The first full survey of the work of a British artist whose art has captured the public imagination since the 1990s Cornelia Parker (b. 1956) is one of the most thoughtful and poetic artists working in Britain today. Her wide-ranging practice, chiefly in sculpture and installation, touches on the fragility of human experience and is rich with visual allusions and literary innuendo. Parker’s dynamic projects have included blowing up a shed, steamrolling musical instruments, exploding a firework made from a pulverized meteorite, and suspending charcoal taken from a church struck by lightning. This monograph traces the development of her art from the late 1970s to the present day. Organized chronologically, the book covers the small-scale sculptures she made while still a student; her work in lead, plaster, silver, and gold; drawings; photographs; video pieces; and installations. Over 175 works are illustrated and each is accompanied by a commentary from the artist herself. Five thematic essays by the curator and writer Iwona Blazwick contextualize Parker’s work and point to her key influences and concerns. 360 illustrations, 315 in color

Cornelia Parker

Arts & Photography

Blazwick, Iwona

Individual Artists

Thames&Hudson

After spending some thirty years as an 'unofficial' artist behind the Iron Curtain of the former Soviet Union, Ilya Kabakov first came to the attention of the West in the 1980s. Today Kabakov is recognized as the most important Russian artist to have emerged in the late 20th century, with installations that speak as much about conditions in post-Stalinist Russia as they do about the human condition universally. His installations are, in some instances, akin to theatrical mise-en-scenes, reproducing a cramped communal apartment or a flooded art museum as a site of Schadenfreude-like comedies on human frustration and doomed aspirations. Alternating between light-hearted irony and genuine tragedy, Kabakov evokes a shadowy world lit by a twenty-watt bulb in which fable-like miracles might occur: a homespun cosmonaut may fly into space, or the radio/television aerial may spell out a poem against the sky. Ilya Kabakov's work has featured in the world's most significant surveys of contemporary art, among them Documenta IX (Kassel, Germany, 1992), and the Whitney Biennial (New York, 1997). In 1993 Kabakov represented Russia at the 45th Venice Biennale.

Ilya Kabakov (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

Groys, Boris

Ross, David A.

History & Criticism

Phaidon Press

Alex Katz is a towering figure in contemporary painting, a key New York-based artist since the early 1960s. Katz was an independent figure during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism and Pop when he first emerged -- and remains a unique, though highly influential figure to this day.Alex Katz is best known for his distinct portraits of sophisticated, irresistible women, masterfully painted using precise, broad areas of colour. Alongside these unmistakably Katzian' female portraits are portraits of men, group portraits, landscapes and interiors rendered in painting, drawing, collage and metal cut-outs. All attest to the artist's attention to detail, economy of means and consummate technique. Bigger-than-life paintings such as The Black Dress (1960), Blue Umbrella (1972), Red Coat (1982) and White Visor (2003) have entered the collective conscience as the epitome of a particular, late 20th century feminine ideal: icons of fashion, yet miraculously resilient to the prevailing fashions of contemporary art.

Alex Katz (Contemporary Artists)

Ratcliffe, Carter

STORR, Robert

American artist Elizabeth Peyton has been credited with breathing new life into the ancient art of portraiture. Her highly stylized, idealized oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors are driven by the emotional, adoring eye of an unrequited lover. Willowy, melancholy young men and women contemporary pop stars, royalty, artists, and friends are the magnetic subjects of her devotion. Caught as if in a state of ambiguous absorption and frozen at the height of their youth, they embody a new kind of portraiture that confirms and updates the immortalizing aura of the traditional genre. Peyton's melding of influences and obsessions ranges widely: from fandom and fashion illustration to academic anatomical studies; from David Hockney and Andy Warhol to a range of Mannerist and Old Master classics; from innocence to the world of bohemia, equally crediting photography and life drawing as its driving forces. Her enamored yet refreshingly informal light wash technique underscores her uniquely delicate, informed hybrid of high and low culture, a statement executed with infectious, seemingly effortless fluidity. Published in conjunction with the artist's major solo exhibition at the New Museum in New York, which will travel to the Whitechapel in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.

Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton

Giorno, John

Hoptman, Laura

Phaidon Press~ Inc

Renowned for his vivid, larger&amp;hyphen;than&amp;hyphen;life portraits, Alex Katz is a towering figure in contemporary painting. His work can be found in institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, LACMA, and the National Portrait Gallery.
The revised and expanded edition of Phaidon’s landmark survey is the most up&amp;hyphen;to&amp;hyphen;date overview of Katz’s prolific 50&amp;hyphen;year career. Featuring more than 300 gorgeous reproductions of key works, Alex Katz devotes ample space to the artist’s lush portraits while also including his landscapes, sculptures, and painted books. Rounding out the book’s content are writings from the artist himself; contributions from Robert Storr, Iwona Blazwick, Carter Ratcliff; and a new essay by Barry Schwabsky.

Alex Katz: Revised & expanded edition (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

Schwabsky, Barry

RATCLIFF, Carter

This is the first major survey in English of the work of Katharina Fritsch, one of the most important artists to emerge in Europe in the last 20 years. 
Ranging from the colossal to the miniature, Fritsch's sculptures and installations bring to life figures and objects that already exist in our imaginations. Using modern manufacturing techniques, Fritsch fabricates people and things that seem to have their origins in mythology, literature, and religion; they hover between purity and danger, innocent yet also unnerving. Combining a singular inner vision with an absolute material precision, Fritsch's sculptures border on the surreal.

Katharina Fritsch

Tate

This publication focuses on five major works by the American conceptual artist Mark Dion (born 1961).
Since the late 1980s Dion has been delving into the tropes and research methods of scientists, explorers, museum curators and archaeologists. He has created a body of work that playfully presents art as scientific inquiry or field work, questioning how knowledge is gathered, classified and displayed.
The five installations documented here incorporate diverse subjects: a scholar’s study invites us to unravel intricate drawings and models; a curator’s office displays the strange magic of obsolete things; the muddy banks of the Thames have also yielded their treasures for poetic display in a gigantic cabinet; while a Dickensian Curiosity Shop tempts us with the bizarre aura of American bric-a-brac. Each immersive environment is also a habitat, evoking the characters that observe, conserve or exploit the natural world.
The catalogue features new short essays on each of the exhibited works, an interview between the artist and Iwona Blazwick and a reprint of a short story by National Book Award for Fiction winner Andrea Barrett.

Mark Dion: Theatre of the Natural World

BARRETT, Andrea

Williams, Gilda

Endt-Jones, Marion

LANGE-BERNDT PETRA

Luke, Ben

Kinchin-Smith, Chelsea

Petersens, Magnus

Stobbs, Candy

Whitechapel Gallery

The second in a series of books published to celebrate a year-long display at Whitechapel Gallery of works from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation. Following the first display at Whitechapel Gallery of works selected by artist Ida Ekblad from Norway's Christen Sveaas Art Foundation, the second display will be selected and curated by artist Pauline Olowska.

Works from Christen Sveaas Art Foundation, selected by Pauline Olowska /anglais

WHITECHAPEL GAL

Published on the occasion of an exhibition at ICA, London.

Abigail Lane

SHONE, Richard

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Ica Editions

Gary Hume (b. 1962) is renowned for paintings distinguished by a bright palette, reduced imagery, and flat areas of seductive color. While Hume's paintings have always emphasized their luscious surfaces and simplified forms, many are infused with a melancholic beauty. Hume first received critical acclaim with a body of work known as the "Door" paintings. These minimal and abstract works, with their high-gloss paint and insistent reflective surfaces, developed in the early 1990s into a broader set of motifs, such as the nude, the portrait, the garden, as well as a pictorial idiom drawn from childhood, with images of polar bears, snowmen, rabbits, owls and close-up faces. His subject matter broadened yet more through the mid 1990s to incorporate images from popular culture, making portraits of celebrity figures such as Kate Moss, British radio DJ Tony Blackburn, and actress Patsy Kensit. For the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1999), he produced the "Water Paintings," large-scale works of multiple, overlapping line drawings of nudes punctuated by flat areas of color. "Cave Paintings," the title of his most recent show at White Cube, featured seven marble tableaux composed of a variety of different stones set against each other in collaged sections that appear like tectonic plates. These are held together by a lead tracery that provides the edge to the expanses of color, traced by the natural faults and veins inherent in the stone itself. These monolithic compositions are hand-carved and richly decadent, combining visual motifs from the natural world with imagery suggestive of human birth and fundamental emotions. Gary Hume was born in Kent in 1962 and lives and works in London and upstate New York. Solo shows include São Paulo Bienal (1996), Venice Biennale (1999) Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1999), the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (1999), Fundação La Caixa, Barcelona (2000), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2003), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2004) and the Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2004). Group shows include Tate Britain, London (2004), Louisiana Museum, Denmark (2004), Kunsthalle Basel (2002), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001). This is the signed limited edition of this title.

Gary Hume: Signed Edition

Loock, Ulrich

Other Criteria

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