art contemporary

Hardcover. Marg Foundation , 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 128 pages. Various expressions of art manifested through painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, and even drama, issues of nostalgia and modernity are juxtaposed to examine the art of Nepal from new viewpoints.The style of art we call Nepali is produced by the Newars, the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, who shaped it from ancient to modern times. The present volume celebrates various artistic expressions of the Newars as well as other ethnic groups that have contributed to the rich cultural heritage of the country. Various traditions, including the Kumari cult and street theater are illustrated along with contemporary art and architecture.

Hardcover. NY, Acanthus Press , 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages, color plates. Volume I, Inventors of Tradition, highlights the careers and showcases the work of the designers who translated and then transformed European period styles into a new vocabulary for America. In addition to the work of celebrated taste-makers Billy Baldwin, Mario Buatta, and Albert Hadley Gura uncovers the interiors of once-influential, now-obscure designers whose work played an important role in the development of the New York look. Among these practitioners are William Pahlmann, the pioneer of contemporary eclecticism; the glamorous Melanie Kahane, with a fondness for shocking pink and tasteful pizzaz; and the epitome of the southern civility, Joseph Braswell, who believed that a beautiful environment could make its occupants into better people.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. A dark, no-holds-barred, and often hilarious collection from a prize-winning poet, veering between the poles of self and world. Kim Addonizio's sharp and irreverent eighth volume, Now We're Getting Somewhere, is an essential companion to your practice of the Finnish art of kalsarikannit-drinking at home, alone in your underwear, with no intention of going out. Imbued with the poet's characteristic precision and passion, the collection charts a hazardous course through heartache, climate change, dental work, Outlander, semiotics, and more. Combatting existential gloom with a wicked, seductive energy, Addonizio investigates desire, loss, and the madness of contemporary life. She calls out to Walt Whitman and John Keats, echoes Dorothy Parker, and finds sisterhood with Virginia Woolf.Sometimes confessional, sometimes philosophical, these poems weave from desolation to drollery and clamor with raucous imagery: an insect in high heels, a wolf at an uncomfortable party, a glowing and self-serious guitar.

Softcover. NY, Picador, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 318 pages. Calvin Tomkins first discovered the work of Robert Rauschenberg in the late 1950s, when he began to look seriously at contemporary art. While gazing at Rauschenberg's painting Double Feature, Tomkins felt compelled to make some kind of literal connection to the work, and it is in that sprit that "for the last forty years it's been [his] ambition to write about contemporary art not as a critic or a judge, but as a participant." Tomkins has spent many of those years writing about Robert Rauschenberg, whom he rapidly came to see as "one of the most inventive and influential artists of his generation." So it seemed natural to make Rauschenberg the focus of Off the Wall, which deals with the radical changes that have made advanced visual art such a powerful force in the world.Off the Wall chronicles the astonishingly creative period of the 1950s and 1960s, a high point in American art. In his in his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and as a pivotal figure linking abstract expressionism and pop art, Rauschenberg was part of a revolution during which artists moved art off the walls of museums and galleries and into the center of the social scene. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Ostfildern GR, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 114 pages illustrated in color and b&w, catalog of an exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, January 24-April 1, 2001. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, pages. Vivid, passionate, primitive - 113 paintings by the poet Stan Rice. Here, his canvases explore the terrain of his poetry, as he captures the familiar and the mythical, the magical and the everyday. Here are legendary beasts, card players; images inspired by Greek myths, Bible stories, nursery rhymes. Some pay homage to objects - others to living things. They belong to no contemporary school. They are at once childlike, ironic, and darkly humorous - paintings that attest to the original vision of a talented poet and painter.

Hardcover. NY, Liveright Publishing , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Published on the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith's diaries "offer the most complete picture ever published" of the canonical author. Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of "our greatest modernist writers" (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks -- posthumously discovered behind Highsmith's linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta -- traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who "[worked] like mad to be something." Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating "atmosphere of nameless dread" (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise like new.

Hardcover. NY, Liveright Publishing , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Published on the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith's diaries "offer the most complete picture ever published" of the canonical author. Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of "our greatest modernist writers" (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks -- posthumously discovered behind Highsmith's linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta--traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who "[worked] like mad to be something." Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating "atmosphere of nameless dread" (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise like new.

Softcover. London, Phaidon, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 160 pages. Paul Graham's intense color photographs map a social and cultural landscape. This work brings together portraits, landscapes and interiors from his British, European and Japanese series. Graham has exhibited worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Tate Gallery, London.

Hardcover. Ostfildern GR, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 279 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. The work of Paul Klee (1879-1940) was deeply influenced by his passion for the theater. Throughout his life, the artist fervently attended theatrical performances, from the opera to puppet shows. Characters from plays or operas Hamlet, Falstaff, or Don Giovanni, for example populate his cryptic visual world. Various types of characters or theatrical elements, such as the clown or the mask, were firmly established themes in his pictorial repertoire. However, Klee primarily forged links between the theater and life, and in so doing, he took up the traditional theme of the world as a stage: people became actors or marionettes; theatrical events converged with scenes from everyday life. This publication sheds light on all of these aspects of Klee's captivation with the stage. A chronology reconstructs a panoramic view of his multifaceted experience with the theater. Selected works by contemporary artists make it clear that not only Klee was fascinated by the sharp-eyed perception of theatrical situations it is a topic that continues to engage artists even today. 394 plates, 212 in color. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Ostfildern GR, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 280 pages. Color and b&w illustrations. This publication sheds light on all of aspects of Klee's fascination with the arts of the stage. A chronology gives a panoramic outline of his several encounters with the theater and a selection of works by contemporary artists makes it clear that Klee was not the only artist to be fascinated with the sharp-eyed perception of theatrical scenarios--the topic is one that continues to engage artists today. Notes: Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Zentrum Paul Klee and Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels.

Softcover. Brookville NY, Hillwood Art Museum, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, stapled wrappers, 44 pages. Full-color catalog featuring essays and images of traditional and contemporary African sculpture depicting mother and child. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Museum of Modern Art, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 367 pages, color and b&w illustrations. This publication comprises a comprehensive catalogue of the collection post-1960s and brings much-needed new critical perspective on the most prominent artists working with the photographic medium of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. At a moment when photography is undergoing fast-paced changes and artists are seeking to redefine its boundaries in new and exciting ways, Photography at MoMA serves as an excellent resource for understanding the expanded field of contemporary photography today. The book is organized with an in-depth introductory chapter and eight chapters of full-colour plates, each introduced by a short essay, and features work by over 250 artists, including Diane Arbus, John Baldessari, Jan Dibbets, Rineke Dijkstra, William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Louise Lawler, Zoe Leonard, Helen Levitt, Sigmar Polke, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jeff Wall, Carrie Mae Weems, Hannah Wilke and Garry Winogrand, among many others. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1st US, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 588 pages, several color plates. Before Picasso became Picasso-the iconic artist now celebrated as one of France's leading figures-he was constantly surveilled by the French police. Amid political tensions in the spring of 1901, he was flagged as an anarchist by the security services-the first of many entries in an extensive case file. Though he soon emerged as the leader of the cubist avant-garde, and became increasingly wealthy as his reputation grew worldwide, Picasso's art was largely excluded from public collections in France for the next four decades. The genius who conceived Guernica in 1937 as a visceral statement against fascism was even denied French citizenship three years later, on the eve of the Nazi occupation. In a country where the police and the conservative Academie des Beaux-Arts represented two major pillars of the establishment at the time, Picasso faced a triple stigma-as a foreigner, a political radical, and an avant-garde artist. Picasso the Foreigner approaches the artist's career and art from an entirely new angle, making extensive use of fascinating and long-overlooked archival sources. In this groundbreaking narrative, Picasso emerges as an artist ahead of his time not only aesthetically but politically, one who ignored national modes in favor of contemporary cosmopolitan forms. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise a bright, clean copy.

NY, Harper & Brothers , reprint, 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 385 pages. Illustrated with a frontispiece and 48 half tone photographs. Original decorated publisher's cloth, with gilt titles. First published in 1897. Account of Sicily at the turn of the 20th century, with a focus on the art, history, and landscape of the Island, from the largest of cities to its hamlets and villages. Contemporary color postcard laid in. Original pale green cloth fafed, previous owners name, embossed stamp on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 184 pages. ARTnews, the oldest art magazine in America and the most widely circulated art magazine in the world, is celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary in 2002. This attractive book celebrates and commemorates this milestone event, presenting one hundred of the best photographic portraits commissioned by and reproduced in the magazine since its origin. These fascinating photographs chronicle the history of the magazine and present a "who's who" of people who have shaped the art world over the last century. Portrait of the Art World includes photographs of many of the great European and American artists of the twentieth century, including George Bellows, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, and Alice Neel. The photographers-often as fascinating as their subjects-range from Zaida Ben-Yusuf, Alice Boughton (early members of Alfred Stieglitz's circle), and Jessie Tarbox Beals (perhaps the first woman photojournalist) to Stieglitz himself, Man Ray, and Cecil Beaton. Contemporary photographers featured in the book include Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Arnold Newman, Richard Avedon, and Robert Mapplethorpe. The book also presents an essay by William F. Stapp exploring the historical context of portrait photography in ARTnews; an essay on the history of ARTnews by Pete Hamill; and an essay by Milton Esterow, the current editor and publisher of ARTnews, discussing his personal view of the magazine. This handsomely illustrated book is the catalogue for an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society from September 27, 2002, to January 5, 2003, which will then travel to Washington, Chicago, and San Francisco

Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, unknown, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 224 pages. Beautiful copy. Like new, in shrinkwrap. Postmodern Ceramics surveys the achievements of over 130 masters of contemporary ceramics from more than twenty-five countries, analyzing their varied approaches by presenting the work in twelve themes.

Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket,160 pages. Folio. gray cloth, spine stamped in gilt. Richly illustrated with 172 illustrations, 50 in full color. First monograph of this American-born artist who has lived most of his life in England. Includes a catalogue of all his work up until 1985.R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007) is one of the most intriguing 20th century artists. Born into a Russo-Jewish family near Cleveland, Ohio, 17-year old Kitaj spent 5 years at sea aboard a Norwegian freighter. He went on to study art in New York and Vienna. A Royal College of Art stipend made him move to London where he became a celebrated artist. Curating The Human Clay, a 1976 show of figurative contemporary British artists, he coined the term "School of London" for the artistic circle around Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, and Leon Kossoff. In 1991 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy, one of only three American painters to be thus honored in the history of the institution. A major 1994 retrospective at London's Tate Gallery failed to produce Kitaj's international breakthrough, but was unanimously panned by British critics instead. This, and the unexpected death of his wife Sandra, induced his increasingly paranoid perspective. Embittered he returned to the USA and settled in Los Angeles, where he finally took his own life in 2007. Kitaj left behind a manuscript unmatched among 20th-century artist autobiographies -- Confessions of an Old Jewish Painter. Eloquently describing his vices and sufferings, it stands in the traditions of both St. Augustine and Thomas de Quincey. Now published for the first time, it is a sensation, from both a literary and art historical point of view.

Hardcover. Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover with illustrated boards, 212 pages. Since the late 1970s, as a pioneer of Southern California underground culture, Raymond Pettibon has blurred the boundaries of "high" and "low," from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, literature, sports, religion, politics and sexuality. Rich in detail, his obsessively worked drawings pull freely from myriad sources spanning the cultural spectrum. The resulting, highly poetic constructions function as acute reflections of contemporary society. Throughout the years, his subjects have included political figures and historical events, with particular intensity since the events of September 11, 2001. Seen here are images of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover, both Bush presidents, the Kennedys, Hitler, scenes from the Vietnam War and protest movements, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prisoner abuse of Abu Ghraib, President Obama and Osama bin Laden. Raymond Pettibon (born 1957) studied economics at UCLA around the same time he joined his brother in the punk band Black Flag. He soon began to contribute artwork to album covers, flyers and t-shirts, for the band and its label, SST Records, and exhibited his work in group shows in galleries in the 1980s. Since the 1990s his work has been the subject of numerous major solo exhibitions.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Dia Art Foundation/Yale, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, illustrated gatefold wraps. 298 pages. Edited and annotated by the poet and editor with color photographs throughout at the gala readins. A wide representation from Bruce Andrews and Rae Armantrout to Lewis Warsh and John Yau. For over three decades, Dia Art Foundation has gathered renowned and visionary poets to present their work in conversation with one another in monthly events through its Readings in Contemporary Poetry series. This collection anthologizes ninety-four poets who gave readings between 2010--when the program resumed under the direction of Vincent Katz after a short break--and 2016. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 219 pages. Clean, bright copy. "I doubt very much that I'm the only person who's finding it more and more difficult to want to read or write novels," David Shields acknowledges in Reality Hunger, then seeks to understand how the conventional literary novel has become as lifeless a form as the mass market bodice-ripper. Shields provides an ars poetica for writers and other artists who, exhausted by the artificiality of our culture, "obsessed by real events because we experience hardly any," are taking larger and larger pieces of the real world and using them in their work. Reality Hunger is made of 600-odd numbered fragments, many of them quotations from other sources, some from Shields's own books, but none properly sourced--the project being not a treasure hunt or a con but a good-faith presentation of what literature might look like if it caught up to contemporary strategies and devices used in the other arts, and allowed for samples (that is, quotation from art and from the world) to revivify existing forms. Shields challenges the perceived superiority of the imagination and exposes conventional literary pieties as imitation writing, the textual equivalent of artificial flavoring, sleepwalking, and small talk. I can't name a more necessary or a more thrilling book.

Softcover. Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages, profusely illustrated in b&w. The great Francesco Goya was pivotal to the development of European art. His engagement with dreams and fantasy link him to the Romantic era while his skeptical view of society, his questioning of the strictures of the Church and State, reflect Enlightenment attitudes familiar to contemporary viewers. His humane and shocking portrayal and denunciation of war still evokes an understanding and immediate response. This publication looks at the motivations of his art, to shine the light of Reason on human relations, and explores his patrons, his career and the times in which he lived. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcovers, complete in two volumes, housed in a glossy illustrated slipcase with light fading to top edge. Volume I: Paintings: Problems and Issues, 149 pages, index. Color and B&W plates. Volume II: Paintings, Drawings and Prints: Art-Historical Perspectives, 262 pages, index. B&W and color reproductions. This set is a two-volume catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum's paintings by Rembrandt as well as pictures once thought to be by the master but now recognised as the efforts of his pupils, contemporary followers, and the occasional later imitator. Bookplate on inside front covers. A heavy set. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.