The immediate physical presence of color is central to Katharina Grosse's creative endeavor. Through an open-ended creative process in which painting takes on the form of a performance, color embodies movement, making its emotional potential tangible. These issues are not only driving her dramatically large in situ works painted across various surfaces in public places. They also inform her studio paintings, which have played an equally central role in her practice from the start. This book is the first study focusing on Grosse's studio practice from the late 1980s to the present. Five essays and an insightful interview with the artist explore how Grosse expands the concept of painting - not just in open space, but also on canvas - through creating an ephemeral character and removing the limitations of its traditional frame.

A definitive resource, full of fresh insights and new revelations, on one of the most influential interwar artists This richly illustrated book offers a definitive new assessment of the oeuvre of Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), a central figure of the interwar European avant-garde. Active as an artist, designer, publisher, performer, critic, poet, and playwright, Schwitters is best known for intimately scaled, materially rich collages and assemblages made from found objects-often refuse-that the artist described as having lost all contact with their role and history in the world at large. But as Graham Bader explores, such simple separation of art from life is precisely what Schwitters's "poisoned abstraction" calls into question. Considering works reaching from Schwitters's earliest collage-based pieces of 1918-19, through his 1920s advertising designs, to his seminal environmental installation the Merzbau, Bader carefully unpacks the meaning behind such projects and sheds new light on the tumultuous historical conditions in which they were made. In the process, he reveals a new Schwitters-aesthetically committed and politically astute-for our time. This authoritative account reframes our understanding of Schwitters's multifaceted artistic practice and explores the complex entwinement of art, politics, and history in the modern period.

The most comprehensive collection on Lichtenstein, from the earliest reviews to recent reassessments, including several hard-to-find and previously unpublished pieces. Roy Lichtenstein's popular appeal-and his influence on pop culture, seen in everything from greeting cards to sitcoms-at times overshadows his importance to contemporary art. Yet, examined on its own terms, Lichtenstein's comics-inspired, deadpan artwork remains as truly unsettling to art-world orthodoxies today as when it first gained wide attention in the early 1960s. Lichtenstein (1923-1997), a central figure in Pop, consistently savaged the rules of painting-while remaining committed to the most traditional procedures and goals of the medium. (He once said, "The things that I have apparently parodied I actually admire and I really don't know what the implication of that is.") This book offers the most comprehensive collection of writings on Lichtenstein's work to appear in thirty-five years, with early reviews, artist interviews and statements (some never before published), and recent reassessments. The book includes Donald Judd's reviews of Lichtenstein's three solo Pop shows in the early 1960s, an essay on the artist's 1969 Guggenheim retrospective, interviews that touch on topics ranging from the New York art world to Monet and Matisse, the transcript of a 1995 slide presentation in which Lichtenstein surveyed three decades of his work, and an in-depth study of Lichtenstein's first Pop painting, Look Mickey (1961). The texts explore Lichtenstein's career across the boundaries of medium and period, excavating early critical discussions and surveying more recent reexaminations of his artistic practice. The collection will be an indispensable resource for those interested in Lichtenstein, Pop Art, and American culture of the 1960s. Contributors Graham Bader, Yve-Alain Bois, John Coplans, David Deitcher, Hal Foster, John Jones, Donald Judd, Max Kozloff, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Roy Lichtenstein, Michael Lobel