Книги про современное искусство

Now available in a new edition, this survey of great contemporary artists is the perfect introduction to the exciting world of art today.

From painters and photographers to sculptors and performance artists, fifty of the most influential contemporary artists are profiled in this colourful and engaging book that traces the various artistic movements and radical changes of the second half of the twentieth century. Presented chronologically, each artist is featured in one or two double-page spreads that include brilliant reproductions of their most important works, a succinct text about their work and life, an insightful biography with key dates in their career, and informative background on major developments in the art world. As diverse and inspiring as the artists themselves, this book is a voyage of discovery into art’s cutting edge.

About the Authors:

Brad Finger is an art historian based near Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of 13 Modern Artists Children Should Know and 13 American Artists Children Should Know.

Christiane Weidemann is an art historian and author of art books for children and adults. Her books include Salvador Dali, Leonardo da Vinci, and 50 Women Artists You Should Know.

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"Public art is one of the most important elements that define a city. Public installations echo the character and spirit of a time and place, and remind us all of the imperative need for creativity and imagination in our daily lives."
(Carole Feuerman)

Art has always made a substantial contribution to cultural identity. This impact is considerably enhanced when a work of art is created for a public place and takes on a space-defining function. Whatever the shape, size or medium, art in public, accessible to all, attracts attention. Its presence provokes thought, questions assumptions, expresses values, and adds new qualities to communities and cities.

In this volume, selected works introduce the history of public art over 4,500 years of historical eras and styles, including world-famous landmarks such as the Great Sphinx of Giza, the Trevi Fountain or the Statue of Liberty. The majority of art works presented here are from modern times, allowing an in-depth look at contemporary works by important artists like Alexander Calder, Nam June Paik, Jeff Koons, Eduardo Chillida or Ai Weiwei.

A sardonic spin on the ABC book, A is for Anarchist is a sharp knife in a drawer full of safety scissors.

Wryly written by critically acclaimed rapper billy woods and sublimely illustrated by artist m. musgrove, A is for Anarchist upends the traditional ABC format with earnestness that belies its irreverence. Anarchist takes modest ideas, like E is for Energy and G is for Ghosts, and flips them into incisive commentary on modern life and the state of the world. Also, it has to be the only alphabet book with annotated footnotes and a Nas reference.

About the Author:

Woods is a writer, rapper, and father who needed somethingcool to read to his children. The child of a Jamaican intellectual and a Zimbabwean revolutionary, woods’s childhood spent between the U.S., Africa, and the West Indies leaves its imprint on all his work. Musgrove is a Brooklyn-based painter, illustrator, and amateur animator. She is inspired by Wimmen’s Comix, William Morris, and tumult.

This is the first monograph on the internationally acclaimed Ivorian-American contemporary artist Aboudia.

Aboudia (b. 1983) draws inspiration from local street culture in his hometown of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The artist is famous for his heavily layered, brutally energetic paintings that combine an innocence and spontaneity with the portrayal of a dark interior world. Since the Ivorian civil wars (2004–2011), his urban landscapes have been haunted by trauma: armed soldiers, ominous skulls, and a populace hemmed in by danger. His recent work continues to grapple with the hardships of daily life and the social inequalities within Ivorian society.

In his imagery, Aboudia refers to characters from his direct neighborhood and contemporary “Nouchi” culture and language, illustrating the vitality and resilience of the inhabitants of Abidjan. With an immense variety of details coming in and out of focus, often only revealing themselves after several viewings, his paintings are a melting pot of references, paying homage to traditional arts and spirituality but also including images from contemporary West African culture.

About the Authors:

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi is a Nigerian artist, art historian, and curator, currently curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Gauz is the pen name of Patrick Armand-Gbaka Brede. Gauz is a photographer, writer, editor of a satirical Ivorian economic newspaper, and the author of the novel Debout-Payé, published in Paris in 2014 by “Le Nouvel Attila.”

This is the second extensive monograph dedicated to the internationally acclaimed Russian artist collective: AES+F.

Since 1987, AES+F have been working at the intersection of painting, sculpture, photography, video, and new technologies. They achieved worldwide acclaim in the Russian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia in 2007 with their provocative, other-worldly Last Riot (2007), the first of their signature large-scale, multichannel video installations. Always pushing the boundaries of their practice, between 2016 and 2019 the collective also worked on video set designs for theater and opera.

The volume will shed light on the psychoanalytic approach that underlies their language and provocations, intended to induce a process of self-reflection in the viewer, changing their perception of the world and society. Their visual journey will be articulated into three chronological sections corresponding to the most significant shifts in their conceptual evolution, covering their practice from 1995 to 2020.

The volume includes contributions by Tina R. Ryan and Brooke L. McGowan, Tom Morton and Hou Hanru.

About the Author:

Silvia Burini is Director of the Center for Studies in Russian Art (CSAR) at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. Giuseppe Barbieri is full professor of History of Modern Art at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and is the head of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage.

This eagerly awaited first monograph focuses on Alexander Ponomarev, one of Russia's most eminent and singular contemporary artists.

Alexander Ponomarev is one of Russia's most widely known contemporary artists, renowned both at home and abroad. In 2014, he was featured in Time magazine as one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers thanks to the vast range of devices he employs to express his ideas, such as drawings, vast, complex installations, and a variety of technologies. He also captures some of the planet's most extreme and least accessible landscapes, symbolizing what he views as a world that is "culturally and morally adrift."

The themes he tackles are those he considers of critical relevance to today's world: the rapport between science and art, the exploration of the Arctic and Antarctic, the retrieval of ancient engineering traditions vs. today's advanced technologies, and the crucial and urgent issue of climate change.

The volume includes two ample introductory essays describing his position in the Russian context of art production over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and his roots in the artistic and humanist culture of the early modern era (Vitruvius, Leonardo, Titian, and the major geographical explorations, etc.).

About the Author:

Silvia Burini is director of the Center for the Studies of Russian Arts (CSAR) at Ca' Foscari University in Venice. Giuseppe Barbieri is full professor of history of modern art at Ca' Foscari University. He has authored and curated over forty books and organized numerous exhibitions.

Recognized as a major Pop artist in his day, Allan D’Arcangelo (1930–1998) has yet to receive the critical reevaluation of painters like Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist. His first monograph in nearly a decade introduces new audiences to his iconic paintings, particularly his celebrated visions of life on the road.

Like Pop peers Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha, Allan D’Arcangelo incorporated mass-manufactured images in works that elevate scenes of everyday American life. While his work often features imagery from more familiar 1960s art — Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, smoking pin-up girls, Superman, Lucky Strike — it differs in the surreal elements he introduced to Pop tropes and romantic views of the American industrial landscape.

D’Arcangelo once observed his “most profound experiences of landscape were looking through the windshield.” The artist brought a Pop sensibility to the tradition of landscape painting in a graphic style that touched on Minimalism, Precisionism, and Hard-edge painting. Often framed from the perspective of the driver’s seat, D’Arcangelo’s work captures the deeply American experience of flying down an endless road. D’Arcangelo’s signature scrolling landscape cut through with flashing signs is as familiar to road trippers as it is to video game racers.

This comprehensive publication includes over 200 reproductions and three essays detailing what critic Dore Ashton describes as the “poetic awareness of the vastnesses both visible and invisible in American life [that] marked and distinguished [D’Arcangelo’s] work.”

About the Authors:

Alex J. Taylor is an Associate Professor in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, and the author of Forms of Persuasion: Art and Corporate Image in the 1960s. Evan Moffitt is a writer, editor, and freelance critic based in New York. Cécile Whiting is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine, and author of A Taste for Pop: Pop Art, Gender, and Consumer Culture.

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What was particularly memorable for those who saw Anish Kapoor’s first shows, in the early eighties, was the silence conveyed to the exhibition space by those small sculptures covered with yellow, red, black or blue pigments.

When the young Kapoor became established on the international scene at the beginning of the eighties,immediately attracting the attention of critics, the art scene was characterized by very noisy art made of large-format paintings, mainly with harsh and violent colors, and redundant in memories and citations ranging from art history to mythology. In this context, Kapoor’s intimist sculptures were offbeat and also distinguished themselves from the so-called “New British Sculpture” so widely discussed in those years.

On closer inspection, that “new” sculpture was not so very new at all, since it constructed narratives and figurative images made through a system of signs placed in relation to each other to give life to a compositional whole.

The young British sculptors had inherited this conception of sculpture from Anthony Caro, and although it was already the postmodern era Caro, as the expression of a tendency to be overcome, was considered the father to kill. The only one of those artists who created a new way to understand sculpture was Kapoor himself, who felt it was possible to return to the origins of art without suffering inferiority complexes towards the artistic avant-gardes of the twentieth century.

Not that Kapoor distanced himself from the history of modern art - as evidenced by his interest in Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein, Barnett Newman, Robert Smithson or Donald Judd. To put it simply, he believed there were archaic forms tied to the spiritual dimension that never lost their ability to create relationships between individuals.

Capturing the development of a rising star in the art world, Anna Weyant unveils the artist’s sharp-witted commentary on the representation of women in pop culture and the art historical canon. This book chronicles six years of Weyant’s artistic output and is the most comprehensive publication about her painting practice to date.

Anna Weyant is the first monograph published by Gagosian that is devoted to the New York-based artist best-known for her precisely rendered figures with their creamy curves and soft beauty, which simmer with the tensions between feminine sexuality and purity, tragedy, and comedy.

With a dark sense of humor, Weyant unpicks the tropes and traditions of art historical representation, interrupting masculine expectations to often absurd and excruciating effect. Particularly drawn to the uncertainties of adolescence, the artist captures young females in situations of intimate weirdness and catastrophe.

The resonance of art history and the effect of doubling are topics discussed in essays by both John Elderfield and Yvonne Owens. Elderfield explores the meaning of the uncanny in film, painting, and sculpture, examining the strangeness of familiarity, and the difference between a real figure and a porcelain doll or an automaton. Owens highlights the pictorial devices reimagined by Weyant, including the still life and seductive symbols of vanitas and memento mori.

Naomi Fry describes the potential violence of the double and the menace of everyday objects in Weyant’s world, which she compares to “a velvet-lined jewel box softly sealed shut.” With wry reference to pop culture, Fry asserts the subtle differences and multiple viewpoints that reveal the painter’s virtuosity and the fullness of female experience.

In a conversation between Weyant and Edward Steed, the artist and the acclaimed cartoonist for the New Yorker discuss the awkwardness of fame, the sweet spot of comedy, and the indescribable nature of a great work of art.

About the Authors:

John Elderfield is chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and was the inaugural Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey. He joined Gagosian in 2012 as a senior curator for special exhibitions.

Naomi Fry is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where she writes about culture in its various forms.

Yvonne Owens writes about art, culture, emotional histories, and the philosophy of art. Her publications to date have focused mainly on representations of women and the gendering of evil in classical humanist discourses. Her most recent book is Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: The Witches and Femmes Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Edward Steed is a cartoonist. He has been contributing cartoons and covers to the New Yorker since 2013.
 

A new and updated edition of the definitive monograph on the British artist Antony Gormley, now available in an affordably priced format.

This beautiful and comprehensive monograph, expanded and updated in a new affordably priced edition, examines the entirety of Gormley’s career, from his earliest sketches to his best-known public installations. Martin Caiger-Smith’s “magnificent, magisterial overview” (The Independent) examines the relationship between Gormley’s life and art and identi-fies the singular vision that ties together a vast canon of work in an extraordinary range of media and materials.

Best known for the major public works that most visibly represent his innovative approach to sculpture, Gormley is a prolific artist who has renegotiated the tension between the individual and the universal. Drawing on images that range from childhood snap-shots to photographs of his most recent installations, this book traces the evolution of Gormley’s work, from the drawings he makes every day in the studio, through the constantly evolving process of casting his own body in various forms, to the ultimate expression of his ideas in such masterpieces as the colossal Angel of the North or the scattered figures of Another Place.

Illustrated with hundreds of images that explore the scale and impact of Gormley’s work — including his acclaimed exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2019, as well as recent installations in Florence, Delos, and New York City—and “dense with insight and deeply considered analysis from the author” (Financial Times), this book is the definitive survey of a monumental career.

About the Author:

Martin Caiger-Smith is Head of the MA Curating the Art Museum program at the Courtauld Institute in London. In his prior roles as Head of Exhibitions and Acting Director of the Hayward Gallery, he organized major exhibitions that showed internationally, including retrospectives of Francis Bacon (1998), Roy Lichtenstein (2004), and Dan Flavin (2006). He writes frequently on art, photography, and architecture. 

Contemporary art speaks directly to the important questions of our time, as well as to the rapidly changing landscapes of identity. It is both a mirror of contemporary society and a window through which we view and deepen our understanding of life as it exists today.

Who are today's artists? What are they thinking about? How do they describe their work? Why do they do what they do?

These are some of the questions addressed in Art:21 Art in the Twenty-First Century 6, companion volume to the sixth season of the Emmy-nominated, two-time Peabody Award-winning PBS series, which introduces thirteen artists who draw on a variety of subjects, experiences, and aesthetic influences to create their work.

The book echoes the style and philosophy of the television series, presenting the artists without interpretive mediation through excerpts of interviews juxtaposed with illustrations of their work.

New Orleans-based self-taught pop artist Ashley Longshore, known for her bold fashionista portraits and larger-than-life personality, has a massive art-cult following. I Do Not Cook, I Do Not Clean, I Do Not Fly Commercial highlights Ashley's colorful life story and showcases her bejeweled vibrant pop art.

Ashley Longshore delivers exactly what her fans are clamoring for: a look at Ashley's big life, her audacious aphorisms, and of course her sumptuous, glittering art in sublime detail. Ashley Longshore's pop-art paintings are always daring; her art makes noise. On any given day, you may catch her in her New Orleans gallery painting with Blake Lively, talking art and fashion with Dapper Dan in New York, or on a remote island in Hawaii painting.

A prolific artist, she has been compared to Andy Warhol for her passion with pop-culture figures; but it's her infectious personality and humorous real talk that has captured the hearts of and inspired her devoted fans. Ashley's story also peeks at her major blingy collaborations with brands such as Rolex; luxury cosmetics brand Clé de Peau; Veuve Clicquot; Chloé; Mark Cross; and Judith Leiber, to name only a few. Ashley Longshore tells the stories of the self-proclaimed "urban hippie" in glorious color and detail and features her works, collaborations, and her singular and authentic personality

About the Author:

Ashley Longshore is a Louisiana-based painter, gallery owner, and entrepreneur. Linda Fargo is senior vice president of the fashion office and the director of women's fashion and store presentation at Bergdorf Goodman. Blake Lively is an actress.

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The first book on the artist collective known for their raucous multimedia installations. Founded by artist Eli Sudbrack, assume vivid astro focus has been dazzling the art world since 1994 with its exuberant, visually spectacular room-size installations. Created out of recycled and appropriated imagery from a wide range of sources - such as unicorn tapestries, children’s stickers, pages from gay porn magazines, album covers, Buddhist thangka paintings, and street graffiti, to name a few - the finished works can feel like a cross between a ’70s disco, Brazilian Carnival, and a psychedelic version of Andy Warhol’s Factory. This volume, their first, will include many of the elements featured in their installations, which are known for the many "give-aways" the artists provide the visitors: a blow-in poster, postcard and sticker pages, and a pop-up, all designed by avaf.

About the Authors:

Cay Sophie Rabinowitz was a senior editor at Parkette magazine for seven years. She has written numerous articles for publications, including Artforum and Interview.
Natalie Kovacs is a Toronto-based curator.

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Through examining more than 120 organizations on a global scale, this work shows how almost every human expression involves performing culture.

Atlas of Performing Culture is an illustrated voyage across five continents — Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, and the Americas — involving the study of venues and events related to performance, the dynamic and unrepeatable mode of artistic activity capable of uniting the audience — who becomes the protagonist — with artists and works of art, architecture, and nature.

The volume is organized around five thematic sections related to the physical spaces, venues, and typologies of events. The unique experience of performing art can involve an island museum in Japan, the Rio Carnival, a Brussels theatrical debut, a rave party in the British countryside, and a cultural center housed in a former funeral home in the outskirts of Paris. Alongside theaters, concert halls, and festivals, we also find museums, sculpture parks, and hybrid cultural centers that elude any attempt of cataloging.

By breaking down the traditional frontiers between performance art, visual art, and performing arts, this volume takes the reader—whether specialist, practitioner, academic, or simply art aficionado — on a journey to some of the main cultural sites and performative experiences around the world. Each section offers a specific overview into leading cultural organizations, as well as a selection of similar international institutions.

About the Author:

Cristiano Leone is a philologist, university lecturer, artistic director, and cultural entrepreneur. He has worked both in the public and private sectors and has collaborated with La Sorbonne, Villa Médicis- Académie de France à Rome, Electa, the National Roman Museum, the Spanish Embassy in Italy, the Terme di Caracalla, and the Centre des Monuments Nationaux - Cité internationale de la Langue Française. He is based between Rome and Paris.

The first comprehensive monograph on the life and career of the Filipino artist Andres Barrioquinto, a rising star of the contemporary Southeast Asian art scene. 

The volume deals with the complex universe of the artist (Manila, 1975), who combines elements deriving from the iconography and aesthetic of Baroque with Japanese woodcuts (ukiyo-e), reinterpreted in a Pop style. In his paintings, men, women, and anthropomorphic animals are shown in forests plentiful with butterflies and birds, introducing the theme of vanitas in a context of strong visual impact.

About the Author:

Demetrio Paparoni is an art critic, curator and essayist. Among his publications: Wang Guangyi (2013), Natee Utarit (2017) and Ronald Ventura (2018).