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

Texts by Michael Taussig, Russell Ferguson, Cuauhtémoc Medina, and Jean Fisher

A fully updated and expanded edition of the artist's first comprehensive monograph, more than a decade since its original publication

Francis Alÿs examines the patterns of various urban sites before weaving his own fables into their tangled social fabric with wit, sensitivity, and an acutely personal connection to his subject matter. A scene such as a Volkswagen Beetle struggling up a hill or a man pushing a block of ice can carry a message that resonates far beyond the work's simple parameters. As Alÿs puts it, 'Sometimes doing something poetic can become political, and sometimes doing something political can become poetic.'

Revised & Expanded Edition

Francis Alÿs

A detail of an artwork by Michaël Borremans titled The Commuter II dated 2022

Portrait of Michaël Borremans. Photo by Pascal Gamarte

Katya Tylevich

A breathtaking selection of Michaël Borremans’s lustrous paintings, this catalogue showcases his technical mastery and creative use of mise-en-scène.

Recalling classical painting, both through technical mastery and choice in subject matter, Borremans’s depictions of the surprising and the bizarre invites a second look. Uncanny scenes of figures looking at blurred acrobatic displays, hooded subjects rendered in Rembrandt-esque lighting, or solemn portraits demonstrate Borremans’s unique vision. In this recent body of work, Borremans continues to draw the viewer in closer with his intimately scaled paintings of mysterious figures in peculiar arenas.

Accessible yet full of rich detail, this pocket-size book features fifteen masterful works offering a mystifying narrative. An illuminating text by Katya Tylevich mines the scenes Borremans sets, conjuring the multidimensionality of the works’ emotional power and their unique place in the lineage of art history.

Michaël Borremans: The Acrobat

A painting by Michael Armitage, titled Enasoit, dated 2019.

Portrait of Michael Armitage, 2021. Photo by Tom Jamieson

Texts by Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, and Sean O'Toole

 is the artist’s first exhibition in Australia, presenting recent work with a suite of new paintings that reflect on the recent Kenyan elections and the political rallies and dissidence that followed. Sumptuous and explicit in their representation of the human body, Armitage’s paintings reconsider cultural traditions and stereotypes, spinning the exoticising gaze of Western art history into a different direction. This fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, edited by curator Natasha Bullock, features essays by Sean O’Toole and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and poems by Mukoma Wa Ngugi.

Michael Armitage: The Promised Land

 is a new zine designed by R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Sophie Crumb on occasion of the 2022 exhibition at David Zwirner in Paris. The zine features details from individual and collaborative works featured in the show, which expand on the Crumb family’s collective interest in graphic and comic portrayals.

Sauve qui peut ! (Run for Your Life)

Hilma af Klint

Philipp Deines

Julia Voss

By Philipp Deines. Foreword by Julia Voss

A moving biography, told in vivid illustrations, this graphic novel features key moments in the life of Swedish artist and pioneer of abstract painting Hilma af Klint (1862–1944). Long underrecognized, af Klint is amid a sensational rediscovery that continues to take art audiences by storm.

Artist Philipp Deines traces the story of now world-famous af Klint’s unique life and groundbreaking oeuvre through five chapters featuring her development as an artist, her family background, and her relationship to the spiritual. Highlighting how she came to her distinctive paintings, her spiritual quest, and the friends who helped her, this is a story of the strength it took af Klint to continue as an artist against all odds.

Beautifully drawn, brightly colored, and well researched, this graphic novel is a new way of looking at the story of an artist. Referencing Julia Voss’s new biography of af Klint, Deines presents an accessible and lively introduction for many ages. Biography, art history, and contemporary narrative style merge and complement each other in this magnificent visual world.

The Five Lives of Hilma af Klint

John Ashbery

Mónica de la Torre

Jeffrey Lependorf

ekphrasis

By John Ashbery. Introduction by Mónica de la Torre. Selections and playlists by Jeffrey Lependorf

An intimate and unique collection of the work of John Ashbery—a prolific poet and art critic—pairing poetry and art writings with playlists of music from his personal library.

This book places poetry by Ashbery, gathered from his later collections, in conversation with a selection of contemporaneous art writing. In addition, as Ashbery loved music and listened to it while writing, the “playlists” here present samplings of music from these same years, culled from his own library of recordings. 

Ashbery’s poetry is frequently described as ekphrastic, though, rather than writing a poem “based on” or “inspired” by the content of an artwork or piece of music, he engages with how the experience of seeing it and the artistic strategies employed offer ways of thinking about it and through it. Many observations from Ashbery’s art writing also provide keys to how we might read his poetry. Many recordings he listened to feature contemporary classical works that emphasize complex textures, disparate sounds, and disjunct phrases—qualities which are mimicked in his poetry.

In exploring this ekphrastic book project, the reader is invited to discover how, for Ashbery, these three forms might illuminate and inform one another. In Mónica de la Torre’s introduction, she explores the connection between the three muses of music, art, and poetry, and the ekphrastic experience of reading Ashbery.

 for a recording of a virtual discussion with 192 Books.

Something Close to Music: Late Art Writings, Poems, and Playlists

Katie Kitamura

Seeing Shakespeare

By William Shakespeare. Artwork by Rose Wylie. Introduction by Katie Kitamura

 is an ideal subject for the artist Rose Wylie, whose work frequently references classic stories and well-known characters.

Likely the last play written entirely by Shakespeare, 

 brings together various themes the Bard explored in his prior plays, including magic, revenge and forgiveness, order and society, and nature versus art. The shipwreck and remote island, the spirits, and the dukes and their children offer rich material for Wylie’s works on paper and canvas.

As the third title in David Zwirner Books’s 

 series, this book pairs a complex narrative with equally layered works by a contemporary artist who approaches the play and art making from a unique perspective. Also included is an introduction by the writer Katie Kitamura.

William Shakespeare × Rose Wylie: The Tempest

1-Up

Jamie Brisick

Brian Lukacher

Emily Erickson

Stephanie Gilmore

Texts by Jamie Brisick and Brian Lukacher. Contributions by Emily Erickson and Stephanie Gilmore

“All this must be either surfed or painted”: This is the underlying sentiment behind Raymond Pettibon’s iconic works of surfers and waves in this quintessential volume dedicated to the motif.

Pettibon is known for his characteristically enigmatic aesthetic and sharply satirical critiques of American culture. Though drenched in cynicism, his work empathizes with the dizzying madness of our own humanity as it engages both so-called high and low culture. Perhaps most poetic among the many motifs present in Pettibon’s oeuvre is the surfer. In 1985, Pettibon began his series of surfers and waves––which he continues to work on to this day––popular for depicting a lone surfer silently carving “a line of beauty” along an impossibly large wave.

This book spotlights a selection of more than one hundred surfers from the series, from smaller monochromatic works on paper to colorful large-scale paintings applied directly to the wall. For Pettibon’s protagonist in these works, surfing exists apart from all else. Momentarily he achieves sublimity on the wave, distant yet synced with turbulent reality. We are forced to confront our own scale: small and feeble in the face of the power of nature, what is beyond our control. Pettibon’s lyrical writings on these painted surfaces—both his own and lines taken from literature—reference his own philosophies and the confusions of reality: he critiques and highlights the hypocrisies and vanities of the world he engages. To help navigate, the scholar Brian Lukacher explores art-historical antecedents in Pettibon’s work, particularly the seascapes of J. M. W. Turner, and Jamie Brisick, the writer and former professional surfer, examines the Southern California surf and music culture of Pettibon’s youth. Professional big wave surfers Emi Erickson and Stephanie Gilmore also describe the sensory experience of conquering the enormous waves depicted in Pettibon’s works.

Point Break: Raymond Pettibon, Surfers and Waves

Kandis Williams

Ebony L. Haynes

Hannah Black

Okwui Okpokwasili

Clarion

Introduction by Ebony L. Haynes. Text by Hannah Black. Conversation between Kandis Williams and Okwui Okpokwasili

The inaugural volume in a new series of books, 

 documents the Los Angeles–based artist’s exhibition 

. Interrogating issues of race, nationalism, authority, and eroticism, her topical work is made across collage, sculpture, and video.



Williams draws on her background in dramaturgy to envision a space that accommodates the biopolitical economies that inform how movement might be read. Looking at the interconnections between popular culture and myth, she relates in her work anatomy, regions of Black diaspora, and communication and obfuscation. Williams’s body of work shapes an alternative language that examines how Black moving bodies are regarded. Williams continues to make visible the inexpressible violence Black bodies have been subjected to in dance and beyond.

Featuring contributions by the curator of 52 Walker—a David Zwirner gallery space—Ebony L. Haynes and the artist and writer Hannah Black, and a stirring conversation between Williams and the artist Okwui Okpokwasili, the book serves as an extension of the exhibition. Included are high-quality illustrations of the artworks alongside rich archival materials.

Kandis Williams: A Line

Gertrude Stein

Lynne Tillman

By Gertrude Stein. Introduction by Lynne Tillman

Originally published in 1930 in an edition of one hundred copies, Gertrude Stein’s 

 pairs her singular literary style with original lithographs by Pablo Picasso and other artists in Stein’s circle to create an exceptional artist book exploring written and visual portraiture.



Written between 1913 and 1929, revolutionary years in art history, 

 conveys the deep human engagement between an artist and her subject. The artist book unites Stein’s ten portraits in prose with ten sketches by five artists: Christian Bérard, Eugene Berman, Pablo Picasso, Pavel Tchelitchew, and Kristians Tonny. Utilizing the interplay between word and image, Stein’s writing and the artists’ images provide nuance and depth, balancing humor and sincerity.

With a new introduction by the writer Lynne Tillman, 

 is an unforgettable artistic collaboration. The subjects represented include Guillaume Apollinaire, Christian Bérard, Eugene Berman, Bernard Faÿ, Georges Hugnet, Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, Pavel Tchelitchew, Virgil Thomson, and Kristians Tonny. Originally printed in an edition of one hundred copies with the lithography, and now widely accessible for the first time, Dix Portraits captures Stein’s legacy as a champion of artists and a pioneer of creativity.

Dix Portraits

Installation view of Carol Bove at the Met, New York, 2022.

Catherine Craft

Lisa Le Feuvre

Texts by Catherine Craft and Lisa Le Feuvre. Foreword by Jeremy Strick. Introduction by Catherine Craft

Exploring the recent sculptural innovations of prominent contemporary artist Carol Bove

 presents an extensive look into the contemporary artist’s work over the past five years and her ongoing exploration of scale, color, material, and artistic traditions of the twentieth century.

Bove’s recent work engages the conceptual concerns of mid-century sculpture, such as spontaneity, industrial materials, and the potential of painted sculpture. However, within this space of familiar sculptural traditions, Bove has discovered new approaches that lead to places previously unknown. Bove’s “collage sculptures” are created from scrap metal and stainless steel that has been carefully worked into sinuous forms and are frequently painted. Considering the hard rigidity of the steel, the works possess an appearance of almost impossible softness, as if steel could become as pliable as clay. Such works range from small pedestal sculptures to large, imposing compositions. Bove’s interest in scale and how a viewer’s understanding of an artwork shifts depending on its context are explored through a selection of small works from the collection of the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Published by the Nasher Sculpture Center, the catalogue features beautiful reproductions of Bove’s work and an introduction as well as an essay by curator Catherine Craft on the development of the collage sculptures and their relationship to other artists and traditions of modern sculpture. Also included is an essay by Lisa Le Feuvre that explores Bove’s complex work by means of a thematic alphabet related to the artist’s interests.

Carol Bove: Collage Sculptures

Foreword by Flavin Judd. Texts by Johanna Fateman, Lucy Ives, Branden W. Joseph, Marta Kuzma, Thessaly La Force, Anna Lovatt, Lauren Oyler, Wendy Perron, Michael Stone-Richards, and Mimi Thompson

A sweeping selection of Donald Judd’s iconic and ambitious works alongside a diverse collection of newly commissioned writings.

One of the most significant American artists of the postwar period, Judd rigorously experimented with color, form, material, and space. The works in this catalogue range from the artist’s expansive installations to self-contained single units, yielding valuable new insights into his process and approach. The survey includes one of his largest and most intricate installations of wall-mounted plywood boxes, conceived in 1986. Other works include variations on some of Judd’s most recognizable forms, executed in materials such as Corten steel, plexiglass, copper, plywood, brushed aluminum, and painted aluminum. Brilliant and exacting reproductions capture these works in vivid detail. Following the major Judd retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2020, this book serves as a companion volume.

With contributions from a wide range of voices—art historians, critics, writers, and performers— this publication includes rich new writings on Judd’s oeuvre, art criticism, and enduring influence. 

 is published on the occasion of the eponymous 2020 exhibition at David Zwirner New York.

Donald Judd: Artworks 1970-1994

Texts by Markus Krajewski, Tom McDonough, and Christopher Williams

Writings, documentation and more from Williams’s 2017 play

This slipcased, four-volume set focuses on Christopher Williams’s (born 1956) theatrical work 

, first presented in 2017 at Miller’s Studio in Zürich. It contains the playscript, publicity and research documents, the artist’s series of open letters and an interview with historian Markus Krajewski on the ceramic tile façades of postwar Cologne.

Christopher Williams: Stage Play

Text by Sarah Roberts and Katy Siegel. Contributions by Paul Auster, Gisele Barreau, Eric de Chassey, Jennifer Hickey, David Reed, Eileen Myles, Richard Shiff, Joyce Pensato and Jenni Quilter

A sweeping retrospective exploring the oeuvre of an incandescent artist, revealing the ways that Mitchell expanded painting beyond Abstract Expressionism as well as the transatlantic contexts that shaped her



Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) was fearless in her experimentation, creating works of unparalleled beauty, strength, and emotional intensity. This gorgeous book unfolds the story of an artistic master of the highest order, revealing the ways she expanded abstract painting and illuminating the transatlantic contexts that shaped her. Lavish illustrations cover the full arc of her artistic practice, from her exceptional New York paintings of the early 1950s to the majestic multipanel compositions she made in France later in her career. Signature works are represented here along with rarely seen paintings, works on paper, artist’s sketchbooks, and photographs of Mitchell’s life, social circle, and surroundings.

Featuring scholarly texts, in-depth essays, and artistic and literary responses, this book is organized in ten chronological chapters. Each chapter centers on a closely related suite of paintings, illuminating a shifting inner landscape colored by experience, sensation, memory, and a deep sense of place. Presenting groundbreaking research and a variety of perspectives on her art, life, and connections to poetry and music, this unprecedented volume is an essential reference for Mitchell’s admirers and those just discovering her work.

Joan Mitchell

Detail view of Alice Neel's 1967 painting titled Richard

The ultimate Alice Neel collection takes readers on an expansive journey through the iconic painter's work and life. With a practice spanning from the 1920s to the 1980s, Neel is widely regarded as one of the foremost American figurative painters of the twentieth century.

Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty

 is a definitive biography of the renowned American artist, whose life spanned the twentieth century, from women’s suffrage through the Depression, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and second-wave feminism.

shows that Alice Neel, known for her portraits of family, friends, writers, poets, artists, students, singers, salesmen, activists, and more, created forthright, intimate, and, at times, humorous paintings that quietly engage with political and social issues.

 documents the solo exhibition of the artist’s work at David Zwirner in New York in 2019. The exhibition and catalogue reveals that Alice Neel was a humanist—she was fascinated by people.

Alice Neel Collection

Installation view of the exhibition titled Barbara Kruger at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2022.

Edited with text by Peter Eleey, Robyn Farrell, Michael Govan, Rebecca Morse, James Rondeau. Foreword by Michael Govan, Glenn D. Lowry, James Rondeau. Essay by Zoé Whitley.

Five decades of iconic and incisive art from Barbara Kruger

Since the mid-1970s, Barbara Kruger (born 1945) has been interrogating the hierarchies of power and control in works that often combine visual and written language. In her singular graphic style, Kruger probes aspects of identity, desire and consumerism that are embedded in our everyday lives. This volume traces her continuously evolving practice to reveal how she adapts her work in accordance with the moment, site and context. The book features a range of striking images—from her analogue paste-ups of the 1980s to digital productions of the last two decades, including new works produced on the occasion of the exhibition. Also featured are singular works in vinyl, her large-scale room wraps, multichannel videos, site-specific installations and commissioned works.

The book also showcases how Kruger’s site-specific works have been reconceived for each venue, and includes a section of reprinted texts selected by the artist. Renowned for her use of direct address and her engagement with contemporary culture, Kruger is one of the most incisive and courageous artists working today. This volume explores how her pictures and words remain urgently resonant in a rapidly changing world.

Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue in Danish and English. It features contributions from curator Anna Kjærsgaard Gregersen and Tamar Garb, Professor in the History of Art at University College London. 

Michael Armitage: Account of an Illiterate Man

Introduction by Duro Olowu. Interview with the artist by Craig Taylor

, artist Marcel Dzama presents a raft of new works inspired by travelling through Mexico and Morocco which touch on the wonder that travel and the strange immersion in cultures aside from one’s own can so often engender. Taking visual cues from the evocative textures and colours around him, Dzama successfully captures the spirit of place, while communicating something essentially human in the experience of those places. Coming at a time of isolation, of stasis for so many, this book engages the imagination in a broad, borderless project, allowing the viewer access to the thrill of discovery and the excitement of the new.

Marcel Dzama: Pink Moon

The latest painting series from the Belgian master of eerie figuration

Belgian artist Michaël Borremans is a master of contradiction. His paintings draw heavily from 18th-century portraiture techniques, but depict scenes that are stranger and more surreal than they first appear: in one painting, children dance in a circle, cloaked in black robes; in another, a woman attempts to cram her whole hand into her mouth. Avoiding any suggestion of a specific time or place, Borremans’s eerie images are situated just slightly beyond the realms of possibility. His dark sense of humor and technical virtuosity are synthesized into a uniquely unsettling and endlessly fascinating experience for viewers.

This volume provides an overview of all of Borremans’s work since 2013, presented in seven different series of paintings. The majority of works collected here have never before been published.

Series 2013–2020

Michaël Borremans: The Badger's Song

 is a new zine designed by the Marcel Dzama on occasion of the exhibition at David Zwirner in New York in 2021. The zine features details from an array of new drawings featured in the show, which expand on Dzama’s interest in travel and nature.

Marcel Dzama: Who Loves the Sun

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

Texts by Lucy Askew, Gene Baro, Lynne Cooke, Maurice de Sausmarez, Michael Harrison, John Leighton Sir, Jennifer Licht, and Bridget Riley

The first-ever book dedicated to the celebrated British artist’s working drawings, created under the aegis of the Bridget Riley Art Foundation

Bridget Riley’s paintings are developed carefully over time, the result of methodically working through pictorial variables such as colour, tone, scale, and rhythm. Studies are central to this process, allowing Riley to concentrate on the analysis and synthesis that lie at the heart of her working practice. Riley says, ‘Because my work is based on enquiry, studies are my chief method of exploration and my way into paintings’ (2005).

This volume richly illustrates the thinking that goes into Riley’s work through a selection of over 150 drawings, colour analyses, notations, scale studies and cartoons, most of which were exhibited at the artist’s recent seminal retrospective exhibitions in Edinburgh and London from 2019 to 2020 organized by the National Galleries of Scotland. The selection spans most of Riley’s working life, tracing the origins and evolving nature of her remarkable body of work. Riley’s beginnings are also documented through selected childhood drawings, work made during and immediately following her studies at Goldsmiths’ College and the Royal College of Art, and her early explorations into abstraction.

The artist’s working method is brought into high relief in a newly commissioned conversation with Riley and Sir John Leighton, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland. The text explores the cardinal moments in the artist’s practice and the impulses that bring her work into existence. The volume also includes four previously published texts dedicated to Riley’s studies and practice written by the artist herself, art historians, curators and museum directors, which shed further light on the enduring role of drawing and the process of exploration central to her work.

Bridget Riley Working Drawings

Sherrie Levine, Dark Blue Moonlight After Man Ray: 11, 2016

Larry List

Jeanne Siegel

Spotlight Series

Text by Larry List. Interview with the artist by Jeanne Siegel

Exploring the development of groundbreaking artist Sherrie Levine’s work, this catalogue looks at four series central to her practice.

, which focuses on new bodies of work by contemporary artists, 

 showcases several series that distinctly engage the artist’s ongoing inquiry into notions of authorship, originality, and authenticity.

Many of the works are consistent with Levine’s practice—the deliberate reproduction of other artists’ works and styles, so that her work and the original are nearly indistinguishable (as with the 

 (2021) series). A number of the works make reference to modernist masterpieces, questioning the stereotypical construct of the heroic male artist. In her 

 (2016) series, Levine used a computer program to calculate the average tone of the nude figures in Renoir’s paintings and then used this color to create monochrome panels. Published for the first time, 

 (2017) replicates the patterns of a set of dominoes that Levine purchased in Hong Kong, evoking both minimalist art and popular games.

The catalogue also features a new essay by Larry List, which tracks the history of Levine’s inspirations and artistic practice, and an interview with Levine by Jeanne Siegel, originally published in the June/ Summer 1985 issue of 

, which explores the artist’s use of appropriated imagery.

Sherrie Levine: Hong Kong Dominoes

Virginia Woolf

Claudia Tobin

By Virginia Woolf. Introduction by Claudia Tobin

 series, this collection of Virginia Woolf’s writings on the visual arts offers a whole new perspective on the revolutionary author.

Despite wide interest in Woolf’s writings, and in the artists and art critics in her Bloomsbury circle, there is no accessible edition or selection of essays dedicated to her writings on art. This volume collects her longest essay on painting, “Walter Sickert: A Conversation” (1934), alongside shorter essays and reviews, including “Pictures and Portraits” (1920) and “Pictures” (1925).

These formally inventive texts reveal the centrality of the visual arts to Woolf’s writing and vision. They show her engaging with contemporary debates about modern art and are innovative in their treatment of ideas about color and form, including in response to the work of her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, who designed many of her book covers and jackets. In these essays and reviews, Woolf illuminates the complex and interdependent relationship between the artist and society, and reveals her own shifting perspectives during decades of social and political change. She also provides sharp and astute commentary on specific works of art and on the relationship between art and writing.

An introduction by Claudia Tobin situates the essays within their cultural contexts.

Oh, to Be a Painter!

Dawn Ades

Richard Tuttle

Text by Dawn Ades. Poetry by Richard Tuttle

The year before he died, in what was one of the most difficult yet prolific periods of his life, Paul Klee created his most surprising and innovative works.

In 1939, the year before his death from a long illness and against a backdrop of sociopolitical turmoil and the outbreak of World War II, Paul Klee worked with a vigor and inventiveness that rivaled even the most productive periods of his youth. This book illuminates the artist’s response to his personal difficulties and the era’s broader realities through imagery that is tirelessly inventive—by turns political, solemn, playful, humorous, and poetic.

The works featured testify to Klee’s restless drive to experiment with form and material. His use of adhesive, grease, oil, chalk, and watercolor, among other media, resulted in surfaces that are not only visually striking, but also highly tactile and original. Not unlike a diary, the drawings are often meditative reflections on the pains and pleasures of life—their titles, among them 

Renowned art historian Dawn Ades looks at this group of paintings and drawings in the context of their time and as indicative of a pivotal moment in art history. Moved by this late period of Klee’s oeuvre, American artist Richard Tuttle responds to specific works in the form of a dialogical poem. This stunning publication highlights the novelty and ingenuity of Klee’s late works, which deeply affected the generation of artists—including Anni Albers, Jean Dubuffet, Mark Tobey, and Zao Wou-Ki—that emerged after World War II and continues to captivate artists and viewers alike today.

Paul Klee: 1939

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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.