Studio Art: Books

Wayne Thiebaud by Timothy Anglin Burgard (Editor); Rachel Teagle (Contribution by); Eve Aschheim (Contribution by); Lauren Palmor (Contribution by) "A beautifully produced, authoritative volume."--Kirkus Reviews  Explores Wayne Thiebaud's career as a self-described "thief" who appropriated and reinterpreted old and new European and American artworks.  Although artist Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) earned acclaim for his poetic renderings of the prosaic particulars of American life, he openly admitted that "it's hard for me to think of artists who weren't influential on me, because I'm such a blatant thief." Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art features the artist's virtuosic appropriations and reinterpretations of old and new European and American artworks, spanning from Andrea Mantegna to Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse to Richard Diebenkorn, offering crucial insights into his creative process.  Thiebaud's exploration of art, artists, and art history--along with the practices of copying, appropriation, and reinterpretation--allowed him not only to see through the eyes of other artists but also to commune with them through their work, expanding his own vision. This career-long engagement with the concept of appropriation illustrates his perception of art history as an encyclopedic "bureau of standards"--a rich repository and resource that offers working artists community with their predecessors and communion with their artworks.  Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Exhibition dates: Legion of Honor: March 22-August 17, 2025

Amy Sherald by Sarah Roberts (Editor); Elizabeth Alexander (Contribution by); Dario Calmese (Contribution by); Rhea L. Combs (Contribution by); Deborah Willis (Contribution by) Amy Sherald's work, life, and significance for American art, as revealed in her powerful figurative paintings of Black subjects   "The contemporary painter's defining subjects are everyday Black Americans, the 'sublime' buried subtly, but unmistakably, in their everyday gestures."--New York Times Book Review, "10 Giftworthy Visual Books"   Bringing together nearly all of her artwork to date, this lavishly illustrated volume situates the work of Amy Sherald (b. 1973) within the context of American realist and figurative painting. Encompassing the full arc of her career, from her poetic early works to the distinctive figure paintings and portraits that have become her hallmark, Amy Sherald: American Sublime unfolds her method of selecting individuals she meets on the street and using facial expression, body language, and clothing choices to create paintings that transcend portraiture and expand the canon of American art. Essays by curators Sarah Roberts and Rhea Combs; poet and writer Elizabeth Alexander; artist Dario Calmese; and renowned scholar Deborah Willis contextualize and illuminate Sherald's creation of a new form of imaginative portraiture. Often depicting her subjects' skin in gray monochrome, surrounded by few markers of place, time, or context beyond the clothes they wear, Sherald challenges the assumption that Black life is inextricably bound with struggle, creating images that engage in more expansive thinking about race and representation and the wide-open possibilities and complexities of every individual. Whether a passerby or the former first lady Michelle Obama, Sherald's subjects are at ease with themselves, the world, and one another.   Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art   Exhibition Schedule:   San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (November 16, 2024-March 9, 2025)   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (April 9-August 10, 2025)   Baltimore Museum of Art (November 2, 2025-April 3, 2026) High Museum of Art, Atlanta (May 15-September 27, 2026)

Vital Signs by Lanka Tattersall (Editor); Precious Okoyomon (Prologue by); Cyrus Grace Dunham (Text by) Vital Signs looks closely at how abstraction is often intimately tied with expansive, fluid ideas of the bodily. Vital Signs looks closely at how abstraction is often intimately tied with expansive, fluid ideas of the bodily. Bringing together seemingly unalike categories-masculine/feminine, figurative/abstract, self/other, exotic/banal-into newly fused configurations, the publication shows how artists have often conceived of these categories as inextricably intertwined. With a focus on artists working in the 1960s and 70s who, with a few exceptions, identified as women, the catalogue is divided into three thematic sections. 'Mirror' explores the ways artists have honed in on the forms of the face and head as a distorted mirror; 'Matter' looks at how artists draw on the metaphorical resonances of the body in ways that suggest mutable morphologies, especially in relation to socially constructed definitions of gender, race, and sexuality; and 'Metamorphosis' examines how artists have used abstraction as a means to transform the human body into different modes of being: new identities, other animals, and spiritual or cosmological entities. An introductory essay Lanka Tattersall maps the historical precedents from a feminist and queer art historical perspective, while a prologue by poet and artist Precious Okoyomon and a focused meditation by Lambda Literary Award finalist Cyrus Grace Dunham open up new forms of language for questions around gender and abstraction.

Remedios Varo by Caitlin Haskell (Editor); Tere Arcq (Editor); Lara Balikci (Contribution by); Mary Broadway (Contribution by); Brenda J. Caro Cocotle (Contribution by); Claire Howard (Contribution by); Katrina Rush (Contribution by); Alive Piliado Santana (Contribution by); Alex Zivkovic (Contribution by) An exploration of the captivating work and mystical outlook of the modern artist Remedios Varo, focusing on her years in Mexico City   This publication offers a definitive look at the artistic practice of Remedios Varo (1908-1963) following her emigration from Spain to Mexico City in 1941. Her work from 1955 to 1963 made a lasting contribution to modern art and the legacy of Surrealism. In Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, fresh historical and material findings establish the integral relationship between Varo's layered interests--in alchemy, architecture, magic, mysticism, philosophy, and science--and her beguiling technical approach to art making. Essays detail specific works' complex stories and spectacular surfaces. An illustrated taxonomy of Varo's artistic techniques, including automatic mark making as well as careful manipulation of materials and media, offers new insights into the artist's craft. An illustrated inventory of a major portion of Varo's library--published here for the first time--reveals the artist's engagement with a wide range of subjects. Stunning new photography of many of her artworks are presented within a dynamic geometric design inspired by the artist's work. Situating Varo as a woman working in midcentury Mexico City and living among a tight-knit community of local and émigré artists, poets, and thinkers, the catalogue illuminates the complex worldview that shaped her search for individual and collective transcendence.   Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago, in partnership with the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City   Exhibition Schedule   Art Institute of Chicago (July 29, 2023-November 27, 2023)  

Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art by Phaidon Editors A global survey of more than 100 artists, chosen by art-world professionals for their work with threads, stitching, and textiles Celebrating tapestry, embroidery, stitching, textiles, knitting, and knotting as used by visual artists worldwide, Vitamin T is the latest in the celebrated series in which leading curators, critics, and art professionals nominate living artists for inclusion. As boundaries between art and craft have blurred, artists have increasingly embraced these materials and methods, with the resulting works being coveted by collectors and exhibited in museums worldwide. Vitamin T is a vibrant and incredibly timely survey - the first of its kind.

Vitamin D3: Today's Best in Contemporary Drawing by Phaidon Editors Phaidon's 'Vitamin' series has long proved an extraordinarily accurate predictor of tomorrow's stars. This latest instalment is a cutting-edge and indispensable survey of the very best of contemporary drawing, as chosen by a panel of the world's leading art experts Over the past 50 years, drawing has been elevated from a supporting role to a primary medium, ranking alongside painting as a central art form. Since Phaidon's publication of the first such surveys (Vitamin D in 2005 and D2 in 2013), contemporary artists have continued to explore drawing's possibilities - from intimate to large-scale works, in a diversity of mark-making processes and materials. Vitamin D3 showcases more than 100 such artists, as  nominated by a global panel of more than 70 international art experts. The more than 70 nominators include such iconic figures as: Iwona Blazwick, Louisa Buck, Mark Coetzee, Thelma Golden, Laura Hoptman, Geeta Kapur, Pablo León de la Barra, Christine Macel, Kate Macfarlane, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Zoe Whitley. The more than 100 selected artists include: Miriam Cahn, Robert Crumb, Tom Friedman, Tania Kovats, Claudette Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Otobong Nkanga, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Deanna Petherbridge, Christina Quarles, Qiu Zhijie, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Wael Shawky, Emma Talbot, and Johanna Unzueta.

Vitamin P3: New Perspectives in Painting by Phaidon Editors At last - the next instalment in the popular Vitamin series - the world's hottest painters, selected by international experts Since the publication of the first Vitamin P in 2002, painting has continued to evolve and excite, with new generations responding to its historic importance and taking it in unexpected directions. A central pillar of artistic practice, painting also has enduring appeal, dominating the art market. Vitamin P3takes the conversation forward, spotlighting more than 100 outstanding artists who are engaging with - and pushing the boundaries of - the medium of paint. Artists include: Etel Adnan, Michael Armitage, Matt Connors, Genieve Figgis, Helen Johnson, Sanya Kantarovsky, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Oscar Murillo, Imran Qureshi, Nicolas Party, Mary Ramsden, Rosie Wylie. International experts include: Iwona Blazwick, Benjamin Buchloh, Marlene Dumas, Laura Hoptman, Geeta Kapur, Alex Katz, Tim Marlow, Sarah McCrory, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Beatrix Ruf, Nancy Spector.

Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramic in Contemporary Art by Clare Lilley; Phaidon Editors A global survey of 100 of today's most important clay and ceramic artists, chosen by leading art world professionals. Vitamin Ccelebrates the revival of clay as a material for contemporary visual artists, featuring a wide range of global talent as selected by the world's leading curators, critics, and art professionals. Clay and ceramics have in recent years been elevated from craft to high art material, with the resulting artworks being coveted by collectors and exhibited in museums around the world. Packed with illustrations, Vitamin C is a vibrant and incredibly timely survey - the first of its kind. Artists include: Caroline Achaintre, Ai Weiwei, Aaron Angell, Edmund de Waal, Theaster Gates, Marisa Merz, Ron Nagle, Gabriel Orozco, Grayson Perry, Sterling Ruby, Thomas Schütte, Richard Slee, Jesse Wine, and Betty Woodman. Nominators include: Pablo Leon de la Barra, Iwona Blazwick, Mary Ceruti, Dan Fox, Jens Hoffmann, Christine Macel, James Meyer, Jed Morse, Beatrix Ruf, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Nancy Spector, Sheena Wagstaff, and Jonathan Watkins.

Vitamin Ph by Editors of Phaidon Press Photography continues to be a central part of international artistic practice. Over the past ten years it has experienced radical changes, in part due to the rise of digital technologies. Photography is now often engaged in by artists who are not just printing in a darkroom, but using the medium as a single aspect of a larger ouvre, as one of several media under exploration.Vitamin Phfocuses on diverse global developments in 'art' photography through the work of 121 contemporary artists, who were nominated by 78 international critics, curators and artists. These selections will be accompanied by a 5000 word introductory text by TJ Demos, aiming to explore ideas relevant to contemporary photography with reference to the works included in the book. In addition, the work of each photographer/artist will be introduced by a short commissioned text of approximately 500 words. Similar in concept, scope and structure to Vitamin Pand Vitamin D, Vitamin Phpresents, in A to Z order, artists who have emerged, or in some instances re-emerged, in the last five years using the medium of photography.

Oceans by Pandora Syperek (Editor); Sarah Wade (Editor) OCEANS attends to the inextricable human and nonhuman agencies that affect and are affected by the sea and its running currents within contemporary art and visual culture. Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth's surface, dividing and connecting humans, who carry saltwater in their blood, sweat, and tears. They also represent a powerful nonhuman force, rising, flooding, heating and raging in unprecedented ways as the climate crisis unfolds. Artists have envisioned the sea as a sublime wilderness, home to mythical creatures and bizarre species, a source of life and death, a site of new beginnings and tragic endings, both wondrous and disastrous. From migration to melting ice caps, the sea is omnipresent in international news and politics, leaking into popular culture and proliferating in recent art and exhibitions. This anthology gathers artists and writers to address the ocean not only as a theme but as a major agent of artistic and curatorial methods. Artists surveyed include Bas Jan Ader, Eileen Agar, John Akomfrah, Heba Y. Amin, Shuvinai Ashoona, Betty Beaumont, Leopold & Rudolf Blaschka, Heidi Bucher, Marcus Coates, Tacita Dean, Ellen Gallagher, Ayesha Hameed, Barbara Hepworth, Klara Hobza, Isuma, Brian Jungen, Tania Kovats, Sonia Levy, Armin Linke, Lani Maestro, Ana Mendieta, Kasia Molga, Eleanor Morgan, Wangechi Mutu, Jean Painlevé and Geneviève Hamon, Allan Sekula, Shimabuku, Christine & Margaret Wertheim, Alberta Whittle Writers include Stacy Alaimo, Bergit Arends, Erika Balsom, Karen Barad, Rachel Carson, Mel Y. Chen, T.J. Demos, Marion Endt-Jones, Kodwo Eshun, Paul Gilroy, Stefano Harney, Epeli Hau'ofa, Donna Haraway, Eva Hayward, Stefanie Hessler, Luce Irigaray, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Celina Jeffery, Melody Jue, Max Liboiron, Lana Lopesi, Chus Martinez, Jules Michelet, Fred Moten, Astrida Neimanis, Celeste Olalquiaga, Ralph Rugoff, John Ruskin, Marina Warner, Jan Verwoert

Speculation by Marina Vishmidt (Editor) A wide-ranging investigation of what speculation is, and what is at stake for artistic, curatorial, critical, and institutional practices in relating to their own speculative character. Engaging with the question of speculation in ways that encompass the artistic, the economic, and the philosophical, with excursions into the literary and the scientific, this collection approaches the theme as a powerful logic of contemporary life whose key instantiations are art and finance. Both are premised on the power of contingency, temporality, and experimentation in the creation (and capitalization) of possible worlds. Artistic autonomy, and the self-legislation of the space of art, have often been seen as the freedom to speculate wildly on material and social possibilities. In this context, the artist is seen as a speculative subject and a paragon of creativity-the diametrical opposite of the bean-counter obsessed with balance sheets and value added. However, once social reality becomes speculative and opaque in its own right-risky, algorithmic, and overhauled by networked markets-what becomes of the distinction between not just art and finance but art and life? This anthology surveys material and social inventiveness from the ground up, speculating with technologies, gender, constructs of the family, and systems of logistics and coordination. An ecology of speculation is traced-one that is as broken, specific, and enthralling as the world. Artists Surveyed include Bertolt Brecht, Jerzy Ludwinski, Cameron Rowland, Salvage Art Institute, Andy Warhol, Mi You, PiraMMMida, Sam Lewitt Writers Include Lisa Adkins, Ramon Amaro, Brenna Bhandar, Octavia Butler, Cedric Durand, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Sophie Lewis, Dougal Dixon, Stanisław Lem, Isabelle Stengers and Phillip Pignarre, Steven Shaviro, Can Xue, Daniel Spaulding

The Cute by Sianne Ngai (Editor) A collection that tracks the astonishing impact of one vernacular aesthetic category-the cute-on postwar and contemporary art. The Cute tracks the astonishing impact of a single aesthetic category on post-war and contemporary art, and on the vast range of cultural practices and discourses on which artists draw. From robots and cat videos to ice cream socials, The Cute explores the ramifications of an aesthetic "of" or "about" minorness-or what is perceived to be diminutive, subordinate, and above all, unthreatening-on the shifting forms and contents of art today. This anthology is the first of its kind to show how contemporary artists have worked on and transformed the cute, in ways that not only complexify its meaning, but also reshape their own artistic practices. Artists surveyed include Peggy Ahwesh, Cosima Von Bonin, Nayland Blake, Paul Chan, Adrian Howells, Juliana Huxtable, Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, Dean Kenning, Wyndham Lewis, Jeff Koons, Sean-Kierre Lyons, Mammalian Diving Reflex, Alake Shilling, Annette Messager, Mariko Mori, Takashi Murakami, Charlemagne Palestine, David Robbins, Mika Rottenberg, Allen Ruppersberg, Jack Smith, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Yoshitomo Nara Writers include Sasha Archibald, Roland Barthes, Leigh Claire La Berge, Lauren Berlant, Ian Bogost, Jennifer Doyle, Lee Edelman, Adrienne Edwards, Lewis Gordon, Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Lori Merish, John Morreall, Juliane Rebentisch, Frances Richard, Carrie Rickey, Friedrich Schiller, Peter Schjeldahl, Kanako Shiokawa, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, Kevin Young

Magic by Jamie Sutcliffe (Editor) The first accessible reader on magic's generative relationship with contemporary art practice. From the hexing of presidents to a renewed interest in herbalism and atavistic forms of self-care, magic has furnished the contemporary imagination with mysterious and often disorienting bodies of arcane thought and practice. This volume brings together writings by artists, magicians, historians, and theorists that illuminate the vibrant correspondences animating contemporary art's varied encounters with magical culture, inspiring a reconsideration of the relationship between the symbolic and the pragmatic. Dispensing with simple narratives of reenchantment, Magic illustrates the intricate ways in which we have to some extent always been captivated by the allure of the numinous. It demonstrates how magical culture's tendencies toward secrecy, occlusion, and encryption might provide contemporary artists with strategies of remedial communality, a renewed faith in the invocational power of personal testimony, and a poetics of practice that could boldly question our political circumstances, from the crisis of climate collapse to the strictures of socially sanctioned techniques of medical and psychiatric care. Tracing its various emergences through the shadows of modernity, the circuitries of ritual media, and declarations of psychic self-defence, Magic deciphers the evolution of a "magical-critical" thinking that productively complicates, contradicts and expands the boundaries of our increasingly weird present.