Search results for ""Author Briony Fer""

An unprecedented look at the little-known paintings from Louise Bourgeois’s early years in New York that laid the groundwork for her sculptural practice “The catalog Louise Bourgeois: Paintings, and the revelatory exhibition, . . . were overseen by Clare Davies, who has commissioned an insightful essay from the art historian Briony Fer. But there’s another bonus: Beyond the paintings in the show, the catalog reproduces around 25 more, meaning that three-quarters of Bourgeois’s contribution to modern painting can now be seen in one place.”—Roberta Smith, New York Times, “Best Art Books of 2022” Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) is celebrated today for her sculptures. Less known are the paintings she produced between her arrival in New York in 1938 and her turn to three-dimensional media in 1949. Crucial to her artistic practice, these early works—the focus of this groundbreaking publication—show how Bourgeois evolved her deeply personal artistic lexicon, and how the themes and motifs she explored in her paintings coalesced into symbols of her sculptural practice. Informed by new archival research and the artist’s extensive diaries, Louise Bourgeois: Paintings explores Bourgeois’s relationship to the New York art world of the 1940s and her development of a unique pictorial language, adding a key element to our understanding of this crucial artist’s career. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (April 11–August 7, 2022) New Orleans Museum of Art (September 8, 2022–January 8, 2023)

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The artists featured in this book approach the inner self through a variety of media. The work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby comprises vibrantly patterned paintings on paper that negotiate the complex cultural terrain of a life formed between two worlds: her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria. Inspired by photography, fashion, architecture, and design, as well as her own family history, Akunyili Crosby’s works often feature domestic spaces that function as physical, conceptual, and emotional points of arrival and departure. Conversely, the Portuguese sculptor Leonor Antunes focuses on migration and the transformation of form and ideas beyond temporal and geographical spaces. The starting point for her elegant site-specific sculptures is the exploration of art, design, and architectural history. Adriana Varejão addresses the colonial history of Brazil in her visceral sculptures and paintings. She often deploys the motif of the wall, the boundary between inside and outside, in her work. The omnipresence of the past also colours the work of trained stage designer Henrike Naumann, whose immersive installations engage with the history of East-West German relations, as well as contemporary instances of right-wing ideology. Naumann explores the mechanisms of radicalisation and explores how they manifest themselves in space. Taken together, the works offer a radical and innovative formal language that positions interiority as both political and aesthetic.

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The beautiful catalogue that accompanies the critically-acclaimed exhibition currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum Best known for her striking drawings of ocean surfaces, begun in 1968 and revisited over many years both in drawings and paintings, Vija Celmins (b. 1938) has been creating exquisitely detailed renderings of natural imagery for more than five decades. The oceans were followed by desert floors and night skies—all subjects in which vast, expansive distances are distilled into luminous, meticulous, and mesmerizing small-scale artworks. For Celmins, this obsessive “redescribing” of the world is a way to understand human consciousness in relation to lived experience. The first major publication on the artist in twenty years, this comprehensive and lavishly illustrated volume explores the full range of Celmins’s work produced since the 1960s—drawings and paintings as well as sculpture and prints. Scholarly essays, a narrative chronology, and a selection of excerpts from interviews with the artist illuminate her methods and techniques; survey her early years in Los Angeles, where she was part of a circle that included James Turrell and Ken Price; and trace the development of her work after she moved to New York City and befriended figures such as Robert Gober and Richard Serra. Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtExhibition Schedule:San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (12/15/18–03/31/19)Art Gallery of Ontario (05/04/19–08/04/19)The Met Breuer, New York (09/24/19–01/12/20)

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A lavishly illustrated monograph that spans the entire career of Gerhard Richter, one of the most celebrated contemporary artists "Spans the contemporary German artist's six-decade career. . . . [A] stirring exhibition in [its] own right."—New York Times"[A] weighty catalogue... illuminat[es] some less-visited corners of Richter's oeuvre."—New York Review of Books Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post–Second World War Germany, in both broad and very personal terms. This handsomely designed book features approximately 100 of his key canvases, from photo paintings created in the early 1960s to portraits and later large-scale abstract series, as well as select works in glass. New essays by eminent scholars address a variety of themes: Sheena Wagstaff evaluates the conceptual import of the artist’s technique; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh discusses the poignant Birkenau paintings (2014); Peter Geimer explores the artist’s enduring interest in photographic imagery; Briony Fer looks at Richter’s family pictures against traditional painting genres and conventions; Brinda Kumar investigates the artist’s engagement with landscape as a site of memory; André Rottmann considers the impact of randomization and chance on Richter’s abstract works; and Hal Foster examines the glass and mirror works. As this book demonstrates, Richter’s rich and varied oeuvre is a testament to the continued relevance of painting in contemporary art.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:The Met Breuer, New York (March 4–July 5, 2020)Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (August 14, 2020–January 19, 2021)

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A comprehensive look at works made by Baldessari between the years 1987 and 1993 This handsome volume, the third of the John Baldessari (b. 1931) catalogue raisonné project, compiles 400-plus unique works of art made by the influential conceptual artist from 1987 through 1993. Here we see the artist’s large-scale photo-based works, many of which employed his signature colored discs painted over the faces of people in the photos, accompanied by entries that trace the shifts and developments in Baldessari’s work as his collaged photo narratives achieved maturity and mastery. A critical essay by Briony Fer provides a close reading of selected works, giving historical context for Baldessari’s art from this period. In addition to a detailed chronology, complete exhibition history, and bibliography, this volume notably features a previously unpublished conversation between Baldessari and the artist Ed Ruscha, which was undertaken specifically for this publication. In the conversation, the artists discuss their early careers in Southern California and the shared thematic concerns in their work. The artworks in this volume demonstrate Baldessari’s ability to express—and, in many cases, combine—the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language within the boundaries of a single piece. Published in association with Marian Goodman Gallery

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