Книги з живопису

"Abstract expressionism" refers to the non-representational use of form and color as a means of expression that emerged in America in the 1940s, largely thanks to the innovative work of Arshile Gorky. Interestingly, abstract expressionism is considered to be the first movement originating in America to have a worldwide influence. Two very different sub-categories of the movement developed: "action painting" (exemplified notably by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock) and "color field painting," made most famous by Mark Rothko. Abstract expressionists strove to express pure emotion directly on canvas, via color and especially texture (the surface quality of the brushstroke), by embracing "accidents," and celebrating painting itself as a communicative action.

Artists featured: William Baziotes, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Theodoros Stamos, Clyfford Still, Mark Tobey, Bradley Walter Tomlin

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre series features:

- a detailed illustrated introduction plus a timeline of the most important political, cultural and social events that took place during that period
- a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each of which is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and with an interpretation of the respective work, plus a portrait and brief biography of the artist
- approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

Hailed as the first American-born art movement to have worldwide influence, Abstract Expressionism denotes the non-representational use of paint as a means of personal expression. It emerged in America in the 1940s, with lead protagonists including Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. 

Abstract Expressionism spawned many different stylistic tendencies but two particularly prominent sub-categories: action painting, exemplified by de Kooning and Pollock, and colour field painting, made most famous by Rothko. Throughout, Abstract Expressionists strove to convey emotions and ideas through the making of marks, through forms, textures, shades, and the particular quality of brushstrokes. 

The movement favoured large-scale canvases and embraced the role of accident or chance. With featured works from 20 key Abstract Expressionist artists, this book introduces the movement which shifted the center of art gravity from Paris to New York and remains for many the golden moment of American art.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre series features:

- a detailed illustrated introduction plus a timeline of the most important political, cultural and social events that took place during that period
- a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each of which is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and with an interpretation of
the respective work, plus a portrait and brief biography of the artist
- approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

Handmade in Africa. Shedding light on the art of the 'Dark Continent'

Art from the African continent occupies an unusual place in the concert of world cultures. Once considered "primitive" by colonial invaders, it has long since been recognized and acknowledged for its highly developed sense of design and aesthetics. Similarly, African art is often concerned with vital moral and spiritual concerns of the human condition, and frequently has a ritual or religious function—whether in masks, ancestral figures, ceramics, basketry, metalwork, or weapons. The items in this volume, mostly datable only with difficulty, start with a sculptured head from Nigeria, possibly dating from the 12th century, and extend from a 15th/16th-century salt container from Sierra Leone to the 19th and 20th centuries, to which most of the artworks belong.

With examples from every region of the continent — including Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Madagascar, South Africa and a dozen other countries — this book demonstrates the profundity and astonishing variety of African arts, describing the social and religious contexts without which these artworks cannot be fully understood.

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre Series features:

• a detailed illustrated introduction plus a timeline of the most important political, cultural and social events that took place during that period
• a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each of which is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and with an interpretation of the respective work, plus a portrait and brief biography of the artist
• approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Ethnologist and historian Stefan Eisenhofer has been head of the African department of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Munich since 2001. He co-founded the museum's Munich EthnoFilm Days and Urban African Sounds concert series. He also teaches at the Institute for Ethnology at the University of Munich, and has curated various exhibitions including Genocide Monument (2004). His book Painted People (2005) explores body art on all five continents.

Often wryly funny and just as smart, Albert Oehlen’s paintings play the medium for all it's worth - and then some. After realizing that the so-called death of painting freed him to explore "the number of aspects through which one could expand painting," Oehlen started work on a wide variety of figurative and non-objective offerings, in what he has called his "post-non-figurative" art. The artist continuously challenges himself, setting up rules that force him to overcome convention and his own routine in order to arrive at a satisfying image. During his career, he has chosen to paint in primary colours only or in grey, to integrate mirrors into his canvases, or to start on computer paintings when the first PCs became available. In his most recent work, Oehlen expands painting through the use of advertising posters whose in-your-face aesthetics he transforms with subtle brushwork. Never without a touch of tongue-in-cheek humour, his work seems to be winking at us as it dares us to change the way we perceive an image.

This XL monograph covers the entire scope of Oehlen’s oeuvre: Roberto Ohrt discusses the early years when Oehlen came into his own alongside Kippenberger, Büttner, and others, part of a scene that broke rules in art and rock music. Klaus Kertess examines the years from 1988 onwards, when Oehlen saw himself more self-consciously as a painter and started his first abstract works, then continued to probe the limits of the medium. Martin Prinzhorn and John Corbett take a close look at aspects of Oehlen’s iconography, and Oehlen discusses his computer paintings in a conversation with Corbett. An exhaustive biography and bibliography round out this comprehensive study. While Oehlen fans will rejoice at the publication of this breathtaking book, no one with an interest in contemporary art should pass up this unique opportunity to discover Oehlen’s remarkable body of work.

Alex Katz's long-standing fascination with dance and collaborations with renowned playwrights and choreographers yielded some of his most complex compositions.

Since Alex Katz first painted the Paul Taylor in 1959, he has invited dancers to model for him. Dance, according to the artist, belongs to the same “long tradition of gestures” as painting. This publication is the first to examine the many decades of Katz’s work for the stage, including the ways that he introduced tenets of postwar painting into theater and dance aesthetics.

“I’d never seen anything like it,” Katz recalls of his first encounter with the work of dancer and choreographer Paul Taylor. The two partnered on fifteen productions for which Katz innovated with flat lighting, humorous obstacles, and framing mechanisms. His involvement with Paul Taylor led to collaborations with other companies including Yoshiko Chuma, Laura Dean, William Dunas, and Parsons.

Among Katz’s most celebrated sets is the ensemble of cutouts he created for Kenneth Koch’s 1961 production, George Washington Crossing the Delaware. Katz heightened the absurdity of the Revolutionary War-inspired play with Pop-adjacent figures and props. This publication brings together paintings, sketches, costumes, photographs, film stills, and ephemera. Newly-commissioned essays, unpublished materials, and major paintings will provide an overview of Katz's working relationships with individual choreographers and shed new light on avant-garde collaborations in New York between the 1960s and 80s.

About the Authors:

Diana Tuite served as the Katz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. Charles L. Reinhart served as the longtime director of the American Dance Festival. David Salle is an American painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. Jennifer Tipton is an award-winning American lighting designer. Robert Storr is an American curator, critic, painter, and writer. Jacqueline Terrassa is the Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby College Museum of Art.

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Пролистать книгу Alex Katz: Theater & Dance

When the final tally of key movers in the plastic arts of this century is compiled, there is no doubt that maestro of movement Alexander Calder (1898-1976), the man who put the swing into sculpture, will be near numero uno. Calder took it off the plinth, gave it to the wind, and left us kinetic playgrounds of the spirit. He operated at the point where Modernity and nature fused, developing an environmental art that changed the medium forever. Visiting his Paris atelier in 1932, Duchamp coined the term "Mobiles" for Calder`s delicate wire and disc pieces, constructions that would soon become immensely popular.

But he didn`t rest on his innovations. Friends with Miro, Mondrian and Leger, Calder also turned his hand to painting, drawing, gouaches, toys, textiles and utensil design. A graphic master who sketched as much in air as in ink, the Sixties and Seventies saw Calder take on the monumental, translating the dynamics of cities into both his Mobiles and "Stabiles". At a time when sculpture was perceived to be the antithesis of movement, Calder unmade gravity and freed the elements in a body of work that is still sending a wind of change through the art world today.

About the Series:

Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

* a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
* approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
* a concise biography

Numerous high-quality reproductions accompany this in-depth examination of Modigliani's career, from the penetrating psychological studies of his early portraits, through the more stylized images such as the graceful figures with the famous almond-shaped eyes and swan-like necks, to his mature depiction of nudes, which have become symbols of femininity.

Although Modigliani led the life of the turn-of-the-century bohemian in Paris, dying at the young age of 35, his restless life is scarcely reflected in his paintings, which are characterized by cool detachment and often archaic austerity. This fascinating study reveals how Modigliani drew his inspiration not so much from the avant-garde movements of the time, as from the artists of the Renaissance and Rococo periods.

An expanded and revised edition of this elegant and definitive volume, which helped establish the ever-growing passion for American Impressionism.

With brilliant scholarship and a wealth of stunning illustrations, American Impressionism provides a vivid summary of the entire art movement, starting with its roots in earlier American art and its relationship to French Impressionism. The first edition was quickly recognized as the most authoritative and penetrating account of the movement, which has continued to grow in popularity since the book's debut. For this new edition, which features 25 additional illustrations, Professor Gerdts has added a fascinating new chapter on Impressionist themes. The volume also includes a thoroughly updated bibliography.

American Impressionism tells how the movement progressed from an avant-garde aesthetic assaulted by critics up to its years of triumph and how the movement developed in diverse ways throughout the country including regional Impressionism in the South, Midwest, and West. All of the masterworks are here, from Childe Hassam's sun-drenched gardens to John Twachtmans snow-silenced landscapes, from Edmund Tarbell's coolly elegant ladies in dim, luxurious interiors to Frederick Friesekes sun-dappled nudes.

Home is where the colors live. The painting of André Butzer

Fusing European expressionism with American popular culture, André Butzer started painting his way through the artistic and political extremes of the 20th century. With wide-ranging influences including the likes of Friedrich Hölderlin, Edvard Munch, Walt Disney, and Henry Ford, he developed a fictitious universe centered around the space colony NASAHEIM. There dwells the Peace-Siemens, a friendly head-shape that combines utopian ideas with the economical thinking of budding mass-consumerism, while a figure like the Wanderer offers romantic projections, or the Shame-Human reflections of the political past. This universe lends thematic depth to the canvases, with the characters acting as protagonists of paint, surrounding the N-House, home of all colors, in the style the artist has termed “Science-Fiction Expressionism.”

Some years into the new millennium, the colors took on a life of their own and grew into abstract paintings of lines freewheeling across the canvas. Moving closer to the limits of painting, from 2010 on Butzer explored the fundamental dimensions and potentialities of painterly expression in the seemingly black surfaces of his N-Paintings. At this point, Butzer relocated to California in 2018, painting outdoors year-round. The resulting works brim with colorful freshness, an extended family of lines and figurations with new attitudes refined by their experiences at the far edge of abstraction.

This is the first book to span the full range of Butzer’s oeuvre from 1999 to 2021, the works’ progression gaining an almost musical drive of development, return, and new beginnings. The plates are interspersed with contemporary quotes from the artist that illuminate his idiosyncratic stance as a background to the work, as well as photos from his archives. The introductory essay, written by Hans Werner Holzwarth, investigates the different work phases, and places the artist’s ideas in a wider discourse of abstraction and figuration after the end of either genre. And, most importantly, the book’s pristine, huge-format illustrations fully evidence the finesse as a colorist that place this artist among the internationally most recognized painters of his generation.

The artist:

André Butzer was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1973. For more than 25 years he has painted his way through the extremes of the 20th century, exploring art, politics, and pop culture. Paintings for him are “localizations of the greatest despair and the greatest hope,” which is exactly why “they come closest to the very joy and aid we are in dire need of.” After spending several years in California, he now lives in the southwest of Berlin and is one of the most internationally recognized painters of his generation.

Famous First Edition: First printing of 4,000 numbered copies

An extraordinary private collection of watercolours and drawings by Andrew Wyeth depicting the subjects memorialized in his legendary painting Christina's World, one of the best-known works of American art.

This book presents rarely seen watercolours and drawings Andrew Wyeth made of his friend Christina Olson, her brother Alvaro, and the weathered Maine farmstead where they lived. It features moving portraits and serene interior and exterior views of the house and the surrounding land, now memorialized in Wyeth's 1948 tempera painting Christina's World, one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art and now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Some forty-five works from the collection of the Marunuma Art Park in Japan, rarely shown before in the United States, are accompanied by works from the Farnsworth as well as by historical photographs of Wyeth, the Olsons, and the house.

Otoyo Nakamura writes about the history of this collection of Wyeth works, and Michael Komanecky addresses the place of the Olson farm in Wyeth's career over three decades, and how Christina's World and the Olson House have inspired pilgrimages for fans of Wyeth's work. Despite its isolated location and seasonal schedule, Olson House draws thousands of visitors each year from around the world. The Olson House, acquired by the Farnsworth Art Museum in 1991, has been recommended for National Landmark status.

About the Authors:

Michael K. Komanecky is Chief Curator at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and former Chief Curator at the Phoenix Art Museum, and author of and contributor to numerous books, including The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain (2008), Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper, 1575-1775 (1998), The Folding Image: Screens by Western Artists of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1984), and Robert Indiana and The Star of Hope (2009).

Otoyo Nakamura is Wyeth Collection Curator at Marunuma Art Park, Asaka, Japan.

Selected and Arranged by Richard Meryman from Recorded Conversations with the Artist, 1964-2007

Richard Meryman began an enduring friendship with Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) while on the job as a Life magazine editor in 1964. For Meryman, this unique friendship yielded more than four decades of recorded conversations with Wyeth, his family, friends and neighbours in Wyeth’s homes in Pennsylvania and Maine. Meryman notes that, whether during formal interviews, shared meals, car rides or long walks, “Wyeth applied to himself the same sensitive understandings that fueled his art. A lifelong realist who swam against the art world tide of modernism, he showed himself to be fundamentally a painter of emotion – of people and objects that somehow embodied his memories and imagination, triggering feelings inexpressible in words, but recognized by viewers.” In five skillfully crafted monologues composed by Meryman around key themes in Wyeth’s work, we hear the voices of not only the artist but also his subjects, neighbors, relatives and critics. 

The book includes reproductions of the works of art discussed by Wyeth in his own words, as well as previously unpublished photographs of Wyeth’s studio taken in 2009.

Whether you're a casual admirer of Andrew Wyeth's paintings or an ardent fan, this retrospective album of his work from the 1930s to the 90s is both an outstanding introduction to the artist and a highly personal glimpse of his career.

The book presents 133 color reproductions of tempera, drybrush, and watercolor paintings and five black and white pencil sketches, and includes Distant Thunder, Green Room, Barracoon, and several paintings of Helga and of Siri Erickson. For every one of these pieces, Wyeth also offers his commentary describing the model or the scene, his mood or his technique, or all of these. 

One of Andrew Wyeth’s most important paintings, Wind from the Sea, a recent gift to the National Gallery of Art, is also the artist’s first full realization of the window as a recurring subject in his art. 

Wyeth returned to windows over the next sixty years, producing more than 250 works that explore both the formal and conceptual richness of the subject. Spare, elegant and abstract, these paintings are free of the narrative element inevitably associated with Wyeth’s better-known figural compositions. 

In 2014 the Gallery will present an exhibition of a select group of these deceptively ‘realistic’ works, window paintings that are in truth skilfully manipulated constructions engaged with the visual complexities posed by the transparency, beauty and formal structure of windows. In its exclusive focus on paintings without human subjects, this catalogue will offer a new approach to Wyeth’s work, being the first time that his non-figural compositions have been published as a group. 

The authors explore Wyeth’s fascination with windows – their formal structure and metaphorical complexity. In essays that address links with the poetry of Robert Frost and the paintings of Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler and Franz Kline, the authors consider Wyeth’s statement that he was, in truth, an ‘abstract’ painter.

До 1960-х років Andrew Wyeth користувався зірковою репутацією висхідної зірки у світі мистецтва. Відтоді критики та вчені здебільшого ігнорували його. Проте Вайет, якому на момент публікації було 88 років, продовжував малювати, на радість своїм шанувальникам, колекціонерам і любителям мистецтва.

Тепер, разом із виставкою High Museum, Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic по-новому дивиться на творчість одного з найулюбленіших художників Америки. Розглядаючи всю його творчість, книга відзначає постійну любов митця до повсякденного життя – домашнього, природного та архітектурного. Ці об’єкти, які зустрічаються в усіх роботах Ваєта, утворюють візерунки, які висвітлюють ключові теми та показують, що художник бореться з проблемами пам’яті, тимчасовості, втілення та метафізики. Книга, організована хронологічно та тематично, досліджує, як підхід художника до цих тем формувався на початку його кар’єри, а останніми роками був переглянутий у новий та дивовижний спосіб.

Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic містить 150 темперних картин і 50 малюнків і акварелей, включаючи його найвідоміші роботи, але також багато з них опубліковані тут уперше.

Про авторів:

Енн Натсон — запрошений куратор виставки «Ендрю Ваєт: пам’ять і магія». Кетлін А. Фостер — куратор американського мистецтва Роберта Л. Макніла молодшого в Музеї мистецтв Філадельфії. Майкл Р. Тейлор — помічник куратора та виконуючий обов’язки керівника відділу сучасного мистецтва в Музеї мистецтв Філадельфії. Крістофер Кросман, директор бібліотеки та художнього музею Вільяма А. Фарнсворта в Рокленді, штат Мен. Джон Вілмердінг — професор американського мистецтва Крістофера Б. Сарофіма в Прінстонському університеті.