History of art Books

Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2020 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Book Prize​Winner of the 2019 Art Journal Prize from the College Art Association What is the role of pleasure and pain in the politics of art? In Touched Bodies, Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra approaches this question as she examines the flourishing of live and intermedial performance in Latin America during times of authoritarianism and its significance during transitions to democracy. Based on original documents and innovative readings, her book brings politics and ethics to the discussion of artistic developments during the “long 1980s”. She describes the rise of performance art in the context of feminism, HIV-activism, and human right movements, taking a close look at the work of Diamela Eltit and Raúl Zurita from Chile, León Ferrari and Liliana Maresca from Argentina, and Marcos Kurtycz, the No Grupo art collective, and Proceso Pentágono from Mexico. The comparative study of the work of these artists attests to a performative turn in Latin American art during the 1980s that, like photography and film before, recast the artistic field as a whole, changing the ways in which we perceive art and understand its role in society.Trade Review“An astute and moving book, Touched Bodies gives account of the transition from an aesthetics of representation to an aesthetics of embodiment and bodily vulnerability in Latin American art of the 1980s. A contribution to aesthetic theory as much as to the history of art, Touched Bodies extends our understanding of performance-based art in relationship to practices of vulnerability, dissensus, and cross-temporal performativity.” -- Rebecca Schneider * author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment *"Mara Polgovsky makes an outstanding contribution to the re-evaluation of the performative turn in adversarial art from 1970s and 1980s Latin America, expanding the genealogy of conceptualism and recalibrating the spectrum of body-centered practice. The originality of her approach provides unparalleled insights into the complex interaction between corporeality, political activism and the body as site of desire and vulnerability." -- Erica Segre * author of Intersected Identities *"Polgovsky’s book, which has already been shortlisted by the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present for its 2020 Book Prize, brings to an international audience a series of artists who have broken the mould of Latin America’s default posture of political protest and produced works which sometimes condense the cry of despair in its barest expression by breaking down the gulf between their bodies and their work. She has brought to the project a remarkable combination of philosophical erudition and descriptive skill, plus the unstoppable curiosity of the best researchers. The book marks a turning point." * Journal of Latin American Studies *“An astute and moving book, Touched Bodies gives account of the transition from an aesthetics of representation to an aesthetics of embodiment and bodily vulnerability in Latin American art of the 1980s. A contribution to aesthetic theory as much as to the history of art, Touched Bodies extends our understanding of performance-based art in relationship to practices of vulnerability, dissensus, and cross-temporal performativity.” -- Rebecca Schneider * author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment *"Mara Polgovsky makes an outstanding contribution to the re-evaluation of the performative turn in adversarial art from 1970s and 1980s Latin America, expanding the genealogy of conceptualism and recalibrating the spectrum of body-centered practice. The originality of her approach provides unparalleled insights into the complex interaction between corporeality, political activism and the body as site of desire and vulnerability." -- Erica Segre * author of Intersected Identities *"Polgovsky’s book, which has already been shortlisted by the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present for its 2020 Book Prize, brings to an international audience a series of artists who have broken the mould of Latin America’s default posture of political protest and produced works which sometimes condense the cry of despair in its barest expression by breaking down the gulf between their bodies and their work. She has brought to the project a remarkable combination of philosophical erudition and descriptive skill, plus the unstoppable curiosity of the best researchers. The book marks a turning point." * Journal of Latin American Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction Corporeal calligraphies in times of change The long 1980s: redefining the temporality of art From curatorial to historical revisionism Beyond the art of post-dictatorship From memory studies to the aesthetics of dissensus The performative turn The ethics of performance Overview of chapters Chapter 1 – Writing the Body A precarious aesthetic A monstrous scene Territories of excess Sacrificial bodies Neonic Obscenity A mystical occasion Sor Teresa, la Lumpérica A corporeal rhetoric The implicated self Chapter 2 – Lamentations Prayerful acts Sky writing and the poetics of ambiguity The new life Song for his/her disappeared love The politics of lamentation Purgatory Neither sorrow nor fear (Un)godly fragments Chapter 3 – Mē mou haptou: Touch, Ethics, and History Waiting for Ariel A political medium? A tortured era A glimpse into 1960s collage Noli me tangere Brailles The haptic gaze Never Again Scenes from inferno Pacem in terris Chapter 4 – Nudities Le féminin Christs and mannequins Divine phobia Intimacy reawakened A scourge from God? Chapter 5 – Ritual and/of Violence Potlatch The scene of destruction The scene of war Mexico’s parodic guerrilla art The scene of ritual Liminal personae The scene of terror Letter bombing The scene of the self Exploding time Chapter 6 – Cybernetics and Face-off Play The hybrid face The interface Facial traces The (post-)facial matrix Conclusion Touched bodies The trace Acknowledgments List of References List of Figures Index

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Book SynopsisTaking selfies is not the exclusive preserve of millennials. In Selfies, the niece of French philosopher Simone Weil, also daughter of one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th c., gives a playful twist to the concept of self-representation: taking her cue from self-portraits by women artists, ranging from the 13th c. through the Renaissance to Frida Kahlo and Vivian Maier, Weil has written a memoir in pieces, that is yet unified. Each picture acts as a portal to a significant moment from Weil's own life (as schoolgirl, writer, daughter and mother) and sparks anecdotes tangentially touching on topical issues (from the Palestinian question to the pain of a mother witnessing her son's psychotic breakdown, to the subtle manifestations of anti-Semitism, to ageism, genetics, and a Jewish dog...). Switching from poignant to light-hearted, with Weil's trademark irony and self-deprecating humour, Selfies is a sophisticated, `delightful read', with heartwrenching tendencies. (Front cover photograph: VIVIAN MAIER, Self-portrait, New York, NY, 1955 copyright Estate of Vivian Maier, Courtesy Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. End page photograph of the author by Marc Riboud, courtesy of Catherine Riboud, Paris.)Trade Review'A beguiling series of vignettes, by turns wry, amusing and disturbing, inspired by self-portraits by women artists and reflecting on the images they provoke. An illuminating survey of the author's various identities, in a fractured world, as mother, lover and writer.' - Michele Roberts. 'A new genre is born: the short selfie collection! Lively, inventive, compassionate, aching, morally complex and troubling, I loved these self-portraits more than anything I've read lately.' - Lauren Elkin. 'In Selfies Sylvie Weil uses a work of an artist to set the theme for a snapshot of a past episode in her life. These selfies are exquisite vignettes - intelligent, witty, observant, sometimes poignant, and beautifully written - the elegance of the original French apparent in this fine English translation.' - Piers Paul Read . 'If yesteryear's painted self-portraits were as concerned with pose and presentation as are today's phone selfies, Sylvie Weil is the ideal analyst of what may lie behind the image. In a sequence of transpositions of the work of women portraitists from the Renaissance onwards, she applies their appearance to her experience, and implies a continuity in women's self-presentation. Like them, Sylvie Weil has an illustrious heritage (daughter to Andre a brilliant and renowned mathematician; niece to Simone, a brilliant and renowned philosopher). Unlike them, she moves from the visual to the verbal, expressive of both profound truth and imagination.' - Amanda Hopkinson.Reviews of Sylvie Weil's 'At Home with Andre and Simone', published by Northwestern University Press, USA, 2010 : `...an elegant and witty memoir-cum-reflection.' -The Spectator. 'Sylvie Weil's memoir is simply one of the best books I've read in the past decade. At turns poignant, poetic, and deeply personal' - Paul LeClerc, president, The New York Public Library. 'The missing link in the story of Andre and Simone Weil is Sylvie Weil, daughter of the great mathematician, niece of the legendary philosopher. In her memoirs... the 'merely' personal is transformed into something rich and strange.' -Palle Yourgrau, author of A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Goedel and Einstein.Table of Contents13 chapters including Self-portrait at the organ, Self-portrait as a capital letter, Self-portrait with postcard, Self-portrait as a visitor, Self-portrait with portrait of my son, Self-portrait as a Chinese mushroom, Self-portrait with dog, Stabat mater, Self-portrait as an author, Self-portrait on the beach, Self-portrait as a maker of idols, Self-portraits in fugitive mirrors, Photobomb selfie.

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Book SynopsisPierre Guariche (1926-1995) was a leading interior architect, furniture, and lighting designer in postwar France. He created a prolific body of work during what is known as the Thirty Glorious Years (1945-1975), a period of economic prosperity and high growth in France. He was an early adopter of industrial materials and production techniques that emerged during the 1950s, and is known for his remarkable lighting fixtures and simple, elegant furniture designs that could be manufactured on a large scale. He worked with innovative companies like Airborne, Steiner, and Pierre Disderot; he co-founded a design collective (Atelier de Recherche Plastique- ARP); and was the artistic director for the Meurop furniture company in Belgium. In advance of Charlotte Perriand in Les Arcs and Marcel Breuer in Flaine, he worked with the architect Michel Bezançon on the creation of La Plagne, the first comprehensive winter sports resort in France. Making use of unpublished archives, this book looks back on a rich itinerary of over 200 interior architecture and design projects, almost as many pieces of furniture, and a series of remarkable lighting fixtures (reissued today by Sammode) which shed light on the modernity and timeless elegance of this remarkable creator. Text in English and French.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores what the methodologies of Art History might offer Comics Studies, in terms of addressing overlooked aspects of aesthetics, form, materiality, perception and visual style. As well as considering what Art History proposes of comic scholarship, including the questioning of some of its deep-rooted categories and procedures, it also appraises what comics and Comics Studies afford and ask of Art History. This book draws together the work of international scholars applying art-historical methodologies to the study of a range of comic strips, books, cartoons, graphic novels and manga, who, as well as being researchers, are also educators, artists, designers, curators, producers, librarians, editors, and writers, with some undertaking practice-based research. Many are trained art historians, but others come from, have migrated into, or straddle other disciplines, such as Comparative Literature, American Literature, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, and a range of subjects within Art & Design practice.Table of ContentsWays of Seeing Comics: Art-Historical Approaches to the Form.Part I Old Skool Art History.The Lives of the Artists.Connoisseurship, Attribution, and Comic Strip Art: The Case of Jack B. Yeats.Reading Comics with Aby Warburg: Collaging Memories.Part II Perception, Reception and Meaning.Psychologies of Perception: Stories of Depiction.Aesthetics of Reception: Uncovering the Modes of Interaction in Comics.Reading Richard Felton Outcault’s “Yellow Kid” Through Perception of the Image.Colour in Comics: Reading Lorenzo Mattotti Through the Lens of Art History.Part III The New and Newer Art Histories.Feminist Art History as an Approach to Research on Comics: Meta Reflections on Studies of Swedish Feminist Comics.Towards Feminist Comics Studies: Feminist Art History and the Study of Women’s Comix in the 1970s in the United States.Real Queer Bodies: Visual Weight and Imagined Gravity in Sport Manga.Part IV Comics for/Beyond Art History.Afrofuturism and Animism as Method: Art History and Decolonisation in Black Panther.What Is an Image? Art History, Visual Culture Studies, and Comics Studies.From Giotto to Drnaso: The Common Well of Pictorial Schema in ‘High’ Art and ‘Low’ Comics.VAST/O Exhibition (De)Construction: Exploring the Potentials of Augmented Abstract Comics and Animation Installations as a Method to Communicate Health Experiences.From Tableau to Sequence: Introducing Comics Theory Within Art History to Study the Photobook.

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Book SynopsisPiero Gilardi (born 1942) looms large in the annals of the European postwar avant-garde. A pioneer of Arte Povera and a promoter of Richard Long and Jan Dibbets, who also introduced American artists such as Bruce Nauman or Eva Hesse to a European audience, Gilardi is also a political activist. This retrospective monograph surveys his many activities.

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Book SynopsisSwiss artist Alfredo Aceto (born 1991) works in painting, sculpture, drawing and sound, mixing personal anecdotes and art-historical references. His obsessional relationship with French artist Sophie Calle, for instance, ended with her signature tattooed on his arm; his projects often deal with obsession, identity and death. This first monograph follows his residence at the Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva.

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Book SynopsisThis volume takes stock of critical perspectives on the work of New Yorkbased Wade Guyton (born 1972), assembling both expansive, scholarly essays and more concise, journalistic assessments by an international array of authorsDaniel Baumann, Kirsty Bell, Johanna Burton, Catherine Chevalier, Bettina Funcke, John Kelsey, Scott Rothkopf and Peter Schjeldahl among themoffering an invaluable reference for any reader coming to terms with his artistic production. The volume also holds up a mirror to the rapidly changing context for Guyton's work, which in a few short years shifted from discussions of the widespread use of modernist motifs in art during the early 2000s to others revolving around the artwork, anticipating its continuous circulation as digital media became ubiquitous in art and culture alike.

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Book SynopsisSwiss artist Claudia Comte (born 1983) is best known for her site-specific installations featuring wooden sculptural forms set against abstract wall paintings and for her installation in Palm Springs, CA. This volume documents her most recent works as well as her first retrospective survey, 10 Rooms, 40 Walls, 1059 m3.

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Book SynopsisEverybody is a designer! But why? Why do we color, organize, and form the world around us - and why do we call that a profession? In this book, Thonik, an Amsterdam-based studio led by lauded designers Nikki Gonnissen and Thomas Widdershoven, researches eleven personal reasons why they design - from the need to create impact to a constant search for independence; from the benefits of systems to the urgency of play. Why We Design looks back on twenty-five years of design practice and speculates on the future of graphic design.

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Book SynopsisFrancis Bacon’s portrait of his first partner Peter Lacy is somehow simultaneously attractive and repulsive. The monumental portrait dating from 1962 was unknown to the public for a long time. Shortly after it was painted, Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni acquired the work and it remained in private hands for decades. This is a key work, created at a turning point in Bacon’s oeuvre. Markus Rath embeds the painting into Bacon’s visual world for the first time. The English painter reveals a biographically oriented representationalism in the portrait, concentrating his compositional arrangement on the stage-like interior and forcing a contrast between the two-dimensional ground and the colour-saturated figure – these are pioneering approaches to composition that shaped his late work decisively.

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Book SynopsisAs artists, they were self-taught and created a cosmos of images that still captivates us today with its sensual immediacy and has made a lasting mark in art history on the work of non-academically trained artists: Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), Camille Bombois (1883–1970), André Bauchant (1873–1958), Louis Vivin (1861–1939) and Séraphine Louis (1864–1942). They are counted among the so-called circle of the "painters of the sacred heart"; their scenarios, often borrowed from nature, especially flowers and fruits, but also people in parks and landscapes, indicate a closeness to nature, a sensitive approach to the things of the immediate environment, with which they apparently sought to escape the coldness of uprising modernism. These French pioneers of authentic art were discovered by the German art historian Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), who organized their first joint exhibition in Paris in 1928.

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Book SynopsisThe general public’s image of Mondrian is of a serious man in a suit and tie with a reserved, rather aloof look. It is the same group of some ten photographs that shaped this image over time, although there are around 400 known photographs of the artist and his studios that provide a far more balanced and livelier image of Mondrian. This gorgeous book is not a biography, but rather a visual and emotional reference work for anyone who wants to immerse themselves in the world of this extraordinarily modern artist. The studios in Amsterdam, Paris, and New York are works of art themselves, as fascinating as the guests in these rooms. There are snapshots showing his private life, taken during journeys or visits, photographs of vernissages and dinners as well as formal portraits that he uses to promote the image of a serious, uncompromising artist. Detailed captions and richly illustrated essays on the significance of photography in the context of Mondrian’s work make this book an extraordinary document of his time.

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Book SynopsisIn 1991, the town of Pulheim initiated the Stommeln Synagogue art project, a permanent process of examination of this historically significant location. Since then it has continued to make a contribution to a culture of remembrance. A wide-ranging overview of remarkable works is being assembled on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the synagogue. Far from the day-to-day business of culture, international artists have repeatedly taken up the challenge of developing works for the silent building in a remote setting and its remarkable historical context. Virtually all the works were specially designed for the location with its architecture and history; the overview publication shows how they enter into a close inter-relationship, how they define the space and are equally themselves defined by its field of tension. The synagogue in the Stommeln district of Pulheim is one of the few ynagogues in Germany that was not destroyed during the pogroms of 1938 and that did not fall victim to the wave of demolitions that took place after the war.

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Book SynopsisBetween 1933 and 1945, artistic creativity within the German Reich was almost totally under the control of the National Socialist state. Many artists emigrated. But what about the ones who remained in Germany? Under what social and economic conditions did they focus on their art and what options for activity were open to them? For artists who did not conform to the system, the years of National Socialism were an era of standstill and isolation. This volume questions this blanket judgement through 15 artist personalities and shows how differently they dealt with ostracism, the lack of audience and the absence of exchange, what possibilities they had for selling and exhibiting their works and to what extent they adapted to the requirements of the Nazi regime. Some 150 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs reflect graphically the contradictions of this time.

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Book SynopsisThis book spotlights a complex art collection established at the intersection of modern art and social justice. In 1963, as civil rights protests swirled across the fiercely segregated state, this historically Black college became an unlikely hub in Mississippi envisioned as “an interracial oasis in which the fine arts are the focus and magnet.” Since its founding in 1869 by the abolitionist-led American Missionary Association, Tougaloo College has made the fight for equality central to its mission. In 1963, Tougaloo became the nexus for modern art in Mississippi, when leaders of the New York art world began a rich program of art acquisitions. This publication features two essays and approximately thirty-five selections from this distinctive collection by diverse artists such as Francis Picabia, Jacob Lawrence, and Alma Thomas.

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Book SynopsisRecent events have pushed artists to visualize ideas of closeness in a new light. Kinship, published on the occasion of the National Portrait Gallery’s tenth “Portraiture Now” exhibition, features the work of eight leading contemporary artists who explore familial relationships through photography, painting, sculpture, and performance. Contemporary portraiture offers a way to consider the mutable yet enduring qualities of familial relationships and the internal and external forces that affect our bonds with others. For example, interpretations of distance - whether emotional, physical, or geographical - have recently become more fraught. By recognizing the transformations that occur in the genre of portraiture and the threads that today’s portraits share, we can better understand the universality and specificity of kinship. List of artists: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jess T. Dugan, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jessica Todd Harper, Thomas Holton, Sedrick Huckaby, Anna Tsouhlarakis

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Book SynopsisGustav Klimt (1862–1918) is the one artist whose name we associate in particular with Viennese Jugendstil and the “Golden Age”. As a sought-after painter of frescoes and the founding president of the Vienna Secession, as the portraitist of fashionable ladies and as an illustrator of unashamed eroticism, Klimt was both the enfant terrible and the darling of Viennese society, who created icons of art history with works like The Kiss and his portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

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Book SynopsisReframing American Landscape: Women, Land, + Art illuminates the accomplishments of Susie Barstow and her circle, who painted the landscape in the nineteenth century and places them in conversation with women-identifying artists working today who expand and challenge how we think about “land” and “landscape” in our contemporary moment. Engaging diverse multigenerational perspectives and creative practices, this publication launches an expanded narrative around land and art that strongly positions women in the canon of American landscape art. It includes a deep look at the nineteenth-century landscape painter conversation with artists working today. For the first time, the nineteenth-century landscape painter Susie Barstow is given a solo exhibition and an in-depth publication. Well known during her lifetime, Barstow was written out of art history, but this book, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name, illuminates the significant accomplishments of the artist, and in doing so redefines the history of the Hudson River School. This book further explores how artists working today continue to engage landscape using multi-disciplinary artistic practices and diverse critical perspectives, that at times challenge art and historical narratives. Artists such as Ebony G. Patterson, Mary Mattingly, Tanya Marcuse, Anna Plesset, Wendy Red Star, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Kay WalkingStick, Saya Woolfalk, Cecilia Vicuña, and others, complicate and redefine how we now understand land through art.

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Book SynopsisIllustrious turning point – Augsburg as the centre of the German Renaissance. Hans Holbein the Elder and Hans Burgkmair are regarded alongside Albrecht Dürer as the forerunners of Renaissance painting in Germany. The prosperous Imperial and trading city of Augsburg was an important centre during this artistic golden age. By means of high-quality works this volume presents a comprehensive insight into the epochal revolution from the Middle Ages to the modern age. Augsburg was influenced by the humanist culture of Italy from an early stage. Thanks to the art-loving trading houses with international operations like the Fuggers, as well as the long sojourns of Emperor Maximilian I and the frequent Imperial diets, the city offered artists like Holbein the Elder and Burgkmair an ideal setting for the development of a new form of art. Together with the works of Dürer, Holbein the Younger and others, many of their most important works bear witness to the highly fertile and yet contrasting ways in which the two artists adopted the Italian Renaissance.

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Book SynopsisThis book presents the work of Ceija Stojka (1933 2013), an Austrian Romni writer, painter, activist, and musician, and survivor of the Holocaust. Beginning in the 1980s, Stojka created over a thousand drawings and paintings, whose subjects range from landscapes and recollections of her happy, prewar existence as part of a large horse-trading family to the mounting oppression of the Roma under the Nazi regime. Having survived the three concentration camps Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz as a child, Stojka left behind an oeuvre depicting her personal experience of arrests, exterminations, survival, and liberation, which was shared by millions. This book serves as an extension of the comprehensive Ceija Stojka exhibition that is hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York between May and September 2023.

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Book SynopsisMax Beckmann (1884–1950), the outstanding Expressionist painter, is regarded as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. His works, jostling with figures and full of colour, are packed with highly symbolic messages. They are critical of the times in which he lived and bear witness to Beckmann’s struggle with existential questions and his constant search for truth. Max Beckmann is one of the most fascinating painters of the modern age, who more than almost any other reflected the social upheavals of his time, not only in his numerous works but also and not least through his extensive correspondence and diaries. He was an observer, a gentleman, a loner and a reflective witness of his age. Perpetually searching for truth, he was a self-critical witness of the times in which he lived. It is especially in his expressive self-portraits that we believe we can get closer to Beckmann’s multi-faceted nature and hence become better able to understand the wide range of metaphors in his multi-faceted oeuvre. This volume by one of the most illustrious Beckmann specialists, Dr. Christiane Zeiller, traces his artistic career and the principal stations of his life, from the years in Berlin and Frankfurt via his exile in Amsterdam und America. The unique Max Beckmann Archives, with its wide-ranging legacy, are currently housed in the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen in Munich. Material which has not previously been published will be shown in the publication, including private photos and objects from amongst the artist’s personal possessions.

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Book SynopsisArt collector, patron and arbiter Hanna Bekker vom Rath (18931983) was a trailblazer for the artistic avant-garde and one of the most important female personalities in Germany during the pre-war and post-war modern periods. She was a friend of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Alexej von Jawlensky, Ida Kerkorius and Paul Klee. This lavishly illustrated volume provides a lively picture of a remarkable woman. A refuge for modernism Hanna Bekker vom Rath promoted the art of the Brücke artists and the avant-garde in a variety of ways. Even during the National Socialist era her Blue House in Hofheim served as an intimate space for exchanges and exhibitions for the artists who were her friends. After the war she founded the Kunstkabinett in Frankfurt, the city's first postwar gallery, and she undertook numerous international journeys on behalf of modern art. The texts and images sketch a multi-faceted portrait of an ambassador of art and document the influence of her achievements.

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Book SynopsisKatharina Beisiegel is a curator for modern art and has been the director of the Kirchner Museum in Davos since 2021.Rajka Knipper is the head of collections and deputy director of the Buchheim Museum der Phantasie in Bernried am Starnberger See.Werner Murrer is a frame expert and a specialist for Expressionist frames.

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Book SynopsisThe rare story of creative collaboration between two renowned artists, David Hockney and James Sellars. Haplomatics is an animated techno-fantasy that combines original text and music by the American composer James Sellars with xerographs by the British artist David Hockney. Their collaboration has not previously been detailed and the unique combination of text-music-image that culminated in Haplomatics deserves closer attention. Their experimentations coalesced into a collaborative work of extraordinary proportions. A companion to the exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art, this book provides insight and access to a rare yet significant work. In addition to reproducing the Hockney Haplomes and the full text of Haplomatics, the book offers a detailed chronicle of the collaboration between Sellars and Hockney and describes the intersectional ties that exist between the text, music, images and the animated video.

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Book SynopsisMichael Duncan is an independent curator based in Los Angeles. He is also the author of Advance of the Rear Guard. Ceeje Gallery: Out of the Mainstream in 1960s California (Hirmer Publishers, 2023).

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Book SynopsisFrances Stark deftly deploys text, image and literary sources in her drawings, collages, paintings and video works that reflect on her roles as artist, mother, woman and teacher. Throughout her career she has experimented with alternative modes of expression, as in her critically acclaimed video, My Best Thing; her PowerPoint work Structures that fit my opening (and other parts considered in relation to their whole); and the performance Put a Song in Your Thing. Companion to an exhibition that documents Stark's 25-year long career, this book contains 125 works in which Stark employs words and images to create provocative and self-referential works that speak to the complexities of daily life. This book includes full-page detailed images that provide an insight into the highly tactile and complex nature of Stark's work. Also included are newly commissioned essays and a collection of brief reflections by a variety of prominent artists and writers whom Stark asked to revisit specific topics they've discussed or written about previously.Filled with high-quality reproductions and thoughtful commentary, this book is the definitive resource on Stark's accomplished, varied and affecting body of work. Published in association with Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

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Book SynopsisBrimming with stunning reproductions and illuminating texts, this handy and accessible book is the perfect introduction to one of European modern art's most important movements. Founded in Munich in 1911, the Blue Rider Group was a revolutionary collective of artists that pioneered German Expressionism. Including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Natalia Goncharova, Gabriele Munter, and Marianne von Werefkin, the group rejected the prevailing formal and academic artistic trends of their time, sought to break free from the constraints of traditional painting, transcend the material world, and explore emotional and spiritual truths in their art. This book spotlights 35 important works that embody the artists' pioneering achievements and radical innovations. It features stunning reproductions that highlight the movement's use of luminous colors, symbolic forms, and expressive brushwork.

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Book SynopsisThis dazzling book showcases the history of modern and contemporary art using one hundred of the most significant art works--one per year--of the past 100 years. Starting with Marcel Duchamp's 1919 whimsical, brilliant L.H.O.O.Q., this compendium offers a year-by-year tour of iconic paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, and performance pieces from all over the world. The works are carefully selected to showcase a diverse range of artists. Read from cover to cover, this volume offers an evocative summary of stylistic trends, historic events, and technological innovations that changed art over the past 100 years. Opening the book to any random page will illuminate a singular perspective and aesthetic delight. Each work is impeccably reproduced and presented in double-page spreads alongside informative and engaging texts. From Georgia O'Keeffe and Man Ray to Kara Walker and Ai Weiwei, this unique survey will both satisfy and surprise art lovers everywhere.

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Book SynopsisIn the latter half of the 19th century, in the verdant countryside near Aix-en-Provence, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), busily plied his brush to landscapes and still lifes that would become anchors of modern art. With compact, intense dabs of paint and bold new approaches to light and space, he mediated the way from Impressionism to the defining movements of the early 20th century and became, in the words of both Matisse and Picasso, “father of us all.” This fresh artist introduction selects key works from Cézanne’s oeuvre to understand his development, innovation, and crucial influence on modern art. From compositions of fruits and pears to scenes of outdoor bathers, we trace his experimentation with color, perspective, and texture to evoke “a harmony parallel to Nature,” as well as the very process of seeing and recording. Along the way, we discover Cézanne’s celebrated Card Players, his layering of warm and cool hues to build up form and surface, and the geometric rigor of his landscapes from the vicinity of Aix-en-Provence, as bright with the light of southern France as they are bold with a radical new rendering of dimensions and depth.

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Book SynopsisMichelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of the Italian Baroque, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial, violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. Though famed for his dramatic use of color, light, and shadow, it was above all Caravaggio’s boundary-breaking naturalism which scorched his name into the annals of art history. From the dirtied soles of feet to the sexualized languor of bare flesh, the artist allowed even sacred and biblical scenes to unfold with a startling, often visceral humanity. This vivid pictorial world was accompanied by an equally intense personal biography, scored by gambling, debts, drunken brawls, and even a murder charge. This book brings together more than 50 of Caravaggio’s most famous and revolutionary works to explore how and why this artist is now considered the most important painter of the early Baroque period and one of the defining influences of art history, without whom Ribera, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet could never have painted the way they did.

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Book SynopsisThe Case Study House program (1945-1966) was a unique event in the history of American architecture. Sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, the program sought to respond to the postwar building boom with prototype modern homes that could be both easily replicated and readily affordable to the average American. Concentrated on the Los Angeles area, the Case Study Houses included 36 model homes commissioned from such major architects of the day as Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Eero Saarinen, A. Quincy Jones, and Ralph Rapson. Their criteria included "using, as far as is practicable, many war-born techniques and materials best suited to the expression of man's life in the modern world." The results of the program would redefine the modern home and extend influence not only across the United States but around the world. This compact guide includes all of the Case Study Houses with over 150 photos and plans, as well as a map showing locations of all sites, including those that no longer exist.

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Book SynopsisClothes define people. A person’s attire, whether it be a sari, kimono, or business suit, is an essential code to his or her culture, class, personality, even faith. Indeed, clothing has the power to define people and their generation. Recognizing this sartorial significance is the Kyoto Costume Institute, whose team of curators examine fashion through sociological, historical, and artistic perspectives. With one of the world’s most extensive clothing collections, the KCI has amassed a wide range of historical garments, including underwear, shoes, and fashion accessories dating from the 18th century to the present day. Showcasing the Institute’s vast collection, Fashion History is a fascinating excursion through clothing trends from the 18th to the 20th century. With photographs of clothing displayed on custom-made mannequins and commentary from some of the sharpest minds in fashion studies, the book is a testimony to attire as “an essential manifestation of our very being” and to the Institute’s passion for fashion as a complex and intricate art form.

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