A scuplture by Yayoi Kusama called Dancing Pumpkin dated 2020

Yayoi Kusama, 2021.  Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

Yayoi Kusama (Book and Journal) - David Zwirner Books, 2023

A beautiful artist-designed journal plus a catalogue celebrating her poetry.



Featuring the vibrant and dynamic work of Yayoi Kusama, 

 is the perfect canvas for imagination. The paintings on the cover and endpapers of Kusama’s first 

 provide the perfect motivation for any creative pursuit.

In her most personal book to date, 

, Kusama brings us into her private world through poetic recollections, giving insight into her creative process and the essential role language plays in her paintings, sculptures, and daily life.

Yayoi Kusama (Book and Journal)

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

A special Ruth Asawa set with a stunning catalogue and blank journal.

 is a welcome reminder to find inspiration in the everyday object. The delicate works featured in the artist's first 

 beckon the inner artist to carve out time to look and create.

Revealing rarely seen work alongside her iconic looped-wire sculptures, 

 celebrates Asawa’s unique vision and intimate subject matter. The catalogue is a document of the breathtaking and surprising eponymous exhibition organized by Helen Molesworth.

Ruth Asawa (Book and Journal)

An untitled painting by Noah Davis, dated 2015.

Discover the art of Noah Davis, a brilliant artist and cultural force, through the people who knew him best. This two-volume set offers an essential, beautifully produced record of his extraordinary oeuvre, illuminating both the power of his paintings and the impact of his visionary work in Los Angeles. A must-have for collectors, curators, and anyone moved by Davis’s enduring legacy.

was published on the occasion of the 2020 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York. Edited by curator Helen Molesworth, the book includes interviews with Lindsay Charlwood, Dagny Corcoran, Daniel DeSure, Thomas Houseago, Deana Lawson, Henry Taylor, and Venus X.

 includes a special conversation, moderated by Helen Molesworth, between Fred Moten, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Lax, and Julie Mehretu; a new essay by Franklin Sirmans; and a chronology by Lindsay Charlwood.

Noah Davis Collection

An oil on canvas painting by Dana Schutz, titled The Arts, dated 2021.

Texts by Dan Nadel, Lynne Tillman, and Hamza Walker

The first comprehensive monograph on one of today’s most innovative and successful painters—made in close collaboration with the artist



Defined by bold brushstrokes, a dynamic use of color, and imaginative compositions, the paintings of Dana Schutz are panoramic expanses that offer visions of humanity in all its complex facets. Her deeply subjective approach, untethered from realism, translates into images that seem to exist in a place that transcends time while celebrating the intrinsic qualities of her medium of choice with freedom and intelligence. As the artist herself stated, ‘I’m interested in painting as an affective place where the hierarchies of the world can be rearranged within the space of a painting.’ This first comprehensive monograph on her work was created in close collaboration with the artist and features a number of never-before-seen paintings and drawings.

Dana Schutz

Mamma Andersson, 2023. Photo by Pierre Björk

This limited, exclusive set includes a signed copy of each of Mamma Andersson’s newest artist’s books, 

 is a celebration of representation, figuration, and classical antiquity.

"When I look at this collection of pictures, . . . what strikes me first is the image-making capacity itself and the endless stream of images it brings forth and always has brought forth into the world.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard



 spotlights the beauty and mystery of nature and the absence of time.

“What Mamma Andersson does in some of these pictures is on the one hand depict the illusions, the one thing which is another thing—masks, theater, statues, paintings—and on the other portray that which is only itself, potted plants, tree trunks, trees, landscapes. Everything is motionless, these rooms are located out of time.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard

Mamma Andersson Signed Set

A studious view of Richard Serra’s recently premiered forged-steel sculpture and new drawings using his trademark paintstick technique



“Enigmatic, arresting, audacious: Richard Serra now and forever.” —



Richard Serra’s hugely successful body of work consistently explores the possibilities of form and matter. Serra’s steel sculptures are held in major collections internationally, and his drawings assert themselves as abstract victories. Through the use of black paintstick—a combination of oil paint, wax, and pigment, to which he has used since 1971—Serra’s drawings convey a strong sense of optical weight, acutely similar to the physical presence of his sculptures. 2022, the artist’s largest single forged round to date, investigates properties of weight and scale.

While the exhibition allowed viewers to encounter Serra’s immense forged round and inky drawings in relation to their own space and bodies, the catalogue is an opportunity for intimate engagement with Serra’s works through stunning reproductions.

Richard Serra: 2022

Tiona Nekkia McClodden

Clarion

Rhea Dillon

Ebony L. Haynes

Simone White

Curator’s Note by Ebony L. Haynes. Artist’s statement by Tiona Nekkia McClodden. Conversation between Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Simone White. Poem by Rhea Dillon

Tiona Nekkia McClodden considers the presence and absence of the Black figure and aesthetic tropes of representation through work traversing film, installation, sculpture, painting, and writing.

“An artist who may be America’s most essential today.” —Siddhartha Mitter, 



Known for her sharp examinations of biomythography and intersubjectivity, McClodden uses a research-based approach in her practice as an artist and self-described “historian and cultural custodian.” 

 dissects the many meanings of these three words. McClodden creates films, paintings, and sculptures from her own firearms and calibers, and referencing cultural and historical objects including Benin Bronzes and BDSM gimp masks. This exhibition pivots around the concept of “training to failure.” It holds that, in order to achieve gains or to succeed—a success measured by and set in accordance with someone else’s standard—you must strenuously lift something that is inherently too great a load to bear. McClodden communicates a core awareness of the body as it corresponds to the fragile boundaries of the psyche. Through custom lighting, the artist carefully choreographs a performance between the work, the gallery space, and the viewer.

Adding to McClodden’s narrative and psychological concepts, this publication includes a curator’s note from Ebony L. Haynes, a poem by the acclaimed writer and artist Rhea Dillon, and a conversation between the poet Simone White and the artist, as well as a statement penned by McClodden herself.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden: MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY 

Tau Lewis

Yves B Golden

Tiana Reid

Curator’s note by Ebony L. Haynes. Text by Tiana Reid. Poem by Yves B. Golden

Tau Lewis’s mythical sculptures create elaborate portals into fantastic worlds.

“At 52 Walker, artist Tau Lewis transmutes the lifeblood of scrap objects into something sanctified. . . . I’m reminded that an art gallery can also be a temple.” —

 at the 2022 Venice Biennale, Lewis has continued to create—from salvaged textiles and other found materials—anthropomorphic forms inspired by those in Yoruban mask dramas, which are spiritually activated by the wearer and the audience and, by extension, their community. Likewise referencing the work of the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, classical Greek and Roman mythology and drama, science fiction, and angelology, Lewis develops her characters’ identities and narratives in an intermediary world that implicates our ancestral pasts, spiritual and cultural similitudes, and multiplanar existences. Documenting and expanding on Lewis’s body of work shown at her 52 Walker exhibition 

, this catalogue contextualizes the artist’s investigations and expressions.

Poetry by the multidisciplinary artist and activist Yves B. Golden complements Lewis’s otherworldly motifs. With a curator’s note by Ebony L. Haynes, this publication also features an essay by Tiana Reid that explores Lewis’s practice, drawing connections between sources that range from Joy James to Frederick Douglass.

Tau Lewis: Vox Populi, Vox Dei

An installation view of works by Shio Kusaka.

Shio Kusaka’s ceramic vessels articulate poetic connections, creating a cohesive and unique installation.

“It’s a striking effect—some pieces are bowl-shaped, others are cylindrical, a few have slim, sloping necks. Their linear arrangement suggests some kind of progression through time and space.”
—

While pulling inspiration and techniques from ancient Japanese ceramics as well as from popular culture and everyday life, Kusaka carves new language into her artwork. Employing various types of clay and firing methods, she experiments with line, color, and size to bring fresh life to the medium. This harmonious presentation is created from individual pieces and thematic groupings, resulting in an extraordinary, unified installation to be experienced in the round. Created in close collaboration with the artist and with many detail images, this book provides a deep dive into Kusaka’s incredible work 

.

Published after Kusaka’s hugely successful exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2022, this catalogue studies her singular installation from all angles. A text by Kusaka illuminates her working process and provides unique insight into this particular work.

Shio Kusaka: one light year

Anna Kats

Introduction by Ebony L. Haynes. Texts by Anna Kats and Nora Turato

series features the Amsterdam-based artist Nora Turato and her vibrant enamel panels that magnify the omnipresence of text, design, and speech in our contemporary culture.



“Meticulous as Helen and tricky as Odysseus, the artist invites us first to misread the slick surfaces and humor of her works as effortless, then forces us to attend to the laborious practices they belie, the histories and possibilities of that effort.” —



Originally trained as a graphic designer, Nora Turato adapts text to subvert and create messages. Although many of Turato’s performances and works appear to be drafted by free association, she meticulously and thoughtfully edits them to evoke a sense of alluring confusion. In three signature murals with a bespoke typeface, Turato addresses the inundation of language, typography, and graphic design in our contemporary culture, whether in the news, on social media, or in advertisements.

Published on the occasion of Turato’s widely popular exhibition

 at 52 Walker, this publication features texts by Ebony L. Haynes and Anna Kats. Serving as an extension of the exhibition, performance scripts by the artist are also included in this publication. As described in 

, “In the slick sea of graphic smoothness and language lost from meaning, something has still been irrefutably made.”

Nora Turato: govern me harder

Lindsay Charlwood

Helen Molesworth

Glenn Ligon

Franklin Sirmans

Julie Mehretu

Fred Moten

Texts by Helen Molesworth and Franklin Sirmans. Interview by Helen Molesworth with Thomas Lax, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, and Fred Moten. Chronology by Lindsay Charlwood

Designed as a companion to the hugely successful monograph 

, this volume offers further insight into the impact and legacy of the revolutionary Los Angeles artist and activist.

“Embedding his dreams on canvas and in the community, visionary American artist Noah Davis created a mighty legacy.” —Rachel Willcock, 

Looking to literature, film, architecture, and art history, Noah Davis imbued his ethereal paintings with emotion and imagination. Muted colors, fantastic scenes, and blurred subjects create an intoxicating vision. Attuned to the power of his medium, Davis layered his paintings—figuratively and literally—using a unique dry paint application to depict quotidian life at an enigmatic, almost magical remove. Featuring sumptuous close-ups throughout, this important new book brings into focus the rich, painterly variety and luminous detail of Davis’s canvases.

With a special focus on the groundbreaking Underground Museum, which Noah Davis co-founded with his wife, Karon Davis, 

 includes a special conversation, moderated by Helen Molesworth, between Fred Moten, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Lax, and Julie Mehretu. This renowned group of artists and thinkers shares personal experiences of the powerful and emotional impact of The Underground Museum and its connection to the larger artistic environs of Los Angeles. Franklin Sirmans contributes a new essay, and Lindsay Charlwood, a lifelong friend of Noah’s, authors a chronology of his life, contextualizing his artistic and social achievements.

Noah Davis: In Detail

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

Suzanne Hudson

Katherine Bernhardt: Why is a mushroom growing in my shower?

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.

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

A portrait of Gerhard Richter by Werner Bartsch.

Dieter Schwarz

Foreword by David Zwirner. Text by Dieter Schwarz

This highly anticipated catalogue, accompanying Gerhard Richter’s first exhibition with David Zwirner, presents Richter’s last paintings along with his recent explorations in drawing, printing, and sculpture.



“[His last paintings] can feel almost like exquisite texts to be read. . . . Their freshness and spontaneity feels like a new beginning.” —Roberta Smith, 



Known for his abstract and realist paintings, Gerhard Richter has pursued a diverse and influential practice characterized by a decades-long commitment to the medium and its formal and conceptual possibilities. This remarkable book celebrates the breadth of Richter’s newest bodies of work and archives a historical moment in the artist’s career.

Full-color plates and installation views showcase a selection of the artist’s final works on canvas—made just before he announced his retirement from oil painting in 2017—alongside an expansive suite of new drawings made with ink, graphite, and colored pencil on paper, a remarkable series of chromatic inkjet prints titled mood, and a stunning glass sculpture that debuted at the exhibition in New York. A newly commissioned essay by Dieter Schwarz, one of the foremost experts on Richter’s oeuvre, illustrates the artist’s path toward his newest bodies of work. Schwarz describes Richter in his studio, revealing the creative process behind his iconic practice.

Gerhard Richter: New York 2023

Gaby Bazin

Vineet Lal

Discover the fascinating world of lithography, explore the techniques that make it work, and learn the secrets behind this truly artistic profession.

 showcases a centuries-old printing practice that evolved into the process used today to print books, magazines, newspapers, and posters. This enchanting behind-the-scenes tour of the lithographer’s workshop offers an inside look at the tools, techniques, and stories that define lithography.

The second children’s book from David Zwirner Books, 

 continues our mission to illuminate different elements of the art industry. The playful illustrations, printed in three striking colors, offer a unique experience of the printed medium and showcase the magic of the lithographer’s world.

Meet the Lithographer

A new artist’s book, created by Gerhard Richter, that explores abstraction and chance in art and writing



“The 100 Abstract Pictures shown here originated about five years ago, when I poured enamel paints on a fifty-by-fifty centimeter glass plate. The paints then flowed into one another without completely mixing. Thus they produced countless ephemeral abstract pictures, which I captured in photographs. These pictures are juxtaposed in the book with text formations that were generated at random.” —Gerhard Richter, 2023

With a career spanning more than sixty years, the renowned painter Gerhard Richter is one of the greatest artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Debuting alongside Richter's first exhibition at David Zwirner, featuring new abstract works created between 2016 and 2022, this book celebrates his continued dedication to experimentation and innovation.

An artwork of its own, this intimate volume inspires both close looking and a beautiful interpretation of abstraction.

Gerhard Richter: 100 Abstract Pictures

Mickey Cartin

Steven Holmes

David Leiber

Luke Syson

Texts by Luke Syson and Steven Holmes. Conversation between Mickey Cartin and David Leiber

An exciting, unexpected, and beautiful encounter with one collector’s deeply personal assemblage of works

Since the 1980s, Mickey Cartin has assembled a remarkable collection of objects and art—Renaissance and modernist paintings, master prints, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, and contemporary art, with a focus on certain artists in depth. Exploring the theory behind collecting art and how Cartin’s approach diverges from common practices, this publication offers a unique perspective on an intimate endeavor. Unconcerned with hewing to specific categories, time periods, or media, Cartin’s collection—which includes the likes of Josef Albers, Sol LeWitt, and Forrest Bess—creates active combinations and disrupts homogeneity, privileging the drive of curiosity.

A documentation of the celebrated exhibition 

Seen in the Mirror: Things from the Cartin Collection

 at David Zwirner, New York, in 2021, this publication includes additional artworks from Cartin’s trove along with views of his home, conveying how he lives and engages day-to-day with these works. Cartin selected each work in the exhibition and publication as a reflection of his deep connections with the many artists represented therein. The conversation between Cartin and David Leiber illuminates the tensions between study and instinct, reading versus experiencing, as well as the influences and figures that inform his personal, curatorial practice. With texts by the curator of the Cartin Collection, Steven Holmes, and the art historian Luke Syson, this inspiring volume is a spirited investigation of a very different method of and approach to collecting.


The Cartin Collection includes nearly 2,000 works in various media including early Netherlandish painting, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, nineteenth-century paintings and drawings, and an extensive collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art. In 2005, the Cartin Collection began to produce exhibitions in partnership with museums, alternative spaces, and galleries in New York, Boston, Miami, and Hartford, as well as in Paris and Berlin. The collection continues to loan extensively across all fields, periods, and media.

An installation view of Juan Muñoz's work, Conversation Piece, Dublin, in 1994.

Michael Brenson

Maurizio Cattelan

Siri Hustvedt

Guillaume Kientz

Vicente Todolí

Foreword by Vicente Todolí. Texts by Siri Hustvedt, Guillaume Kientz, and Juan Muñoz. Interview with the artist by Michael Brenson. Contribution by Maurizio Cattelan

A comprehensive look into the fascinating life and enduring legacy of Juan Muñoz and his enigmatic installations



“Walking between these figures feels like an interruption; being a spectator is itself a performance. They seem to know more than we do, about the status of being an artwork and the place of the viewer. The joke, if there is one, is on us.” —



Muñoz’s revolutionary oeuvre evokes emotional narratives through sculpture, installation, drawing, writing, and sound. Situating viewers between his work and among one another, he creates an intimacy between art and its audience. Muñoz thought deeply about art history and, in particular, the tradition of Spanish painting. Before his untimely death at the age of forty-eight, he produced an extensive, powerfully evocative body of work that uniquely explores the narrative and philosophical possibilities of art.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2022, this catalogue provides an expansive overview of Muñoz’s career from the 1980s onward. In an accompanying text, the art historian and curator Guillaume Kientz contextualizes Muñoz’s influences within the art-historical canon. The acclaimed writer Siri Hustvedt contributes a thoughtful response to the artist’s iconic 

. In an imagined interview between Muñoz and himself, Maurizio Cattelan further propels the artist’s momentum and potential in the time before his death. Also featured is a never-before-published interview between Muñoz and the art historian Michael Brenson that took place in 2000.

Juan Muñoz: Seven Rooms

The Artist Journals

Featuring the vibrant and dynamic work of Yayoi Kusama, this journal is the perfect canvas for creative thought.

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s kaleidoscopic environments have captured the imaginations of millions of museum and gallery visitors around the world. Her quintessential polka dots, organic shapes, and optical environments that become hypnotic, merging concepts of flatness and depth, presence and absence, and beauty and the sublime. The paintings on the cover and endpapers of Kusama’s first Artist Journal provide the perfect motivation for any creative pursuit.

Each journal is beautifully crafted in Verona, Italy.

Yayoi Kusama: The Journal

 is a welcome reminder to find inspiration in the everyday object.

The twentieth-century master Ruth Asawa is renowned for her hand-looped and tied-wire sculptures that explore the interplay of light and shadow. Asawa also produced an enormous body of works on paper, finding moments to weave her creative practice into the fabric of her daily life, depicting her California garden, her family, and her home. The delicate works featured in Asawa’s first Artist Journal beckon the inner artist to carve out time to look and create.

Ruth Asawa: The Journal

A painting by Marlene Dumas, titled Longing, dated 2018.

An installation view of the exhibition, Suzan Frecon: recent paintings, oil and water, at David Zwirner in London, dated 2022.

A detail from a work by Bridget Riley, titled Study for Measure for Measure Dark 2, dated 2019.

Portrait of Bridget Riley, 2021. Photo by Yuki Shima

Richard Shiff

An expansive anthology of the critic and art historian Richard Shiff’s most influential writings, which have shaped today's understanding of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art

“To see a work, to gather it in as sensation, is less than knowing it, less than classifying it, less than theorizing it….But seeing art, or sensing it by some other means, also becomes more than knowing it. To prolong sensory involvement with a work of art preserves its greatest potential.”

In his engaging and penetrating observations on modern and contemporary visual art, Shiff has written about an impressive range of creative forces, including Willem de Kooning, Marlene Dumas, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, and Peter Saul. A leading scholar and powerful voice, Shiff offers insight into prominent artistic practices that span generations and approaches, as seen in this considered selection of essays on twenty-seven artists.

These writings first appeared in exhibition catalogues for institutions including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Modern. Shiff supplements his unquestionable fluency in art history with perspectives cultivated from his readings in philosophy, phenomenology, literary theory, and psychoanalysis, among other fields. Shiff’s writing—conceptually rich, meditative, and enjoyable to read—is attuned to the nuances of artistic style and technique, drawing out art’s social implications not merely from broad histories but also directly from artists’ mark making and technical gestures. Actively engaged as a viewer and a writer, Shiff has transformed the act of looking at art into contemplative and captivating writing.

 includes essays on Georg Baselitz, Mark Bradford, Georges Braque, Jim Campbell, Chuck Close, Willem de Kooning, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin, Suzan Frecon, Lucian Freud, Ellen Gallagher, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Julie Mehretu, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, Peter Saul, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Jack Whitten, and Zeng Fanzhi.

Read an excerpt from the book on Suzan Frecon.

Listen to a podcast between author Richard Shiff and "Reading the Art World" host Megan Fox Kelly.

Essays on Modern and Contemporary Artists

Richard Shiff: Writing after Art

A painting by Nate Lowman, titled Maria, dated 2022.

Lynne Tillman

Jim Lewis

Andrew Paul Woolbright

Texts by Lynne Tillman and Jim Lewis. Interview with the artist by Andrew Paul Woolbright

A stunning, focused document of Nate Lowman’s work from the past four years

“Brewing the good, the bad, and the ugly of consumerist modern life in his masterful paintings, Lowman draws a portrait of the times that is equally mischievous and somber.” —

With an archive of source material amassed and processed over time, Lowman creates slippery, layered images that transform visual referents found in the news, media, and art history. In this volume, Lowman plays with cataclysmic imagery that probes the tensions between the everyday and the extreme, presence and absence, and violence and representation. In his vibrant paintings of digitally rendered hurricane imagery and crime scene photography cataloging the aftermath of the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, he considers the physicality of his medium in connection to the chaos of his subject matter.

Spotlighting Lowman’s exhibitions at David Zwirner in London and New York along with other recent work, this monograph includes a text by Lynne Tillman that provides a unique perspective across all bodies of Lowman’s oeuvre. In an interview with Andrew Paul Woolbright for 

, Lowman discusses his engagement with representation and meaning, twentieth-century gestural and pop art, slow painting, and American violence.

Nate Lowman, David Zwirner Books, dated 2023

Nate Lowman

Katsushika Hokusai

Ryoko Matsuba

ekphrasis

By Katsushika Hokusai. Introduction by Ryoko Matsuba

 collects beautiful new translations of Hokusai’s painting tutorials and related essays written by the artist and his peers—a selection made available in English for the first time.

, Katsushika Hokusai was a revolutionary printmaker. His mastery of ukiyo-e in the nineteenth century has inspired generations of artists since, and his works helped introduce the world to the delicate beauty and power of the Japanese woodblock technique. In addition to his remarkable artistic output, Hokusai was also a dedicated teacher who sought to pass down his unique understanding of color and painting to practicing artists through immensely detailed written tutorials and manuals, many of which are excerpted here, in English, for the first time.

Connecting Hokusai’s prints from the Edo period to contemporary Japanese art, the scholar Ryoko Matsuba’s introduction foregrounds Hokusai’s contributions to Japanese creative expression from the 1800s to today. Also included in this book is the contemporary artist Ikeda Manabu’s concise observations about Hokusai’s lasting influence. This volume offers invaluable insight into the psyche of a true master, and a rare personal account of an artist’s life during a fascinating period in Japan’s history.

Mad about Painting

Hilma af Klint

Susan Aberth

Suzan Frecon

William Glassley

Joy Harjo

Max Rosenberg

Julia Voss

Introduction by Julia Voss. Texts by Susan Aberth, Suzan Frecon, and Max Rosenberg. Helen Molesworth and Joy Harjo in conversation. Julia Voss and William Glassley in conversation. New poetry by Joy Harjo

The first detailed survey of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint’s groundbreaking 

“Revelatory and sublime. . . . Her work remains conceptually open enough for viewers to draw their own conclusions, insert their own meaning and feel transported to other glorious worlds.” —

One of the most inventive artists of the twentieth century, af Klint was a pioneer of abstraction. Her first forays into nonobjective painting preceded the work of Kandinsky and Mondrian and radically mined the fields of science and religion. Deeply interested in spiritualism and philosophy, af Klint developed an iconography that explores esoteric concepts in metaphysics, as demonstrated in 

. This rarely seen series of works on paper renders orbital, enigmatic forms, visual allegories of unification and separateness, darkness and light, beginning and end, life and death, and spirit and matter.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition 

, in 2022, this book features a text by the art historian Susan Aberth examining af Klint’s spiritual and theosophical influences. With a conversation between curator Helen Molesworth and the US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo discussing connections between 

 and Native theories, the publication broadens the scope of philosophical interpretations of af Klint's timeless work. Also included is a newly commissioned essay by the celebrated af Klint scholar Julia Voss, a contribution by the artist Suzan Frecon, and a text by art historian Max Rosenberg that further develops the conversation around why af Klint’s work was not recognized in its time.

Hilma af Klint: Tree of Knowledge

Derek Jarman

Michael Charlesworth

By Derek Jarman. Introduction by Michael Charlesworth

 weaves a sensory tapestry that serves as both a political call to action and a meditation on illness, dying, and love.

 there are no boundaries or solutions.” —Derek Jarman

Originally released as a feature film in 1993, the year before the acclaimed artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman’s death due to an AIDS-related illness, 

 is a daring and powerful work of art. The film and its script, as reproduced in this volume, serve as an impassioned response to the lack of political engagement with the AIDS crisis.

Jarman's Blue moves through myriad scenes, some banal, others fantastical. Stories of quotidian life––getting coffee, reading the newspaper, and walking down the sidewalk––escalate to visions of Marco Polo, the Taj Mahal, or blue fighting yellow. Facing death and a cascade of pills, Jarman presents his illness in delirium and metaphors. He contemplates the physicality of emotions in lyrical prose as he grounds this story in the constant return to Blue—a color, a feeling, a funk. Michael Charlesworth's compelling introduction brings 

 into conversation with Jarman’s visual paintings.

All Books