First published in 1998, Leeming's landmark biography of Beauford Delaney returns to print

Long out of print, this new edition of David Leeming's landmark biography of Beauford Delaney (1901-79) features an introduction by Hilton Als. Leeming, also the author of James Baldwin's acclaimed 1994 biography, delves into the captivating life of one of the most significant Black artists of our time. With rare affection, tact and insight, he paints a vivid portrait of an artist who defied convention and left an indelible mark on both art history and everyone he encountered--including a diverse array of writers, artists and musicians, from Henry Miller and Jean Genet to Baldwin and Georgia O'Keeffe.
Tracing Delaney's humble beginnings in a deeply religious family in Knoxville, Tennessee, to New York, to his untimely demise in a Parisian asylum, Leeming draws not only on his close friendship with the artist but also journals, notebooks, letters and critical reviews, guiding the reader through the evolution of his practice and his remarkable life. As Als writes in his introduction: Sadly, there are many ways for the queer Black boy to die--but also, many ways for him to live. Delaney saved his own life through art, the making of worlds based on what he saw in his internal and external universe.
David Adams Leeming (born 1937) is an American philologist and Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The World of Myth (1990), James Baldwin: A Biography (1994) and the Oxford Companion to World Mythology (2005). He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Lyrical landscapes are rendered in liberal swaths of impasto in Yektai's soft yet dynamic paintings

Iranian American artist and poet Manoucher Yektai (1921-2019) was a founding member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. His practice was shaped by his interactions with de Kooning, Pollock and Rothko as much as by Iranian modernism. This second monograph on the understudied midcentury artist spans works from what he called his Body of Landscape series, including brushy, vibrant depictions of Positano, Italy and views of 95th Street in Manhattan. As poet James Schuyler wrote of this series in 1959: Nothing is literally described but all is there: openness, greenness, the pink and wrecked look of New York as it often shows itself nowadays, Berlin-on-Hudson, glamorous and condemned. This volume features a plate section that highlights the lushness of Yektai's signature impastos, as well as essays by Suzanne Hudson and Paul Galvez.

The musician's tender and nuanced tribute to the life and work of her deceased brother

This volume is an intimate consideration of musician Kim Gordon's brother's life and art featuring personal photographs and pages from his journals. Following Keller Gordon's death in 2023, his sister collected mementos--relics from a shared existence spent dipping in and out of one another's lives over decades--including drawings, photos, poems and the diaries he kept at various stages of lucidity. The Sonic Youth frontwoman also authored a diaristic essay about their childhood, the complexities of family dynamics and the double-edged sword of creating and maintaining legends about those we love and admire. I know exactly when the myth of my brother started, she writes. Designed to evoke the format of Keller's diaries, this volume features facsimiles of his writings, offering insight into the complicated figure of Keller Gordon as well as his sister's life. Through Kim's prose and Keller's own words, Keller extends and destabilizes the form of the biography, foregrounding the fragmented and the imperfect, echoing how memories themselves dissolve and take new shape over time.
Kim Gordon is an artist and cofounding member of the bands Sonic Youth and Body/Head, and the author of the memoir Girl in a Band.

The multimedia artist's first-ever thorough monograph, teeming with cosmograms, numerals and other relics

This volume is the first comprehensive monograph on the work of Ouattara Watts (born 1957). Over the course of nearly four decades, the Abidjan-born, New York-based artist has developed a painting practice that places cosmograms, numerals, cloth and other symbols and relics from around the world into relation with each other, leveling hierarchies and creating new relations in the process. Alongside traditional mediums such as acrylic and gouache, the artist embeds materials from a kaleidoscopic range of sources in his monumental, densely layered canvases: papier-mâché, fallen leaves, textiles gleaned from flea markets and photographic reproductions, among others. This volume features essays by writer Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, curator Lawrence Rinder and artist Dieter Buchhart, as well as a conversation between the artist and curator-critic KJ Abudu--the first longform interview with the artist since his 1995 dialogue with Okwui Enwezor.

Carnivalesque scenes of American nightlife from a painter who called Times Square her home

Chicago-born, New York-based artist Jane Dickson (born 1952), makes paintings and drawings that explore the psychogeography of American culture, focusing primarily on New York's Times Square, where she lived for nearly 30 years. She participated in legendary artist collectives such as Fashion Moda, Collaborative Projects Inc. and Group Material. Working figuratively from her own photographic snapshots, Dickson portrays strip clubs, diners, motels and sex workers and their seemingly straight-laced foils: suburban homes, driveways and businessmen. Using oils and acrylic on canvas and linen alongside a range of atypical surfaces such as vinyl, felt, astroturf and sandpaper, she achieves impressionistic textures that often blur her subjects in hazes of neon and darkness. This first comprehensive monograph of her work includes a 1996 essay-cum-manifesto by Dickson, and new essays by Shannon Mattern, Daniel S. Palmer, Lucy Sante and Yasmin Ramirez.

A 10-year survey of a Finnish painter's close-up depictions of everyday life, now back in print

Paris-based Finnish painter Henni Alftan (born 1979) uses tight framing of close-range photography to explore the similarities between painting and image-making. This reprint of her comprehensive catalog, first published in 2020, gathers a selection of Alftan's works from the past 10 years.

Blair's painterly use of mise-en-scène evokes the influence of Edward Hopper's cinema-inspired tableaux

This volume builds on a developing body of scholarship linking the American painters Dike Blair (born 1952) and Edward Hopper (1882-1967) to each other. In both Hopper's tableaux and Blair's mise-en-scènes, light is a character in its own right, whether casting an eerie pallor on a desolate interior or illuminating the lip of a half-drunk glass; both artists imply narratives without offering definitive plots, inviting the viewer to stitch together a story from images and absences. Matinee foregrounds the realism of Blair and Hopper within the context of the utter irreality of the movies, lambent and liminal. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, organized by Helen Molesworth at the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center in Nyack, New York, this volume features a conversation between Molesworth and Blair that takes as its jumping-off point Hopper's painting New York Movie (1939).

This book was published in conjunction with Edward Hopper House

Relics of the everyday as tongue-in-cheek allegories for sexuality and decadence

New York-based sculptor Kathleen Ryan (born 1984) recasts found and handmade objects as spectacular, larger-than-life hieroglyphs of Americana. This book gathers her titular series of bejeweled, oversized moldy fruit sculptures.

New compositions of earthly delights under the veil of night, from the painter known for her joyful depictions of birds, trees, flowers and more

This catalog, accompanying Karma's three-part exhibition of new paintings by Ann Craven (born 1967), surveys major motifs of the artist's nearly 30-year-long practice. For the first time, she has set all of her scenes in the darkness of evening, creating a consistent chromatic background that intensifies her always-vibrant colors. These oils of moons, trees, birds, flowers and deer constitute the latest chapter in her systematic catalog of what she terms revisitations, each of which is also a reinvention of her subject matter. In this body of work, and across her practice, figuration morphs into kaleidoscopic abstraction and back again, each canvas resisting easy categorization in favor of pure feeling. In addition to a lush plate section, this volume features an intimate conversation between the artist and curator Jay Sanders, an expansive art-historical essay by Richard Kalina and poems written and collected in dedication to Craven by Susan Howe.

A reintroduction of the long-elusive painter Robert Duran spotlighting his patterned, puzzle-like approach to abstraction

Painter Robert Duran (1938-2005) was a mainstay of the 1960s and '70s New York art scene before relocating to New Jersey with his family. This first monograph on his career reintroduces Duran to the public with a survey of his abstract works and an oral history of his life as told by fellow painters.

This book was published in conjunction with New Jersey State Museum

An acidic portrait of the grifters and pretenders of the art world, from the celebrated author of The Mars Room

In Rachel Kushner's latest work of fiction, The Mayor of Leipzig, an unnamed artist recounts her travels from New York City to Cologne--where she contemplates German guilt and art-world grifters, and Leipzig--where she encounters live adult entertainment in a business hotel. The narrator gossips about everyone, including the author. Taking a time out from what happened to me in Cologne and in Leipzig, Kushner writes, I want to let you in on a secret: I personally know the author of this story you're reading. Because she fancies herself an art world type, a hanger-on. Who would do that voluntarily? I mean, it's not like someone held a gun to my head and said, Be an artist. I chose it, but I still can't imagine having anything to do with the art world if you don't have to. Also, people who don't make stuff, who instead try to catalogue, periodize, and understand art, they never understand the first thing. Art is about taste, a sense of humor, and most writers lack both.

Rachel Kushner (born 1968) is the author of The Flamethrowers (2013) and The Mars Room (2018). Her debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book. A collection of her early work, The Strange Case of Rachel K, was published by New Directions in 2015. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's and the Paris Review.

At once surreal and neoclassical, Lee-Smith's masterful compositions reflect the social alienation of mid-20th-century America

Hughie Lee-Smith came of age in the midst of the Great Depression, spending his early life primarily between Cleveland and Detroit. The Midwest left an indelible impression on the artist, whose Social Realist paintings referenced its expansive gray skies and industrial architecture. Carnival imagery recurs throughout Lee-Smith's work via the motifs of ribbons, pendants and balloons, often evoking the contrast between the carnival's playful theatricality and its uncanny imitation of reality. He depicted abandoned, crumbling urban architecture as the sets for his existential tableaux, and even when his figures appear together, they always seem solitary. Over the course of his long career, Lee-Smith developed a distinct figurative vocabulary influenced by both Neoclassicism and Surrealism--the summation of a lifelong effort to see beyond the real.
This volume, published for a 2022 show at Karma, New York, surveys the artist's practice from 1938 to 1999, tracing his development from depictions of the Midwest to his years on the East Coast in the decades following World War II. It features writing by Hilton Als, Lauren Haynes, Steve Lock and Leslie King-Hammond, as well as a conversation between Reggie Burrows Hodges, LeRonn P. Brooks and Kellie Jones.
Hughie Lee-Smith (1915-99) was born in Eustis, Florida. Early in his career he was involved in several WPA projects, including Karamu House in Cleveland (the oldest running African American theater in the nation) and the Southside Community Art Center in Chicago, where he would cross paths with Charles White, Gordon Parks and Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, among others. Eventually teaching would take him to the East Coast, where he was artist in residence at Howard University in Washington, DC, and later an instructor at the Art Students League of New York. He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Two decades of intricately layered works on paper from an artist known for his contemporary still lifes

Comprising 100 works on paper, Drawings: 2003-2023 is the most expansive collection of Jonas Wood's artistic practice to date. This body of work traces the artist's trajectory back to his early days in Los Angeles, where he worked alongside painter Laura Owens and sculptor Matt Johnson. It was during this formative period that Wood's distinct visual language began to take shape: a language that would come to define his mature practice. Drawing played a central role in Wood's process, serving as both preparatory sketches for his collages and paintings, as well as independent works of art in their own right. At the core of Wood's prolific output lies a deep appreciation for the handmade--a reverence reflected in his engagement with found photographs, manual projectors and half-erased pencil sketches. Although rendered in a flattened perspective, the resulting tableaux are deeply layered, revealing traces of the artist's hand, miscellaneous references and the transformative nature of various artistic media. The comprehensive catalog features an essay by Douglas Fogle and a conversation between Laura Owens and the artist.
The Los Angeles-based artist Jonas Wood (born 1977) creates paintings, drawings and prints, which mostly comprise intricate still lifes and interior domestic scenes. Throughout his compositions, the artist draws from art history, memory, and the people, objects and interiors that comprise his life. His work is boldly colored, detailed and graphic, and often features basketballs, ceramics and lush plants.

Teddy bears, toys and fruit populate Imai's intimate and imaginary compositions

In The Scene, Japanese painter Ulala Imai (born 1982) draws references from popular culture, including Peanuts comics and Star Wars, to make delicate still-life-style works that, according to author Hiji Nam, create a magical mannerist fable world.

A 50th-anniversary tribute to one of America's first racially integrated exhibitions

In August 1971 Peter Bradley mounted the landmark exhibition The De Luxe Show at the legendary DeLUXE theater in Houston's Fifth Ward. The De Luxe Show was a milestone in civil rights history, as one of the first racially integrated shows in the United States. Curated by Bradley with the backing of collector and philanthropist John de Menil, the exhibition featured emerging and established abstract modern painters and sculptors of the time, including Darby Bannard, Peter Bradley, Anthony Caro, Dan Christensen, Ed Clark, Frank Davis, Sam Gilliam, Robert Gordon, Richard Hunt, Virginia Jaramillo, Daniel Johnson, Craig Kauffman, Alvin Loving, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Michael Steiner, William T. Williams and James Wolfe.

In August 2021, for its 50th anniversary, Karma and Parker Gallery staged a contemporary bicoastal tribute to The De Luxe Show. The tribute honors the long, pioneering legacies of the artists of The De Luxe Show, and continues the dialogue between these innovators in the field of abstraction that began 50 years ago. This fully illustrated catalog includes texts and installation images from the original 1971 catalog, as well as a newly commissioned text by Amber Jamilla Musser and a text by Bridget R. Cooks that expands upon her 2013 essay in Gulf Coast.

After decades of working with gouache, Blair turns to oil paint for his most recent series of hyperrealist street scenes, tablescapes and windows

Working from his own photographs of subjects such as cigarette packets, blossoming flowers, snacks, liquor glasses and coffee cups, doors and desolate, nighttime scenes, New York-based artist Dike Blair (born 1952) creates intimate, diaristic tableaux paintings. His depictions of food evoke the soft palette and bird's-eye perspective of Wayne Thiebaud, while his window views and landscapes combine the modernism of Edward Hopper with the photorealistic eye of William Eggleston. After using gouache for decades, Blair began working in oil in 2017; the resulting noirish scenes retain the artist's signature style, but imbue his works with a particular novel luster. This expansive monograph presents Blair's paintings in oil to date. Illustrated with hundreds of recent works, the book features a reprint of a formative 2018 essay on the artist by Helen Molesworth, as well as new scholarship by Jim Lewis and Christine Robinson.

A painterly meditation on corporality and mentality, infused with Post-Impressionist influences

In 2016, American painter Mark Grotjahn (born 1968) began a series of intimately scaled, thickly impastoed skulls. Made with brushes rather than his historically favored palette knife, these paintings affirm the influence of Post-Impressionists on the artist. After 15 years of Face Paintings and more than 100 Mask Sculptures, Grotjahn has stripped back the disguise and the skin and arrived at the 22 bones that structure the human visage. By introducing a symbol of life's inevitable end into his visual vocabulary, Grotjahn sets his sights on his own corporeality. As a result, the Skulls are his most intimate paintings to date.
This catalog presents the entirety of his series, alongside a singular essay by Alison M. Gingeras in which she posits that the skull is the origin of portraiture, charting the motif's emergence throughout art history.

An opulent, joyful homage to the many ways of painting flowers, from Charles Burchfield to Amy Sillman

Flowers are always working in the service of the passage of time, writes Helen Molesworth in the opening pages of (Nothing but) Flowers. In all of the paintings in this book where flowers are depicted, innocently standing in their vases, the minor gestures of gathering, arranging and display can be seen as a verb list dedicated to world-building. This clothbound volume gathers paintings of flowers by more than 50 artists from Charles Burchfield to Amy Sillman, Joe Brainard to Lisa Yuskavage, who have explored the perennial appeal of this richest and yet simplest of subjects. (Nothing but) Flowers demonstrates the capacity of the humble botanical motif to capture sorrow, stimulate rehabilitation, and guide us through periods of mourning, celebration and rebirth. Writers Hilton Als, Helen Molesworth and David Rimanelli contribute meditations on the many resonances of flowers in art.

Artists include: Gertrude Abercrombie, Marina Adams, Henni Alftan, Ed Baynard, Nell Blaine, Dike Blair, Vern Blosum, Joe Brainard, Cecily Brown, Charles Burchfield, Matt Connors, Andrew Cranston, Ann Craven, Stephanie Crawford, Somaya Critchlow, Verne Dawson, Lois Dodd, Peter Doig, Nicole Eisenman, Ida Ekblad, Minnie Evans, Marley Freeman, Jane Freilicher, Mark Grotjahn, James Harrison, Lubaina Himid, Samuel Hindolo, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Max Jansons, Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Sanya Kantarovsky, Alex Katz, Karen Kilimnik, Zenzaburo Kojima, Matvey Levenstein, Shannon Cartier Lucy, Calvin Marcus, Helen Marden, Jeanette Mundt, Soumya Netrabile, Woody De Othello, Sanou Oumar, Jennifer Packer, Nicolas Party, Hilary Pecis, Richard Pettibone, Elizabeth Peyton, Amy Sillman, Elaine Sturtevant, Tabboo!, Honor Titus, Uman, Susan Jane Walp, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, Matthew Wong, Albert York, Manoucher Yektai and Lisa Yuskavage.

Themes and motifs in the art of Kara Walker, from blackface to abjection, by a leading art historian

In 2002, Kara Walker was selected to represent the United States at the prestigious São Paulo Art Biennial. Curator Robert Hobbs wrote extended essays on her work for this exhibition, and also for her show later that year at the Kunstverein Hannover. Because these essays have not been distributed in the US and remain among the most in-depth and essential investigations of her work, Karma is now republishing them in this new clothbound volume.
Among the most celebrated artists of the past three decades, with over 93 solo exhibitions to her credit, including a major survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker is known for her tough, critical, provocative and highly imaginative representations of African Americans and whites reaching back to antebellum times. In his analysis, Hobbs looks at the five main sources of her art: blackface Americana, Harlequin romances, Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection, Stone Mountain's racist tourist attraction and the minstrel tradition.
Robert Hobbs (born 1946) has written more than 50 books and catalogs, focusing on such artists as Milton Avery, Alice Aycock, Lee Krasner, Robert Smithson and Kehinde Wiley. Since 1991 he has held the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of American Art in the School of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University. Since 2004 he has served as a visiting professor at Yale University.
Now based in New York, Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California, in 1969. She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994; soon afterward, Walker rose to prominence for her large, provocative silhouettes installed directly onto the walls of exhibition spaces.

Expansive landscapes, solitary figures and serene interiors characterize Xiao's contemplative and philosophical paintings

This is the first monograph for Chinese painter Xiao Jiang (born 1977), whose works are populated with subjects drawn from his everyday life and memories, imbuing his paintings with both a sense of remoteness and an emotional tenor, and evoking work by artists such as Edward Hopper. Inspired by the mountains surrounding Jinggangshan, the city of his birth, Xiao's sweeping views of peaks and highlands complement his more subdued domestic scenes that minimize humanity's presence in the world. Including a wide selection of pieces on canvas or burlap made between 2008 and the present, this monograph showcases Xiao's range of techniques and formal development as a painter. As he has said: I would like my artworks to be less straightforward; they appear to be ordinary yet with a hint of suggestion. This helps leave room for audiences to have their own interpretation. New essays by Winnie Wong and John Yau offer insight into the artist's life, provide evocative close readings of works and situate Xiao's practice in relation to both the Western painting canon and to centuries-old Chinese artistic and philosophical traditions.