Okwui Enwezor

Spotlight Series

Interview with the artist by Okwui Enwezor

Over the course of his three-decade career, Thomas Ruff has taken up many approaches to photography in his investigation into the status of the image in contemporary culture.

, the artist presents new work that continues his ongoing probe into the history, processes, techniques, and technology of photography. One of the most influential artists working with photography today, Ruff has redefined the medium’s conceptual possibilities, simultaneously capturing and challenging the essence of the medium as a means for visual experience. He has investigated various photographic genres, including portraiture, the nude, and landscape and architectural photography, using both analog and digital technologies, and culling imagery from scientific archives, print media, and the internet.

Presented here is a selection of Ruff’s most well-known works, as well as the newer 

 series, begun in 2018, which draws on negatives of India and Burma taken in the 1850s by Captain Linnaeus Tripe, an officer in the East India Company. Also included is a conversation between Ruff and Okwui Enwezor, which took place at Haus der Kunst in Munich, in connection with the artist’s retrospective then on view. The conversation, published here for the first time, has been edited for this volume and examines Ruff’s artistic practice and inspiration, serving as an engaging and dynamic introduction to the artist.

Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, in 2019, 

Thomas Ruff: Transforming Photography

Oscar Wilde

Michael Bracewell

ekphrasis

By Oscar Wilde. Introduction by Michael Bracewell

, arguably the most complete exploration of his aesthetic thinking, and certainly the most entertaining, Oscar Wilde harnesses his famous wit to demolish the supposed boundary between art and criticism.

, the essay takes the form of a leisurely dialogue between two characters: Ernest, who insists upon Wilde’s own belief in art’s freedom from societal mandates and values, and a quizzical Gilbert. With his playwright’s ear for dialogue, Wilde champions idleness and contemplation as prerequisites to artistic cultivation. Beyond the well-known dictum of art for art’s sake, Wilde’s originality lays argument for the equality of criticism and art. For him, criticism is not subject to the work of art, but can in fact precede it: the artist cannot create without engaging his or her critical faculties first. And, as Wilde writes, “To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own.”

The field of art and criticism should be open to the free play of the mind, but Wilde plays seriously, even prophetically. Writing in 1891, he foresaw that criticism would have an increasingly important role as the need to make sense of what we see increases with the complexities of modern life. It is only the fine perception and explication of beauty, Wilde suggests, that will allow us to create meaning, joy, empathy, and peace out of the chaos of facts and reality.

The Critic as Artist

Sherrie Levine, Dark Blue Moonlight After Man Ray: 11, 2016

New work by American artist Sherrie Levine engages her ongoing practice of appropriating artworks from the Western art historical canon—this time by taking Ad Reinhardt’s 

 (2018) continues the artist’s ongoing investigation of color separated from its representational function. Inspired by the exhibition 

 held at David Zwirner, New York in 2017, Levine has created abstract restatements of the 28 works that were on view, making use of pixilation to consolidate the range of blue tones in each painting into a single, truly monochromatic value. This work revisits a technique first employed by Levine in her 1989 group of woodcut prints 

, where an averaging algorithm was used to create a checkerboard composition based on modernist artists’ iconic paintings.

 is published on the occasion of Levine’s eponymous solo exhibition at David Zwirner’s Upper East Side location in New York in 2019. The publication features full color reproductions of 

 and includes the 1965 text “Reinhardt Paints a Picture,” in which Reinhardt famously interviewed himself.

Sherrie Levine: After Reinhardt

A sculpture by Ruth Asawa, called Untitled (S.175, Hanging Single-Lobed, Four-Layer Continuous Form within a Form), dated c. 1992.

Edited by Tamara H. Schenkenberg. Texts by Aruna D’Souza, Helen Molesworth, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg

“Doing is living. That is all that matters.”—Ruth Asawa

Throughout her long and prolific career American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) developed innovative sculptures in wire, a medium she explored through increasingly complex forms using craft-based techniques she learned while traveling in Mexico in 1947. In 1949, after studying at Black Mountain College, Asawa moved to San Francisco and created dozens of wire works, among them an iconic bronze fountain—the first of many public commissions—for the city’s Ghirardelli Square.

Bringing together examples from across Asawa’s full and extraordinary career, this expansive volume serves as an unprecedented reorientation of her sculptures within the historical context of 20th-century art. In particular, it includes careful consideration of Asawa’s advocacy for arts education in public schools, while simultaneously focusing on her vital—and long under-recognized—contributions to the field of sculpture. Insightful essays explore the intersection of formal experimentation and identity to offer a fresh assessment of this celebrated artist. Richly illustrated with exquisite new installation views, 

 introduces original scholarship that traces the dynamic evolution of form in the artist’s work.

Ruth Asawa: Life's Work

Sherry Turner DeCarava

Radiclani Clytus

Texts by Radiclani Clytus and Sherry Turner DeCarava

 is the pictorial equivalent of jazz. Here, the visionary photographer turns his gaze on legendary jazz icons Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday, among many others.

“This is a book about people, about jazz, and about things. The work between its covers tries to present images for the head and for the heart and, like its subject matter, is particular, subjective, and individual,” writes DeCarava. A master of poetic contemplation and of sensual tonalities in black and white, DeCarava is, above all, a photographer of people. A member of the post–World War II generation that sought a new modernist vocabulary, he was first recognized for his innovative images of life in Harlem (the subject of 

, his 1955 collaboration with poet Langston Hughes) and extraordinary portraits of jazz musicians. It is these two themes—New York and jazz—interwoven and inseparable, that are the ostensible subject of 

. However, the seemingly casual yet deeply felt compositions and the rich, gradient tones of DeCarava’s photographs stir emotions that resonate far beyond one neighborhood and one era.

Conceived, designed, written, and made as an artist maquette by DeCarava in the early 1960s, 

 went unpublished for almost half a century until it was printed by Phaidon in 2001. At its core is a visual and philosophical journey to plumb the meaning of a creative life. The artist’s intention in proposing a complex relationship between vision and music moves his comprehensive, decade-long reflection to the status of a magnum opus. This new edition, copublished by First Print Press and David Zwirner Books, includes new scholarship by Radiclani Clytus and reflections by Sherry Turner DeCarava.

Roy DeCarava: the sound i saw

Zoé Whitley

Preface by Zoé Whitley. Introduction and text by Sherry Turner DeCarava

 presents the first survey since 1996 of photographer Roy DeCarava, an essential figure of American art and culture, whose “poetry of vision” re-forms urban life, labor, love, and jazz into the discovery of “an intimate, emotional arc of transformation.”

Though DeCarava often refrained from public discussion of his work, this catalogue provides important background into determining factors of his aesthetic sensibility—his traditional training in painting and printmaking as well as his philosophical undertakings. It brings the viewer to a consideration of contradictory precepts in DeCarava’s work that seeks resolution through tonal and structural elements within the image.

 presents a wide-ranging selection of DeCarava’s photographs accompanied by a preface by Zoé Whitley, an American curator based in London, and features an introduction and essay by curator and art historian Sherry Turner DeCarava. Titled “Celebration,” Turner DeCarava’s essay considers the artist’s singular poetic vision, his timeless portrayals of individuals and places, and his mastery of composition and photographic printmaking.

As Whitley writes, “In making photographs, as in life, DeCarava was patient. Possessing both a peerless self-awareness and acute observational skills, he knew intuitively when to wait and when to open the camera’s shutter. In the dark room, he availed himself of these same attributes, moving with steady assurance to develop his prints so as to allow the full range of what he called his ‘infinite scale of grey tones’—often realized at the deepest end of the spectrum—to emerge slowly and fully.”

Published on the occasion of an exhibition of DeCarava’s work at David Zwirner, New York in 2019, this exquisite volume showcases a dynamic range of images that underscore DeCarava’s subtle mastery of tonal and spatial elements across a wide, fascinating array of subject matter: from the figural implications of smoke and debris to the “shimmering mirror beneath a mother as she walks with her children in the morning light.” These photographs express a strength of imagery—an intent to synchronize and honor the pulse of art as an emergent signal for creative and revelatory freedom.

Roy DeCarava: Light Break

Raoul De Keyser, 2009. Photo by Christophe Vander Eecken

Edited with text by Martin Germann, and Bernhard Schwenk. Texts by Steven Jacobs, Luk Lambrecht, and Philippe Van Cauteren

From his debut in 1964, the widely beloved Belgian painter Raoul De Keyser pursued and developed a unique compositional sensibility in which distinctions between abstraction and figuration were to dissolve in an intimate, humble sensation of “everydayness.” His modestly scaled paintings featured simple but elusive shapes often rendered in a broadly pastel palette, full of gentle sensuality.

This 240-page volume accompanies the first posthumous retrospective exhibition on De Keyser at S.M.A.K., the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in 2018, and is conceived as the new standard De Keyser monograph. Alongside a detailed account of the development of his art, it contains a comprehensive illustrated chronology, as well as a revelatory chapter on his drawing and photography. Friends and admirers of De Keyser’s, such as Tomma Abts, Maria Eichhorn, Werner Feiersinger, Suzan Frecon, Roland Jooris, Thomas Scheibitz, and James Welling, contribute comments on his life and work.

Raoul De Keyser: Oeuvre

14.08.041_mama-mummy-and-mamma-predecessors-2_splash_1

Portrait of Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Photo by Stefan Ruiz

Ian Berry

Steven Matijcio

Malik Gaines

Edited by Ian Berry and Steven Matijcio. Interview by Ian Berry. Essays by Malik Gaines and Steven Matijcio

 unites works from the artist’s Predecessors series. Investigating the confluences, contact zones, and third spaces of culture, Akunyili Crosby represents the people and places closest to her: the women of her family, her partner, the interiors of her grandmother’s home and her own. Even in the midst of such personal themes, Akunyili Crosby opens these painted worlds to her viewers, and invites them to reflect upon their own experiences, memories, and emotions.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Predecessors

Portrait of Neo Rauch, 2023. Photo by Uwe Walter.

Daniel Kehlmann

One of the most influential figurative painters of his generation, Neo Rauch presents bold, new work in 

Rauch is widely celebrated for his captivating compositions that bring together figurative painting and surrealism into an entirely new kind of visual encounter. They often hint at broader narratives and histories—seemingly reconnecting with artistic traditions of realism—but they remain dreamlike and impossible to reduce to a single story. Though his art is highly refined and executed with great technical skill, Rauch himself stresses the intuitive, deeply personal nature of how he works. As the artist notes, “My process is far less a reflection than it is drawing from the sediments of my past, which occurs in an almost trance-like state.”

Eight large-scale canvases and seven smaller, more intimately scaled works continue the artist’s exploration of figuration and the ambiguous nature of meaning in visual art. In some of the larger works, the saturation of the canvas with characters, objects, and forms, all rendered at different scales and in conflicting arrangements, creates a collage-like quality—a figurative scrapbook of Rauch’s personal iconography.

The publication features a short story by German novelist and playwright Daniel Kehlmann, which was inspired by the paintings in this book. The fantastical text moves between present-day New York and an unknown time of enchanted forests, knights, and witches, exploring the many layers found in Rauch’s canvases. Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner Hong Kong in 2019, 

Neo Rauch: PROPAGANDA

A painting by Nate Lowman, titled Maria, dated 2022.

Taking humanity and popular culture as his subject matter, Nate Lowman approaches these themes as an active participant in the collective American experience. Underscoring this is desire: a longing for something or someone, or a wish for something to happen. The duality inherent in desire is contained in Lowman’s use of well-known images whose meanings are both instantly recognizable and constantly in flux. Appropriated, relatable images and language from American pop culture and its 24-hour news cycle form a narrative and tell part of the American story. Angels, poppies, hearts, pine-tree air fresheners, smiley faces, iconic celebrities, crosses and news articles—all presented through the lens of desire—confront viewers with the things of modern life that are often left unsaid and unexamined.

For more than a decade, Nate Lowman has produced paintings, sculptures, and (often salon-style) installations that process and represent the unfolding human experience in a visual environment of endlessly proliferating public media archives. Re-presenting and reframing techniques of image reproduction as painterly practice, Lowman constructs narratives condensed in layers of studio techniques, including printing, cropping, projecting, cutting, staining, repurposing, lacquering, stripping, and stretching. His paintings explore the capacity of images to mediate between the personal and the universal in cycles of decay and renewal.

Published on the occasion of the Aspen Art Museum’s exhibition of the New York–based artist, Nate Lowman is the first comprehensive monograph on the artist to date.

Nate Lowman: Before and After

Laila Pedro

Lying deep within the urban metropolis of Hong Kong, Happy Valley is one of the most iconic racecourses in the world. It is also the chief source of inspiration for a new body of work by American artist Marcel Dzama.

Jockeys ride through waves and cathedrals, Chinese symbols pulled from racing paraphernalia adorn the edges of paper, and bats swoop, hunting for prey. Dzama’s distinct visions of the racetrack come alive through a series of large-scale paintings and drawings, transposing imagery from his prolific oeuvre into this adrenaline-filled sporting arena. His new works reflect on the culture of horseracing and how the track has become not only a symbol of sport, but also of commerce, class, and wealth.

The publication includes a conversation between Dzama and Laila Pedro. Published on the occasion of his solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong in 2019, 

Marcel Dzama: Crossing the Line

Frederik Bjerregaard

Hanna Mood

Martina Hoogland Ivanow

The paintings by Mamma Andersson on these pages are mostly new works, many of them from the exhibition she curated at the São Paulo Art Biennial. With this publication the intention has been to reveal Andersson’s work in a new context, outside the walls of a gallery, alongside two photographers – Hanna Moon and Martina Hoogland Ivanow – inspired by her universe. As Mamma says of the titles of her works, our wish is “to provide viewers with a platform to direct their thoughts onto a track that they hadn’t thought of...” Hanna Moon, the South Korean artist and fashion photographer, joins Mamma Andersson in Brazil as she installs her exhibition at the 2018 Bienal de São Paulo. Moon’s photographic project is the antithesis of reportage, a personal investigation of her experience of the city. Her confrontational work may appear on first glance to be a million miles from Andersson’s, and yet in its tone, intimate but also unfamiliar and disturbing, we perhaps trace reverberations of Andersson’s universe.

Mamma Hanna Martina: Text Paintings Photos

A painting by Lisa Yuskavage titled Night Classes at the Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture, dated 2018-2020

Lisa Yuskavage, 2020. Photo by Jason Schmidt

Jarrett Earnest

Hanna Schouwink

Text by Jarrett Earnest. Foreword by Hanna Schouwink

 is the first survey of the artist’s small-scale paintings. While Yuskavage is primarily known for larger canvases, these intimate works offer a new window into her transgressive paintings and complex and influential oeuvre.

Based on the artist’s imagination, live models, maquettes, and found and staged photographs, the small paintings in this book demonstrate Yuskavage’s methodical exploration of how images are created and their sources. Some of the small works are studies for large paintings, while others revisit preexisting images. Yet others are one-of-a-kind compositions only created on this intimate scale. As places for experimenting with color, form, and characters as well as a variety of formats—including stretched and unstretched linen, canvas boards, wood, and paper—these paintings play a remarkably dynamic and pivotal role within her work. This catalogue presents the paintings to scale so readers can explore the works as if seeing them in person.

Documenting the artist’s exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2018, this catalogue includes an essay by Jarrett Earnest that illuminates Yuskavage’s early influences and explores the constant, often surprising themes that can be found throughout her art.

Small Paintings, 1985–2018

Lisa Yuskavage: Babie Brood

Portrait of Kerry James Marshall, 2018. Photo by Jason Bell

Legendary Chicago-based painter Kerry James Marshall is as much an astute social critic and incredible authority on art history as he is a painter’s painter. In addition to reproductions of paintings, this book presents the text of a speech Marshall gave at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, upon receiving the Wolfgang Hahn Prize in 2014, a prize awarded annually to artists who have an “oeuvre that has consistently and substantially continued to develop and is recognized by international experts.”

In the lecture he talks about his life, about his interest in Afro-American culture, about social injustice, race relations, power dynamics, and ultimately calls for the black subject, so long ignored in art history, to finally be represented—in reaction to the fact that beauty has been synonymous with being white through almost all of art history.

Kerry James Marshall: Inside/Out

Teju Cole

Hal Foster

Kerry James Marshall is one of America’s greatest living painters. 

 presents a groundbreaking body of new work that engages with the history of the medium itself.

, the artist has widened his scope to include both figurative and nonfigurative works that deal explicitly with art history, race, and gender, as well as force us to reexamine how artworks are received in the world and in the art market. In the paintings in this book, Marshall’s critique of history and of dominant white narratives is present, even as the subjects of the paintings move between reproductions of auction catalogues, abstract works, and scenes of everyday life.

Essays by Teju Cole and Hal Foster help readers navigate the artist’s masterful vision, decoding complexly layered works such as 

 (2018) and Marshall’s own artistic philosophy. This catalogue is published on the occasion of Marshall’s eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner, London, in 2018.

Kerry James Marshall: History of Painting

Paul Klee and Hans Bloesch met while they were still in school and remained friends all their lives. They also took their first steps as artists together: Bloesch as a writer, Klee as a painter. From 1902 to 1905 they collaborated on an open project, which they simply called "Das Buch" (The Book). Bloesch contributed poems, Klee watercolors and drawings. However, they finally lost interest in it and "Das Buch" was abandoned.

Today it represents an extraordinary discovery because it contains many previously unknown works by Paul Klee and for the first time provides a broad insight into his early artistic development. This volume contains a facsimile of "Das Buch" including transcripts, commentaries, and two essays on this astonishing discovery.

A Joint Project from the Years 1902 to 1905

Hans Bloesch and Paul Klee: Das Buch

A still from a film by Francis Alys, titled Children’s Game #26: Kisolo, Tabacongo, DR Congo, dated 2021.

A detail of an artwork by Michaël Borremans titled The Commuter II dated 2022

Portrait of Michaël Borremans. Photo by Alex Salinas

Sigmar Polke, Magnetische Landschaft (Magnetic Landscape), 1982

Dawn Ades

Olivier Berggruen

J. Patrice Marandel

Nicholas Hall

Texts by Dawn Ades, Olivier Berggruen, and J. Patrice Marandel. Introduction by Nicholas Hall

Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art

 explores the ways in which artists have sought to explain their world in terms of an alternate reality, drawn from imagination, the subconscious, poetry, nature, myth, and religion.

 takes as its point of departure Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s legendary 1936 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 

, which not only introduced these movements to the American public, but also placed them in a historical and cultural context by situating them with artists from earlier centuries.

Presenting works from the twelfth century to the present day, this catalogue is organized into six themes—Monsters & Demons, Dreams & Temptation, Fragmented Body, Unconscious Gesture, Super Nature, and Sense of Place. Works included range from medieval gargoyles to twentieth-century works by Louise Bourgeois, Sigmar Polke, and Pablo Picasso as well as contemporary works by Michaël Borremans, Marcel Dzama, and Raymond Pettibon. Masterworks from the likes of Piero di Cosimo, Francisco de Goya, and Titian are considered alongside those by William Blake and Odilon Redon. Time folds and temporal barriers collapse when Damiano Cappelli meets Edvard Munch, and Salvator Rosa encounters Luc Tuymans and Lisa Yuskavage. Salvador Dalí, Sherrie Levine, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Kerry James Marshall—eight centuries intersect and, as such, this wide-ranging catalogue examines affinities in intention and imagery between works executed across a broad span of time.

Organized in collaboration with Nicholas Hall, a specialist in the field of Old Masters and nineteenth-century art, this fully illustrated catalogue is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2018. It includes new scholarship by Dawn Ades, Olivier Berggruen, and J. Patrice Marandel.

 presents sixty interviews with the artist over the course of four decades and is the first compilation of its kind. It is the companion volume to the critically acclaimed and bestselling 

This collection of interviews engages a diverse range of topics, from philosophy and politics to Judd’s insightful critiques of his own work and the work of others such as Mark di Suvero, Edward Hopper, Yayoi Kusama, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock. The opening discussion of the volume between Judd, Dan Flavin, and Frank Stella provides the foundation for many of the succeeding conversations, focusing on the nature and material conditions of the new art developing in the 1960s. The publication also gathers a substantial body of unpublished material across a range of mediums, such as radio and film, including extensive interviews with art historians Lucy R. Lippard and Barbara Rose.

Judd’s contributions in interviews, panels, and extemporaneous conversations are marked by his forthright manner and rigorous thinking, whether in dialogue with art critics, art historians, or his contemporaries. In one of the last interviews, he observed, “Generally, expensive art is in expensive, chic circumstances; it’s a falsification. The society is basically not interested in art. And most people who are artists do that because they like the work; they like to do that [make art]. Art has an integrity of its own and a purpose of its own, and it’s not to serve the society. That’s been tried now in the Soviet Union and lots of places, and it doesn’t work. The only role I can think of, in a very general way, for the artist is that it [art] tends to shake up the society a little bit just by its existence, in which case it helps undermine the general political stagnation and, perhaps by providing a little freedom, supports science, which requires freedom. If the artist isn’t free, you won’t have any art.\"

 is copublished by Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books. The interviews expand upon the artist’s thinking present in 

 (Judd Foundation/David Zwirner Books, 2016).

Donald Judd Interviews

Installation view of Carol Bove at the Met, New York, 2022.

Johanna Burton

Interview with the artist by Johanna Burton

 presents new work by “sculpture’s woman of steel,” as coined by Randy Kennedy in 

. Her new sculptures expand on her investigations of materiality and form.

Characterized by compositions of various types of steel, Bove’s ongoing series of “collage sculptures,” begun in 2016, amalgamates theoretical and art-historical influences across time periods and disciplines. To create these lyrical and abstract assemblages, Bove pairs fabricated tubing that has been crushed and shaped at her studio with found metal scraps and a single highly polished disk. Luminous color is applied to parts of the composition, transforming the steel—more commonly associated with inflexibility and heft—into something that appears malleable and lightweight, like clay, fabric, or crinkled paper.

Bove’s new works are smaller in scale and elaborate on the “collage sculptures,” with more complex forms that twist, fold, and bend into postures that belie their material construction. She manipulates steel to varying degrees, rendering gentle folds in some, and extreme, almost anthropomorphic contortions in others. Their contrasting textures—matte, glossy, or rough—create a further sense of visual play, heightening the surface tension throughout.

This publication features a new interview with the artist by Johanna Burton. Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, in 2019, 

Carol Bove: Ten Hours

A detail from a work by Bridget Riley, titled Study for Measure for Measure Dark 2, dated 2019.

Portrait of Bridget Riley, 2021. Photo by Yuki Shima

Robert Kudielka

Richard Shone

Neil MacGregor

E.H. Gombrich

Michael Craig-Martin

Andrew Graham-Dixon

Bryan Robertson

Edited by Robert Kudielka. Introduction by Richard Shone. Conversations with Bridget Riley, Neil MacGregor, E.H. Gombrich, Michael Craig-Martin, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Bryan Robertson

Bridget Riley is one of the outstanding figures of modern painting. She has pursued a course of rigorous abstraction for over fifty years, from her celebrated black and white Op Art works in the 1960s to the complex color paintings of the 1990s. On the occasion of a major exhibition of her work in 1992 at London’s Hayward Gallery, BBC Radio broadcast a series of five dialogues, each one between Riley and a well-known figure from the art world. These encounters, edited by an art historian, are contained in this book. With Neil MacGregor, Riley discusses the art of the past in relation to the art of the present; with Sir Ernst Gombrich the perception of color in painting; with the artist Michael Craig-Martin, the theory and practice of abstraction; and with the critics Bryan Robertson and Andrew Graham-Dixon, she talks about events and travels that have influenced her as an artist. Taken as a whole, this series forms an excellent introduction to the work and ideas of one of the most creative minds of today.

Bridget Riley: Dialogues on Art

Éric de Chassey

John Elderfield

Dave Hickey

Text by Michael Bracewell, Éric de Chassey, John Elderfield, Dave Hickey, Robert Kudielka, Bridget Riley, Richard Shiff, Frances Spalding, David Sylvester, and David Thompson. Foreword by Dr Simon Groom, Sir John Leighton, and Ralph Rugoff

A landmark exhibition catalogue reflects on almost 70 years of works by Bridget Riley, from some of her earliest to very recent projects, providing a unique record of the work of an artist still very much at the height of her powers. Essays from leading scholars and commentators on Riley’s work will make this title the authority on Riley’s practice.

Includes a selection of critical writings, statements and conversations specially selected by the artist as well as her own writings. The book starts with David Sylvester’s review of her first exhibition in 1962 and ends with Éric de Chassey’s newly commissioned 2019 essay.

In the last decade, Riley has continued to push her practice considerably, producing several large-scale site-specific wall paintings as well as continuing to develop new paintings. This book will explore these recent developments, and also examine the notable influence that other artists such as Georges Seurat and Piet Mondrian have had on Riley’s work.

Bridget Riley

Detail view of Alice Neel's 1967 painting titled Richard

Helen Molesworth

Ginny Neel

Text by Helen Molesworth. Introduction by Ginny Neel. Contribution by Marlene Dumas

One of the foremost American figurative painters of the twentieth century, it is not surprising that Alice Neel was a humanist—she was fascinated by people.

Known for her daringly honest portraits, Neel loved to paint people in all their complexities—to penetrate and reveal their fears and anxieties, how they defiance and survival. She also loved to paint the unadorned human figure. Her nudes, in particular, explore the body with frankness while celebrating the individuality of each of her subjects, and they exemplify the freedom and courage with which she approached her work and her life.

Through her paintings and works on paper, Neel was able to free herself from the expected inhibitions and crippling taboos that were placed on women and focus on the beauty and nuanced complexity of flesh and the human body. In their mastery of form, color, and implied social commentary, her nudes are as relevant today as when they were painted.

 documents the solo exhibition of the artist’s work at David Zwirner in New York in 2019. Including works that span the 1920s to the 1980s, this presentation focuses primarily on the nude figure—whether male or female, adult or child—and demonstrates how Neel rebelled against and challenged the traditional perceptions of sexuality, motherhood, and beauty in our society. The catalogue includes newly commissioned scholarship by Helen Molesworth and an introduction by Ginny Neel of The Estate of Alice Neel.

Alice Neel: Freedom

This lushly illustrated book by collage artist Andrea D'Aquino brings Asawa's creative journey to life, detailing the influence of her childhood in a farming family, and her education at Black Mountain College where she pursued an experimental course of education with leading avant-garde artists and thinkers such as Anni and Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg. Delightful and substantial, this engaging title for young art lovers includes a page of teaching tools for parents and educators.

The Story of Ruth Asawa

A Life Made by Hand

Patrick Modiano

Dominique Zehrfuss

Damion Searls

Poems by Patrick Modiano. Illustrated by Dominique Zehrfuss. Translated with an introduction by Damion Searls

Published in English for the first time, 

 is the marriage of prose and painting by Nobel-prize winning author Patrick Modiano and his partner, the illustrator Dominique Zehrfuss.

 is a rare book: it reveals not only the individual talents of the authors, Modiano and Zehrfuss, but also the depth of the couple’s creative union. Sensitively translated into English for the first time by Damion Searls, 

 captures the exquisite sadness of waking from a beautiful dream. There are twenty-eight dreams in this book, or perhaps one dream in twenty-eight parts—visions of paradise imagined by Zehrfuss during a time of deep sadness. Captured first in Zehrfuss’s brightly colored gouaches, each paradise was then refashioned as a poem by Modiano.

Zehrfuss’s paintings are Edens in miniature, and rather than describe them outright, Modiano dreams himself into these reveries in quiet, understated verse. The reader enters this shared realm in an experience less like paging through a book and more like slipping into a shared world. These paradises are wishes for moments when a painting, or a poem, or a lover—perhaps they are not so different—relieves the loneliness of being human. As Modiano writes with a touch of wistfulness, “The Lilliputian painted her paradises / And I / Next to her / Wrote a poem.” A pure example of ekphrastic writing—poetry inspired by paintings—this book shows how writing and visual art can together create a unique emotional experience.

First published by Editions de l’Olivier/ Le Seuil in 2005

28 Paradises

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