Over the course of the past 40 years, painter John Wesley has created a remarkably singular body of work whose subject is no less than the American psyche. While many artists of his generation have used popular images to explore the cultural landscape, Wesley has employed comic strip style and compositional rigor to make deeply personal, often hermetic paintings that strike at the core of our most primal fears, joys and desires. In this first volume ever to collect the entire iconic Bumstead series, which spans from 1974 until the present, we are introduced to several paintings that have never been reproduced before. These are dark and erotic works, sly and witty without ever giving too much away. Linda Norden described them thus in Parkett 62: "The Bumstead paintings--whether detailing scenes of domestic misunderstanding, zooming in on off-camera moments of bafflement or simply scanning empty halls and walls for private memories--are excruciatingly specific representations of the gulfs between feeling and comprehension… smart, funny, startling, irreverently empathetic and often heartbreaking, they are a welcome antidote to more laborious discourse." With an insightful new essay by Robert Hobbs.

John Wesley: The Bumsteads

Arts & Photography

Hobbs, Robert

History & Criticism

Fredericks & Freiser

The first monograph on the heterogeneous postmodernist painting of David Humphrey, blending figuration and abstraction, pop and expressionism The acclaimed American painter David Humphrey (born 1955) has been exhibiting his work internationally since the 1980s when he first burst upon the New York art scene. His compositions often feature human figures, animals and objects interwoven into abstract passages to create complex narratives that reckon with the dynamics of human relationships, gender, the environment and race, all while resisting any one interpretation. This is the first comprehensive monograph surveying the totality of the artist's 40-year career. Edited by Davy Lauterbach in close collaboration with the artist, it includes over 200 full-color reproductions of Humphrey's painting and sculptural work from the early 1980s to today. The plates are complemented by a selection of archival and detail photographs, and essays by Lauterbach, Wayne Koestenbaum and Lytle Shaw, plus a lively and far-reaching conversation between Humphrey and the painter Jennifer Coates, his frequent artistic collaborator.

David Humphrey

Lytle Shaw

Davy Lauterbach

Wayne Koestenbaum

Jennifer Coates

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