With hits such as Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, Serial Mom, and Pecker, John Waters has consistently shocked, outraged, and amused movie audiences around the world. Feted for his singular and controversial vision, he has been described by William S. Burroughs as the "Pope of Trash" and by Time magazine as the "Sultan of Shock." Now Waters has teamed up with acclaimed art critic and curator Bruce Hainley to offer a unique, provocative, and personal interpretation of sex and sexuality today through the window of contemporary art. Andy Warhol, Larry Clark, Richard Kern, Sarah Lucas, Cy Twombly, Lily van der Stokker, Vincent Fecteau, Karen Kilimnik, and Paul McCarthy are among the seventy well-known artists whose work they have selected. "Contemporary art is sex...it's all about sex," Waters tells us in the introduction, and in the book he and Hainley have chosen and carefully arranged a wide selection of recent works, from startling graphic depictions of the body and sexual acts to abstract images suggesting or inviting different ideas and concepts of the erotic. In a frank and often hilarious conversation, presented in three parts, the authors talk about their choices and explain the pairing and juxtaposition of the works. Along the way, they consider many of the issues raised by the art and discusswith humor and seriousness alikehow art reflects attitudes toward sex and the body in today's world. Questionnaires devised by Waters and Hainley for the artists offer further insights into sex and its relationship with art, while the authors' lists of favorite "sex reads" provide inspiration for further reading. This remarkable and original book will appeal to anyone interested in exploring the place of sex within contemporary society, and in discovering how sex inspires and challenges today's leading artists. 176 illustrations, 143 in color.

Art: A Sex Book

Arts & Photography

WATERS, JOHN

Hainley, Bruce

History & Criticism

Thames&Hudson

This volume on Tomma Abts (b. 1967) will be published in conjuction with the exhibition of the same name that will be on display at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art from 9 April to 29 June 2008. It explores how the artist creates forms that delight the eye and challenge the mind. While working within strict parameters, Abts has reinvented abstraction for the twenty-first century. This is the first monograph on Abts, providing an extensive overview of more than ten years of work. It includes illuminating essays by three top critics, as well as full color reproductions of virtually every painting and drawing made by the artist since 1997.

Tomma Abts

Hoptman, Laura

Werwoert, Jan

Phaidon Press

Product Description 
The first major monograph on provocateur painter Peter Saul, featuring the largest collection of his work ever published, overseen by the artist himself. \nPeter Saul is a trailblazing artist and masterful painter who is just now receiving his due after an extraordinary six decades of painting. A Pop Art predecessor, the artist’s brightly colored paintings feature contrarian depictions of popular culture and political history. Known for a satirical bent that exposes the ironies of every subject he takes up, Saul’s work has been profoundly influential to the generations of artists who have followed him. 
 In the 1950s and ’60s, reacting against Abstract Expressionism’s seriousness, Saul began to paint everyday objects such as refrigerators, often overflowing with food and other household items, which resulted in his important 
Icebox series. He later turned to more political subjects, such as his graphic, cartoonish “Vietnam” paintings. His interest in politcal figures and their hypocrises continues to this day with paintings of politicians from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. 
Freely incorporating a range of pop culture references with aplomb—from cartoon and comic book characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Superman, to real life figures including Ethel Rosenberg, Willem de Kooning, Fidel Castro, and John Wayne Gacy—his work also includes darkly humorous self-portraits. 
 This landmark volume includes several important contributions, including essays by Los Angeles–based critic Bruce Hainley; Richard Shiff, renowned art historian; and Annabelle Ténèze, Chief Curator and Director of Les Abattoirs, in Toulouse, France. The book also features new commentary by the artist himself on his most important works from several periods of his career, and a 20-page booklet, also penned by the artist, called “My Life Story.”\nAbout the Author 
Bruce Hainley is the author of 
Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant’s Volte-Face (2014), among other books. 
Richard Shiff is the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at The University of Texas at Austin. 
Annabelle Ténèze is Chief Curator of Heritage and Director of Les Abattoirs, Musée - Frac Occitanie Toulouse, France.

Peter Saul

Shiff, Richard

Ténèze, Annabelle

Individual Artists

Rizzoli Electa

The first book-length monograph on Elaine Sturtevant, who has focused her career on the artistic copy.
Asked to sum up her artistic pursuit, the American artist Elaine Sturtevant once replied: "I create vertigo." Since the mid-1960s, Sturtevant has been using repetition to change the way art is understood. In 1965, what seemed to be a group show by then "hot" artists (Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, George Segal, and James Rosenquist, among others) was in fact Sturtevant's first solo exhibit, every work in it created by herself.
Sturtevant would continue to make her work the work of others. The subject of major museum exhibitions throughout Europe and awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 54th Venice Biennale, she will have a major survey at the MoMA, New York, in 2014.
In Under the Sign of [sic], Bruce Hainley unpacks the work of Sturtevant, providing the first book-length monographic study of the artist in English. Hainley draws on elusive archival materials to tackle not only Sturtevant's work but also the essential problem that it poses. Hainley examines all of Sturtevant's projects in a single year (1967); uses her Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform) from 1995 as a conceptual wedge to consider contemporary art's place in the world; and, finally, digs into the most occluded part of her career, from 1971 to 1973, when she created works by Michael Heizer and Walter de Maria, and had her first solo American museum exhibit.

Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant's Volte-Face (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents)

Semiotext[e]

The more familiar elements of Warhol's oeuvre touch on subjects ranging from religion to women's shoes, from celebrity to death, and so here, finally, are sex and bodily fluids. Gathered together are a group of works that include Warhol's rarely exhibited erotic male nude drawings from the 1950s, the Torso and Sex Part paintings and drawings (1977-82), and the conceptual alchemy of the abstract Oxidation and Piss paintings series (1978).

Andy Warhol: Piss & Sex Paintings And Drawings

GAGOSIAN GALLERY

Exploring the evolution of Agnes Martin’s sublime use of color 
This handsomely designed, concise volume celebrates Agnes Martin’s pursuit of beauty, happiness and innocence in her nonobjective art created while living in the desert of New Mexico. From her multicolored striped works to compositions of color-washed bands defined by hand-drawn lines, to the deep gray Black Paintings that characterized her work in the late 1980s, Martin’s treatment of color in each of these phases is examined. 
A particular emphasis is placed on the latter half of her career and the broadening vision that developed during her years working in the desert, which crystalized her quest to deepen her understanding of the essence of painting, unattached to emotion or subject, yet radiant and meditative in its pure abstraction. 
With editorial contributions by a selection of writers whose cross-genre works span art writing, essay and memoir, this book expands an approach to Martin’s paintings beyond a purely art historical lens, bringing new voices into the conversations around her career, inviting a rediscovery of her enduring legacy. An essay by author Durga Chew-Bose provides a poetic exploration of color; the writer Olivia Laing (author of The Lonely City) discusses the nature of solitude in her text; and Bruce Hainley uses a 1974 essay by Jill Johnston as a jumping-off point to delve into Martin's life during her years in New Mexico.

Agnes Martin: Distillation of Color

Hickey, Andria

Laing, Olivia

Chew-Bose, Durga

Pace Publishing

The heterogeneous punk spirit of Urs Fischer is in full threat in this catalogue from his recent retrospective exhibition (including many new works) at Kunsthaus Zrich. All materials were considered fair game, and Fischer took every possible liberty in the museum space. He cut huge walk-through holes in the gallery walls and leaned the removed pieces on their edges in the rooms. He made burning wax sculptures, put obstacles on the ground, and hung a DANGEr sign above it all. As curator Mirjam Varadinis says, "the familiarity of everyday motifs is undermined in a process of metamorphosis that renders [the work] uncanny and even threatening." Of course, a dose of humor, drawing upon the grotesque, informs the work as well. You can try to name influences, inspirations, and related artists--Thek, Nauman, Barney, Fischli & Weiss--but Fischer is sui generis.

Urs Fischer: Kir Royal

Heiser, Jörg

JRP|Ringier

Since the mid-1960s, American conceptualist Elaine Sturtevant (born 1930) has been using her multidisciplinary practice to mercilessly interrogate the commercial and symbolic value of art and the male-driven art world. Working predominantly from memory, she copies iconic works by male artists such as Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys and Frank Stella. Often indistinguishable from the originals, Sturtevant's painting, sculpture, video and photographic facsimiles force thorny issues of replica and simulacra, origin and difference, to a crisis point. Designed in close collaboration with the artist, The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking offers a compilation of Sturtevant's largely unpublished writings, along with a selection of essays on her life and work. Sturtevant and her rigorous, committed conceptual strategy are central to ongoing debates on the concept of originality in contemporary art and beyond.

Elaine Sturtevant: The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking

Since the mid-1990s, Alex Bag (born 1969) has been among the leading protagonists of video performance, regarded as a vital precursor by a generation of younger artists such as Cory Arcangel or Shana Moulton. Bag became known for her video performances, in which she humorously critiqued TV culture and the clichés of the contemporary art world. An extraordinarily flexible actress, Bag often appeared herself, taking on a multitude of roles. In the video that gained her initial recognition, “Untitled Fall `95” (1995), she played an art student who, as though in a video diary, depicted her desires and hopes as an artist and in her everyday schooling. In other videos she has frequently investigated the advertising structures of network TV (as in “Coven Services,” 2004), or the most diverse TV genres and formats (“Fancy Pantz,” 1997, “Gladia Daters,” 2005). This first Alex Bag monograph includes a complete videography with transcriptions, scripts and stills.

Alex Bag

Phillips, Glenn

Gygax, Raphael

Silk Cut smokes, high-end pens and watches, jewelry dangling into cleavage, the Marlboro Man, the very young Brooke Shields in that movie still, bare-chested blondes on bikes--this is the stuff of Richard Prince's photographs. Sexist jokes, Playboy magazine cartoons, and grafittied doodles are the stuff of his paintings. Or rather, all of these icons of mass culture are the materials that Prince recycles and processes in order to make his own artworks. Re-photographed, fragmented, layered, and copied down, their original format irreversibly if subtly altered, they are transformed into works of high art. By appropriating a reality artificially staged by the media, Prince assesses and catalogues everyday life in America through the cool gaze of an archivist. At the same time, he returns a piece of life to these much abused types: the Marlboro Man rides across the prairie free of consumerist underpinnings. Conceived of and designed by the artist himself, this large-format, two volume publication is the most ambitious presentation of Prince's work to date. One book is devoted to paintings, the other to photographs, and an accompanying booklet offers a radical essay by Bruce Hainley as well as a complete biography and selected bibliography.

Richard Prince: Paintings-Photographs

Hatje Cantz Publishers

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