The Legendary Tigerman

Filipe Costa

Composed by The Legendary Tigerman and Filipe Costa

A 12-inch LP: Theme & Five Variations
Recorded live at Clube Recreativo dos Anjos, March 2015
Mixed at Bandido Sessions Studio

 is Douglas’s adaption of the 1907 political novel of the same title by Joseph Conrad. Set in London in 1886, the book recounts an anarchist’s failed plot to bomb the Greenwich Observatory and is considered among the first literary portrayals of modern-day terrorism. Consistent with Douglas’s nonlinear treatment of historical events within his practice, his version sets the action within the context of Portugal’s so-called “Hot Summer” of 1975, which ended the turbulent period between the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 (a bloodless coup to end Europe’s longest dictatorship) and the ratification of a new constitution. During the transition to democracy, which hastened the decolonization of Portuguese colonies, numerous terrorist acts by extreme right- and left-wing groups rocked the country.

The Secret Agent: Music for a Film by Stan Douglas

Stan Douglas

Noam M. Elcott

Roxana Marcoci

Dragana Vujanovic

Louise Wolthers

Foreword by Louise Wolthers and Dragana Vujanovic. Text by Noam M. Elcott. Conversation between the artist and Roxana Marcoci

“Often people confuse photography with human vision but they’re very different things”, says Stan Douglas, winner of the 2016 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. “[What] happens to our sense of our selves, our sense of time when so much of our knowledge about the world comes through these mechanical media, these inhuman media?” Attending to such questions, The Hasselblad Award 2016, which presents three series entitled 

 (2016), accompanied by two texts, offer intricate meditations on the function, construction and consumption of contemporary forms of photography. From HD cinematic images to abstract manifestations of data, each series probes the relationship between human and mechanical memory, each employing a particular synthetic process supported, if not entirely constructed, by computer software.

In one of the neo-noir mise-en-scènes of 

, two single vehicles drive through the darkness over Vancouver’s Georgia Viaduct, their headlights glowing like the road lamps punctuating the panorama. Underneath the flyover in the southwestern corner of Strathcona, lived a predominantly African Canadian community for the better half of the 20th century, until the area was bulldozed in the early 70s to make way for the so-called inner-city freeway. Using 3D modelling software, Douglas reconstructs the neighborhood from the vantage point of a drone: in 

 (2014) we see multiple rooftops and luminous windows – an inhabited environment with no people in sight. Clouding the lines between real, imagined and remembered, the series attends to the shadows of history as it materializes the memory of a marginalized community.

 radically depart from the realm of representation. 

 is a collection of digital images composed of densely packed multi-colored streaks – each streak vying for our attention. Douglas built the series from files that were corrupted in the process of shooting his well-known projects 

, on the other hand, emerged from a rigorous attempt to ‘write’ images using tailor-made software that reverse engineers what happens in a JPEG encoding, producing hypnotic shapes and colors. In his interview with Roxana Marcoci published in the book, the artist places the series in the context of his recent photographic works. Noam M. Elcott’s thorough, art historical analysis of Douglas’ approaches to photography, further offers an illuminating reading of the artist’s practice. Pushing the limits of what we know and understand to be photography, the Hasselblad Foundation recognizes Douglas as an artist who has made pioneering achievements in photographic art.

Stan Douglas: Hasselblad Award 2016

Sigmar Polke, Magnetische Landschaft (Magnetic Landscape), 1982

Elena Geuna

Guy Tosatto

The artist who dared put into question the parameters of ordinary vision. One of the main exponents of Capitalist Realism—a current that arose in the 1970s in opposition to both the Socialist Realism widespread in the countries of Eastern Europe and Western pop art—Sigmar Polke was a tireless experimenter of techniques, art materials, and chemical-alchemical processes. He created figurative paintings that drew on a vast iconographic repertoire, often inspired by everyday life, and abstract works with a powerful symbolic value, sometimes created by chance through reactions between paint and other products. The book reproduces over eighty-five of his works (including photographs and sculptures, along with numerous paintings), giving a full account of Polke’s reflections and studies made over his fifty-year career.

Sigmar Polke

Sherrie Levine, Dark Blue Moonlight After Man Ray: 11, 2016

Kay Heymer

Sherrie Levine: African Masks After Walker Evans

 continues the artist’s questioning of traditional ideas of originality and authorship, developed over four decades, and her interest in the deconstruction of images and objects from the past in order to create new relationships with contemporary audiences today. Through repetition, duplication and restatement, this series not only re-examines the central and ongoing concerns of Levine’s artistic practice but also revisits one of the most prominent subjects of her oeuvre – the work of Walker Evans.

I–XXIV 

Sherrie Levine: African Masks After Walker Evans

Richard Shiff

Widely regarded as one of the most influential artists working today, Richard Serra is known in particular for his large steel sculptural forms, which deal primarily with investigations of weight, balance, density, and scale, as well as their effect on the viewer and his/her sense of space. Serra’s relentless pursuit of these questions over the course of his celebrated career has deepened our understanding of the effects of sculpture on space and perception, and broadened the scope of what we allow the genre to address.

Published on the occasion of Serra’s exhibition 

 at David Zwirner, New York called one of “the year’s best shows” by 

this catalogue is the first in-depth overview of the artist’s works in forged steel. While he had already become known for his works in vulcanized rubber, lead, and steel, Serra first began using forged steel after encountering a large-scale forge at a steel mill in Germany in 1977. Unlike casting, wherein steel is heated until molten and poured into a mold, forging is the process of changing metal’s shape while in a solid state, through extreme heat and pressure. Serra’s first forged sculpture was 

 (1977), installed outside of the Mies van der Rohe–designed Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Since then, he has continued to use this material in different configurations and formats to create works that use forged blocks, rounds, or lintels. Designed by McCall Associates in close collaboration with the artist, 

 presents a survey of Serra’s forged sculpture since 1977, featuring new scholarship by Richard Shiff and two texts by Serra, along with dramatic photographs of the forging process. Bringing together over sixty detailed plates of forged sculptures, this unique publication not only introduces readers to an important aspect of Serra’s work, but uses these works to return to the eternal questions of weight, balance, and perception in his practice.

Richard Serra: Forged Steel

Ulrich Loock

Raymond Pettibon

Lucas Zwirner

Foreword by Dirk Luckow and Sabine Breitwieser. Introduction by Ulrich Loock and Harald Falckenberg. Texts by Ulrich Loock, Raymond Pettibon, and Lucas Zwirner

Philosophically profound, deeply literary and biting in his satire, Raymond Pettibon is the foremost draftsman of his generation, and one of America’s most important contemporary artists. Approaching “high” and “low” subject matter with equal appetite and comfort, Pettibon plumbs the depths of American sexuality, politics, subcultures, mores, and intellectual histories through themes ranging from Shakespeare to Gumby, surfers to the Bible, baseball to German Romanticism.

Published on the occasion of his major European traveling retrospective at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg – Sammlung Falckenberg, 

 presents over six hundred works from every part of the artist’s career, the majority of which have never been shown before. Arranged thematically in thirty-two chapters, this unique catalogue charts the appearance and development of the themes that have come to define Pettibon’s expansive oeuvre. Different sections are introduced with excerpts from interviews conducted with the artist, and are further discussed in a detailed appendix by curator Ulrich Loock. Beyond shedding valuable light on the genesis and cross-pollination of Pettibon’s thematic interests, this catalogue is the first to tackle the artist’s work as a whole—as a kind of hive mind of American culture whose various branches constantly address and reinterpret one another. Of particular interest are Pettibon’s own readings of individual works in the book. In excerpts paired with corresponding images, Pettibon guides readers through his complex, often meandering turns of thought; never condescending, they invite readers to enter more deeply into his thinking without sacrificing the intellectual rigor and sense of mystery that makes Pettibon’s work so compelling and challenging. The book includes a complete facsimile of his first artists’ book, 

—almost entirely unavailable for decades—in addition to numerous early drawings completed with his nephew, record covers, flyers, and sections dedicated to collages and drawings from the 1980s to today. Also featured are biographical notes compiled by Lucas Zwirner, offering a nuanced, insightful reading of Pettibon’s history, whose early life and work is often simplified and categorically tied to punk rock, and instead underscores the complexities surrounding the artist’s long-standing relationship with art, literature, and American culture. This unparalleled selection of Pettibon’s work is the definitive single volume for novices and experts alike.

Collected Works

Raymond Pettibon: Homo Americanus

Byron Coley

Jonathan Lethem

Kitty Scott

Robert Storr

Texts by Byron Coley, Jonathan Lethem, Kitty Scott, and Robert Storr

Produced in close collaboration with the artist, this comprehensive collection of Raymond Pettibon’s work spans his early flyers for the influential band Black Flag through his most recent political work, and includes previously unpublished material, as well as zines, posters, and excerpts from screenplays. Perhaps unlike any artist of his generation, Pettibon best captured the discontent and counterculture spirit of the late 1970s and early 80s in America.

Immersed in the punk scene in Southern California, he devoted his earliest work to flyers for Black Flag and zines that he created and sold in local record stores. His distinctive style took shape in those early days: slyly sophisticated pen-and-ink drawings with cartoonlike flourishes. With biting irony and a searing wit, Pettibon let loose on the hypocrisies and greed of the capitalist political machine. His work captured the attention of the Los Angeles art scene and, eventually, the international art world.

Also included is a collaboration between Jonathan Lethem and the artist, commissioned specifically for the book.

 surveys the splenetic drawings of another disaffected son of Southern California.” –Bookforum

“Pettibon’s drawings are a world unto themselves, or rather a reflection of and reaction to the world as he sees it…It’s an impressive tome, heavy, beautifully printed, and slipcased.”

Raoul De Keyser, 2009. Photo by Christophe Vander Eecken

Often understated, the emotional force of Raoul De Keyser’s cryptic and highly lyrical paintings is undeniable. Composed of very basic geometric shapes that hover between abstraction and figuration, many of De Keyser’s works seem to hint at forms just out of focus, spaces impossible to inhabit. Their power lies in their ability to suggest through simple gestures, and to compel intense contemplation. Since his death in 2012, De Keyser’s stature as a painter has only continued to grow, as has his influence on a younger generation of European painters.

 is published on the occasion of the eponymous show at David Zwirner, first presented at the London gallery in November 2015 and traveling to New York in 2016. Curated by Ulrich Loock, who contributes the catalogue’s text, the exhibition is organized around a group of twenty-two paintings that the artist completed shortly before his death. Collectively, these works have become known as 

. Imposing stark material and formal limitations, De Keyser was able to revisit in this body of work many of the major subjects and themes that occupied him throughout his nearly fifty-year career: the inconspicuous things close at hand, the landscape of the low lands where he grew up and lived all his life, and the partition of the picture plane. This elegant catalogue presents plates and details of a careful selection of paintings, beginning in the 1970s, that emphasizes the tentative way De Keyser chose to explore his themes—never approaching anything directly, hinting rather than demonstrating. Taken together, 

 reveals an uncompromising artist who continued to pose new aesthetic problems for himself—even at the end of his life—and managed to come up with original and deeply moving solutions.

Raoul De Keyser: Drift

Paul Gauguin

Donatien Grau

ekphrasis

By Paul Gauguin. Translated with an introduction by Donatien Grau

“Criticism is our censorship . . .” So begins one of the greatest invectives against criticism ever written by an artist. Paul Gauguin wrote “Racontars de rapin” only months before he died in 1903, but the essay remained unpublished until 1951. Through discussions of numerous artists, both his contemporaries and predecessors, Gauguin unpacks what he viewed as the mistakes and misjudgments behind much of art criticism, revealing not only how wrong critics’ interpretations have been, but also what it would mean to approach art properly—to really look.

Long out of print, this new translation by Donatien Grau includes an introduction that situates the essay within Gauguin’s written oeuvre, as well as explanatory notes. This text sheds light on Gauguin’s conception of art—widely considered a predecessor to Duchamp—and engages with many issues still relevant today: history, novelty, criticism, and the market. His voice feels as fresh, lively, sharp in English now as it did in French over one hundred years ago. Through Gauguin’s final piece of writing, we see the artist in the full throes of passion—for his work, for his art, for the art of others, and against anyone who would stand in his way.

As the inaugural publication in David Zwirner Books’s new 

 sets a perfect tone for the books to come. Poised between writing, art, and criticism, Gauguin brings together many different worlds, all of which should have a seat at the table during any meaningful discussion of art. With the express hope of encouraging open exchange between the world of writing and that of the visual arts, David Zwirner Books is proud to present this new edition of a lost masterpiece.

Ramblings of a Wannabe Painter

Michael Fried

Poems by Michael Fried. Photographs by James Welling

Michael Fried is as much a poet as he is a critic. His experiences among artworks and luminaries of the art world have resulted in a canonized body of criticism, but they have also provided the raw material for many of the poems in his newest collection, 

Fried’s passion, lyricism, and humor, which have been lauded by Allen Grossman and J. M. Coetzee, are on display as he explores the people and the objects that have moved him—great minds and great works of art. Along the way, Fried begins to reveal himself to the reader: he is at once a student, unsure of himself; a young man, ambitious and in love; a committed champion of artists; a world-class intellectual among intellectual peers; and a poet, transmuting the world around him. Here we find the poet-critic at his most complete.

 breaks ground for Fried by combining the eighty poems—a mix of lyrical and prose poetry—with over thirty photographs, most of them made, all of them selected, by renowned American photographer James Welling. More often than not, the photographs stand in oblique relation to the poems, as complementary pieces of a mesmerizing whole.

Written under the epigraph of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s urging in “Self-Reliance”—“Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events”—the poems engage diverse subjects: from the high modernist art world of the 1960s to a major poet’s tragic loss of memory, from exemplary works such as Edgar Degas’s 

, and Adolf Menzel’s drawings, from the lives of figures such as Edouard Manet, Anna Akhmatova, Jacques Derrida, Stanley Cavell, Iris Murdoch, Ian Hamilton, and John Harbison, to erotic love, late fatherhood, the death of parents and friends, and the onset of age. 

is a uniquely vivid and compelling volume, at once a collection of wide-ranging yet intimately related poems and a brilliant photobook, that aims to hold the reader/viewer in its spell from first page to last.

“Ever alert within the shifting frames of his forms, Michael Fried\s poems persistently surprise the real, which he rides for all it’s worth. His poetry takes shape along the fault lines of experience, as raw material in the margins of our idea of the major. Candor and calamity, tenderness and intelligent irreverence—that’s the 

—Peter Cole, 2007 MacArthur Fellow, has published several books of poems and many volumes of translations from Hebrew and Arabic, both medieval and modern. He has received numerous honors for his work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. He is the author of 

Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations

Promesse du Bonheur

Texts by Angela Lampe, Michael Baumgartner, Charles W. Haxthausen, Christine Hopfengart, Cathrin Klingsohr-Leroy

Known for its whimsy and levity, Paul Klee’s art is often considered gleefully childlike. This groundbreaking volume argues that Klee’s style emerged from a philosophical school that originated with early German Romanticism and consisted of perpetual shifts between satire and affirmation of the absolute, finite and infinite, and real and ideal. Featuring approximately 250 works, this careful appreciation of Klee connects each stage of his career to the larger philosophical context.

Exploring the satires and caricatures of Klee’s youth, his experimentations in Cubism and “mechanical theater,”and the constructivist approach of the Bauhaus school, this book follows the trajectory of Klee’s oeuvre as a reflection of prevailing styles. It closes with the artist’s final years, in which he was labeled a “degenerate artist” by the Nazi regime and struggled with illness. Viewed through the many facets of irony as a complex theme, and against the backdrop of Europe’s seismic political and artistic movements, Klee’s body of work takes on a renewed significance as one of the most critical of its generation.

Paul Klee: Irony at Work

A painting by On Kawara, titled MAY 11, 1967, dated 1967.

On Kawara, One Million Years (Past), 1970-1971, Page 2001

Tommy Simoens

Jonathan Watkins

Texts by Tommy Simoens and Jonathan Watkins

On Kawara (1932–2014) is considered to be one of the most important and most radical modern artists of our time. His oeuvre is consumed with time and place, concepts that he used to try and map out the meaning of human existence.

 focuses on Kawara’s creations from 1966, which was a key year within his oeuvre as it was the birth of his world-famous date paintings—small paintings in which he inscribed the exact date on which he created the painting in white letters and numbers on a monochromatic background. If a painting wasn’t complete by midnight, it was destroyed. Since the start of the 

 series, as the entire collection is called, in 1966, he created more than 2,000 date paintings in more than 100 different cities. The artist used a folder to accurately record the days on which he created a painting and what the format was. He also kept a smear of the paint he used and the newspaper headlines for that day in this folder. This folder, in which he documented his 1966 creations, is fully portrayed in 

In 2015, Kawara’s date paintings from 1966 were displayed in the Dhondt-Dhaenens Museum in Deurle. This was the last project that the artist collaborated on, together with the museum curator and the editor of this book, Tommy Simoens, before his death in 2014.

On Kawara: 1966

14.08.041_mama-mummy-and-mamma-predecessors-2_splash_1

Portrait of Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Photo by Stefan Ruiz

Texts by Cheryl Brutvan and Taiye Selasi

This catalogue is the first publication to focus on the work of Nigerian-born, L.A.-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby. It accompanied an exhibition of the artist's work held at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida in 2016. Contents include an introductory essay by exhibition curator Cheryl Brutvan, Taiye Selasi's text "Bye-Bye, Babar (Or: What Is An Afropolitan?)", artist interview, artist's chronology, and select bibliography and exhibition history. With full color reproductions of all works in the exhibition.

Out of stock

Njideka Akunyili Crosby: I Refuse to be Invisible

"This is a Book of Drawings that was made by me, Jason Rhoades over the time of the conception, production, erection and realization of a project / sculpture 'Perfect World'.”

 is a large-scale artist’s book consisting of over 400 single-sided reproductions of Rhoades’s drawings and handwritten notes, bound together by four aluminum screw bolts. Although originated by the artist during the presentation of his immense and critically acclaimed exhibition 

 at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg in 1999, 

 was not an actual catalogue for the show, but instead a stand-alone object produced as part of the preparation for, and creation of the piece. Intended as a sort of user’s manual, the book reveals the artist’s grappling with the enormity of the 

 exhibition, as well as the conceptual and physical challenges he was facing in his creative process more generally.

 on the occasion of the 2016 LA Art Book Fair. This numbered edition of 100 copies features all the original black and white reproductions as well as one of Rhoades’s original cover designs, a color photograph depicting his father’s garden.

Jason Rhoades: Xerox Book

Antoon Melissen

Over the course of nearly 40 years, Dutch artist Jan Schoonhoven (1914–1994) produced works on paper and sculptural reliefs, while maintaining his job as a civil servant employed by the Dutch Post Office. This new monograph places the artist, one of the most important Dutch artists of the 20th century, in an international context, arguing for his role as an influential player in European art after the Second World War.

From his central position in the Netherlandish Informal Group, associated with Art Informel, to his later involvement with the Dutch Nul group, part of the international ZERO network, Schoonhoven participated in two of the most important currents of postwar European abstraction from his hometown of Delft. This volume features many hitherto unknown works and photographs and sheds new light on the work of the “master of white.”

Jan Schoonhoven

Briony Fer

Jessamyn Fiore

Sarah Sze

Text by Briony Fer. Interview with Sarah Sze by Jessamyn Fiore

Well known for his radical “anarchitectural” interventions throughout the 1970s, Gordon Matta-Clark was always deeply, though less publicly, committed to drawing. His works on paper—which span three-dimensional reliefs, calligraphy, and notebook entries—capture the interdisciplinary spirit that defined the art world in the 1970s. Intricate and concise, they testify to his interest in the crossovers between visual and performance arts, as well as the broader integration within his oeuvre of the natural and built environment.

Documenting the artist’s extraordinary accomplishments as a draftsman, this publication originates from the 2015 solo presentation at David Zwirner, New York, entitled 

, organized in close collaboration with Jane Crawford and Jessamyn Fiore from the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. This catalogue presents in vibrant detail selections from Matta-Clark’s 

, and his own “calligraphy,” many of which have never been published. Perhaps the best known of the group, the 

 explore parallel, smaller-format versions of his physical interventions in architecture; slicing meticulously through several layers of paper, gesso, or cardboard, Matta-Clark created sculptural flat works that emphasized the voids created by the extraction of matter. Drawings with his own “calligraphy” emphasize the medium of drawing as an independent form. Abstract letters make up a code that remains indecipherable, but points toward a visionary longing to invent new languages and structures of experience. Some of the most elaborate and colorful compositions include trees, several of which refer explicitly to Matta-Clark’s 

 performance at Vassar College in upstate New York in 1971. In full-color plates, the reader can see the physical structure of his trees “dissolving” into kinetic energy and, in some drawings, becoming reduced to a multitude of arrows. Near-abstract tree shapes also incorporate his calligraphic marks, with branches constructed from imaginary letters, again emphasizing the importance of language to a new visual experience. Matta-Clark’s notebooks, which he often insisted on completing in a single sitting, are presented in elegantly curated groups. Combining elements of Surrealist automatic drawing with an interest in choreography, these works appealed to performance artists at the time—including Laurie Anderson and Trisha Brown. This unparalleled presentation of Matta-Clark’s drawings is accompanied by new and exciting scholarship by Briony Fer, as well as a conversation between Jessamyn Fiore and contemporary artist Sarah Sze; it marks a major contribution to the literature on this highly influential artist.

Drawings and Notebooks

Gordon Matta-Clark: The Beginning of Trees and the End

Eva Badura-Triska

Veit Loers

Bernhard Riff

Texts by Eva Badura-Triska, Veit Loers, and Bernhard Riff

During the 1990s, Franz West’s work moved in new and innovative stylistic directions, as his career was solidified through important international exhibitions. This publication delves into this significant decade in an effort to contextualize the evolution of West’s singular practice.

The 1990s proved critical in the development of the idiosyncratic style for which West is still known today. His key innovations from this period—which included the addition of exuberant color to his papier-mâché forms, the incorporation of furniture both as art object and as social incubator, and the inclusion of work by other artists in his own installations—resulted in dynamic, frequently interactive installations that helped to expand the possibilities of sculpture and the ways in which art is experienced. Produced on the occasion of David Zwirner’s 2014 exhibition in New York, this fully illustrated publication gives an in-depth overview of the decade, arguably the most important of the artist’s lengthy career. It features essays by noted West scholars Eva Badura-Triska and Veit Loers, as well as a personal account by Bernhard Riff on video collaborations made with the artist throughout the 1990s.

Franz West: The 1990s

Elena Filipovic

Danh Vo

Carol Bove

Tino Sehgal

Texts by Elena Filipovic, Danh Vo, Carol Bove, and Tino Sehgal

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects Without Specific Form

 documents the groundbreaking retrospective curated by Elena Filipovic with the artists Danh Vo, Carol Bove, and Tino Sehgal that traveled to Wiels Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, Fondation Beyeler in Basel, and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt in 2010 and 2011.

Organized by Wiels Contemporary Art Centre in collaboration with the 

, the exhibition offered visitors the possibility of finding a new interpretation of Gonzalez-Torres' work with each visit. Following the installation of a retrospective version of the exhibition at each institution by Elena Filipovic, an artist whose practice has been informed by Gonzalez-Torres’s work was invited to entirely re-install the show halfway through its duration. Danh Vo’s version was presented at Wiels, Carol Bove’s at the Fondation Beyeler, and Tino Sehgal’s at the Museum für Moderne Kunst. Through this structure, the exhibition evolved into several different forms—none being the definitive one.

The publication has been years in the making as Elena Filipovic and the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation worked together to find the best ways to present the complexities and nuances of the exhibition. The book includes installation views of each version of the show and an illustrated checklist with images of the artworks in every instance of their installation. The structure of the publication allows the reader to see the immensely different ways the artworks can be installed, as well as how context acted on and through each piece during the cycle of exhibitions.

Amanda Cruz

Lewis Baltz

Roland Barthes

Carlos Basualdo

Bertold Brecht

David Deitcher

Marguerite Duras

Russell Ferguson

Rainer Fuchs

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

bell hooks

Miwon Kwon

Charles Merewether

Gerardo Mosquera

Bob Nickas

Virgilio Piñera

Rainer Maria Rilke

Tim Rollins

Susan Sontag

Nancy Spector

Wallace Stevens

Susan Tallman

Anne Umland

Simon Watney

Edited by Julie Ault. Texts by Amanda Cruz, Lewis Baltz, Roland Barthes, Carlos Basualdo, Bertolt Brecht, David Deitcher, Marguerite Duras, Russell Ferguson, Rainer Fuchs, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, bell hooks, Miwon Kwon, Charles Merewether, Gerardo Mosquera, Bob Nickas, Virgilio Piñera, Rainer Maria Rilke, Tim Rollins, Susan Sontag, Nancy Spector, Wallace Stevens, Robert Storr, Susan Tallman, Anne Umland, and Simon Watney. Chronology by Julie Ault

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, one of the most influential artists of his generation, lived and worked resolutely according to his own democratic ideology, determined to “make this a better place for everyone.” Combining principles of conceptual art, minimalism, political activism, and poetic beauty, Gonzalez-Torres’s ever-changing arsenal included public billboards, give-away piles of candy or posters, and ordinary objects (clocks, mirrors, light fixtures) often used to startling effect. His work challenged the notions of public and private space, originality, authorship, and—most significantly—the authoritative structure in which he functioned.

Now in its second edition, Gonzalez-Torres’s editor Julie Ault has amassed a comprehensive monograph of this important artist. In the spirit of the artist’s method, Ault rethinks the very idea of what a monograph should be. The book, which places strong emphasis on the written word, contains texts by Robert Storr and Miwon Kwon among other notables, as well as significant critical essays, exhibition statements, transcripts from lectures, personal correspondence, and writings that influenced Gonzalez-Torres and his work. Ample visual documentation adds another decisive layer of content. We see works not just in their finality, but often witness their transformation over a lifespan. This collection is a critical reference for the history of contemporary art.

With hundreds of pages of new and previously unpublished essays, notes, and letters, 

 is the most comprehensive collection of the artist’s writings assembled to date.

This timely publication includes Judd’s best-known essays, as well as little-known texts previously published in limited editions. Moreover, this new collection also includes unpublished college essays and hundreds of never-before-seen notes, a critical but unknown part of Judd’s writing practice.

Judd’s earliest published writing, consisting largely of art reviews for hire, defined the terms of art criticism in the 1960s, but his essays as an undergraduate at Columbia University in New York, published here for the first time, contain the seeds of his later writing, and allow readers to trace the development of his critical style. The writings that followed Judd’s early reviews are no less significant art-historically, but have been relegated to smaller publications and have remained largely unavailable until now. The largest addition of newly available material is Judd’s unpublished notes—transcribed from his handwritten accounts of and reactions to subjects ranging from the politics of his time, to the literary texts he admired most. In these intimate reflections we see Judd’s thinking at his least mediated—a mind continuing to grapple with questions of its moment, thinking them through, changing positions, and demonstrating the intensity of thought that continues to make Judd such a formidable presence in contemporary visual art.

Edited by the artist’s son, Judd Foundation curator and co-president Flavin Judd, and Judd Foundation archivist Caitlin Murray, this volume finally provides readers with the full extent of Donald Judd’s influence on contemporary art, art history, and art criticism.

Donald Judd Writings

Claudia Jolles

Ellie Meyer

Texts by Claudia Jolles, Flavin Judd, and Ellie Meyer

The work of Donald Judd, one of the most significant American artists of the postwar period, has come to define Minimalist art, a label to which the artist strongly objected. The unaffected, straightforward quality of Judd’s work demonstrates his strong interest in color, form, material, and space. Wanting to create works that could assume a direct material and physical presence without recourse to grand philosophical statements, Judd eschewed classical ideals of representational sculpture and created works that relied on clear, definite objects.

 represents the first-ever focused examination of Judd’s works in Cor-ten steel, which he began to produce in earnest in 1989 and would continue to elaborate on until his death in 1994. Cor-ten is an alloy that makes steel more resistant to corrosion, and eliminates the need for paint. With its distinctive red-brown patina, Cor-ten afforded Judd a new medium for exploring the relationship between surface and volume, as well as color and form. Prior to 1989, Judd executed a handful of works in Cor-ten primarily as outdoor commissions or site-specific works. This volume is produced on the occasion of the 2015 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York. Designed in close collaboration with Flavin Judd and Judd Foundation, 

 sheds new light on a body of work that represents the culmination of three decades of aesthetic output and underscores the mastery and control over material and space that characterizes Judd’s practice as a whole.

Donald Judd: Cor-ten

Robin Clark

A key member of the Light and Space movement in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s, De Wain Valentine is distinguished in particular by his in-depth understanding of synthetic materials and his ability to transform industrial products into artworks that investigate the seductive power of light, transparency, reflection, and surface. Published in conjunction with his critically lauded 2015 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, 

De Wain Valentine: Works from the 1960s and 1970s

 focuses on the artist’s pioneering achievements in polyester resin. A new scholarly text by Robin Clark on Valentine’s production from this period details his personal history and his innovations with this material. Influenced by the vast California landscape, he was initially confronted with material limitations: at the time, polyester resins could not be poured in volumes exceeding fifty pounds. Not willing to accept this restriction, Valentine partnered with Hastings Plastics in 1966 to create an entirely new resin that could be cast in larger quantities. The resulting material, known as Valentine MasKast Resin, allowed the artist to dramatically increase the scale of his work. With its inherent ability to contain and reflect light, while maintaining a powerful luminous dimension, polyester resin would form the foundation of Valentine’s practice.

 includes rich color plates of Valentine’s “Columns,” corporeally scaled sculptures cast in colored polyester resins that recede from a wider base up to a narrow tip; his “Circles,” 6-foot discs that display not only the artist’s mastery of geometrical form, but also highlight his command of color in sculpture; and a selection of the artist’s smaller forms—rings, discs, and double pyramids. The catalogue also features extensive documentation of 

 (1975–1976), two massive, identical columns that each stand twelve feet tall. Originally executed for Baxter Travenol Laboratories’ newly built corporate headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois, Valentine had conceived of two immense vertical columns standing side by side, but because of architectural modifications (the ceiling in the company’s reception area was lowered at a late stage of construction), Valentine was forced to install the two slabs on their sides. Forty years after its initial conception, the exhibition at David Zwirner represented the first time this work was presented in its intended configuration.

Abigail McEwen

Pedro de Oraá

Susanna Temkin

Text by Abigail McEwen. Interview with Pedro de Oraá by Lucas Zwirner. Illustrated chronology by Susanna Temkin

Radical political shifts that raged throughout Cuba in the 1950s coincided with the development of Cuban geometric abstraction and, notably, the formation of Los Diez Pintores Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters). The decade was marked by widespread turmoil and corruption following the 1952 military coup and by rising nationalist sentiments. At the same time, Havana was undergoing rapid urbanization and quickly becoming an international city. Against this vibrant backdrop, artists sought a new visual language in which art, specifically abstract art, could function as political and social practice.

 marks one of the first major presentations outside of Cuba to focus exclusively on the origins of concretism in the country. It includes important works from the late 1940s through the early 1960s by the twelve artists who were at different times associated with the short-lived group: Pedro Álvarez, Wifredo Arcay, Mario Carreño, Salvador Corratgé, Sandú Darié, Luis Martínez Pedro, Alberto Menocal, José M. Mijares, Pedro de Oraá, José Ángel Rosabal, Loló Soldevilla, and Rafael Soriano. Many of the group’s members had traveled widely in the preceding years and corresponded with those at the forefront of European and South American abstract movements.

Produced on the occasion of the major exhibition at David Zwirner, 

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