Books by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Faith Ringgold

by Faith Ringgold, Katarina Pierre, Emily Wei Rales, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Michele Wallace

"Every one of Ringgold's images tells a story, as often to uplift as critique and almost always in bright, bold and inviting ways." –Bob Morris, New York Times
Lauded internationally for her narrative quilts and her colorful paintings of African American life, New York artist Faith Ringgold has explored and sabotaged perceptions of identity and gender inequality through her experiences in the feminist and civil rights movements.
This catalog is published for her international traveling exhibition organized by the Serpentine, London, which traveled to Bildmuseet, Sweden, in 2020 and opens at Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland, in 2021. Focusing on several series of paintings, story quilts and political posters from the 1960s to today, the book includes two texts by Michele Wallace that interweave Ringgold’s biography with the chronology of works in the exhibition. In an extensive interview, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ringgold discuss her life in Harlem, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, her inspirations and her passion for storytelling and exercising her freedom of speech. The book also documents the expanded scope of the exhibition at the Glenstone Museum, which includes key examples of Ringgold’s soft sculpture and rare experiments with pure abstraction.
Faith Ringgold (born 1930) is a painter, mixed-media sculptor, performance artist, teacher and writer best known for her narrative quilts. As an avid civil rights and gender equality activist, Ringgold’s work is highly political; in 2020, the New York Times described her as an artist “who has confronted race relations in this country from every angle, led protests to diversify museums decades ago, and even went to jail for an exhibition she organized.” She has had solo shows at Spectrum Gallery (1967), Studio Museum in Harlem (1984) and, most recently, a five-decade retrospective at the Serpentine (2019). Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others.

Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates

by Klaus Ottmann, Dan Mills, Lynn Gamwell, Timothy Morton, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Emma Enderby, Agnes Denes, Giampaolo Bianconi, Renee Gladman, Caroline Jones, Lucy R. Lippard

"Agnes Denes, the queen of land art, made one of New York’s greatest public art projects ever in 1982. Now, the world might be catching up with her." –Karrie Jacobs, New York Times
Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates accompanies the largest exhibition of the artist’s work in New York to date, held at The Shed in fall 2019 as part of the arts space’s opening season. Presenting more than 130 works, this comprehensive publication, presented in an embossed slipcase, spans the 50-year career of the path-breaking artist dubbed “the queen of land art” by the New York Times, famed for her iconic Wheatfield―A Confrontation (1982), for which she planted a two-acre wheatfield in Lower Manhattan on the Battery Park Landfill, in the shadow of the then recently erected Twin Towers.

A major undertaking, this superb catalog includes a comprehensive text by the exhibition’s curator, Emma Enderby, an interview with Denes by Hans Ulrich Obrist, essays by prominent scholars and curators including Caroline A. Jones, Lucy R. Lippard and Timothy Morton that examine Denes’ multifaceted practice in new ways, writings by the artist and reflections by curators who have worked with Denes over the course of her career. New works by Denes commissioned by The Shed for the exhibition are presented in a special insert.

Budapest-born, New York–based artist Agnes Denes (born 1931) rose to international attention in the 1960s and 1970s as a leading figure in conceptual, environmental and ecological art. A pioneer of several art genres, she has created work in many mediums, utilizing various disciplines―such as science, philosophy, linguistics, ecology and psychology―to analyze, document and ultimately aid humanity.

Remember to Dream!: 101 Artists, 101 Notes

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Poetry on a Post-it: thoughts, dreams, jokes, quotations, questions and puns by some of the world’s foremost artists, writers, designers, musicians and actors, from Yoko Ono and Jane Fonda to Jonas Mekas and Grimes
In Remember to Dream!, celebrated curator Hans Ulrich Obrist collects an abundance of thoughts for the day, dreams, drawings, musings, jokes, quotations, questions, answers, poems and puns from some of the world’s greatest contemporary artists, musicians and more, handwritten on Post-it notes (and other scraps).

From the reassuringly philosophical to the inspiringly straightforward, the ingeniously funny to the tenderly posthumous, Remember to Dream! (titled after a note by Carrie Mae Weems) paints a picture of the art world direct from many of the most celebrated creative figures of the 21st century. These include BTS, Marina Abramovic, Tracey Emin, FKA twigs, Gilbert & George, Grimes, Zaha Hadid, Pharrell Williams, Zadie Smith, David Lynch, Jonas Mekas, Frank Ocean, Yoko Ono, Eileen Myles, Arca and Vivienne Westwood.

The book features a preface by Hans Ulrich Obrist and is designed by award-winning book designer Irma Boom.

Annie Leibovitz

by Graydon Carter, Steve Martin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul Roth

When Benedikt Taschen asked the most important portrait photographer working today, Annie Leibovitz, to collect her pictures in a SUMO-sized book, she was intrigued by the challenge. The project took several years to develop and when it was finally published in 2014, it weighed in at 26 kg (57 pounds).

This incredible collection is now available in an accessible XXL book format.

Leibovitz drew on more than 40 years of work, starting with the photojournalism she did for Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s through the conceptual portraits she made for Vanity Fair and Vogue. She selected iconic images—such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono entwined in a last embrace—as well as portraits that had rarely, if ever, been seen before.

The Annie Leibovitz SUMO covered political and cultural history, from Queen Elizabeth II and Richard Nixon to Laurie Anderson and Lady Gaga.

“What I had thought of initially as a simple process of imagining what looked good big, what photographs would work in a large format, became something else,” Leibovitz says. “The book is very personal, but the narrative is told through popular culture. It’s not arranged chronologically and it’s not a retrospective. It’s more like a roller coaster.”

Fans of Leibovitz and her many celebrated subjects can now enjoy that same roller coaster ride for themselves with this unlimited edition.

Obrist-isms

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

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The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present

by Douglas Coupland, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Shumon Basar

A highly provocative, mindbending, beautifully designed, and visionary look at the landscape of our rapidly evolving digital era.

50 years after Marshall McLuhan's ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture in The Medium is the Massage, Basar, Coupland and Obrist extend the analysis to today, touring the world that’s redefined by the Internet, decoding and explaining what they call the 'extreme present'.

THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES is a quick-fire paperback, harnessing the images, language and perceptions of our unfurling digital lives. The authors offer five characteristics of the Extreme Present (see below); invent a glossary of new words to describe how we are truly feeling today; and ‘mindsource’ images and illustrations from over 30 contemporary artists. Wayne Daly’s striking graphic design imports the surreal, juxtaposed, mashed mannerisms of screen to page. It’s like a culturally prescient, all-knowing email to the reader: possibly the best email they will ever read.

Welcome to THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES, a paper portrait of Now, where the Internet hasn’t just changed the structure of our brains these past few years, it’s also changing the structure of the planet. This is a new history of the world that fits perfectly in your back pocket.

30+ artists contributions: With contributions from Farah Al Qasimi, Ed Atkins, Alessandro Bavo, Gabriele Basilico, Josh Bitelli, James Bridle, Cao Fei, Alex Mackin Dolan, Thomas Dozol, Constant Dullaart, Cecile B Evans, Rami Farook, Hans-Peter Feldmann, GCC, K-Hole, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Eloise Hawser, Camille Henrot, Hu Fang, K-Hole, Koo Jeong-A, Katja Novitskova, Lara Ogel, Trevor Paglen, Yuri Patterson, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Michael Stipe, Rosemarie Trockel, Amalia Ulman, David Weir, Trevor Yeung.

Creative Chicago: An Interview Marathon

by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Alison Cuddy

On September 29, 2018, before a live audience at Navy Pier in Chicago, international curator Hans Ulrich Obrist conducted his first US Marathon interview session as part of Art Design Chicago, a yearlong celebration of Chicago’s art and design legacy initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Obrist, who has undertaken a life-long project of interviewing cultural figures, spoke with more than twenty of Chicago’s most innovative and influential artists, designers, architects, writers, and other creatives. In their interviews, this diverse group of creatives provided insights into their artistic processes, influences, and ideas about and hopes for their shared city of Chicago. Among the participants were social-practice artist/developer Theaster Gates, architect Jeanne Gang, writer Eve Ewing, Hairy Who artists Art Green and Suellen Rocca, performance/installation artist Shani Crowe, and the city’s cultural historian Tim Samuelson. Creative Chicago: An Interview Marathon serves as documentation for this event, including edited transcripts of the interviews, biographies of the participants, photos of the event, and images of the artists’ work.

Ai Weiwei (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

by Ai Weiwei, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Karen Smith, Bernard Fibicher

Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is truly an artist for the twenty-first century. In his sculptures he refashions artefacts and antiques into surprising, sometimes monumental constructions such as Template (2007): hundreds of wooden doors and windows taken from demolished Ming and Qing dynasty temples and arranged into a massive outdoor sculpture. As much as these materials look to the past, they also speak of the present, because never before (and probably never again) have they been available in such abundance. Like his benches carved from centuries-old temple beams, Template is a sly commentary on the speed with which China's building boom is obliterating its past. (When Template collapsed in a rainstorm two weeks after its unveiling at Documenta 12, the artist embraced its demise as a clever artistic twist.)
In China today, making art that's critical of current cultural and economic policies is not a particularly safe career move. But Ai's father, the poet Ai Qing, walked a similar path, absorbing European avant-garde styles while studying in 1930s Paris and later standing by them in the face of Communist opposition, a move that eventually led to his exile to the distant provincial town where his son Weiwei came to be born and raised. In the late 1970s Ai Weiwei moved to Beijing, banding together with other pro-democracy artists in a loose collective known as the Stars Group. In 1981, following government retaliation against one of their exhibitions, Ai moved to New York, where he attended art school and lived the life of the bohemian for twelve years, his East Village apartment serving as a base for countless visiting Chinese artists. When his father became ill in 1993 Ai returned to China, settling in Beijing and finally taking up his art career in earnest.
Weiwei's artistic forebears belong primarily to the Western modernist avant-garde (Duchamp and Beuys are particularly relevant). But Ai has equally and increasingly been influenced by modernist architecture and contemporary urban planning, citing the need for an ideal for living in a country where runaway economic development has shown little regard for the everyday life of the individual. In stark contrast to the glass-and-steel high-rises going up around Beijing, the art galleries, ateliers and homes Ai designs are boxy and modest, made from brick and other vernacular materials. Their resolution of Eastern and Western styles is a fitting parallel to his antique readymade sculptures.
At a time when the West is finally discovering Chinese contemporary art, Ai is one of the few to have transcended the label 'Chinese artist'. In part thanks to his gallery Urs Meile (Lucerne and Beijing), Ai has won the support of strong European collectors. His work is increasingly being shown at major venues around the world (Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthaus Graz, Tate Liverpool) and included in major international exhibitions (the Moscow Biennial, the Guangzhou Triennale, Documenta). A complex, multi-faceted artist, Ai is poised to make a deep impact on contemporary art far beyond China's borders.
In the interview Hans Ulrich Obrist discusses Ai Weiwei’s life and motivations, his childhood in a rural province close to the Russian border, his underground political work, his move to New York in the 80s and consequent return to China in the 90s, and his break within the art world.
Karen Smith’s survey examines the evolution of Ai Weiwei’s work from the early paintings, drawings, and sculptures pieces through his most recent installations and architectural work, including the cotton-made sculpture World Map (Biennale of Sydney, 2006), the wooden doors and windows structure Template (Documenta 12, 2007) and his collaboration with the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron for the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Bernard Fibicher focuses on Working Progress (Fountain of Light) (2007), a site-specific sculpture for Tate Liverpool inspired by Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (1919) and

Ways of Curating

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

The world's most influential contemporary-art curator explores the history and practice of his craft

Hans Ulrich Obrist curated his first exhibit in his kitchen when he was twenty-three years old. Since then he has staged more than 250 shows internationally, many of them among the most influential exhibits of our age.

Ways of Curating is a compendium of the insights Obrist has gained from his years of extraordinary work in the art world. It skips between centuries and continents, flitting from meetings with the artists who have inspired him (including Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, and Gilbert and George) to biographies of influential figures such as Diaghilev and Walter Hopps. It describes some of the greatest exhibitions in history, as well as some of the greatest exhibitions never realized. It traces the evolution of collections from Athanasius Kircher's seventeenth-century Wunderkammer to modern museums, and points the way for projects yet to come.

Obrist has rescued the word "curate" from wine stores and playlists to remind us of the power inherent in looking at art--and at the world--in a new way.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating*: *But Were Afraid to Ask (Sternberg Press)

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Everything you ever wanted to know about Hans Ulrich Obrist but were afraid to ask has been asked by the sixteen practitioners in this book. Spanning the beginning of his “career” as a young curator in his Zurich kitchen to his time most recently as the Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programs, and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London, the book is a “production of reality conversations.” It undertakes the impossible: pinning down this peripatetic curator, attempting to map his psychogeography so that silences may be transcribed. In a sense, it organizes a “protest against forgetting” and affirms the sagacity of an artist who told this dontstop curator “don't go” when he “contemplated leaving the art world” for other fields—“to go beyond the fear of pooling knowledge”—in lieu of bringing other fields into the (then) hermetic art world.
Contributors
Jean-Max Colard, Robert Fleck, Jefferson Hack, Nav Haq, Noah Horowitz, Sophia Krzys Acord, Brendan McGetrick, Markus Miessen, Ingo Niermann, Paul O'Neill, Philippe Parreno & Alex Poots, Juri Steiner, Gavin Wade, Enrique Walker

The Great Animal Orchestra A Work from the Collection of the Fondation Cartier Pour L'art Contemporain

by Bernie Krause, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Gilles Boeuf, Michel Andre

Since the 1970s, California-based bioacoustician and musician Bernie Krause (born 1938) has recorded more than 5,000 hours of natural habitats, including at least 15,000 terrestrial and marine species from all around the world. At once poetic and scientific, this sound archive reveals the musical harmony and orchestral organization of animal vocalizations. It also reveals that the great animal orchestra, increasingly threatened by human activities, now risks being reduced to total and utter silence, as today 50% of the biodiversity recorded by Krause have disappeared forever.
This book presents The Great Animal Orchestra, a work created by Krause and United Visual Artists in 2016 for the exhibition spaces of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris. It tells the story of the elaboration of this unprecedented immersive installation, from the recordings of the sounds of nature realized by Krause to their visual translation into a three-dimensional video installation by United Visual Artists. Combining aesthetics and technology, The Great Animal Orchestra simultaneously offers a sound and visual meditation on the necessity of preserving the beauty of the natural world.
Alongside contributions by Krause, Matthew Clark, Gilles Boeuf, Michel André and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the book includes the QR codes of seven recordings made by Krause in seven territories chosen for their ecological diversity and the richness of their biophony, from Canada to the Central African Republic, from the United States to Zimbabwe, from Brazil to the oceans.

Mapping It Out: An Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

A look at our exterior and interior worlds through intriguing and imaginative maps from over 130 contributors in the fields of art, science, film, and more Maps have always been at the heart of human knowledge. Whether they chart a newly discovered land or lay out a complicated process, maps serve to improve our understanding of what surrounds us. Maps make the complex simple, and reveal the complexity behind the apparently simple. Mapping It Out invites artists, architects, writers, and designers, geographers, mathematicians, computer pioneers, scientists, and others from a host of fields to create a personal map of their own, in whatever form and showing whatever terrain they choose, whether real-world or imaginary.

Over 130 contributors’ ideas are represented, including Yoko Ono, Louise Bourgeois, Damien Hirst, David Adjaye, Ed Ruscha, Alexander Kluge, and many more. Some contributors have translated scientific data into simplified visual language, while others have condensed vast social, political, or natural forms into concise diagrams. There are reworked existing maps, alternate views of reality, charted imaginary flights of fancy, and the occasional rejection of a traditional map altogether. 140 illustrations, 120 in color

Hans Ulrich Obrist: Infinite Conversations

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

A collection of 31 conversations Hans Ulrich Obrist has held with thinkers and scientists on art, science and philosophy.
In 2014, for the thirtieth anniversary of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, noted art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist imagined “The Infinite Conversation”: a series of conversations with artists, scientists, and thinkers close to the Fondation Cartier and its exhibition program. The Infinite Conversations gathers together all of these conversations, with figures such as Patti Smith, Raymond Depardon, Agnès Varda, and Freddy Mamani, in an invitation to transcend the borders between art disciplines.

Adrián Villar Rojas (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Eungie Joo

The first book to explore the fascinating career and fantasy-driven worlds created by the acclaimed Argentinean artist
Adrián Villar Rojas's works concoct imaginary realms. Usually made from clay, his colossal installations are transitory and so cannot be collected, as they disappear or decay over time. His practice confronts the public with ideas of obsolescence and extinction, but also with the possibilities of humankind and its endless imagination. This is the first book to include all of Villar Rojas' most significant projects, featured in international biennials such as Venice, Documenta, Shanghai, and others.

Gerhard Richter: Writings 1961 - 2007

by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Dietmar Elger

For a painter who has so successfully neutralized the declarative potential of his medium, Gerhard Richter has committed to print a surprisingly large amount of discussion on his work. Perhaps it is only natural that an artist whose painting incarnates the Cagean premise that there is nothing to communicate should be moved to address that fact over and over. For this reason, the first edition of Richter's writings, The Daily Practice of Painting (published in 1993 by MIT Press) was an especially compelling collection, gathering the speculations of an artist profoundly involved in states of doubt, uncertainty and negation. Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, it quickly became a basic text in all of the creative fields. For this new, complete edition of the writings, Richter has placed his private archive at the editor's disposal; most of the photographic material comes from this archive and has not been previously published. The volume begins with the artist's farewell letters to his teacher Heinz Lohmar in 1961, is augmented with 15 unpublished texts from 1962 to 1993, as well as texts from the past 14 (highly productive) years of his career, and closes with an interview on his contribution to the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. In between are public statements on specific exhibitions, private reflections drawn from personal correspondence, answers to questions posed by critics and journal excerpts discussing the intentions, methods and subjects of his works from various periods. At more than 600 pages (the first edition was only 288), it is without doubt the essential companion to Richter's colossal oeuvre.
Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932. His first solo show was in 1964 at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. Today he is ranked among the world's greatest painters.

Hans Ulrich Obrist & Zaha Hadid: The Conversation Series: Vol. 8

by zaha hadid, Hans Ulrich Obrist

The celebrated architect and Pritzker Prize-winner speaks with series editor Hans Ulrich Obrist about the projects that established her distinctive, deconstructivist style, and shares her thoughts about contemporary architecture. Conceptual and structural questions are discussed with great precision, providing insight into one of the world’s most influential architectural firms.

Lee Ufan: Art of Encounter

by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lee Ufan

Painter, sculptor, writer and philosopher Lee Ufan (born 1936) first came to prominence in the late 1960s as one of the major proponents of the Japanese avant-garde group Mono-ha. Japan's first contemporary art movement to gain international recognition, the Mono-ha school of thought rejected Western notions of representation, choosing to focus on the relationships of materials and perceptions rather than on expression or intervention.

A new edition of a collection of writings first published in 2004, this volume features previously unpublished essays from 1967 to 2007 and a recent interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist. This edition has been published by Lisson Gallery and the Serpentine Galleries on the occasion of Lee Ufan’s 2018 outdoor commission Relatum-Stage at Serpentine Galleries, London.

Hans Ulrich Obrist & Olafur Eliasson: The Conversation Series: Vol. 13

by Olafur Eliasson, Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson have known each other for many years, and have worked together intimately--on exhibitions, book projects, performances and more. Their legendary conversations, gathered here, are revealing, challenging, philosophical--and essential to both oeuvres.

Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist has been conducting ongoing conversations with the world's greatest living artists since he began in Switzerland, aged 19, with Fischli and Weiss. Here he chooses 19 of the greatest figures and presents their conversations, offering the reader intimacy with the artists and insight into their creative processes. Inspired by the great Vasari, Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects explores the meaning of art and artists today, their varying approaches to creating, and a sense of how their thinking evolves over time. Including David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, Rem Koolhaas, and Oscar Niemeyer, this is a wonderful and unique book for those interested in modern art.

Somewhere Totally Else: By Hans Ulrich Obrist. (Hapax)

by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Cl�ment Diri�, Finn Canonica

Since 2012, Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) has made a weekly contribution to Das Magazin, the weekend supplement of the Swiss Tages-Anzeiger newspaper.
His weekly column offers a survey of contemporary art and current cultural affairs in the style of a diary.
Offering an open and globalized mapping of the culture of the 2010s, Obrist’s writings for Das Magazin are collected in Somewhere Totally Else for the first time. The anthology also serves as a portrait, revealing the personal cosmology of this curious-about-everything global citizen par excellence: Obrist writes on everything from Etel Adnan and Lina Bo Bardi to Fischli/Weiss, from the importance of sharing and interdisciplinary thinking to the legacy of Édouard Glissant.
Somewhere Totally Else collects 100 entries written between 2012 and 2017, with drawings by British artist David Shrigley.

Wish You Were Here 111 Artists, 111 Notes

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

The next volume in Hans Ulrich Obrist's celebrated Post-it notes series, with notes handwritten by world-leading figures in arts and culture, from Amy Sherald to John Waters

In this ongoing and open-ended project, famed Swiss art curator and critic Hans Ulrich Obrist collects an abundance of dreams, drawings, musings, thoughts for the day, jokes, quotations, questions, answers, poems and puns from some of the world's greatest contemporary artists. Obrist shares these notes with his Instagram followers, combining the slow composition of the written note and the velocity of the Instagram post, in an endeavor to revive the art of handwriting from within an ever-advancing digital age.
Following the success of the first volume, Remember to Dream! (2023), this book gathers 111 such notes from 111 artists and cultural figures into an accessible and playful format. Wish You Were Here was designed by award-winning designer Irma Boom, who interprets each handwritten note to capture the character of its author with her ingenious and original typography.
Contributors include: Nairy Baghramian, Matthew Barney, Alvaro Barrington, Georg Baselitz, Mark Bradford, Cecily Brown, Hélène Cixous, Samuel R. Delany, Liz Diller, Jim Dine, Kim Gordon, Antony Gormley, Jon Gray, Katharina Grosse, Sheila Hicks, Lubaina Himid, Ho Tzu Nyen, Cristina Iglesias, Anne Imhof, Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq, Isaac Julien, Alex Katz, KAWS, Francis Kéré, Kid Cudi, Jeff Koons, Suzanne Lacy, June Leaf, Glenn Ligon, Maya Lin, Takesada Matsutani, Julie Mehretu, Tyler Mitchell, Sarah Morris, Oscar Murillo, Minoru Nomata, Alice Notley, Piet Oudolf, Amol K Patil, Solange Pessoa, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Caroline Polachek, Hassan Sharif, Amy Sherald, Paul Stamets, Tilda Swinton, Juergen Teller, Rosemarie Trockel, Jimmy Wales, John Waters.

The Hockney Interviews

by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Conversations that explore the work, life and practices of a legendary painter

British painter David Hockney (born 1937) is one of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition to being an important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is also renowned as a printmaker, stage designer and photographer. In 1964, Hockney moved to Los Angeles, where, famously, he was inspired to make a series of vibrantly colored paintings of swimming pools in the comparatively new acrylic medium.
This volume brings together conversations held between this art-world icon and preeminent curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, which began with their first meeting in 2006 at Hockney's London studio. Exploring the artist's dedicated and prolific practice, his friendships with Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon, fervent preoccupation with painting nature, ruminations on new technologies and his love of smoking, Hockney's musings are as bold and varied as his work.
The Hockney Interviews is a hardback reading book and intimate portrait of one of the world's most distinguished living artists, fully illustrated with artworks spanning the breadth of his career.