Contemporary African art since 1980

Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu. 2009

Contemporary African Art Since 1980 is the first major survey of the work of contemporary African artists from diverse situations, locations, and generations who work either in or outside of Africa, but whose practices engage and occupy the social and cultural complexities of the continent since the past 30 years. Its frame of analysis is absorbed with historical transitions: from the end of the postcolonial utopias of the sixties during the 1980s to the geopolitical, economic, technological, and cultural shifts incited by globalization. This book is both narrower in focus in the periods it reflects on, and specific in the ground it covers. It begins by addressing the tumultuous landscape of contemporary Africa, examining landmarks and narratives, exploring divergent systems of representation, and interrogating the ways artists have responded to change and have incorporated new aesthetic principles and artistic concepts, images and imaginaries to deal with such changes. Organized in chronological order, the book covers all major artistic mediums: painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, drawing, collage. It also covers aesthetic forms and genres, from conceptual to formalist, abstract to figurative practices. Moving between discursive and theoretical registers, the principal questions the book analyzes are: what and when is contemporary African art? Who might be included in the framing of such a conceptual identity? It also addresses the question of globalization and contemporary African art. (Amazon)

The contemporary art book : the essential guide to 200 of the world's most widely exhibited artists

Charlotte Bonham-Carter, David Hodge. 2009

Without doubt, the international contemporary art stage increases annually, drawing new crowds and new interest. Whilst enticing, contemporary art can be bewildering. This accessible and beautifully produced guide will pinpoint key artists and events, and so help demystify a generation of rapid change in the art world. The A-Z listing (by artist's name) will feature 200 of the most widely exhibited and remarkable artists who have made substantial contributions over the past 40 years; with biographies, insights into their key works and cross-referencing to linked artists, themes and movements. This essential directory will clarify new art developments for a wide audience and highlight international venues and events to visit. The comparative titles include: "Art Now" by Taschen with smaller format, and directory of cutting-edge artists, which doesn't include the progenitors of contemporary art; "20th Century Art Book" by Phaidon Press, stops at year 2000; and, "Cream and Ice Cream" from Phaidon Press with cutting-edge new artists for a niche audience. (Amazon)

A face to the world : on self-portraits

Laura Cumming. 2009

Focusing on the art of self-portraiture, this effortlessly engaging exploration of the lives of artists sheds fascinating light on some of the most extraordinary portraits in art history. Self-portraits catch your eye. They seem to do it deliberately. Walk into any art gallery and they draw attention to themselves. Come across them in the world's museums and you get a strange shock of recognition, rather like glimpsing your own reflection. For in picturing themselves artists reveal something far deeper than their own physical looks: the truth about how they hope to be viewed by the world, and how they wish to see themselves. In this beautifully written and lavishly illustrated book, Laura Cumming, art critic of the Observer, investigates the drama of the self-portrait, from Durer, Rembrandt and Velazquez to Munch, Picasso, Warhol and the present day. She considers how and why self-portraits look as they do and what they reveal about the artist's innermost sense of self -- as well as the curious ways in which they may imitate our behaviour in real life. Drawing on art, literature, history, philosophy and biography to examine the creative process in an entirely fresh way, Cumming offers a riveting insight into the intimate truths and elaborate fictions of self-portraiture and the lives of those who practise it. A work of remarkable depth, scope and power, this is a book for anyone who has ever wondered about the strange dichotomy between the innermost self and the self we choose to present for posterity -- our face to the world. [Amazon]

John Piper, Myfanwy Piper : lives in art

Frances Spalding. 2009

Art historian Frances Spalding here provides an exuberant and richly illustrated dual biography of John Piper--one of the best loved and capacious English artists--and his wife the librettist Myfanwy Piper, collaborator with Benjamin Britten. Together they stood at the heart of the English cultural landscape of the mid-20th century. Drawing on substantial original research, including many interviews with those who had either known or worked with the Pipers, Spalding's biography sheds new light on the story of British art in the 1930s. In the middle of this decade, the Pipers were at the forefront of avant-garde activities in England, with Myfanwy editing the most advanced art magazine of the day and John working alongside Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and others. The book contains 80 color and 80 black-and-white plates, and also presents a wealth of information on the major commissions of John Piper's lengthy career as well as his work in print-making, stained glass, illustration, theatre design, and fireworks. And it illuminates Myfanwy Piper's collaborations with the composers Benjamin Britten and Alun Hoddinott, and her role as Betjeman's muse. (Amazon )

Magritte : attempting the impossible

Siegfried Gohr. 2009

The ongoing relevance of Belgian painter Rene Magritte may lie in the semiotic character of his work and its ability to create chasms between the world, its surfaces and the signs we use to occupy it. Magritte's paintings offer a space for the viewer to contemplate the emptiness of signs and to locate that emptiness in a world we recognize--indeed, the artist relies on the props of normalcy in order to upend, invert and collapse them into the terra incognita where life leaves off and art begins. "The mind loves the unknown," he avowed, "it loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown." In Attempting the Impossible we have a new definitive Magritte monograph, replacing David Sylvester's volume of the early 1990s. Featuring more than 300 works, it contains much unpublished material and includes chapters covering Magritte's photography, drawings and influence on German and American contemporary art. Each chapter opens with a close reading of a key work--such as "The Treachery of Images" ("This is not a pipe") of 1928-29--and a reconstruction of its intellectual and historical contexts. Art historian Siegfried Gohr examines Magritte's marriage and friendships, the phases of his work (from his sunlit Renoir period and his "periode vache" to his bright and visually arresting postwar work, which had such an influence on the advertising industry), the Belgian roots of his wit and sensibility and his word paintings and investigations into the paradoxes of representation. (Amazon)

Revolution on paper : Mexican prints 1910-1960

Dawn Ades and Alison McClean with the assistance of Laura Campbell ; edited by Mark McDonald. 2009

Between 1910 and 1920, Mexico was convulsed by socialist revolution, from which emerged a strong left-wing government that laid great stress on art as a vehicle for promoting revolutionary values. This led to a pioneering programme to cover the walls of public buildings with vast murals and, later, to setting up print workshops to produce works for mass distribution and education. This book is published to accompany the first ever exhibition on this period to be held in Europe, on view at the British Museum from 27 October 28 February 2010. It will feature approximately 130 prints by over 40 artists, including the three great men of Mexican art of the period: Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. In this title, a fascinating range of material includes not only single-sheet artists prints but also large posters with designs in woodcut or lithography, as well as illustrated books on many different themes. Also included are earlier works by the popular engraver Jose Guadalupe Posada, adopted by the revolutionaries as the archetypal printmaker working for the people, and whose macabre dances of skeletons have always fascinated Europeans. Essays by Alison McClean and Dawn Ades will set Mexican printmaking in its artistic and political context. The book will also contain concise biographies of all the artists featured. (Amazon)

The invention of New Zealand : art & national identity, 1930-1970

Francis Pound. 2009

Engagingly written by one of New Zealand's most brilliant and original art historians, this study of 20th-century New Zealand art helps define a national identity within the cultural context of art and literature. The essence of New Zealand and the invention of a specifically New Zealand high culture is presented and celebrated in this beautifully illustrated volume. (Amazon)

Yayoi Kusama

Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata, Udo Kultermann

CHECK OUT Yayoi Kusama's current exhibition at City Gallery, Wellington (until 7 February 2010)

This is a monograph on the extraordinary 40 year career of Japanese sculptor and performance artist Yayoi Kusama, recently the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, which toured the United States and Japan through 1999. In January-March 2000 the Serpentine Gallery, London will be presenting a large solo exhibition devoted to Kusama's work. Internationally noted for her soft sculptures an psychedelic installations, Kusama explores themes of love, infinity and obsession throughout her work, from her net-like pattern paintings begun in 1959, to her Pop-inspired love happenings in the 1960s, to installations in which every surface has been compulsively covered in polka-dots, mirrors or stuffed phallus-like protrusions. A visionary whose work is unique in the panorama of post-war art, Yayoi Kusama is known not only as an artist but also as a fashion-designer, poet and novelist - all documented in this comprehensive monograph. (Amazon)

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