Speaking With Hands

In October 1993, Henry M. Buhl purchased a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz of Georgia O'Keeffe's hands. This photograph would come to be the cornerstone of a private collection that now includes over one thousand images by the medium's foremost practitioners as well as little-known and emerging artists. Focusing on the theme of the hand, Buhl has gathered images spanning the history of photography, from a photogenic drawing negative made in 1840 by William Henry Fox Talbot to serial Polaroids made in 2002 by Cornelia Parker. The collection also encompasses a comprehensive range of photographic practices, including scientific, journalistic, and fine-art photography, with a strong component of contemporary art. Published on the occasion of a major exhibition drawn from The Buhl Collection, this book demonstrates the prevalence of the hand as a photographic theme, a result, in part, of photography's easy ability to capture fragments and detail, as well as ephemeral movement. The selected works depict the hand literally, in the context of portraiture, for example, as well as figuratively, in terms of the poetic emphasis given to hand gestures in documentary images. In artistic images created from the 1920s to the present, the hand is abstracted and subsequently treated as a conceptual device. Jennifer Blessing explores the nature of collecting photographs and why hands are in many ways a uniquely photographic theme. Kirsten A. Hoving emphasizes the prevalence of hands in Surrealist photographs and prose. Ralph Rugoff discusses the uncanny aspects of hands in contemporary art that uses photography. The catalogue entries, written by Matthew S. Witkovsky with Melanie Mariio and Nat Trotman, cover 150 artists and 168 works, forming a useful resource for the study of the history of photography.

Arts & Photography

Ralph Rugoff

Jennifer Blessing

Kirsten A. Hoving

Photography & Video

Guggenheim Museum

A Brief History of Invisible Art Perfect Ralph Rugoff

California College of the Arts

Painter and sculptor George Condo (born 1957) has inhabited a broad swath of cultural contexts over his three-decade career, from the early-1980s East Village scene to a collaboration with William Burroughs to making album cover art for Phish and, most recently, Kanye West. Early in his career, Condo was friendly with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring and briefly worked at Andy Warhol's Factory. Having been included in the Whitney Biennial in 1987, by 2010 he was once again judged so original that a bronze sculpture of his was placed in that year's Biennial. Condo's loose, imaginative approach to portraiture has distinguished him throughout the decades: "There was a time when I realized that the central focal point of portraiture did not have to be representational in any way," he said in 1992. "You don't need to paint the body to show the truth about a character. All you need is the head and the hands." George Condo: Mental States surveys the artist's career from 1982 to the present day, focusing on his portrait paintings but also including a selection of sculptural busts made in materials such as gold and bronze. Organized by theme, and including 100 images of artworks in addition to writings by Will Self, David Means, Ralph Rugoff and Laura Hoptman, this volume explores Condo's relationship to art history, popular culture and contemporary society.

George Condo: Mental States

George Condo

Laura Hoptman

WILL SELF

David Means

History & Criticism

Hayward Gallery Publishing

First edition, first printing. Hardcover. Printed laminated paper-covered boards; no dust jacket as issued. Photographs by Thomas Demand, Andreas Gursky and Edward Ruscha. Essays by Stefan Gronert, Diedrich Diederichsen and Ralph Rugoff. Includes a list of works, biographies and bibliographies. 120 pp., with 46 black-and-white plates, 39 four-color plates and numerous additional black-and-white illustrations. 9-5/8 x 11-7/8 inches. Published on the occasion of an exhibition at Kunstmuseum, Bonn, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida.

Great Illusions: Thomas Demand, Andreas Gursky, Edward Ruscha

Thomas Demand

Stefan Gronert

Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami

Venezia, Arsenale e Giardini, May 11 - November 24, 2019. Edited by Ralph Rugoff. English Text.

La Biennale di Venezia. 58ª Esposizione internazionale d'arte. May You Live in Interesting Times.

La Biennale di Venezia

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Books by Ralph Rugoff