Historically, women have been depicted as a projection of male fantasies, prejudices, and relationships. However in the 1970s, there was a tectonic change in the way women portray themselves in art. For the first time, female artists began to investigate visual representations of their own selves. They studied their own bodies and created the alternative views of feminine identity. Editor Gabriele Schor explores the Feminist Avant-Garde to emphasise the role that these artists played for the last four decades. The results are provocative, radical, poetic, ironic, angry, cynical, and heartfelt. Most of all they are honest, sharing a collective consciousness that reassessed, and even rejected, what came before by turning to new ways of expression in the fields of photography, performance, film, and video. Included here are works by Cindy Sherman, Ana Mendieta, Nil Yalter, Ketty La Rocca, Birgit Jürgenssen, Renate Bertlmann, Francesca Woodman, and other fearless female artists from around the world. Their work explored the female experience in all its dimensions including pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, sexuality, partnership, beauty standards, rape, and the female body. Each artist is introduced by an essay and the book also includes fascinating interviews with leading curators in the field of feminist art. This groundbreaking book emphasises the accomplishments of women artists who have made a name for themselves while encouraging and inspiring those who have come after them.

The different techniques of realization and presentation of audiovisual art, the thoughts of the protagonists, and the results of their artistic research. The association between images and music aroused the curiosity of a number of artists and thinkers of the past, and continues to be a topic of great interest today. This book aims to take stock of the situation, now that abstract audiovisual art is enjoying a new season of renewed vitality.

The paintings and drawings of Michele Melillo (*1977) enchant the viewer with their lightness and harmonious colours. Accompanied by an explanatory essay by Veit Ziegelmaier, this comprehensive artist monograph reproduces for the first time works from all work cycles by the young German painter and graphic artist.Michele Melillo starts with historicalreferences when developing his works, combining in masterly style motifs from the Baroque and Rococo eras with a modern vocabulary of forms, folkloric ornaments and classical architecture. Fauvist orgies of colour and sprawling lines characterise the recurring subjects of his pictures: the barque as a symbol of the Egyptian sun god Ra, fabulous creatures and unusual animal pictures or portraits of people long believed to be dead. After studying painting with Prof. Axel Kasseboehmer at the Academy of Fine Arts, today Melillo lives and works in Munich. As the monograph impressively proves, hisworks instantly fascinate the viewer and surprise repeatedly with their profound wit.

A richly illustrated history of self-taught artists and how they changed American art Artists without formal training, who learned from family, community, and personal journeys, have long been a presence in American art. But it wasn't until the 1980s, with the help of trailblazing advocates, that the collective force of their creative vision and bold self-definition permanently changed the mainstream art world. In We Are Made of Stories, Leslie Umberger traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, they redefined who could be rightfully seen as an artist and revealed a much more diverse community of American makers. Lavishly illustrated throughout, We Are Made of Stories features more than one hundred drawings, paintings, and sculptures, ranging from the narrative to the abstract, by forty-three artists-including James Castle, Thornton Dial, William Edmondson, Howard Finster, Bessie Harvey, Dan Miller, Sister Gertrude Morgan, the Philadelphia Wireman, Nellie Mae Rowe, Judith Scott, and Bill Traylor. The book centralizes the personal stories behind the art, and explores enduring themes, including self-definition, cultural heritage, struggle and joy, and inequity and achievement. At the same time, it offers a sweeping history of self-taught artists, the critical debates surrounding their art, and how museums have gradually diversified their collections across lines of race, gender, class, and ability. Recasting American art history to embrace artists who have been excluded for too long, We Are Made of Stories vividly captures the power of art to show us the world through the eyes of another. Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum Exhibition Schedule Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC July 1, 2022-March 26, 2023

Known for his colourful, irreverent, and often politically charged paintings, Halim Flowers is a contemporary visual artist, spoken word performer, and author who has become one of the hottest newcomers in the contemporary art scene. As a minor, Flowers was arrested and wrongfully sentenced to two life sentences in Washington, DC, later to be released under a new juvenile lifer resentencing law. His experiences aired on HBO in the Emmy award-winning documentary Thug Life in DC, as well as Kim Kardashian-West's film The Justice Project. Since his release, Flowers has produced a stunning spectrum of paintings expressing his ardent advocacy for human rights, and his resonant, up-lifting mantra "Love is the vaccine". This beautifully illustrated volume provides the first full treatment of Flower's artistic vision, with insightful interpretation from leading scholars of this star on the rise.

A celebration of the diverse world of American watercolors from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century, featuring works from the Harvard Art Museums’ collection Watercolor holds a special place in the history of American art. For generations of artists, the medium has provided a space for innovation and experimentation, allowing practitioners to let their imagination loose and to reflect on process and perception. Its rise to the status of fine art in the decades following the Civil War is well documented, yet its continued role as a testing ground and means of generating new ideas throughout the twentieth century has received comparatively less attention. This volume considers continuity and change in the American watercolor tradition over a century of production through the lens of the Harvard Art Museums’ collection. Works by well-known watercolorists such as Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler are included, as well as surprising additions from Zelda Fitzgerald, Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, and many others. In the spirit of the medium, the authors take a fluid and open-ended approach to the topic, offering both personal and scholarly reflections that invite readers to ponder the influence of these works on their own experience of the world. In addition to contextual essays, there are close readings of singular works and examinations of the unique material characteristics of the watercolor medium. Distributed for the Harvard Art Museums Exhibition Schedule: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (May 20–August 13, 2023)

Narcissus Quagliata is considered one of the most significant contemporary artists in glass. He has defined a new pathway in this field by combining painting with light, and he is best known for his spectacular artworks in public spaces, which have drawn world-wide attention. These include The Dome of Light: Wind, Fire, and Time in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, the largest illuminated glass dome in the world. Contrasted with this, MUTANT is perhaps his quietest, most personal and most intimate book, in which, for the first time, readers will come to know the person behind the artist through his thoughts, poems, sketches and his latest artworks - an impressive exploration on the relationship between dreams, words and images. Text in English, Italian and Spanish.

Since the 1990s, acclaimed Norwegian and London-based artist AK Dolven has produced a substantial body of work that explores the relationship between individuals and the perception of their environment, the connections that bind inner and outer realities. Using a diverse range of media, she combines seemingly simple, almost minimalistic elements to create complex responses to a particular locale - especially the frozen landscapes of the Arctic Circle - while maintaining a universal voice that resonates far beyond the specifics of the place. Frequently immersive in nature, her works investigate but also induce feelings of discomfort and disorientation in the eye, body and mind of the viewer, a sense of forever being at odds with one's surroundings. Coinciding with a solo exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, this book presents the past decade of the artist's practice. In five themed chapters, each artwork is shown in a series of large-scale installation shots and details that replicate the spatial and physical impact of the piece itself. Introductory texts to each chapter by five internationally renowned writers and thinkers illuminate various aspects of the artist's work, addressing, among other things, its political significance, emotional intensity and philosophical depth. An introduction by volume editor Gaby Hartel considers the importance of AK Dolven's sketchbooks to the genesis of her work, with a 24-page insert reproducing some of these sketchbooks in facsimile form. A second bound-in insert at the back of the book presents the artist's own notes on the works, with supporting source material.

Robert Gober rose to prominence in the mid-1980s and was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Early in his career, he made deceptively simple sculptures of everyday objects--beginning with sinks and moving on to domestic furniture such as playpens, beds and doors. In the 1990s, his practice evolved from single works to theatrical room-sized environments. In all of his work, Gober's formal intelligence is never separate from a penetrating reading of the socio-political context of his time. His objects and installations are among the most psychologically charged artworks of the late twentieth century, reflecting the artist's sustained concerns with issues of social justice, freedom and tolerance. Published in conjunction with the first large-scale survey of the artist's career to take place in the United States, this publication presents his works in all media, including individual sculptures and immersive sculptural environments, as well as a distinctive selection of drawings, prints and photographs. Prepared in close collaboration with the artist, it traces the development of a remarkable body of work, highlighting themes and motifs that emerged in the early 1980s and continue to inform Gober's work today. An essay by Hilton Als is complemented by an in-depth chronology featuring a rich selection of images from the artist's archives, including never-before-published photographs of works in progress.
Robert Gober was born in 1954 in Wallingford, Connecticut. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions, most notably at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Schaulager, Basel. In 2001, he represented the United States at the 49th Venice Biennale. Gober's curatorial projects have been shown at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Menil Collection, Houston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in New York.

The first comprehensive look at the nearly seven-decades-long career of contemporary Mexican American artist Virginia Jaramillo Over the course of her career, Virginia Jaramillo (b. 1939) has forged a pathway to exploring ideas and concepts of space through abstract paintings and handmade paper works influenced by her myriad interests including physics, the cosmos, mythology, ancient cultures, and modernist design philosophies. This beautifully illustrated volume demonstrates that despite having been historically excluded from the canon of American abstraction, Jaramillo has made profound contributions to the field. Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence documents more than 60 works including early paintings that pushed the depth of the painted surface to its very limits; her innovations in the centuries-old practice of handmade papermaking; and recent bodies of work, where Jaramillo engages in deep investigations into antiquity and architectural ruin through large-scale paintings. In addition to an overview of Jaramillo’s life and work, this comprehensive catalogue includes in-depth essays on the artist’s formative years in Los Angeles, her forty-year devotion to hand papermaking, and the recent resurgence of her painting practice. An interview with Jaramillo rounds out the volume. Distributed for Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Exhibition Schedule: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (June 1–August 27, 2023)

In 1916, as World War I raged around them, a group of bohemians gathered at a small cabaret in Zurich, Switzerland. After decorating the walls with art by Picasso and other avant-garde artists, they embarked on a series of extravagant performances. Three readers simultaneously recited a poem in three languages a monocle-wearing teenager performed a spell from New Zealand another young man sneered at the audience, snapping a whip as he intoned his Fantastic Prayers." One of the artists called these sessions both buffoonery and a requiem mass." Soon they would have a more evocative name: Dada.In Destruction Was My Beatrice , modernist scholar Jed Rasula presents the first narrative history of Dada, showing how this little-understood artistic phenomenon laid the foundation for culture as we know it today. Although the venue where Dada was born closed after only four months and its acolytes scattered, the idea of Dada quickly spread to New York, where it influenced artists like Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray to Berlin, where it inspired painters George Grosz and Hannah Hoech and to Paris, where it dethroned previous avant-garde movements like Fauvism and Cubism while inspiring early Surrealists like Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, and Paul Eluard. The long tail of Dadaism, Rasula shows, can be traced even further, to artists as diverse as William S. Burroughs, Robert Rauschenberg, Marshall McLuhan, the Beatles, Monty Python, David Byrne, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, all of whom,along with untold others,owe a debt to the bizarre wartime escapades of the Dada vanguard.A globe-spanning narrative that resurrects some of the 20th century's most influential artistic figures, Destruction Was My Beatrice describes how Dada burst upon the world in the midst of total war,and how the effects of this explosion are still reverberating today.

This second collection of gorgeously illustrated artworks highlights events from volumes 10 through 15 of the main story. The definitive edition also includes illustrations from volumes 1 through 3 of Sword Art Online: Progressive, as well as art from animated productions, games, and conventions. A must-have for SAO fans and abec fans alike!

It was in Paris in 1927, at an exhibition dedicated to Picasso, that Francis Bacon grasped his vocation as a painter. In 1946, he moved to Monaco on the French Riviera where he lived for four years, his time in the Principality marking a turning point in his art; with his popes series, he became a painter of the human figure. In Paris he befriended artists and intellectuals, such as Giacometti and Leiris, whilst the city would become the setting for the crystalisation of his reputation in 1971 with the retrospective at the Grand Palais. In 1975, Bacon would take a studio in the Marais district. This bilingual publication co-published by Albin Michel and The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation tells of Bacon s deep ties with France and Monaco, and has been overseen by Martin Harrison, author of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonne and curator of the coinciding exhibition Francis Bacon, Monaco et la culture franc aise which runs at Grimaldi Forum, Monaco from 2 July 2016 until 4 September 2

Helen Bellany, twice married to the artist John Bellany, recalls their lives together in Scotland, London, and Italy, John's rise from poverty and obscurity to worldwide recognition, and the human cost inherent in creating great art. The sea was in both their hearts and in John's work from its earliest stages. From there, he deepened into a profound exploration of the human condition. The Restless Wave reflects the mystery, poetry and passion that was at the core of the inner life John and Helen shared. The couple had great friendships with such fellow artists as David Bowie, and John painted such internationally known figures as Billy Connelly, Sean Connery and Peter Maxwell Davis, as well as many portraits of his muse, Helen.

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

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. This 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 is available in both English only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.