The former director of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm makes his literary debut with this dramatic and riveting novel of book publishing, émigrés, spies, and diplomats in World War II Sweden based on his grandfather’s life. 
In 1933, after Hitler and the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany, Immanuel Birnbaum, a German Jewish journalist based in Warsaw, is forbidden from writing for newspapers in his homeland. Six years later, just months before the German invasion of Poland that ignites World War II, Immanuel escapes to Sweden with his wife and two young sons. 
Living as a refugee in Stockholm, Immanuel continues to write, contributing articles to a liberal Swiss newspaper in Basel under the name Dr. B. He also begins working as an editor for the legendary German publisher S. Fischer Verlag. Gottfried Bermann Fischer had established an office in Stockholm to evade German censorship, publishing celebrated German writers such as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig. 
Immanuel also becomes entangled with British intelligence agents who produce and distribute anti-Nazi propaganda in Stockholm. On orders from Winston Churchill, the Allied spies plan several acts of sabotage. But when the Swedish postal service picks up a letter written in invisible ink, the plotters are exposed. The letter, long a mystery in military history accounts, was in fact written by Dr. B. But why would a Jew living in exile and targeted for death by the Nazis have wanted to tip them off? 
Daniel Birnbaum’s novel will intrigue readers with its fascinating portrayal of the astonishing connections and often mysterious players illuminated by his grandfather’s remarkable wartime life.

Dr. B.: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Birnbaum, Daniel

United States

Harper

Few artists have changed the manner in which photographic images are made, read, and received over the past two decades as dramatically as German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968). One of the most important and distinctive artists to emerge in the 1990s, Tillmans’s work is internationally recognized for its powerful reflections on the often overlooked objects and moments in everyday life. With images culled from the entirety of Tillmans’s career, this generously illustrated book accompanies the artist’s first retrospective exhibition in the United States and features the potent effects of his portraits, abstractions, and structural and sculptural motifs. Essays by leading scholars examine the context of the German art and pop cultural scene in which Tillmans first began working in the late 1980s; his use of magazines as both venue and source materials; his unique approach to portraiture; his ability to create a sense of intimacy between the viewer and subjects ranging from his friends to cultural figures and heads of state; and his distinctive approach to presenting his images in displays and installations. A fascinating look at the breadth of Tillmans’s career to date, including his most recent new work, this book demonstrates the renowned abilities of one of the art world’s most revolutionary photographers.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Arts & Photography

Ferguson, Russell

Wigley, Mark

Ault, Julie

Molon, Dominic

Relyea, Lane

Individual Artists

Yale University Press

In the mid-1980s the sprouting of new movements that had driven modern art since the nineteenth century finally went dormant, sputtering out with a last few half-hearted lels ('pattern painting', 'neo-geo', 'commodity art'). But this was not the end of art history -- far from it. In the years since, art's creative development has remained more vibrant than ever, resulting in a staggering diversity of new forms. Defining Contemporary Art responds to this unique landscape with an innovative approach to art history. Assembled and written by eight of the most prominent curators working today, all of whom have both witnessed and shaped this period, Defining Contemporary Art tells the story of the two hundred pivotal artworks of the past twenty-five years. These artworks include not only the most talked out pieces but also the quietly influential works, those which may have been overlooked at the time of their making but which went on to change the paradigm of their era. Arranged year by year, these two hundred works provide a true chronological depiction of creativity in our era, forming a mosaic in which readers may find their own patterns..

Defining Contemporary Art: 25 Years in 200 Pivotal Artworks

Butler, Cornelia H.

Cotter, Suzanne

History & Criticism

Phaidon Press

During the 1990s a number of artists claimed the exhibition as their medium. Working independently or in various collaborative constellations, they eschewed the individual object in favor of the exhibition environment as a dynamic arena, ever expanding its physical and temporal parameters. For these artists an exhibition can comprise a film, a novel, a shared meal, a social space, a performance or a journey. Their work engages directly with the vicissitudes of everyday life, offering subtle moments of transformation. This catalogue, which accompanies a major exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, is the first in the U.S. to examine the dynamic interchange among a core group of these artists--Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija--a many-sided conversation that helped shape the cultural landscape of the 1990s and beyond.

Theanyspacewhatever

Foster, Hal

Blom, Ina

Von Hantelmann, Dorothea

BOURRIAUD, NICOLAS

Bonami, Francesco

King, Emily

Gioni, Massimiliano

Hoffmann, Jens

Iles, Chrissie

Govan, Michael

Avgikos, Jan

Joseph, Branden

Boeri, Stefano

Falguières, Patricia

Douroux, Xavier

Föll, Heike

Lange, Christy

Archer, Michael

Guggenheim Museum Publications

Exploring how science, religion and the media shape consciousness, Michael Joo's artworks knit together the physical and the metaphysical. Matter and subject matter, energy and waste, the visible and that which cannot be seen--this is the stuff of Joo's sculptures. His densely layered works are accretions of meaning brought about by succinctly-handled conjunctions and disjunctions in a space. This publication is the first monograph on the artist and will feature the first compilation of his own writings.

Michael Joo

MIT List Visual Arts Center

“Is it the intentionality described by phenomenology and the ambiguous flesh of the active viewer who enters the work of art and fully explores its most extreme possibilities that determine the limits of possible subjectivation? Or is it the work itself that defines the parameters of new potential forms of subjectivity, perhaps involving modes of awareness that dodge the framework of phenomenology? Such are the questions that constitute the ultimate horizon of this essay.”―Daniel Birnbaum 
A philosophical essay on time, phenomenology and beyond, Daniel Birnbaum's Chronology was presented in frieze as a “compelling and sophisticated take on the common theme of Deleuzian immanence.” Whereas many theoretical books littering the bookshops of art institutions are laudations of excess, Birnbaum's convictions presented in Chronology cut a way through the “caesuras of non-meaning and blankness into the thick web of sense.” 
The works of artists such as Stan Douglas, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Doug Aitken, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tacita Dean, Darren Almond, Tobias Rehberger, Pierre Huyghe, and Philippe Parreno are scrutinized as so many attempts to capture the very dialectic of time itself. As Brian Dillon writes in frieze, “Birnbaum's notion of an art of unpredictable becoming … has its aporias too. A brief aside apropos Matthew Barney – to the effect that his art is all meaning, all of the time – is quite telling.” 
Daniel Birnbaum is Director of the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and Director of its Portikus gallery. He is also a member of the board of the Institut für Sozialforschung. A contributing editor of Artforum, he is the author of numerous texts on art and philosophy.

Chronology

Lukas & Sternberg

Housed in a unique slipcase of Spencer Finch's design, this first monograph is as visually stunning and thought-provoking as the work within. The confounding question of the title refers to Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical "propositions," and reflects the inquisitive nature of Finch's practice and his interests in the limits of thought and vision. What Time is it on the Sun? presents 120 color photographs and accompanying texts documenting 40 varied works, plus three essays on the literary, philosophical and scientific inspirations that drive Finch's intelligent and quixotic musings. A conceptual artist and a romantic, he examines the problems of representation through subjects as elusive as the Milky Way and wind, rendered in unexpected materials ranging from Tang to invisible ink. Working with light and color, Finch often focuses on historically charged locales as he explores the shifting terrain of desire and memory, highlighting the role subjectivity plays in shaping our perceptions.

Spencer Finch: What Time is it on the Sun?

Hudson, Suzanne

Cross, Susan

MASS MoCA

A definitive and timely monograph celebrating the work of ground-breaking conceptual artist Cerith Wyn Evans Cerith Wyn Evans is one of today's most respected and acclaimed sculptors. Born in Wales and educated through his first language of Welsgh, his work reflects his fascination with&nbsp; literature, film, music, and philosophy. Evans is an artist interested in language and how this can be perceived in spatial terms. Originally an experimental filmmaker, in the 1990s Evans started creating sculptures and installations defined by poetic conceptualism and elegant aesthetic forms. Often made of neon light, his pieces subtly disrupt existing systems of communication, either through the subversion and alteration of given spatial forms or by adopting a communal rather than a singular, authoritarian voice. In 2003 Evans represented Wales at the country's inaugural pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale. This book, the first comprehensive study dedicated to his work, includes contributions by luminaries such as the former Guggenheim Chief, Nancy Spector and the 2011 Venice Biennale director, Daniel Birnbaum, together with a previously unpublished text by Evans himself.

Cerith Wyn Evans (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

SPECTOR, Nancy

OBRIST, Hans-Ulrich

Humor & Entertainment

A comprehensive monograph on the work of KAWS, one of the most sought-after artists and creative forces of our time Drawing from Pop art traditions, KAWS's work straddles the line between fine art and popular culture, crossing the mediums of painting and sculpture, along with fashion, merchandise, vinyl toys, and, most recently, augmented reality. This book, made in close collaboration with the artist, features his most well-known works alongside sketches, preparatory drawings, and never-before-seen images of KAWS at work, revealing the meticulous process behind his iconic artworks. Accompanying a major retrospective exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, it captures the artist's unique ability to reshape the ways we think about contemporary art and culture today.

KAWS: WHAT PARTY (Black on Pink edition)

Tsai, Eugenie

The long-anticipated, expanded version of Daniel Birnbaum's art manifesto Chronology has finally arrived. This fully illustrated edition features a new introduction and afterword by the author where he reflects on the critical reception of his book and further extends Deleuzian ideas to the fields of art and film. In his afterword on Paul Chan, the author discusses a new sense of messianic time, a new chronology, as experienced with The 7 Lights series by the artist. Chronology is a productive point of reference and a source of inspiration for critics, curators, and perhaps more surprisingly dancers and choreographers. In his essay about time, phenomenology and beyond, Daniel Birnbaum scrutinizes the works of film and installation artists such as Stan Douglas, Doug Aitken, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tacita Dean, Pierre Huyghe, and others. Through the work of these artists, Birnbaum reveals a common concern with the logic, language, and overall dialectic of experiencing time. This is a highly desirable version of Chronology that will appeal even to the previously initiated.

Daniel Birnbaum: Chronology

Sternberg Press

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