The most comprehensive book yet published on the Canadian color-photography pioneer
Fred Herzog is best known for his unusual use of color photography in the 1950s and 1960s, a time when art photography was almost exclusively associated with black-and-white imagery. In this respect, his photographs can be seen as prefiguring the New Color photographers of the 1970s. The Canadian photographer worked largely with Kodachrome slide film for over 50 years, and only in the past decade has technology allowed him to make archival pigment prints that match the exceptional color and intensity of the Kodachrome slide, making this an excellent time to reevaluate and reexamine his work.
This book brings together over 230 images, many never before reproduced, and features essays by acclaimed authors David Campany, Hans-Michael Koetzle and artist Jeff Wall. Fred Herzog is the most comprehensive publication on this important photographer to date.The essential account of Albers' enormously influential proto-Minimalist series, featuring studies and archival materials
Made over the course of a quarter century between 1950 and his death in 1976, Josef Albers' groundbreaking series Homage to the Square comprises 2,000 oil paintings. His quest for continuous reflection and refinement inspired numerous young Minimalist and Conceptualist artists in their search for a reduced formal language. This outstanding volume explores the secrets of Albers' subtle aesthetic and the questions it poses: what is the significance of the square? How did Albers' thoughts on color and its use as a material evolve over this span?
Featuring studies on paper, archival materials and essays by Albers aficionados Margit Rowell and Donald Judd, among others, this richly illustrated publication sheds light on the various inspirations that influenced Albers early on in Europe and later in America, and illustrates the lasting impact of his art and thinking.
Josef Albers (1888-1976) laid the foundations for some of the most important art education programs of the 20th century. In 1936, during his time working at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, he had his first solo exhibition in New York at J.B. Neumann's New Art Circle. In 1949, Albers left the college and began the Homage to the Square series. He taught at various institutions throughout America, including Yale University. He died in 1976.
A new, comprehensive survey of Sugimoto's five-decade career, from grand dioramas and seascapes to eerie portraits of wax effigies and more
Through his expansive exploration of the possibilities of still images, Hiroshi Sugimoto has created some of the most alluringly enigmatic photographs of our time--pictures that are meticulously crafted and deeply thought-provoking, familiar yet tantalizingly ambiguous. Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine is a comprehensive survey of work produced over the past five decades, featuring selections from all of Sugimoto's major series, as well as lesser-known works that illuminate his innovative, conceptually driven approach to making pictures.
Texts by international writers, artists and scholars?including Geoffrey Batchen, Edmund de Waal, Mami Kataoka, Ralph Rugoff, Lara Strongman and Margaret Wertheim?highlight his work's philosophical yet playful inquiry into the nature of representation and art, our understanding of time and memory, and the paradoxical character of photography as a medium so well suited to both documenting and invention.
Hiroshi Sugimoto (born 1948) has exhibited extensively in major museums and galleries throughout the world, and his work is held in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; National Gallery, London; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Smithsonian, Washington, DC; and Tate, London, among others. Sugimoto divides his time between Tokyo and New York City.
A journey through Matisse's epoch-making practice, from his early Fauvist works to his brilliant cutouts
The volume is anchored by and named after Charles Baudelaire's 1857 poem Invitation to the Voyage, to which Matisse repeatedly referred in his lifetime. Following Baudelaire's poem, the book is thus conceived as a journey through the work and life of Matisse, in which travel played an important role.
Published alongside the Matisse retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler, this monograph sails across the many waves of the artist's practice. Beginning with his early paintings from around 1900, Invitation to the Voyage then carries the reader from his revolutionary Fauvist works of the 1910s to the sensual paintings of his Nice period in the 1930s and his legendary silhouettes of the late 1940s and 1950s. The wealth of important paintings, sculptures and silhouettes gathered here reveals the development and richness of Matisse's masterful oeuvre.
Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is one of Modernism's leading exponents. By liberating color from its conventional associations and simplifying forms, he redefined painting and brought a hitherto unknown lightness to art. Matisse was also an innovator in sculpture, and in his late silhouettes he developed an unmistakable interplay between painting, drawing and sculpture.
The New York Public Library unveils 500 years of documentation of one of the earth's most inhospitable regions
For centuries, what lies above the Arctic Circle has been a source of intrigue for those who live below its border. Stories from ancient Greek and Norse mythology gave rise to lively conceptions of ice-free waters and a fabled people who lived at the top of the world. Explorers sought to map the region as early as the 15th century, and there has been a significant expedition to the Arctic every decade since 1800. Expeditions to the Arctic in search of resources and trade routes slowly replaced these legends with more accurate information. For the general public, to whom the Arctic would always carry some degree of mystery, illustrations gave shape to the unknowable.
Drawing on the rich collections of the New York Public Library, The Awe of the Arctic is a survey of how the Arctic has been visually imagined and depicted over the past 500 years. This densely illustrated catalog includes groundbreaking scholarship on this fascinating assembly of books, prints, maps, photographs and artifacts. Essays illuminate specific topics, such as the magic lantern slides from the Peary expedition and contemporary work by Indigenous artists. This book invites us to consider how the history of Arctic exploration has shaped our current understanding of the Polar North and the peoples who call it home.
A tender, joyous portrait of the thriving lesbian subculture in '90s San Francisco
In the 1990s, queer youth, outcasts and artists flocked to San Francisco to experiment with art, self-expression, style and gender and to find community. Rent was affordable, paving the way for queer bars, clubs, tattoo shops, galleries, cafés, bookstores and women-owned businesses to emerge. A new wave of feminism embraced gender fluidity, and butch/femme culture flourished. The Mission district was the center of this queer cultural renaissance, and the feeling of community there was palpable.
Chloe Sherman was both a member of this community and an ardent visual chronicler. Her documentary photographic work on 35mm film stems from a commitment to capturing the vibrancy, tenderness, individuality, resilience and joy within this subculture that was derided by mainstream society. Distilling the spirit of the time, her debut monograph is a candid portrait of a vibrant era that connects current and future generations to the pulse of San Francisco at a pivotal chapter in queer history.
Chloe Sherman (born 1969) arrived in San Francisco in 1991 and earned her BFA in Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited internationally and featured in magazines such as Rolling Stone and Interview.
A definitive history of 20th-century Danish design through 101 classic objects
Denmark has long loomed large in international design history. Today, Danish furniture, textiles, home appliances and utensils from the 1960s and '70s are more popular than ever, for sale at design galleries and a rarity at flea markets. This publication provides an extensive overview of those everyday objects that have to this day written design history both in Denmark and worldwide. Along with 32 leading scholars and journalists, the Head of the Library and Research at the Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen, Lars Dybdahl, explores the fascinating history of the individual objects. Playfully presented and situated in their historical context, the catalog sheds new light on this unique world of objects. Among the design classics included are the Carlsberg lager label, the Dursley-Pedersen bicycle, the PH lamp, Dansk Standard cutlery, the Beolit 39 radio, the Spoke-Back Sofa, the Flag Halyard Chair, Kobenstyle kitchenware, the Nilfisk vacuum cleaner, LEGO, the Trinidad stacking chair and ECCO shoes.Designers include Arne Jacobson, Georg Jensen, Finn Juhl, Borge Mogensen, Verner Panton and Hans J. Wegner.
The first visual book on the massively influential musician and interdisciplinary artist whose six-decade oeuvre unites music, movement and art
Composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker and choreographer, Meredith Monk has united music, theater and dance to forge a new creative idiom exploring the human voice as instrument that has proved enormously influential for musicians and artists from Bruce Nauman and Terry Riley to Björk and John Zorn. Since the 1960s, she has created performances at the Guggenheim Museum rotunda (the first artist to do so), performed in public car parks and on opera stages, and recorded numerous acclaimed albums with ECM. Her music has been used in films by Jean-Luc Godard (Nouvelle Vague), the Coen Brothers (The Big Lebowski) and David Byrne (True Stories), and she has directed two films (Ellis Island and Book of Days).
This catalog is the first overview of her work, featuring previously unpublished archival material, scores, notations, drawings and photographs, as well as an insightful conversation with Monk and essays by acclaimed writers and curators such as Andrea Lissoni, Rick Moody, Timothy Morton, Teresa Retzer, Beatrix Ruf, Anna Schneider, Adam Shatz and Louise Steinman.
Meredith Monk (born 1942) was born in New York City, where she still lives. She began to explore the spectrum of the human voice through abstract vocal expression in the early 1960s, and developed what became known as extended vocal technique in numerous solo performances, using a three-octave range. In 1968 she founded The House to promote interdisciplinary performance, and 10 years later founded the Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble. In 2015, Monk was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama.
Kubin's eerie, unsettling illustrations reveal his preoccupation with the world's evils
For Austrian artist Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), evil was intrinsic to his life and work. After a traumatic childhood growing up in Zell am See and subsequent mental crises, he began his artistic training in Munich in 1898. He processed his nightmares and obsessions in a large number of fantastical drawings. His subjects, perpetually pessimistic, remain relevant a century later: war, famine, pestilence, death and every horror in between. Kubin had a pronounced fear of the feminine, sexuality, night time and of being at the mercy of fate, all of which visited him in uncanny dreams. For Kubin, the aesthetic of evil proved to be the antithesis of the idyll: the deliberate suppression of a hideous reality.
Drawn from the Albertina Museum's collection of over 1,800 drawings by the artist, The Aesthetic of Evil displays Kubin's grotesque vision as well as his superb draftsmanship. Amid the violent, haunting atmosphere of his graphic works it is easy to see how Kubin became trapped in his dark visions, to the point where the inexhaustible, intangible specter of evil consumed his life. Essays by Elisabeth Dutz, Natalie Lettner and Brigitte Holzinger explore Kubin's cosmos of the sinister: his personal iconography of evil fueled by his nightmares and obsessions.
From perfect pink ladies to rough-skinned russets: a gorgeous study of the wondrous variety of apples
William Mullan's obsession with apples began when he saw his first Egremont Russet at a Waitrose grocery store outside of London. Fascinated by its gnarled, potato-like appearance and shockingly fresh, nutty flavor, Mullan began searching for, and photographing, rare apple varieties. In Odd Apples, each apple is lovingly rendered and styled according to its individual personality--a combination of its looks and its flavors. The apples are set against complementary brightly colored backdrops; they are peeled or unpeeled, cut or whole, skin shriveled or perfectly smooth and shiny.
It is precisely this odd charm combined with the hitherto unknown that makes these photographs fascinating studies of a supposedly commonplace fruit. Mullan embraces its idiosyncratic aesthetic qualities completely, and invites us, in this attractive gift book, to embark on a visual expedition into the world of the apple.
By day, William Mullan (born 1989) works at an artisanal chocolate factory in Brooklyn, and by night, he photographs fruit. British-born, New York-based Mullan came to photography as an autodidact and his talent was quickly recognized. His Odd Apple project developed into an influential and much talked-about series, reviewed by the New Yorker, the New York Times and i-D Magazine, and released as a sold-out run of prints on his website.
A superbly produced retrospective on the luminous career of Jean-Michel Basquiat
The first African-American artist to attain art superstardom, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) created a huge oeuvre of drawings and paintings (Julian Schnabel recalls him once accidentally leaving a portfolio of about 2,000 drawings on a subway car) in the space of just eight years. Through his street roots in graffiti, Basquiat helped to establish new possibilities for figurative and expressionistic painting, breaking the white male stranglehold of Conceptual and Minimal art, and foreshadowing, among other tendencies, Germany's Junge Wilde movement. It was not only Basquiat's art but also the details of his biography that made his name legendary--his early years as Samo (his graffiti artist moniker), his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Madonna and his tragically early death from a heroin overdose. This superbly produced retrospective publication assesses Basquiat's luminous career with commentary by, among others, Glenn O'Brien, and 160 color reproductions of the work. Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father--an ethnic mix that meant young Jean-Michel was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of 11. In 1977, at the age of 17, Basquiat took up graffiti, inscribing the landscape of downtown Manhattan with his signature Samo. In 1980 he was included in the landmark group exhibition The Times Square Show; the following year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist ever to be invited to Documenta. By 1982, Basquiat had befriended Andy Warhol, later collaborating with him; Basquiat was much affected by Warhol's death in 1987. He died of a heroin overdose on August 22, 1988, at the age of 27.Whether candid or posed, in black and white or color, Orkin's photographs of women reveal her consistently sympathetic eye
In 1951, her photograph American Girl in Italy--depicting a young woman on a street flanked by whistling men--made Ruth Orkin (1921-85) a household name. Now, a new facet of her work emerges through sensational never-before-seen negatives and slides. Women illustrates Orkin's devoted, humorous, witty and sensitive documentation of women's life in the 1940s and 1950s. She records the illustrious goings-on in beauty salons and at cocktail parties, at dog shows and on Hollywood sets. We meet Lauren Bacall, Jane Russell, Joan Taylor and Doris Day, but also waitresses, stewardesses, female soldiers and best friends. Whether gazing directly into the camera, looking away from it or even laughing at something outside of the frame, Orkin's snapshots of women reflect their increased career mobility, consumer power and social influence in the postwar era.
Traditional Christian dogma meets 20th-century sensibilities in modernist church spaces across Europe
Spurred on by the modernizing impulses of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, the Catholic Church searched for an appropriate architectural language that showed its relevance to the modern world. Sacred Modernity documents this dramatic shift in ecclesiastical architecture across postwar Europe. Among these structures, some exude a joyful antagonism, while others emanate a cold minimalism. Boldly designed, outrageous and provocative for their time, the aesthetic of this period still ignites great debate between modernists and traditionalists. Half a century on, this study traces how their materials and ideals have matured and patinated. The book represents the first attempt to collate the religious architecture of the mid-century high modern years that took many forms, from Brutalism to Structural Expressionism.
Architects include: Alvar Aalto, Dominikus B�hm, Justus Dahinden, G�nther Domenig, Walter Maria F�rderer, Clemens Holzmeister, Viktor Hufnagl, Angelo Mangiarotti, Giovanni Michelucci, Gio Ponti, Roland Rainer, Sep Ruf, Carlo Scarpa, Richard Gilbert Scott, Basil Spence.
How artists such as Cao Fei, KAWS and Jacolby Satterwhite are elevating the aesthetics of gaming
In 2023, 3.09 billion people--almost a third of the world's population--played video games. As curator Hans Ulrich Obrist writes, video games are to the 21st century what movies were to the 20th century and novels to the 19th century. As the first transgenerational show of its kind, Worldbuilding brings together more than 50 artists to examine the relationship between gaming and time-based media art. It features works by Meriem Bennani, Ian Cheng, Cao Fei, Harun Farocki, Pierre Huyghe, KAWS, Sondra Perry, Jacolby Satterwhite, Sturtevant and Suzanne Treister. This catalog is conceptualized as the future standard reference in the field. In addition to texts by contemporary theorists, curators and critics on the individual works, a series of newly commissioned contributions investigate various perspectives on the intersection of art and video games.
Back in print, the most authoritative overview on the beloved Bauhaus Renaissance man and pioneer of abstraction, the first artist to take a line for a walk
The many books on Paul Klee (1879-1940) published over the years should not obscure the fact that there has been no new, comprehensive Klee overview since Will Grohmann's oft-reprinted 1954 monograph. With Paul Klee: Life and Work, the Zentrum Paul Klee has set out to fill this gap, drawing on a wealth of new resources including the Klee family's archives, much of which is published here for the first time.
Life and work are truly integrated in this massive, 344-page volume: Klee's vast body of work is surveyed chronologically, as the book narrates his life alongside the abundant reproductions of drawings, paintings, watercolors, sculptures, puppets and numerous archival documents and photographs (nearly 500 reproductions in total). The book divides Klee's career into eight periods: Childhood and Youth; Munich and the Encounter with the Avant Garde; World War I and the Breakthrough to Success; At the Bauhaus in Weimar; Master of Modern Art; The Move to Dusseldorf and the Nazi Rise to Power; First Years of Emigration in Bern; and Final Years. The result of many years of research and labor, this magisterial publication demonstrates conclusively why Klee numbers among the most influential and best-loved artists of the past 100 years.Flaneur with a camera: Herzog's melancholy early work is a love letter to a bygone Vancouver
Fred Herzog roamed the streets of Vancouver to create a portrait of his adopted hometown in chance scenarios and spontaneous acts of perception. Today his work is among the most important examples of early color photography. But Herzog did not decide to work almost exclusively with Kodachrome slide color film until the late 1950s. Fred Herzog: Black and White is the first appreciation of a lesser-known facet of the photographer's work. Complementing the landmark publication of Modern Color in 2017, the volume brings together his sumptuous arrangements of light and shadow, and moments of life outside the city. The early black-and-white photographs evoke a sense of melancholy, not nostalgia, showing that the appeal of Herzog's work lies in his flair for condensing a psychological state.
Fred Herzog (1930-2019) arrived in Vancouver from Germany in 1953. Professionally employed as a medical photographer, he spent his evenings and weekends photographing the city and its inhabitants in vibrant color. Though he was working prolifically from the 1950s on, Herzog was relatively unknown until a major retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2007 brought his work to a wider public. Digital inkjet printing enabled Herzog to finally make satisfactory prints from his slides and exhibit his important early color street photography.
The past year in photojournalism: 2023 as told through its most arresting, inspirational and profound images
Independent photojournalism and documentary photography are indispensable tools of political education for a democratic society and an essential part of shaping public opinion--especially in our post-factual times. In recognition of this, the independent nonprofit World Press Photo Foundation, based in Amsterdam, has been presenting the World Press Photo Award for the best photo, the best story and the best long-term project of the year for more than six decades. The winning images in the various categories tell bold stories and provide invaluable insights into the state of our world.
A fresh look at Hopper's iconic vision of the American landscape--its gas stations, diners and highways
Edward Hopper's world-famous, instantly recognizable paintings articulate an idiosyncratic view of modern life, unfolding in a world of lonely lighthouses, gas stations, movie theaters, bars and hotel rooms. With his impressive subjects, independent pictorial vocabulary and virtuoso play of colors, Hopper's work continues to this day to color our memory and imaginary of the United States in the first half of the 20th century.
Hopper began his career as an illustrator and became famous around the globe for his oil paintings. These paintings testify to the artist's great interest in the effects of color and his mastery in depicting light and shadow, at work whether the artist was painting alienated figures in dreamlike interiors or desolate American landscapes. Edward Hopper: A Fresh Look on Landscape is published to accompany a major exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler of Hopper's iconic images of the vast American landscape. The catalog gathers together paintings, watercolors and drawings made by the artist between the 1910s and the 1960s, and supplements them with essays by Erika Doss, David Lubin and Katharina R ppell, focused on the subject of depicting the landscape. Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was the master of American Realism. His paintings captured the mood and atmosphere of his era. His style of painting and subject matter became the stylistic foundation for a distinct type of American modernism. A source of inspiration for countless painters, photographers and filmmakers, Hopper's body of work continues to be influential to this day.With new scholarship, this volume casts af Klint as a pioneering cosmonaut of inner space
For decades a relatively unknown artist, Hilma af Klint has posthumously claimed her rightful place in art history recently but dramatically: her 2019 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum was seen by more than half a million visitors. In 2013, curator Iris Muller-Westermann organized the first retrospective exhibition of af Klint's work. Now she presents us with an extensive survey show, curated with Milena H gsberg, at the Moderna Museet in Malm , which this volume accompanies, supplementing reproductions with the latest information and research on af Klint.
Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium investigates, from a variety of perspectives, the question of how this trailblazing abstract artist linked her painting to a higher consciousness. Essays by art historians, a quantum physicist, a spiritual teacher and an historian of theosophy and esotericism, among others, provide insights into a world beyond the visible which fascinates us now even more than ever. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a Swedish painter whose simultaneous fascination with art and spiritism led her to produce one of the most astonishing oeuvres in modern art history. Her conventional landscape paintings and botanical illustrations served as her main source of income, but her true lifelong passion lay in the art she created as a result of otherworldly communication. Af Klint's private works not only demonstrate perhaps the first example of true abstraction in Western painting; they also convey a complex, deeply felt system of spirituality that guided af Klint throughout her life and career.How contemporary media artists use the moving image as a critical mirror of its era
German filmmaker Heinz Peter Schwerfel (born 1954) spotlights 60 artists from more than 20 countries working in moving images to short-circuit the universal language of mass media and, in so doing, innovate the genre itself.