Bamana masks and headdresses, Lega ivories, Dogon sculpture, and Benue bronzes are among the many exquisite African artifacts found in the renowned Menil Collection. This stunning book―the first comprehensive catalogue on the de Menils' collection of African art―features 115of the museum’s finest pieces. Dating primarily from the 19th and 20th centuries, these works come from North Africa and the Sahel, Coastal West Africa, and Central and East Africa.
An essay by scholar Kristina Van Dyke discusses the formation of the collection, which was inspired in part by its relationship to modernist works and by the couple’s interest in human rights. This insightful text also explains how the de Menils' visionary spirit was influenced by African art and places those objects within the context of the whole of the de Menils’ collection, in which works from ancient, Byzantine, medieval, modern, Oceanic, and Native American cultures speak to the universal struggle for human understanding. Entries for the selected works were written by leading scholars in the field and are grouped into sections based on regions.

African Art from The Menil Collection

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

The Menil Collection

This lavishly illustrated book is the first to examine the significant contributions of John and Dominique de Menil to art, architecture, film, and the civil and human rights movements. The de Menils, who moved to Houston from France in 1941, amassed one of the world's great private art collections and became passionately involved in the cause of human rights. 
The volume includes a discussion of the building of the de Menils' art collection; their patronage of modern architecture in Houston; their embrace of modernism; their leadership in Houston's civil rights movement and in human rights projects worldwide; their commissioning of works of art; their involvement in early film education and documentary filmmaking; and their establishment of the Rothko Chapel, the Menil Collection, the Cy Twombly Gallery, the Dan Flavin Installation, and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum. Vintage photographs, including those taken by Henri Cartier Bresson and Eve Arnold, previously unpublished correspondence with artists, and an illustrated chronology all add to this textured tribute to the de Menils' extraordinary achievements.

Art and Activism: Projects of John and Dominique de Menil

The first comprehensive look at Rauschenberg’s Cardboard series, a previously unexplored realm of the artist’s oeuvre Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925) began to investigate the boundaries between painting and sculpture in the 1950s, working with a variety of found objects in his Combine paintings and freestanding Combines. Later, in his Cardboard series (1971–72), he confined himself to the use of cardboard boxes, eliminating virtually all imagery, reducing the palette to a near monochrome, and commenting in subtle ways on the materialism and disposability of modern life. This book is the first to focus exclusively on Rauschenberg’s rarely seen Cardboards, along with related works from his Made in Tampa Clay, Cardbirds, Egyptian, and Venetian series. Approximately eighty-eight Cardboards and related sculptural pieces, many from the artist’s personal collection, are reproduced in the book. Full provenance and exhibition history are provided for each work, along with a complete bibliography. In addition, distinguished scholar Yve-Alain Bois offers an insightful essay that discusses the Cardboards and situates these lesser-known but critical pieces within the context of Rauschenberg’s long and creative career.

Robert Rauschenberg: Cardboards and Related Pieces (Menil Collection)

Bois, Yve-Alain

Anna Gaskell is prominent among a generation of artists who emerged in the late 1990s and have redefined the landscape of contemporary art, building upon cinematic strategies pioneered a decade earlier by artists such as Cindy Sherman and Laurie Simmons. Gaskell and others of her generation have invented an entirely new discourse, one in which narrative is disrupted, lacking closure and connectivity. Gaskell goes further yet, creating bodies of work that appear to tell stories but confound one's ability to draw clear connections between the different images within a given series. In Half Life, a new project commissioned by The Menil Collection, Gaskell draws inspiration from stories like Rebecca, The Old Nurse, and The Turn of the Screw, to create an installation of video and photography that plumbs the dark recesses of the human psyche, embodying a sense of fear, isolation, and uncertainty. Accompanied by the first published biography and bibliography on the artist, as well as an interview and essay by Matthew Drutt, curator of the project, with contributions by Niall Mackenzie and Francis McKee.

Anna Gaskell: half life

Drutt, Matthew

At a glance, Luisa Lambri's photographs of architectural interiors might appear to be yet another example of the austere, depopulated spaces found in so much of today's photo-based work. They are, however, eminently different in both conception and execution, at once deeply personal and ethereal rather than wholly impartial and concrete, suffused with a delicacy and intimacy that is diametrically opposed to the stark realism found in the works of, say, Thomas Ruff or Candida H fer. Since Lambri initiated what has become a sustained engagement with architecture and photography in 1997, she has endeavored to strike a subtle balance between objectivity and subjectivity, creating interpretations of spaces rather than documents of them, eliciting something minimal, abstract, and nonspecific that is imprinted by memory and desire in the process. For her project at The Menil Collection, Lambri has been commissioned to photograph Menil House, the home designed by Philip Johnson for John and Dominique de Menil in 1951, as well as The Menil Collection designed by Renzo Piano in 1987. These will be presented along with a selection of her previously unpublished projects.

Luisa Lambri: Locations

Individual Artists

Catálogo de la exposición del pintor neoyorkino. Este proyecto Cold Mountain (1988-1991) nace tras un momento de crisis personal y de madurez artística, y parte de su atracción por la caligrafía y la poesía chinas, así como de la herencia del expresionismo abstracto y la influencia de Jackson Pollock. Consituye una plasmación del principio oriental de que la pintura es una forma de escritura.

Brice Marden: Cold Mountain

RICHARDSON, Brenda

One of the leading proponents of the Pop Art movement, Jasper Johns culled his source material from popular culture with a preoccupation for the enigmatic character of everyday objects, language and numeric systems. This modest volume reviews the artist's broad career via his works on paper and plastic, surveying 30 objects spanning the years 1955-2001, charting his interests, techniques and aesthetic evolution.

Jasper Johns: Drawings

ROSENTHAL, Mark

This is the first major exploration of the works of American abstract painter and watercolorist Suzan Frecon (b. 1941), critically acclaimed for her sensitive arrangement of color, form, and texture, and for the philosophical resonance of her art. By restricting herself to nonrepresentational forms, earth-based colors, and, in the case of her watercolors, “found” pieces of paper, Frecon achieves an unequaled sense of balance and openness in her work. The book features ten oil paintings and thirty watercolors dating from the late 1990s to 2007. 
form, color, illumination celebrates the uniqueness of Frecon's painting and articulates how her work distinguishes itself within the history of abstract painting. The authors describe in-depth how her artistic process and materials are an integral part of her focus and aesthetic. Included is an essay revealing the "ethics” of her aesthetics––an argument for abstraction and an attention to truth that is not divorced from social and environmental concerns.

form, color, illumination: Suzan Frecon painting

Eckhardt, Sarah

Loock, Ulrich

Helfenstein, Josef

Rinder, Lawrence

Frehner, Matthias

NeoHooDoo, a phrase coined by the poet Ishmael Reed in 1970, celebrates the practice of rituals, folklore, and spirituality in the Americas beyond the scope of Christianity and organized religion. The endurance of these centuries-old traditions of magic and healing are the unique focus of this book. Exploring how spirituality influenced artists in the late 20th century and bringing together an intergenerational group of artists from North, Central, and South America, NeoHooDoo reveals the wider implications of ritualized practice in contemporary art.
This book examines the work of thirty-three artists––including Jimmie Durham, David Hammons, José Bedia, Rebecca Belmore, and James Lee Byars––who began using ritualistic practices during the 1970s and 1980s as a way of reinterpreting aspects of their cultural heritage. Younger artists such as Tania Bruguera and Michael Joo are shown to have drawn upon the iconography of ritual. The original essays, which range over artistic use of ritual as a form of therapy, catharsis, or political critique, stand alongside contributions from NeoHooDoo’s key sources of inspiration: Robert Farris Thompson, Ishmael Reed, and Quincy Troupe.

NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith

Reed, Ishmaël

The subversive, often jarringly direct sculptures of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) are acclaimed for their seemingly absurd juxtapositions and uncanny photorealism. Reflecting deep suspicions of religious and political authorities, these constructions serve as sardonic critiques of existing power structures, forcing the viewer to challenge his or her understanding of symbols, both iconic and commonplace. This publication features new works by Cattelan, as well as several of his large-scale pieces dating from 2003 to 2007, all of which are considered in the context of the Menil’s remarkable holdings, with a focus on contemporary art. To this end, we see how works by artists such as Lucio Fontana, Robert Morris, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol “converse” with Cattelan’s art. With commentary from Franklin Sirmans, this book presents the rare opportunity to appreciate Cattelan’s works amid the backdrop of the 20th century.

Maurizio Cattelan: Is There Life Before Death?

Sirmans, Franklin

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Books by The Menil Collection