Julian Schnabel Plate Paintings, 1978-86

Aspen Art Museum

Peter Saul

Concerning his penchant for difficult or vulgar subject matter, San Francisco-born painter Peter Saul has stated, "Putting crime, war, sex, distortion and low class stuff into the picture is a way to take the decoration out of the picture--literally remove it from the dining room because no one is going to drink orange juice in the same room with it." Saul fuses his MAD Magazine-inspired humor with a Surrealist painting style to create difficult, funny and trenchant works--what Robert Storr, who has penned an essay for this volume, refers to as "sick jokes." Presaging Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley and exerting noticeable influence on artists such as Barry McGee and Ed Templeton, Saul's oeuvre is long overdue for deeper examination and this comprehensive publication provides the first complete overview of his work over the past five decades--from his epic historical canvases to his homage to Thomas Hart Benton, his lampoons of art world sacred cows and works evidencing his particular take on the existential dilemmas of the aging American male. More recent works satirizing current affairs round this volume out.

Arts & Photography

Saul, Peter

History & Criticism

minor rubbing to back cover from rubbing during shipping. New clean, unread

Anna Gaskell: by proxy

Gaskell, Anna

Sobel, Dean (Curated by)

Photography & Video

Published on the occasion of the 2001 exhibition Thomas Demand, curated by Dean Sobel, at the Aspen Art Museum (also traveled to De Apel Foundation, Amsterdam, ArtPace, San Antonio, Texas and SITE Sante Fe, Sante Fe, New Mexico). From the publisher: "German photographer Thomas Demand (b. 1964) is one of the most highly acclaimed artists of his generation. Like many of his contemporaries, his work investigates the nature and process of photography while exploring the role of the media in our culture. Demand begins his process with images of highly charged locations, usually interiors. He obtains these images from a variety of sources, including newspapers, the Internet, and even his own memory. Demand then builds life-size paper and cardboard models of these places, which in turn become the "subjects" of his large-scale photographs. While the artificiality of these images may not be immediately apparent, upon detailed examination, one can see that details are missing (like light switches), and everything has a hint of peculiarity. In describing his work, Demand has said, "The surroundings that I portray are, for me, something untouched - a utopic construction. No traces of use are visible on their surfaces, and time seems to have come to a stop."

Thomas Demand Catalogue and Exhibition 2001 / 2002

Thomas Demand

Sobel, Dean & Lars Lerup

From the author of the award-winning Art of Grace and Passion comes this spotlight on North American artisanship between 200 BC and the early 1900s. The masterworks featured here range from clothing, accessories, and ceremonial and hunting gear to blankets, cradles, storage vessels, and utensils. Each was crafted of such diverse materials as quills, ivory, hide, wood, fibers, stone, clay, and even glass beads imported by European traders.
George Everett Shaw, Steven C. Brown, Benson L. Lanford, and Bill Mercer examine how American Indians' existence developed around the challenges and benefits of the climate, terrain, flora, and fauna of their locales. Their art objects embody the spiritual devotion--inseparable from their relationship with the natural world--that even now shapes their lives. Whether decorated with abstract patterns or with representations of humans and animals, such pieces were vehicles for passing down beliefs and customs before written languages existed. Thus we can appreciate them not only for their beauty and the skill and ingenuity of their makers but also in the context of the cultures from which they sprang.

Art of the Ancestors: Antique North American Indian Art

Brown, Steven C.

Shaw, George Everett

Lanford, Benson L.

This lavishly illustrated artist's book is the largest and most ambitious publication yet produced by the Los Angeles-based video artist and photographer Doug Aitken--an artist known for his groundbreaking publications. Featuring a short text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Director and Chief Curator of the Aspen Art Museum, it focuses on Aitken's still images, more than half of which have never been reproduced before. Known primarily for his multi-screen video installations, Aitken has gained international recognition for his immersive explorations of the experience of time and location. His exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum was the first dedicated solely to his photography. From nighttime cityscapes to deserted gas stations, airports and bus depots, Aitken's dreamlike photographs contain the same spatial and temporal dislocation and narrative suggestion as his installations.

Doug Aitken: 99 Cent Dreams

Jacobson, Heidi Zuckerman

Individual Artists

Belief & Doubt

Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson

The majority of texts written about Avner Ben-Gal focus on his nationality. The majority of his paintings from the early 2000s include graphic, violent imagery. Ben-Gal's recent work, however, has evolved beyond the political and religious challenges of the Middle East to convey the more oblique foreboding of contemporary society, with all of its attendant horrors, both perceived and actual. Employing a muted palette, he paints landscapes of non-specific places-those from a dream or a novel or an overheard rumor-and his compositions include blurred figures or solitary vegetation. Although his spaces are bleak and charged with emotion, they are neither prescriptive nor didactic. The works are a more universal reflection on our collective current life-a life that, although at times desolate, is punctuated by intense beauty.The Aspen Art Museum presents Avner Ben-Gal in his first one-person museum exhibition.

Avner Ben-Gal: Sudden Poverty

Douglas Fogle

Yutaka Sone

Benjamin

Susanne Ghez

Philippe Pirotte

Hamza Walker

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Books by Aspen Art Museum