From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. The Contemporary African Art Collection-which is essentially run by only two guys, Italian collector Jean Pigozzi and French curator André Magnin-has managed to make some people very angry. Is it not the worst sort of cultural colonialism, detractors ask, for two white Westerners to define what contemporary African art is, especially when their collection consists almost exclusively of self-taught artists? But, as they make clear in the interviews included here, Pigozzi and Magnin make no claim to do anything other than present artists they love, and it is their idiosyncratic tastes that make this catalog (which is being published in conjunction with an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston) such a surprise and a pleasure. The surprise comes from the sheer scope of inventiveness and variety on display: from the spare, ominous watercolors of Barthélémy Toguo (from Cameroon) to the surrealistic allegories Cheri Samba (of Congo) paints in a slick, commercial art style. Some of the artists produce work at a polar extreme from the scruffy, homemade look one might expect from "outsider" artists: Rigobert Nimi of Congo uses scavenged materials to build gleaming, precisely rendered models of spaceships and robot factories, and Abu Bockari Mansaray of Sierra Leone draws maniacally detailed diagrams of such devices as a "Nuclear Telephone Discovered in Hell." If there is any flaw in this presentation of an explosively imaginative group of artists (33 of them in all, from 14 countries), it is that, with only two or three images for each artist, it feels far too short. Still, for open-minded readers more interested in art itself than what Pigozzi calls "intellectual art gossip," this is a book to linger over and absorb slowly, one intoxicating vision at a time.

African Art Now: Masterpieces From the Jean Pigozzi Collection

Thomas McEvilley

Andre Magnin

Alison De Lima Greene

Alvia J. Wardlaw

Arts & Photography

Merrell

The catalogue of an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, May 7 to July 10, 1988, and five other museums subsequently. Profusely illustrated.

Lucas Samaras--objects and subjects, 1969-1986

Donald Kuspit

Roberta Smith

Abbeville Press

From roughly 1965 to 1980, Conceptual Art and Performance Art took center stage throughout the western world, introducing new and complex ideas to the practice of contemporary art which reverberate to this day. Thomas McEvilley's The Triumph of Anti-Art not only explains the origins of these controversial and compelling art forms, but also uncovers many relatively unrecognized yet indisputably important artists, American and European. He guides the reader through a thicket of seemingly arcane meanings of these nonrepresentational art form, and brings clarity to the intentions and agendas of these artists, as well as to their real world contexts. The long-term effects of "anti-art," and the development of the pluralistic situation known as post-Modernism, are described in vivid detail. From the Greek philosopher Diogenes, through the 19th-century German romantic tradition, to the modern art critic Clement Greenberg, McEvilley traces philosophical ideas and political impulses that temporarily led to a toppling of painting and sculpture in the decades right after World War II. Following an overview of Modernism and Marcel Duchamp's influence, a chapter on Yves Klein sets the state for surveys of Conceptual Art and its practitioners, including Bernar Venet, John Baldessari, and Francis Alys. McEvilley then gives equal focus to Performance Art with chapters on Andy Warhol, Brian O'Doherty, and Marina Abramovic and Ulay, among others. At the end of the volume the "triumph" of "anti-art" is explored in depth, as are the origins of the terms, practices, and politics of global art history.

Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post-Modernism

History & Criticism

McPherson

For seven years, from 1956 to 1962, a young French artist electrified the European art world with visual, conceptual and performance art works far ahead of their time. His rise was wildly celebrated by some as the appearance of a prophetic genius, and derisively dismissed by others as scandalous nonsense. His monochrome paintings, body art works, fire paintings, conceptual exhibitions and music, and monumental public space works threatened to upend the very categories of art, in both Europe and America. Indeed, after his tragically premature death in 1962, some of the most far-reaching transformations in contemporary art would follow directly in his wake. But by the 1970s his reputation seemed headed for oblivion, until in 1977 a young classics scholar at Rice University, Thomas McEvilley, proposed Klein for a retrospective show to Dominique deMenil, then director of the Rice gallery, and wrote several texts about Klein that would transform our understanding of Yves Klein's aesthetics. The project grew to involve major institutions, resulting in 1982 with exhibitions in Houston, New York, Paris and Chicago. Virtually overnight Yves Klein's art reentered the art canon. Coincidentally, the career of an important critic was launched. Yves the Provocateur provides the "skeleton key" to clearly examine the full dimensions of Klein's accomplishment. In two opening essays, McEvilley briefly surveys and places Klein's art into context. Then, in the centerpiece essay -- which amounts to a miniature critical biography bearing all the best features of a novella -- he traces the formative and crucial events in Klein's life. Finally, he describes Klein's intellectual development, demonstrating how Klein embedded and parodied in his work the philosophical system of a particular form of Rosicrucianism. An extensive chronology is appended at the end. Yves the Provocateur collects Thomas McEvilley's writings on Klein which rejuvenated Klein's stature and hitherto have only been available in journals and hard-to-find exhibition catalogues. Together they constitute an important document in contemporary art history. The publication of this book is timed to coincide with the major Klein retrospective at the Hirshhorn Gallery in Washington, DC on May 16, 2010, and later at the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, on October 23.

Yves the Provocateur: Yves Klein and Twentieth-Century Art

Individual Artists

From roughly 1965 to 1980, Conceptual Art and Performance Art took center stage throughout the western world, introducing new and complex ideas to the practice of contemporary art which reverberate to this day. Thomas McEvilley's The Triumph of Anti-Art not only explains the origins of these controversial and compelling art forms, but also uncovers many relatively unrecognized yet indisputably important artists, American and European. He guides the reader through a thicket of seemingly arcane meanings of these nonrepresentational art form, and brings clarity to the intentions and agendas of these artists, as well as to their real world contexts. The long-term effects of anti-art and the development of the pluralistic situation known as post-Modernism, are described in vivid detail. From the Greek philosopher Diogenes, through the 19th-century German romantic tradition, to the modern art critic Clement Greenberg, McEvilley traces philosophical ideas and political impulses that temporarily led to a toppling of painting and sculpture in the decades right after World War II. Following an overview of Modernism and Marcel Duchamp's influence, a chapter on Yves Klein sets the state for surveys of Conceptual Art and its practitioners, including Bernar Venet, John Baldessari, and Francis Alys. McEvilley then gives equal focus to Performance Art with chapters on Andy Warhol, Brian O'Doherty, and Marina Abramovic and Ulay, among others. At the end of the volume the triumph of anti-art is explored in depth, as are the origins of the terms, practices, and politics of global art history.

The Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post-Modernism

McPherson & Company

In 1975 Marina Abramovic and Uwe Laysiepen met in Amsterdam, fell in love, and began to collaborate as performance artists. By the time their personal relationship ended twelve years later they had become two of the most famous performance artists in the world. Thomas McEvilley met them in 1983; they became close friends, and ever since he has been able to follow the development of their career together, and their careers apart, over the past twenty-seven years. Art, Love Friendship is divided into three sections. The first documents Marina Abramovic and Ulay together, including their three-month-long Great Wall Walk in 1988. The second section features Ulay's career before meeting Marina -- when, for example, he briefly "stole" Germany's most famous painting in broad daylight -- as well as his later work as a conceptual photographer. The final section features a long interview with Marina and essays about her work of the 1990s and the 2000s. The book includes 65 photographs presented throughout the text, and features a dramatic opening section of "Relation Works." The book coincides with Marina Abramovic's major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Art, Love, Friendship: Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Together & Apart

Performing Arts

A major, lavishly illustrated study of contemporary art being produced by the leading artists working in sub-Saharan Africa. Painters, photographers, sculptors and installation artists are represented from nineteen countries: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Republic of Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Togo. Artists include Frédéric Bruly Bouabre, Seydou Keita, Samuel Kane Kwei, Chéri Samba and Malik Sidibé, among many others. African Art Now offers a rare glimpse into the latest currents in contemporary African art, showing how artists share an awareness of both local and global cultures, thereby acknowledging the complex heritage that African artists face today. An important and compelling book that will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary art and culture.

African Art Now: Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection

Merrell Pub Ltd

Charles Ross’ fascination with light, time and the space of the stars has produced a major earthwork, large-scale prism installations, sculpture, and painting with dynamite. From Star Axis, a vast architectonic earth/star work in the New Mexico desert, to his Solar Burns series made by burning wood-panel monochromes with focused rays of the sun, Ross allows the natural patterns and forces of the cosmos to inform his work. The Substance of Light is a comprehensive volume that covers over four decades of work and features full-color illustrations of his Solar Spectrum artworks, Star Axis, his Solar Burns, Star Maps and Explosion Paintings and Drawings, along with early work and selected architectural commissions. Major essays by Thomas McEvilley and Klaus Ottmann, as well as an extensive interview with Loïc Malle and a range of historical texts are also included.

Charles Ross: The Substance of Light

Charles Ross

Klaus Ottmann

Loïc Malle

Radius Books

In the fall of 1899, Charles A.A. Dellschau (1830–1923), a retired butcher from Houston, embarked on a project that would occupy him for more than 20 years. What began as an illustrated manuscript recounting his experiences in the California Gold Rush became an obsessive project resulting in 12 large, hand-bound books with more than 2,500 drawings related to airships and the development of flight. Dellschau’s designs resemble traditional hot air balloons augmented with fantastic visual details, collage and text. The hand-drawn “Aeros” were interspersed with collaged pages called “Press Blooms,” featuring thousands of newspaper clippings related to the political events and technological advances of the period. After the artist’s death in 1923, the books were stored in the attic of the family home in Houston. In the aftermath of a fire in the 1960s, they were dumped on the sidewalk and salvaged by a junk dealer. Eight made their way into the collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Witte Museum and the Menil Collection; the remainder were sold to a private collector. Dellschau’s works have since been collected by numerous other museums including the American Folk Art Museum, the High Museum, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Like the eccentric outpourings of Adolf Wölfli, Henry Darger and Achilles Rizzoli, these private works were not created for the art world, but to satisfy a driving internal creative force. Dreamer, optimist and visionary, Charles Dellschau is one of the earliest documented outsider artists known in America. This first monograph on Dellschau includes an essay by art critic Thomas McEvilley, an essay by critic Roger Cardinal of the University of Kent, a text by James Brett of the Museum of Everything in London, an essay by Tom Crouch of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Air and Space, an essay by Barbara Safarova and a biographical overview by artist and independent curator Tracy Baker-White.

Charles Dellschau (MARQUAND BOOKS/)

Roger Cardinal

Thomas D. Crouch

Barbara Safarova

Randall Morris

Tracy Baker-White

James, Brett

Marquand Books/D.A.P.

Spanning thirty years of intensive research, this book proves what many scholars could not explain: that today s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought—Western and Eastern philosophies. Thomas McEvilley explores how trade, imperialism, and migration currents allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East. This groundbreaking reference will stir relentless debate among philosophers, art historians, and students.

The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies

Motilal Banarsidass

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Books by Thomas McEvilley