Ute Eitzenh繹fer: Subtext
That Ute Eitzenh繹fer's jewelry is related to contemporary phenomena is beyond any doubt. The longevity of precious metals and stones is juxtaposed with the rapid development of social realities -- or with our increasingly overwhelmed perception of them. In particular, our power and powerlessness in dealing with meanwhile highly complex communication are a source of inspiration for her works. The seemingly timeless aesthetics of the minimalist-looking pieces of jewelry nevertheless open up to a variety of perspectives: when worn, they encourage us as wearers or beholders to engage in dialog and bring about an immediate exchange. Text in English and German.
Gabi Dziuba & Friends
Gabi Dziuba's jewellery is stringent, laid-back, fragile, minimalist, glamorous, and progressive. Collaboration with close artist associates is characteristic of her work, including those with Gu]nther F繹rg, Hans-J繹rg Mayer, Martin Kippenberger, Heimo Zobernig, Monika Baer, and Alexandra Bircken. Text in English and German. Gabi Dziuba's jewelry is stringent, laid-back, fragile, minimalist, glamorous, and progressive. Blister packs, coins, beans, or letters are turned into wilful creations. Collaboration with close artist associates is characteristic of her work, including those with G羹nther F繹rg, Hans-J繹rg Mayer, Martin Kippenberger, Heimo Zobernig, Monika Baer, and Alexandra Bircken, whose works are included in this monograph. This highlights the openness of Dziuba's artistic approach to new trends - Pop Art, Minimal Art, punk, fashion. A fascinating biography results in which the visual artist, musician, designer, and entrepreneur has freely experimented with the traditional assignment of roles since the 1970s. Gabi Dziuba & Friends is a vivid survey of her extraordinary working methods and the exhibition activities in her Berlin studio. Text in English and German.
Revisions
The manner in which Bacon's paintings evolved was misunderstood during his lifetime. Since he always painted alone in his studios, there were no witnesses to the emergence of his visceral imagery. His insistence on privacy helped generate considerable speculation about his painting process, most of it erroneous.Bacon did make one clear statement about the genesis of his paintings: "I sketch out very roughly on the canvas with a brush, just a vague outline of something, and then I go to work . . . ". Yet this fundamentally accurate summation of his technique ran counter to the received wisdom and was misunderstood or ignored.Martin Harrison's introductory essay begins by demonstrating exactly what Bacon meant, and what he did: it will show what "rough sketching' signified. It also deploys X-ray and infrared images that reveal under-drawing, and analyzes other features that elucidate Bacon's methodology. Photographs of paintings briefly arrested at intermediate points before completion--taken by the few visitors to the studio allowed the privilege--help to explain later stages in painting process.Sophie Pretorius's survey incorporates every one of the images that have hitherto remained unseen, illustrating the transitional states of all the paintings recorded in photographs, arranged thematically.A reference section includes thumbnail images of all the paintings discussed here, arranged in chronological order. This is consistent with the layout of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonn矇 (2016), to which this volume may be regarded as a supplement, publishing significant new information.
Margit Koppendorfer
During her 40-year career, Margit Koppendorfer has designed costumes for the greats of theater history: characters from Shakespeare, Brecht, and Handke, directed by Berghaus, Peymann, and Tabori, performed in Vienna, Zurich, and Berlin. Margit Koppendorfer: Costume Designs presents Koppendorfer's often life-sized mixed-media design sketches on transparent paper and reveals through these unique illustrations how the costume designer accords identity to the characters. By alienating the real in a visionary way, a latent truth emerges. While author Elfriede Jelinek and actress Maria Happel emphasize in their texts the masterful embodiment of the costumes, and of their characters, Margit Koppendorfer herself says of her work, "I dance into the set with my characters." Text in English and German.
Thomas Putze
For Thomas Putze, performance is a snapshot of a moment, a play on possibilities, and at the same time a well-planned and sophisticated act to captivate the onlooker. Yet above all, it is thinking, drawing, sculpting, and realizing with and through the body, which he treats just as relentlessly as all the other materials in his works. He swings through trees, occupies church facades, and submerges himself in mud; frequently without clothing or scantily wrapped in plastic sheeting, he gauges and challenges the physical and thus social space between us bystanders. Thomas Putze typifies the risk of being human, with all its failings and plenty of humor. He not only holds us to account but rather invites us to do this ourselves: to partake in art and to reflect on the performance we call life. Text in English and German.
Nat Mayer Shapiro: Joy and Rigor
From optical illusions to genre scenes and dancing kites, Shapiro's protean output defies categorization From the 1950s until his death in 2005, Nat Mayer Shapiro created over 900 paintings, drawings, assemblages and sculptures. Though he drew from modernist movements such as Expressionism, Op art and pure abstraction, his work features Biblical vignettes, dancing kites, anthropomorphic sculptures and views into the fathomless cosmos.
El-Gazzar
El-Gazzar, born in 1925 in Alexandria, is a leading figure in modern Egyptian art of the 20th century. He enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1944 and then joined the Contemporary Art Group founded by Hussein Youssef Amin, his master. With an innovative and unique expressionist style, it portrays the people of Cairo in a folkloric way. Later, he tried his hand at abstraction by representing industrial machines and their effects on humans. Recognized during his lifetime, the production of El-Gazzar was exhibited in France from 1949, at the Venice Biennale in 1952 and at the S瓊o Paulo Museum in 1953. Today, his works are in private collections in Cairo, Alexandria, Rome, Paris and Brussels, but also in major institutions around the world, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. This catalogue raisonn矇, published in English, comprises two volumes. The first is dedicated to the artist's paintings and the second to graphic works, archives and photographs. It brings an understanding of the enigmatic work of the artist, but also of modern Egyptian art in general.
Andrea Blum: Biota
A 40-year overview of Blum's career working at the interface of art, architecture and design, leading up to her focus on our engagement with the natural worldPublished with Hunter College Art Galleries. Andrea Blum (born 1950) is a New York-based artist who has worked at the intersection of art, architecture and design since the 1970s. She has exhibited at a wide range of venues and has built projects in Europe and the United States that include public installations, furniture, exhibition design, libraries and other designs for living. Blum's work considers the relationship of the sociopolitical world to the private psychological one, zooming in and out of the conditions that organize us as a culture, with a focus on the "down time"--when one eats, reads and is in repose--as the time when the border between private behavior and public etiquette is most evidenced.Accompanying an expansive exhibition of the same name at Hunter College Art Galleries, Biota is lavishly illustrated with extensive photography of Blum's early sculpture, public works, exhibitions, installations and propositions of the past 40 years. The book includes new essays and a conversation between the artist and Allan Schwartzman, all of which explore Blum's practice and artmaking philosophy.
How do you survive your fans when you’re famous?
How do you survive your fans when you're famous? That's the question Shawn, a talented young singer and musician, will have to answer more often than he ever thought possible! Come and follow his hilarious adventures with his fans, and join the Mendes Army if you feel like it!
Meriem Bennani: For My Best Family
Utilizing mediums as diverse as mechanized flip-flops and animated film, Bennani takes a playful, ultra-contemporary approach to the representation of global cultures on social mediaThis publication documents, analyzes and comments on new works by New York-based Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani (born 1988) in relation to her previous production and the cultural context in which she works. Bennani's works explore the potential of storytelling while amplifying reality through a strategy of fantastical imagery and humor, juxtaposing and mixing the language of YouTube videos, reality TV, documentaries and animation. Throughout her career, she has developed a shape-shifting practice of films, sculptures and immersive installations questioning contemporary society and its fractured identities, gender issues and dominance of digital technologies. Combining a new site-specific, large-scale installation with an art film codirected with Orian Barki, the project documented here, her most ambitious, explores ways of being together in public and intimate sociopolitical settings.
Hellebore: The Art of Missupacey
In this fascinating Art of book, Colorado-born artist Ashleigh Izienicki reveals the process behind how she combines dark, macabre themes with a cute and feminine touch to create incredibly popular art. Ashleigh has accumulated a massive following online under her brand, Miss Upacey. She has over 603K followers on Instagram, a popular Patreon, and a successful online shop selling products such as pins, phone cases, stickers, and stationery. She now resides in California and works in traditional and digital mediums. Her book features tutorials in both, giving fans and art-lovers a glimpse behind the curtain into her process, studio set-up, and inspiration. She also talks about the challenges and joys that come with running an art business, and gives her invaluable advice to aspiring creatives.Miss Upacey: The Art of Ashleigh Izienicki has the unmatched production values that 3dtotal Publishing is known for - high-quality paper and a beautiful hardback cover with special cover finishes. This is a keepsake for Miss Upacey fans, and art fans in general, to display on their bookshelf for many years to come.
Anna Freeman Bentley - Complete Reality
Showcases Anna Freeman Bentley's paintings exploring the tension between reality and fabrication in spaces.Anna Freeman Bentley (b. 1982) is an artist based in London. Her painting practice explores unpeopled architecture and interiors, the objects, decoration, and furniture inviting both narrative and abstruser consideration. This publication, Complete Reality, documents Freeman Bentley's latest series of paintings, which she created after visiting the film set for My Driver & I (2024), a coming-of-age drama set in the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.Over the course of the shoot, Freeman Bentley took over two thousand photographs, which she edited and worked from in her London studio. The paintings show lavish rooms, filled with fringed lamps, dusty chandeliers, vast mirrors, and ornate furniture, juxtaposed with the incongruous signs of a film set: screens, leads, computers, and plastic chairs. Exploring the relationship between "reality" and "fabrication", the series continues the artist's interest in spaces that have an inherent tension or transience.Alongside the paintings that comprise Complete Reality, the publication also includes a series of oil studies on paper that explore additional rooms, angles, and spaces from the film set. Installation images of the artist's most recent solo exhibitions - Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Paris (2024), make shift at Monica de Cardenas, Zuoz (2024), and Complete Reality at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2024-25) - showcase the works staged in different configurations and gallery environments.In her introduction, Jennifer Higgie considers the interiority of Freeman Bentley's elusive scenes, and her interest in temporary and unreal spaces. The curator and writer Elisabetta Fabrizi interviews Freeman Bentley about the interplay of reality and illusion in her paintings. They reflect on themes of authenticity and narrative tension, and discuss Freeman Bentley's earlier explorations of cinema, particularly Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979). Kathryn Lloyd writes about the conceptual and historical relationships between cinema, photography, and painting. She analyzes how Freeman Bentley forges an interdependence between these three distinct media, creating an unmistakably painterly language that somehow distils the essence of both film and photography.In an interview with Michele Robecchi, the artist discusses her recent solo exhibition in Switzerland, make shift. Freeman Bentley reflects on her personal connections to the work, the significance of the temporary and transitory nature of the film set and her use of triptychs, mirrors, and fragmentation to disrupt conventional readings of space. In her contribution, the film producer Georgie Paget offers a speculative film script based on the exhibition Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Paris.Edited by Matt Price and designed by Joanna Deans, the book is published by Anomie Publishing, London.
R. Crumb: Existential Comics
This volume brings together twenty-five of R. Crumb's most ambitious, acclaimed, and profound comics. One of the most influential and iconic cartoonists of our time, R. Crumb is celebrated for pushing the boundaries of representation, mass consumerism, and polite society. The comics in this volume exemplify Crumb's creative output over twenty-five years following his early experimentation in the 1960s and 1970s. The comics collected here depict characters searching for an understanding of the world around and within themselves. Through adaptation, autobiography, biography, and short fiction, Crumb--much like his subjects--demands we pay attention to our darkest desires, compulsions, fears, and obsessions. Existential Comics also features a new, introductory comic strip by Crumb, reflecting on his practice in the context of this volume. Editor Dan Nadel's essay further weaves together Crumb's life, career, and influences, delving into the creative environment that informed some of the artist's most outstanding comics.
Benjamin West and the Death of a Stag
Benjamin West's The Death of a Stag, a tour de force of pictorial theater and his own unique Scottish masterpiece, has been the focus of high drama for over two centuries. Painted for the Clan Mackenzie in 1786, the gigantic canvas, measuring twelve by seventeen feet, is still the largest in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. The painting almost moved to America, but after a successful campaign, it was purchased in 1987. In 2004, the work was conserved in situ in the National Gallery of Scotland and this book tells the story of the picture, both in terms of its history and the conservation process.
Elegies of Love
Never reprinted since their first, posthumous appearance in 1935, these woodcuts were the only printed versions of his work to receive Rodin's full approval. Mostly self-educated, Rodin was a passionate re-reader of his favorite books, and Ovid's Love Elegies occupied a special place in his imagination. These woodcut illustrations were taken from the astonishingly free and improvisatory life drawings he made in his later years. For many people these are the most entrancing manifestation of his genius. Privately published in 1939 in a very strictly limited edition, these 31 beautiful images are very rarely seen. This edition marries Rodin's illustrations to Christopher Marlowe's glittering translation, which was ceremonially burnt by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1599.
Douglas Gordon
This book will accompany the first major solo exhibition of Douglas Gordon's work in Scotland since he presented his now celebrated work, 24 Hour Psycho at Tramway in Glasgow in 1993. Gordon is one of a number of Glasgow-trained artists who came to prominence in the 1990s. He has gone on to achieve huge international recognition, marked by major awards, including the Turner Prize in 1996, and by exhibitions in museums in Europe and America. Gordon works with film, video, photographs, objects and texts, examining issues such as memory and identity, good and evil, life and death. He makes great play with the doubling of images often in positive and negative or in mirrored form. This book will show all the important aspects of Gordon's work, both past and present. In addition, it will be specially tailored to bring out the particularly Scottish nature of Gordon's ideas and practice. The exhibition book will contain essays by the exhibition curator, Keith Hartley, senior curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Dr Holger Broeker, Kunstmuseum; Dr Jaroslav Andel of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Prague and an essay by the renowned Scottish author, Ian Rankin.
Brightening Glance
For more than five decades, Pat Lipsky has been a leading figure in American color field painting. In loosely connected vignettes, this extraordinary book looks back on a life starting in 1970s SoHo: from her pioneering days juggling painting and single motherhood in a redesigned factory loft on Wooster Street; to Paris, where an enchanting friendship develops with the former director of the Louvre, Pierre Rosenberg; to her yearslong close friendship with legendary art critic Clement Greenberg; to a marvelous love affair with the charismatic art dealer Richard Bellamy. We glimpse Lipsky's first introduction to C矇zanne as a child in 1950s Brooklyn and her studies with the mythic artist Tony Smith, who would become her mentor. There is a visit with Lee Krasner at her home in Springs and another at Lipsky's Manhattan apartment, late-night, smoke-filled loft parties, and evenings at Max's Kansas City where Lou Reed and Nico sing in the background while rival groups of earthwork artists, pop artists, conceptual artists, and color field painters pretend to ignore each other at the bar. Along the way we experience Lipsky's emergence at the forefront of her generation of painters. Brightening Glance offers a stunningly self-revealing portrait of the struggles and sacrifices, joys and excitement inherent in a modern painter's life, and captures the evergreen allure of New York's art world between 1970 and 2010. In stripped down, elegant prose, Lipsky summons a New York that no longer exists and ponders why we love (and hate) the art world. Ultimately, it's a story of a contemporary woman, a mother, and a painter, who dares a career in a field where only a handful of women have succeeded.
Ben Shahn, on Nonconformity
A richly illustrated new exploration of the painting, photography, and illustration of the politically progressive American artist Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity offers a fresh and wide-ranging account of the work of Ben Shahn (1898-1969), a Jewish immigrant from Russian-controlled Lithuania who became one of America's most prominent and prolific "social viewpoint" artists from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War. Revealing why Shahn remains so relevant today, the book examines his commitment to progressive political causes, from combating fascism to fighting for civil rights. Incorporating international perspectives, it investigates his World War II poster art, labor-related work, and engagement in postwar artistic debates. It brings new insights to Shahn's social realist and documentary styles and their evolution into allegorical, lyrical, and often abstract idioms that embrace the philosophical and the spiritual. And it demonstrates the underappreciated complexity of Shahn's layered visual language and how he experimented with modernist conceptual strategies--often involving photography--to create his paintings, murals, drawings, prints, posters, illustrated books, and commercial designs. Shahn's guiding credo--formulated in the Cold War--asserted that nonconformity was the precondition for all significant art and great social change. Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity illuminates why the artist's work should be seen as a series of "nonconformities" driven by his steadfast dedication to social justice and humanistic values. Published by the Jewish Museum, New York and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sof穩a, Madrid, in association with Princeton University Press Exhibition ScheduleThe Jewish Museum, New YorkMay 23-October 12, 2025
Ryan Preciado & Manuel Sandoval: So Near, So Far
By re-creating Manuel Sandoval's furniture designs for a Rudolph M. Schindler house, Preciado initiates a multigenerational dialogue encompassing architecture, authorship and the built environment Published with Palm Springs Art Museum. In 2020, artist Ryan Preciado (born 1989) began a conversation across time with the life and work of carpenter Manuel Sandoval, who was born nearly 100 years before the artist and worked with architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph M. Schindler. Preciado had been asked to re-create a dining set made by Sandoval for the Ralph G. Walker House, a Los Angeles home designed by Schindler. Working from chairs made in the 1940s, Preciado undertook a kind of forensics to understand how to achieve Sandoval's deeply technical design. Along the way, Preciado engaged in an imagined discourse with Sandoval--about the latter's craft, life and how he navigated a crucial chapter in American architectural history. The culmination of nearly five years of research into this under-historicized figure, So Near, So Far presents work by Preciado in dialogue with Sandoval's story, breaking open established narratives about authorship and the built environment.
Zeng Fanzhi: Near and Far/Now and Then
Astonishing new works from a painter often considered China's greatest living artistPublished with Los Angeles County Museum of Art. One of the most discussed exhibitions during the 2024 Venice Biennale, by renowned Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi (born 1964), is captured in this sumptuous volume. Shedding light on Zeng's ambitious practice of redefining the abstract, this book features two recent bodies of work--oil paintings and works on handmade paper. Emerging from the artist's decades of research in color theory, Zeng's new oil paintings draw on and challenge Impressionist and pointillist practices, with layers of brushwork creating figurative elements that are readily recognizable from afar but dissolve when viewed up close. In a world inundated with machine-rendered images, Zeng's boundary-pushing experiments inspire viewers to experience the beauty and time-honored art and craft of painting. Zeng's works on handmade paper, rendered in ink, graphite, chalk, gold dust and other mineral pigments, point to a new direction in his practice.
Parmigianino
An exploration of Parmigianino's greatest Roman painting, illuminating his dynamic process of invention and the dramatic story around its creation. Parmigianino (1503-1540), whose nickname means "little man of Parma," was the leading painter in Parma after Correggio, and is celebrated as one of the originators of Mannerism. The Vision of Saint Jerome is his first, and only, major public undertaking from his brief period in Rome. This book explores the artist's time in the city until the dramatic events of the Sack of Rome in 1527, and places The Vision of Saint Jerome in the context of Parmigianino's career and legacy. Featuring a selection of key surviving preparatory drawings for this altarpiece, the publication reveals Parmigianino's inspired artistic process. Tracing the history of Parmigianino's masterpiece after its arrival in England, the texts also provides an illuminating account of the painting's conservation and of the artist's reception in nineteenth-century Britain. Published by National Gallery Global/Distributed by Yale University Press
Sungi Mlengeya
Whether infused by movement or stillness, Mlengeya's black-and-white portrait paintings radiate both power and peaceBorn in 1991 in Dar es Salaam, Sungi Mlengeya captures the essence of Black womanhood in her haunting monochromatic acrylic portraits. The meticulously painted figures are set against a minimalist white background, creating a striking contrast that emphasizes skin texture and form. Her portraits, whether infused by movement or stillness, radiate both power and peace, offering the viewer intimate moments of strength and serenity. In this first monograph dedicated to Mlengeya, the curator Tandazani Dhlakama brilliantly analyzes how African, Black and feminist conditions are intertwined in her work, and the intimate conversation between Sungi and her model, Jemima Michael, takes us behind the scenes of a work in the making.
Janet Dawson
Celebrates the work of an artist who is a trailblazer of abstraction yet has a distinct realist styleBorn in Sydney in 1935, Janet Dawson has moved between abstraction and figuration, formalism and realism over six decades. Consistent to her practice is her investigative vision: her art derives from an immense curiosity about material existence and states of the natural world.The first major monograph on Dawson, this book features new scholarship by exhibition curator Denise Mimmocchi and assistant curator Monique Leslie Watson (both Art Gallery of New South Wales) and by Australian art critic Jennifer Higgie. An archival text by British-born Australian art critic Virginia Spate on Dawson's first solo exhibition at Gallery A, Melbourne, in 1961, is also reproduced. Published in association with a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Faraway, So Close features over eighty works created from 1951 to 2018, as well as archival and recent photographs.Exhibition Dates: July 19, 2025-January 18, 2026Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
You and Me
Like a comforting sip of tea amidst life's chaos, these delightful illustrations celebrate the small joys of existence. You and Me is an uplifting, heart-warming collection from the inimitable @JangandFox. A celebration of everyday joy to spread hope, light and positivity told through the beautiful friendship of popular characters Eleph and Little Fox. This is the perfect gift to lift a loved one's spirits and remind them that you have their back. 'Even in the thickest forest, the light always finds its way.' 'Look at the magical moments that we are so used to, that we call them "ordinary days"'. 'On the days you feel invisible, know you're a treasure worth finding.' Including exclusive, never-before-seen comics.
Margret Eicher: It's a Digital World!
Eicher's large-scale tapestries swap royals for celebrities to riff on art history and contemporary visual cultureWhile tapestries have historically been used by nobility to celebrate their exploits, Margret Eicher (born 1955) revives the genre with a surprising topicality, depicting today's most recognizable celebrities and characters. Eicher thus provides a critical dimension to tapestry making, presenting the consequences of the digital revolution.
Botello
The first ever monograph of Spanish painter and sculptor ?ngel Botello's work presents the artist's most illustrious works in a collector's edition. Text in English and Spanish. In this first published monograph devoted to the work of the Spanish painter and sculptor ?ngel Botello, the artist's most illustrious works curated from private collections, museums and the artist's estate are presented in a collector's edition. Text in English and Spanish.
Retrospective Exhibition of Important Works of John Singer Sargent
Death of Species
Death of Species is a lyrical, speculative journey across a sea of collapsing institutions and emerging possibilities. In these pages, the world is an archipelago of fragile islands-fortresses of power, shifting territories of tradition, and swirling oceans brimming with technological change. As the tide of AI-driven media and radical innovation rises, once-mighty islands crumble, revealing the tensions beneath their rigid surfaces: hierarchies upended, pirate-like dissenters flourishing in hidden coves, and new, amphibious ways of living that slip effortlessly between land and sea. Through vivid metaphors and deft storytelling, the book invites readers to witness the death of old species-outdated modes of creation, power, and governance-while tracing the emergence of astonishing new forms. From the fortresses that cling to rusted authority to the renegade pirate ships deftly navigating uncharted waters, every chapter brims with transformative ideas about collaboration, fluid institutions, and creative evolution. Weaving in tales of young visionaries, archivists on the brink, and communities unshackled by digital transformations, Death of Species is at once a reflection on the fragile illusions of permanence and a clarion call to embrace what comes next. Anyone curious about how we might thrive in a fluid, fast-changing world will find here both cautionary tales and exhilarating prospects for the future. https: //hyperdense.digital/
Sam Gilliam: Sewing Fields
Dedicated to Gilliam's late-career sewn and collaged fabric works, this colorful catalog embraces the artist's restless creativity and visionary approach to abstractionA pioneering artist who redefined the boundaries of painting, Sam Gilliam (1933-2022) transformed the medium with his radical approach to color, material and space. Sewing Fields focuses on a lesser-known yet crucial period in Gilliam's later career: that of his sewn and collaged works. His residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in 1993 reshaped his artistic practice. Far from his Washington, DC, studio, Gilliam embraced new materials, working with pre-stained fabrics that he shipped to Ireland, cutting and layering them into sculptural compositions. A collaboration with a local dressmaker further expanded his process, reinforcing his innovative fusion of painting and textile techniques. Sewing Fields brings these groundbreaking works back to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, nearly 50 years after Gilliam's first Dublin exhibition, positioning him within a broader transatlantic dialogue on abstraction.
Anila Quayyum Agha: Interwoven
Untangling the conceptual threads that unite a distinguished artist's two- and three-dimensional artworksSpanning two decades of the multifaceted work of Pakistani American visual artist Anila Quayyum Agha (born 1965), Interwoven documents immersive installations, embroidery, drawings, paintings and wall sculptures. Such visual gateways, the "patterns used to break patterns," as the New York Times put it in a recent profile on the artist, poetically convey the contradictions and layered dimensions of the American journey. Whether immersive rooms of light or delicate, intimate drawings, Agha's works prompt feelings of wonder, disarming audiences with their beauty and allowing them to ponder deep questions regarding themes such as the history of women, the role of spirituality and the immigrant experience. The book includes essays that explore Agha's work through the lenses of biography, feminism and art and architectural history. This book was published in conjunction with The Westmoreland Museum of American Art
Hilma AF Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers
Af Klint's exquisitely rendered botanical portfolio reveals a deep spiritual engagement with the flora of her native SwedenAcross the spring and summer seasons of 1919 and 1920, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint engaged in a period of intense observation of nature, venturing into forests and fields and drawing the flowers she found there. The resulting 46 sheets comprise her Nature Studies portfolio, recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In pencil and jewel-toned watercolor, af Klint juxtaposed exquisitely rendered blossoms with enigmatic diagrams: a blooming sunflower is echoed by nested circles; lily of the valley is joined by a colorful checkerboard; catsfoot is set against a pair of mirrored spirals. Together, these two modes--representational and abstract--demonstrate the artist's belief that close observation of nature reveals "what stands behind the flowers" ineffable aspects of the human character.Published in conjunction with the first public exhibition of this rare portfolio, Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers presents the drawings alongside contextualizing artworks and translations of the artist's previously unpublished writings. An overview essay by curator Jodi Hauptman explores af Klint's portfolio and the circumstances of its creation; texts by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Laura Neufeld and Lena Struwe unpack the imagery, materiality and botanical knowledge behind these works.Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) trained at Stockholm's Royal Academy of Fine Arts and established herself as a professional artist. In the first decade of the 20th century, she developed a unique abstract vocabulary, some years earlier than her peers. Whether on canvas or on paper, her singular work is informed by her spiritual investigations and, as this project demonstrates, an interest in and attunement to the natural world.
