The book is an invitation to get lost within varied landscapes of its pages: middle-of-nowhere Australia, the minds of Susan Sontag and W.G Sebald, and, most prominently, the proverbial forests of all of our childhoods. There are, however, a few thematic paths to trace through these landscapes. Coming-of-age desire, our uneasy sense of self when isolated in nature and female sexuality become the mile-markers. The invitation to get lost is an invitation to come out the other side with the sense that being lost is not necessarily a state to be avoided but one in which we can occasionally luxuriate in.

Originally delivered as the prestigious Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts in 1995, After the End of Art remains a classic of art criticism and philosophy, and continues to generate heated debate for contending that art ended in the 1960s. Arthur Danto, one of the best-known art critics of his time, presents radical insights into art's irrevocable deviation from its previous course and the decline of traditional aesthetics. He demonstrates the necessity for a new type of criticism in the face of contemporary art's wide-open possibilities. This Princeton Classics edition includes a new foreword by philosopher Lydia Goehr.

With the launch of Moscow Art Magazine in 1993, curator and critic Viktor Misiano gave readers access to a rich variety of theory, criticism, and artists' texts by Russian and international writers. It is the only independent art journal in Russia which has weathered they country's economic crises and continued to publish innovative, and at times challenging, writing on visual art up to the present day.Critical Mass: Moscow Art Magazine 1993-2017 is published to mark the 100th issue of the magazine and presents a selection of texts, which cover the development of Russian art since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Arranged thematically, they range from the hopeful manifestos of the early 1990s to the angry, politically-engaged art of the 2010s. Misiano, who received the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory in 2016, has written new introductions to the themes covered in the book, setting the original texts within the social and political context of their time. A critical chronology marks important events in the cultural life of Russia connected to criticism and art theory, such as the first translations of key international texts.

Tony Conrad has significantly influenced cultural developments from minimalism to underground film, "concept art," postmodern appropriation, and the most sophisticated rock and roll. Creator of the "structural" film, The Flicker, collaborator on Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures and Normal Love, follower of Henry Flynt's radical anti-art, member of the Theatre of Eternal Music and the first incarnation of The Velvet Underground, and early associate of Mike Kelley, Tony Oursler, and Cindy Sherman, Conrad has eluded canonic histories. Yet Beyond the Dream Syndicate does not claim Conrad as a major but under-recognized figure. Neither monograph nor social history, the book takes Conrad's collaborative interactions as a guiding thread by which to investigate the contiguous networks and discursive interconnections in 1960s art. Such an approach simultaneously illuminates and estranges current understandings of the period, redrawing the map across medium and stylistic boundaries to reveal a constitutive hybridization at the base of the decade's artistic development. This exploration of Conrad and his milieu goes beyond the presentation of a relatively overlooked oeuvre to chart multiple, contestatory regimes of power simultaneously in play during the pivotal moment of the 1960s. From the sovereign authority invoked by Young's music, to the "paranoiac" politics of Flynt, to the immanent control modeled by Conrad's films, each avant-garde project examined reveals an investment within a particular structure of power and resistance, providing a glimpse into the diversity of the artistic and political stakes that continue to define our time.Branden W. Joseph is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and an editor of the journal Grey Room (MIT Press). He is the author of Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde (MIT Press, 2003.)

Nathalie has been creating ceramics, textiles, illustrations and other artwork for numerous brands - most notably Anthropologie, Astier de Villatte, Uniqlo, Issey Miyake and Godiva - for the past 20 years. She is one of the most commercially successful French artists working today, whose aesthetic has captured the imagination of people from all over the world - her kitchenware, wallpapers, fabrics, furniture, fashion accessories and sculptures are coveted items in countries like Japan, United States, England, Germany and France, among others.

The legend of Jean-Michel Basquiat is as strong as ever. Synonymous with 1980s New York, the artist first appeared in the late 1970s under the tag SAMO, spraying caustic comments and fragmented poems on the walls of the city. He appeared as part of a thriving underground scene of visual arts and graffiti, hip hop, post-punk, and DIY filmmaking, which met in a booming art world. As a painter with a strong personal voice, Basquiat soon broke into the established milieu, exhibiting in galleries around the world. Basquiat's expressive style was based on raw figures and integrated words and phrases. His work is inspired by a pantheon of luminaries from jazz, boxing, and basketball, with references to arcane history and the politics of street life-so when asked about his subject matter, Basquiat answered "royalty, heroism and the streets." In 1983 he started collaborating with the most famous of art stars, Andy Warhol, and in 1985 was on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. When Basquiat died at the age of 27, he had become one of the most successful artists of his time. First published in an XXL edition, this unprecedented insight into Basquiat's art is now available in a compact, accessible volume in celebration of TASCHEN's 40th anniversary. With pristine reproductions of his most seminal paintings, drawings, and notebook sketches, it offers vivid proximity to Basquiat's intricate marks and scribbled words, further illuminated by an introduction to the artist from editor Hans Werner Holzwarth, as well as an essay on his themes and artistic development from curator and art historian Eleanor Nairne. Richly illustrated year-by-year chapter breaks follow the artist's life and quote from his own statements and contemporary reviews to provide both personal background and historical context. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

For someone who shuns the limelight so completely that he conceals his name, never shows his face and gives interviews only by email, Banksy is remarkably famous. From his beginnings as a Bristol graffiti artist, his artwork is now sold at auction for six-figure sums and hangs on celebrities' walls. The appearance of a new Banksy is national news, his documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop was Oscar-nominated and people queue for hours to see his latest exhibition. Now more National Treasure than edgy outsider, who is Banksy and how did he become what he is today? In the first attempt to tell the full story of Banksy's life and career, Will Ellsworth-Jones pieces together a picture of his world and unpicks its contradictions. Whether art or vandalism, anti-establishment or sell-out, Banksy and his work have become a cultural phenomenon and the question 'Who is Banksy?' is as much about his career as it is 'the man behind the wall'. 'Britain's unlikeliest national treasure' Independent 'A fascinating portrait that elicits admiration for a man who, despite his increasingly unconvincing efforts to retain some shred of his vandal status, has had an undeniable impact on art' The Times

Valentin Popov's art combines images of the superhero in American society with traditional religious iconic art from his native Ukraine. His work is in a number of major art museum collections including the National Museum of Ukrainian Art, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and more. Ironic Icons is his first book.

In this readable and highly original book, John J. Curley presents the first synthetic account of global art during the Cold War. Through a careful examination of artworks drawn from America, Europe, Russia and Asia, he demonstrates the inextricable nature of art and politics in this contentious period. He dismantles the usual narrative of American abstract painting versus figurative Soviet Socialist Realism to reveal a much more nuanced, contradictory and ambivalent picture of art making, in which the objects themselves, like spies, dissembled, housed and managed ideological differences.

The Insta Grammar series explores the best of the best in amateur photography, focussing on the immensely popular social media site, Instagram. After Cats, City and Nordic, Green is the fourth and latest title in this series, which closely follows online trends. The reason is obvious: green is the new black. Be inspired by photos of plants, trees and everything green, and enjoy the creativity of the selected photographers.

Memory as a dynamic process has been the underlying theme of Sabine Moritz s drawings and paintings since the early 1990s. In her work the Cologne-based artist has captured remembered images from her childhood in the GDR; drawn flower compositions; and in recent years has engaged with the motif of war. This publication presents Moritz s latest work: a collection of drawings and paintings of helicopters created between 2002 and 2013. The Helicopter series has arisen from Moritz s interest in the shift in their symbolic meaning. They are based on images of helicopters from newspapers and television that the artist transferred into her own language.The outcome is a series of beautiful drawings and paintings that range from objective depictions of helicopters to more poetic compositions. The works are accompanied by poems by Adam Zagajewski and Friedrich Holderlin, alongside a text by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Teary, big-eyed orphans and a multitude of trashy knockoffs epitomized American kitsch art as they clogged thrift stores for decades.

When Adam Parfrey tracked down Walter Keane--the credited artist of the weepy waifs, for a "San Diego Reader" cover story in 1992--he discovered some shocking facts. Decades of lawsuits and countersuits revealed the reality that Keane was more of a con man than an artist, and that he forced his wife Margaret to sign his name to her own paintings. As a result, those weepy waifs may not have been as capricious an invention as they seemed.

Parfrey's story was reprinted in "Juxtapoz" magazine and inspired a Margaret Keane exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum. And now director Tim Burton is filming a movie about the Keanes called "Big Eyes," and it's scheduled for release in 2014. Burton's "Ed Wood," starring Johnny Depp, was based upon the Feral House book edited and published by Parfrey about the angora sweater-wearing B-film director.

"Citizen Keane" is a book-length expansion of Parfrey's original article, providing fascinating biographical and sociological details, photographs, color reproductions, and appendices with legal documents and pseudonymous essays by Tom Wolfe inflating big eye art to those painted by the great masters.

This catalogue documents the first exhibition in the Middle East by KAWS (Brian Donnelly, born 1974, USA). The solo show explores his career and vast oeuvre and features paintings and sculptures made over the past 20 years. KAWS' imagery has long possessed a sophisticated, dark humour, revealing the interplay between art and consumerism, referencing both art history and pop culture. Donnelly began his career in street art in the 1990s, becoming synonymous with the name KAWS, a tag that became a staple in his 'sub-vertisments' (modifications of commercial works). In addition to more than 40 major pieces exhibited in the Garage Gallery, examples of commercial collaborations designed by KAWS, among them sneakers, skateboards, and toys are on view in a separate archive above Cafe 999. A massive 5-meter-tall sculpture, COMPANION (PASSING THROUGH) (2013), in the Fire Station courtyard and an inflatable 40-metre public artwork at the Dhow Harbour, HOLIDAY (2019), also serve to highlight the exhibition.

This volume offers an account of recent and current art made in Hong Kong in the years leading up to the handover of British sovereignty to China in 1997. This process differed from many other experiences of the post-colonial elsewhere in the world in that it did not end in independence but in absorption into a much larger entity with an entirely different political system. Until now, the cultural aspects of this transition have not been given the attention they deserve, apart perhaps from the analysis of film. The author addresses this by considering a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation, as well as other kinds of visual production such as architecture, fashion, graphic design and graffiti. He shows how the approach of the handover heightened a sense of local identity, and how this found expression in the politicized art that became common at the time.

A disquiet expressed with a timeless vision. The decision to pay homage to Antonio Canova could not but start out of the encounter with the man who, back in 1992, had already understood his sculptures and captured their essence in images that have themselves become works of art. This man, this contemporary artist, could only be Mimmo Jodice. He is not only a photographer of art but a person with a keen gaze and vision who has decided to tackle perhaps the most complex sculptor of all time. Jodice chose to approach Canova with love and intellectual nobility and now, through a fascinating series of unprecedented details, is offering us a new, contemporary, conceptually lucid, authoritative, and captivating view of one of the greatest artists in history.

Johnny Carroll-Pell is a young artist from Brighton who is diagnosed as severely autistic. Though he finds verbal communication challenging, he finds expression through painting. To coincide with the first major exhibition of his paintings at the Phoenix Art Gallery in Brighton, this book contains 100 full-colour pictures celebrating his art. The title replicates his popular Facebook page 'Art By Johnny' and several further exhibitions planned around the country. The paintings and photos here are selected by his parents, Henry Normal and Angela Pell, who have written a book about bringing Johnny up called A Normal Family. Johnny is also the subject of several BBC Radio 4 shows, a couple of poetry books written by his dad, and the inspiration for the film Snow Cake, written by his mum. Edited by Henry Normal. "Many artists would envy the spontaneity and freedom of expression that Johnny shows as he paints - and the joyous and arresting results speak for themselves. Years ago, we used to say that people with autism showed no emotion and had no imagination: looking at these beautiful paintings makes me ashamed that we could ever have been so blind." Jane Asher - President, National Autistic Society

“We are all inside this thing—but how?” This book explores 21st century art’s reckonings with the technosphere. Almost unimaginable in its complexity and scale, a man-made megastructure surrounds all of us, and often seems inescapable. Outlining the poetics of encryption that attend to this infrastructural condition, Samman explores dramatic motifs including confinement, capture, and burial, as well as access and exclusion from secured domains. Poetics of Encryption excavates the art of our times as it quests through caves, cables, codes, satellites, and icons. Toggling between enlightened concern and occult dreaming it surveys a counter-intuitive aesthetic of the interface: Addressing those who cannot write code, this analogy in contemporary art stages its own ‘digital’, both virtually and analogue.

Isaac Cordal ...is a sculpture artist from London. His sculptures take the form of little people sculpted from concrete in 'real' situations. Cordal manages to capture a lot of emotion in his vignettes, in spite of their lack of detail or colour. He is sympathetic toward his little people and we empathise with their situations, their leisure time, their waiting for buses and their more tragic moments such as accidental death, suicide or family funerals. His sculptures can be found in gutters, on top of buildings and bus shelters - in many unusual and unlikely places in the capital. This book is the first time his images have been shown in together in one book dedicated to his work, many images never seen before. Cordal's concrete sculptures are like little magical gifts to the public that only a few lucky people will see and love but so many more will have missed. Left to their own devices throughout London, what really makes these pieces magical is their placement. They bring new meaning to little corners of the urban environment. They express something vulnerable but deeply engaging.

David Lynch is internationally renowned as a filmmaker, but it is less known that he began his creative life as a visual artist and has maintained a devoted studio practice, developing an extensive body of painting, prints, photography, and drawing. Featuring work from all periods of Lynch's career, this book documents Lynch's first major museum exhibition in the United States, bringing together works held in American and European collections and from the artist's studio. Much like his movies, many of Lynch's artworks revolve around suggestions of violence, dark humor, and mystery, conveying an air of the uncanny. This is often conveyed through the addition of text, wildly distorted forms, and disturbances in the paint fields that surround or envelop his figures. While a few relate to his film projects, most are independent works of art that reveal a parallel trajectory. Organized in close collaboration with the artist, David Lynch: The Unified Field brings together ninety-five paintings, drawings, and prints from 1965 to the present, often unified by the recurring motif of the home as a site of violence, memories, and passion. Other works explore the odd, tender, and mincing aspects of relationships. Highlighting many works that have rarely been seen in public, including early work from his critical years in Philadelphia (1965 70), this catalog offers a substantial response to dealer Leo Castelli's comment when he enthusiastically viewed Lynch's work in 1987, I would like to know how he got to this point; he cannot be born out of the head of Zeus." Published in association with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Chaouki Chamoun is one of the Middle East's most renowned artists. Born in Sariine Tahta, the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon in 1942, he studied architectural drawing at night school, then joined the Lebanese University where he won art scholarships to Syracuse University and later to New York University. Through more than thirty oneman shows and over fifty group exhibitions, his work has continuously evolved in search of a new aesthetic vocabulary. With over 300 plates to illustrate his story, Chamoun leads us through his own artistic journey, showing how the schools of the modern era have informed his technique and imagery, and how he has been motivated and inspired as much by the tiniest details of a pebble as by the political turmoil visited on his homeland. Going beyond a record of his life and art, this book delves into what drives an artist to create.

The first African-American artist to attain art superstardom, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) created a huge oeuvre of drawings and paintings (Julian Schnabel recalls him once accidentally leaving a portfolio of about 2,000 drawings on a subway car) in the space of just eight years. Through his street roots in graffiti, Basquiat helped to establish new possibilities for figurative and expressionistic painting, breaking the white male stranglehold of Conceptual and Minimal art, and foreshadowing, among other tendencies, Germany's" Junge Wilde" movement. It was not only Basquiat's art but also the details of his biography that made his name legendary--his early years as "Samo" (his graffiti artist moniker), his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Madonna and his tragically early death from a heroin overdose. This superbly produced retrospective publication assesses Basquiat's luminous career with commentary by, among others, Glenn O'Brien, and 160 color reproductions of the work.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father--an ethnic mix that meant young Jean-Michel was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of 11. In 1977, at the age of 17, Basquiat took up graffiti, inscribing the landscape of downtown Manhattan with his signature "Samo." In 1980 he was included in the landmark group exhibition "The Times Square Show"; the following year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist ever to be invited to Documenta. By 1982, Basquiat had befriended Andy Warhol, later collaborating with him; Basquiat was much affected by Warhol's death in 1987. He died of a heroin overdose on August 22, 1988, at the age of 27.