Books by Barry Schwabsky
Vitamin P2
by Barry Schwabsky, Michele Robecchi
A dynamic overview of the best new contemporary painting from around the world.
The first volume of Vitamin P, published in 2002, inaugurated a vibrant period for painting. Since its publication, a whole new generation of painters has emerged, some inspired by the artists who appeared in that book, others taking cues from new sources. Vitamin P2 introduces this new wave of painters to the world.
The vast medium of painting continues to be a central pillar of artistic practice, and Vitamin P2 presents the outstanding artists who are currently engaging with and pushing the boundaries of the medium. Over 80 international critics, artists and curators have nominated the 115 artists who have made a fresh, unique or innovative contribution to recent painting. All of the artists in Vitamin P2 have recently emerged onto the international scene, and none appeared in the first Vitamin P.
An introduction by Barry Schwabsky, who also wrote the introduction for Vitamin P, provides a broad overview of recent developments in the medium while also looking towards its future.
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From Here to There: Alec Soth's America
by Geoff Dyer, August Kleinzahler, Barry Schwabsky, Britt Salvesen, Siri Engberg
From Here to There: Alec Soth's America is the first exhibition catalogue to feature the full spectrum of the work of Alec Soth, one of the most interesting voices in contemporary photography, whose compelling images of everyday America form powerful narrative vignettes. Featuring more than 100 of the artist's photographs made over the past 15 years, the book includes new critical essays by exhibition curator Siri Engberg, curator and art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky, which offer context on the artist's working process, the photo-historical tradition behind his practice and reflections on his latest series of works. Novelist Geoff Dyer's "Riverrun"--a meditation on Soth's series Sleeping by the Mississippi--and August Kleinzahler's poem "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City" contribute to the thoughtful exploration of this body of work. Also included in the publication is a 48-page artist's book by Soth titled The Loneliest Man in Missouri, a photographic essay with short, diaristic texts capturing the banality and ennui of middle America's suburban fringes, with their corporate office parks, strip clubs and chain restaurants. This full-color publication includes a complete exhibition history, bibliography and interview with the artist by Bartholomew Ryan.
Alec Soth was born in 1969 and raised in Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1999, 2004) and Jerome Foundation (2001), was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and was short-listed for the highly prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. His first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. Since then Soth has published Niagara (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogotá (2007) and The Last Days of W (2008). He is a member of Magnum Photos.
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Landscape Painting Now: From Pop Abstraction to New Romanticism
From fantastical worlds to political topologies: a global survey of landscape painting in the 21st century
Although the fact may be surprising to some, landscape painting is positively thriving in the 21st century―indeed, the genre has arguably never felt as vital as it does today. The reasons why, if speculative, surely include our imminent environmental collapse and increasingly digitally mediated existence. Landscape Painting Now is the first book of its kind to take a global view of its subject, featuring more than eighty outstanding contemporary artists―both established and emerging―whose ages span seven decades and who hail from twenty-five different countries.
Through its thematic organization into six chapters―Realism and Beyond, Post-Pop Landscapes, New Romanticism, Constructed Realities, Abstracted Topographies, and Complicated Vistas―the book affords a generous window into the very best of contemporary landscape painting, from Cecily Brown’s sensual, fleshy landscapes to Peter Doig’s magic realist renderings of Trinidad, Maureen Gallace’s serene views of beach cottages and the foaming ocean, David Hockney’s radiant capturings of seasonal change in the English countryside, Julie Mehretu’s dynamically cartographic abstractions, Alexis Rockman’s mural-sized, postapocalyptic dioramas, and far beyond.
Landscape Painting Now features an extensive essay by Barry Schwabsky, art critic for The Nation. Schwabsky’s text weaves throughout the book, tracing the history of landscape painting from its origins in Eastern and Western art, through its transformation in the 20th century, to its present flourishing. Shorter texts by art historians Robert R. Shane, Louise Sørensen, and Susan A. Van Scoy introduce each artist, situating the importance of landscape within their practice and addressing key works. With over 400 color reproductions, including many details, this ambitious survey makes a compelling case for the continued relevance of landscape painting in our time.
Featured artists are Etel Adnan, Francis Alÿs, Hurvin Anderson, Mamma Andersson, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, Lucas Arruda, Ayman Baalbaki, Jules de Balincourt, Ali Banisadr, Hernan Bas, John Beerman, Amy Bennett, Cecily Brown, Gillian Carnegie, Noa Charuvi, Nigel Cooke, Will Cotton, Cynthia Daignault, Verne Dawson, Vincent Desiderio, Lois Dodd, Peter Doig, Rackstraw Downes, Tim Eitel, Andreas Eriksson, Inka Essenhigh, Richard Estes, Genieve Figgis, Jane Freilicher, Barnaby Furnas, Maureen Gallace, Tim Gardner, Franz Gertsch, Adrian Ghenie, April Gornik, Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Pat de Groot, Daniel Heidkamp, Barkley L. Hendricks, Israel Hershberg, David Hockney, Shara Hughes, Yvonne Jacquette, Merlin James, Yishai Jusidman, Alex Kanevsky, Alex Katz, Anselm Kiefer, Per Kirkeby, Makiko Kudo, Matvey Levenstein, Li Dafang, Liu Xiaodong, Damian Loeb, Antonio López García, Enrique Martinez Celaya, Julie Mehretu, Justin Mortimer, Maki Na Kamura, Jordan Nassar, Silke Otto-Knapp, Celia Paul, Eggert Pétursson, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Neo Rauch, Alexis Rockman, Jean-Pierre Roy, Tomás Sánchez, Lisa Sanditz, Serban Savu, George Shaw, Mark Tansey, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Wayne Thiebaud, Luc Tuymans, Cinta Vidal, Kay WalkingStick, Corinne Wasmuht, Matthew Wong, Jonas Wood, Lisa Yuskavage and Luiz Zerbini
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Bernar Venet (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)
by Barry Schwabsky, Florence Derieux, Clare Lilley
The first true monograph on the work of celebrated French conceptual artist and sculptor Bernar Venet
Bernar Venet is one of France's most celebrated living artists. Having emerged from the late 1960s avant-garde scene in New York, Venet developed a personal aesthetic based on an innovative use of mathematics and science, where control, chance, and chaos converge to form a fine equilibrium while investigating their relationship with the environment.
Conversant in many media, Venet is mostly known for his monumental outdoor sculptures in major cities worldwide and, in fall 19, his Arc Majeur is due for completion at a site in Belgium - at almost 200 feet in height (60 meters), Venet's sculpture will be taller than New York's Statue of Liberty.
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The Observer Effect: On Contemporary Painting (Sternberg Press)
A collection of writings on art by Barry Schwabsky.
“Many consider Barry Schwabsky to be the critic on painting today, even if he does write copiously on other art forms,” write editors Rob Colvin and Sherman Sam in their foreword to this selection of Schwabsky's writings. Written since the turn of the millennium, the texts in The Oberver Effect include meditations on the broader context of painting today alongside reflections on such well-known American painters as Alex Katz, Kerry James Marshall, Nicole Eisenman, and Dana Schutz, as well as practitioners from Europe and beyond—Bernard Frize, Tal R, and Ha Chonghyun among them. As Colvin and Sam point out, the book “documents a dialogue between abstraction and the image” in which “images serve less to represent their described subject than to articulate the sort of painting each one desires to be.”
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Jessica Stockholder: Contemporary Artists series (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)
by Barry Schwabsky, Lynne Cooke, Germano Celant
The definitive book on a creative force who continues to influence sculpture and installation art
Jessica Stockholder has long broken down the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture to explore the body in social and cultural space - using found objects intertwined with profusions of vivid colours. This revised, updated edition spotlights the extraordinary evolution of her career, and examines the pivotal role she has played in shaping some of the most fundamental ideas around which contemporary sculpture and painting revolve today.
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The Perpetual Guest: Art in the Unfinished Present
Leading art critic explores the connections between art’s past and present
Contemporary art sometimes pretends to have made a clean break with history. In The Perpetual Guest, poet and critic Barry Schwabsky demonstrates that any robust understanding of art’s present must also account for the ongoing life and changing fortunes of its past.
Surveying the art world of recent decades, Schwabsky attends not only to its most significant newer faces—among them, Kara Walker, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ai Weiwei, Chris Ofili, and Lorna Simpson—but their forebears as well, both near (Jeff Wall, Nancy Spero, Dan Graham, Cindy Sherman) and more distant (Velázquez, Manet, Matisse, and the portraitists of the Renaissance).
Schwabsky’s rich and subtle contributions illuminate art’s present moment in all its complexity: shot through with determinations produced by centuries of interwoven traditions, but no less open-ended for it.
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