ekphrasis

By Marguerite Yourcenar. Introduction by John Knight

A selection of texts on art and artists by the Belgian French novelist and essayist Marguerite Yourcenar

 (1951), an imagined autobiography of the Roman emperor, Yourcenar brings the same depth of inquiry and inventive speculation to her lyric prose on art and artists in this newest title in the 

 series. In these five jewel-like essays, Yourcenar meditates on the decay of time, the desire both satiated and refused by art, and the imagery animating the lives, works, and dreams of Michelangelo, Dürer, and Piranesi. And in an intimate mediation on the historical novel, Yourcenar describes her own encounters with how language reveals the past. Together these exquisite essays explore that fundamental awe—perhaps even the terror—at the heart of an encounter with beauty. 

An introduction by John Knight sketches the life of this extraordinary writer and situates Yourcenar’s unique criticism within her attempt to capture the great struggle required to make an enduring work of art. Subtle and learned, Yourcenar’s essays are like stepping stones into the past and the shadowy business of artistic creation. Bringing back into print Yourcenar’s seminal essay “The Dark Brain of Piranesi” in the poet Richard Howard’s elegant English translation, conducted in collaboration with the author, this volume also collects texts from 

 (1983) into a particularly focused volume.

A Dream of Stone

Karl Ove Knausgaard

 considers recurring themes and motifs from Mamma Andersson’s oeuvre and suggests complex and potent feelings related to loss. 



Finding inspiration in work by other Scandinavian painters, including Carl Fredrik Hill and Vilhelm Hammershøi, Andersson explores the tension between interiority and the external world, imbuing her compositions with a haunting stillness and introspection. Departing from earlier oil-on-board paintings, the paintings in this body of work primarily utilize canvas, a support that allows Andersson to create at a larger scale and expand compositional possibilities within the pictorial space. Employing trompe l’oeil, the artist produces a subtly claustrophobic effect in domestic spaces by layering uncanny interior scenes taken from her own home and her imagination, an interplay of surfaces and imagery that probes the nature of representation.

This catalogue, published on the occasion of the artist’s first solo exhibition in Paris, at David Zwirner, and a companion to three previous volumes of recent work, marks a metaphorical farewell to a previous phase in her life. The author Karl Ove Knausgaard, a frequent collaborator of Andersson’s, provides an accompanying text to this book, offering an oneiric perspective on the artist’s evocation of layered dimensions.

Mamma Andersson: Adieu Maria Magdalena

Wassily Kandinsky

Daniel Birnbaum

Julia Voss



An important exploration of the lives and art of Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky, two pioneers of abstraction at the turn of the twentieth century

The Swedish artist Hilma af Klint is one of the art world’s major rediscoveries of the twenty-first century. While the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky has famously been credited for creating the first abstract artwork, this designation has been called into question with the resurfacing and renewed study of af Klint’s non-figurative paintings. In this captivating volume, the af Klint biographer and scholar Julia Voss and the curator and writer Daniel Birnbaum convey in depth the two artists’ nearly parallel development away from figuration and into the liberating, mystical vision of art.

While there is no indication that these artists, who both died in 1944, ever met, this publication presents a dynamic and visual conversation between them. Through this engrossing account of the affinities and divergences between af Klint’s and Kandinsky’s lives and work—supported by more than 100 striking illustrations—we gain a deeper understanding of the forces that shaped their artistic trajectories. By examining the spiritual, sociopolitical, and personal contexts that influenced their practices, this book invites us to witness a pivotal moment in which the art world was forever changed.

Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky: Dreams of the Future

An artwork by Raymond Saunders, called Untitled, dated 1990. Copyright Raymond Saunders

Jarrett Earnest

Darby English

Thelma Golden

Ebony L. Haynes

Richard J. Powell

Judith Wilson

Introduction by Ebony L. Haynes. Texts by Jarrett Earnest, Darby English, Richard J. Powell, and Raymond Saunders. Interview with Raymond Saunders by Judith Wilson. Conversation between Thelma Golden and Ebony L. Haynes


Discover Raymond Saunders’s dynamic paintings and his extraordinary legacy as an artist and thinker in his first monograph.

Saunders’s work brings together his extensive formal training with his own observations and lived experience. His assemblage-style paintings frequently begin with a monochromatic black ground elaborated with white chalk—a pointed reversal of the traditional figure-ground relationship. He subsequently adds a range of other markings, materials, and talismans, such as wallpaper and advertisements, rulers and paintbrushes. Expressionistic swaths of paint, minimalist motifs, line drawings, and passages of vibrant color tangle with found objects, signs, and doors collected from his physical surroundings at home and abroad, creating unexpected visual rhymes and resonances that reward careful and sustained looking. At once deliberately constructed and improvisatory, didactic and deeply felt, these richly built surfaces conjure a range of themes, allowing for a nuanced multiplicity of meanings. 

Documenting a two-part exhibition presented at David Zwirner and Andrew Kreps Gallery in 2024, this publication illuminates Saunders’s ability to infuse his work with social relevance and commentary. Included is a conversation between curator Ebony Haynes and the Studio Museum of Harlem director Thelma Golden about Golden’s multidecade engagement with Saunders’s artwork and writing. A facsimile of Saunders's self-published pamphlet from 1967, 

—his vital essay on the creative expression of the artist, which continues to spark cultural conversation more than five decades later—is reproduced alongside new annotated commentary by the art historian Darby English. An essay by Jarrett Earnest offers an in-depth interpretation of two of Saunders’s complex chalkboard works. Also included is a previously unpublished interview from 1980 between the artist and Judith Wilson, in which Saunders discusses his multilayered practice. Lastly, a pivotal text from 1993 by the art historian Richard J. Powell offers a panoramic examination of Saunders’s art from 1968 to 1993, with a special focus on his iconic painting 

. This robust group of texts and academic considerations offers a compelling exploration of Saunders’s wide-ranging practice and lasting influence.

Raymond Saunders: Post No Bills

Jeffrey Kastner

Foreword by Winston Eggleston. Text by Jeffrey Kastner.



This momentous publication catalogues the last major group of William Eggleston’s photographs to ever be produced using the dye-transfer method, the format in which he originally presented his work.



Eggleston’s vivid photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning. One of the foremost practitioners in the medium’s history, Eggleston is widely considered the father of color photography. He pioneered the use of dye-transfer printing for art photography in the 1970s. The technically advanced process—first developed by Kodak in the 1940s—allowed him to achieve the richness of tonal depth and color saturation that he had been searching for. In the early 1990s, Kodak stopped producing the dyes, paper, and film used for this process. With the necessary materials now discontinued, and the bulk of what remained being used for the major group of work presented at David Zwirner in Los Angeles, 

 marks the final presentation of new works completed in this medium.

The publication includes a new essay by Jeffrey Kastner, offering critical insights into Eggleston’s enduring influence at this turning point in the history of photography.

William Eggleston: The Last Dyes

Huma Bhabha: Welcome . . . to the one who came

David Zwirner Books: Fall 2025

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 scuplture by Yayoi Kusama called Dancing Pumpkin dated 2020

Yayoi Kusama, 2021.  Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

Doro Globus


Ruth Asawa found inspiration everywhere—whether she looked to her children, her garden, or the warmth of her home, she believed that anything could become art. Her engaging work invites young artists to discover how creativity can sprout from anywhere.

Through her unique wire sculptures and natural watercolors, Asawa demonstrated that even the simplest materials can be transformed into something extraordinary. Her work encourages children to explore their own imaginations and to see the beauty in the everyday world around them.




Pumpkins, polka dots, flowers, and so much more! Yayoi Kusama creates art that's bursting with color and creativity, bringing “never-ending joy” to children. Her playful and vibrant masterpieces are perfect for young artists who love to explore and have fun with colors and shapes.

Kusama's radiant world invites young imaginations to run wild, offering endless possibilities for creative expression. With her signature bold patterns, she encourages kids to embrace their own unique artistic voices.

What Artists Make Set

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

Edited by Dennis Brzek and Hilke Wagner. Conversation between Dennis Brzek, Hilke Wagner, and Wolfgang Tillmans.

Very few artists mirror our recent past as profoundly as Wolfgang Tillmans in their work. On the occasion of his exhibition "Weltraum" at the Albertinum in Dresden, Tillmans has created a unique artist's book that places his four decades of artistic practice in a thoughtprovoking dialogue with the past and present of East and West Germany. 

 intertwines excerpts from a 1987 Dresden inventory catalogue with Tillmans' 2003 catalogue "If one thing matters, everything matters" for Tate Britain, in which he devised a speculative catalogue raisonné of his early work. The resurgence of these two out-of-print titles is combined with a conversation in which Tillmans reflects on his artistic beginnings and analyses their aesthetic and social implications today.

Wolfgang Tillmans: Things Matter

An installation by Huma Bhabha, titled We Come in Peace, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, dated 2017.

Peter Eleey

Tausif Noor

Explore the artist Huma Bhabha’s layered and nuanced sculptures and works on paper that focus on the reinvention of the figure and its expressive possibilities. 



Through the artist’s fusion of materials such as bronze, iron, wood, or bone, Bhabha’s work unites the ancient and the futuristic, evoking both familiarity and otherworldliness. Her formally innovative practice pulls from a wide range of references, including those that span the history of art, quotidian influences such as science-fiction and horror films, and the makeshift structures and detritus of urban life.

Instinctive and rigorous, her formidable sculptures bring diverse aesthetic, cultural, and psychological touchstones into contact with matters of surface, materiality, and formal construction. This publication highlights Bhabha’s ability to move between a wide range of media and forms, creating deeply resonant hybrid figures that seem to simultaneously dwell in the past, present, and future.

Published on the occasion of two concurrent exhibitions

includes a text by the scholar Tausif Noor that investigates the theme of alienation in Bhabha’s work. In his essay, the curator and writer Peter Eleey situates Bhabha’s practice within the arc of art-historical models and contextualizes her work in the current moment.

Dan Nadel

This special edition with an artist-signed bookplate is available in a limited run of 275 copies.

By R. Crumb. Edited and with an introduction by Dan Nadel

This volume brings together twenty-five of R. Crumb’s most ambitious, acclaimed, and profound comics.

One of the most influential and iconic cartoonists of our time, R. Crumb is celebrated for pushing the boundaries of representation, mass consumerism, and polite society. The comics in this volume exemplify Crumb’s creative output over twenty-five years following his early experimentation in the 1960s and 1970s.

The comics collected here depict characters searching for an understanding of the world around and within themselves. Through adaptation, autobiography, biography, and short fiction, Crumb—much like his subjects—demands we pay attention to our darkest desires, compulsions, fears, and obsessions. 

 also features a new, introductory comic strip by Crumb, reflecting on his practice in the context of this volume.

Editor Dan Nadel’s essay further weaves together Crumb’s life, career, and influences, delving into the creative environment that informed some of the artist’s most outstanding comics.

Selected Stories 1979–2004

R. Crumb: Existential Comics (Signed Edition)

Text by Marilyn Chase. Foreword by Jonathan Laib. 



The definitive biography and inspiring story of American sculptor Ruth Asawa.

"A fitting homage to this remarkable woman." —

This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art. In this compelling biography, author Marilyn Chase brings Asawa's story to vivid life. She draws on Asawa's extensive archives and weaves together many voices family, friends, teachers, and critics to offer a complex and fascinating portrait of the artist.

Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa

This heavyweight cotton hoodie features a recent artwork by the legendary artist Ed Ruscha. Ruscha made the artwork for the cover of a collection of writings by the late art critic Dave Hickey, titled 

, which was edited by Jarrett Earnest and published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

This limited edition of 300 is a collaboration between 

 and David Zwirner Books. 
Made in the USA from 100% cotton, 14 oz. heavy fleece and garment-dyed in a slightly faded black color. 
Printed with soft-touch artwork on the back and embroidered with a small, black Platform logo on the left sleeve. 
Features a loose, boxy fit with ribbed cuffs and hem and a front kangaroo pocket. Model is 5'11" and wearing size Medium. 
Due to the limited-edition nature of this product, all sales are final.

 (measurements are front body length x pit-to-pit chest width, in inches):

XS: 25.875" x 19.5"
S: 26.875" x 21.5"
M: 27.875" x 23.5"
L: 28.875" x 25.5"

Ed Ruscha: Feint of Heart Hoodie

David Zwirner Books: Color Catalogue

R. Crumb: Existential Comics,Selected Stories, 1979–2004

David Zwirner Books: Spring 2025

Edited by Janet Bishop and Cara Manes. Contributions by Genji Amino, Isabel Bird, Anne Anlin Cheng, Caitlin Haskell, Charlotte Healy, Corey Keller, Ruth Ozeki, Jeffrey Saletnik, Marin Sarve-Tarr, Dominika Tylcz, Jennie Yoon, and Marci Kwon.



A landmark survey of the wide-ranging practice of one of the twentieth century’s most innovative artists



Best known for her sinuous looped-wire sculptures, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) used everyday materials to create endlessly innovative works in a variety of media over her more than six-decade-long career, from her student days at the experimental Black Mountain College in the 1940s through her mature years in her adopted home city of San Francisco.

This extensively illustrated volume explores the astonishing expansiveness of Asawa’s work, from the abstract looped-wire sculptures for which she garnered national attention in the 1950s to her nature-inspired tied-wire pieces, clay and bronze casts, paperfolds, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. The book explores the ways in which her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative practice, and highlights the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that informed her numerous public sculpture commissions and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy.

Essays and other writings consider Asawa and her work within the context of modern abstract sculpture, through the lens of craft and the materiality of wire, and in relation to her Asian American identity and her personal history as a Japanese American who was incarcerated with her family during World War II. Focus texts illuminate the connections between Asawa and key artistic figures such as Josef Albers, Imogen Cunningham, and R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom she maintained enduring relationships.

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective

Portrait of Toba Khedoori, 1995. Photo by Rachel Khedoori.

Edited with text by Moritz Wesseler. Text by Mark Godfrey and Anna Lovatt.



Meticulously drawn objects against blank backgrounds form liminal spaces devoid of human presence or context



Following the artist’s internationally acclaimed first solo exhibition at Fridericianum in Germany in 2022, this title offers a focused look at Khedoori’s singular visual language, grounded in objecthood and natural forms, and articulated through extraordinary precision. Australian-born artist Toba Khedoori’s (born 1964) oeuvre incorporates both drawing and painting. She arranges large sheets of paper worked with wax to form monumental image carriers on which she produces precise drawings using graphite and oil paint, which captivate with their execution and fine detail.

Toba Khedoori

Giorgio de Chirico

Fabio Benzi

By Giorgio de Chirico. Introduction by Fabio Benzi



This seminal 1929 surrealist novel by the painter Giorgio de Chirico merges the realms of dream and reality.

In the artist’s only novel, de Chirico invites the reader into a world where language, time, space, and meaning are fluid, highlighting themes of mystery, myth, and the uncanny. Following the titular character Hebdomeros as he embarks on a series of philosophical musings and bizarre experiences divorced from a specific place or time, 

 embraces ambiguity in a profound exploration of the subconscious mind. Highly visual passages evoke the landscapes and compositions of de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, and non sequiturs mirror the freedom that Surrealism allowed for in art of all categories.

An introduction by the scholar Fabio Benzi contextualizes de Chirico’s work within a broader modernist framework, highlighting its influence on surrealism and its resonance with the literary and artistic movements of the early twentieth century.

Cover of a book titled Hebdomeros, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

Back cover of a book titled Hebdomeros, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

Interior spread of a book titled Hebdomeros, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

A Novel

Hebdomeros

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

Anne Higonnet

By Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. Introduction by Anne Higonnet



A selection from the memoir of Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, the renowned eighteenth-century French portraitist and one of the most important women painters in art history

In her memoir, Vigée Le Brun offers a candid and thoroughly enjoyable account of her life and art. She relates her encounters among the royalty and aristocracy she painted––including, most famously, her patron Marie Antoinette––and the effusive reception they extended to her across Europe. Forced to flee during the French Revolution, Vigée Le Brun traveled through Italy, Russia, Germany, and England, returning twelve years later to France under Napoleon I. These pages demonstrate her unflagging creativity during unstable times and her remarkable savvy. Her observations provide unique insight into the art world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, a time when women were rarely allowed success.

In her introduction to this volume, the scholar Anne Higonnet conveys Vigée Le Brun’s unique position at a turning point in the art world, as well as the larger world beyond, and navigates in particular how one retroactively reconstructs a relationship to a world-changing revolution.

Cover of a book titled Souvenirs, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

Back cover of a book titled Souvenirs, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

Interior spread of a book titled Souvenirs, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

From a Memoir

Souvenirs

What Artists Make

Explore the world of artist Yayoi Kusama in this lively, interactive lift-the-flap book for children ages 0–3.

Pumpkins, polka dots, flowers, and so much more! Yayoi Kusama creates art that's bursting with color and creativity, bringing “never-ending joy” to children. Her playful and vibrant masterpieces are perfect for young artists who love to explore and have fun with colors and shapes.

What Did Yayoi Kusama Make?

Explore the world of artist Ruth Asawa in this lively, interactive lift-the-flap book for children ages 0–3.

Ruth Asawa found inspiration everywhere—whether she looked to her children, her garden, or the warmth of her home, she believed that anything could become art. Her engaging work invites young artists to discover how creativity can sprout from anywhere.

Through her unique wire sculptures and natural watercolors, Asawa demonstrated that even the simplest materials can be transformed into something extraordinary. Her work encourages children to explore their own imaginations and to see the beauty in the everyday world around them.

What Did Ruth Asawa Make?

14.08.041_mama-mummy-and-mamma-predecessors-2_splash_1

Portrait of Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Photo by Stefan Ruiz

Jareh Das

Helen Molesworth

Jason Rosenfeld

Drew Thompson

Texts by Jareh Das, Helen Molesworth, Jason Rosenfeld, and Drew Thompson



The first monograph on the internationally celebrated Nigerian American painter who blends her personal history and African diasporic identity in layered compositions

“Critics have often (and rightly) marveled at the care and finesse with which Akunyili Crosby assembles vast multiplicities of time and place into singular sites of visual contestation.” —

Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s work unites multiple places and temporalities, reflecting both personal and universal dimensions of contemporary life and, in particular, the intricacies of the African diasporic identity. This first monograph on Akunyili Crosby brings together nearly fifty paintings, made from 2010 to 2023, that chart her methodical practice of layering painted representations of people, locales, and aspects of her own experiences with transferred images sourced from her personal collection and Nigerian publications, among other outlets. Akunyili Crosby reveals and revisits distinct realms, from lush gardens to domestic, interior worlds related to motherhood, family, marriage, the body, and personal identity.

New texts from Jareh Das, Helen Molesworth, Jason Rosenfeld, and Drew Thompson focus on a range of themes in Akunyili Crosby’s work, including her visual language and material practice, her mixing of Western and Nigerian imagery and forms, and her use of photography in portraiture and figuration.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

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

Viscerally evocative, Dana Schutz’s newest paintings and sculptures depict allegorical scenes in which often grotesque characters negotiate their subjecthood.

Schutz’s large-scale paintings and sculptures portray tragicomic situations populated by characters preoccupied with self-preservation as they tilt toward oblivion. With mask-like features—all jaws and noses—they emerge, in groups and pairs, out of the painterly atmosphere. Enormous, vibrant, and enigmatic, her works convey tangible yet ineffable tensions and ambiguities of human life.

Published on the occasion of Schutz’s 2023 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, this catalogue features a long-form essay by Jarrett Earnest, who chronicles Schutz’s artistic process as she creates her most ambitious sculpture to date, 

. Earnest explores the interconnections between Schutz’s long-standing painting practice and her more recent engagement with sculpture, offering a fascinating reflection on her thematic explorations and artistic inquiry, and the conceptual underpinnings of her work. The text is accompanied by behind-the-scenes photography by Jason Schmidt, which offers an intimate view of the artist at work.

Dana Schutz: Jupiter’s Lottery

By R. Crumb. Edited and with an introduction by Dan Nadel



 with an artist-signed bookplate is available in a limited run of 275 copies.

R. Crumb: Existential Comics

Kayode Ojo

Serubiri Moses

Clarion

Curator’s note by Ebony L. Haynes. Text by Serubiri Moses



Kayode Ojo’s sculptural installations made of ready-made items prompt reflections on class, consumption, and the fragility of luxury.

“There is a sense of urgency in these fleeting collisions between fashion and art. It’s the kind of tenuous exchange between culture and commerce that he does best.” 

Replete with sequins, chrome finishes, and transparent and reflective surfaces, Ojo’s sleek sculptures move between the related visual languages of delicate minimalism and glittering opulence, foregrounding the transformative power of the material object and its ability to transport its owner through dimensions of time, place, and social status. Sourcing his materials from fast-fashion websites and online shopping hubs, the artist weaves the familiar cadences of searching, scrolling, purchasing, and receiving into his nimble artistic practice. Ojo works instinctively to refashion these items into poetic yet perverse arrangements that make visible the phenomenon of social aspiration, unveiling its double-edged nature as a facilitator of both belonging and instability.

The texts in this volume, including a curator’s note by Ebony L. Haynes and an essay by Serubiri Moses, explore Ojo’s influences and examine the consumerism that is both called out by and a central component of the artist’s creative practice.

Kayode Ojo: EDEN

All Books

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.