning volume captures the masterpieces that make this world-famous institution a cultural destination and a global treasure.The Hermitage: 250 Masterworks explores this sumptuous collection in the manner of a private tour, showcasing the museum's extraordinary and uniquely underpublished treasures: no other institution has thirty-six Rembrandts; works by Italian Renaissance artists incluTrade Review"Highlights from the palatial Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, are beautifully reproduced in an accessible volume celebrating the museum's 250th anniversary." -Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisFriendsWithYou is a contemporary fine art collective that has been spreading their unifying message of Magic, Luck, and Friendship worldwide since their founding in 2002. Expanding their mission of connectivity and reawakening via their interactive artworks, the artists Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III call on the viewer to reinvent and reinterpret the lost meaning of spirituality. Using ideas like animism, healing arts, the modern ritual and celebrated symbols, FriendsWithYou addresses the human need to relate to one another. Together, the artists have constructed their own brand of post pop visual language a la Murakami, Arturo Herrera and Yayoi Kusama and have instilled in their work the powerful ability to trigger thoughts of happiness, curiosity, and meaningful interaction.  We Are FriendsWithYou is a brightly colored and comprehensive monograph that explores the journey of Sam & Tury, from their early handcrafted art objects to their recent works expeTrade Review"Although they have worked in many mediums—print, video, sculpture, and painting included...but, despite the simple title We are FriendsWithYou, don’t expect the retrospective volume to be flat. Once past the reflective shell, FriendsWithYou world unfolds through images of select project from their prolific 12-year history, accompanied by visual descriptions and personal essays by admirers like Pharrell Williams." -W Magazine"In case you don't have the chance to see one of FWY's public works in the flesh, they've made the process of spiritual enlightenment through art all the easier by releasing a massive, shiny compendium of their work. It's called We Are FriendsWithYou, and, trust us, after flipping through its colorful pages, you really believe them. The addictive energy produced by FWY certainly jumps off the pages of their artistic archives...the effervescent pages activate a childish wonder we thought was long gone, revealing the surprisingly potent powers of smiley faces and rainbows." -Huffington Post"Most Anticipated Art Book Releases of 2014. FriendsWithYou is a contemporary fine art collective that has been spreading their unifying message worldwide since their founding in 2002. Their aesthetic reflects the playful tastes of Murakami, Arturo Herrera, and Yayoi Kusama while they address these grander themes of spirituality and human connection. With contributions by Pharrell Williams, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Peter Doroshenko, this book reveal insight into their joyful body of work." -Complex Magazine"We Are FriendsWithYou, the freshly minted, whimsically potent, comprehensive monograph from co-conspirators Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III, portrays the duo’s expansive work of paintings, sculptures, and massive installations over the last decade. Their mission? To spread the positive message of Magic, Luck, and Friendship,™ in an effort to stimulate new thoughts of happiness and meaningful interaction. Now there’s a proponent for change we can definitely get behind. Even the metallic cover makes us smile." -LA Canvas“We Are FriendsWithYou is a playful and extensive monograph exploring the art collective’s owners Sam & Tury through their artistic pathways…this book gives depth and a proper lens into the art duo’s complete body of work...” –Trendland.com

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Book SynopsisThe first monograph on the godfather of streetwear, this book pays homage to Hiroshi Fujiwara's influence on contemporary fashion, music, and design. The most comprehensive book devoted to the extensive work of Hiroshi Fujiwara-a pioneer in streetwear, music, and art, and the ultimate arbiter of cool. Known internationally as one of the founding fathers of Tokyo's Harajuku scene, Fujiwara exerts a disproportionate influence over contemporary design culture. Having collaborated with the likes of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood as a teenager in the early 1980s, he merged a seminal interest in punk with hip-hop and skate culture to become one of Japan's principal tastemakers. A musician and producer, Fujiwara is also one of the most prolific sneaker designers, and his kicks are some of the most sought-after collectibles. In addition to his very visible and long-standing collaborations with Nike, he has authored a number of fashion lines and is at the head of the Tokyo-based FragmentTrade Review"Most Anticipated Art Book Releases of 2014. Hiroshi Fujiwara is known as the "godfather of streetwear," and this book pays tribute to his influence on contemporary fashion, music, and design. Hiroshi Fujiwara offers an extensive work of the pioneer in streetwear, music, and art. Because he is one of the founding fathers of Tokyo's Harajuku scene, Fujiwara's influence over contemporary design culture is definite. The book chronicles his career over more than 30 years, which includes highly sought-after artwork and graphics, sneakers, product design, and curated personal effects. With contributions by Sarah Lerfel and Ino Hidefumi, this book provides insight into one of the most influential tastemakers of our time." -Complex Magazine“Hiroshi Fujiwara reveals the mind-boggling variety of work he has designed….” –Surface Magazine"…the artist's first monograph, Hiroshi Fujiwara—Fragment spans his 30-plus-year career as a musician, producer, and designer, surveys Fujiwara's unstoppable creativity—from art to graphic design to his personal belongings—with commentary from fellow influencers like Takashi Murakami and Clapton himself." –Details “…Fujiwara continues to define youth culture in ways that subsequent generations still strive to emulate but rarely attain." –Paper "The first monograph on the “godfather of streetwear,” this hardcover book by publisher Rizzoli pays homage to Hiroshi Fujiwara’s influence on contemporary fashion, music and design. Known internationally as one of the founding fathers of Tokyo’s Harajuku scene, Fujiwara is also one of the most prolific sneaker designers, and his kicks are some of the most sought-after collectibles…this graphically-inspired book provides a unique glimpse into one of the most influential tastemakers of our time…" –Highsnobiety.com

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Book SynopsisThe bible of indie culture. index A to Z celebrates the uncompromising personalities, humor, and DIY brilliance of the indie generation and captures the spirit of the era with sections like F for Fashion, featuring designers Kate Spade and Marc Jacobs; I for Indie with Harmony Korine and John Waters; and others such as Royalty, Vanished, and X-Rated. Paying homage to Generation X''s It glossy, this volume is packed with index''s most memorable interviews and greatest photographs of the time, including previously unpublished outtakes and party pictures. Beginning as a low-budget, oversized fanzine in 1996, index magazine quickly became one of the most influential small publications in the United States. With a smart and irreverent voice that epitomized the late ''90s indie ethos, the magazine brought together some of the most relevant cultural figures who were at that time young and often unknown, and who have since become cultural icons or celebrities, including B

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Book SynopsisA dynamic and far-reaching dialogue with one of Europe’s most influential contemporary artists about his vision of unifying art and everyday life. In 2013, at the age of eighty, Michelangelo Pistoletto was the subject of a six-month exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. Here, in an insightful, passionate, and humorous dialogue with his interviewer, Alain Elkann, he reflects on his legacy. Illustrated with more than two hundred photographs of his life and work, The Voice of Pistoletto demystifies the story of the growth of an artist, candidly discussing his inspirations; his relationships with gallerists, critics, and curators of great renown; and the comparisons and critiques of his fellow contemporary masters, from Magritte to Picasso, Koons to Cattelan, Giacometti to Bacon. The result is a conversational collage that illuminates Pistoletto’s own creative life and gives readers a privileged view of the history of contemporary art in general.

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Book SynopsisAccompanying catalogue of an exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Paris. The catalogue includes a fully illustrated, comprehensive listing of the paintings, drawings, and prints in Lichtenstein’s Expressionism series. Among the styles and movements appropriated by Lichtenstein, his borrowing of Expressionist motifs—from Alexei Jawlensky’s close-up, pensive faces to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s jagged, feline figures—strikes the clearest irony. Including key paintings, sculpture, drawings, and woodcuts, this catalogue demonstrates the bold paradox that Lichtenstein posed by translating Expressionist subjects into the primary colors and pop flatness of his signature style.

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Book SynopsisThe art that I make takes place about one step away from the normal stir of human activity. —Richard Artschwager   This book documents Richard Artschwager’s last series of work, shown posthumously at Gagosian Gallery, New York, in 2014. For five decades, Richard Artschwager has forged a maverick path by confounding the generic limits of art while making the visual comprehension of space and the everyday objects that occupy it strangely unfamiliar. For his last series of work, Artschwager returned to an image, the isolated Running Man, that fascinated and inspired him for twenty years. About the works, Robert Morgan notes in his essay They are remarkable…as a metaphor in reference to existence and mortality.

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Book SynopsisI’m interested in using the real world as a material and a force within my process. I like how these materials take some control away from me, allowing for a more uncertain future and yet a more finished piece. These materials come with a history, not one I necessarily know, but a history for sure. There is an infinity in real-world objects that, no matter how much I try, I couldn’t paint or sculpt into being. —Dan Colen This visually lush artist’s book, showing Dan Colen’s Trash series, makes visible and palpable how Colen’s studio has learned to work with abject things and materials by tapping into their individual histories and exposing their latent energies. The fervid paintings readdress midcentury painterly investigations of gravity and the flatbed picture plane, but unlike Colen’s predecessors’ radical experiments, where the composition of elements equals the sum total of the work, here the spirited debris of the street bec

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Book SynopsisAccompanying a major exhibition, this stunning volume serves as an introduction to North American Indian art and a rare opportunity to see this comprehensive and superb private collection. A glorious testament to the infinite beauty, diversity, and historical significance of Native American culture, Indigenous Beauty presents outstanding examples of art made by tribes across the North American continent. This aesthetically rich and inclusive collection offers a broad view of American Indian art, including sculpture from the Northwest Coast; ancient ivories from the Bering Strait region; Yup’ik and Alutiiq masks from the Western Arctic; Katsina dolls from the Southwest Pueblos; Southwest pottery; sculptural objects from the Eastern Woodlands; Eastern regalia; Plains regalia and pictographic arts; and Western baskets. David Penney’s introduction and texts by other renowned experts offer insight into the visual and material diversity of the collection, providing a greater undeTrade Review"Make no mistake. [Indigenous Beauty] is not a vanity exhibition, showing off the holdings of a wealthy couple. According to experts, there are many “masterworks” here. Masterful because they clearly manifest the highest levels of artistry but also because they were created by individuals and families who were — or are — highly respected within their communities as artists and as teachers of craft." -Seattle Times

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Book SynopsisThis book documents two new bodies of work; a series of large four-part aluminum panel paintings incorporating Oehlen’s recurring motif of trees and a series titled Finger Paintings, in which color-blocked advertisements are an extension of the canvas, providing fragmented, ready-made surfaces for Oehlen’s visceral markings, made with his hands as well as with brushes, rags, and spray cans. Both series were exhibited at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, in summer 2014.

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Book SynopsisA book documenting Michael Craig-Martin’s installation of twelve new large-scale works in the gardens at Chatsworth House. Each work is an immense, vibrantly colored line drawing in space, fabricated in steel. The book also documents a concurrent exhibition curated by Craig-Martin at Chatsworth House, including sculptures from the Devonshire Collection, in which Craig-Martin has swapped their traditional bases for bright pink plinths, and a visually arresting selection of drawings from the Old Master Drawings Cabinet, including drawings by Hans Holbein, Annibale Carracci, and Ghirlandaio.

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Book SynopsisFASHION: A Timeline in Photographs is a definitive and beautifully illustrated visual history of fashion from one of America’s premiere fashion historians, Caroline Rennolds Milbank. This unrivaled and exceptional fashion resource is an immersive 150-year visual odyssey which tracks year-by-year, decade-by-decade, the ever-changing fashion landscape from 1850 to the present. With over 1400 photographs, almost all of which are rare—either never before published or rarely seen—we see fashion transform from the crinoline-supported billowing skirts and enormous ballooning sleeves of the late 19th century to the hemlines that fell along with the crashing stock market in 1929; through the shocking pants styles of the '30s and short A-line shifts of the '60s; through the designer-driven styles of the '80s, '90s, and today. In her introduction, Milbank explains the importance of photographs in that they “show what fashion illustrations cannot; what people actuallTrade Review"Over the past decade, street style has become so ubiquitous it's nearly lost all meaning. Fashion: A Timeline in Photographs brings a fresh perspective to the phenomenon. With a scrapbook feel, it exhibits style through candid pictures taken from the 19th century to present - the most notable dating to a time before digital cameras and the Internet. its deliberate elimination of calculated camerawork captures a true depiction of how people dress." -SURFACE MAGAZINE"Caroline Rennolds Milbank has taken on the herculean and seemingly impossible task of chronicling fashion year by year via images that span over a century—all accompanied by very brief but enlightening text. What this feat of perseverance accomplishes is that it provides amazing details of fashion that might have previously gone unnoticed for many readers. Without question this is a book to be read, pored over, and read again if you wish to really absorb all that is included. There is an almost unending amount of information here the likes of which this reviewer has never come upon. . . this is a must for those who are obsessed with the progression of fashion as well as those who are in need of a text dedicated to how fashion has evolved since 1850."-NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS"FASHION A Timeline in Photographs:1850 to Today is a cunning combination of the scholarly-and the blur that Fashion persists in running along. . . The book's laser focus on fashion since just before the Civil War until today, illustrates each year's fashion "moment" with photographs and commentary. Harold Koda writes the foreword, solidifying the book's importance as to how we look at & in fashion. Milbank's culling of photographs-which must have been thousands and thousands, or more, is quite brilliant. This book is a heavenly marriage of fashion and photography, and we are immersed, and we are seduced, blissfully drowning in its beauty and weight."-LITTLE AUGURY BLOG“Fashion A Timeline in Photographs: 1850 to Today” is a labour of love by one of the most reliable and informed fashion scholars in the United States, Caroline Rennolds Milbank. . . Costume designers, fashion designers, stylists and editors will find this book as invaluable as the general reader will find it engrossing."-THE BUSINESS OF FASHION

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Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive and long-overdue monograph of visual artist Eric White, containing mostly previously unpublished work. Eric White generates a world of psychologically charged narratives in his masterfully executed and surreal figurative paintings. His work is inspired by cinema—especially the golden age of Hollywood—and an obscure pop culture seen through the lens of a satirical and fantastical schizophrenic dream logic. This book covers the breadth of his career so far, from his earliest acrylics, oils, and works on paper, to his subverted album cover paintings, work he describes as paranoid social realism, and his 1/3 Scale Retrospective installations. White's work opens a window into an alternate universe, one that is distorted, dark, and extremely witty.

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Book SynopsisMixed-media artist Carlos Betancourt and his influential studio, Imperfect Utopia, helped to launch the Miami art scene in the 1980’s. Betancourt’s oeuvre 
is a lush explosion of radiant, eccentric colors in which he explores the kaleidoscope (multi-racial, multi-lingual, trans-cultural) of Caribbean and American culture. His work alludes to issues of memory, beauty, identity, and communication.  He bends the lines between art, photography, and nature in his photographs, collages, painting, installations, and conceptual pieces. Carlos Betancourt’s imagery reinterprets the past and present and offers it in a fresh context. He is inspired by Puerto Rico, Miami, and his extensive travels; also artist Ana Mendieta’s interventions in nature, Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblages, Andy Warhol’s perceptions, Neo Rauch compositions, and a Federico Fellini-esque cast of characters for his photo assemblages. This exuberant volume explores BetaTrade Review"[Carlos Betancourt] bends the lines between art, photography, and nature in his photographs, collages, painting, installations, and conceptual pieces. Betancourt's imagery reinterprets the past and present and offers it in a new context. . . This exuberant volume explores Betancourt's body of work, with more than 250 images and texts..."-VENÜ MAGAZINE"Don't let the title fool you - there's nothing imperfect about this volume. . . Included are more than 250 images of Betancourt's vast oeuvre, which heavily focuses on blurring the lines between and experimenting with imagery, fine art, and nature, as well as exploring themes of memory, beauty, identity, and communication. If you like the glitz of Warhol mixed with the sharper aesthetic of Rauschenberg, you'll enjoy his work, and this tome that draws its title from the name of Betancourt's studio, Imperfect Utopia."-INTERVIEW MAGAZINE This exuberant volume explores Carlos's 25-year-old career with more than 250 images and texts. . . Everything in Carlos's work is rooted in the idea of memories, beauty and nature. Consummate dexterity in many different mediums including photography, collage, painting, assemblage and sculpture have allowed Carlos to develop his very own visual language which is as vast as the amount of colors, symbols and materials that he uses."-THE HUFFINGTON POST

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Book SynopsisA long-overdue survey of an essential West Coast artist whose humorous works delve into America’s underbelly and evolving counterculture. Over the past thirty years, Jim Shaw has become one of America’s most visionary artists, moving between painting, sculpture, and drawings, while building connections between his own psyche and the larger political, social, and spiritual history of America. Shaw’s imagery is mined from comic books, record covers, conspiracy magazines, obscure religious pamphlets, and other cultural refuse to produce a portrait of the American subconscious out of his personal obsessions.  Shaw, along with fellow Michigan native Mike Kelley, moved to California in the 1970s to attend Cal Arts and was one of a number of notable artists to emerge from the school in the early 1980s. Shaw’s work is distinguished by rigorous formal and structural analyses of neglected forms of vernacular culture. Accompanying a major exhibition, this

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Book SynopsisHow They Decorated illustrates some of the great rooms of the twentieth century, whose stylish residents influence our tastes today.   Gloria Vanderbilt cleverly noted, “Decorating is autobiography.” Reflecting that truism, the interiors in this book capture the individual approaches of these icons of style: Bunny Mellon’s spare all-American elegance; Hélène Rochas’s refined sophistication; Vanessa Bell’s colorful bohemianism; Mona von Bismarck’s breezy opulence; and Georgia O’Keeffe’s earthy chic. Author P. Gaye Tapp analyzes each of her subjects’ refined way of living, how she embellished her residences (or left them elegantly stark), and the long-lasting effects on today’s generation of designers and connoisseurs of beauty.   The book is presented in four sections that describe the aesthetic approaches that the ladies took in decorating their abodes: &ldquoTrade Review"In How They Decorated: Inspiration from Great Women of the Twentieth Century, blogger P. Gaye Tapp casts her eyes on the decorating styles of iconic women like Babe Paley, Pauline de Rothschild, Mona Von Bismarck and Elsa Schiaparelli. Whether these women employed top decorators or executed their homes on their own, the book provides great insights into lives fabulously lived."—Forbes.com"visually-attuned…"—Vogue "How They Decorated is a lovely and interesting book that anyone with an interest or passion for interior design should read from cover to cover."—La Dolce Vita Blog"The interiors of these trendsetting women defied their time and inspire and delight to this day. In How They Decorated, one can learn from the most notable style muses of the last century."—Political Style Blog"Design lovers everywhere should ready themselves for a real treat, as this April Rizzoli releases P. Gaye Tapp's "How They Decorated: Inspiration from Great Women of the Twentieth Century." Peaking past the curtains and into the homes of the most discerning aesthetic icons of their time, from Babe Paley and Elsa Schiaparelli to Bunny Mellon and Mona von Bismarck, the book straddles styles, eras, and tastes for an interior journey anchored in a certain, je-ne-sais-quois sense of refinement. "—Guest of a Guest "Illustrated with vintage photography and watercolor renderings, How They Decorated is an archaeological volume at heart, tracing the genesis of the many enduring decorating styles that were influenced by the women in its pages." —Carl J. Dellatore "A fascinating book"—Architect Deisgn Blog"Interior designer and blogger P. Gaye Tapp recollects the lives and impeccably decorated homes of 16 iconic women in her upcoming book, How They Decorated: Inspiration From Great Women of the Twentieth Century"—New York Magazine". . .this book takes the reader into the homes of heiresses, artists (including Georgia O'Keefe) and tastemakers of their generations. Written by a noted female interior designer, the book celebrates the discipline and the many women who have shaped its evolution."—HGTV.com"In How They Decorated: Inspiration From Great Women of the Twentieth Century ($55, Rizzoli), P. Gaye Tapp explores the aesthetic approaches of 16 style-setters, including Pauline de Rothschild, Babe Paley, Bunny Mellon, Georgie O’Keeffe and more."—Modern Luxury Interiors, Atlanta"Covering these sixteen elegant women, she shows how they (most of course worked with decorators, architects and designers) orchestrated rooms of great charm, individuality and style. Tables are lavishly set, bedrooms invite lingering, fashions are paraded. And then, just when the lavish interiors are feeling rather intense, she introduces Georgia O’Keeffe (bold simplicity) and then Lesley Blanche, the ultimate romantic. It’s a book to treasure. I love it."—The Style Saloniste

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Book SynopsisPairing the video sculptures, paintings, and drawings produced during the last decade of Nam June Paik’s life with key works from the artist’s oeuvre, this book testifies to Paik’s lifelong exploration of the role of technology in culture. Paik is considered the founder of video art and was one of the first artists to bring television into the realm of art, treating it as a tactile and multisensory medium.

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Book SynopsisThe definitive monograph on contemporary African American painter Kerry James Marshall, accompanying a major traveling retrospective. This long-awaited volume celebrates the work of Kerry James Marshall, one of America’s greatest living painters. Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts riots in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience. Best known for large-scale interiors, landscapes, and portraits featuring powerful black figures, Marshall explores narratives of African American history from slave ships to the present and draws upon his deep knowledge of art history from the Renaissance to twentieth-century abstraction, as well as other sources such as the comic book and the muralist tradition. With luscious color and brushstrokes and highly detailed patterning, his direct and intimate scenes of black middle-class life conjure a wide range of emotions, resultinTrade Review"Kerry James Marshall is the first comprehensive study of the life and oeuvre of one of America's greatest modern painters. Marshall has not received the attention he deserves and Kerry James Marshall aims to change that. This book is packed with stunning replicas of Marshall's paintings. It is simply a pleasure to hold it. It is a must have for all students and experts of painting."-THE WASHINGTON BOOK REVIEW"This beautifully conceived and produced catalog for a 2016-17 survey organized jointly by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a stunning overview." —ARTBLOG

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Book SynopsisPiero Manzoni was one of the most radically inventive artists of the twentieth century whose work continues to challenge the definitions of artistic sovereignty and virtuosity to this day. Immediately upon his death in 1963 at the age of thirty, Piero Manzoni’s reputation as a provocateur and wild child preceded him, with his most subversive work, Artist’s Shit, 1961, elevating him to cult status. But what actually came before, and lay behind those thirty grams of pure artistic output? Flaminio Gualdoni sets out to explore exactly that in this biography that traces the guiding themes of Manzoni’s works, lending order to a jumble of hitherto fragmented materials and setting aside any apocryphal hypotheses.

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Book SynopsisEdmund de Waal’s art speaks to his enduring fascination with the nature of objects and the attendant history of their collection and display. Confronting European and Asian traditions of intimate craftsmanship with the scale and sequence of minimalist art and music, Edmund de Waal’s ensembles of porcelain vessels evoke at once the delicate measure of Agnes Martin’s sublime abstract paintings and the rhythmic pulses of the music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

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Book SynopsisAn unparalleled collection of postwar and contemporary art assembled by two gutsy collectors. The Schulhofs were unique among American collectors, as they sought art with a truly international dimension; Milan, Rome, Paris, Dusseldorf, Basel, London, Kassel, Venice, Pittsburgh, and New York were just a few of the many destinations for the late Hannelore and Rudolph Schulhof in over fifty years of collecting art. Starting in the early 1950s, together they built a collection that continues to inspire and educate future generations—from the powerful elegance of Richard Serra’s Schulhof’s Curve to Eduardo Chilida’s exquisite ironworks and works on paper by artists such as Robert Smithson, Mark Rothko, and Cy Twombly. The collectors’ interest in minimalism is reflected in works by Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin, and Robert Ryman. This handsome volume showcases the thoughtful and highly personal texture of the Schulhof Collection.

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Book SynopsisA stunning volume showcasing the magnificent court dress of the Russian Empire, culled from the authoritative collection at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, photographed with the Winter Palace as a backdrop. Prerevolutionary Russia was renowned for the glamorous and luxurious lifestyles of the nobility, with their opulent palaces and glittering social life. Now, this lavish volume reveals the incredible clothing they wore, from everyday dress and ceremonial attire (traditional holidays outfits and military uniforms) to dress for special occasions, including elaborate evening wear for theater and musical events and fancy masquerade balls. Celebrated for luxurious materials and impeccable craftsmanship, the dress of the Russian nobility was haute couture at its finest. With beautiful photography and details highlighting the hand-spun silks and lace and jeweled embroideries, Russian Splendor highlights the glamour of this gilded age and offers a fascinating window inTrade Review"For a trip to colder climes, Russian Splendor mines the portraits, objets and costumes in the State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg for a touch of fur-trimmed luxury of the 19th-century Imperial Court."—The New York Times"This book features a plentiful selection of photographs and a history written, brilliantly, by four curators of the museum’s historical costumes department, who locate the costumes in the life of the court and its ceremonials . . . The narrative is wonderfully enriched by quotations from the memoirs and letters of courtiers and visitors who recorded moments from the lives of royal and aristocratic personages." —Art News"A stunning volume showcasing the magnificent court dress of the Russian Empire, culled from the authoritative collection at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, photographed with the Winter Palace as a backdrop."—City Book Review"With beautiful photography and details highlighting the handspun silks and lace and jeweled embroideries, this book highlights the glamour of this gilded age and offers a fascinating window into a vanished world. Essays by Hermitage Museum curators, alongside historic Russian paintings and photo-graphs, place the clothing in a historical context, revealing the rich cultural layers and artistic influences of czarist Russia."—Antiques And The Arts Weekly

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Book SynopsisThis book showcases the most important work by celebrated street artist and activist JR—the award-winning global street-art project he has been working on for the last six years, involving a quarter of a million people. Artist and activist JR exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors. Known for plastering cities with huge black-and-white wheatpaste photographic portraits of the people who live there, JR won a $1 millian TED Prize in 2011 with his “TED Wish”: to create a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work by making digitally uploaded images into posters to display in diverse communities. To accomplish this, JR has visited cities on nearly every continent. Since the project’s inception, approximately 200,000 people have contributed their portraits. From the suburbs of Paris to Israel and P

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Book SynopsisA beautiful showcase of David Reed’s 1974–75 paintings and related works.   A companion to the upcoming exhibition of Reed’s 1974–75 brushstroke paintings, this book features color plates of works originally exhibited in 1975 at Susan Caldwell Gallery. Along with installation images and plates from that seminal exhibition, related paintings, performances, and film images appear throughout the book in the form of a visual essay. New texts by Richard Hell and Reed appear alongside reprints from the time, including the original exhibition text by Paul Auster. A conversation between Katy Siegel and artist Christopher Wool unfolds the significance and legacy of Reed’s early work.

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Book Synopsis  Published as an accompaniment to the 2015 exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in New York, this new book depicts Jeff Koons' new Gazing Ball Paintings and the resulting dialogue he creates with artists of the past, from Titian to El Greco, Courbet to Manet.     Dealing with the power of artistic gesture, each work, presented here in stunning color, features a blue glass gazing ball that sits on a painted aluminum shelf attached to the front of the painting that reflects both the painting and the viewer. This metaphysical occurrence connects the viewer to a family of cultural history in real time. Through the simple act of placing a gazing ball in front of the images, painting and sculpture are reunited for maximum sensory perception. New essays by Joachim Pissarro and Donatien Grau complete this striking new book.    

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Book SynopsisThis stunning volume presents the cult artist’s visually arresting and detailed sculptures, which evoke fantastic realism and the macabre. Kris Kuksi’s ornate artworks transcend a fine-art gallery context, appealing to a goth, street-culture audience. Using a range of mixed media and unconventional materials, Kuksi builds intricate miniature worlds out of model train kits, army men, jewelry, rocks, tchotchkes, religious souvenirs, figurines, and ornamental fixtures sourced from all over the world. Each of the delicate and unique assemblages host endless intricate baroque and macabre narratives, reminiscent of lost civilizations, classical sculpture, and fantastic realism. This volume features more than 200 color reproductions and intricate details of his works. Much-anticipated, it is bound to be collected by both loyal fans and those only now discovering Kuksi’s masterful, impossible-to-forget compositions, which draw the viewer i

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Book SynopsisParisian jewelry designer Marie-Hélène de Taillac's first book offers a sumptuous journey into her colorful and vibrant world, from her exotic inspirations to her artisanal savoir faireWhen she drew her first designs in 1996, Marie-Hélène de Taillac stirred a revolution in contemporary jewelry, forging a style centered on the artisanal techniques of handcrafted jewelry to showcase the stones themselves.The French designer's first monograph showcases her creations while delving into her inspirations, from whimsical fairy tales to her extensive travels. The layout reflects de Taillac's preoccupation with color, with each chapter featuring a different colored text. With detailed sections dedicated to the journey of creating jewelry, this new title presents a fascinating glimpse into the work of one of today's most exciting designers.Trade Review"Jewelry Designer Marie-Helene de Tailac Is Releasing a Book. Parisian jewelry designer Marie-Hélène de Taillac is teaming up with Rizzoli for her first book, Gold and Gems: The Jewels of Marie-Hélène de Taillac. The tome features a forward by Vanessa Friedman, and additional text by Nathalie Rykiel, Ines de la Fressange, and Hamish Bowles. Gold and Gems will be available in September." —DAILY FRONT ROW "...she takes us on a journey through her vivid world in which rich hues of special gems set the tone of the collection and inspire the settings and the spare beauty that relies on her mastery of color and her creative blending of different palettes which she believes evoke a magical and exuberant effect." —FORBES.COM "Those who have visited Marie- Hélène de Taillac’s New York City jewel box of a salon won’t be surprised to know that the first coffee-table book dedicated to the designer is just as sumptuous as her colorful namesake collection. Ensconced in a case featuring a rainbow of jewels, the lapis lazuli-colored tome, published by Rizzoli, is largely a visual catalogue of the brand’s designs over the years, interspersed with essays from the likes of New York Times Chief Fashion Critic Vanessa Friedman and fashion journalist Hamish Bowles." —NATIONAL JEWELER

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Book SynopsisThe first major English-language monograph on Icelandic Pop artist Erró establishes his primacy among today’s significant figurative artists. Erró, Iceland’s most prominent painter, receives long overdue critical attention for his contributions to international Pop, late Surrealism, and contemporary figurative painting in this sumptuous monograph. Since introducing exclusively source-image-based painted collage to the European Pop movement in 1959, Erró has produced an influential body of work mining cartoons and art history on canvases marked by political satire and his own cheerfully dystopian observations of human nature.Prescient and timely, Erró’s paintings are marked by a voracious consumption of imagery synthesizing a hallucinatory vision of contemporary visual culture. Often compared to Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, and Roy Lichtenstein, Erró’s multifigure narratives, refusal to commit to a singular style, and obse

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Book SynopsisThis provocative new book presents the collaborative paintings of Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis, among today’s sharpest observers of the culture of pleasure, their art inseparable from the world in which it finds expression. Los Angeles is both background and subject in the respective oeuvres of Israel and Ellis. For Israel, the American dream, as embodied by the L.A. mythos, remains affecting and potent, and he approaches his hometown with an uncanny coupling of local familiarity and anthropological curiosity. While Ellis, who became famous for his portrait of an amoral, decadent L.A. of the 1980s in his debut novel Less Than Zero, has continued to elaborate upon his jaundiced vision of a superficial youth society over the past two decades. Now these two artists have come together to create a lively discourse on their city. At Israel’s provocation, Ellis has written short texts that Israel then converted into various fonts and combin

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Book SynopsisCurated by noted Picasso biographer John Richardson, this exhibition catalogue examines the intersection of Picasso's bullfighting imagery with the mythological (and biographical) compositions of the 1930's. Including works dating from 1897 to 1972, this fully illustrated catalogue presents a career-long survey of Picasso's engagement with ancient bullfighting and mythological narratives and includes essays by noted Picasso scholars Michael FitzGerald and Gertje Utley.

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Book SynopsisAn eye-opening book about the 1980s New York art scene, its far-reaching effects on contemporary art, and the rise of some of the biggest names in the art world today. This groundbreaking book, accompanying a major exhibition at the Hirshhorn, tells the story of the evolution of New York’s downtown art scene in the 1980s—from a DIY counterculture in the East Village to a legitimate gallery business in SoHo. Coinciding with the rise of modern branding and the onset of the information age, artists’ focus on commodities and consumerism began as satire but came to be much more complex: commodities and associated phenomena, such as advertising, now served as vessels for ideas, politics, and personal relationships in “brand-new” types of painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performance. In a book full of visual surprises, newly commissioned essays shed new light on this pivotal period: curator Gianni Jetzer provides a compre

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Book SynopsisFigurative painting of the past five years, represented here by an exciting young generation of artists and vital practitioners, addresses the challenge of contemporary representation through expressionistic compositions and new techniques reflecting digital fluency.

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Book SynopsisThe first monograph on Iraqi artist Hayv Kahraman surveys her figurative work, which mines the marginal space that pertains to diasporic peoples, collective and personal memory, and gender. The vital practice of Hayv Kahraman produces ethereal figures relating to each other in complex grounds. Their grace belies the brutal history of violence and displacement Kahraman’s subjects endure, creating an oscillating effect that entices the viewer with its seductive order. The artist combines elements of Italian Renaissance painting and twelfth-century Baghdadi illuminated manuscripts to create an evocative, hybrid vocabulary. Her quietly radical shifts—where traditional Iraqi screens’ geometric patterns are replaced with sections of a woman’s body, or a manuscript figure is presented as doll-like parts—convey the artist’s developing exploration of femininity, acculturation, and abstract patterns. Essays by Martin Daughtry, Walter Mignolo, an

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Book SynopsisThis long-overdue monograph rediscovers the fifty-year career of Robert De Niro, Sr., an important New York School painter and poet.The first comprehensive monograph on painter and poet Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922-1993), a major contributor to postwar American art, known for his unique, bold style of painterly representation. De Niro was a visionary artist in the early days of Abstract Expressionism and a celebrated member of the New York School of painters, along with Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.Over the course of his fifty-year career, he painted portraits, still lifes, the female nude, and interiors with a signature gestural painting style and brilliant color, which bear the influence of Henri Matisse as well as his teacher, Hans Hofmann. During the height of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art in the 1960s, De Niro remained faithful to his own vision in his paintings and poetry; today his powerful figural works are ripe for rediscovery.

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Book SynopsisTara Donovan's sculptures and installations are mind-bending experiences: she transforms common everyday materials like straws and index cards turning them into elaborate, room-size sculptures that are as surreal as they are beautifulMacArthur genius grant recipient Tara Donovan's otherworldly sculptures have transfixed audiences for over a decade. Taking mundane materials and through clever craftsmanship, ingenuity, and repeated manipulation, the artist builds large-scale works made of rubber bands, plastic tubing, and paper plates into objects that evoke the natural world or other organic material. This volume--which accompanies a major exhibition at MCA Denver--features an expansive selection of her most significant works to date, including sculpture, drawings, works on paper, and site-responsive installations. This exhibition will be the first time that Donovan's wall-based and freestanding objects will be installed together, in order to understand fully how the arti

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Book SynopsisWinner of the James A. Porter and David C. Driskell Book Award for African American Art History, I Too Sing America offers a major survey on the visual art and material culture of the groundbreaking movement one hundred years after the Harlem Renaissance emerged as a creative force at the close of World War I.It illuminates multiple facets of the era--the lives of its people, the art, the literature, the music, and the social history--through paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, and contemporary documents and ephemera. The lushly illustrated chronicle includes work by cherished artists such as Romare Bearden, Allan Rohan Crite, Palmer Hayden, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, and James Van Der Zee.The project is the culmination of decades of reflection, research, and scholarship by Wil Haygood, acclaimed biographer and preeminent historian on Harlem and its cultural roots. In thematic chapters, the author captures the range and breadth oTrade Review"One measure of an exhibition catalogue’s quality is the degree to which it makes you want to go see the exhibition. In the case of this volume, let us just say that, since picking it up, I have been wracked with pain that I have not been able to visit the Columbus Museum of Art to catch the show it accompanies, which runs through January 20. It is a sumptuously illustrated tome, with reproductions of pieces, variously iconic and little-known, by Palmer Hayden, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Augusta Savage, Horace Pippin, and many, many more. Haygood is a biographer and journalist (famed for writing the story that became the film The Butler), and he’s accomplished the rare feat of weaving together rich scholarship with luminous prose. Including contributions from a variety of experts, it takes an expansive view of its subject, looking not only at visual art but vernacular photography, writing, and periodicals of the movement. 'The Harlem Renaissance lives,' Haygood writes. 'It sings. It continues to do its part to explain America to itself, and also to the world.' This book is a superb vehicle for that remarkable story. —Andrew Russeth"Celebrating the centennial of the creative and intellectual flowering, “I Too Sing America” is a unique exploration of the subject that brings a journalist together with his hometown museum and the community where he grew up in Columbus, Ohio... Titled after Langston Hughes’s iconic poem, “I Too Sing America” considers the Harlem Renaissance “as a movement not confined to either upper Manhattan or the interwar period, but as a historical moment of national and international significance that continues to have reverberations far beyond its typically noted end date in the mid-1930s.” The catalog is a wonderful volume lavishly illustrated with the art and photography that defined the Renaissance. Haygood’s essays on how Harlem emerged as the mecca of Black America, the feverish publishing the period sparked, the dance, theater, and music the era engendered, the two Reverend Powells, and W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, appear throughout the volume. His contributions are punctuated by writings about individual visual artists, including Malvin Gray Johnson, Winold Reiss, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, Augusta Savage, and James VanDerZee, authored by the museum’s curators." —Culture Type

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Book SynopsisThis vibrant edition examines Tom Wesselmann's important series of Standing Still Lifes, monumental works that are both pictorial and sculptural.Accompanying an exhibition at Gagosian New York, this catalogue explores nine of Tom Wesselmann's monumental works made between 1967 and 1981. It marks the first time that the complete series of Standing Still Lifes has been exhibited. Each work in the series is comprised of multiple canvases shaped according to the outline of the commonplace objects they depict. Wesselmann was one of the leading American Pop artists, perhaps best known for his Great American Nude series. This attractive volume will be released with two unique covers, both printed in dazzling color on acetate, which will be shipped to customers at random.

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