These essays on abstract painting by eleven of its most incisive critics trace the development of such critical issues as hard-edge painting, deductive and serial structure, monochrome abstraction, the psychological analogy, regionalism, and the "death of painting" in Postmodernism. The introduction and commentary by Frances Colpitt situates the essays historically and examines their philosophical sources and influences, from formalism and phenomenology to structuralism and poststructuralism. What emerges is a coherent and optimistic picture of abstract painting--the definitive contribution of modern art.

The first fully illustrated account of the life and work of English painter Christopher Wood (1901-30), this authoritative work, which includes over 150 images, provides extensive visual analysis of individual paintings, set designs and drawings created by Wood in both Britain and France so bringing fresh perspective to his unique artistic development on both sides of the Channel.Wood's short career drew on a multitude of influences, all of which contributed to the development of his faux-naive style. His oscillation between diverse artistic reference points is borne out in Katy Norris' fascinating narrative that analyses Wood's engagement with the Parisian avant-garde on the one hand, and the attraction of the simpler life he encountered in Cornwall, Cumbria and Brittany on the other. The emotional turmoil of his final years underlines the tensions between the two worlds that Wood inhabited and which he was ultimately was unable to reconcile.Filling a surprising gap in the published literature about this early 20th-century painter, Christopher Wood will appeal to readers who are yet to encounter Wood's work, as well as collectors and enthusiasts.

Of all the giants of twentieth-century art, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was the most prolific writer. Here, available for the first time in paperback, are all of Kandinsky's writings on art, newly translated into English. Editors Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo have taken their translations directly from Kandinsky's original texts, and have included select interviews, lecture notes, and newly discovered items along with his more formal writings. The pieces range from one-page essays to the book-length treatises "On the Spiritual in Art" (1911) and "Point and Line to Plane" (1926), and are arranged in chronological order from 1901 to 1943. The poetry, good enough to stand on its literary merits, is presented with all the original accompanying illustrations. And the book's design follows Kandinsky's intentions, preserving the spirit of the original typography and layout.Kandinsky was nearly thirty before he bravely gave up an academic career in law for his true passion, painting. Though his art was marked by extraordinarily varied styles, Kandinsky sought a pure art throughout, one which would express the soul, or "inner necessity," of the artist. His uncompromising search for an art which would elicit a response to itself rather than to the object depicted resulted in the birth of nonobjective art--and in these writings, Kandinsky offered the first cogent explanation of his aims. His language was characterized by its desire for vivification, of the infusion of life into mundane things.Considered as a whole, Kandinsky's writings exceed all expectations of what an artist should accomplish with words. Not only do his ideas and observations make us rethink the nature of art and the wayit reflects the aspirations of his era, but they touch on matters vital to the situation of the human soul.

The home is, for many people, the location for their most intense relationships with visual things. Because they are constructed through the objects we choose, domestic spaces are deeply revealing of a range of cultural issues. How is our interpretation of an object affected by the domestic environment in which it is placed? Why choose a stainless steel teapot over a leopard print one? How do the images hanging on the walls of our homes arrive there? In placing contemporary art in the context of the 'ordinary' home, this book embarks on the contentious topic of whether 'high' art impacts on 'ordinary' people. What is the size and nature of the audience for contemporary art in Britain? Do people really visit more art galleries than attend football matches? What is the significance of the home in relation to such questions? Indeed, what constitutes 'art' in the home?
This book carefully unpicks these questions as well as the troubled relationship between the home as a place of comfort and reassurance and the often unsettling and challenging images offered by contemporary art. Within the art world, the home has been addressed as a subject and even used as a temporary gallery and a space for installations, and yet it is not common for works by today's avant-garde artists to be conceived and marketed to participate in the domestic lives that most people live.
Handsomely illustrated, this book unites contemporary art, craft and design, with sociology, anthropology and cultural studies to provide an unusual and forthright addition to ongoing art and culture debates.

The home is, for many people, the location for their most intense relationships with visual things. Because they are constructed through the objects we choose, domestic spaces are deeply revealing of a range of cultural issues. How is our interpretation of an object affected by the domestic environment in which it is placed? Why choose a stainless steel teapot over a leopard print one? How do the images hanging on the walls of our homes arrive there? In placing contemporary art in the context of the 'ordinary' home, this book embarks on the contentious topic of whether 'high' art impacts on 'ordinary' people. What is the size and nature of the audience for contemporary art in Britain? Do people really visit more art galleries than attend football matches? What is the significance of the home in relation to such questions? Indeed, what constitutes 'art' in the home?
This book carefully unpicks these questions as well as the troubled relationship between the home as a place of comfort and reassurance and the often unsettling and challenging images offered by contemporary art. Within the art world, the home has been addressed as a subject and even used as a temporary gallery and a space for installations, and yet it is not common for works by today's avant-garde artists to be conceived and marketed to participate in the domestic lives that most people live.
Handsomely illustrated, this book unites contemporary art, craft and design, with sociology, anthropology and cultural studies to provide an unusual and forthright addition to ongoing art and culture debates.

Franz Kline spent years struggling to find a style for himself and then achieved "overnight success" with his dramatic black and white abstractions. They were, in fact, so successful that they overwhelmed every other aspect of Kline's art, and as a result he has been oversimplified and underestimated. Now, after nearly twenty years of research, Harry F. Gaugh has written the definitive volume on Kline, which provides the first comprehensive view of his life and work, and reveals how unexpectedly complex they both were.

Using interviews and correspondence with dozens of Kline's friends and critics, and quoting from the artist's own letters, the author has created an evocative portrait of Kline's evolution from an ambitious art student in Boston and London to a penniless Greenwich Village artist painting murals in bars just to pay the rent, and finally to a mature artist in command of his own unique and hard-won style. Kline made his initial, admittedly modest, reputation as a figurative artist, and rare photographs of that early work--sketches from life-drawing class, portraits of Nijinsky, scenes of the Pennsylvania countryside--offer an intriguing background for his later paintings. Not until his late thirties did Kline begin to develop an abstract mode, working his way through a series of strikingly dissimilar styles. Dr. Gaugh illuminates how talent, training, experimentation, the influence of fellow artists, and pure chance interacted to yield the famous black and white abstractions. When he died in 1962, Kline had begun exploring the potential of vibrant color, and the vivid full-color reproductions of his late paintings make poignantly clear how much the art world lost with hisdeath at the relatively young age of fifty-one.

With its detailed yet thoroughly readable text and 170 illustrations (many never before published) this comprehensive volume brings to light much new information about Kline and enriches the reader's appreciation and understanding of his art.

Other Details:
170 illustrations, 70 in full color. 9 x 11" trim size. First published 1985.

This collection of new essays addresses emotion in relation to the arts. The essays consider such topics as the paradox of fiction, emotion in the pure and abstract arts, and the rationality and ethics of emotional responses to art.

Lauded by Jerry Saltz as "one of the most reactionary yet radical visions of art," The Young and Evil tells the story of a group of artists and writers active during the first half of the twentieth century, when homosexuality was as problematic for American culture as figuration was for modernist painting. These artists-including Paul Cadmus, Fidelma Cadmus Kirstein, Charles Henri Ford, Jared French, Margaret Hoening French, George Platt Lynes, Bernard Perlin, Pavel Tchelitchew, George Tooker, Alexander Jensen Yow, and their circle-were new social creatures, playfully and boldly homosexual at a time when it was both criminalized and pathologized. They pursued a modernism of the body-driven by eroticism and bounded by intimacy, forming a hothouse world within a world that doesn't nicely fit any subsequent narrative of modern American art. In their work, they looked away from abstraction toward older sources and models-classical and archaic forms of figuration and Renaissance techniques. What might be seen as a reactionary aesthetic maneuver was made in the service of radical content-endeavoring to depict their own lives. Their little-known history is presented here through never-before-exhibited photographs, sculptures, drawings, ephemera, and rarely seen major paintings-offering the first view of its kind into their interwoven intellectual, artistic, and personal lives. Edited by Jarrett Earnest, who also curated the exhibition, The Young and Evil features new scholarship by art historians Ann Reynolds and Kenneth E. Silver and an interview with Alexander Jensen Yow by Michael Schreiber.

Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) was a pivotal figure in Abstract Expressionism and stands as one of the most important characters of post-war American art. This ground-breaking catalogue raisonne of paintings, which has been painstakingly researched over sixteen years, is both an invaluable scholarly resource and a celebration of Hofmann's remarkable artistic achievements. Hofmann's long and productive career began in Paris in 1904 where the young artist absorbed the manifold influences of the city's avant-garde. Drawn back to Germany due to war, Hofmann, exempt from military service, opened an innovative school for art in Munich. The school's reputation spread internationally and, as the political situation in Germany deteriorated during the 1930s, Hofmann re-located his school to New York. The city, a center for emerging artistic talent, was the perfect environment for Hofmann to continue his teaching practice, which he did until 1958, when he devoted himself entirely to painting. Throughout his American years, Hofmann enlarged the expressive language of abstraction, through his innovative use of color, materiality and structure. This impressive three-volumed catalogue marks a milestone in the scholarship and understanding of Hofmann's huge contribution to twentieth-century art. Through insightful essays, meticulous catalogue entries and supporting academic apparatus, it is shown how Hofmann's exceptional body of work often defies categorization - his was a highly personal visual language with which he endlessly explored pictorial structures and chromatic relationships. Both visually stunning and academically robust, this publication is an essential purchase for all those with a keen interest in one of the twentieth century's most significant and original artists.

This exhibition celebrates the historic moment in the history of modern art when Kazimir Malevich debuted his new non-objective paintings under the banner of Suprematism and Vladimir Tatlin introduced his revolutionary counter-relief sculptures. They were bitter rivals and diametrically opposed in their creative thinking, so when an exhibition in which their new works appeared, entitled 0,10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting and organized by fellow artist Ivan Puni in Petrograd in 1915, the other 12 artists in the show chose sides. It was a stylistically diverse exhibition, with cubist-inspired works and the first non-objective paintings and reliefs. The Beyeler's presentation will include a large number of the works from the original exhibition. The catalogue will include essays by exhibition curator Matthew Drutt and other leading scholars, as well as documents gathered together and translated for the first time. (German edition ISBN 978-3-7757-4032-6) Ausstellung/Exhibition: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel 4.10.2015-17.1.2016

Throughout his life, Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) was a prolific and creative writer. Correspondent to many, his unpublished letters, selected and extracted here for the first time (along with published writings), reveal fascinating insight into significant events and encounters at various stages of the artist's career, while also demonstrating how Nicholson's aesthetic was interwoven into every aspect of his daily life. Including previously unpublished letters to both Winifred Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, these are complemented by those sent to some of the artist's closest friends and trusted supporters, among them Herbert Read, Adrian Stokes, Jim Ede and Margaret Gardiner. Throughout, Nicholson's lively intellect and total commitment to art are clearly evident, as is his association and friendship with some of the key figures of international Modernism, including Mondrian, Henry Moore and Picasso. Featuring reproductions of key works and selected letters, Ben Nicholson: Writings and Ideas is an invaluable resource to all those interested in the work of this key British artist and the period in which he worked.

In the mid-1950s, Yves Klein (1928-1962) declared that "a new world calls for a new man." With his idiosyncratic style and huge charisma, this bold artist would go on to pursue a brief but bountiful career, producing more than 1,000 paintings over seven years in an oeuvre now considered a mainstay of postwar modernism. Klein made his name above all with his large monochrome canvases in his own patented hue of blue. International Klein Blue (IKB), composed of pure pigment and binding medium, is at once rich and luminous, evocative and decorative, and was conceived by Klein as a means of evoking the immateriality and infinitude of the world. The works of this "Blue Revolution" seem to draw us into another dimension, as if hypnotized by a perfect summer sky. Klein was also renowned for his deployment of "living brushes," in which naked women, daubed in International Klein Blue, would make imprints of their bodies on large sheets of paper. This Basic Art introduction presents key Klein works to introduce an artist who was at once a showman, inventor, and pioneer of performance art. With page after page of the ever-alluring International Klein Blue, it is both an essential guide to a modern art master and a meditation on the unique effects of a single color. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

When it comes to viewing art, living in the information age is not necessarily a benefit. So argues Michael Findlay in this book that encourages a new way of looking at art. Much of this thinking involves stripping away what we have been taught and instead trusting our own instincts, opinions, and reactions. Including reproductions of works by Mark Rothko, Paul Klee, Joan Miro , Jacob Lawrence, and other modern and contemporary masters, this book takes readers on a journey through modern art. Chapters such as "What Is a Work of Art?" "Can We Look and See at the Same Time?" and "Real Connoisseurs Are Not Snobs," not only give readers the confidence to form their own opinions, but also encourages them to make connections that spark curiosity, intellect, and imagination. "The most important thing for us to grasp," writes Findlay, "is that the essence of a great work of art is inert until it is seen. Our engagement with the work of art liberates its essence." After reading this book, even the most intimidated art viewer will enter a museum or gallery feeling more confident and leave it feeling enriched and inspired.

Cinema was the most important new artistic medium of the twentieth century and modernism was the most important new aesthetic movement across the arts in the twentieth century. However, what exactly is the relationship between cinema and modernism? Cinematic Modernism and Contemporary Film explores how in the early twentieth century cinema came to be seen as one of the new technologies which epitomised modernity and how cinema itself reflected ideas, hopes and fears concerning modern life. Howard Finn examines the emergence of a new 'international style' of cinema, combining a poetic aesthetic of the image with genre-based fictional narrative and documentary realism. He provides concise accounts of how theorists such as Andre Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Ranciere have discussed this cinematic aesthetic, clarifying debates over terms such as 'realism', 'classical' and 'avant-garde' as well as recent controversies over terms such as 'slow cinema' and 'vernacular modernism'. He further argues the influence of modernism through close readings of many contemporary films, including films by Abbas Kiarostami, Bela Tarr, Jia Zhangke, and Angela Schanelec. Drawing on a broad range of examples, including Soviet montage, Italian neorealism, postwar new waves and the 'new cinema' of Taiwan and Iran, this book explores the cultural significance of modernism and its lasting influence over cinema.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was a fighting spirit. Despite a cancer diagnosis in 1941, increasing frailty, and the confines of a wheelchair, the indomitable Frenchman never stopped in his quest to make art. With what he called une seconde vie, a second life, he embarked on a remarkable collage period, cutting and pasting pieces of colored paper into gouaches decoupees of birds, plants, flowers, and the female form. Emphasizing color and contrast, the cut-out technique generated both striking lines and vivid juxtapositions. In works such as Icarus (1943), The Blue Nude (1952), The Snail (1953), and The Sheaf (1953), clean forms and elemental structures power a compositional force that belies the work's decorative appeal, at once tightly organized and infectious with joie de vivre. As his work progressed, Matisse's excitement with his results fueled ever-larger pieces, advancing from small works to vast wall-sized murals. As his final years approached, Matisse reveled in the simplicity and brilliance of these pieces, avowing, "Only what I created after the illness constitutes my real self: free, liberated..." In this essential introductory book, we revisit this joyful final chapter of Matisse's long and prodigious career, examining how the cut-outs encapsulated the artist's many years exploring the possibilities of composition, form, and color. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Modernism, referring to the period dating roughly from the late 19th century to 1970, is regarded as a crucial moment in the history of American art. Although Modernist artists adopted a wide range of styles, they were linked by a desire to interpret a rapidly changing society and to cast aside the conventions of representational art. Some, such as Stuart Davis and Joseph Stella, responded to consumerism, urbanism and industrial technology; others, such as Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe, found inspiration in nature and the Native American culture of the Southwest. This magnificent new book presents the works of the Vilcek Collection, an unparalleled private collection of American Modernist paintings, drawings and sculpture. Art historian Lewis Kachur explores almost 100 rarely seen works by 20 leading artists active during the first half of the last century, while William C. Agee contributes an incisive introduction. Lavishly illustrated throughout, Masterpieces of American Modernism provides an outstanding overview of the radical shift in art driven by this major aesthetic movement.

A pioneer not only of the art but also the fashion world, Frida Kahlo is beloved for her signature portraits and the bold, innovative clothing she wore in them. This fabulous paper doll set features Frida and 30 of her signature ensembles. Bilingual explanatory captions contextualise how and when she wore each outfit. Also includes a bonus paper doll of husband Diego Rivrera complete with two outfits of his own.

An exploration of women's contribution to visual culture in major Western urban centers, this collection also sheds new light on women's relationships with the processes of modernism and modernization. The essays in this volume analyze women's work in a variety of mediums, including design, print, illustration, murals, poster art, costume design, and film as well as more conventional forms of painting and sculpture in the interwar period (1918-1939). International in scope, the volume discusses artists and exhibitions from the United Kingdom, Greece, Mexico, France, Ireland, and the United States. The contributors place a strong emphasis on archival research yet each addresses contemporary concerns in feminist art history. By focusing on a very specific time period, the essays place a central concern on the history and theory of art and gender and are united by their coherent focus on women's role in the agency and mediation of artistic production between the wars.

Back in print, the most authoritative overview on the beloved Bauhaus Renaissance man and pioneer of abstraction, the first artist to take a line for a walk The many books on Paul Klee (1879-1940) published over the years should not obscure the fact that there has been no new, comprehensive Klee overview since Will Grohmann's oft-reprinted 1954 monograph. With Paul Klee: Life and Work, the Zentrum Paul Klee has set out to fill this gap, drawing on a wealth of new resources including the Klee family's archives, much of which is published here for the first time. Life and work are truly integrated in this massive, 344-page volume: Klee's vast body of work is surveyed chronologically, as the book narrates his life alongside the abundant reproductions of drawings, paintings, watercolors, sculptures, puppets and numerous archival documents and photographs (nearly 500 reproductions in total). The book divides Klee's career into eight periods: "Childhood and Youth"; "Munich and the Encounter with the Avant Garde"; "World War I and the Breakthrough to Success"; "At the Bauhaus in Weimar"; "Master of Modern Art"; "The Move to Dusseldorf and the Nazi Rise to Power"; "First Years of Emigration in Bern"; and "Final Years." The result of many years of research and labor, this magisterial publication demonstrates conclusively why Klee numbers among the most influential and best-loved artists of the past 100 years.

'Any fool can paint, but drawing is the thing and drawing is the test. If you are a good draughtsman you are ipso facto a good painter' - Walter Sickert. The drawings included in this publication reveal the working practice of Walter Sickert (1860-1942), an artist considered by many the 'father' of modern British art. Sickert was a prolific draughtsman throughout his career and used his drawings as preparatory works for his paintings. Drawn from nature, his sketches capture the intricacies of architectures, the infectious thrill of performance, and even the nuances of a subject's character. Sickert frequently visited locations again and again, investing long periods of time in locations to detail certain elements or even redraw entire views. In doing so, he was able to develop ideas and concepts before an image was possibly transferred to canvas. As a mentor and teacher to a younger generation of artists he also attempted to teach the use of preparatory drawings to his proteges, steering the course of arts practice in Britain. Stored in Tate's collection and archive, this selection of drawings not only serve as a record of Sickert's creative process but express his engagement with the world around him, both in Britain and abroad.

A hairless, ghostly figure on a bridge. The sky orange-red above him. His hands raised to his ears, his mouth wide in a haunting wail. In painting The Scream, Edvard Munch (1863-1944) created Mona Lisa for our times. The shriek of his iconic figure reverberates around the world, its echo resounding in the work of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Martin Kippenberger, Marlene Dumas, and Tracey Emin. This introductory book surveys Munch's staggering capacity for psychodrama in The Scream and beyond. With rich illustration, it looks at the lurid, dark, and deeply modern visions that made up the artist's response to relationships and emotions. These compelling images, regarded by the artist himself as a means of "free confession," remain as magnetic today as they were on the brink of modernism. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions