September brings new books on art focused on photography portraits by William Eggleston, the West Coast / East Coast trajectory of gallerist Virginia Dwan, Francis Bacon paintings and more. Summer may almost be over but there's still time to hit the beach and relax with a good read from some of the new art books to hit the shelves.
“William Eggleston Portraits”
The American photographer William Eggleston (b. 1939) was a pioneer in exploring the artistic potential of color photography. Eggleston made a name for himself with his eccentric, unexpected compositions of everyday life that were nonetheless rife with implied narrative, elevating the commonplace to art. This illustrated book features Eggleston’s portraits, including many familiar images as well as some previously unseen photographs from his career.
Many of Eggleston’s photographs portray life in his home state of Tennessee and the people he encountered there. Eggleston frequented the 1970s Memphis club scene, where he photographed musicians such as Alex Chilton and Ike Turner. He also photographed celebrities including Dennis Hopper, Walter Hopps and Eudora Welty, and became a fixture of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene. Over the past half century, he has created a powerful and enduring body of work featuring friends and family, musicians, artists, and strangers. In addition to the reproductions of Eggleston’s portraits, this volume includes an essay and chronology, plus an interview with Eggleston and his close family members that gives new insights into his images and artistic process.
BASIC FACTS: “William Eggleston Portraits” is written by Phillip Prodger. Published by Yale University Press. Release Date: September 6, 2016. Hardcover; 184 pages; $50.00.
“Dwan Gallery: Los Angeles to New York, 1959-1971”
Virginia Dwan was a influential 20th century American gallerist as well as an art collector. Her galleries, the first established in a Los Angeles storefront in 1959, followed by a second in New York in 1965, became a beacon for influential postwar American and European artists. She sponsored the debut show for Yves Klein in the United States, and she championed such artists as Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, and Ad Reinhardt. Her LA gallery featured abstract expressionism, neo-Dada, and pop, while the New York branch became associated with the emerging movements of minimalism and conceptualism. At the same time, the gallery’s influence expanded to remote locations in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, where Dwan sponsored such iconic earthworks as Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, and Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field.
Published to coincide with an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art celebrating Dwan’s gift to the Gallery of her personal collection, “Dwan Gallery” explores her career. Alongside full-color images of one hundred leading artworks, the book deepens our understanding of the artistic exchanges Dwan facilitated during this age of mobility and transformed the making of art and the sites of its exhibition.
BASIC FACTS: “Dwan Gallery: Los Angeles to New York, 1959-1971” is written by James Meyer (Author), Virginia Dwan (Contributor) and Paige Rozanksi (Contributor). Published by University of Chicago Press. Release Date: September 5, 2016. Hardcover; 384 pages; $60.00.
“Francis Bacon: Late Paintings”
Encompassing more than 25 paintings Francis Bacon made in London and Paris during the last two decades of his life, this book serves as a companion to the 2015 exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, New York. It is the first in-depth exploration of the innovations of the artist’s late work. In his late paintings, Francis Bacon refined themes that had long obsessed him. He quoted reflexively from his oeuvre, reworking subjects to strip them to the bare essentials. This new book features over 150 color illustrations of the artist’s work and related materials, including reproductions of ephemera from Bacon’s Hugh Lane studio.
BASIC FACTS: “Francis Bacon: Late Paintings” is written by Richard Calvocoressi (Author), Richard Francis (Author), Mark Stevens (Author), Colm Toibin (Author) and Martin Harrison (Contributor). Published by Gagosian / Rizzoli. Release Date: September 6, 2016. Hardcover; 208 pages; $100.00.
“Unfinished Business: Paintings From the 1970s and 1980s by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl and David Salle”
From Los Angeles to Long Island, the creative journeys of painters, colleagues and friends Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, and David Salle are the focus of this book that charts their careers and reflects on what is to come. Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, and David Salle each came into their own during the 1970s when they graduated from the California Institute of Arts and developed painting styles that would characterize their work for decades to come.
This book examines nine paintings and accompanying drawings by each artist made between 1975 and 1985, juxtaposing them in aspects of structure and purpose that have not been previously acknowledged. Featured texts include a reflection by Mary Heilmann, a timeline organized by Witt Kegel and Sarah Silverstein, an analytical essay by David Pagel, and an introduction by Parrish Art director Terrie Sultan that draws on intimate interviews in which the artists expound upon their vision and goals in art school, their subsequent move to New York, and the friendship that continues to inspire and motivate each of them in their current homes on Long Island.
BASIC FACTS: “Unfinished Business: Paintings From the 1970s and 1980s by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl and David Salle” is written by David Pagel. Published by Prestel. Release Date: September 8, 2016. Paperback; 108 pages; $39.95.
RELATED: ART REVIEW: How Bleckner, Fischl and Salle Gave New Life to Painting, published August 16, 2016. Reviewed by Eric Ernst.
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings”
This new book is the first to celebrate the most iconic paintings of one of the most important museum in the world. This volume’s broad sweep of material, all from a The Metropolitan Museum of Art, makes it at once a universal history of painting and the ideal introduction to the iconic masterworks of this world-renowned institution. Color illustrations and details of 500 masterpieces, created over 5,000 years in cultures across the globe, are presented chronologically from the dawn of civilization to the present.
These works represent a tour of painting from ancient Egypt and classical antiquity and Byzantine and medieval altarpieces, to paintings from Asia, India, Africa, and the Americas and the greatest European and North American masters. This book includes an introduction and texts about each artwork written by Kathryn Calley Galitz, a curator and educator at the Met.
BASIC FACTS: “The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings” is written by Kathryn Calley Galitz (Author) and Thomas P. Campbell (Foreword). Published by Skira Rizzoli. Release Date: September 13, 2016. Hardcover; 544 pages; $75.00.
“Jan Krugier: My Journey with Art: Interviews with Caroline Kesser”
Jan Krugier (1928–2008) was a renowned Swiss artist, collector, and gallery owner who over the course of his five-decade career amassed one of the world’s most important private collections of twentieth-century art. This book presents a series of interviews that art critic Caroline Kesser conducted with Krugier just before his death.
Kesser leads Krugier through an account of his life—from his birth in Poland through his experience in World War II in the Polish resistance and his survival of Auschwitz. Then Krugier details the evolving path of his postwar career in art, beginning with his own paintings and moving on to the opening of his own galleries in Geneva in 1962 and New York in 1966, and his subsequent work mounting exhibitions for such artists as Alberto Giacometti, Giorgio Morandi, and Oscar Schlemmer. Throughout, Krugier’s passion for art comes through, augmented by his intimate knowledge of every aspect of its production. The result is a guided tour of twentieth-century art—and the tale of an extraordinary life lived in its service.
BASIC FACTS: “Jan Krugier: My Journey with Art: Interviews with Caroline Kesser” is written by Caroline Kesser. Published by Scheidegger and Spiess. Release Date: September 15, 2016. Hardcover; 150 pages; $39.00.
“Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia”
This book explores nine women artists who are at the forefront of the Aboriginal arts movement in Australia. Comprised of a series of illustrated essays, this book brings to life a wide array of artistic practices, each attempting to grapple with the most fundamental questions of existence. Written by leading art historians, anthropologists, curators, and other experts in the field, these essays provide a look at one of today’s most dynamic artistic movements.
BASIC FACTS: “Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia” is written by Henry F. Skerritt (Author). Published by Prestel. Release Date: September 25, 2016. Hardcover; 176 pages; $49.95.
“Alex Da Corte: Free Roses”
This illustrated book on the dynamic work of neo-pop artist Alex Da Corte, whose immersive installations and provocative objects seamlessly blend high and low culture as they explore themes of love, sex, family, death, and desire. For his largest solo museum exhibition, Da Corte takes over all of MASS MoCA’s second-floor galleries, presenting a selection of existing works and an expansive new sculptural installation inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s prose poem “A Season in Hell.” Restaging past exhibitions and remixing examples from multiple bodies of work in a fresh narrative, the artist presents his bold output in an environment that transforms the museum space.
Full-page illustrations of the exhibition form the centerpiece of this volume and are complemented by stills from the artist’s videos as well as reproductions of his formally rigorous, brightly colored mashups of consumer objects and appropriated images. Two essays illuminate Da Corte’s engagement with film, animation, and appropriation while exploring the personal, cultural, and political themes that run through the work.
BASIC FACTS: “Alex Da Corte: Free Roses” is written by Susan Cross (Author) and Alex Da Corte (Author). Published by Prestel. Release Date: September 28, 2016. Hardcover; 208 pages; $55.00.
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