Bøger udgivet af David Zwirner

Best known for his iconic print Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known as the Great Wave, Katsushika Hokusai was a revolutionary printmaker. His mastery of ukiyo-e in the nineteenth century has inspired generations of artists since, and his works exposed the world to the delicate beauty and power of Japanese woodblock technique. In addition to his remarkable artistic output, Hokusai was also a dedicated teacher who sought to pass down his deep understanding of color and painting to practicing artists through immensely detailed written tutorials. Here, for the first time in centuries, are excerpts from his manuals, many available for the first time in English. It is an invaluable insight into the psyche of a true master, and a rare personal account of an artist's life during a fascinating period in Japan's history. Connecting Hokusai's prints from the Edo period to manga, author Ryoko Matsuba foregrounds Hokusai's contributions to Japanese creative expression from the 1800s to today. Also included in this book: Vincent Van Gogh's letter about Hokusai's Great Wave and the contemporary artist Ikeda Manabu's concise observations about Hokusai's lasting influence.

The second title in the Clarion series spotlights the artist Nikita Gale, whose multimedia work applies the lens of material culture to examine the role authority plays in political, social, and economic systems.Immersing the audience in sound and light, Nikita Gale’s END OF SUBJECT subverts understandings of viewership by prompting spectators to question their subjecthood within 52 Walker’s site-specific installation. Creating an aurally and visually rich environment, Gale engages with the architecture of the space, stimulating all senses, and muses on the boundaries of performance art. Considering and fracturing the physical space of the installation, the artist employs abolitionist ideology and institutional critique to simultaneously rupture and rebuild facets of the art institution. With an introduction by Ebony L. Haynes and a suite of poems by Harmony Holiday, this publication considers Gale’s multidisciplinary approach in addressing historical hierarchies of visibility. A text by the esteemed artist Andrea Fraser offers reflections on the various interventions at play during a gathering held in the exhibition. About Clarion The Clarion series of illustrated publications is positioned as an extension of each exhibition at the groundbreaking gallery space 52 Walker, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. The program focuses on showcasing conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers. The series title is derived from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the oldest of its kind, at the University of California, San Diego. Octavia Butler attended this workshop in the 1970s. Butler’s writing has been influential in the conceptual framework of the program and the Clarion series. With a sleek design influenced by encyclopedias, each publication features color reproductions of the works on view, alongside an introduction by Haynes, commissioned essays, artist texts, archival materials, and more.

A breathtaking selection of Michaël Borremans’s lustrous paintings, this catalogue showcases his technical mastery and creative use of mise-en-scène.Recalling classical painting, both through technical mastery and subject matter, Borremans’s depiction of the surprising and the bizarre, invites a second look. Uncanny scenes of figures onlooking blurred acrobatic displays, hooded subjects in Rembrandt lighting, or solemn portraits of painted faces demonstrate Borremans’s unique vision. In this recent body of work, Borremans continues to draw the viewer in closer with his small scale paintings of mysterious figures in peculiar arenas.

Selections from Romaine Brooks’s unpublished memoir No Pleasant Memories expose the psyche and practice of this underrecognized queer, female artist.Most known for her bold and darkly painted portraits, Brooks was revolutionary in her feminist renderings of women in resistance. Openly queer, she challenged conceptions of gender and sexuality in her art, which also served as her refuge. While many of her male counterparts were disfiguring and cubing their subjects—often women—Brooks gave personhood and power to the figures she painted. Her frank approach to her complicated relationship with her mother, faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender is complemented by a keen wit that echoes the gray tones of her work.   Though her paintings are held in major collections, Brooks’s influence in modernist circles of the early twentieth century is largely underexplored. This new publication, guided by Brooks’s own impressionistic musings, bridges an important gap between the art and the artist. An introduction by Lauren O’Neill-Butler explores Brooks’s role as an artist in the early twentieth century through the lens of gender and sexuality. 

This comprehensive catalog of the work of the beloved artist Rose Wylie over the last five years, highlighting her expansive oeuvre of painting and drawing"Wylie fearlessly tackles the thorniest topics head-on, committing her thoughts and questions about politics, religion, fame, love, history, money and nature to canvas." - Charlotte Brook, Harper's Bazaar Inspired by film, pop culture, and the history of fashion as she experienced personally, Wylie harnesses a union of high and low culture with a bold technique of mark making. Her unique practice of material overlay and erasure creates fantastic compositions. Creating conceptual tensions between formal and informal aesthetics, Wylie employs the visual elements of text as formal details in her paintings. With a beautiful swiss binding, this monograph compiles the work of four exhibitions at David Zwirner offering a full breadth of Wylie's most recent work to date. Giving insight and compassion to Wylie's feminist and rebellious impulses, Judith Bernstein writes an accompanying text on how she relates to Wylie's ambitious and playful energy. With a foreword by Nicholas Serota, this publication also features new essays by Barry Schwabsky and David Salle and an enlightening interview between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Designed as a companion to the hugely successful monograph Noah Davis, this volume offers further insight into the impact and legacy of the revolutionary Los Angeles artist and activist."Embedding his dreams on canvas and in the community, visionary American artist Noah Davis created a mighty legacy." - Rachel Willcock, ArtReview (2022) Looking to literature, film, architecture, and art history, Noah Davis imbued his ethereal paintings with emotion and imagination. Muted colors, fantastic scenes, and blurred subjects create an intoxicating vision. Attuned to the power of his medium, Davis layered his paintings-figuratively and literally-using a unique dry paint application to depict quotidian life at an enigmatic, almost magical remove. Featuring sumptuous close-ups throughout, this important new book brings into focus the rich, painterly variety and luminous detail of Davis's canvases. With a special focus on the groundbreaking Underground Museum, which Noah Davis co-founded with his wife, Karon Davis, Noah Davis: In Detail includes a special conversation, moderated by Helen Molesworth, between Fred Moten, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Lax, and Julie Mehretu. This renowned group of artists and thinkers share personal experiences of the powerful and emotional impact of The Underground Museum and its connection to the larger artistic environs of Los Angeles. Franklin Sirmans contributes a new essay and Lindsay Charlwood, a lifelong friend of Noah's, authors a chronology of his life, contextualizing his artistic and social achievements.

Expressive and rich paintings by the Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera-made during a time of intense solitude and collective struggle across the globe"The rising star's ethereal work is filled with transcendent imagery that allows the viewer to peek beyond the veil of earthly existence." - Naomi Rea, Artnet News In her paintings, Zvavahera gives form to emotions that manifest from other realms and dimensions beyond the domains of everyday life and thought. Her vivid imagery is rooted in the cornerstones of our earthly existence-life and death, pain and pleasure, isolation and connection, and love and loss. This is the first book to explore her work in vivid detail. Zvavahera draws from a powerful visual vocabulary comprising women, her family, and shape-shifting animals, in scenes both metaphorical and fantastical. In several paintings, she makes use of intricate patterns taken from her own floral or classical Zimbabwean designs. Her particular process of alternating painting and printing results in images that communicate complex emotions in a play of tension and release. The result is a deeply personal body of work that probes the nature of the human condition. As Zvavahera states, "It is me in the paintings.… I can only speak about myself." In addition to gorgeous reproductions of seventy-five paintings, including up-close details and installation views, this catalogue also features a new essay by curator Meredith Brown and an interview with the artist by writer Allie Biswas. This catalogue surveys work made since 2017, including her much-lauded contribution to the 2022 Venice Biennale.

An intimate and unique collection of the work of John Ashbery-a prolific poet and art critic-pairing poetry and art writings with playlists of music from his personal library.This book places poetry by Ashbery (1927-2017), gathered from his later collections, in conversation with a selection of contemporaneous art writing. In addition, as Ashbery loved music and listened to it while writing, the "playlists" here present samplings of music from these same years, culled from his own library of recordings. Ashbery's poetry is frequently described as ekphrastic, though, rather than writing a poem "based on" or "inspired" by the content of an artwork or piece of music, he engages with how the experience of seeing it and the artistic strategies employed offer ways of thinking about it and through it. Many observations from Ashbery's art writing also provide keys to how we might read his poetry. Many recordings he listened to feature contemporary classical works that emphasize complex textures, disparate sounds, and disjunct phrases. Ashbery's poetry similarly plays with a diversity of poetic textures and sudden turns such that a reader might construct multiple narratives or pathways of meaning. He rarely offers linear stories or focuses on evocative descriptions of a scene or object. In exploring this ekphrastic book project, the reader is invited to discover how, for Ashbery, these three forms might illuminate and inform one another. In Mónica de la Torre's introduction, she explores the connection between the three muses of music, art, and poetry, and the ekphrastic experience of reading Ashbery.

Renowned British artist Bridget Riley’s paintings have provoked powerful sensations through their formally taut, abstract compositions over the course of her more than six-decade career. In this new body of work, Riley returns to earlier ideas and takes them into further and surprising directions.As the artist has noted, “I am sometimes asked ‘What is your objective’ and this I cannot truthfully answer. I work ‘from’ something rather than ‘towards’ something. It is a process of discovery.” Since 1961, Riley has focused exclusively on seemingly simple geometric forms, such as lines, circles, curves, and squares, arrayed across a surface—whether a canvas, a wall, or paper—according to an internal logic. The resulting compositions actively engage the viewer, at times triggering sensations of vibration and movement. In the present selection, Riley advances her Measure for Measure series, her most extensive body of work to date, into a new, darker color palette—once again, changing the way we look and offering a powerful effect on our eyes.   This sense of dynamism was explored to great effect in the artist’s earliest black-and-white paintings, which established the basis of her enduring formal vocabulary. In 2020, after visiting her own earlier works at her retrospective exhibition organized by the National Galleries of Scotland, Riley returned to black-and-white lozenges, adjusting the orientation of each shape to create a new visual sensation. Published on the occasion of the 2021 exhibition at David Zwirner, London, this monograph features new scholarship on the artist by art historian Éric de Chassey, who looks at how Riley’s past, in addition to the history of art, has led to this body of work.

Exploring the recent sculptural innovations of prominent contemporary artist Carol BoveCarol Bove: Collage Sculptures presents an extensive look into the contemporary artist’s work over the past five years and her ongoing exploration of scale, color, material, and artistic traditions of the twentieth century.    Bove’s recent work engages the conceptual concerns of mid-century sculpture, such as spontaneity, industrial materials, and the potential of painted sculpture. However, within this space of familiar sculptural traditions, Bove has discovered new approaches that lead to places previously unknown. Bove’s “collage sculptures” are created from scrap metal and stainless steel that has been carefully worked into sinuous forms and are frequently painted. Considering the hard rigidity of the steel, the works possess an appearance of almost impossible softness, as if steel could become as pliable as clay. Such works range from small pedestal sculptures to large, imposing compositions. Bove’s interest in scale and how a viewer’s understanding of an artwork shifts depending on its context are explored through a selection of small works from the collection of the Nasher Sculpture Center.   Published by the Nasher Sculpture Center, the catalogue features beautiful reproductions of Bove’s work and an introduction as well as an essay by curator Catherine Craft on the development of the collage sculptures and their relationship to other artists and traditions of modern sculpture. Also included is an essay by Lisa Le Feuvre that explores Bove’s complex work by means of a thematic alphabet related to the artist’s interests. 

Set on a remote island, Shakespeare’s The Tempest is an ideal subject for the artist Rose Wylie, whose work frequently references classic stories and well-known characters.Likely the last play written entirely by Shakespeare, The Tempest brings together various themes the Bard explored in his prior plays, including magic, revenge and forgiveness, order and society, and nature versus art. The shipwreck and remote island, the spirits, and the dukes and their children offer rich material for Wylie’s works on paper and canvas.   As the third title in David Zwirner Books’s Seeing Shakespeare series, this book pairs a complex narrative with equally layered works by a contemporary artist who approaches the play and art making from a unique perspective. Also included is an introduction by the writer Katie Kitamura.

Originally published in 1930 in an edition of one hundred copies, Gertrude Stein’s Dix Portraits pairs her singular literary style with original lithographs by Pablo Picasso and other artists in Stein’s circle to create an exceptional artist book exploring written and visual portraiture.Written between 1913 and 1929, revolutionary years in art history, Dix Portraits conveys the deep human engagement between an artist and her subject. The artist book unites Stein’s ten portraits in prose with sketches by five artists: Pablo Picasso, Christian Bérard, Eugene Berman, Pavel Tchelitchew, and Kristians Tonny. Utilizing the interplay between word and image, Stein’s writing and the artists’ images provide nuance and depth, balancing humor and sincerity.    With a new introduction by the writer Lynne Tillman, Dix Portraits is an unforgettable artistic collaboration. The subjects represented include Guillaume Apollinaire, Christian Bérard, Eugene Berman, Bernard Faÿ, Georges Hugnet, Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, Pavel Tchelitchew, Virgil Thomson, and Kristians Tonny. Originally printed in an edition of one hundred copies with the lithography, and now widely accessible for the first time, Dix Portraits captures Stein’s legacy as a champion of artists and a pioneer of creativity. 

Exploring the development of groundbreaking artist Sherrie Levine’s work, this catalogue looks at four series central to her practice.The latest in the Spotlight Series, which focuses on new bodies of work by contemporary artists, Sherrie Levine: Hong Kong Dominoes showcases several series that distinctly engage the artist’s ongoing inquiry into notions of authorship, originality, and authenticity.  Many of the works are consistent with Levine’s practice—the deliberate reproduction of other artists’ works and styles, so that her work and the original are nearly indistinguishable (as with the After Henri Matisse (1985) and After Feininger (2021) series). A number of the works make reference to modernist masterpieces, questioning the stereotypical construct of the heroic male artist. In her Monochromes After Renoir Nudes (2016) series, Levine used a computer program to calculate the average tone of the nude figures in Renoir’s paintings and then used this color to create monochrome panels. Published for the first time, Hong Kong Dominoes: 1–12 (2017) replicates the patterns of a set of dominoes that Levine purchased in Hong Kong, evoking both minimalist art and popular games. The catalogue also features a new essay by Larry List, which tracks the history of Levine’s inspirations and artistic practice, and an interview with Levine by Jeanne Siegel, originally published in the June/ Summer 1985 issue of Arts Magazine, which explores the artist’s use of appropriated imagery.

An unprecedented catalogue exploring the formal and visual affinities and contrasts between Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi-two of modern art's greatest painters. Rarely seen together, the artworks of Josef Albers (1888-1976) and Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) share many similarities. Although they never met, both artists worked in series as they explored difference and potential through their distinctive treatment of color, shape, form, and morphology. They were also both influenced by Cezanne. As master illusionists and experts in proportion, they tackled similar conceits from different perspectives. Albers focused on the effects of subtle or bold changes and interactions in color, while Morandi made still lifes that treat simple objects as a cast of characters on a stage, exploring their relationship in space. Published on the occasion of the critically acclaimed exhibition Albers and Morandi: Never Finished at David Zwirner New York in 2021, the book illuminates the visual conversation between these two artists. With the exhibition hailed by The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl as "one of the best … I've ever seen," this publication brings this unusual, thought-provoking pairing to your home. Gorgeous reproductions are accompanied by a roundtable about form and color between the exhibition's curator, David Leiber; Heinz Liesbrock, the director of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop; and Nicholas Fox Weber, the executive director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, as well as an essay by Laura Mattioli, the Morandi expert and founder of the Center for Italian Modern Art.

In the Belgian artist Harold Ancart's rich new body of work, he turns an immersive landscape of trees, mountains, and seas into a meditation on painting itself. Harold Ancart often paints subjects that naturally invite contemplation, such as the horizon, clouds, flowers, flames, and icebergs. His newest body of work captures the experience of landscape seen in motion or from a distance: trees blurred while driving past, an inky-black sea seen from a distance, an evocative Martian mountain range. Recalling René Magritte, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Piet Mondrian, who approached this subject matter in distinct ways, Ancart blurs form and color, figure and ground, and figuration and abstraction. Reproduced here in magnificent foldouts, two multipanel canvases situate the viewer between a mountainscape and a seascape, both monumental in scale. Ancart segments the seascape with a stark horizon line, dividing sky and ocean. Like other comparable motifs within the artist's oeuvre, the vividly colored cloudy sky functions in an anthropomorphic way, alluding to the endless possibilities and personalities of organic forms. Including an interview with Bob Nickas, this catalogue offers insight into Ancart's frank reflections on painting, writing, nature, and more. The publication also features a new essay by Laura McLean-Ferris. Taken together, the works in Harold Ancart: Traveling Light meditate on the expansive possibilities of painting.

The Chinese artist Liu Ye's meticulous, colorful canvases convey his love of literature in the first publication dedicated to his paintings of books.Liu is known for his precise, deftly rendered representational paintings. Drawn from contemporary culture and old master painting, his wide-ranging visual touchstones include Piet Mondrian, Miffy the Bunny, Balthus, and Rogier van der Weyden. In this new publication devoted to his book paintings, the artist examines the book as both a physical object and cultural totem. Playing with geometry and perspective, Liu creates extraordinary and disorienting portraits of this most familiar subject. Liu's Book Painting series, begun in 2013, depicts close-up views of books that are turned open to reveal empty pages, an approach that emphasizes the object's form over its content. Rendering books' material structure-endpapers, binding, spine-in sensual detail, these paintings indicate an obsession with the book as an object and a lifelong love of literature. Liu's father was a children's book author who introduced him to Western writers at a young age, fueling his curiosity and imagination. Many of the books in his father's collection were banned in Cultural Revolution-era China and the artist read them secretly throughout his childhood. This formative experience figures in his popular Banned Books series and in his book paintings in general. Published on the occasion of a solo exhibition presented at David Zwirner New York in 2020, this catalogue includes new writing by the acclaimed poet Zhu Zhu, who traces the evolution of the book form in Liu's work, as well as an interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

"It never occurred to me while growing up that art is an industry involving countless jobs, so if this book helps shed light to just one kid that it is a viable career option, then it has done its job, as art is indescribably important!" -Oliver Jeffers, Artist and Illustrator "This book so beautifully explains to kids what goes into making an art exhibition. It's not just about an artist hanging something on a wall for people to see: it's so much more lively, layered, and community-driven. Even I learned a ton about what truly goes into a fantastic art show!" -Joy Cho, Author and Founder of Oh Joy! "I wish I'd had this book when I was a kid! I always wanted my art to be in a big museum one day but, growing up in a small town, that just seemed impossible. Making a Great Exhibition is a beautifully illustrated behind-the-scenes peek at exactly how art makes its way from an artist's mind to the big white walls of a fancy gallery. Turns out, there are a lot of people, with some very cool jobs, who make the magic happen-and any book that shows kids (and parents!) they can grow up to have a career in the arts is okay by me!" -Danielle Krysa, The Jealous Curator An exciting insight into the workings of artists and museums, Making a Great Exhibition is a colorful and playful introduction geared to children ages 3 to 7.How does an artist make a sculpture or a painting? What tools do they use? What happens to the artwork next? This fun, inside look at the life of an artwork shows the journey of two artists' work from studio to exhibition. Stopping along the way we meet colorful characters-curators, photographers, shippers, museum visitors, and more!Both illustrator and author were raised in the art world, spending their time in studios, doing homework in museum offices, and going to special openings. They have teamed up to share their experiences and love for this often mysterious world to a young audience. London-based illustrator Rose Blake is best known for her work in A History of Pictures for Children, by David Hockney and Martin Gayford, which has been a worldwide success. Author Doro Globus brings her love for the arts and kids together with this fun journey.

A broad and deep anthology of critic and art historian Richard Shiff's most influential writings, which have shaped our understanding of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art.In his engaging and often strikingly deep observations of major modern and contemporary visual art, Shiff has written about an impressive range of artists, including Willem de Kooning, Marlene Dumas, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, and Bridget Riley. A leading scholar and powerful voice, Shiff's insight into some of the most prominent artistic practices spans generation, place, and approach as seen in this considered selection of essays on twenty-six artists. These writings first appeared in exhibition catalogues for retrospectives at galleries and institutions including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and Tate Modern. Shiff supplements his unquestionable fluency in art history with insights cultivated from his readings in philosophy, phenomenology, literary theory, and psychoanalysis, among other fields. Shiff's writing-conceptually rich, meditative, and enjoyable to read-is attuned to the nuances of artistic style and technique, drawing out art's social implications not merely from broad histories but also directly from artists' mark making and technical gestures. Actively engaged as a viewer and a writer, Shiff has transformed the act of looking at art into contemplative and captivating writing. Includes essays on Georg Baselitz, Mark Bradford, Georges Braque, Jim Campbell, Chuck Close, Willem de Kooning, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin, Suzan Frecon, Lucian Freud, Ellen Gallagher, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Julie Mehretu, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Jack Whitten, and Zeng Fanzhi.

In his introduction to Charles Baudelaire’s Salon of 1846, the renowned art historian Michael Fried presents a new take on the French poet and critic’s ideas on art, criticism, romanticism, and the paintings of Delacroix.Charles Baudelaire, considered a father of modern poetry, wrote some of the most daring and influential prose of the nineteenth century. Prior to publishing the international bestseller Les Fleurs du mal (1857), he was already notable as a forthright and witty critic of art and literature. Captivated by the Salons in Paris, Baudelaire took to writing to express his theories on modern art and art philosophy.    The Salon of 1846 expands upon the tenets of romanticism as Baudelaire methodically takes his reader through paintings by Delacroix and Ingres, illuminating his belief that the pursuit of the ideal must be paramount in artistic expression. Here we also see Baudelaire caught in a fundamental struggle with the urban commodity of capitalism developing in Paris at that time. Baudelaire’s text proves to be a useful lens for understanding art criticism in mid-nineteenth-century France, as well as the changing opinions regarding the essential nature of romanticism and the artist as creative genius.    Acclaimed art historian and art critic Michael Fried’s introduction offers a new reading of Baudelaire’s seminal text and highlights the importance of his writing and its relevance to today’s audience.

R. Crumb’s obsessions—from sex to the Bible, music, politics, and the vicissitudes and obscenities of daily life—are chronicled in this comprehensive book of work by the illustrious American comic artist.Instrumental in the formation of the underground comics scene in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s, Crumb has ruptured and expanded the boundaries of the graphic arts, redefining comics and cartoons as countercultural art forms. Presenting a slice of Crumb’s unique universe, this book features a wide array of printed matter culled from the artist’s five-decade career—tear sheets of drawings and comics taken directly from the publications where the works first appeared, comic book covers, broadsides from the 1960s and 1970s, and tabloids from Haight-Ashbury, Oakland, the Lower East Side, and other counterculture enclaves, as well as exhibition ephemera. Complementing this volume are historical works from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that have inspired Crumb and pages from his rarely seen sketchbooks from the 1970s and 1980s that reveal his exemplary skill as a draftsman.  Documenting the critically acclaimed exhibition Drawing for Print: Mind Fucks, Kultur Klashes, Pulp Fiction & Pulp Fact by the Illustrious R. Crumb at David Zwirner, New York, in 2019, curated by Robert Storr, this publication offers an opportunity to immerse oneself in Crumb’s singular mind. In the accompanying text, Storr explores the challenging nature of some of Crumb’s work and the importance of artists who take on the status quo. 

In this exploration of contemporary photography, David Levi Strauss questions the concept that “seeing is believing”Identifying a recent shift in the dominance of photography, David Levi Strauss looks at the power of the medium in the age of Photoshop, smart phones, and the internet, asking important questions about how we look and what we trust.   In the first ekphrasis title on photography, Strauss challenges the aura of believability and highlights the potential dangers around this status. He examines how images produced on cameras gradually gained an inordinate power to influence public opinion, prompt action, comfort and assuage, and direct or even create desire. How and why do we believe technical images the way we do?  Offering a poignant argument in the era of “fake news,” Strauss draws attention to new changes in the technology of seeing. Some uses of "technical images" are causing the connection between images and belief (between seeing and believing) to fray and pull apart. How is this shifting our relationship to images? Will this crisis in what we can believe come to threaten our very purchase on the real? This book is an inquiry into the history and future of our belief in images.

Master sculptor Auguste Rodin’s illuminating writings on cathedrals in France are especially relevant and significant following the recent fire at Notre Dame. In this volume, the writer and Rodin scholar Rachel Corbett selects excerpts from the famous sculptor’s book Cathedrals of France, first published in 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I. Cathedrals were central to the way Rodin thought about his art: he saw them as visual metaphors for the human figure, among the finest examples of craftsmanship known to modern man, and as a model for how to live and work—slowly, brick by brick.  Here, Corbett takes the fire at Notre Dame and the concerns over its restoration as an entry point in an exploration of Rodin's cathedrals. Rodin adamantly opposed restoration, as he felt it often did more damage than the original injury. (Many of the cathedrals that Rodin looks at in his texts were, in fact, bombed during the war.) But while he rails against various restoration efforts as evidence that “we are letting our cathedrals die,” the book, with its tenderly rendered sketches and written portraits, is itself an attempt to preserve these cathedrals. The selection of texts in this volume is a reminder—as is the tragedy of Notre Dame—of why we ought to appreciate these feats of architecture, whether or not they are still standing today.

The first comprehensive monograph on the work of Brazilian painter Lucas Arruda elucidates the artist’s intricate, meditative compositions.Lucas Arruda has gained critical acclaim for atmospheric paintings that fluctuate between abstraction and figuration, imagination and reality. This monograph presents three groups of works loosely characterized as seascapes, jungles, and monochromes. Collectively titled Deserto-Modelo and mostly painted at the break of day, they have an ephemeral, transient quality.   Arruda’s intimately sized paintings of seascapes and junglescapes are characterized by their subtle rendition of light. Painted from memory, they are devoid of specific reference points, achieving instead their variety through the depiction of atmospheric conditions. Verging on abstraction, the compositions are grounded by an ever-present, if sometimes faint, horizon line that offers a perception of distance. They appear at once familiar and imaginary. Through his often evocative and textured brushstrokes, Arruda foregrounds the materiality and physicality of paint, while also recalling his genres’ historical associations with the notion of the romantic sublime.   Alongside meticulous color plates and powerful details, author Will Chancellor offers a close reading of the work, raising questions about artifice, thresholds, and perception. Critic Barry Schwabsky unpacks the challenges posed by Arruda’s mysterious painted surfaces. As a whole, this book offers a detailed introduction to the work of a uniquely thoughtful and inventive artist.   

The most comprehensive overview of artist Josh Smith’s radical technicolor paintings.Josh Smith: Emo Jungle looks at the artist’s vigorous repetition of particular motifs, illuminating his approach to painting as an exploratory medium for image production. Published on the occasion of Smith’s critically acclaimed first exhibition at David Zwirner, this catalogue features a new body of work that marks an important evolution for the artist. In these paintings, Smith sets the stage for a new mode of self-reflective commentary on image making, acknowledging that “the meaning perhaps arises in the making.” A new essay by curator Bob Nickas treats the Reaper, Turtle, and Devil figures from Emo Jungle as ciphers through which to understand Smith’s work. Nickas demonstrates how these new paintings re-stage and personalize the artist’s more abstract earlier works and illuminates the ways in which repetition functions within Smith’s practice. With more than one hundred illustrations, this book serves as the ideal introduction to Smith’s disruptive oeuvre.

In his 1989 book on Balthus—the storied and controversial artist who worked in Paris throughout the twentieth century—Guy Davenport gives one of the most nuanced, literary, and compelling readings of the work of this master. Reading it today highlights the change in perspectives on sexuality and nudity in art in the past thirty years.Written over several years in his notebooks, Davenport’s distinct reflections on Balthus’s paintings try to explain why his work is so radical, and why it has so often come under scrutiny for its depiction of girls and women. Davenport throws the lens back on the viewer and asks: is it us or Balthus who reads sexuality into these paintings? For Davenport, the answer is clear: Balthus may indeed show us periods in adolescent development that are uncomfortable to view, but the eroticization exists primarily on the part of the viewer. Arguing that Balthus’s figures are erotic only if we make them so, and that their innocence is more present than anything pornographic in them, Davenport posits that the paintings hold up a mirror to our own perversities and force us, difficultly, to confront them. He writes, “The nearer an artist works to the erotic politics of his own culture, the more he gets its concerned attention. Gauguin’s naked Polynesian girls, brown and remote, escape the scandal of Balthus’s, although a Martian observer would not see the distinction.” Davenport’s critique helps us understand Balthus in our times—something we need more than ever as we crucially confront sexual politics in visual art.