"The written word is the most basic element of human culture. To touch the written word is to touch the essence of culture." - Xu Bing Book from the Sky certainly seemed to have fallen from the heavens: the text of this installation piece was written in a new language that resembled traditional Chinese. No matter who scours Xu Bing's book for 'meaning', they will only discover a semblance of it: mutated characters that resist interpretation. Carving out approximately four thousand wood blocks by hand, Xu Bing spent four years, from 1987 to 1991, making (in his own words) "something that said nothing". After creating a book no one could read, it only made sense for Xu Bing to develop his next project: a book that transcended barriers of language: Book from the Ground. Composed entirely of pictographs, Book from the Ground is a groundbreaking study into the concept of universal communication. Whether his goal is total comprehension or confusion, Xu Bing's masterful exploration of language challenges the way we think about the written word.

This survey exhibition captures the arc and continued ascent of contemporary artist Beverly McIver. This exhibition catalog accompanies a survey exhibition of contemporary artist and painter Beverly McIver. Curated by Kim Boganey, this exhibition represents the diversity of McIver's thematic approach to painting over her career. From early self-portraits in clown makeup to more recent works featuring her father, dolls, Beverly's experiences during COVID-19 and portraits of others, Full Circle illuminates the arc of Beverly McIver's artistic career while also touching on her personal journey. McIver's self-portraits explore expressions of individuality, stereotypes, and ways of masking identity; portraits of family provide glimpses into intimate moments, in good times as well as in illness and death. The show includes McIver's portraits of other artists and notable figures, recent work resulting from a year in Rome with American Academy's Rome Prize, and new work in which McIver explores the juxtaposition of color, patterns, and the human figure. Full Circle also features works that reflect on McIver's collaborations with other artists, as well as her impact on the next generation of artists. The complementary exhibition, In Good Company, includes artists who have mentored McIver, such as Faith Ringgold and Richard Mayhew, as well as those who have studied under her. This catalog includes a conversation with Beverly McIver by exhibition curator Kim Boganey, as well as two essays: one by leading Black feminist writer Michele Wallace, daughter of Beverly's graduate school mentor Faith Ringgold, and another by distinguished scholar of African American art history Richard Powell. Published in association with the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Exhibition dates: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art February 12-September 4, 2022 Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art December 8, 2022-March 26, 2023 The Gibbes Museum April 28-August 4, 2023

SingaporeEye features seventy-five of the country's most dynamic contemporary artists, as well as contributions by experts tracing the origins and history of artistic development in Singapore, offering insight of new trends arising from the city's young artists of today and of the perspectives behind their work. The publication of this volume coincides with the 50th anniversary of Singapore's independence. A cosmopolitan and multicultural city with a global outlook tempered by Asian traditions, Singapore and its contemporary artists are starting to gain a foothold in the international art world.

"Pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he says it does." - Margo McCAaffery, 1968. The catalogue Beyond the Pain, published for the exhibition of the same name at Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, addresses approaches to conquering pain within the visual arts. Twelve renowned national and international artists demonstrate how negative physical and psychological experiences can be transformed into a positive attitude to life, and contributions from academics complement and discuss the overcoming of pain. The reception of art, just like the experience of pain, is as much informed by cultural-societal norms as it is a profoundly individual experience; to this end contemporary art is connected to a universal theme of humanity. Text in English and German.

Robert Hernandez traces the history and assesses the impact of VIVA Lesbian and Gay Latino Artists, a nonprofit artists' coalition founded in 1987 in the Silverlake community of Los Angeles. Their aim was to increase the representation of lesbian Latina and gay Latino artists in the LA art scene. VIVA sponsored exhibitions, theatrical performances, and educational outreach. It worked closely with other gay and lesbian organizations in Los Angeles, using arts-based projects to address cultural and sociopolitcal issues that were of concern to their community and the AIDS crisis in particuar. The first organization of its kind in Los Angeles, VIVA offered a stage and a voice for artists who had been routinely marginalized.

The VIVA collection of papers is housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. It includes administrative papers, photographs, artwork, VIVA publications, and documents related to the organization's exhibitions, performances, educational projects, and other events.

This book spotlights a complex art collection established at the intersection of modern art and social justice. In 1963, as civil rights protests swirled across the fiercely segregated state, this historically Black college became an unlikely hub in Mississippi envisioned as “an interracial oasis in which the fine arts are the focus and magnet.” Since its founding in 1869 by the abolitionist-led American Missionary Association, Tougaloo College has made the fight for equality central to its mission. In 1963, Tougaloo became the nexus for modern art in Mississippi, when leaders of the New York art world began a rich program of art acquisitions. This publication features two essays and approximately thirty-five selections from this distinctive collection by diverse artists such as Francis Picabia, Jacob Lawrence, and Alma Thomas.

This book is an account of the theory and practice of practitioners of the so-called "second" or "younger" Viennese school associated with Hans Sedlmayr and Otto Pacht and their short-lived journal, Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen. It demonstrates the strong dependence of these writers on the work of Gestalt psychology which was emerging at the time. Gestalt theory emerges as the master key to interpreting Sedlmayr and Pacht's ideas about art and history and how it affected their practices. This fresh interpretive apparatus casts light on the power and originality of Sedlmayr's and Pacht's theoretical and empirical writings, revealing a practice-based approach to history that is more attuned to the visuality of art. Verstegen demonstrates the existence of a genealogy of Vienna formalism coursing throughout most of the twentieth century, encompassing Johannes Wilde and his students at the Courtauld as well as Otto Demus in Byzantine studies. By bringing Gestalt theory to the surface, he dispels misunderstandings about the Vienna School theory and attains a deeper understanding of the promise that a Gestalt analytic holism - a non-intuitionist account of the relational logic of sense - is offered.

It has recently become apparent that criticism has fallen on hard times. Either commodification is deemed to have killed it off, or it has become institutionally routine. This book explores contemporary approaches which have sought to renew criticism's energies in the wake of a 'theatrical turn' in recent visual arts practice, and the emergence of a 'performative' arts writing over the past decade or so.

Issues addressed include the 'performing' of art's histories; the consequences for criticism of embracing boredom, distraction and other 'queer' forms of (in)attention; and the importance of exploring writerly process in responding to aesthetic experience. Bringing together newly commissioned work from the fields of art history, performance studies, and visual culture with the writings of contemporary artists, "After Criticism" provides a set of experimental essays which demonstrate how 'the critical' might live on as a vital and efficacious force within contemporary culture.

German artist Neo Rauch, championed as "the painter of the zeitgeist" by The New York Times's Roberta Smith, presents new paintings in PROPAGANDA. 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 is available in both English only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

Anyone who has ever laughed out loud at Max Kersting’s brilliant combinations of word and image has immediately become a fan of his unique and original art. He lends new meaning to found photographs with his added speech and thought bubbles. The newly created word-image relationships are, in their sensitive way, as humorous as they are inimitably profound. This connection applies all the more to his new work, which could be called “purely graphic.” Here, Kersting considers the graphic” in its two meanings of drawing and writing, or symbol. Even Roland Barthes compared the flow of the fountain pen to the pressure of the ballpoint pen. Like brilliant emblems from Kersting’s ballpoint pen, the texts are scratched across the paper in brief, marvelously unskilled handwriting, as well as across the existential ground upon which our daily lives occur.

A larger-than-life figure in the design community with a client list to match, Paula Scher turned her first major project as a partner at Pentagram into a formative twenty-five-year relationship with the Public Theater in New York. This behind-the-scenes account of the relationship between Scher and "the Public," as it's affectionately known, chronicles over two decades of brand and identity development and an evolving creative process in a unique "autobiography of graphic design." New Yorkers, designers, and theater fans everywhere will be thrilled to find hundreds of Scher's posters, including those for Hamilton, Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, and numerous Shakespeare in the Park productions, collected in this one-of-a-kind volume along with other printed and process-related matter. Essays by two of the theater's artistic directors, George C. Wolfe and Oskar Eustis, and design critics Steven Heller and Ellen Lupton contextualize Scher's dynamic typographic treatment.

Under a Banner of Concern is a compilation of drawings and poetry from acclaimed artist and musician, Tim Presley. Featuring art from Presley's 2019 exhibition in Chicago and Los Angeles-Under the Banner of Concern-the black ink drawings merge abstracted and expressionistic brush and line work, the latter of which breaks down figures into simple forms. Characterized by Presley's "every figure" symbology in their emptied out flat bodies and hollowed eye sockets, these figures are both represented as sexualized and mask-like. In addition to his exhibited drawings, the book will also feature previously unreleased artwork, as well as new poetry from Presley. Under a Banner of Concern is a psychedelic visual experience that is a place for introspection rather than pure image-making.

In every generation of artists, there are a few who propose a new set of ques- tions and alter the way we understand art. Peter Doig is such an artist. This handsome monograph considers the painter's entire career, beginning with the early work produced in the 1990s when Doig's enigmatic but wholly new conception of painting was first introduced to audiences. Doig was born to Scottish parents, spent several years as a child in Trinidad, later settling in Canada for his formative early teen years. He found his voice while at art school in London, albeit one that was out of step with the work of the time (much of it installation-based and dripping with neo-conceptualist leanings). He had developed a small following of fellow artists and critics when the rest of the art world caught up and took notice. In 2002, he left London for Trinidad, where he has remained. The small Caribbean island-with its own distinctive light and landscape-has deeply influenced his recent work. This volume was designed in close collaboration with the artist, with a cover and various interior elements created especially by the artist.

A unique insight into the ways in which one of today's leading artists is inspired by great works of the past. In 16 emphatically modern new paintings, renowned artist, Alison Watt, responds to the remarkable delicacy of the female portraits by eighteenth-century Scottish portraitist, Allan Ramsay. Watt's new works are particularly inspired by Ramsay's much-loved portrait of his wife, along with less familiar portraits and drawings. Watt shines a light on enigmatic details in Ramsay's work and has created paintings which hover between the genres of still life and portraiture. In conversation with curator Julie Lawson, Watt discusses how painters look at paintings, explains why Ramsay inspired her, and provides unique insight into her own creative process. Andrew O'Hagan responds to Watt's paintings with a new work of short fiction and art historian Tom Normand's commentary explores further layers of depth to our understanding of both artists.

Keith Haring (1958 -1990) is widely recognised for his colourful paintings, drawings, sculptures and murals. Haring exploded onto the early 1980s New York art scene with his vivid graffiti-inspired drawings, many of which found exposure in the public realm, such as the Times Square billboard broadcast of his famous Radiant Child in 1982. Haring's instantly recognisable `cartoon-like' imagery not only drew on the iconography of contemporary pop and club culture but also looked back to the patterns and rhythms of Islamic and Japanese art, and primitive wall-paintings,. Furthermore his work also reflected a profound commitment to social justice and activism, and raised numerous issues that remain relevant today, including the AIDS crisis, the Cold War and fear of nuclear attack, racism, the excesses of capitalism and environmental degradation. Featuring around fifty works supported by rarely seen photography, film and archival documents from the Keith Haring Foundation, this accessible book will not only introduce Haring to a new audience but also throw fresh light on an artist whose work remains symptomatic of the subcultural and creative energy of 1980s New York. Three short texts exploring various aspects of Haring's practice will be interspersed with illustrations of his works and a rolling time-line featuring key social and political events of the 1980s (from the election of Reagan in 1980 and the explosion of hip hop from underground movement to global phenomenon to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) and Haring's responses to them. The publication also aims to include select and unpublished reminiscences from those who collaborated and interacted with Haring, including performers such as Madonna and Grace Jones and artists Jenny Holzer and Yoko Ono.

"The landscape and architecture of a city like Berlin possess a great deal of under-track information. Inexplicable, yet perceptible, sometimes barely whispered." - Vincenzo Castella Vincenzo Castella went to Berlin for the first time between August and September 1989, without imagining that an epochal turning point was preparing in that city, with the imminent fall of the Wall, on 9th November 1989. The volume publishes for the first time the shots of that residency. A photographic cycle which, although presenting itself as a 'digression, an experiment with open outcomes' as explained by Frank Boehm in his text, with respect to the themes of his research at the time is fully inserted in a wider reflection on landscape, understood as a context built and modified by man, which is also the common thread of all of Castella's oeuvre. For today's readers, this is not just an unpublished visual document that, through a silent and essential revival, gives us a glimpse of how the city looked before history intervened to cut its boundaries, but also a crucial element to approach and deepen the work of one of the most appreciated masters of contemporary photography. Text in English, German and Italian.

Bill Woodrow (b.1948) and Richard Deacon (b.1949) have been making sculpture together since 1990. This new book is the first to showcase the work made over this thirty-year period. They have created over sixty works altogether which they call 'shared sculptures', highlighting the important equality of authorship and responsibility at stake for both these artists. Their shared sculptures exist as five main bodies of work, which have been variously shown in exhibitions in Britain and abroad: 'Only the Lonely' (1993), 'monuments' (1999), 'Lead Astray' (2004), 'On the Rocks' (2008) and 'Don't Start' (2016). Their recent body of work, 'We Thought About It A Lot' (2021), has seen them working on paper to explore their ideas together. This new book provides a rich visual account of these works, showing new and original photographs of them individually and in their exhibition contexts. It also includes studio photographs, images of the preview cards that they have designed for exhibitions over the years and reproduces one of their earlier fax exchanges. The publication features an introductory essay by the art historian and curator Jon Wood and is released to coincide with the artists' latest two-person exhibition, 'We Thought About It A Lot, and other shared drawings' at Ikon, Birmingham, in autumn 2021. Bill Woodrow (b.1948) has exhibited internationally, representing Britain at biennales in Sydney (1982), Paris (1982, 1985) and Sao Paulo (1983). He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1986 and participated in Documenta 8 in 1987. He was elected a Royal Academician in 2002 and had a major retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2013. Richard Deacon (b.1949) has exhibited internationally throughout his career. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1987, elected to the Royal Academy in 1998 and to the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin in 2010. A large exhibition of his work was shown at Tate Britain in 2014, the same year as a selected edition of his writings was published. Dr Jon Wood (b.1970) is a writer and curator, specialising in modern and contemporary sculpture. Recent publications and exhibitions include: 'Sean Scully' (2020), 'Contemporary Sculpture: Artists' Writings and Interviews' (2020), 'Tony Cragg at the Boboli Gardens' (2019) and 'Sculpture and Film' (2018). He is a trustee of the Gabo Trust.

The Stroemple Collection boasts more than five hundred vintage Venetian vessels that illustrate the height of Venetian glassblowing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 2012, George Stroemple commissioned James Mongrain-Dale Chihuly's current gaffer and an exceptional glass artist-to make a series of ten vessels to replicate major examples of vintage Venetian glass in the Stroemple Collection. The finished pieces exemplify Mongrain's extraordinary ability to re-create traditional Venetian mastery in glass. Since then, the Stroemple Collection has commissioned Mongrain to make more series, all based on the historic works in the Stroemple Collection. For these, Mongrain uses traditional techniques and imagery to reimagine the Venetian style, working on a large scale to create monumental and sculptural pieces that reference tradition but are firmly within contemporary glassmaking. This book documents each of the James Mongrain commissions and will also include various examples of historic Venetian glass that inspired Mongrain in the making of these series.

Over the past few decades, the Nordic region has witnessed large shifts in its political, social and international outlook. Meanwhile, its art, commonly described as introverted, contemplative and wild, is also undergoing changes. As technology embeds itself further into the contemporary art scene, there is a renewed need to examine the role of art in society and everyday life, and to consider how the digitalization of art has tackled socio-political realities, locally and in the wider world. Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art includes a collection of testimonials from 78 artists, connected to Nordic art, who employ concepts and/or tools relating to the digital in their practice. Their statements form the basis of the essays in Part 2, penned by leading scholars affiliated with the Nordic art context, which inquire into the digital influences on contemporary art, with particular attention paid to the national and international Nordic socio-political context. Landscapes, nature, minimalism, melancholia - this book examines how these traditional Nordic tropes hold up in the growing field of digital contemporary art, and asks: to what extent have digital dynamics been adopted into the imaginaries and practices of Nordic artists? www.digitaldynamics.art