The month of November brings with it a wide range of brand new art books that highlight artists, art movements, exhibitions and more. Expect to find books on Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Sophie Calle, Robert Frank, Yves Klein and KAWS. Enjoy these new November art book releases.
“Louise Nevelson: Light and Shadow”
In 1929, Louise Nevelson was a disappointed housewife with a young son, surrounded by New York’s vibrant artistic community but unable to fully engage with it. By 1950, she was an artist living on her own, financially dependent on her family, but she had received a glimmer of recognition from the establishment: inclusion in a group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1980, Nevelson celebrated her second Whitney retrospective. Her work was held in public collections around the world; her massive steel sculptures appeared in public spaces in seventeen states, including the Louise Nevelson Plaza in New York City’s Financial District.
The story of Nevelson’s artistic and spiritual transformation is complex and inseparable from major historical and cultural shifts of the twentieth century, particularly in the art world. Art historian and psychoanalyst Laurie Wilson brings a unique perspective to Nevelson’s story, drawing on hours of interviews she conducted with Nevelson and her circle. Over 100 images, many of them drawn from personal archives and never before published, make this a comprehensive biography on the artist.
BASIC FACTS: “Louise Nevelson: Light and Shadow” is written by Laurie Wilson (Author). Published by Thames & Hudson. Release Date: November 15, 2016. Hardcover; 512 pages; $39.95.
“The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from The Sir Elton John Collection”
Sir Elton John, musician and philanthropist, has built one of the greatest private collections of photography in the world. This book presents a selection of modernist images, which introduce a crucial moment in the history of photography when artists were beginning to use the camera and darkroom to redefine and transform visions of the modern world. Technological advancements gave artists the freedom to experiment and test the limits of the medium enabling new imaginings of portraits, nudes and still lifes; and street life and the modern world was captured from a new, uniquely modern perspective.
Showcasing only original vintage prints by the artists themselves, this book features key figures from the 1920s to 1950s, such as Brassaï, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, Tina Modotti, Man Ray, Edward Steichen and Alexander Rodchenko. The book also includes a newly commissioned interview with Sir Elton John and essays on modernist photography and technology and innovation by Dawn Ades and Shoair Mavlian.
BASIC FACTS: “The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from The Sir Elton John Collection” is written by Dawn Ades (Author), Sir Elton John (Author) and Jane Jackson (Author). Published by Aperture. Release Date: November 15, 2016. Hardcover; 240 pages; $60.00.
“Sophie Calle: And so Forth”
As multi-faceted as the artist herself, this illustrated book on Sophie Calle’s recent installations, displays her genius for entwining personal experience with universal truth. Throughout her career, the photographer and installation artist Sophie Calle has been creating tableaux that recreate her personal journeys.
Projects from the past 10 years are explored in this new illustrated volume. Following on the heels of Calle’s highly acclaimed “Did You See Me?” this book offers images of Calle’s most recent works, with many ongoing series also illustrated here. Readers will discover how the artist continues to examine the boundaries of public and private life in ways that surprise, engage, and inspire.
BASIC FACTS: “Sophie Calle: And so Forth” is written by Sophie Calle (Author) and Marie Desplechin (Contributor). Published by Prestel. Release Date: November 18, 2016. Hardcover; 508 pages; $85.00.
“The Figurative Pollock”
This book focuses on the distinctive and expressive power of Jackson Pollock's figurative paintings, drawings, and prints; a rarely studied aspect of his artistic career. Pollock’s name has become synonymous with the abstract drip paintings that he famously created on the floor of his studio. Before these paintings, from the 1930s to the late 1940s, Pollock created figurative works, studying at one time under the painter Thomas Hart Benton and with the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Pollock took up figuration again after his famous drip paintings. This book starts with the early decades and also treats Pollock’s re-adoption of the figuration after his renowned abstract paintings. “The Figurative Pollock” features 100 paintings and works on paper. From landscapes to experiments in non-Western totemic painting to sketches and drawings fueled by Jungian analysis, the range of Pollock’s early and late work is presented here.
BASIC FACTS: “The Figurative Pollock” is written by Josef Helfenstein (Editor), Nina Zimmer (Editor) and Kunstmuseum Basel (Editor). Published by Prestel. Release Date: November 21, 2016. Hardcover; 208 pages; $60.00.
“Robert Frank: Hold Still, Keep Going”
“Hold Still, Keep Going” is the long-awaited reprint of the catalogue to Robert Frank’s (born 1924) 2001 exhibition at the Museum Folkwang in Essen. Though the artist is best known for his seminal photobook “The Americans” (1959) and his experimental film “Pull My Daisy” (1959), until this publication, little scholarship existed on the intersection between Frank’s work in the disciplines of photography and film.
This book explores the influence of film on Frank’s photographic work, and the interaction between the still and moving image that has engaged the photographer and experimental filmmaker since the late 1950s. The book adopts a non-chronological approach, including photographs, film stills, 35mm filmstrips, as well as photomontages that present Frank’s most famous series alongside less known work. Including a new essay from Tobia Bezzola, director of the Museum Folkwang, this edition highlights some of the more obscure work by perhaps the world’s best-known living photographer.
BASIC FACTS: “Robert Frank: Hold Still, Keep Going” is written by Ute Eskildsen (Author, Editor), Christoph Ribbat (Author), Wolfgang Beilenhoff (Author) and Robert Frank (Photographer). Published by Steidl. Release Date: November 22, 2016. Hardcover; 168 pages; $40.00.
“Yves Klein: In/Out Studio”
This new Yves Klein overview shows how Klein transformed his life into a myth that blurred the boundary between art and biography. It includes around 300 unearthed archival photographs of Klein, his works, and their production. Klein spanned many mediums, exploring musical composition, sculpture, performance, photography, theater, film and theoretical writing, in addition to the blue monochrome painting for which he is so famed. Reproductions of artworks are interspersed with photographs of and quotations by Klein.
This book offers a new look behind the scenes of his performances, uncovers the genesis of his famous Anthropometries and Fire Paintings and portrays Klein at work in his studio, in private settings and on his travels. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Klein always viewed photography as a lens through which to dramatize his subjects, and chose carefully who could photograph him.
BASIC FACTS: “Yves Klein: In/Out Studio” is written by Matthias Koddenberg (Editor) and Yves Klein (Artist). Published by D.A.P./Verlag Kettler. Release Date: November 22, 2016. Hardcover; 300 pages; $60.00.
“KAWS: Where the End Starts”
Appropriating characters, images and effects from pop culture, the work of KAWS blurs the lines between high and low art, and between art and fashion. Deploying film and television favorites for his toys, large-scale sculpture and bold, nearly abstract painting, KAWS recasts the familiar colors and forms of popular entertainment in cheeky and often poignantly human terms. Influenced by Andy Warhol and other Pop artists, hard-edge abstract painting and graffiti, KAWS’ work straddles consumer culture and artistic innovation.
“KAWS: Where the End Starts” explores the artist’s career in depth, featuring key paintings, sculptures, drawings, toys, and fashion and advertising designs. This monograph, including contributions from Andrea Karnes, Michael Auping, Dieter Buchhart and Pharrell Williams, reveals aspects of KAWS’ formal and conceptual development over the past 20 years, as his career has shifted from graffiti to fine art and collaborations with designers and brands. Published with more than 150 color reproductions by the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth in conjunction with the 2016 fall exhibition on KAWS.
BASIC FACTS: “KAWS: Where the End Starts” is written by Andrea Karnes (Editor), Marla Price (Editor) and KAWS (Artist). Published by Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Release Date: November 22, 2016. Hardcover; 240 pages; $55.00.
“Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016”
This illustrated publication surveys the work of filmmakers and artists who have pushed the material and conceptual boundaries of cinema. Over the past century, the material, optical, abstract, spatial, and tactile properties of film have been tested at a level of experimentation and utopian ambition that is generally unrecognized. Whether creating synesthetic or 3-D environments, projective or non-projective installations, generations of leading-edge artists have explored how technology transforms experience.
The essays published here offer a look at the themes of cinematic space, formats of the screen, animation and CGI, the body and the cyborg, and the materiality of film. An immersive plate section brings together rarely seen and previously unpublished stills, in addition to concept drawings from historic and contemporary films.
BASIC FACTS: “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016” is written by Chrissie Illes (Author). Published by Whitney Museum of American Art. Release Date: November 29, 2016. Hardcover; 256 pages; $65.00.
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