Книги про современное искусство

'Carlos Cruz-Diez: Colour Happens' is the title of the first individual Spanish exhibition, an official institution, dedicated to the work of Carlos Cruz-Diez (Caracas, 1923). His work has been present in the greatest European exhibitions dedicated to Kinetic Art since the 60's, as well as in the most important collective exhibitions devoted to Latin American art. Carlos Cruz-Diez has worked in many of the most dignified museums worldwide, including, Musee National d'Art Modern Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, of which loaned works of Cruz-Diez for this exhibition, as with the private Foundation Allegro, the Altelier Cruz-Diez and MUGAB (Diputation of Alicante).

Fabric monuments

In the summer of 1995, the Reichstag building in Berlin was transformed into an immense sculptural experience by Christo and Jeanne-Claude along with a team of hundreds of workers.

Using fabric materials has become a famous tradition for Christo and Jeanne-Claude: landscape projects in the USA, Japan, and Australia and urban projects such as the Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris have established them as the most extraordinary artist couple of the age.

This in-depth survey of their unusual work is illustrated with absorbing photographs by Wolfgang Volz.

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN’s  Basic Art Series  features:

• a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
• a concise biography
• approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The photographer:
Wolfgang Volz has worked with Christo and Jeanne-Claude as the exclusive photographer of their works since 1971. He was also project director (with Roland Specker) for Wrapped Reichstag and (with Josy Kraft) for Wrapped Trees, and was in charge of The Wall - 13,000 Oil Barrels, 1999. His close collaboration has resulted in many books and more than 300 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world.

The author:
Jacob Baal-Teshuva, born 1929, is author, critic and independent curator of museum shows. He studied at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem and the New York University. His numerous publications include works on Marc Chagall, Alexander Calder, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Jacob Baal-Teshuva lives and works in New York and Paris.

The life and work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, in a book designed by Christo himself

"Nobody discusses a painting before it has been painted. Our projects are discussed and argued about, pro and con, before they are realized."  - Christo

The work of the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude transcends borders, resists categorizing, and embraces contradiction. This is the only large-format book that includes all of their projects, from Christo and Jeanne-Claude's works from 1958 to urban and rural temporary works of art, such as The Gates in Central Park, the Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin, and Running Fence in California. Part biography, part critical analysis, part catalogue, the book has a lively text by the critic Paul Goldberger that traces both the lives and the works of an artist couple who established a category all their own: a category somewhere between conceptual art, urban planning, architecture, politics, engineering and art.

This volume gives a detailed overview of the life and work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, from early drawings and family photos to plans for future projects. It features hundreds of previously unpublished photographs, drawings and plans for realized works, an incisive and detailed history spanning the entire oeuvre, and in-depth interviews, in a lavish edition designed by Christo himself. In addition to a thorough photographic documentation of all of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work, the book includes the transcript of a conversation between the artists and Paul Goldberger, the last conversation about her work that Jeanne-Claude had before her death in late 2009. Conceived originally to mark Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 75th birthdays, this book is now an eloquent homage to Jeanne-Claude, and a celebration of the work of two artists whose imagination has affected the landscape of every continent.

Covering all work phases in large-scale reproductions and accompanied by extensive texts as well as production Polaroids and installation photos by Wool himself. Limited to 1,000 copies, each numbered and signed by the artist. Also available in an Art Edition, limited to 100 copies and with an original artwork by Christopher Wool.

In-your-face, achingly simple, deceptively frank, the work of Christopher Wool is so very New York. Though he owes a debt to abstract expressionism and pop art, he completely transcends - even demolishes - these genres. Whether it’s a text-based painting or an abstract spray-painted piece, his work is immediately engaging. Wool questions painting, like many other artists in his generation, but he doesn’t provide any easy answers. “The harder you look the harder you look,” as he titled one of his word paintings, is an excellent example of how he states the obvious whilst provoking us to think deeper about what seems obvious.

Christopher Wool became known in the mid-1980s through allover paintings produced with rubber rollers commonly used to simulate decorative wallpaper patterns on walls. By 1988 he had hit stride with his dry, dead-pan word paintings (“Trbl,” “Riot,” “Sell the House, Sell the Car, Sell the Kids”), while continuing to explore the possibilities of pattern painting. Since the 1990s, he has been developing the painterly qualities of his work, using a mostly black-and-white palette, starting from abstract lines drawn with a spray gun or layered stock images, overpainting silkscreens on linen, wiping out images, with a widening variety of media, a process that can involve photography, silkscreen, and, in the new millennium, also the computer.

Exploring Wool’s work in close to 500 pages, this monograph is exhaustive in scope and depth. All work phases are covered in large-scale reproductions and accompanied by production Polaroids and installation photos by Wool himself. Editor Hans Werner Holzwarth has previously collaborated on several catalogs and artist’s books with Wool. Essays and analyses by Glenn O’Brien, Jim Lewis, Ann Goldstein, Anne Pontégnie, Richard Hell, and Eric Banks make this book a great read as well as a definitive study of the story so far.

A look at the seminal work of this conceptual artist, who photographed her trademark performances and created dramatic narrative collages using the results.

Created in 1975, A Play of Selves is a visual tale of a young woman overwhelmed by her various, conflicting alter-egos and her final triumph over self-doubt. Acted out with sixteen separate characters, the seventy-two photographic assemblages mark Sherman’s earliest explorations of her trademark use of herself as the subject in staged photographs.

Sherman originally shot hundreds of photographs of herself costumed as the various characters in dozens of poses. After cutting out the individual images from black-and-white prints, she used an elaborately formulated, handwritten script to organize the images into the five-act “play.” The piece was first shown in 1975, in Buffalo, New York, where Sherman was a student.

Confessions of a connoisseur

Insiders' tips on how the design art market really works

"Art is about life, the art market is about money."  - Damien Hirst

Whether you're an art fan, aficionado, or collector, this completely unique book should be on your required reading list. Like a textbook for a class given by all of the world's leading experts, Collecting Contemporary Art is the one and only book to teach you everything you ever wanted to know about the contemporary art market. The introduction explains the ABCs of buying art on the primary and secondary markets, at auction, and at art fairs and gives an overview of the world art scene and its social circles. The main body of the book brings together tell-all interviews with the biggest players in the global art market: the Critic (Rimanelli), the Dealer (Boesky, Brunnet/Hackert, Coles, Deitch, Fortes, Gagosian, Gladstone, Glimcher, Hetzler, Lybke, Perrotin, Rosen, Shave, Wirth), the Consultant (Cortez, Fletcher, Heller, Segalot, Westreich), the Collector (Brant, Broad, Habsburg, Joannou, Lambert, Lehmann, Lopez, Paz, Pinault, Rothschild Foundation, Saatchi), the Auction House Expert (Cappellazzo, de Pury, Meyer), and the Museum Curator/Director (Dennison, Eccles, Heiss, Lowry, Peyton-Jones).

Rounding up the book are chapters on the year in art collecting - giving a timeline of the most important annual auctions, exhibitions, fairs, etc. around the world - as well as a glossary of terms every art savvy player should know. The text is illustrated by the work of the hottest artists in today's market, including Matthew Barney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Lisa Yuskavage, and many more.

All in all, these elements add up to the equivalent of an invaluable and privileged real-world collector's education - all between the covers of one book.

The author:
Adam Lindemann is a private investor and influential collector of contemporary art and design. In partnership with designer Marc Newson, he re-launched Ikepod, a Swiss watch design company. He also writes a monthly column on collecting for The New York Observer.

"A magazine about the rest of the world" – so reads the celebrated subtitle of the magazine Colors.

With their latest project, the creative minds at Fabrica breathe new life into that motto. In cooperation with Reporters sans Frontières, they used various means to distribute blank notebooks to international graphic designers, illustrators, artists, photographers, and filmmakers – and also, of course, to students in every creative profession.

But it isn’t just creative professionals they have in their sights with the Notebook Project but – much more broadly – people of all ages and social classes and from a wide range of ethnic, religious, and political communities all over the world.

With 3,500 richly illustrated notebooks full of drawings and collages already submitted, the time is right to engage in a provisional stocktaking.

This is done here with a little series of books that selects the best from the works submitted, organizes it thematically, and annotates it professionally.

The result is an attractive invitation to graphic designers and illustrators, who are already increasingly employing traditional graphic techniques, to allow themselves to be stimulated by the variety of styles on offer. For "there is hardly a designer today who isn’t full of enthusiasm for vernacular culture, graffiti, amateurish drawings, and charmingly misused typography" (Gerrit Terstiege, editor in chief of form).

The volume Violence is a frightening demonstration of just how completely the subject of violence dominates the world today.

Violence done by human beings to other human beings, whether in the private sphere of personal relations, in the form of coerced and degrading living conditions, or in the open brutality of war and civil war.

The artistic documents selected here are expressions of that violence, images and signs that represent or indict. By doing so with a creative engagement that seeks to produce a sense of shock and personal involvement in the viewer, they speak implicitly but unmistakably of the dignity of their creators and the injuries they have suffered.

On the occasion of the 260th anniversary of its foundation, Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg issued a special collector’s edition of Franz Anton Bustelli’s masterpiece Commedia dell’Arte figurines first introduced 1759/60.

For the Couture Edition, each of the figurines have been redressed with new designs by contemporary fashion designers and Haute Couturiers including, Christian Lacroix, Viktor & Rolf, Gareth Pugh and Vivienne Westwood.

Taking this project as a launching point the Collector’s Book examines the Commedia dell’Arte as a whole, its significance and impact on fields as diverse as literature, painting, circus, fashion, all forms of theater, cinema and advertising over the centuries up until the present day.

With over 500 photographs, drawings, historical and contemporary references and multifaceted essays and texts, by a series of authors, the book takes the reader on a caleidoscopic ride through centuries and across disciplines, documenting and contexturalizing the project from a variety of angles.

A brief history of the Commedia dell’Arte, introduction of the main characters, Bustelli’s versions transformed into Porcelain and the designers new interpretations, the cultural significance of the Commedia dell’Arte, Bustelli’s figurines’ peculiar gestures juxtaposed to those in silent movies, pantomime, street gestures by urban tribes, masks from use in performance, art, fashion, religion, masquerades, film, comics and rock’n roll, the unique costumes of the Commedia dell’Arte as popular and reappearing motif in fashion over centuries.

Simultaneously the publication documents the design and production of the Couture Edition pieces in the studios of the designers and Nymphenburgs Master workshops revealing rare insights in process and alchemy of fashion and porcelain production. Each of the sixteen new designs is discussed in context of the respective protagonist, who are portrayed with an intimate photograph in their studios and a comprehensive profile text.

The book demonstrates the increasing relevance of handcraft in the age of mass production - century old techniques are the engine of both fashion and fine porcelaine. The elaborate production process of the figurines at the Nymphenburg’s master workshops is for the first time documented and revealed to the public. It illustrates the familiarities and essential bond between Haute Couture and Fine Porcelain making, the mutual devotion to technique and stupefying craft. Why Haute Couture and the Nymphenburg Manufactory are to be counted amongst a few guardians of a level of human achievement expressed as an untouchable form of beauty that would otherwise be lost within a generation or even less.

Over 500 striking color images display the artwork of 100 contemporary painters from around the world. Their works, in oils, acrylics, and watercolors, range from very traditional pieces representing their mother countries to emerging styles that are new on the world scene. Naïve style painters resurge with a new spark, while others ventured into a more futuristic direction, mixing styles and creating completely unique and innovative canvases. No matter in which direction the artists take their work, each painting is truly exceptional and comes straight from the heart. The painters, from child prodigies to experienced veterans, are arranged alphabetically, allowing readers to view all the work of each artist together. Through this book, readers will travel the world and discover amazing contemporary artists and their important works of art. This book is a must for serious art collectors, enthusiasts, gallery owners, and artists.

Cutting Edges documents the new heyday of collage in current art and visual culture. Today’s artists, illustrators, and designers are increasingly drawn to this artistic technique by the challenges of seamlessly melding traditional craftsmanship with skilled computer montage. They are not only composing a wide variety of visual elements, but are also deliberately omitting, deleting, and destroying them. This book is an inspiring collection of these unique examples of contemporary collage.

A Guggenheim Museum Publication Dan Flavin (1933-1996) was hailed for his pioneering use of light and color divorced from traditional artistic contexts. Employing only commercial fluorescent lights, Flavin devised a radical new art form that circumvented the limits imposed by frames, pedestals, and other conventional means of display. His embrace of the unadorned fluorescent light as an aesthetic object placed him at the forefront of Minimal art.

This book, published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, draws upon the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's extensive holdings of Flavin's work, which includes representative examples of each of the formats he developed over the course of his career.

Flooded with color on every page, this volume provides a wide-ranging view of Flavin's work and intellectual thought, bringing together contributions by a number of critics and art historians, and including excerpted writings by the artist.

The Museo Reina Sofia dedicated to Dario Villalba the long-waited anthology exhibition that looked over in depth the work considered today as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the Spanish art in the last decades, not only his great international renown. Despite his previous exhibitions at main contemporary art museums in Europe, this show was Dario Villalba's first solo exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofia. This catalog is a monograph on Villalba's work and artistic trajectory in which the commissioner, Maria Luis Martin de Argil's text appears as well as an unpublished essay by Francisco Calvo Serraller, and a complete documentary appendix that gives a full account of his biography, artistic chronology and bibliography. The catalog also includes a text by Miguel Fernandez Cid and the reproduction of some of the Basic Documents.

This consideration of Hockney's work from 1960 to the early nineties dispels myths and opens up new lines of inquiry concerning his contributions to post-modern art. Filled with beautiful color plates of his paintings, the book draws on extensive research and the artist's personal archives. In a broad chronological format the book reveals the major phases in Hockney's oeuvre: his early years as a student at the Royal College of Art in London and his ironic experimentation with different styles of painting; his images of life in southern California; his highly personal portraits and their studies in perspective; his reinterpretations of modernist paintings; and his forays into photo-collage.

The authors' incisive commentary reveals how Hockney's paintings question, parody and undermine accepted ideas about modern art, while forcing us to reconsider our assumptions about originality and creativity.

The work of Catalan artist Eulàlia Valldosera links to the human body and the representation through the conceptual pieces. Her installations formed by objects, cinematic devices, and projected images in the space surround the spectator and produce nearly a magical effect. The retrospective, which the Reina Sofia Museum dedicates to the artist, allows to get to know her initial works, barely shown previously, that include drawings, photography or single-channel videos. Besides, Valldosera will present the work Alma Mater, a monumental multichannel installation created especially for this show. Dependences consists of two elements, a DVD based on the installation in the MNCARS, including all the exhibited work, and a book that collects two unpublished texts, written by Bartomeu Marí and the re-edition of a text by Jorge Luis Marzo written in 1996.