One of the leading artists of his generation, the Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz (1953-2001) was known for his diverse and highly original body of work centering on the narrative possibilities of figures in environments. Juan Muñoz illustrates in full color approximately sixty works—including sculptures, drawings, and several major installations—which will be included in a major exhibition presented by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Art Institute of Chicago in October 2001. Muñoz's early work focused on architectural objects that implied a transitory human presence. Then, defying the trend among progressive artists, he began to introduce figures into his work. Casting his figures in papier-mâché, resin, and eventually bronze, Muñoz limited their size and descriptive details to heighten their psychological impact. In the 1990s, Muñoz created his signature "conversation pieces," large ensembles of figures installed in indoor or outdoor settings. Calling upon a wide range of sources in literature, music, film, as well as painting and sculpture, Muñoz's work explores the nature of psychological interaction and engages the viewer on a variety of perceptual levels. Juan Muñoz includes essays by Neal Benezra, art critic Michael Brenson, and Olga Viso, as well as an interview with the artist by Paul Shimmel. Also featuring highlights from a 2001 installation commissioned by London's Tate Modern, Juan Muñoz is the most comprehensive overview of this challenging and exciting artist's work.

Juan Munoz

Arts & Photography

Benezra, Neal

Viso, Olga M.

Individual Artists

University of Chicago Press

Martin Puryear has been described as one of the most important sculptors working in America. His work is found in the collections of nearly every major US museum, and in 1989 he won first prize at the Sao Paula Bienal. Wood is Puryear's favourite medium, sometimes combined with tar, wire or other substances, and his abstract ensembles are often on an imposing scale. This volume aims to show the artist's full range of materials, techniques and influences, and the reasons for his international recognition.

Martin Puryear

Thames&Hudson

An introduction to the Viennese artist's work is accompanied by an interview, commentaries, and details about his most recent assemblies and sculptures.

Franz West (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

Curiger, Bice

Fleck, Robert

History & Criticism

Phaidon Press

Affinities and Intuitions: The Gerald S. Elliott Collection of Contemporary Art

Art Inst of Chicago Museum Shop

Puryear, Martin

Art Institute Of Chicago

Sculpture

"From the beginning I was trying to see if I could make art that did that. Art that was just there all at once. Like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Or better yet, like getting hit in the back of the neck. You never see it coming; it just knocks you down. I like that idea very much: the kind of intensity that doesn't give you any trace of whether you're going to like it or not."â€”Bruce Nauman
"Bruce Nauman's art is about heightened awareness, awareness of spaces we usually don't notice (the one under the chair, out of which he made a sculpture) and sounds we don't listen for (the one in the coffin), awareness of emotions we suppress or dread... It's hard to feel indifferent to work like his."â€”Michael Kimmelman, New York Times
One of America's most important artists, Bruce Nauman has worked in a dazzling variety of media since the mid-1960s: sculpture, photography, performance, installation, sound, holography, film, and video. What has been a constant throughout his career, however, is his persistence in exploring both art as an investigation of the self and the power of language to define that self.
The latest volume in the acclaimed Art + Performance series is the first book to combine the key critical writings on Nauman with the artist's own writings and interviews with him, as well as images of his work. Bruce Nauman offers a multifaceted portrait of an artist whose determination to experiment with style and form has created a body of work as eclectic and perhaps more influential than that of any other living American artist.

Bruce Nauman

Halbreich, Kathy

Nauman, Bruce

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Distributed Art Pub Inc

Bruce Nauman's art has ranged across a variety of media that includes drawings, sculpture, performance, photography, neon, film, video, holograms, texts, and large-scale mixed media installations. This book features a comprehensive catalogue raisonne with illustrated entries for more than five hundred works, including films, videos, performances, and photographic pieces.

Bruce Nauman: Exhibition Catalogue and Catalogue Raisonne

SCHIMMEL, PAUL

Published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Des Moines Art Center, and traveling to other venues.

Robert Arneson : A Retrospective

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Portland Art Museum (Or.)

Des Moines Art Center

Arneson, Robert

Ed Paschke

Pulsing with electric colors, Pop Art works featuring Marilyn, Elvis and social outcasts.

Hudson Hills

su-per-no-va: n., pl. A rare celestial phenomenon involving the explosion of most of the material in a star, resulting in an extremely bright, short-lived object that emits vast amounts of energy. Given the massive shift in the West's cultural sensibility in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the current global political situation, the 1990s and its over-the-top, anything-goes art scene suddenly appear much more historical than contemporary. If we really are at the turning point that we seem to be, then we've arrived at a particularly opportune moment for reconsideration, for assessing the legacy of the decade after the frenzy has subsided. Supernova brings together a number of curators and critics--each of whom was actively involved in constructing the 1990s art discourse--to step back and consider what trans-identity, broad-based thematic trends can now be identified as emblematic of, or seminal to, the decade. The Kent and Vicki Logan collection of contemporary art offers a compelling and visually alluring vehicle to consider such issues, as these ambitious collectors were firmly planted at the center of the scene--acquiring some of the most challenging and iconic art of the period, including works by Young British Artists (YBAs), Asian practitioners and a diverse array of influential women artmakers. In Supernova, reproductions of these artists' works are dispersed among contributors' essays, which explore such themes as beauty and the abject, iconoclasm and the role of social activism in art.

Supernova: Art of the 1990s From the Logan Collection

HIRST, Damien

Gober, Robert

Murakami, Takashi

Gonzalez-Torres, Felix

Siegel, Katy

Zhang, Huan

Antoni, Janine

Currin, John

Yuskavage, Lisa

Fritsch, Katharina

Grynzstejn, Madeleine

D.A.P./San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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