Romaine Brooks

H.D.

Vernon Lee

Gertrude Stein

Virginia Woolf

Cynthia Zarin

ekphrasis

Photograph of Women Authors collection of ekphrasis books, published by David Zwirner Books

This curated bundle features writing by women authors who explore the intersection of art, literature, and personal experience. From poetic portraits to memoirs to essays on the nature of artistic expression, this selection of books offers a diverse range of voices and perspectives.

Brooks, H.D., Lee, Stein, Woolf, Zarin

Women Authors (ekphrasis)

Raoul De Keyser, 2009. Photo by Christophe Vander Eecken

Edited by Steven Jacobs and Hilde D'haeyere. Contributions by Steven Jacobs, Hilde D'haeyere, Wouter De Vleeschouwer, Benedict Vandaele, and Klaartje Vanthuyne

This book focuses on Belgian artist Raoul De Keyser's hitherto understudied early works, including a catalogue raisonné of paintings made between 1964 and 1980. A leading exponent of European painting from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, De Keyser started painting in the 1940s but aborted his artistic career in the early 1950s, becoming a civil servant and journalist. Only in 1964 did he take up painting again with works blending the influence of Raveel, Dine, Held, and Noland. Soon, he developed his own idiom, evolving into a more subdued and abstract style in the 1970s. Based on extensive archival research, this book contains a wealth of artworks, photographs, posters, and documents that never have been published before.

Catalogue of Paintings 1964–1980

Raoul De Keyser: Early Works

Portrait of Chris Ofili, 2017. Photo by Carlos Arias

Jason Allen-Paisant

Text by the studio of Chris Ofili. Poems by Jason Allen-Paisant

A stunning presentation of the acclaimed British painter Chris Ofili’s newest body of work that continues his exploration of Shakespeare’s Othello

Renowned for his rich, multilayered paintings, Ofili here expands his engagement with William Shakespeare’s 

(1603–1604). The transmuting colors and forms of the watercolors and paintings in this volume reflect the complex interiority of the character Othello—his vulnerabilities and his joyful sorrows. The artist also considers these works, which investigate ideas of authenticity, meaning, and selfhood, to be partly self-portraits. As viewers and readers, encountering a subject whose features split and shift with each repeated representation, we are asked to consider metamorphosis, love, the bearing of outside influences on our inner selves, and the force we exercise on the world.

Published on the occasion of a two-site exhibition staged by David Zwirner Paris and Victoria Miro in Venice, the catalogue includes a text from Ofili’s studio and a selection of poems by Jason Allen-Paisant from his 2023 collection 

Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow, Victoria Miro/David Zwirner Books, 2024

Interior spread from Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow

Interior spread from Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow, Victoria Miro/David Zwirner Books, 2024

interior spread, Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow, Victoria Miro/David Zwirner Books, 2024

Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow

 was published on the occasion of Christopher Williams’s exhibition 

Werbung: A 48 hour display of quality framing materials

 at Maxwell Graham, New York. The book includes 124 typographic poems by Williams, based on the format of 1970s film festival press packets which contained camera-ready art for advertising. These poems are presented as camera-ready art to be used to advertise the availability of ‘Inklusive’ in paperback, broadcast radio, and long play vinyl.

Christopher Williams: Inklusive 1972 / Inclusive 1974

Luc Tuymans in his studio, 2022. Photo by Otman Q

Éric de Chassey

Joshua Cohen

Jonathan Crary

Lynne Tillman

Su Wei

Cover of a book titled Luc Tuymans (Special Edition) published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

This special edition signed by the artist and featuring a slipcase is available in a limited run of 250 copies.

Texts by Éric de Chassey, Joshua Cohen, Jonathan Crary, Lynne Tillman, and Su Wei

Stunning translations of images from the internet and the artist’s iPhone to canvas, Luc Tuymans’s quiet paintings belie an underlying moral complexity.



“Once Tuymans’s muted compositions felt fatalistic; now they appear as committed assaults on our digital fragmentation and the lies that thrive in its cracks.” —Jason Farago, 



One of the most important painters working today, Luc Tuymans pioneered a distinctive figurative style beginning in the 1980s that has proven singularly influential among his peers as well as subsequent generations of artists. Tuymans’s deeply resonant compositions insist on the power of images to simultaneously convey and conceal meaning. Rendered in a restrained and muted palette, the artist’s canvases are based on preexisting imagery from a range of historical, cultural, and popular media sources.

This monograph of recent work reveals how Tuymans’s paintings grasp the mystery, strangeness, and possibilities of contemporary image making. It highlights a body of work that Tuymans has been working on since 2020, bringing together three exhibitions: 

, at David Zwirner, New York. For this trilogy, Tuymans has heightened the contrast and saturation in his paintings, underscoring the urgency of our contemporary global moment. With texts by the novelist Joshua Cohen, the art historians Jonathan Crary and Éric de Chassey, the writer and critic Lynne Tillman, and the writer Su Wei, this publication offers an in-depth, dimensional understanding of both Tuymans’s outlook and his assertion of the relevance of painting in our digitally saturated world.

Interior spread of a book titled Luc Tuymans (Special Edition) published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

Luc Tuymans: Nice (Special Edition)

Gaby Bazin

Vineet Lal

Meet the Typographer, David Zwirner Books, 2024

Written and illustrated by Gaby Bazin. Translated by Vineet Lal

Enter the workshop, meet the typographer, and discover the world of letterpress printing.

 showcases the fascinating evolution and technique of letterpress printing in colorful and engaging illustrations. Armed with little characters made of lead, a typographer reveals the secrets of his craft and its history, from Gutenberg to the present. Gaby Bazin takes readers into the studio, unveiling the enchanting world of movable type.

Following the mission of the children’s imprint at David Zwirner Books, this publication illuminates yet another creative role in the art industry, offering a distinct perspective on the printed medium and the fine art of typography.

Cover of a book titled Meet the Typographer, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

Interior spread of a book titled Meet the Typographer, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

Meet the Typographer

Doro Globus

Rose Blake

Books Making a great exhibition and I Am an artist by David Zwirner Books

 series, a collaborative project by author Doro Globus and illustrator Rose Blake, aims to dismantle barriers within the art world, paving a colorful and accessible path for budding artists. Through engaging narratives, hands-on activities, and insights into the lives of a diversity of artists, these books provide a gateway for children in classrooms everywhere to explore their creative impulses and discover the boundless possibilities of self-expression.

 offers young readers exciting insights into the many ways artists work and the reasons why they make art. Geared to children ages 4 to 8, but with appeal for all ages, this colorful and playful book asks: Who are artists? Why do they make art? What materials do they use? What tools do they work with? What forms do their artworks take?

 explores the inner workings of artists and museums. This fun, inside look at the life of an artwork shows the journey of two artists’ work from studio to exhibition. Stopping along the way we meet colorful characters—curators, photographers, shippers, museum visitors, and more!

Interior spread, Making a Great Exhibition, David Zwirner Books, 2024

How Art Works

A scuplture by Yayoi Kusama called Dancing Pumpkin dated 2020

Yayoi Kusama, 2021.  Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

Lynn Zelevansky

Robert Slifkin

Cover of a book titled Yayoi Kusama (Special Edition), published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

This special edition featuring a slipcase is available in a limited run of 300 hand-numbered copies.

Texts by Robert Slifkin and Lynn Zelevansky

The newest book on the internationally celebrated Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama presents her latest monumental and vibrant work and is the first to explore the experience of seeing it from the lens of the visitor

“My entire life has been painted here. Every day, any day. I will never cease dedicating my whole life to my love for the universe.” —Yayoi Kusama

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Kusama has created a profoundly personal oeuvre that resonates with a global audience. Distinctly recognizable, her works frequently deploy repetitive elements such as dots to evoke both microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Celebrating the visitor experience, this publication offers an immersive tour of Kusama’s 2023 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York. Illustrating thirty-five paintings, a gigantic sculptural installation of pumpkins, a trio of towering, colorful flower sculptures, and a fan-favorite Infinity Mirror Room, 

is a vivid document with varying perspectives that echo Kusama’s own.

New scholarship by Robert Slifkin considers how Kusama innovates and complicates art-historical traditions of image production and how her art seeks to connect humans with the greater cosmos. An essay by Lynn Zelevansky reflects on her own long-standing engagement with Kusama’s work and the ways in which it, across the decades, can be seen as a record of love in all its complexity: full of humanity, generosity, affection, sadness, and pain.

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers (Special Edition), David Zwirner Books, 2024

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers (Special Edition)

By Robert Storr. Edited with text by Francesca Pietropaolo

A scholarly meditation on Reinhardt’s work, bringing together his abstract painting, comics and slide lecture series

 takes as its subject the work of American artist Ad Reinhardt (1913–67). An American abstract painter, he worked in New York alongside artists including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. Renowned art critic and historian Robert Storr curated the award-winning 2013 exhibition of Reinhardt’s work at David Zwirner gallery. This book brings together, for the first time, Storr’s writings on Reinhardt’s abstract painting—for which the artist became hugely influential on the younger generations of Minimal and Conceptual practitioners—his satirical cartoons addressing political and social issues and advocating for abstract art, and his famous slide lecture series. With introductory texts by Storr and art historian Francesca Pietropaolo, this book features an essay previously published in 

 (2013) and a companion text, also written in 2013, that appears in print for the first time.

Focal Points: Ad Reinhardt

Jordan Wolfson, 2023, National Gallery of Australia. Photo by Karlee Holland. Courtesy National Gallery of Australia

Edited by Russell Storer. Contributions by Genevieve Bell, Russell Ferguson, Anne Imhof, Andrew Meares, Mark Setrakian, and Richard Taylor. 

A celebration of the first work by Wolfson to enter an Australian collection



Artist Jordan Wolfson is emblematic of the time in which we live. As we grapple with our relationship to technology, our immersion in internet culture, and social issues of racial and gender inequality, alienation, and violence, Wolfson confronts us with their images, actions, and effects. His works act as witnesses on the world we are in right now rather than taking a moral position or articulating a particular point of view. They are therefore often uncomfortable to experience, as well as being deeply intriguing in their extraordinary visual power and technical sophistication.

In this publication, the National Gallery of Australia has gathered robust ideas, facilitated discussions, and sought unique perspectives that position Wolfson's major work within diverse contexts, including art history, cybernetics, and media theory. Contributors include Mark Setrakian, Wolfson's principal collaborator; Richard Taylor of Wētā Workshop; Russell Ferguson, a curator, writer, and longtime observer of Wolfson's work; Genevieve Bell and Andrew Meares from the Australian National University School of Cybernetics; and artist Anne Imhof. The publication's creative vision has been driven by the artist and features stunning documentary photographs by David Sims and design by Joseph Logan.

Body Sculpture: Jordan Wolfson

Detail of an oil on linen painting, titled Clear Message, dated 2019.

A double catalogue covering two manifestations at Xavier Hufkens gallery by Josh Smith, who is known for painting series of simple yet highly distinctive visual motifs. Part of the New York-based artist’s ongoing process of image production and experimentation, the paintings are autonomous entities but also part of a larger “family” of interrelated works. ‘Finding Emo’ (2019) featured new paintings and monotypes depicting the Grim Reaper. Following on that was ‘Keyhole’ (2022), in which Smith showed a new series of large-format paintings and figurative monotypes in which he addresses abstraction, expanding on this recurrent theme in terms of scale, palette, and energy.

Josh Smith: Finding Emo / Keyhole

Edited by Glenn Adamson, Dakin Hart and Kate Wiener. Contributions by Ai Fukunaga, Nonie Gadsden, Diana Jocelyn Greenwold, Laura Kina, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Margo Machida, Laura Mott and Katy Siegel

An expansive look at the multifaceted American artist Toshiko Takaezu within the history of postwar artmaking

Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) was an American artist whose multidisciplinary work in ceramics, painting, sculpture, weaving, and installation innovatively drew from the natural world, combining expressionist energies with influences from East Asia. The closed ceramic forms for which she is best known are effectively abstract paintings in the round. Her reputation as a ceramic artist, however, has obscured the breadth of her output in other mediums and her role within the larger art movements of the twentieth century. This book provides the first retrospective assessment of Takaezu’s art and life, representing her diverse oeuvre, which spanned six decades, and her hybrid identity as an Asian American woman, artist, and teacher. 

This ambitious volume features essays exploring Takaezu’s biography, her background as a Hawai‘i-born artist of Okinawan heritage, the relationship between her abstract work and that of her contemporaries, the role of cultural exchange in her art, her impact as an educator, and more. Beautifully illustrated with nearly 300 images of artworks and archival photographs, and including an updated chronology, exhibition history, and recollections from the artist’s former apprentices, the book offers a compelling and comprehensive account of this singular artist’s career.

Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within

An untitled painting by Noah Davis, dated 2015.

A sculpture by Ruth Asawa, called Untitled (S.175, Hanging Single-Lobed, Four-Layer Continuous Form within a Form), dated c. 1992.

Ruth Asawa with hanging wire sculpture, 1951. Photo © Imogen Cunningham Trust

The Artist Journals

The Artist Journals Collection, David Zwirner Books, 2024

 go beyond canonical art to capture the modern and contemporary spirit of today’s most acclaimed painters, sculptors, and other major creative forces. Created in close collaboration with each artist or artist’s estate, these beautifully produced blank books—with their stunning wraparound cover artwork, endpapers, patterned interior pages, and bellybands that transform into collectible bookmarks—are works of art themselves, designed to inspire, collect, and gift to a wide audience.

The Artist Journals Collection, 2024, David Zwirner Books

The Artist Journals Collection

In celebration of one of Kusama’s most iconic infinity rooms

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is known worldwide for her polka dots and colorful, immersive light installations featuring unusual and organic forms, such as pumpkins. 

 is a tribute to her beloved and singular practice, with a particular focus on 

 from the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. 

 is a room-sized installation where, as the title suggests, the lights seem almost natural, like fireflies on a quiet summer’s night. The pool of water creates an incredible sense of stillness and the mirrors reflect never-ending images of themselves, creating a sidereal ambience. Space appears infinite, without top or bottom, beginning or end. As in Yayoi Kusama’s early installations, including her 

 embodies an almost hallucinatory approach to reality.

Yayoi Kusama: Present Infinite

A detail of an artwork by Michaël Borremans titled The Commuter II dated 2022

Portrait of Michaël Borremans, 2025. Photo by Charlie De Keersmaecker 

Katya Tylevich

Presenting the Belgian artist Michaël Borremans’s newest group of psychologically charged paintings, this catalogue highlights his exceptional technical skill, interest in figuration, and innovative approach to mise-en-scène.

“Everything is a self-portrait. And now I have been painting monkeys. . . . It’s like making a movie.” —Michaël Borremans, 

 showcases seventeen paintings that reveal his interest in exploring surface and artifice. Borremans portrays mysterious sitters—including the titular monkeys, which are glazed toy figurines—and depicts enigmatic scenes that simultaneously invite viewers in and keep them at bay.

Katya Tylevich’s insightful commentary delves into the depths of Borremans’s compositions, connecting the themes and motifs in 

 to those present in previous bodies of work. Tylevich delves into the complex emotional and art-historical registers at play in the artist’s new paintings and maps the trajectory of his practice, observing other instances of repetition and fabulation across his practice. The publication, featuring this essay alongside beautifully illustrated images of the new paintings, serves as the ideal complement to the artist’s 2024 exhibition at David Zwirner, London.


Michaël Borremans: The Monkey,  David Zwirner Books, 2024

Michaël Borremans: The Monkey

A detail from a painting by Katherine Bernhardt, titled Escape from New York, dated 2020.

Suzanne Hudson

Cover of a book titled Katherine Bernhardt Special Edition, published by David Zwirner Books in 2023

This special edition featuring a slipcase and a signed, numbered bookplate designed by the artist is available in a limited run of 250 copies.

Dazzling and playful, Katherine Bernhardt’s paintings highlight her fascination with American pop vernacular, from Pokémon and the Pink Panther to Crocs and psilocybin mushrooms.

“Bernhardt has always been impressive for her ability to combine the immediate, seductive properties of paint with the infectious humor of topical pop culture.” —

Bernhardt’s boundless visual appetite has established her as one of the most exciting painters working today. Thinking about the relationship between art, objects, and commerce, Bernhardt spotlights iconic motifs of cartoons and cultural symbols. Colors and lines bleed and pool together, revealing Bernhardt’s brisk and improvisational process. Monumental in size, subject matter, and vibrancy, her works demand attention.

Expanding on the exhibition at David Zwirner, London, in 2022, this catalogue includes additional paintings and works on paper in which Bernhardt develops her ongoing body of work. With many details of paintings, this significant publication gives the artist’s work ample space to play. Suzanne Hudson’s essay considers Bernhardt’s work from an art-historical perspective and explores the artist’s work and life.

Katherine Bernhardt: Why is a mushroom growing in my shower? (Special Edition)

The newest book from the internationally celebrated Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama presents her latest monumental and vibrant work and is the first to explore the experience of seeing it from the lens of the visitor.

 is a vivid document with varying perspectives that echo Kusama’s own.

New scholarship by Robert Slifkin considers how Kusama innovates and complicates art-historical traditions of image production and how her art seeks to connect humans with the greater cosmos. An essay by Lynn Zelevansky reflects on her own long-standing engagement with Kusama’s work and the ways in which it, across the decades, can be seen as a record of love in all its complexity: full of humanity, generosity, affection, sadness, and pain.



 featuring a slipcase is available in a limited run of 300 hand-numbered copies.

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner Books,2024

interior spread, Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner Books, 2024

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, 2024

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers

Edwin Denby

Cal Revely-Calder

That Still Moment, Poetry and Essays on Dance, David Zwirner Books, 2024

By Edwin Denby. Introduction by Cal Revely-Calder

 series focuses on dance and poetry through the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest critics.

“I am interested at the moment in recalling to you how it looks when one sees dancing as non-professionals do, in the way you yourselves I suppose look at pictures, at buildings, at political history or at landscapes or at strangers you pass on the street. Or as you read poetry.” —Edwin Denby

After starting his career as a dancer in Germany, Edwin Denby moved to Manhattan, where he formed friendships with prominent members of the New York School, including Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, and artists such as Rudy Burckhardt. In his critical writing, he brought his experience as a dancer to the page along with a poet’s sensibility, distinguishing himself as an authority through delicate observation and illustrative prose. This collection of writings highlights Denby’s interdisciplinary scope and range of expression, as well as his sharp, singular voice and empirical sensibility toward all works of art.



 pairs Denby’s landmark essays on dance criticism and portraits of major performers, such as Vaslav Nijinsky, with selections of his poetry that are long out of print. The writer and editor Cal Revely-Calder further contextualizes Denby’s life and work in his insightful introduction.

That Still Moment Poetry and Essays on Dance, David Zwirner Books, 2024

interior spread, That Still Moment Poetry and Essays on Dance, David Zwirner Books, 2024

Poetry and Essays on Dance

That Still Moment

A detail from a work by Robert Ryman, titled Winsor 34, dated 1966.

Jeffrey Kastner

Lucy Lippard

Dieter Schwarz

Texts by Jeffrey Kastner, Lucy Lippard, and Dieter Schwarz

An extensive look at Robert Ryman’s formative work from the early 1960s, as well as his last series of paintings

In the 1960s, Robert Ryman began to firmly establish the broad parameters of his radical and inventive practice. While he initially gained recognition for work he made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his earlier paintings have remained less widely seen.

This publication includes representative works of all facets of Ryman’s painterly practice during this time—influenced by his career as a jazz musician—including his use of thick impasto brushstrokes on both stretched and unstretched canvas; heavily or sparsely worked paintings in both small and large formats; and a group of rarely seen works on raw linen, each featuring one or several seemingly complete, independent compositions. Many of these works feature subtle suggestions of colorful underpainting that leave an outsized effect on the viewing experience, while in other works Ryman’s assertive use of green, red, and blue intensifies the visual presence of the various white tones.

Revealing the breadth of Ryman’s work, this catalogue also includes a selection of drawings, many of which were made concurrently with the early works, as well as his last paintings. The final canvases demonstrate the inexhaustible and probing nature of Ryman’s singular approach to painting over his five-decade career. The details reveal the visual presence of various white tones, creating an interplay between color and absence and dimensionality that characterizes much of Ryman’s oeuvre.

Cover of a book titled Robert Ryman: Early and Late published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

Interior spread from a book titled Robert Ryman: Early and Late published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

Robert Ryman: Early and Late

Yves Michaud

Julie Otsuka

Amy Sillman

Shinique Smith

Lily Stockman

Book cover, Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979–1985, David Zwirner Books, 2024

Text by Julie Otsuka. Contributions by Amy Sillman, Shinique Smith, and Lily Stockman. Conversation between Joan Mitchell and Yves Michaud

Discover Joan Mitchell’s powerful and dynamic work—spotlighted in this book as never before.



“An entry for one of the best shows of 2022. . . . Mitchell, then in her 50s, reaches peak form in gathering brushstrokes that flicker and burn like auras on fire.” —Jerry Saltz, 



This highly anticipated publication focuses on the years 1979 to 1985—a significant and deeply generative period within Joan Mitchell’s decades-long career. As Mitchell became even more fully immersed in daily life at her property in Vétheuil, France—surrounded by lush gardens, and challenged and inspired by new creative relationships—her studio practice flourished and her work became even more ambitious and expansive. Executed in an increasingly bold palette, the works from this period exemplify Mitchell’s nuanced mastery of composition, scale, and color. In addition to her large-scale abstract works, this publication features numerous smaller paintings and a selection of archival materials.

Included in the book are several texts that complement the illustrated works. A new essay by the bestselling author Julie Otsuka recollects her encounters with Mitchell’s paintings over the years. A fascinating conversation between Mitchell and the French philosopher Yves Michaud from 1986 is featured. Reflections by the artists Amy Sillman, Shinique Smith, and Lily Stockman each explore a unique component of Mitchell’s oeuvre or practice, underscoring Mitchell’s continued influence on artists today.

interior spread, Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979–1985, David Zwirner Books, 2024

Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979–1985

A portrait of Gerhard Richter by Werner Bartsch.

Gerhard Richter: Foricano, 26 Drawings, David Zwirner Books, 2024

Gerhard Richter’s newest facsimile-like artist’s book is focused on a single work comprising twenty-six drawings



“[Richter’s drawings] are of stringent individuality and recognizably by Richter’s hand, not based on their signature style but rather because they make their theme the act of drawing itself, gauging the conditions of drawing.” —Dieter Schwarz

In this new work, Richter combines various elements from a limited set of forms and techniques—meandering lines, broad tonal planes applied with angled strokes of graphite, and passages of smudging, hatching, and erasure—thereby uniting choice and chance in an infinitely generative process. The suite of works on paper from 2023 encapsulates and refines the fundamental principles that have consistently defined Richter’s artistic journey. Reproduced at actual size, the drawings encourage in-depth observation and inspire a compelling reimagining of abstraction.


Cover of a book titled Gerhard Richter: Foricano, 26 Drawings, published by David Zwirner Books in 2024

Cover of a book titled Gerhard Richter: Foricano 26 Drawings, published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

Interior spread from a book titled Gerhard Richter: Foricano 26 Drawings, published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

26 Drawings

Gerhard Richter: Foricano

The Problem of Taste: On the Late, Great Dave Hickey with Jarrett Earnest

1-Up

Dave Hickey

Jarrett Earnest

By Dave Hickey. Edited and with an introduction by Jarrett Earnest

From the legendary and iconoclastic critic Dave Hickey, a collection of twenty of his most emblematic essays on art

“We really don’t need to know the aesthetic and moral parameters of a work to love it—­only to know they are there.” —Dave Hickey

The late Dave Hickey was a singular voice on art, music, democracy, and culture. Known for his radical criticism, he united different worlds through a range of literary styles and techniques to ultimately explore what it means to be human. Complementing his iconic collections 

 unites twenty of Hickey’s characteristically astute essays on art from over twenty years, most of which were originally published in exhibition catalogues that are long out of print. The result is a volume that shows the writer at his most creative and incisive in an ever-relevant exploration of beauty and value. Compiled and with an introduction by the writer and critic Jarrett Earnest, and featuring cover art by Ed Ruscha, this latest book is ideal for cult followers and new readers of Hickey, for artists and art critics, and for thinkers across all disciplines.

Including essays on Terry Allen, Karen Carson, Sarah Charlesworth, Vija Celmins, Vernon Fisher, Robert Gober, Ann Hamilton, Luis Jiménez, Hung Liu, Josiah McElheny, Elizabeth Peyton, Lari Pittman, David Reed, Bridget Riley, Norman Rockwell, Ed Ruscha, Steve Schapiro, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol, as well as Hickey’s 2002 text “Buying the World,” which he later edited for inclusion in the revised edition of 

Feint of Heart: Art Writings 1982–2002, by Dave Hickey

Feint of Heart: Art Writings, 1982–2002, By Dave Hickey

1982–2002

Feint of Heart: Art Writings

An artwork by Elizabeth Peyton, titled Omai (Afterlife) after Sir Joshua Reynolds's Portrait of Omai, 1776, dated 2023

Elizabeth Peyton, Portrait at the Opera (Elizabeth), 2016

All Books