Vern Blosum


Book Description

Vern Blosum does not exist. The story can be told in just a few lines: in 1961 an artist paints five canvases inspired by pages in a horticulture book; then came parking meters bearing temporal commentaries, water hydrants, and animals.Some of them were shown at Leo Castelli Gallery, sold to collectors and public institutions, included in seminal exhibitions or books on Pop art: a seemingly normal progression in an artist's career, were it not for a rumor that emerged regarding his true identity.Alfred H. Barr, the Director of MoMA, New York, started to worry about it in 1964 and, after extensive inquiries, came to the conclusion that Vern Blosum did not exist. His paintings were taken down or sent back to storage, and the artist's name fell into obscurity. Vern Blosum does not exist, but his work does. And that is precisely what this book aims to reveal.Published in the HAPAX series with the Kunsthalle Bern.




Nothing But Flowers


Book Description

An opulent, joyful homage to the many ways of painting flowers, from Charles Burchfield to Amy Sillman "Flowers are always working in the service of the passage of time," writes Helen Molesworth in the opening pages of Nothing but Flowers. "In all of the paintings in this book where flowers are depicted, innocently standing in their vases, the minor gestures of gathering, arranging and display can be seen as a verb list dedicated to world-building." This clothbound volume gathers paintings of flowers by more than 50 artists from Charles Burchfield to Amy Sillman, Joe Brainard to Lisa Yuskavage, who have explored the perennial appeal of this richest and yet simplest of subjects. Nothing but Flowersdemonstrates the capacity of the humble botanical motif to capture sorrow, stimulate rehabilitation, and guide us through periods of mourning, celebration and rebirth. Writers Hilton Als, Helen Molesworth, Sarah Nicole Prickett and David Rimanelli contribute meditations on the many resonances of flowers in art. Artists include: Gertrude Abercrombie, Marina Adams, Henni Alftan, Ed Baynard, Nell Blaine, Dike Blair, Vern Blosum, Joe Brainard, Cecily Brown, Charles Burchfield, Matt Connors, Andrew Cranston, Ann Craven, Stephanie Crawford, Somaya Critchlow, Verne Dawson, Lois Dodd, Peter Doig, Nicole Eisenman, Ida Ekblad, Minnie Evans, Marley Freeman, Jane Freilicher, Mark Grotjahn, James Harrison, Lubaina Himid, Samuel Hindolo, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Max Jansons, Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Sanya Kantarovsky, Alex Katz, Karen Kilimnik, Zenzaburo Kojima, Matvey Levenstein, Shannon Cartier Lucy, Calvin Marcus, Helen Marden, Jeanette Mundt, Soumya Netrabile, Woody De Othello, Sanou Oumar, Jennifer Packer, Nicolas Party, Hilary Pecis, Richard Pettibone, Elizabeth Peyton, Amy Sillman, Elaine Sturtevant, Tabboo!, Honor Titus, Uman, Susan Jane Walp, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, Matthew Wong, Albert York, Manoucher Yektai and Lisa Yuskavage.




Raphael Hefti


Book Description

Raphael Hefti (b. 1978, lives and works in London and Zurich) has a singular approach to experimentation with materials: fascinated with processes and often inventing his own, he blurs boundaries between natural and industrial, abstract, and representational.He frequently collaborates with technicians and scientists to reveal unexpected beauty in ordinary materials, referring to processes that otherwise remain invisible but which form the crucial substructure of contemporary culture.Recent solo exhibitions by Hefti include CAPC Bordeaux (2013), White Cube Gallery, London (2013) and Camden Arts Centre, London (2012). He was also included in the group exhibitions "Flex-Sil Reloaded" at the Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2013), "How to Work (More For) Less" at the Kunsthalle Basel (2011), "Minimal Myth" Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam (2012), and in 2012 he won the Swiss Art Award national prize.The book includes an essay by Alex Farquharson, a conversation with Adam Szymczyk, and an essay by Harry Burke.Published in the HAPAX series with Nottingham Contemporary.




The Jean Freeman Gallery Does Not Exist


Book Description

An examination of a 1970s Conceptual art project—advertisements for fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery—that hoodwinked the New York art world. From the summer of 1970 to March 1971, advertisements appeared in four leading art magazines—Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, and ARTnews—for a group show and six solo exhibitions at the Jean Freeman Gallery at 26 West Fifty-Seventh Street, in the heart of Manhattan's gallery district. As gallery goers soon discovered, this address did not exist—the street numbers went from 16 to 20 to 24 to 28—and neither did the art supposedly exhibited there. The ads were promoting fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery. The scheme, eventually exposed by a New York Times reporter, was concocted by the artist Terry Fugate-Wilcox as both work of art and critique of the art world. In this book, Christopher Howard brings this forgotten Conceptual art project back into view. Howard demonstrates that Fugate-Wilcox's project was an exceptionally clever embodiment of many important aspects of Conceptualism, incisively synthesizing the major aesthetic issues of its time—documentation and dematerialization, serialism and process, text and image, publishing and publicity. He puts the Jean Freeman Gallery in the context of other magazine-based work by Mel Bochner, Judy Chicago, Yoko Ono, and Ed Ruscha, and compares the fictional artists' projects with actual Earthworks by Walter De Maria, Peter Hutchinson, Dennis Oppenheim, and more. Despite the deadpan perfection of the Jean Freeman Gallery project, the art establishment marginalized its creator, and the project itself was virtually erased from art history. Howard corrects these omissions, drawing on deep archival research, personal interviews, and investigation of fine-printed clues to shed new light on a New York art world mystery.




The Jean Freeman Gallery Does Not Exist


Book Description

An examination of a 1970s Conceptual art project—advertisements for fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery—that hoodwinked the New York art world. From the summer of 1970 to March 1971, advertisements appeared in four leading art magazines—Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, and ARTnews—for a group show and six solo exhibitions at the Jean Freeman Gallery at 26 West Fifty-Seventh Street, in the heart of Manhattan's gallery district. As gallery goers soon discovered, this address did not exist—the street numbers went from 16 to 20 to 24 to 28—and neither did the art supposedly exhibited there. The ads were promoting fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery. The scheme, eventually exposed by a New York Times reporter, was concocted by the artist Terry Fugate-Wilcox as both work of art and critique of the art world. In this book, Christopher Howard brings this forgotten Conceptual art project back into view. Howard demonstrates that Fugate-Wilcox's project was an exceptionally clever embodiment of many important aspects of Conceptualism, incisively synthesizing the major aesthetic issues of its time—documentation and dematerialization, serialism and process, text and image, publishing and publicity. He puts the Jean Freeman Gallery in the context of other magazine-based work by Mel Bochner, Judy Chicago, Yoko Ono, and Ed Ruscha, and compares the fictional artists' projects with actual Earthworks by Walter De Maria, Peter Hutchinson, Dennis Oppenheim, and more. Despite the deadpan perfection of the Jean Freeman Gallery project, the art establishment marginalized its creator, and the project itself was virtually erased from art history. Howard corrects these omissions, drawing on deep archival research, personal interviews, and investigation of fine-printed clues to shed new light on a New York art world mystery.




Social Medium


Book Description

"Since the turn of the millennium, artists have been writing, and circulating their writing, like never before. The seventy-five texts gathered here--essays, criticism, manifestos, fiction, diaries, scripts, blog posts, and tweets--chart a complex era in the art world and the world at large, weighing in on the exigencies of our times in unexpected and inventive ways." -- Publisher's description.




Close to the Knives


Book Description

The “fierce, erotic, haunting, truthful” memoirs of an extraordinary artist, activist, and iconoclast who lit up late-twentieth-century New York (Dennis Cooper). One of the New York Times’ “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” David Wojnarowicz’s brief but eventful life was not easy. From a suburban adolescence marked by neglect, drugs, prostitution, and abuse to a squalid life on the streets of New York City, to fame—and infamy—as an activist and controversial visual artist whose work was lambasted in the halls of Congress, all before his early death from AIDS at age thirty-seven, Wojnarowicz seemed to be at war with a homophobic “establishment” and the world itself. Yet what emerged from the darkness was a truly extraordinary artist and human being—an angry young man of remarkable poetic sensibilities who was inordinately sympathetic to those who, like him, lived and struggled outside society’s boundaries. Close to the Knives is his searing yet strangely beautiful account told in a collection of powerful essays. An author whom reviewers have compared to Kerouac and Genet, David Wojnarowicz mesmerizes, horrifies, and delights in equal measure with his unabashed honesty. At once savage and funny, poignant and sexy, compassionate and unforgiving, his words and stories cut like knives, leaving indelible marks on all who read them.




Sturtevant


Book Description

Known for her early repetitions of the work of her contemporaries including Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol Sturtevant turned the visual logic of Pop art back on itself, using Duchamps model of the readymade to probe uncomfortably at the workings of art history in real time. Yet the aspect of her work that allowed her to be described as the one artist who cant be copied her chameleon-like embrace of other artists art is also what has allowed her to be largely overlooked in the history of postwar American art. As a woman making versions of the work of better-known male artists, she has passed almost unnoticed through the hierarchies of mid-century modernism and postmodernism, at once absent from these histories while nevertheless articulating their structures. Despite a rising reputation in Europe, Sturtevant is still largely unknown in her home country. Published to accompany the first retrospective of her work in a US museum since 1973, at The Museum of Modern Art, this publication considers Sturtevant as a uniquely American artist, with political concerns inflected specifically by her upbringing and adult life in the US. Featuring previously unpublished drawings and sketches from the artists archive, the book includes an essay by the exhibition curator that provides a comprehensive overview of the artists practice while situating it more concretely within American culture.




Grays the Mountain Sends


Book Description

Grays the Mountain Sends by Bryan Schutmaat documents the rugged landscapes and people of the great American West. The images describe a series of mining sites and small mountain towns and the people who have worked in them, built them, and a few younger people who might, or might not, be looking for a way out of them.




Lucy R. Lippard on Pop Art (Pocket Perspectives)


Book Description

Explore the dynamic world of 1960s pop art through Lucy Lippard's insightful analysis of this groundbreaking international art movement. Surprising, questioning, challenging, enriching: the Pocket Perspectives series presents timeless works by writers and thinkers who have shaped the conversation across the arts, visual culture, and history. Celebrating the undiminished vitality of their ideas today, these covetable and collectable little books embody the best of Thames & Hudson.