Pierre Restany

Klaus Ottmann

Fire at the Heart of the Void (Art & Knowledge)

Yves Klein

Works, Writings, Interviews

While there is no essentialist quality of genius, the postmodern artist can reach the extraordinary by way of an active-passive Genius Decision, which is engaged in an activity of failure in its desire to represent the nonrepresentable.

The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition, Second, Revised and Expanded Edition

The Genius Decision

Mark Morrisroe

Artistic photobook. Catalog of an exhibition held at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, November 27, 2010 - February 13, 2011; Artists Space, New York, Fall 2011; Villa Stuck, Munich, Spring 2012.

This is an exploration of two artists' creative dialogue with gardens and nature: the French post-impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) and the contemporary American artist Jennifer Bartlett (b. 1941). Both were avid gardeners, and gardens, especially the ones they created for themselves, had a lifelong influence on both artists' works. Garden views from both inside the house and the outside became become a defining subject. This volume brings together over 45 paintings, drawings, and prints by Bonnard and Bartlett. Gardens are a recurrent theme throughout Bonnard's oeuvre, from the early days of Le Clos, the Bonnard summer home in the Dauphiné, and his first garden at Vernonnet, west of Paris, to his final home, Le Bosquet near Cagnes, which became his favorite place to paint and from which he seldom traveled. Jennifer Bartlett emerged in the mid-1970s to become one of the leading American artists of her time, and one of the first female painters of her generation to be both commercially successful and critically acclaimed. Since the 1990s, Bartlett has been spending her summers in a small cottage near the beach in Amagansett, on Long Island's East End. Like Bonnard's paintings of gardens, Bartlett's In the Garden series continues to reveal its true urgency through of the artist's relationship to nature and dialogue with the many languages in painterly history.

In and Out of the Garden

Jennifer Bartlett & Pierre Bonnard

Pamela Auchincloss

Social Realism was first labeled as a definable art movement in the 1920s, when art and propaganda merged during the Russian Revolution. Much of today's social art is beyond mere "social realism," following a path from realism to abstraction and transcendence, initially trod by artists such as Mark Rothko and Barnett, An abstraction encoded with utopian ideology. In the late twentieth century a strikingly different kind of social realism emerged. Though propaganda plays heavily into the mix, So does a darker reality borne out on the streets of urban centers and inrual backyards, languishing in a post-industrial depression. Since the 1980s, socially conscious artists have increasingly addressed issues of narcissism/vanity, consumption, commerce, sex, drugs, and AIDS. Work by 25 artists is represented inSocial Strategies, including Jenny Holzer, Gilbert & George, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

Redefining Social Realism

Social Strategies

How did a 10-year-old Russian immigrant named Marcus Rothkowitz, who arrived at Ellis Island in 1913 with his mother, become Mark Rothko, one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century? Did you know that: in his youth, he wanted to be an actor, and that the theater remained his first love? he was largely self-taught? he painted figuratively for more than half of his life? he saw even his most abstract and meditative works as dramas? 72 illustrations, including 61 plates in full color

Mark Rothko

The Essential

Phillips Collection

Dorothy M. Kosinski

Exhibition The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. 6.10.2012-6.1.2013 and Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, 26.3.-30.6.2013

Klaus Ottmann

Books

Your next favorite book is out there