Views From Abroad European Volume 2

et.al.

Ammann, Jean-Christophe

Abrams [distributor]

A modern update of the Medieval trade manuals--the 'come-along-with-me' (vade mecum) of Medieval craftsmen--Words of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum is an invaluable guidebook for anyone interested in contemporary art and the practice of curating. In over fifty short essays, this compendium offers advice to a new generation of curators from veterans of contemporary art exhibitions who, over the past 25 years, have played a crucial role in shaping what we see today, and how we see it. While providing an intimate look at the minds of these master curators, Words of Wisdom also establishes the curator's craft as an important vocation that has changed tremendously over the past quarter-century. In the course of their musings, the curators offer behind-the-scenes insights into influential exhibitions and institutions and the contemporary art world they represent. Among the contributors are Jean-Christophe Amman, director of the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt, Germany; Donna de Salvo, curator at the Tate Gallery, London; Richard Flood, chief curator at the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; independent curator Hans Ulrich Obrist; and Marcia Tucker, founding director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.

Words Of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum (INDEPENDENT CUR)

Arts & Photography

Richards, Judith

Kuoni, Carin

History & Criticism

Independent Curators International (ICI)

In the more than 500 working drawings by Alex Katz reproduced here, we are able to look over the artist's shoulder at works in their nascent state--a rare experience essential to any understanding of the artist's oeuvre. Like a sculptor's preparatory drawings, these are the sketches of a painter who is not a draftsman but a painter; they are the raw material, revealing Katz's methods of looking and recording. Contours, overlappings, movements and attitudes are put to paper ever so quickly, with observation given top priority. Subject development, composition and memory are all elements that come about afterwards, when the artist takes up the paintbrush and moves to the canvas. First Sight contains a vast array of previously unpublished sketches and drawings, printed here in facsimile, at a scale of 1:1, and spanning the entire career of the artist, from 1950 to the present. The book is a limited edition of 1000 copies.

Alex Katz: First Sight

Katz, Alex

Peter Blum Edition, New York

"To make art, artists are like thieves, watching for a door left open. At the beginning of the 1960s, I painted a chair on a chair. I painted a chest of drawers on a chest of drawers. A hopeless entanglement of painting and sculpture. Is that what I was looking for? Minimal Art, Pop art... artists learn from other artists but desperately want their art to be unique... But the categories happen. The sense that there is such a thing as sets is at least 50,000 years old. But in your time and when it comes to art, the encounter should be naked, naïve and free of prejudgment (such as classification). My originality, if any, lies in good part in paradoxes: useful/useless, object/image, etc." These are Richard Artschwager's own words, and presented here is a comprehensive full-color documentation of the artist's paintings/sculptures/furniture.

Richard Artschwager

Paul, Frédéric

Individual Artists

Domaine de Kerguehennec

General Idea was founded in Toronto in 1969 by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson as a generic identity to free the artists “from the tyranny of individual genius.” Under the leadership of their fictitious muse Miss General Idea, and inspired by William Burroughs' conception of the “image virus,” the collective interrogated media image culture through now legendary projects like File magazine, as well as paintings, installations, sculptures, mail art, photographs, videos, ephemera, TV programs and even a beauty pageant. General Idea came to an end in 1994, when Partz and Zontal died of AIDS. Today General Idea can be seen to anticipate the later art collectives of the 1970s as well as aspects of Relational Aesthetics in the 1990s. This volume presents an overview of the Canadian collective's bold mingling of reality and fiction and their frequently transgressive, parodic incursions upon both art and society. It traces such prevalent themes of their oeuvre as the mystique of the artist and the creative process, glamour as a creative tool, art's relationship to media and mass culture, architecture and archaeology, sexuality and AIDS. Including newly commissioned essays and reprinted texts, this volume is richly illustrated with documents and reproductions of the most significant projects realized by General Idea between 1969 and 1994.

General Idea: A Retrospective 1969-1994

Moos, David

Bronson, AA

Lebovici, Élisabeth

Dompierre, Louise

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

JRP|Ringier

Featuring established and emerging photographers including Thomas Ruff, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Beat Streuli, Thomas Struth, Nobuyoshi Araki, Anna and Bernhard Blume, Baltasar Burkhard, Gnter Farg, Andreas Gursky, Candida Hafer, Axel Htte, Martin Liebscher, Inge Rambow, and Jarg Sasse, XL-Photography presents the photography collection of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, assembled by Jean-Christophe Amman, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt. XL-Photography presents close to 200 large-format works by the 14 aforementioned photographers, with pieces that range from the ironic pictorial narratives of Anna and Bernhard Blume to Htte's landscape images; from Candida Hafer's interior shots to Araki's provocative erotic stagings; from Ruff's deconstructions of subjectivity to Streuli's urban views. Much more than a simple collection catalogue, this smartly designed and lavishly illustrated book presents some of the essential positions taken in photographic art over the past ten years.

XL-Photography: Art Collection Neue Borse

WEISS, David

Hütte, Axel

Fischli, Peter

GURSKY, ANDREAS

Araki, Nobuyoshi

Sasse, Jörg

Förg, Günther

Snauwaert, Dirk

Bernhard

Liebscher, Martin

Rambow, Inge

Scherf, Jone Elissa

Lorenz, Gunter

Photography & Video

Hatje Cantz Publishers

The oeuvre of Marlene Dumas is primarily characterized by her watercolors. Suggestive works, they appear to be based mostly on photographs from magazines which Dumas blurs, crops, or distorts. In doing so, the artist explores the sexualized dynamics between the picture, the painter, and the viewer. Her always openly sensual representations of human bodies and faces deal with some of the questions central to life. Wet Dreams features a broad selection of Dumas' loaded and expressive watercolors, expanding on the primary topics found throughout her work: the clicha picture of the female, the relations between the sexes, role playing, sexuality and pornography, guilt and violence, birth and death. Specially featured here are a number of collaborative works which the artist created with her daughter and with the painter Bert Boogaard.

Marlene Dumas: Wet Dreams

The German Stock Exchange in Frankfurt, headquartered in Germany and Luxembourg, has significantly extended its collection of photographs in the last year, acquiring primarily large-format works by upcoming artists. Hence the necessity to produce XL Photography 2, sequel to the two-year-old XL Photography. This volume features photographers who employ an unparalleled range of modes of design and expression, spanning the rather classical black-and-white photographs of Nicholas Nixon and the cool color photographs of Stephen Shore, as well as the innovative One-Minute Sculptures of Erwin Wurm. Under the artistic guidance of Jean-Christophe Ammann, the photographic collection of the German Stock Exchange in Frankfurt places established artists such as Bernd &amp; Hilla Becher, SebastiNo Selgado, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Roni Horn, and Jrgen Teller next to younger, as yet-undiscovered talents. This luxuriously designed, large-scale picture book represents all significant positions taken by photography in the past ten years.

Xl Photography 2 (English and German Edition)

The young Leipzig painter Matthias Weischer, born in 1973, depicts suburban interiors that can appear at once pleasantly furnished and ominously vacated. Abstract patterns in wallpaper or carpet suggest households that have been lovingly attended to, but Weischer invests this decor with an oddly noisy insistence, so that its sheer "effect" invades any space a human presence might occupy. Often an entire ceiling or a part of a wall is omitted, so that Weischer's homes quickly come to seem absurdly staged, like sets that are wholly indifferent to habitation. Subtle perspectival collisions and a frequently clinical treatment of light compound these atmospheres of banal anxiety, and Weischer's impasto paint application further intensifies the claustrophobic pressure--even while imparting his evident enjoyment in detailing ornamental effect. The artist's conceptual preoccupations are consistent, but the emotional nuances of his paintings vary greatly. With over 200 color plates, this is an impressive catalogue raisonne for one of the Leipzig School's most promising stars.

Matthias Weischer: Malerei (English and German Edition)

Stegmann, Markus

Bergmann, Rudij

Hatje Cantz

In 2006, The New York Times' art critic Roberta Smith described Art Basel Miami as, " a decentralized sprawling mass of excitement and display, plus lots of disposable wealth. It is the art world's version of Mardi Gras." The Miami fair's more established European partner, Art Basel, has been described as "the Olympics of the art world," and "a modern art mecca" by The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal respectively. Add to these the Venice Biennale, Documenta, Skulptur Projekte Munster, the Armory show, SITE Santa Fe, the Whitney, Liverpool, Sao Paolo, Berlin, Sharjah, Sydney, Beijing, Prague and Istanbul biennials and dozens of other international fairs seemingly proliferating without check, and you have a pretty accurate depiction of the state of the roving art world epicenter today. For years, Berlin photographer Gabriele Heidecker has documented the key moments, players and artworks of this evolving phenomenon. Produced to accompany the 2007 Art Basel Miami fair, this probing photographic study includes analytic essays by a consortium of experts in the field.

Gabriele Heidecker: Art Affairs

Spiegler, Marc

Munter, Ulrike

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