This is the first monograph to give an overview of the entire career to date of artist Ding Yi (b. 1962), whose work, unlike most other well-known Chinese painters, is wholly abstract. Large in scale, and extraordinary in detail, Ding Yi's paintings invite a myriad of questions, not least how an intuitive artist works with recurrent patterns and symbols. Tackling this paradox, the authors discuss a range of questions pertinent to the artist, primary of which is how China has shaped his work, both culturally and environmentally, over the past thirty years. Based on extensive interviews with the artist, Ding Yi presents a definitive portrait of an important contemporary painter, who holds a unique position in Chinese art history. As such, it is essential reading for fans and the uninitiated alike.

Mati & The Music is a book about the 52 paintings by Mati Klarwan that appeared on album covers, this body of work started in the mid 1950s and continued for half a century. Klarwein was heavily involved in the New York art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. He was mainly commissioned to paint covers by the musicians themselves the most famous being Miles Davis 'Bitches Brew' and 'Live Evil', Carlos Santana's 'Abraxas', Earth Wind & Fire, Buddy Miles, Gregg Allman. He was also employed by major records labels including Blue Note for Jackie McLean, Reuben Wilson and Douglas records for the Last Poets, Howard Walkes and Jerry Garcia. This book is an introduction to a painter's work through his passion for music.

Ten new paintings by Alfredo Arreguin are included in this new edition of the highly regarded book first published in 2002. Arreguin's palpitations of color and light and arrested movement awaken our sublimated vision. His paintings seem to force our entire being to experience its livingness as an insatiable yearning and questing of the eyes. - from the Foreword by Tess Gallagher. decades, Alfredo Arreguin has long been recognized as a major force in pattern painting. His canvases are tapestries that mingle diverse and interpenetrating influences and images: the traditional crafts of his native Michoacan; the lush rainforests of his homeland and of the Pacific Northwest; Japanese ukiyo-e prints; sacred and endangered animals; gods and totemic figures; icons like Frida Kahlo and Cesar Chavez; and motifs including masks, eyes, and abstractly patterned tiles. But Arreguin's paintings, for all the apparent flatness of their surfaces, conceal an astonishing depth of perspective. superimposed planes, and below the surface of each completed painting are many others, transformed by the artist's strategic occlusions and erasures. The result is an exuberant, phosphorescent visual interplay in which images combine to form other images, yielding a potent narrative power and pointing up the profound, ambiguous symbiosis between human beings and nature, fiction and reality, and the natural and supernatural worlds. Lauro Flores reveals Alfredo Arreguin as a genuinely American painter, in the real, hemispheric sense of this term - an artist of magic, mystery, and revelation whose place in the history of North American art has already been secured.

Play art' or interactive art is becoming a central concept in the contemporary art world, disrupting the traditional role of passive observance usually assumed by audiences, allowing them active participation. The work of 'play' artists - from Carsten Holler's 'Test Site' at the Tate Modern to Gabriel Orozco's 'Ping Pond Table' - must be touched, influenced and experienced; the gallery-goer is no longer a spectator but a co-creator. Time to Play explores the role of play as a central but neglected concept in aesthetics and a model for ground-breaking modern and postmodern experiments that have intended to blur the boundary between art and life. Moving freely between disciplines, Katarzyna Zimna links the theory and history of 20th and 21st century art with ideas developed within play, game and leisure studies, and the philosophical theories of Kant, Gadamer and Derrida, to critically engage with current discussion on the role of the artist, viewers, curators and their spaces of encounter. She combines a consideration of the philosophical implications of play with the examination of how it is actually used in modern and postmodern art - looking at Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Relational Aesthetics. Focusing mainly on process-based art, this bold book proposes a fresh approach - reaching beyond classical cultural theories of play.

The most comprehensive monograph to date on the groundbreaking Swiss artist and international art star, Pipilotti Rist A pioneer of experimental video art, Pipilotti Rist is celebrated for her expansive installations that bridge the spaces between fine art and popular culture, the natural world and the technological sublime. Through vivid colors, audaciously sensuous imagery, and playful sexuality, Rist's art-which ranges from single-channel videos to multilayered environments-absorbs viewers in a hyperfeminine aesthetic interlaced with deeper themes of pain, innocence, and transformation.

From the mangaka who told his life story in A Drifting Life, and gave you Abandon the Old in Tokyo and The Push Man and Other Stories, comes this collection of gekiga of the 1970s which have never before been translated into English. Personally selected for publication exclusively by Landmark Books by Tatsumi, the stories strip away the gloss of the Japanese Economic Miracle to reveal the stresses, desires and angst of the millions of young people who flocked to the cities where life was not what it was promised to be.Compared to Tatsumi's earlier stories, this collection paints a much more pessimistic world. The stories run on a different beat. The banality of modern life and its values bleed through.Yoshihiro Tatsumi plumbs the depths of the lost Japanese youth of the 1970s. Today, 'youth' of every age group appreciates Yoshihiro Tatsumi. They are attracted to him because they connect with the struggles and the darkness of modern life which he portrays.

A comprehensive overview of the oeuvre of Belgian painter Jan Van Imschoot A comprehensive overview of the oeuvre of Belgian painter Jan Van Imschoot (b. 1963), whose contemporary work builds bridges to predecessors such as Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Goya, and Manet. Van Imschoot's painting consciously opts for a clear, sometimes contradictory and ironic style. The directness of his decisive brushwork and his balanced yet audacious use of color is strikingly contemporary, while his work draws on historical themes from literature and art history. In this way, Van Imschoot engages in a continuous dialogue with the past, in which he, with a dose of cynicism, often targets phenomena or figures that find themselves on the fringes of (contemporary) society. Bringing together more than 220 works by Van Imschoot with five accompanying texts, this book gives fresh insight into the painting practice of this Belgian master. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

A pragmatist conception of artistic form, through a study of the painter Gerhard Richter. In this study of the practice of contemporary painter Gerhard Richter, Florian Klinger proposes a fundamental change in the way we think about art today. In reaction to the exhaustion of the modernist-postmodernist paradigm's negotiation of the "essence of art," he takes Richter to pursue a pragmatist model that understands artistic form as action. Here form is no longer conceived according to what it says-as a vehicle of expression, representation, or realization of something other than itself-but strictly according to what it does. Through its doing, Klinger argues, artistic form is not only more real but also more shared than non-artistic reality, and thus enables interaction under conditions where it would otherwise not be possible. It is a human practice aimed at testing and transforming the limits of shared reality, urgently needed in situations where such reality breaks down or turns precarious. Drawing on pragmatist thought, philosophical aesthetics, and art history, Klinger's account of Richter's practice offers a highly distinctive conceptual alternative for contemporary art in general.

Structured around sexual desire as the central analytical category, this monograph systematically approaches a heterogeneous array of artworks to purposefully examine the entanglements of art, feminist theory, gender, and sexuality. This book considers the potential of sexually explicit art to challenge a socially constructed conception of sexuality as well as gender, and explores the sexually explicit as a means to (re-)claim agency for marginalized subjectivities and to emancipate desire from within the patriarchal and heteronormative system. In distinct case studies, the author focuses on works by four US-American artists - Robert Mapplethorpe, Joan Semmel, Betty Tompkins, and Tee A. Corinne - and situates them in relation to contemporaneous debates associated with the insurgent Sexual Liberation Movements of the 1970s. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, and gender and sexuality studies.

A bricoleur of uniquely American utopian/dystopian cosmologies, Jim Shaw (born 1952) weds themes from American religious history with motifs from 1960s and 70s counterculture, often coining rubrics--such as his invented religion of "O"--or series under which to unify these narratives. "My Mirage" is Shaw's earliest sequence of this kind. Conceived between 1986 and 1991, arranged in chapters and constituted of nearly 170 works--drawn, silk-screened, photographed, sculpted, filmed or painted in a different style--"My Mirage" recounts the wanderings of Billy, a white, middle-class American sucked into the whirlwind of the 1960s and 70s counterculture. An anxious and withdrawn youth consumed by psychotic hallucinations, Billy joins a psychedelic pagan cult, eventually and inevitably returning to the religion of his youth, "reborn" as a fundamentalist Christian. Shaw's broad iconography for this visual bildungsroman ranges from children's books to contemporary art, religious literature and psychedelic poster art, all juxtaposed en face--one image per page--to relay an associative narrative progression. From the start, the project was intended for the book format as its ideal incarnation, and this edition was therefore created in close collaboration with the artist. "My Mirage" offers one of Shaw's most concise statements on vernacular culture and the wild polarities of religious life in postwar America.

In this major monograph on Grayson Perry, now updated and expanded, writer and art historian Jacky Klein explores the artist's work through a discussion of his major themes and subjects. Klein's text is complemented by intimate and perceptive commentaries by Perry on individual pieces, giving unique access to his imaginative world and creative processes. This third edition not only has updates throughout, but also includes two new chapters, on the 'House for Essex', designed and built in 2015 with Living Architecture (a UK not-for-profit holiday rental company founded by philosopher and writer Alain de Botton, which aims to promote, educate and enhance appreciation of modern architecture), and on 'Identity Politics', covering new work made since the previous edition of this book was published in 2013.

50 Contemporary Artists is my response to publishers, critics and curators who systematically regurgitate the same list of contemporary artists every season. Being an Artist, Editor-In-Chief of Artvoices Magazine and the Curator of Artvoices Art Books, I view thousands of artists and their works annually. Arguably, countless artists are intentionally left out of the conversation because of geography, race, religion and or sexual preference. Art and its function and or appeal to the public-at-large should remain subjective. 50 Contemporary Artists appeals to a wide demographic of art professionals and art enthusiasts who are interested in art and artists. The survey features artists of color, all genders, LGBTQ and diverse religious backgrounds. The Art World current trend has shifted to visual artists who have been marginalized and or discriminated against are now being exhibited in galleries and museums Worldwide to a welcoming and exuberant audience. 50 Contemporary Artists survey book assists art professionals and the public-at-large a necessary point of reference to interpret the artists practice and process. This annual book represents the now and next generations of artists to watch and collect.

How have artists responded to our market-driven, tech-enabled culture of speed? Viewing Velocities explores a contemporary art scene caught in the gears of 24/7 capitalism. It looks at artists who embrace the high-octane experience economy and others who are closer to the slow movement. Some of the most compelling artworks addressing the cadences of contemporary work and leisure play on distinct, even contradictory conceptions of time. From Danh Vo's relics to Moyra Davey's photographs of dust-covered belongings, from Roman Ondak's queuing performers and Susan Hiller's outdoor sleepers to Maria Eichhorn's art strike and Ruth Ewan's giant reconstruction of the French revolutionary calendar, artists have drawn out aspects of the present temporal order that are familiar to the point of near-invisibility, while outlining other, more liberating ways of conceiving, organising and experiencing time. Marcus Verhagen builds on the work of theorists Jonathan Crary, Hartmut Rosa and Jacques Rancière to trace lines of insurgent art that recast struggles over time and history in novel and revealing terms.

I am glad I am alive to witness these things; giving words to this life of sensations is a relief. Smell the flowers while you can. Close to the Knives is the artist, writer and activist David Wojnarowicz's extraordinary memoir. Filthy, beautiful, and sharp to the point of piercing, it is both an exploration of the world seen through the eyes of an artist, and a moving portrait of a generation living, grieving, and dying through the AIDS crisis. It is a triumphant hymn of resistance, and a dizzying celebration of the joys of seeing and living in the world.

"Stocked" documents the work of contemporary artists who take the grocery store and consumption of its products as their subjects. Much of their work candidly cites 1960s pop, but these artists also use strategies culled from minimalism, performance, documentary photography, and scientific taxonomy. Keen observers and clever humorists, they prompt us to pay attention to the items we purchase, the spaces in which we buy them, the people we encounter there, the cultural norms that inform our eating and shopping, and the often overlooked effects of our habits.

The first major publication devoted to weaver and designer Dorothy Liebes, reinstating her as one of the most influential American designers of the twentieth century At the time of her death, Dorothy Liebes (1897–1972) was called “the greatest modern weaver and the mother of the twentieth-century palette.� As a weaver, she developed a distinctive combination of unusual materials, lavish textures, and brilliant colors that came to be known as the “Liebes Look.� Yet despite her prolific career and recognition during her lifetime, Liebes is today considerably less well known than the men with whom she often collaborated, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Dreyfuss, and Edward Durrell Stone. Her legacy also suffered due to the inability of the black-and-white photography of the period to represent her richly colored and textured works. Extensively researched and illustrated with full-color, accurate reproductions, this important publication examines Liebes’s widespread impact on twentieth-century design. Essays explore major milestones of her career, including her close collaborations with major interior designers and architects to create custom textiles, the innovative and experimental design studio where she explored new and unusual materials, her use of fabrics to enhance interior lighting, and her collaborations with fashion designers, including Clare Potter and Bonnie Cashin. Ultimately, this book reinstates Liebes at the pinnacle of modern textile design alongside such recognized figures as Anni Albers and Florence Knoll. Published in association with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum  Exhibition Schedule: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (July 7, 2023–February 4, 2024)  

On the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel, Israeli artist Beverly Barkat (born 1966) presents her site-specific work, After the Tribes, at the Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi in Rome. The work is made up of a four-meter-high metal tower divided into twelve painted panels that represent the twelve tribes of Israel.

Focusing on artistic evocations of the irrepressible Gedes--an increasingly dominant family of trickster dieties--"In Extremis" examines the striking disjunction between social collapse and artistic flourescence in twenty-first century Haiti. It brings together the work of 34 artists, most of them living in Port-au-Prince, where they produce remarkable and controversial bodies of work in a variety of media while confronting on a daily basis the realities of Haiti's frustratingly slow recovery from the earthquake of 2010. Some of these artists have achieved acclaim on the international stage, but many receive new attention or reexamination here.

Donald J. Cosentino is professor emeritus of world arts and cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Other contributors include Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Edwidge Danticat, Leah Gordon, Claudine Michel, Patrick A. Polk, Jean Claude Saintilus, Katherine Smith, and Stephen C. Wehmeyer.

The British painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is famed for his idiosyncratic mode of depicting the human figure. Thirty years after his death, his working methods remain underexplored. New research on the Francis Bacon Studio Archive at Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, sheds light on the genesis of his works, namely the photographic source material he collected in his studios, on which he consistently based his paintings. The book brings together the artist's pictorial springboards for the first time, delineating and interpreting recurring patterns and methods in his preparatory work and adoption of photographic material. In addition, it correctly locates 'chance' as a driving force in Bacon's working method and qualifies the significance of photography for the painter.

Artist Kent Monkman's all-encompassing project, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, takes viewers on a journey through Canada's history, starting in the present and going back to before Canadian confederation. Throughout the book there are clever, albeit controversial, commentaries told by Monkman's genderfluid, time-travelling, supernatural alter-ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. Her narratives take viewers through the history of New France and the fur trade, the nineteenth-century dispossession of First Nations lands through Canadian colonial policies, the horrors of the residential school system, and modern First Nations experiences in urban environments. Shame and Prejudice challenges predominant narratives of Canadian history and honours the resilience of First Nations peoples. This book accompanies Monkman's largest solo exhibition to date, which is currently travelling across Canada at venues including the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. The exhibition includes the artist's own paintings, drawings, and sculptural works, which form a dialogue with historical artefacts and artworks borrowed from museums and private collections across Canada. The book is trilingual with all text in English, French and Cree.