Emerging amid the brutality of World War I, the revolutionary Dada movement took disgust with the establishment as its starting point. From 1916 until the mid-1920s, artists in Zurich, Cologne, Hanover, Paris, and New York launched a radical assault on the politics, social values, and cultural conformity which they regarded as complicit in the devastating conflict. Dada artists shared no distinct style but rather a common wish to upturn societal structures as much as artistic standards and to replace logic and reason with the absurd, chaotic, and unpredictable. Their practice encompassed experimental theater, games, guttural sound-making, collage, photomontage, chance-based procedures, and the "readymade," most notoriously Marcel Duchamp's urinal, Fountain (1917). Throughout, the Dadaists considered the visual appearance of their work secondary to the ideas and critiques it expressed. In this sense, Dada may be seen as a fundamental precursor to conceptual art. With a selection of key works from some of the most famous proponents of Dada such as Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Hoech, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, and Man Ray, this book introduces this urgent, subversive, and determined 20th-century movement and its lasting influence on modern art. 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 History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

Abstraction shook Western art to its core. In the early part of the 20th century, it refuted the reign of clear, indisputable forms and confronted audiences instead with vivid visual poems devoid of conventional representational imagery and characterized by allegories of emotion and sensation. This radical artistic adventure established new artistic means, as much as narratives. Expression became characterized by shocking juxtapositions of color, light, and line. Artists abandoned the conventions of brush and easel and played with new materials and methods of artistic gesture: commercial paints and housepainter's brushes, working on unstretched and unprimed canvases, moving the canvas to the floor, and applying paint with hands. This essential introduction spans the international breadth, conceptual depth, and seismic impact of abstract art with a thorough survey not only of the big names such as Picasso, Klee, Kline, Rothko, and Pollock, but also lesser-known figures who made equally significant contributions, including Antoni Tapies, K. O. Goetz, Ad Reinhardt, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. 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 History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

Gerhard Richter is one of the most important and popular artists of the postwar era. For decades he has sought innovative ways to make painting more relevant, often through a multifaceted dialogue with photography. Today Richter is most widely recognized for the photo-paintings he made during the 1960s that rely on images culled from mass media and pop culture. Always fascinated with the limits and uncertainties of representation, he has since then produced landscapes, abstractions, glass and mirror constructions, prints, sculptures, and installations. Though Richter has been known in the United States for quite some time, the highly successful retrospective of his work at the MOMA in 2002 catapulted him to unprecedented fame. Enter noted curator Dietmar Elger, who here presents the first biography of this contemporary artist. Written with full access to Richter and his archives, this fascinating book offers unprecedented insight into his life and work. Elger explores Richter's childhood in Nazi Germany; his years as a student and mural painter in communist East Germany; his time in the West during the turbulent 1960s and '70s, when student protests, political strife, and violence tore the Federal Republic of Germany apart; and, his rise to international acclaim during the 1980s and beyond. Richter has always been a difficult personality to parse, and the seemingly contradictory strands of his artistic practice have frustrated and sometimes confounded critics. But the extensive interviews on which this book is based disclose a Richter who is far more candid and vivid than ever before. The result is a book that will be the foundational portrait of this artist and his profoundly influential oeuvre.

iDeep in the heart of my loneliness, I think of the art of my lioness.i German Fluxus artist Dieter Rothis enigmatic (and sometimes singsong) mail art for his lover, the artist Dorothy Iannone, was matched only by her responses and the sexually loaded non-mailable art she made featuring the two of them. Roth and Iannone met in 1967, broke up in 1974, and remained friends and lively correspondents until Rothis death. He painted over and dimmed the subjects of postcard photos to make himself the central figure; she needed no prompting to cast him in a starring role in her autobiographically based oeuvre. From imy dear old baby, will you please bring this check to the bank so we have some money when I come back, i to iremember me?i they were a fascinating couple; now readers can encounter that passion themselves.

Gerhard Richter's oeuvre embraces in excess of three thousand individual works. Over a period of five decades he has created a stylistically heterogeneous, complex body of work that testifies to his status as the most important living artist of our time. The first volume of this catalogue raisonne has been released on the occasion of the artist's eightieth birthday in February 2012.Dietmar Elger, director of the Gerhard Richter Archive at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, has spent years resear-ching and preparing this publication. The six-volume catalogue raisonne of all of Richter's paintings and sculptures will be pu-blished over the next five years. Aside from the richly colored illustrations, many of them full-page, it includes full technical details, information about the artist's handwritten notes, and the provenance, bibliography, and exhibitions of each individual work. This information is supplemented by commentary, quotes, and comparison images. Subscription price for complete set: EURO 198.00 per volume. You will be invoiced with each delivery.

Gerhard Richter's oeuvre embraces in excess of three thousand individual works. Over a period of five decades he has created a stylistically heterogeneous, complex body of work that testifies to his status as the most important living artist of our time. This long-awaited first volume of the catalogue raisonne is being re-leased on the occasion of the artist's eightieth birthday in Febru-ary 2012. The first volume encompasses the works Gerhard Richter assi-gned numbers 1 to 198, covering the years 1962 to 1968.

Gerhard Richter’s oeuvre embraces in excess of three thousand individual works. Over a period of five decades he has created a stylistically heterogeneous, complex body of work that testifies to his status as the most important living artist of our time. This long-awaited first volume of the catalogue raisonné is being released on the occasion of the artist’s eightieth birthday in February 2012. Dietmar Elger, director of the Gerhard Richter Archive at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, has spent years researching and preparing this publication. The six-volume catalogue raisonné of all of Richter’s paintings and sculptures will be published over the next seven years. Aside from the richly colored illustrations, many of them full-page, it includes full technical details, information about the artist’s handwritten notes, and the provenance, bibliography, and exhibitions of each individual work. This information is supplemented by commentary, quotes, and comparison images. Subscription price for complete set: € 198.00 per volume. You will be invoiced with each delivery.

Gerhard Richter’s oeuvre embraces in excess of three thousand individual works. Over a period of five decades he has created a stylistically heterogeneous, complex body of work that testifies to his status as the most important living artist of our time. This long-awaited first volume of the catalogue raisonné is being re-leased on the occasion of the artist’s eightieth birthday in Febru-ary 2012. Subscription price for complete set: € 198.00 per volume. You will be invoiced with each delivery.

Over the past half-century, Gerhard Richter (born 1932) has built up a stylistically heterogeneous and conceptually complex body of painting, photography, sculpture and artist's books that firmly establishes his status as the most important living artist of our time: today, this diverse oeuvre totals in excess of 3,000 individual works. In February 2012, Hatje Cantz announced the first volume of their Gerhard Richter catalogue raisonne--the first of a projected five volumes, to be issued over the next seven years. Edited by Dietmar Elger, director of the Gerhard Richter Archive at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, who has spent years researching and preparing the publication, this third volume encompasses the works Richter assigned numbers 389-651/2, which span the years 1976 to 1988. Alongside nearly 700 full-color plates (many of them full-page), it includes full technical specifications, information about the artist's handwritten notes, and the provenance, bibliography and exhibition history for each individual work. This information is further supplemented by commentary, quotations from the artist and comparison images.