Claudia Jolles

Ellie Meyer

Texts by Claudia Jolles, Flavin Judd, and Ellie Meyer

The work of Donald Judd, one of the most significant American artists of the postwar period, has come to define Minimalist art, a label to which the artist strongly objected. The unaffected, straightforward quality of Judd’s work demonstrates his strong interest in color, form, material, and space. Wanting to create works that could assume a direct material and physical presence without recourse to grand philosophical statements, Judd eschewed classical ideals of representational sculpture and created works that relied on clear, definite objects.

 represents the first-ever focused examination of Judd’s works in Cor-ten steel, which he began to produce in earnest in 1989 and would continue to elaborate on until his death in 1994. Cor-ten is an alloy that makes steel more resistant to corrosion, and eliminates the need for paint. With its distinctive red-brown patina, Cor-ten afforded Judd a new medium for exploring the relationship between surface and volume, as well as color and form. Prior to 1989, Judd executed a handful of works in Cor-ten primarily as outdoor commissions or site-specific works. This volume is produced on the occasion of the 2015 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York. Designed in close collaboration with Flavin Judd and Judd Foundation, 

 sheds new light on a body of work that represents the culmination of three decades of aesthetic output and underscores the mastery and control over material and space that characterizes Judd’s practice as a whole.

Donald Judd: Cor-ten

Robin Clark

A key member of the Light and Space movement in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s, De Wain Valentine is distinguished in particular by his in-depth understanding of synthetic materials and his ability to transform industrial products into artworks that investigate the seductive power of light, transparency, reflection, and surface. Published in conjunction with his critically lauded 2015 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, 

De Wain Valentine: Works from the 1960s and 1970s

 focuses on the artist’s pioneering achievements in polyester resin. A new scholarly text by Robin Clark on Valentine’s production from this period details his personal history and his innovations with this material. Influenced by the vast California landscape, he was initially confronted with material limitations: at the time, polyester resins could not be poured in volumes exceeding fifty pounds. Not willing to accept this restriction, Valentine partnered with Hastings Plastics in 1966 to create an entirely new resin that could be cast in larger quantities. The resulting material, known as Valentine MasKast Resin, allowed the artist to dramatically increase the scale of his work. With its inherent ability to contain and reflect light, while maintaining a powerful luminous dimension, polyester resin would form the foundation of Valentine’s practice.

 includes rich color plates of Valentine’s “Columns,” corporeally scaled sculptures cast in colored polyester resins that recede from a wider base up to a narrow tip; his “Circles,” 6-foot discs that display not only the artist’s mastery of geometrical form, but also highlight his command of color in sculpture; and a selection of the artist’s smaller forms—rings, discs, and double pyramids. The catalogue also features extensive documentation of 

 (1975–1976), two massive, identical columns that each stand twelve feet tall. Originally executed for Baxter Travenol Laboratories’ newly built corporate headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois, Valentine had conceived of two immense vertical columns standing side by side, but because of architectural modifications (the ceiling in the company’s reception area was lowered at a late stage of construction), Valentine was forced to install the two slabs on their sides. Forty years after its initial conception, the exhibition at David Zwirner represented the first time this work was presented in its intended configuration.

Abigail McEwen

Pedro de Oraá

Susanna Temkin

Lucas Zwirner

Text by Abigail McEwen. Interview with Pedro de Oraá by Lucas Zwirner. Illustrated chronology by Susanna Temkin

Radical political shifts that raged throughout Cuba in the 1950s coincided with the development of Cuban geometric abstraction and, notably, the formation of Los Diez Pintores Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters). The decade was marked by widespread turmoil and corruption following the 1952 military coup and by rising nationalist sentiments. At the same time, Havana was undergoing rapid urbanization and quickly becoming an international city. Against this vibrant backdrop, artists sought a new visual language in which art, specifically abstract art, could function as political and social practice.

 marks one of the first major presentations outside of Cuba to focus exclusively on the origins of concretism in the country. It includes important works from the late 1940s through the early 1960s by the twelve artists who were at different times associated with the short-lived group: Pedro Álvarez, Wifredo Arcay, Mario Carreño, Salvador Corratgé, Sandú Darié, Luis Martínez Pedro, Alberto Menocal, José M. Mijares, Pedro de Oraá, José Ángel Rosabal, Loló Soldevilla, and Rafael Soriano. Many of the group’s members had traveled widely in the preceding years and corresponded with those at the forefront of European and South American abstract movements.

Produced on the occasion of the major exhibition at David Zwirner, 

 is the first in-depth catalogue on the subject to be published in English; the show offered a “wonderful taste of a very complicated history,” according to Roberta Smith of 

. With an extensive plate section, which includes works from the exhibition and a selection of important pieces from the permanent collection of Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, this volume provides readers with a rich visual experience of this crucial period in modernism’s history. The catalogue also features an extensively researched illustrated chronology, compiled by Susanna Temkin, which tracks the development of the period artistically and politically from 1939 through 1964. New scholarship by Abigail McEwen offers an interpretative framework for this group of artists, and a deeper understanding of the forces behind the development of this movement. Also included is a conversation between Lucas Zwirner and Pedro de Oraá, one of the central members of Los Diez.

Concrete Cuba: Cuban Geometric Abstraction from the 1950s

Marcel Proust

Jennie Feldman

ekphrasis

By Marcel Proust. Afterword by Alain Madeleine-Perdrillat. Translated by Jennie Feldman

Long overlooked in Proust’s posthumously published writings, 

, written when he was only twenty-four years old, not only reemphasizes the importance of visual art to his development, but contains the seeds of his later work.

Proposed in 1895 by Proust to the newspaper 

 (it was rejected), this essay is much more than a straightforward piece of art criticism. It is a literary experiment in which an unnamed narrator gives advice to a young man suffering from melancholy, taking him on an imaginary tour through the Louvre where his readings of Chardin imbue the everyday world with new meaning, and his ruminations on Rembrandt take his melancholic pupil beyond the realm of mere objects.

Published for the first time as a stand-alone volume and newly translated, this edition, part of the David Zwirner Books 

 series, aims to introduce a wider audience to one of Proust’s most important and influential works in Western literature. “For the true artist,” as Proust writes, “as for the natural scientist, every 

 is interesting, and even the smallest muscle has its importance.” The same could be said of the author’s own work—every essay has its own crucial place in the formation of his groundbreaking oeuvre.

The afterword by renowned Proust scholar Alain Madeleine-Perdrillat, originally published in the French by Le Bruit du Temps, is an impassioned argument in favor of returning to the lost paths of Proust’s early thinking. It sees, in the passage from Chardin’s world of objects to Rembrandt’s contemplative paintings, a movement toward the radical interiority for which Proust would later become widely celebrated as a novelist. Written at the beginning of his literary career, 

 gestures back to some of Proust’s earliest notes on art, while creating space for what was to come.

Chardin and Rembrandt

Stan Douglas

Jason E. Smith

Diana Thater

Edited with an introduction by Stan Douglas. Foreword by Diana Thater and Jason E. Smith

Contributions by Beth B, Rosetta Brooks, Luís Castro Leiva, Meg Cranston, Charles Gaines, Jack Goldstein, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Susan Hiller, Roni Horn, Kellie Jones, Mike Kelley, Justen Ladda, Thomas Lawson, Sylvère Lotringer, John Miller, Constance Penley, Brian Routh, Mira Schor, Allan Sekula, Robert Storr, and Lynne Tillman

This collection of never-before-published talks at one of the leading art schools in the United States, documents an exciting decade in the development of contemporary art and arts education, featuring interviews with renowned artists, curators, and writers.

Introduced in 1986 as an initiative by Richard Hertz (Chair, Academic Studies, 1979–2003), the Graduate Art Department of the ArtCenter College of Design, located in Pasadena, California, celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2016. This book documents the first decade of the department’s existence by presenting a selection from over three hundred talks, including a 1990 symposium conducted by renowned curator and art historian Robert Storr, as well as twelve talks from its artists and critics lecture series known as the Graduate Seminar. Discussions between students and faculty members range from what it means to be an artist and the changing role of art in society, to how artists function within an academic setting.

Alongside the newly transcribed talks, this volume also includes reproductions of slides used by participants at the time. Bringing the presentations to life, these archival images offer a sense of the context and spirit of the original seminars. Together, an introduction by Stan Douglas—ArtCenter Graduate Art faculty member—and a foreword by Diana Thater and Jason E. Smith, Chair and Associate Chair of Graduate Art, present historical context for these illuminating talks.

The First Decade 1986–1995 

ArtCenter Talks: Graduate Seminar

An untitled painting by Noah Davis, dated 2015.

Texts by Maikoio Alley Barnes, Helen Molesworth, Henry Taylor, and Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker

This catalogue is published by the Frye Art Museum on the occasion of the exhibition 

Young Blood: Noah Davis, Kahlil Joseph, The Underground Museum

. Celebrating the life and legacy of painter, curator, and visionary artist Noah Davis (1983–2015), 

 places Davis’ work in the context of an ongoing visual dialogue with his elder brother, artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph. The catalogue features essays by Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, curator of the exhibition; Helen Molesworth, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Henry Taylor, Davis’ friend and fellow artist; and Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, director emerita of the Frye Art Museum. The catalogue contains rich reproductions of the paintings, installations, sculptural, and filmic works in the exhibition. 

is a celebration of black culture, spirituality, and creative legacy.

Marcel Dzama

Justin Peck

Text by Hans Christian Andersen. Interview with Marcel Dzama and Justin Peck by Lucas Zwirner

Marcel Dzama’s prolific output as a draftsman has, in recent years, expanded to include works in many different media—film, sculpture, dance, collage, and even a recent collaboration with artist Raymond Pettibon are all part of his current practice. His at times surreal, often frightening vision, translates beautifully to film and dance, where actors in complex costumes bring to life the worlds Dzama draws on paper.

Published on the occasion of his collaborative ballet with choreographer Justin Peck and musician Bryce Dessner at the New York City Ballet, 

 documents the genesis of all aspects of the project. The gem-like booklet begins with “The Most Incredible Thing,” the Hans Christian Andersen story on which the ballet is based, and continues to present Dzama’s costume designs. The images not only show final design decisions, but also chart the changes in costumes as the project unfolded, and the ways in which Dzama’s conception of the characters in the ballet shifted over time. The book closes with a conversation between Dzama and Peck in which choreographer and artist discuss the nuances of their collaborative process, and the important role of renowned composer Dessner in bringing the project to life. Also included is a poster made specifically for this book by the artist.

Marcel Dzama: The Book of Ballet (La chose la plus incroyable dans le monde)

A still from a film by Francis Alys, titled Children’s Game #26: Kisolo, Tabacongo, DR Congo, dated 2021.

Francis Alÿs

Catherine Lampert

Texts by Francis Alÿs and Catherine Lampert

Francis Alÿs is known for his discreet performative solo actions as well as for coordinating large-scale collective allegorical events. Many of these performances—both ones in which the artist features as a protagonist and the mass actions in which Alÿs himself stays on the sidelines—are now revered as classics of the genre. Characteristic of his approach, whose site-specific projects broach specific local and political situations through dialogue with people rather than by addressing them directly, is the process of negotiation and interaction.

, 1995–) exemplifies the subtlety and inscrutable quality of his oeuvre at large. The small pictures on wood panels measuring approximately 4.3 by 5.9 inches depict miniature scenes and often look like snapshots of simple gestures and activities that, upon closer inspection, appear to be fairly absurd.

It is a series of 111 such paintings the artist created over the past two decades but regards as incomplete. Rather than add new pictures to the ensemble, Alÿs reworks, alters, augments the existing panels, sometimes even overpainting them completely. Some have gone untouched for years, while others are subject to frequent revision. Around one quarter of the series has been repainted since it was last presented; no fewer than sixteen pictures were altered in 2016 alone, as date stamps indicate. The various stages in the work’s ongoing transformation—it may be said to evolve alongside the artist himself—survive only in photographic documentation, illustrating the constancy of Alÿs’s art and the foundation on which it rests, but also his changing interests and priorities.

The pictures are demanding in every respect: with their small formats, they disclose nothing to the fleeting glance—they demand sustained attention. Most of the compositions originated in the notebooks of the artists, whose painterly oeuvre has grown in parallel with his actions and major collaborative projects since the beginning of his career. Its defining feature are recurrent or similar figures that appear time and again, like the characters in a novel. Certain conspicuous protagonists clad in suits and known from other painting series as “the Liar,” “the Prophet,” “the Clown,” and the like were first sketched in 

 and then elaborated elsewhere, or conversely migrated from other creations into the series. Mirroring and inversion are frequent stylistic devices in Alÿs’s work, both in his writings and in his pictures. Le temps du sommeil thus blends the functions of an archive, a creative repertoire, and a medium for brainstorming.

Another salient aspect of his art is the interweaving of word and image, often through the titles of the works. The visitor should not be misled by the fact that the pictures in the series are presented alongside conceptual writings and ideas for interventions and works. The texts are not intended as annotations to the images; they enter into a dialogue with them, shining a light, always tinged with humor, on the complex interrelationship between visual and verbal communication.

Francis Alÿs: Le temps du sommeil

Michael Auping

Alexandra Whitney

Texts by Michael Auping and Alexandra Whitney

Showcasing Dan Flavin’s “corner,” “barrier,” and “corridor” works, this catalogue explores the artist’s core sculptural vocabulary and how his use of fluorescent light forged a new relationship between the art object and its surrounding architecture.

This publication examines how Flavin’s light works, which he described as “situations,” function in space, occupying key positions that highlight how the rooms themselves are constructed. The exhibition is not only historically significant, as it mines early explorations in Flavin’s practice, but many of the works are reproduced for the first time in plates that accurately capture their colors. Published on the occasion of the 2015 eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, 

takes as its point of departure the artist’s influential show, 

corners, barriers and corridors in fluorescent light from Dan Flavin

, presented at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1973.

Above all, the photography reveals the unexpected and powerful interplay between the light of neighboring pieces and the space—the way the walls, floor, and various hues mingle to form unpredicted palettes that reveal what Michael Auping, following Donald Judd, calls the “exoskeleton.” These works, with their immediate relationship to architecture, not only function as color experiments but as structural explorations in light, and in his essay, Auping explores how Flavin’s investigations of corners, barriers, and corridors became an essential part of the way the artist understood space. This publication also features rarely seen photographs of Flavin installing his historic 1973 exhibition, as well as detailed notes by Alexandra Whitney about the works included in the St. Louis presentation. Designed by McCall Associates, in close collaboration with the Estate of Dan Flavin, this catalogue presents an especially significant body of work in a completely new way and offers a vital historical perspective on Flavin’s practice.

Dan Flavin: Corners, Barriers and Corridors

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

Robert Kudielka

Texts by Robert Kudielka and Richard Shiff

Bridget Riley’s explorations of perception through form and color have made her into one of the most significant painters working today. Since the early 1960s, she has used elementary shapes—lines, circles, curves, and squares—to create visual experiences that immediately draw the viewer in, often triggering optical vibrations and illusions. More recently, Riley has shifted back to black and white in her large-scale paintings, marking a departure from her recent colored stripe paintings and a return to the palette of some of her earliest works.

Published on the occasion of her 2015 solo exhibition at David Zwirner, 

 presents paintings from the last thirty-four years of her career, including images of 

, a wall painting previously shown in Germany and England, and exhibited for the first time in New York. These dynamic reproductions begin with stripe paintings from the 1980s and end with a coda of sorts —a return to black and white that ties back to her work from the 1960s, but bear traces of Riley’s deep engagement with color in the interim. As critic Éric de Chassey puts it in his essay for Riley’s 2015 catalogue with Galerie Max Hetzler: “The black-and-white paintings not only enter into a dialogue with the 1960s works, but take stock of every painting experience Riley has created during a long career.”

Also included is a selection of the artist’s works on paper; taken together, these complementary aspects of her practice over the past four decades reveal the astonishing variety she has achieved by developing and rediscovering different forms. An essay by art historian Richard Shiff helps contextualize the developments in Riley’s practice since the early 1980s, and further emphasizes her influence and lineage as a painter. Rounding out the publication are biographical notes by Robert Kudielka, one of the artist’s foremost critics. With a career spanning six decades, Bridget Riley remains one of the most exciting painters today, and 

 presents a selection of works from what may be her richest period to date.

Bridget Riley: Works 1981–2015

Paul Morris

This special edition with an artist-signed bookplate is available in a limited run of 400 copies.

One of America’s most celebrated cartoonists, Robert Crumb helped define cartoon and punk subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s with comic strips like 

. The open sexuality of his work, paired with frequent self-deprecation and a free, almost stream-of-consciousness style, have made Crumb into a global voice and a renowned contemporary artist.

Originally published by Kitchen Sink Press in 1996, 

 is at once a satirical take on aesthetics and a continued exploration of Crumb’s subversion of sexuality and mainstream values. Drawings of women in positions ranging from lascivious to modest or mid-sport are accompanied by quotations, many of which are from artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Harvey Kurtzman. Mining his own obsessions and fantasies, Crumb reimagines the history of art, challenging notions of beauty, along with society’s mores and expectations of propriety around the female form. The second volume of 

, published in 2003, expanded on the first, adding all new drawings (also of women) and quotations, likewise taken from the history of art and aesthetics. The effect of both volumes is undeniably destabilizing. The images appeal to a purely erotic sensibility, which in turn is undercut by the inclusion of highfalutin and frequently philosophical prose. The images drag philosophy back down to earth, while the writing challenges the pure eroticism of Crumb’s drawings.

 is released for the first time as part of 

Art & Beauty Magazine: Drawings by R. Crumb. 

It is published on the occasion of Crumb's exhibition at David Zwirner, London, which debuts the new work he created for the magazine’s third issue. Presenting all three volumes in one book, 

 is arranged chronologically and guides the reader through the twenty-year history of Crumb’s magazine, from the earliest images in the 1990s to the most recent drawings completed in 2016. Paul Morris, longtime gallerist and supporter of Crumb’s practice, writes an introduction that contextualizes this body of work and the artist’s career as a whole. This beautiful edition, with a cover specially designed by Crumb for its release, makes the initial two issues available for the first time in over ten years, and presents the new and previously unpublished material from the third. For seasoned supporters and novices alike, 

Art & Beauty Magazine: Drawings by R. Crumb

 is a wonderful window into Crumb’s world of bodies and ideas, art and beauty.

Out of stock

Art & Beauty Magazine: Drawings by R. Crumb (Limited Edition)

Text by Anette Gehrig. Contributions by Michael Freund, Sébastien Gokalp, Paul Morris, and Joost Swarte

The USA’s Aline Kominsky-Crumb (b. 1948) and Robert Crumb (b. 1943) are an odd couple—in life, as well as in art. He is a celebrated underground artist and she is a pioneer of the autobiographical comic. Since 1972, they have been collaboratively writing and drawing the autobiographical relationship-and-family comic strip 

, in which the societal upheavals of the 1970s, the differences between man and woman, and a handful of substantial neuroses play leading roles: a side-splitting drama, unique in the world of comics, with a wealth of punch lines. The publication 

Aline Kominsky-Crumb & Robert Crumb. Drawn Together

 coincides with the exhibition of the same name and contains selected episodes from 

, including the stories that have never been published in Europe before, supplemented with solo works by Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Robert Crumb, as well as photographs and articles on the life and works of these artists.

Aline Kominsky-Crumb & Robert Crumb: Drawn Together

Text by Bob Nickas, Katy Siegel, Heidi Zuckerman

German artist Tomma Abts (born 1967) creates her paintings and drawings using a rigorous process that combines the rational with the intuitive. Starting with no external source material and no preconceived idea of the final result, Abts makes complex abstract compositions that ultimately take as their subject the process of their own creation. This publication accompanies her exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum, which is the first to survey the artist's extensive drawing practice. It features 41 works from 1996 to the present—many never before exhibited—and includes new works created specifically for the exhibition. The catalogue also features essays by Bob Nickas, Katy Siegel and Heidi Zuckerman.

Out of print

Tomma Abts: Mainly Drawings

Limning a dizzying array of topics with his distinctive combinations of image and text, Raymond Pettibon has created a vocabulary of characters and symbols that reappear consistently if enigmatically across his oeuvre, ranging from baseball players, atomic bombs, and railway trains to the cartoon Gumby. But the most poetic and revealing of Pettibon’s symbols may be the surfer, the solitary longboarder challenging a massive wave. In his surfer works, viewers ride along with a counterculture existentialist hero who perhaps is the artist’s nearest proxy.

This revised and expanded edition of Raymond Pettibon: Surfers 1985–2015, the first printing of which sold out almost immediately upon publication in 2014, features twenty additional works, as well as new color separations and jacket design. Nearly all the works included in this volume depict an ocean roiling with chaotic swells, accompanied by non sequiturs, quotations, and fragments of poetry in the artist’s handwriting. Organized chronologically, the publication traces Pettibon’s prolific output of his surfer series, from early small-scale monochrome India ink drawings to numerous examples from the 1990s when the artist introduced color, culminating with his recent large-scale works, some of which were executed directly on a wall. Rounding out the publication is a poetic meditation by the writer Carlo McCormick, which captures the essence of Pettibon’s surfing works: “Riddled with enigma, Raymond Pettibon’s art speaks little about himself the artist, preferring rather to address more central questions on the nature of self, but he tells us this, ‘Some things (sea foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, but only surfed,’ or again, ‘All this must be either surfed or painted.’"

Raymond Pettibon: Surfers 1985-2015

Helen Molesworth

Ruth Erickson

By Helen Molesworth. Contributions by Ruth Erickson

A dynamic new look at the legendary college that was a major incubator of the arts in midcentury America

In 1933, John Rice founded Black Mountain College in North Carolina as an experiment in making artistic experience central to learning. Though it operated for only 24 years, this pioneering school played a significant role in fostering avant-garde art, music, dance, and poetry, and an astonishing number of important artists taught or studied there. Among the instructors were Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Karen Karnes, M. C. Richards, and Willem de Kooning, and students included Ruth Asawa, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly.

 is a singular exploration of this legendary school and of the work of the artists who spent time there. Scholars from a variety of fields contribute original essays about diverse aspects of the College—spanning everything from its farm program to the influence of Bauhaus principles—and about the people and ideas that gave it such a lasting impact. In addition, catalogue entries highlight selected works, including writings, musical compositions, visual arts, and crafts. The book’s fresh approach and rich illustration program convey the atmosphere of creativity and experimentation that was unique to Black Mountain College, and that served as an inspiration to so many. This timely volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the College and its enduring legacy.

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957

Kai Hong

Kate YK Lim

Park Kyung-mee

Richard Vine

Introduction by Park Kyung-mee. Texts by Kai Hong, Kate Lim, and Richard Vine

This monograph serves as a comprehensive survey of Yun Hyong-keun's oeuvre covering forty years from his earliest surviving efforts through his very last works. This overview is accompanied by insightful critical essays by Kai Hong, Kate Lim, and richard Vine that offer diverse contemporary perspectives on the style, themes, and historical context of this remarkable artist.

Korea's Dansaekhwa movement which formed one of the most complex efforts at artistic expression in the 1970s has at long last started to attract international interest and a serious appraisal by experts outside of Asian art. Yun was a central figure in the Dansaekhwa movement who also firmly established his own artistic integrity by drawing on traditional Korean art and themes as the root for his conceptual approach and aesthetic sensibility.

Selected Works 1972–2007

Yun Hyong-keun

A scuplture by Yayoi Kusama called Dancing Pumpkin dated 2020

Yayoi Kusama, 2021.  Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

Midori Yamamura

Yayoi Kusama is the most famous artist to emerge from Japan in the period following World War II. Part of a burgeoning international art scene in the early 1960s, she exhibited in New York with Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, and other Pop and Minimalist luminaries, and in Europe with the Dutch Nul and the German Zero artist groups. Known for repetitive patterns, sewn soft sculptures, naked performance, and suggestive content, Kusama’s work anticipated the politically charged feminist art of the 1970s. But Kusama and her work were soon eclipsed by a dealer-controlled art market monopoly of white male American artists. Returning to Japan in 1973, Kusama became almost as famous for her self-proclaimed mental illness and permanent residence in a psychiatric hospital as she was for her art. In this book, Midori Yamamura eschews the usual critical fascination with Kusama’s biography to consider the artist in her social and cultural milieu. By examining Kusama’s art alongside that of her peers, Yamamura offers a new perspective on Kusama’s career.

Yamamura shows that Kusama, who came of age in totalitarian wartime Japan, embraced art as an anti-conformist pursuit, seeking a subjective autonomy that resulted in the singular expression of her art. Examining Kusama’s association with European and New York art movements of the 1960s and her creation of psychedelic light-and-sound “Happenings,” Yamamura argues that Kusama and her heterogeneous peers defied and undermined various pillars of modernity during the crucial transition from the modern nation-state to global free-market capitalism.

The art market rediscovered Kusama in the 1990s, and she has since had a series of high-profile exhibitions. Recounting Kusama’s story, Yamamura offers an incisive, penetrating analysis of postwar art’s globalization as viewed from the periphery.

Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular

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

Wolfgang Tillmans

 compiles a new body of work by renowned photographer Wolfgang Tillmans (born 1968). Since the early 90s, Tillmans has redefined the genre of photography, epitomizing a new kind of subjectivity and questioning existing values and hierarchies. 

 is no exception; images of cars in a typical street view—not in a crash, or an extreme traffic jam, but simply present—pay tribute to the amount of time we spend around, or looking at, or using the vehicle.

"Cars are everywhere," the photographer says. "Their sheer number is the most crazy thing about them. They appear in our lives with excessive omnipresence. In their volume cars intrude upon public space, and the way they occupy streets and open areas is rarely challenged." This unusual artist's book takes up a subject rarely deemed worthy of representation. "Virtually wherever there are people, there are cars and they are visually intermingling in whatever we see," Tillmans points out. "We are looking at the world from a car and cars are in the foreground, the background or in between of what is in our view."

With over 100 color photographs and text by the artist himself, this new volume is an important addition to any photobook collection, and to our understanding of what it is to live in a world oversaturated with both cars and images.

Wolfgang Tillmans: The Cars

Dominic Eichler

Texts by Dominic Eichler and Wolfgang Tillmans

From the start, Wolfgang Tillmans's (born 1968) abstract photographs played a decisive role in his gentle subversion of photographic hierarchies and his seductive emphasis on the materiality of photographic objects in his presentation of them. In the past decade he has pursued this tack, making wholly non-representational photographs that explore processes of exposure. From the delicate veils of color in the 

 series, and the sculptural paper drops made of folded or rolled-up photographic paper, to the colorfully compelling works of the 

 series, the printed object itself, divorced from its reproductive function, is always the point. "For me, the abstract picture is already objective because it's a concrete object and represents itself," Tillmans says; "the paper on which the picture is printed is for me an object, there is no separating the picture from that which carries it. That's why I like to show photographs sometimes framed and sometimes not, just taped to the wall." Designed by the photographer, and with 275 color reproductions of these works, 

--now in paperback--impressively demonstrates how fruitfully Tillmans has mined this terrain.

Wolfgang Tillmans: Abstract Pictures

Philipp Kaiser

This generously illustrated book examines a series of color photographs by Los Angeles–based artist James Welling, who turned to the painter Andrew Wyeth for inspiration.

As a conceptual artist who is deeply interested in the genesis of representation, Welling began this series of photographs as an examination of Andrew Wyeth’s influence on his own work, from Welling’s earliest watercolors in the 1960s through his recent photographs. Shot on location in Pennsylvania and Maine—in the same areas where Wyeth painted throughout his life—this major series includes photographs from 2010 through 2014. In addition to including never-before-seen works from the completed Wyeth series, the book explores the mechanisms of influence of one artist upon another—even across media—ranging from subconscious borrowings to more direct appropriations. Using color photography, Welling evokes Wyeth’s aesthetic, particularly the importance of place in his work. Paying homage to Wyeth’s practice of manipulating subject matter in his seemingly realistic paintings, Welling digitally altered his photographs in subtle ways. This book provides a fascinating look at a major new series by a leading contemporary artist, and allows for fresh and insightful connections to Andrew Wyeth.

Things Beyond Resemblance: James Welling Photographs

An installation view of the exhibition, Suzan Frecon: recent paintings, oil and water, at David Zwirner in London, dated 2022.

David Cohen

For the past four decades, Suzan Frecon has become known for abstract oil paintings and watercolors that avoid facile explanations or recognizable visual associations. Instead, compositions integrate color, surface, and light to create an abstract visual reality that she intends to exist solely on its strength as art. In a deliberative and searching process, she works toward painting that provides a complex, powerful, and inexplicable experience for the viewer. As she has stated, “The physical reality and the spiritual content of my paintings are the same.”

 documents Frecon’s third solo exhibition at David Zwirner in New York, held in 2015, and is the most vivid presentation to date of the artist’s engagement with natural light, the always-varying subtleties of which she integrates into how the painting is created. The focal point of the catalogue is the painstakingly reproduced color plates of fourteen recent paintings, many of which are depicted several times in various types of light and from multiple angles, allowing the reader to experience the work in a way that is more akin to seeing them in person. In addition, it features an illuminating and lively essay by art writer David Cohen, which strives to explain the complexity of viewing and experiencing Frecon’s work. Rounding out the catalogue are numerous details and installation views, atmospheric color photographs of the artist’s studio and materials, and an illustrated visual appendix showing a selection of Frecon’s reference sources for the comprised works, including insightful commentary written by the artist.

Cover of a book titled oil paintings and sun, published by David Zwirner Books in 2015.

Suzan Frecon: oil paintings and sun

Gordon Hughes

Richard Serra’s “Reversal” drawings employ two identical rectangular sheets of paper that are adjoined in a vertical or horizontal format, with the black and white areas reversing themselves top to bottom (or left to right). The area that is black on the top (or left) sheet is white on the bottom (or right) sheet, and the area that is white on the top (or left) sheet is black on the bottom (or right) sheet in a figure / ground reversal.

, designed by McCall Associates in close collaboration with the artist and printed by Steidl, is the most extensive presentation of the “Reversal” drawings to be published. The book reproduces all thirty-three drawings shown in 2014 at David Zwirner in New York, in addition to documenting this series in its entirety. The book also includes new scholarship by art historian Gordon Hughes.

Richard Serra: Vertical and Horizontal Reversals

Interview with Raymond Pettibon and Scott Campbell by Alessandro Simonetti

This book is a very intimate conversation where the two artists discuss various unexpected topics such as their respective views on art and life, as well as the memories of their common time spent in jail. It was hosted on June 5th, 2013 by Italian photographer Alessandro Simonetti who simply let the conversation run and added his B&W close ups photographs, making it an overall surprising document.

On jail, art, horse races & boloney sandwiches 

Raymond Pettibon and Scott Campbell

A detail from a painting by Oscar Murillo, titled manifestation, dated 2019.

Oscar Murillo in his studio, 2022. Photo by Jason Schmidt

Belisario Caicedo

Clara Dublanc

Oscar Murillo

Texts by Belisario Caicedo, Clara Dublanc, and Oscar Murillo

Known for his large-scale paintings, Oscar Murillo's expanding practice, which includes performance, sculpture, installation, and video, has helped define him as one of the most dynamic artists of his generation. Local in his interest in community and family, but global in his approach to art making, Murillo's creative explorations present us with some of the most pressing questions facing us today: how do communities define themselves, and how can a single individual—an artist—help facilitate communication between them and the larger world?

 is a long-term project, developed with members of his family, studio team, and collaborators around the world, that begins to offer answers to these questions through painting and drawing. In 2013, Murillo began sending squares of raw canvas to selected schools in over twenty countries around the world, with the sole requirement that they be affixed to desks and illustrated by students. The canvases would stay there for a year and then be re-collected by the artist. Within weeks of their arrival, children from places as disparate as China and Slovenia began to draw, paint, write, and communicate, creating documents of their social and educational experiences. 

 catalogues the first year of Murillo\s exploration, with intimate photographs of the participants and the projects myriad steps—the arrival of canvases to different schools, the process of wrapping desks, the students at work, and the final products. Designed by OMO Creates in close collaboration with the artist, the book not only brings together a vast amount of material now collected in the eponymous archive, with over six hundred pages of detailed spreads, but is itself an extension of the project—an ongoing catalogue that charts the creation of artworks as a communal and global endeavor.

Oscar Murillo: Frequencies

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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.