Individual artists, art monographs Books

Book SynopsisAlthough he never studied at the Royal College of Art, Antony Donaldson's friendships with RCA students Patrick Caulfield, Allen Jones and Peter Phillips put him firmly in the vanguard of the Pop Art movement in London in the 1960s. Born in 1939, Donaldson was chosen in 1964 for the landmark New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery which included Allen Jones and David Hockney and he became the first Pop Artist to sell his work to the Tate. Like Hockney, Donaldson dreamed of a quiet and relaxed life in southern California and moved to Los Angeles between 1966 and 1968, where he painted daringly simple compositions using saturated colour and sensual forms. In later years Donaldson took up sculpture in a variety of media; his most famous piece is the giant Buddha-like head of Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Suspense, in the courtyard of the Gainsborough Film Studios in London. This monograph includes an illustrated chronology, an exhibition checklist and a bibliography

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Book SynopsisJohn Leslie Breck (1860-1899) was one of the founders of the American art colony at Giverny and was among the earliest American artists to embrace the Impressionist style. He was also one of the first to exhibit his Impressionist paintings in America and helped to popularize the style during his years working in the Boston area in the 1890s. Between 1887 and 1888 he and a handful of his American colleagues began visiting the French village of Giverny, where they met Claude Monet and subsequently explored the new approach to painting that Monet had helped to pioneer. Breck's canvases from this period, loosely brushed and filled with light and color, are a marked departure from his earlier works that are characterized by darker tonalities and tighter brushwork that typified the preferred style of the era. When Breck returned to America in 1892, he applied what he had learned to paintings of the New England landscape and frequently exhibited his work. Inspired by The Mint Museum's 2016 acquisition of John Leslie Breck's canvas Suzanne Hoschede-Monet Sewing, this volume includes approximately 70 of Breck's finest works, drawn from public and private collections. Along with his scenes of Giverny and America, this volume features a selection of paintings from his sojourn in Venice in 1897. Always interested exploring in new ways of seeing the world, Breck had begun to explore aspects of post-Impressionism and Asian aesthetics in the years before his early death, at the age of 39, in 1899. This volume also features up to 36 additional comparative images, including details, photographs, and paintings by Monet and other leading American impressionists including Willard Metcalf, Theodore Robinson, Lila Cabot Perry, Childe Hassam, and Arthur Wesley Dow, presented throughout the main essays and chronology and appendices.Trade Review"This is the book every artist deserves. It is exemplary in the way it illustrates all of Breck's outstanding works, gives us a much-needed, detailed account of his life in Giverny including his relationship to Monet and his step-daughters, explains his family and his ties to Boston, expands our knowledge by illustrating his work in Venice, Santa Barbara, and Gloucester, and forthrightly examines his good times and his troubled ones." Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., formerly curator of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Harvard Art Museums. "John Leslie Breck: American Impressionist is a revelation. Never before have so many of Breck's finest paintings been seen together. It's a must for anyone who loves Impressionism." George T.M. Shackelford, Deputy Director, Kimbell Art MuseumTable of ContentsSponsor’s Statement by Charles Bowman; Lenders; Foreword by Todd A. Herman; Acknowledgments by Jonathan Stuhlman; John Leslie Breck and American Impressionism: An Introspective Historiography by Erica E. Hirshler; John Leslie Breck His Life and Career by Royal W. Leith and Jeffrey R. Brown; Artistic Beginnings in Giverny by Katherine Bourguignon; The Exhibition That Never Was: John Leslie Breck’s Paintings of Venice by Royal W. Leith; “A Great Genius,” Yet a Man Apart: John Leslie Breck in Context by Jonathan Stuhlman; Appendix 1 A Week in Giverny: July 1888 by Royal W. Leith; Appendix 2 Song Lyrics by John Leslie Breck; Appendix 3 The Day: On Seeing John Leslie Breck’s "Studies of an Autumn Day” A Poem by Edward Breck; Chronology by Jeffrey R. Brown and Royal W. Leith; Exhibition History by Jeffrey R. Brown and Royal W. Leith; Exhibition Checklist; Index; Photo Credits

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Book SynopsisClaude Monet’s Vétheuil in Winter (1878-79), painted during the artist’s first winter in the village, depicts his new home on the Seine, seen from the opposite bank of the river. Monet’s two and a half years in Vétheuil, a small farming community northwest of Paris, saw two severe winters, the inspiration for this impressionist masterpiece, which is the subject of this ninth volume in the Frick Diptych series. Susan Grace Galassi has written an insightful and engaging essay about Monet’s difficult but productive time in Vétheuil, which saw the death of his wife Camille. The Frick's Monet painting, the only work by the artist in the collection is the basis for other significant canvases made during his stay in the village in both winter and summer. Galassi's essay is accompanied by a text and intriguing new work—Colour experiment no. 109—by the artist Olafur Eliasson, created in response to the Monet painting. Eliasson’s work will be shown at the Frick next to the painting that inspired it.Table of ContentsDirector’s Foreword by Ian Wardropper, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director, The Frick Collection; Acknowledgments; A Space without Beginning and End by Olafur Eliasson; Frozen Splendor: Claude Monet’s Vétheuil in Winter by Susan Grace Galassi; Bibliography Index; Image Credits

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Book SynopsisThe depth of history at Queen Anne’s Gate – a handsome Baroque street overlooking St James’s Park – is unusual even in London, and few houses resonate with more memories than the extraordinary number 14. The story of the house over the centuries features political revolutionaries, occult initiations, clandestine war meetings, and a decapitated head. It begins, however, as a museum of Roman sculpture, unrivalled outside Italy, designed for connoisseur and virtuoso Charles Townley (1737–1805). Townley embodied Enlightenment values perhaps more completely than any other figure in the art world of 18th-century Britain – his portrait by Johann Zoff any (seen above) is one of the iconic paintings of the period – yet remarkably he has never been the subject of a major publication. Written with a sparkle matching Townley’s own enthusiasm, this beautiful and engaging publication tells the story of 14 Queen Anne’s Gate and examines the extraordinary life of Charles Townley and his remarkable collection of over 150 Roman marble statues (mostly now in the British Museum but captured in spectacular engravings of the period). It will be a revelation. The house was designed as a temple to the past, reviving in the modern city the occult practices of the ancient world. Here visitors in eighteenth century would have found an assembly of Roman sculpture unrivalled outside Italy, as well as a library and collection devoted to understanding a universal ‘generative sprit’ worshipped by early civilizations. That spirit may be found in the succession of major roles the house has continued to take through generations of dramatic change up to the present day. Charles Townley, for whom the house was built, was a fi gure both marginal and emblematic. Catholic and bisexual, he forged a life literally on the borders of the Protestant British establishment. He remains little understood or appreciated in his homeland and, remarkably, has never been the subject of a major exhibition or publication. The ‘emblematic’ side of Townley’s life was dedicated to virtù, the term used for an appreciation of fi ne art pursued for its own sake. The ‘marginal’ side of Townley, by contrast, manifested itself in a fascination with the ancient occult, particularly the Bacchic mysteries. The house he made for himself was at once a temple to virtù and to Bacchus and contained an unprecedented programme of Bacchic iconography.

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Book SynopsisLoves Moodsis a beautifully produced catalogue showcasing a captivating new sub-series within Damien Hirst's butterfly gloss paintings. Featuring all 100 works in the series, none of which have been exhibited publicly, the book offers a visual exploration of colour, emotion and connection. In each painting, two colours blend, meet or collide at the centre of the canvas. These interactions sometimes harmonious, sometimes jarring mirror the volatile oscillations of love. The series represents a progressive exploration of Hirst's iconic butterfly motif, a symbol he has long associated with themes of transformation, life and death. The introductory essay discusses the historical use of butterflies in art and their significance in Hirst's oeuvre, while also delving into how the Loves Moods paintingsreflect on the art of loving, solitude and relationships.

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Book SynopsisIn answering the question posed by its title, and drawing on his twenty year relationship with the artists, Michael Bracewell is the first writer to engage directly with Gilbert & George to understand why they have devoted their lives exclusively and continuously - to the vision of art they conceived within months of first meeting. What emerges piece by piece is a portrait of Gilbert & George as two men who are infinitely more intense, strange, determined and alone than their longstanding public image suggests.

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Book SynopsisThis new title celebrates 50 years of the creative force of nature that is the artistic partnership of Gilbert & George. Published in cooperation with the LUMA Foundation in Arles, France, on the occasion of their retrospective exhibition on show from 2 July to 23 September 2018. The book will feature five interviews with Gilbert & George by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum, one for each decade of their practice. This title will be heavily illustrated with examples of Gilbert & George's artworks from their early years to their most recent series. Designed by Gilbert & George themselves, The Great Exhibition will feature their trademark style and panache. Introduced by a text co-authored by Obrist and Birnbaum, this publication will also feature several extracts from Michael Bracewell's 2017 publication What is Gilbert & George?. All text will be presented in both French and English.

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Book SynopsisAn epistolary collection of paintings by French painter and philosopher Eugenie Paultre, Matter of Life is a diaristic account of the artist's six-month residency at Damien Hirst's workshop where she discovered and documented new possibilities in her painting, as well as a more profound connection to the work of her host.

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Book SynopsisFollowing the success of Writings on Art 1980–2005, HENI presents the highly anticipated final volume to complete a two-volume collection of writings on art by Robert Storr, one of the world’s leading art critics and curators. Featuring the best of Storr’s criticism – reviews, essays, articles, many of which previously unpublished – from 2006 to the present day, the book includes his texts on artists such as Gego, Carrie Mae Weems, David Hammons, Jenny Holzer, Jasper Johns, Gerhard Richter, El Anatsui and Francesco Clemente. Written with his signature intellect and wit, his writings range from essays on performances of femininity in Cindy Sherman’s photographic oeuvre to dialectics of race in the work of Kara Walker. Expertly curated from his prolific output, and illustrated with 175 images to accompany 51 texts, Writings on Art is the definitive collection of Storr’s multi-faceted writing with his finger on the pulse of contemporary art – a must-read for curators and students, artists, exhibition-goers and all those interested in the art and culture of today.

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Book SynopsisMadC: Street to Canvas is the first monograph on the world-renowned contemporary artist and muralist MadC (Claudia Walde), whose practice moves dynamically between the street and the studio to capture the energy of painting and test the heights of its possibility. For more than two decades – from her beginnings in the 1990s as a graffiti artist in the local scene of Bautzen in east Germany to largescale public murals on an international level – MadC has captivated global audiences with her distinctive style, characterised by abstract compositions of bold, sweeping lines and transparent layers of vivid colours. Writer and curator Luisa Heese charts the artist’s career, exploring MadC’s immense body of work in locations across more than 35 countries. Over 200 artworks and personal photographs illustrate the book, showcasing her unique use of colour and the spontaneous movement of lines produced by spray cans and brushstrokes. From street to canvas, MadC adorns each surface with a vivacity that surpasses cultural barriers. Traversing private and public spaces, her work constantly blurs the lines between street art and fine art. What is revealed is the potential for art to be an inclusive and universal language to connect and inspire people and communities around the world.

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Book SynopsisThis fascinating volume showcases the work of British artist, poet and performer Liz Finch and presents a series of 25 sculptures created between 1975 and 2016. The gentle figures are strangely familiar, built using found and made objects that might otherwise be discarded. Knitted limbs and faces with stitched or collaged features are affixed to torsos made from cardboard boxes that are plastered with papier-mâché and painted. The fragile bodies are then suspended on pieces of frayed string and twisted wire from the shoulders or sometimes by the neck. Finch subverts the ordinary and engages with the uncanny; a strange and anxious feeling created by familiar objects in unfamiliar contexts. Featuring full reproductions of each artwork alongside close details that reveal their composition, the book is threaded with poetic texts by Finch that blur the lines between personal memories, surreal dreams and everyday reality.

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Book SynopsisOriginally a film by British avant-garde filmmaker Nichola Bruce, The Romance of Bricks is a portrait of the artist Liz Finch: a British painter, performer and poet. From her life-changing accident and rural solitude to the mad social whirl of 80s London anarchic performances and up to the present day, The Romance of Bricks sews together archival film over many years to produce an intriguing glimpse into the private world of the artist. Featuring commentary from Jools Holland, Christine Binnie, Jennifer Binnie, John Finch, Brian Clarke, Aubrey Fabing, Richard Strange, Nicola Bateman Bowery, Francesco Brusatin and Martin Harrison alongside an intimate dialogue with the artist herself.

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Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive collection of Annette Messager’s drawings, including 150 works made over the last ten years, which constitute an invaluable lexicon to the mind and work of a trailblazing iconoclast. Messager redefined the role of women making art and the very nature of sculpture – accomplishments which won her the coveted Golden Lion for best national pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 and the Praemium Imperiale for sculpture in 2016. Messager’s subjects range from animal to human, feminist activists to devotional figures, skeletons to ghosts. She broaches the grand themes of love, life, death and the fairy tales, mythologies, superstitions and vanities that lie beneath.

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Book SynopsisBetween 2006 and 2020, French photographer and artist Bruno Serralongue conducted a prolonged engagement with the community of refugees on their last stop in a long journey to reach England. The resulting photographs, which formed the basis for an exhibition at Paris’s Centre Pompidou in 2019, are published here for the first time. Serralongue captured disparate moments in the lives of the exiles, their attempts to reach England and their provisional camps which were dismantled by the French government in 2020. Serralongue’s images employ a suspended temporality that contradicts the sensationalised images broadcast by the mass media, recalling the visual traditions of history painting more than photojournalism. The slowness of his photography, a characteristic of working with a view camera, requires both a distance from, and a proximity with, the subjects photographed, achievable only due to a relationship of trust built with the inhabitants of the ‘Jungle’.

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Book SynopsisPaolozzi at Large in Edinburgh is an art book introducing the Scottish-Italian artist, Eduardo Paolozzi, to as wide an audience as possible: his pan-European vision; his eclecticism; his hybrid identity; his erudition; his modernity. This book focuses on twelve pieces of Paolozzi’s work – his major pieces in Edinburgh, the city where he was raised. Paolozzi’s work was often informed by his voracious reading and he used text in his creations. Each piece will therefore also be linked to a response poem by the former Edinburgh Makar, Christine De Luca.Trade ReviewThis celebration of Eduardo Paolozzi s works in Edinburgh through the evocative poetry of Christine de Luca has brought together many people who either knew or are inspired by the artist. It is a project he would have loved... FIONA PEARSONEduardo Paolozzi was a ‘one off’ … As someone who has been involved in the acknowledgement of his genius, I can say that I, myself, have been provided with proof that his art is a source of inspiration. RICHARD DEMARCOI like to think of Eduardo Paolozzi as a magician who transformed the detritus of contemporary life into artistic gold. The sheer breadth of his imagination and invention continues to inspire both artists and the general public alike. SIR JOHN LEIGHTON Director-General of the National Galleries of ScotlandThis wonderful collection of creative responses to Paolozzi’s public work around Edinburgh celebrates his deep connection with the City and will inspire citizens and visitors alike to see his work afresh. PROF DOROTHY MIELL Vice Principal and Head of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of EdinburghThrough textile design and collage, from sculpture to print, the work of Eduardo Paolozzi remains as potent to me today as it was when I first saw it some fifty years ago. ARTHUR WATSON President of the Royal Scottish Academy

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Book SynopsisHelen Bellany, twice married to the artist John Bellany, recalls their lives together in Scotland, London, and Italy, John's rise from poverty and obscurity to worldwide recognition, and the human cost inherent in creating great art. The sea was in both their hearts and in John's work from its earliest stages. From there, he deepened into a profound exploration of the human condition. The Restless Wave reflects the mystery, poetry and passion that was at the core of the inner life John and Helen shared. The couple had great friendships with such fellow artists as David Bowie, and John painted such internationally known figures as Billy Connelly, Sean Connery and Peter Maxwell Davis, as well as many portraits of his muse, Helen.Trade Review`Immediate, full of emotion.'-The Scottish Review of Books; `Bellany's life and art constitute a saga worthy of his seafaring ancestors. He could not have succeeded without Helen, as this book shows and both knew from the outset of their momentous voyage together.'-The Spectator; `In an effortless style, Bellany lays bare the imperfections of their relationship, capturing both testing times and happy memories. An honest and enthralling read.'-Scottish Field; `A marvelously tender biography.'-Fiona Green, The Islington Tribune; `Compelling ... a beautifully told tale of a remarkable man by a remarkable woman.'-Joan Bakewell; `The book is as much about [John] as it is about Helen, but she writes with great candour and without self-pity. Just by telling the story, she makes clear how much we owe to her for the gift of John's art.'-Duncan Macmillan, Scotland on Sunday; `The Restless Wave is a remarkable book, and deserves to be widely read. It is also, at approaching 400 pages, the longest love letter we've ever read: but so easy and rewarding to read at the same time.'-Undiscovered Scotland; `A touching (written) portrait of one of Scotland's great artists, and life as his muse.'-Bookseller review, Waterstones Sauchiehall Street; `One of the best biographies I've ever read.'-Dennis Canavan

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Book SynopsisA detailed examination of the motivations and precise coordinates of Duchamp''s break from painting into the field of the linguistic sign.Matisse and Duchamp seem to incarnate ideal poles of the tension internal to modern art as it plunged into crisis the idea of the image—a polemical operation that opened the way to contemporary art''s auto-problematization of experimental constructivism. Where Matisse subverted the aesthetic regime by bringing painting out of itself to invest its environment in a Bergsonian energetics of color, Duchamp cuts it off from the plastic arts through a reversal of Bergson''s in-the-making. The readymade captures a literalized signifier of this perspective. Duchamp Looked At is an extraordinarily rich philosophical study that offers a startling new account of the dis/continuity between the problems of contemporary art and the new articulations Duchamp fabricated between image and idea, science and art, painting and language. Alliez and Bonne''s meticulous archaeological survey rediscovers the real problems and motivations of “Duchamp-thought” through a close analysis of his entire oeuvre: from the Nudes in which the problem of representing movement is gradually displaced into the realm of the virtual, the image disqualified in favor of the diagram, to the pataphysical sciences of chance and the particular, the readymades, the Large Glass and Étant donnés—and beyond, as the artist carbonizes the gallery with 1200 Sacks of Coal and ties it up with Miles of String, in installations that take Duchamp beyond Duchamp.

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Book SynopsisA major figure in the Arte Povera movement of the late 1960s, the renowned Italian artist Giuseppe Penone is known for his exploration of the relationship between art and the natural world in a body of work that includes sculpture, performance, works on paper, and even garden design. His first works in porcelain, the exquisite disks presented here draw attention to the moment of touch—the convergence of surface and skin—that underpins so much of his work. Published to accompany The Frick Collection, New York’s temporary installation of works by Penone, this new volume comprises eleven porcelain disks that the artist made during his 2013 residency at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, the influential porcelain factory founded in the 18th century. A continuation of his Propagazioni (Propagations) series, begun in 1995, which includes various media, each disk bears the imprint of one of the artist’s fingertips. One of them is in gold, its imprint a variation on the artist’s index finger. Never before presented to the public, the installation of the disks in a gallery adjacent to the Frick’s early Italian paintings on gold grounds and the porcelain room kindles a rich artistic dialogue with both porcelain and gold.Table of ContentsDirector’s Foreword by Ian Wardropper; Introduction: “But there on the shining shield”: Giuseppe Penone’s Propagazioni at the Frick by Xavier F. Salomon; Propagazioni in Porcelain: Ripples of Thought after a conversation with Giuseppe Penone by Giulio Dalvit; Installation; Bibliography

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Book SynopsisArthur Szyk (pronounced “Shick”) was born in Łód´z, Poland, in 1894 and died in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1951. He was considered the greatest miniaturist and painter-illuminator of his era, and the leading political artist in America during World War II. He was internationally recognized and celebrated, and his works of art continue to be exhibited worldwide. This catalogue of institutional holdings of Arthur Szyk’s art was created to provide the best jumping off point for those interested in surveying his originals for the purpose of research, scholarship, and curatorial possibilities. Arthur Szyk Preserved illustrates where Szyk’s work can be found today. Ultimately, this catalogue recognizes and celebrates the public institutions that serve as vital caretakers of Arthur Szyk’s art and legacy. It is hoped that this publication will encourage them to more fully promote public awareness of Szyk’s art and the breadth and beauty of his works in multiple and creative ways.Table of ContentsArthur Szyk Biography; Preface; The Guarantors of Arthur Szyk’s Legacy; Catalogue of Institutional Holdings by Title, Place, and Date; Appendix A: Three-dimensional Art Designed by Arthur Szyk for Institutions; Appendix B: Arthur Szyk Archives; Appendix C: Timeline; Appendix D: Places Szyk Lived and Worked; Appendix E: Selected Resources; Appendix F: The Compilers

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Book SynopsisThis pastel belongs to a small number of works of art at the Frick by a female artist. Rosalba Carriera (Italian, 1673 1757) spent most of her life in Venice, then a popular destination for young aristocrats from all over Europe undertaking the Grand Tour-a tour of the continent that served as an educational rite of passage into adulthood. Many of these travelers would go to Rosalba's studio to have a portrait painted, and Rosalba, who began her career as a miniaturist painter in Venice, became internationally acclaimed. Rosalba's pastels are technically innovative, remarkable for their soft edges and sumptuous effects. By binding colored chalk into sticks, she obtained a much wider range of prepared colors, which ultimately expanded the visual possibilities of this medium. Little is known about this portrait, painted about 1730. Despite the fragility of the medium-pastel-it is in pristine condition. The portrayal of the man as a pilgrim, with a black cape and holding a staff, may indicate that he was a member of the Pellegrini family-pellegrini being the Italian word for pilgrims-or that he is someone who traveled on a pilgrimage. More likely, however, his attire is simply a costume related to the Venetian Carnival. Designed to foster critical engagement and interest specialist and non-specialist alike, each book in the Frick Diptych series illuminates a single work in the Frick's rich collection with an essay by a Frick curator paired with a contribution from a contemporary artist or writer. AUTHORS: Born in Lausanne in 1980, Nicolas Party is a figurative painter who has achieved critical admiration for his familiar yet unsettling landscapes, portraits, and still lifes that simultaneously celebrate and challenge conventions of representational painting. His works are primarily created in soft pastel, an idiosyncratic choice of medium in the 21st-century, and one that allows for exceptional degrees of intensity and fluidity in his depictions of objects both natural and manmade. Xavier F. Salomon is deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, The Frick Collection, New York. SELLING POINTS: . New volume in the best selling Frick Diptych series that began with Holbein's Sir Thomas More by Hilary Mantel . Volume 13 focuses on an exquisite eighteenth-century Italian portrait 45 colour illustrationsTable of ContentsDirector’s Foreword by Ian Wardropper; Acknowledgments; Mask of Dust by Nicolas Party; Rosalba’s Man in Pilgrim’s Costume by Xavier F. Salomon; Bibliography; Index; Image Credits.

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Book SynopsisNew volume in the Frick Diptych series features an illuminating essay by Frick deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon paired with a text by award-winning author Hisham Matar.

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Book SynopsisSunday Suns is the weekly project of American designer Tad Capenter, who has taken on the simple of task of designing, illustrating, scuplting, modelling, making, stitching or creating a sun every Sunday.

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Book SynopsisFeaturing iconic Chicago underground poster artist Jay Ryan's 120 favourite pieces of art from the last three years.

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Book SynopsisPublished to coincide with an exhibition organized by Bob Nickas, on view at David Zwirner, New York (February 19 – March 23, 2013). Uglow quickly gained a reputation as an “artist’s artist.” Working in series that evolved slowly over decades, he always remained faithful to his central vision and his practice was unaffected by the increasingly commercial demands of the art scene in the 1980s and 1990s. His paintings revolve around a subtle dialogue between notions of center and edge, and are executed gradually, with several layers of paint. They appear at once calm and dynamic, and simultaneously suggest emptiness and ground.

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Book SynopsisJohn McCracken (1934–2011) occupies a singular position within the recent history of American art, as his work melds the restrained formal qualities of Minimalist sculpture with a distinctly West Coast sensibility expressed through colour, form and finish. He developed his early sculptural work while studying painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While experimenting with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, the artist began to produce objects made with industrial materials, including plywood, sprayed lacquer and pigmented resin, creating the highly reflective, smooth surfaces that he was to become known for. This catalogue charts the evolution of McCracken’s diverse oeuvre, encompassing both well-known and lesser-seen examples of the artist’s production from the early 1960s up through his death in 2011, presenting a range of sculptures, paintings and sketches.

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Book SynopsisStitches and sutures: tracing the body and landscape in Troy Montes-Michie's collages To tailor a garment by “rock of eye” is to rely on the drape—on experience over mathematical measurement—in the fitting process. It is a kind of drawing in space—a freehand, an intuition, a trust of materials. Rock of Eye, published on the occasion of Troy Montes-Michie’s (born 1985) solo exhibition at the California African American Museum, is a collection of the artist’s collages, drawings, and found and woven images sourced from vintage erotic magazines, French tailoring magazines, found photographs and other materials. These materials are familiar from Montes-Michie’s recent large-scale paintings and collages that center on the Black male body and his series that traces the social history and form of the zoot suit. Troy Montes-Michie was born in El Paso and his practice reflects his experience growing up along the US/Mexico border. This book is a study in ambiguity between portraiture and landscape; his are the cuts and folds of patterning and mapping. In Rock of Eye, Montes-Michie’s stitches suture histories and geographies; they establish thresholds for crossing; his needle hits rock. Including essays by Tina Campt and editor Andrea Andersson, with an interview by Brent Edwards, Rock of Eye is a tactile and sensuous artist’s book recalling the form of fabric swatch books and affirming that collage is an art of selection.Trade ReviewBy painting clothes over these archival nude images, we see them intimately rather than explicitly, stepping away from the fetishized Black male body that had been left on display in the magazines they originated in. -- Adam Lee * Hyperallergic *Montes-Michie’s critical gestures of veiling are both protective and defiant. Desire isn’t banished from the frame, and this is the joyful knot of the work. He beholds his subjects with tenderness and dresses them in their rebellious threads. -- Laura Larson * Photo Eye *In the artist’s hands, the images’ sitters are rendered more complex through elisions and additions that cause them to double and seem slightly imperceptible. -- Alex Greenberger * ARTnews *Revels in contradiction, ambivalence, beauty, queerness, time, and place. -- Rasheeda Saka * Alta *

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Book SynopsisJulia Chiang's word and pattern based artwork has been exhibited across the world. Her deceptively simple yet precisely painted patterns are merged with poetic language to form the core of her exuberantly colourful work. This collection of her artwork was produced in conjunction with Chiang's summer 2013 exhibition in Tokyo and collects her abstract artwork and ceramics from 2011 to the present. This edition is accompanied by an introductory essay by Lumi Tan.

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Book SynopsisDuring the 1990s, Franz West’s work moved in new and innovative stylistic directions, as his career was solidified through important international exhibitions. This publication delves into this significant decade in an effort to contextualize the evolution of West’s singular practice. The 1990s proved critical in the development of the idiosyncratic style for which West is still known today. His key innovations from this period—which included the addition of exuberant color to his papier-mâché forms, the incorporation of furniture both as art object and as social incubator, and the inclusion of work by other artists in his own installations—resulted in dynamic, frequently interactive installations that helped to expand the possibilities of sculpture and the ways in which art is experienced. Produced on the occasion of David Zwirner’s 2014 exhibition in New York, this fully illustrated publication gives an in-depth overview of the decade, arguably the most important of the artist’s lengthy career. It features essays by noted West scholars Eva Badura-Triska and Veit Loers, as well as a personal account by Bernhard Riff on video collaborations made with the artist throughout the 1990s.

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Book SynopsisOver five decades, Doug Wheeler has pioneered the art of light and space. His work powerfully explores the way we perceive “empty” space—the way light can affect our perception and make emptiness feel full and dense. From his early experiences flying across the desert with his father, a doctor in Globe, Arizona, Wheeler developed a passion for the intensity and stillness of vast expanses, seeing in them a whole new set of possibilities for visual art.Although Wheeler began his career as a painter, his wall-mounted artworks soon began incorporating light as a medium and quickly gave way to an unprecedented art-historical breakthrough: his construction of an absolute light environment, crafted in his studio in 1967. Since that unparalleled moment, Wheeler’s work has been exhibited widely all over the world; in the past decade, with numerous major gallery and museum installations, his reputation as the definitive light and space artist has been solidified. This volume, featuring new scholarship by renowned art historian Germano Celant, traces the entire course of Wheeler’s career to date, from his first mature paintings to his immersive installations. Writing on Wheeler’s intense and direct engagement with the absoluteness in the optical fields he creates, Celant provides a detailed account for Wheeler’s development as one of the most original and influential artists of his generation. Wheeler’s work not only changes how we encounter reality after we see it, but also how we envision what is possible more broadly in visual art.

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Book SynopsisKnown for her extensive body of intricate and dynamic wire sculptures, American sculptor, educator, and arts activist Ruth Asawa challenged conventional notions of material and form through her emphasis on lightness and transparency.Asawa began her now iconic looped-wire works in the late 1940s while still a student at Black Mountain College. Their unique structure was inspired by a 1947 trip to Mexico, during which local craftsmen taught her how to create baskets out of wire. While seemingly unrelated to the lessons of color and composition taught in Josef Albers’s legendary Basic Design course, these works, as she explained, are firmly grounded in his teachings in their use of unexpected materials and their elision of figure and ground. Presenting an important and timely overview of the artist’s work, this monograph brings together a broad selection of her sculptures, works on paper, and more. Together the body of work demonstrates the centrality of Asawa’s innovative practice to the art-historical legacy of the twentieth century. In addition to an incredible group of photographs of the artist and her work by Imogen Cunningham, a selection of rare archival materials will illustrate a chronology of the artist’s life and work. Featuring an extensive text by Tiffany Bell which explores the artist’s influences, history, and, most importantly, the work itself, as well as a significant essay by Robert Storr discussing Asawa’s work in relation to mid-twentieth century art history, culture, and scientific theory. 

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