FRANK STELLA

A study of the American abstract artist Frank Stella (b. 1936), surveying his career from the famous Black Paintings of the late 1950s up to the present.

Frank Stella has become become among America's premier contemporary artists. Unlike many 20th century artists, Stella has always worked in abstraction. His art is irrepressible, daring, hugely enjoyable, and refreshingly angst-free. This book begins with the celebrated Black Paintings of 1959, moves on through the Minimalist Copper and Aluminium paintings of the early Sixties, to the exuberant Protractor series, the expansion into three dimensions in the 1970s, and closing with the 3-dimensional Polish Village, Exotic Birds and Brazilian 'maximalist' works of the 1980s and 1990s.

Employing the most up-to-date art criticism of Frank Stella, James Pearson also looks at Stella's contemporaries: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Morris Louis, Robert Ryman, Brice Marden, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman among others.

Includes new illustrations. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 5

There does not seem to be much going on in some of Frank Stella's 1960s Minimal paintings. But there is, in fact, a lot going on. Stella limits himself to a narrow set of rules. Like Brice Marden, Barnett Newman, Morris Louis and Mark Rothko, Stella sets himself to explore a few configurations of painting. But these things - the shape of the canvas, internal organization of the stripes, colour of the bands - offer up endless permutations.

Frank Stella's paintings are lean, but leanness does not necessarily mean unfeelingness. This is the problem that monochrome painting creates, and Minimal art in general. Certainly Stella is intense: his Black Stripe Paintings, his Protractor series, his copper paintings, his India Birds, are intense works of art.

The Stella exhibitions of the late 1980s and early 1990s were affairs, in which one was impressed by a sense of colour and light, a spaciousness to the works, and a huge scale, so that each work dominated the gallery rooms. Stella is in no way a quiet, unobtrusive artist: his paintings are domineering, self-confident, assured of their own effects. Stella has always been an artist who knows what he's doing. His paintings do not lurk in gallery corners, shyly. His paintings announce themselves instantly and powerfully. Stella's June-July 1985 show at the ICA in London was typical: massive multi-media works were squeezed into the ubiquitous sparse white rooms, completely taking over the sedate spaces.

From his early work for Vogue to his portraits of the rich and famous, Helmut Newton (1920-2004) conveyed a unique vision of a wealthy and glamorous world that often shocks but never ceases to fascinate. This book, available again in the Photofile series, presents about sixty of his instantly recognizable shots of haute couture and the beau monde.

The work of Alex Colville, O.C. (1920-2013), one of the great modern realist painters, combines the Flemish detail of Andrew Wyeth, the eerie foreboding of George Tooker and the anguished confrontations of Lucian Freud. Behind the North Americans stands their common master, Edward Hopper. Colville's works are in many museums in Canada and Germany. He has affinities with Max Beckmann and appeals to the German "secondary virtues": cleanliness, punctuality, love of order. In a long life he resolutely opposed the fashionable currents of abstract and expressionistic art. In contrast to Jackson Pollock's wild action painting, Colville created paintings of contemplation and reflection. As Jeffrey Meyers writes: I spent several days with Colville on each of three visits from California to Wolfville. I received seventy letters from him between August 1998 and April 2010, and kept thirty-six of my letters to him. He sent me photographs and slides of his work and, in his eighties, discussed the progress and meaning of the paintings he completed during the last decade of his life. His handwritten letters, precisely explaining his thoughts and feelings, provide a rare and enlightening opportunity to compare my insights and interpretations with his own intentions and ideas. He also discussed his family, health, sexuality, politics, reading, travels, literary interests, our mutual friend Iris Murdoch, response to my writing, his work, exhibitions, sales of his pictures and of course the meaning of his art. His letters reveal the challenges he faced during aging and illness, and his determination to keep painting as health difficulties mounted. He stopped writing to me when he became seriously ill two years before his death. In this context the late paintings, presented in colour in this book, take on a new poignancy.

A sweeping retrospective exploring the oeuvre of an incandescent artist, revealing the ways that Mitchell expanded painting beyond Abstract Expressionism as well as the transatlantic contexts that shaped her Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) was fearless in her experimentation, creating works of unparalleled beauty, strength, and emotional intensity. This gorgeous book unfolds the story of an artistic master of the highest order, revealing the ways she expanded abstract painting and illuminating the transatlantic contexts that shaped her. Lavish illustrations cover the full arc of her artistic practice, from her exceptional New York paintings of the early 1950s to the majestic multipanel compositions she made in France later in her career. Signature works are represented here along with rarely seen paintings, works on paper, artist's sketchbooks, and photographs of Mitchell's life, social circle, and surroundings. Featuring scholarly texts, in-depth essays, and artistic and literary responses, this book is organized in ten chronological chapters. Each chapter centers on a closely related suite of paintings, illuminating a shifting inner landscape colored by experience, sensation, memory, and a deep sense of place. Presenting groundbreaking research and a variety of perspectives on her art, life, and connections to poetry and music, this unprecedented volume is an essential reference for Mitchell's admirers and those just discovering her work. Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Schedule: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (September 4, 2021-January 17, 2022) Baltimore Museum of Art (March 6-August 14, 2022) Fondation Louis Vuitton (October 5, 2022-February 27, 2023)

The elegant Matisse retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 1992 was the first king-sized retrospective of Matisse's work anywhere in the world for more than twenty years. Appropriately labelled "the most beautiful show in the world," this giant new look at Matisse and his pursuit of pleasure was a consummate success. Henri Matisse: A Bio-Bibliography provides the scholar, student, artist, and layperson with an extended primary and secondary bibliography with which to study and enjoy this great artist. These works cover his life, career, oeuvre, and influence on other artists. Though many of the entries are annotated, this is not meant to be a critical guide; rather, it is a way to get to know a great artist through the literature surrounding him and his art.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) is regarded as one of the key figures in 20th-century European art. A Modernist to his bones, he sent seismic waves through the art world with his hard-edged, intensely colored paintings and disseminated his ideas through Die Brucke art movement and the MUIM-Institut school of modernist painting, both of which he cofounded. Kirchner's work reconciled past and present through an Expressionist prism, reflecting the latest avant-garde ideas in art, while exploring traditional academic approaches and subjects. His works tackled social, moral, and emotional questions with a fierce intensity. Distorted perspectives, rough lines, and unusual colors were mainstays of his practice, as well as a recurring interest in capturing the human form, whether in frenetic city vistas such as Berlin Street Scene (1913) or in his famously decadent studio. In this introductory book, we explore the stretch of Kirchner's career through Germany and Switzerland, including his founding of Die Brucke, and his inclusion in the Nazis' infamous "degenerate art" exhibition in 1937. Along the way, we'll encounter vivid landscapes, stark nudes, intense urban settings, and, above all, a persistent emphasis on the emotional experience of painter and viewer. 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

Accompanying a focused display at The Courtauld Gallery that will bring together for the first time Pieter Bruegel the Elder's only three known grisaille paintings - the Courtauld's Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (which is barred from travel), The Death of the Virgin from Upton House in Warwickshire (National Trust) and Three Soldiers from the Frick Collection in New York - this book will examine the sources, function and reception of these three exquisite masterpieces. The panels will be complemented by prints and contemporary replicas, as well by other independent grisailles in order to shed light on the development of this genre in Northern Europe. Despite his status as the seminal Netherlandish painter of the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569) remains an elusive artist: fewer than forty paintings are ascribed to him. Of these, a dozen are cabinet-sized. These small-scale works offer key insights as they often bear a personal significance for the artist and were sometimes given as gifts to friends and patrons. Presenting these works together for the first time is not only an extraordinary and unprecedented opportunity but it will be extremely revealing, considering their unusual nature in both Bruegel's oeuvre and 16th-century art in general. Monochrome painting in shades of grey was a mainstay of Netherlandish art from the early 15th century, most often present on the wings of altarpieces and preparatory sketches for engravings. In contrast, Bruegel's panels constitute one of the earliest and rare examples of independent cabinet pictures in grisaille, created for private contemplation and enjoyment. This seemingly austere type of painting has often been imbued with religious or political significance. On a purely artistic level, it enabled the painter to showcase his skill by limiting his palette. The publication, which includes a technical investigation of the three panels, will provide the opportunity to reassess the practical aspects of the grisaille technique and the many ways in which this effect was achieved. Indeed, Bruegel's three monochromatic paintings display quite different techniques, raising the question of the painter's intent. This is the latest in the series of books accompanying critically acclaimed Courtauld Gallery displays, following on from Collecting Gauguin (2013), Antiquity Unleashed (2013), Richard Serra (2013), A Dialogue with Nature (2014), Bruegel to Freud (2014) and Jonathan Richardson (2015).

Gilles Deleuze was one of the most influential and revolutionary philosophers of the twentieth century. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation is his long-awaited work on Bacon, widely regarded as one of the most radical painters of the twentieth century.The book presents a deep engagement with Bacon's work and the nature of art. Deleuze analyzes the distinctive innovations that came to mark Bacon's style: the isolation of the figure, the violation deformations of the flesh, the complex use of color, the method of chance, and the use of the triptych form. Along the way, Deleuze introduces a number of his own famous concepts, such as the 'body without organs' and the 'diagram, ' and contrasts his own approach to painting with that of both the phenomenological and the art historical traditions.Deleuze links Bacon's work to CTzanne's notion of a 'logic' of sensation, which reaches its summit in color and the 'coloring sensation.' Investigating this logic, Deleuze explores Bacon's crucial relation to past painters such as Velasquez, CTzanne, and Soutine, as well as Bacon's rejection of expressionism and abstract painting.Long awaited in translation, Francis Bacon is destined to become a classic philosophical reflection on the nature of painting.

"[...] this is a book to pick up and dream about having a dragon curled up on your lap by the fire in these winter nights." - SFcrowsnest Anne Stokes is a phenomenally popular artist in the field of gothic and magical fantasy, with fans all over the world. Her roots in design and illustration have led to supremely well-crafted paintings that have been licensed for use on all manner of merchandise and her followers eagerly await each new piece. This long-overdue book showcases Anne's oeuvre in all its glory, accompanied by illuminating text about Anne and her inspirations, techniques and processes. The book is divided into thematic sections covering the full range of subjects that she has portrayed: her early work (like that for Dungeons & Dragons), the dark and the gothic, dragons, unicorns, fairies, mermaids and all that is mystical and magical. From the dark allure of Summon the Reaper to the opalescent beauty of Stargazer, this is a real treat for all fans and anyone who loves fantasy and stunning art in general.

You may ask yourself, "Do I really need another book about Louis Icart?" The answer is a resounding "Yes!" This is the first and only book devoted exclusively to the erotic artwork of Louis Icart. Every art dealer, auctioneer, antiques dealer, and collector has seen these wonderful little Icart etchings, with no clue as to their origin or value. Included in this book are full-color pictures of his most readily available erotic artwork, with titles for easy identification and a price guide, too.

The final edition of the late Tom Phillips's 'defining masterpiece of postmodernism'. In 1966 the artist Tom Phillips discovered A Human Document (1892), an obscure Victorian romance by W.H. Mallock, and set himself the task of altering every page, by painting, collage or cut-up techniques, to create an entirely new version. Some of Mallock's original text remains intact and through the illustrated pages the character of Bill Toge, Phillips's anti-hero, and his romantic plight emerges. First published in 1973, A Humument - as Phillips titled his altered book - quickly established itself as a cult classic. From that point, the artist worked towards a complete revision of his original, adding new pages in successive editions. That process is now finished. This final edition presents an entirely new and complete version of A Humument. It includes a revised Introduction by the late artist, in which he reflects on the 50-year project, and 92 new illustrated pages.