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

 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.

Each journal is beautifully crafted in Verona, Italy.

Ruth Asawa: The Journal

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

Dan Flavin, New York, 1970.  Photo by Gianfranco Gorgoni. © Maya Gorgoni

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

Helen Molesworth

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.

Blue

Nikita Gale

Daphne A. Brooks

Ebony L. Haynes

Andrea Fraser

Harmony Holiday

Clarion

Introduction by Ebony L. Haynes. Texts by Andrea Fraser and Harmony Holiday. Liner notes by Daphne A. Brooks

 series spotlights the artist Nikita Gale, whose multimedia work applies the lens of material culture to examine the role authority plays in political, social, and economic systems.



Immersing the audience in sound and light, Nikita Gale’s 

 subverts understandings of viewership by prompting spectators to question their subjecthood within 52 Walker’s site-specific installation. Creating an aurally and visually rich environment, Gale engages with the architecture of the space, stimulating all senses, and muses on the boundaries of performance art. Considering and fracturing the physical space of the installation, the artist employs abolitionist ideology and institutional critique to simultaneously rupture and rebuild facets of the art institution.

With an introduction by Ebony L. Haynes and a suite of poems by Harmony Holiday, this publication considers Gale’s multidisciplinary approach in addressing historical hierarchies of visibility. A text by the esteemed artist Andrea Fraser offers reflections on the various interventions at play during a gathering held in the exhibition.

Nikita Gale: END OF SUBJECT

Judith Bernstein

David Salle

Nicholas Serota

Barry Schwabsky

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Foreword by Nicholas Serota. Texts by Judith Bernstein, David Salle, and Barry Schwabsky. Interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist

A comprehensive publication of work from the past six years by the beloved artist Rose Wylie, highlighting her expansive oeuvre of painting and works on paper

“Wylie fearlessly tackles the thorniest topics head-on, committing her thoughts and questions about politics, religion, fame, love, history, money and nature to canvas.” —



Inspired by film, pop culture, and the history of fashion, Wylie harnesses a union of high and low culture with a bold technique of mark making. Her unique practice of material overlay and erasure creates fantastic compositions. Playing with the conceptual tensions between formal and informal aesthetics, Wylie also employs the visual elements of text as crucial details in her paintings.

With beautiful swiss binding, this monograph compiles work from five exhibitions at David Zwirner, offering an impressive view of Wylie’s most recent work. Giving insight to Wylie’s feminist and rebellious impulses, Judith Bernstein writes an accompanying text on how she relates to Wylie’s ambitious and playful energy. This publication also features a foreword by Nicholas Serota and new essays by David Salle and Barry Schwabsky, in addition to an enlightening interview between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Rose Wylie: Which One

A detail from a painting by Portia Zvavahera, titled This is where I travelled [3], dated 2020.

Portia Zvavahera, Ndirikukuona (I can see you), 2021

Allie Biswas

Meredith Brown

Text by Meredith A. Brown. Interview with the artist by Allie Biswas

Expressive and rich paintings by the Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera—made during a time of intense solitude and collective struggle across the globe.



In her paintings, Zvavahera gives form to emotions that manifest from other realms and dimensions beyond the domains of everyday life and thought. Her vivid imagery is rooted in the cornerstones of our earthly existence—life and death, pain and pleasure, isolation and connection, and love and loss.

Zvavahera draws from a powerful visual vocabulary comprising women, her family, and shape-shifting animals, in scenes both metaphorical and fantastical. In several paintings, she makes use of intricate patterns taken from her own floral or classical Zimbabwean designs. Her particular process of alternating painting and printing results in images that communicate complex emotions in a play of tension and release. The result is a deeply personal body of work that probes the nature of the human condition. As Zvavahera states, “It is me in the paintings.… I can only speak about myself.”

In addition to gorgeous reproductions of twenty-four paintings, including up-close details and installation views, this catalogue also features a new essay by the curator Meredith Brown and an interview with the artist by the writer Allie Biswas. This catalogue surveys work made since 2017.

Portia Zvavahera

Éric de Chassey

Renowned British artist Bridget Riley’s paintings have provoked powerful sensations through their formally taut, abstract compositions over the course of her more than six-decade career. In this new body of work, Riley returns to earlier ideas and takes them into further and surprising directions.



As the artist has noted, “I am sometimes asked ‘What is your objective’ and this I cannot truthfully answer. I work ‘from’ something rather than ‘towards’ something. It is a process of discovery.” Since 1961, Riley has focused exclusively on seemingly simple geometric forms, such as lines, circles, curves, and squares, arrayed across a surface—whether a canvas, a wall, or paper—according to an internal logic. The resulting compositions actively engage the viewer, at times triggering sensations of vibration and movement. In the present selection, Riley advances her 

 series, her most extensive body of work to date, into a new, darker color palette—once again, changing the way we look and offering a powerful effect on our eyes.

This sense of dynamism was explored to great effect in the artist’s earliest black-and-white paintings, which established the basis of her enduring formal vocabulary. In 2020, after visiting her own earlier works at her retrospective exhibition organized by the National Galleries of Scotland, Riley returned to black-and-white lozenges, adjusting the orientation of each shape to create a new visual sensation.

Published on the occasion of the 2021 exhibition at David Zwirner, London, this monograph features new scholarship on the artist by art historian Éric de Chassey, who looks at how Riley’s past, in addition to the history of art, has led to this body of work.

Bridget Riley: Past into Present

Thomas Ruff: Tableaux Chinois, Walther Koenig, 2022

An ingenious photographic analysis of Chinese propaganda across two photo technologies

In the early 2000s, Thomas Ruff (born 1958) chanced across a coffee-table propaganda book on Mao Zedong and became interested in the visual rhetoric of Chinese Communism, eventually purchasing copies of 

—the French iteration of a periodical that the Chinese Communist Party produced from the late 1950s through the 1970s as a means of demonstrating the advantages of Communism to European countries.
Ruff scanned images from 

 depicting cheerful soldiers, scenic views, ceremonial occasions and Mao himself, enlarging them to reveal the offset halftone dots, then duplicating the image and converting it into pixels; that image was then layered over the original scan, from which Ruff removed various areas. The final image therefore contains both analog halftone and digital pixel. As Susanne Holschbach observes, “Ruff has visually merged the technological process of preparing photographs for their mass distribution from the two photographic eras on one pictorial plane.”

Thomas Ruff: Tableaux Chinois

A detail of a photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans titled Sicily Morning, dated 2018.

“Wolfgang Tillmans is not only a great artist, he’s a joyous intellectual whose generosity, wit and good-natured skepticism is political, authentic and playfully profound.” – John Waters

This volume offers a panoramic collection of interviews and writings from an artist for whom language has always been a significant means of creative expression. Arranged chronologically, the assembled texts reflect Tillmans’ thinking on photography, music, politics, nightlife, astronomy, spirituality and activism. The sources are as varied as their content, with statements and conversations that originally appeared in exhibition catalogues rubbing up against social-media posts and song lyrics.

Whether discussing his own work as a photographer or drawing out the thoughts of others, Tillmans is a generous interlocutor with a refreshing clarity of thought. This visually rich and timely publication tracks Tillmans’ contributions to art and cultural criticism in tandem with the social and cultural shifts of the past 30 years.

Wolfgang Tillmans: A Reader

Mamma Andersson, 2023. Photo by Pierre Björk

Edited by Lærke Rydal Jørgensen and Marie Laurberg. Foreword by Poul Erik Tøjner and Marie Laurberg. Text by Barry Schwabsky, Karl Ove Knausgård, Magnus Florin. Conversation between Mamma Andersson and Marie Laurberg

Works from the past two decades and a new series from the Swedish master of the oneiric and the unsettling

Mamma Andersson (born 1962) ranks as one of the most important painters of her generation. The Swedish artist is an eminent interpreter of the unique language of painting. With a sharp sense of mood, color and materiality, she has developed a personal take on the classical genres of painting: still lifes, interiors and landscapes are at the crux of her work. Her signature aesthetic is the result of repeated applications and overpainting. Oil on canvas is covered in spray paint, paint is dragged in thin bands across the surface, producing a material fullness and variety.

This catalog accompanies the Louisiana’s exhibition 

, and contains contributions from the author Karl Ove Knausgård, the playwright Magnus Florin and the art writer and poet Barry Schwabsky, in addition to a conversation between Mamma Andersson and the exhibition’s curator, Marie Laurberg.

Mamma Andersson: Humdrum Days

Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear book cover

Edited by Roxana Marcoci. With contributions by Quentin Bajac, Yve-Alain Bois, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Clément Chéroux, Durga Chew-Bose, Stuart Comer, Keller Easterling, Paul Flynn, Sophie Hackett, Michelle Kuo, Oluremi C. Onabanjo, Phil Taylor, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Andrew Vielkind

Encompassing photography, installation, print media, video and more, this publication is the most comprehensive account of Tillmans's wide-ranging career to date

A visionary creator and intrepid polymath, Wolfgang Tillmans unites formal inventiveness with an ethical orientation that attends to the most pressing issues of life today. While his work transcends the bounds of any single artistic discipline, he is best known for his wide-ranging photographic output. From trenchant documents of social movements to windowsill still lifes, ecstatic images of nightlife to cameraless abstractions, sensitive portraits to architectural studies, astronomical phenomena to intimate nudes, he has explored seemingly every genre of photography imaginable, continually experimenting with how to make new pictures and deepen the viewer's experience.

Published in conjunction with a major exhibition of Tillmans's work at the Museum of Modern Art, this copiously illustrated volume surveys four decades of the artist's career. An outstanding group of writers offer diverse essays addressing key threads of his multifaceted practice, and a new text by Tillmans himself elucidates the distinctive methodology behind his system of presenting photographs. 

 fear grants readers new insight into the work of an artist who has not only changed the way photography is exhibited but pointed contemporary art in dynamic new directions.

Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear, The Museum of Modern Art, 2022

Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear

This cahier is a visual sketchbook for an exhibition by Marlene Dumas at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, in dialogue with the museum's collection. Although the exhibition has been postponed towards 2025, this anticipatory publication already arose from Dumas' enthusiasm and affection for this combination. The enigmatic Cycladic antiquities, dating from 3000-2000 BC, speak to us in the same timeless language as Dumas' contemporary works.


Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues

Gwendolyn Owens

Philip Ursprung

By Gordon Matta-Clark. Edited by Gwendolyn Owens and Philip Ursprung

An essential reference that provides new understanding of the thought processes of one of the most radical artists of the late twentieth century

Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) has never been an easy artist to categorize or to explain. Although trained as an architect, he has been described as a sculptor, a photographer, an organizer of performances, and a writer of manifestos, but he is best known for un-building abandoned structures. In the brief span of his career, from 1968 to his early death in 1978, he created an oeuvre that has made him an enduring cult figure.

In 2002, when Gordon Matta-Clark’s widow, Jane Crawford, put his archive on deposit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, it revealed a new voice in the ongoing discussion of artist/architect Matta-Clark’s work: his own. Gwendolyn Owens and Philip Ursprung’s careful selection and ordering of letters, interviews, statements, and the now-famous art cards from the CCA as well as other sources deepens our understanding of one of the most original thinkers of his generation. 

Gordon Matta-Clark: An Archival Sourcebook

 creates a multidimensional portrait that provides an opportunity for readers to explore and enjoy the complexity and contradiction that was Gordon Matta-Clark.

brings the world’s leading contemporary artists together with William Shakespeare. Featuring covers designed by each artist and illustrations throughout, these editions of Shakespeare’s plays are created with a whole new generation in mind, one of readers and art lovers alike.

 is an ideal subject for the artist Rose Wylie, whose work frequently references classic stories and well-known characters.

William Shakespeare x Marcel Dzama: A Midsummer Nights Dream

Set in an enchanted forest, Shakespeare’s 

is the ideal subject for artist Marcel Dzama, whose work frequently references dreams, fairy tales, and mythical worlds.

William Shakespeare x Chris Ofili: Othello

 remains one of Shakespeare’s most contemporary and moving plays, with its emphasis on race, revenge, murder, and lost love. Chris Ofili’s new edition highlights the tragedy of 

’s plight in ways no other volume of this play has.

Shakespeare book series featuring three titles

The Seeing Shakespeare Collection

By Charles Baudelaire. Illustrated by Marlene Dumas

After their successful collaboration in William Shakespeare's 

, Hafid Bouazza and Marlene Dumas decided to reunite. This time he would translate the fifty prose poems collected by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) in 

 , and she would illustrate his translation.
Hafid Bouazza passed away on April 29, 2021. Marlene Dumas made paintings and drawings for the twenty prose poems of which he completed the translation. She was inspired by the atmosphere of the text and the specific timbre of Bouazza. The book thus became a posthumous ode to their friendship.

Charles Baudelaire is considered the poet of the spleen, a melancholy, an intense boredom that leads to weltschmerz. In 

 he paints portraits of grieving widows, rejected lovers, people who fight against the dark around them and within themselves. Anyone who reads this magnificent collection will realize that 

The French original has been recorded in its entirety in 

 , as has an English translation by Louise Varèse. The heart of the book is formed by the twenty translations of Hafid Bouazza, illustrated by Marlene Dumas.

Charles Baudelaire: Le Spleen de Paris

Rachel Kushner

Robert Slifkin

Texts by Rachel Kushner and Robert Slifkin

A selection of nearly one hundred previously unseen images from the 1960s and 1970s by the pioneer of color photography, William Eggleston.

, a series of photographs taken by Eggleston between 1969 and 1974, establishes the groundbreaking visual themes and lexicon that the artist would continue to develop for decades to come. The work offers a journey through the mythic and evolving American South, seen through the artist’s lens: vibrant colors and a profound sense of nostalgia echo throughout Eggleston’s breathtaking oeuvre. His motifs of signage, cars, and roadside scenes create an iconography of American vistas that inspired a generation of photographers. With its in-depth selection of unforgettable images—a wood-paneled station wagon, doors flung open, parked in an expansive rural setting; the artist’s grandmother in the moody interior of their family’s Sumner, Mississippi home—

 is emblematic of Eggleston’s dynamic, experimental practice. The breadth of work reenergizes his iconic landscapes and forms a new perspective of the American South in transition.

Accompanying the ninety brilliant Kodachrome images and details, a literary, fictional text by the critically acclaimed author Rachel Kushner imagines a story of hitchhikers trekking through the Deep South. New scholarship by Robert Slifkin reframes the art-historical significance of Eggleston’s oeuvre, proposing affinities with work by Marcel Duchamp, Dan Graham, Jasper Johns, and Robert Smithson. A foreword by William Eggleston III offers important insights into the process of selecting and sequencing this series of images.

William Eggleston: The Outlands, Selected Works

Romaine Brooks

Lauren O’Neill-Butler

By Romaine Brooks. Introduction by Lauren O’Neill-Butler

Selections from Romaine Brooks’s unpublished memoir 

 expose the psyche and practice of this underrecognized queer, female artist.

Most known for her bold and darkly painted portraits, Brooks was revolutionary in her feminist renderings of women in resistance. Openly queer, she challenged conceptions of gender and sexuality in her art, which also served as her refuge. While many of her male counterparts were disfiguring and cubing their subjects—often women—Brooks gave personhood and power to the figures she painted. Her frank approach to her complicated relationship with her mother, faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender is complemented by a keen wit that echoes the gray tones of her work.

Though her paintings are held in major collections, Brooks’s influence in modernist circles of the early twentieth century is largely underexplored. This new publication, guided by Brooks’s own impressionistic musings, bridges an important gap between the art and the artist. An introduction by Lauren O’Neill-Butler explores Brooks’s role as an artist in the early twentieth century through the lens of gender and sexuality.

Strange Impressions

Makeda Best

Taylor Davis

Ruth Erickson

Briony Fer

Jennifer L. Roberts

John Yau

Text by Helen Molesworth. Contributions by Makeda Best, Taylor Davis, Ruth Erickson, Briony Fer, Jennifer L. Roberts, and John Yau

Revealing rarely seen work alongside her iconic looped-wire sculptures, this catalogue celebrates Ruth Asawa’s unique vision and intimate subject matter.

Known for her intricate and distinct artistic language, Asawa produced numerous sculptures, drawings, and prints that are built on simple, repeated gestures that accumulate into complex compositions. Her works on paper and “continuous” looped-wire sculptures suggest a field of fluctuating positive and negative forms, a means of reshaping how we perceive the world. Personal motifs reappear throughout in the most comprehensive look at the artist’s oeuvre to date––ceramic casts of faces of her family, friends, and neighbors; the carved front door Asawa and her family made for their home; and drawings of her children, grandchildren, and husband sleeping––all providing an expansive look into the artist’s life.

A document of the breathtaking and surprising exhibition 

, organized by Helen Molesworth, this book records and expands upon the show, offering new insight from writers and curators with a selection of sixty-four works from Asawa’s spectacular oeuvre. With an essay by Molesworth, this book also features focused texts from Makeda Best, Taylor Davis, Ruth Erickson, Briony Fer, Jennifer L. Roberts, and John Yau.

Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible

Alexandre Kojève

Boris Groys

By Alexandre Kojève. Introduction by Boris Groys

 explores Alexandre Kojève’s philosophical approach to the relationship between art and beauty.

A teacher to Jacques Lacan, André Breton, and Albert Camus, Kojève defined art as the act of extracting the beautiful from objective reality. His poetic text, “The Concrete Paintings of Kandinsky,” endorses nonrepresentational art as uniquely manifesting beauty. Taking the paintings of his renowned uncle, Wassily Kandinsky, as his inspiration, Kojève suggests that in creating (rather than replicating) beauty, the paintings are themselves complete universes as concrete as the natural world. Kojève’s text considers the utility and necessity of beauty in life, and ultimately poses the involuted question: What is beauty?

Including personal letters between Kandinsky and his nephew, this book further elaborates the unique relationship between artist and philosopher. An introduction by Boris Groys contextualizes Kojève’s life and writings.

Kandinsky: Incarnating Beauty

Trailer Video

A gelatin silver print by Diane Arbus, titled Triplets in their bedroom, N.J. 1963, dated 1963.

Texts by 55 authors, including Hilton Als, A. D. Coleman, Holland Cotter, Jacob Deschin, Germaine Greer, Hilton Kramer, Arthur Lubow, Janet Malcolm, Francine Prose, Sukhdev Sandhu, Peter Schjeldahl, Adrian Searle, Susan Sontag, Lynne Tillman, and Colm Tóibín

Edited by Max Rosenberg. Foreword by Jeffrey Fraenkel and Lucas Zwirner

Through an assemblage of articles, criticism, and essays from 1967 to the present, this groundbreaking publication charts the reception of the photographer’s work and offers comprehensive insight into the critical conversations, as well as misconceptions, around this highly influential artist.

Best known for her penetrating images exploring what it means to be human, Diane Arbus is a pivotal and singularfigure in American postwar photography. Arbus’s black-and-white photographs demolish aesthetic conventions and upend all certainties. Both lauded and criticized for her photographs of people deemed “outsiders,” Arbus continues to be a lightning rod for a wide range of opinions surrounding her subject matter and approach. Critics and writers have described her work as “sinister” and “appalling” as well as “revelatory,” “sincere,” and “compassionate.” Through an assemblage of articles, criticism, and essays from 1967 to the present, 

 charts the reception of the revolutionary photographer's work.

Illuminating fifty years of evolution in the field of art criticism, 

All Books