Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this book breaks new ground by considering how Robert Motherwell's abstract expressionist art is indebted to Alfred North Whitehead's highly original process metaphysics. Motherwell first encountered Whitehead and his work as a philosophy graduate student at Harvard University, and he continued to espouse Whitehead's processist theories as germane to his art throughout his life. This book examines how Whitehead's process philosophy-inspired by quantum theory and focusing on the ongoing ingenuity of dynamic forces of energy rather than traditional views of inert substances-set the stage for Motherwell's future art. This book will be of interest to scholars in twentieth-century modern art, philosophy of art and aesthetics, and art history.

The first in-depth survey of the life and work of Jim Hodges, one of America's most celebrated contemporary artists Jim Hodges is an artist who addresses issues such as memory, love, and existential struggles through a multifaceted practice that includes photography, screen printing, and sculpture. His use of found materials including rocks and denim, coupled with the adoption of transitory shapes like spiderwebs, speaks of a personal experience that resonates on a collective level filtered through elements available in nature. Mysterious, beautiful, poetic, and conceptually deep, Hodges's work has the rare quality of being simultaneously thought-provoking and visually beautiful.

Painting as simulation and hyperreality: Peter Halley and the digital age. In the 1980s, Peter Halley revitalised painting by relying on sociology and science fiction. He employed fluorescent colours and Roll-A-Tex to deconstruct early and mid-twentieth-century transcendent geometric abstraction into abstract cells and prisons and by adding conduits to imaginatively access outside forces. Peter Halley has met many challenges posed by the Information Age and French poststructuralism by situating his painting on the divide separating analogue and digital worlds. Robert Hobbs’s monograph analyses Halley’s geometric and highly keyed art in terms of opportunities provided by the Internet, aesthetic possibilities afforded by Photoshop, timely relevance advanced by Michel Foucault’s and Jean Baudrillard’s sociological theories, and conundrums presented by both science fiction and physics.

Robert Motherwell, who died in 1991, was the youngest member of the first wave of Abstract Expressionists known as the New York School (a phrase he coined), which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman. An articulate writer, Motherwell was pegged early on as the intellectual of the group. "Robert Motherwell: Open" is the first examination of the painter's "Open" series, which preoccupied him from 1967 until the last years of his life. Pared down and minimal, these paintings differ greatly from his more dynamic and monumental "Elegies" series, for which he is perhaps best known. Containing many previously unpublished paintings as well as works in public collections, this monograph--the most comprehensive and best-illustrated book on Motherwell currently in print--introduces a series of texts by critics and art historians John Yau, Robert Hobbs, Matthew Collings, Donald Kuspit, Robert Mattison, Mel Gooding and Saul Ostrow.

Newly revised and updated, this authoritative book presents the exciting, ironic, and often subversive work of Yinka Shonibare MBE, one of the stars of the international art scene. Born in London and raised in Nigeria, Shonibare employs a diverse range of media--from sculpture, painting, and installation to photography and film--to probe matters of race, class, cultural identity, and history. He is perhaps best known for his signature use of a colorful "African" batik fabric that actually originated in Indonesia and was introduced to Africa in the19th century by British and Dutch colonizers. Incorporated into Victorian costumes, covering sculptures of extraterrestrials, or stretched like canvas for paintings, these vibrant textiles cleverly challenge issues of origin and authenticity. This book--the most comprehensive resource available on Shonibare--presents the best work of the London-based artist's career, including his high-profile project for the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square and other innovative public sculptures. Whether lampooning Victorian propriety or commenting on what it means to be an "alien," Shonibare makes art that challenges straightforward interpretations.

The celebrated survey of female Abstract Expressionist artists revealing the richness and lasting influence of their work The artists Jay DeFeo, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and many other women played major roles in the development of Abstract Expressionism, which flourished in New York and San Francisco in the 1940s and 1950s and has been recognized as the first fully American modern art movement. Though the contributions of these women were central to American art of the twentieth century, their work has not received the same critical attention as that of their male counterparts. Women of Abstract Expressionism is a long-overdue survey. Lavishly illustrated with full-color plates emphasizing the expressive freedom of direct gesture and process at the core of the movement, this book features biographies of more than forty artists, offering insight into their lives and work. Essays by noted scholars explore the techniques, concerns, and legacies of women in Abstract Expressionism, shedding light on their unique experiences. This groundbreaking book reveals the richness of the careers of these important artists and offers keen new reflections on their work and the movement as a whole. Published in association with the Denver Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Mint Museum, Charlotte, N.C. (10/22/16-01/22/17) Palm Springs Art Museum (02/18/17-05/28/17)