The essential volume on the great fashion designer, entrepreneur and Louis Vuitton artistic director, back in print.

This authoritative Virgil Abloh compendium, created by the designer himself, accompanies his acclaimed landmark 2019–23 touring exhibition and offers in-depth analysis of his career and his inspirations. More than a catalog, Figures of Speech is a 500-page user’s manual to Abloh’s genre-bending work in art, fashion and design.

The first section features essays and an interview that examine Abloh’s oeuvre through the lenses of contemporary art history, architecture, streetwear, high fashion and race, to provide insight into a prolific and impactful career that cuts across mediums, connecting visual artists, musicians, graphic designers, fashion designers, major brands and architects. The book also contains a massive archive of images culled from Abloh’s personal files on major projects, revealing behind-the-scenes snapshots, prototypes, inspirations and more — accompanied by intimate commentary from the artist. Finally, a gorgeous full-color plate section offers a detailed view of Abloh’s work across disciplines.

Virgil Abloh (1980–2021) was a fashion designer and entrepreneur, and the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s men’s wear collection from 2018 to 2021. He was also CEO of the Milan-based label Off-White, a fashion house he founded in 2013. Born in Rockford, Illinois, to Ghanaian parents, he entered the world of fashion with an internship at Fendi in 2009 alongside rapper Kanye West. The two began an artistic collaboration that would launch Abloh’s career with the founding of Off-White. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018.

Haring as activist and egalitarian: a fresh, accessible and dynamic look at one of New York’s most exhilarating artists.

Lavishly illustrated with essays and reflections by cultural leaders, Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody surveys Haring’s dynamic art practice from 1978 to 1990, shining a bright light on the iconic and beloved artist known for his fluid, uniform lines, intricate compositions and repeating imagery such as the barking dog and radiant baby. Forty years after he came to prominence, Haring’s art continues to garner worldwide recognition, breaking down barriers and spreading joy, while taking on complex issues that remain crucial today, from environmentalism, capitalism and the proliferation of new technologies to religion, sexuality and race.

Titled after a quote from Haring’s journals, Art Is for Everybody centers on the artist’s activism, the emphasis he placed on community and his egalitarian approach to art and life. The volume is organized chronologically and thematically, emphasizing Haring’s work made with publics in mind such as the subway drawings and murals, his collaborative practice and his unflinching belief that art is essential in making a better world.

Keith Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1958 and arrived in New York from Pittsburgh in 1978, befriending artists including Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat. During the 1980s, Haring achieved international recognition and participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions. After contracting HIV in 1988, he focused his activism on the AIDS crisis. Less than two years later, Haring died of an AIDS-related illness.

The definitive monograph on the iconoclastic painter George Condo

With his arresting, unsettling style, George Condo emerged out of the dynamism of the New York art scene in the early 1980s, and he has been restlessly painting, drawing and sculpting – bringing forms into the world in one way or another – ever since. Condo’s originality lies in his transformation of references and inspirations, in both style and content, which include the canon of Western art history; from his journey through Greek classical sculpture to an unlimited and free exchange of painterly languages ranging from Rembrandt and Velasquez to Picasso and Warhol, and a unique vision of literary and popular culture.

With his ‘fake’ Old Masters, reconfigured Manets, impossibly intricate paintings that seem abstract only from a distance, fractured and multifaceted ‘psychologically Cubist’ portraits, and the orgiastic misdemeanours of a host of butlers, bankers and priests, Condo has invented, mastered and expanded not just one painterly language but an entire lexicon.

Working closely with Condo, Simon Baker has combined biographical, chronological and thematic approaches to survey the artist’s work and career to date. An introductory essay on Condo’s contradictory nature and a chapter exploring his phenomenal early career are followed by three thematic chapters that look at the years from 1984 to the present, tracing Condo’s systematic reconstruction of the techniques of painting, exploring his relationship to the concept of abstraction, and probing the darker side of his psychological iconography in drawing, painting, sculpture and writing.

George Condo is the definitive monograph on this unique artist. It will appeal to artists, art students and those with a general interest in art.

About the Author:

Simon Baker is Director of Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (MEP). He was formerly Senior Curator, Photography and International Art, Tate. Prior to becoming Tate’s first curator of photography, he was Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Nottingham. He has written widely on surrealism, photography and contemporary art.

George Condo’s unconventional paintings are illuminated in context with his vast range of artistic influences — from Tiepolo to Picasso to Basquiat, and from psychedelic to new wave.

George Condo is renowned for his eclectic mix of artistic influences — from the Old Masters to cubism to pop art. The artist who coined the term “artificial realism” blends imagery and styles from various movements in works that critique contemporary Western culture and its excesses. His paintings and sculptures feature Humanoids — figures that are metaphors of our humanity, magnifying our emotions and revealing our high and low points. For the first time in his own words, Condo reveals the genesis and significance of his distorted creations and unveils previously unseen paintings created during the pandemic and the political turmoil in the United States.

Didier Ottinger examines the career, influences, and works of this unconventional artist who is at once rewriting the history of art and caricaturing the immoderation of the modern world. An exhibition of Condo’s Humanoids at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco opens nearly a quarter century after he created set and costume designs for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

About the Authors:

Didier Ottinger, general curator of heritage and specialist in modern and contemporary painting, is assistant director of cultural programming at the Centre Pompidou where he curated exhibitions on Edward Hopper (2013), David Hockney (2017), and Georgia O’Keeffe (2022). American artist George Condo’s work is in the permanent collections of the Met, MoMA, Broad Foundation in Los Angeles, Tate, and Centre Pompidou. Exhibitions of his work have been shown in New York, London, Rotterdam, Berlin, Venice, Shanghai, and more. H.R.H. the Princess of Hanover is a philanthropist.

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Пролистать книгу George Condo: Humanoids