Books by Samantha Friedman

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs

by Samantha Friedman

With their economy of means and chromatic geometries, Matisse’s cut-outs are the apex of his "construction by means of color" Published in conjunction with the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to Henri Matisse’s paper cut-outs, made from the early 1940s until the artist’s death in 1954, this publication presents approximately 150 works in a groundbreaking reassessment of Matisse’s colorful and innovative final chapter. The result of research conducted on two fronts--conservation and curatorial--the catalogue offers a reconsideration of the cut-outs by exploring a host of technical and conceptual issues: the artist’s methods and materials and the role and function of the works in his practice; their economy of means and exploitation of decorative strategies; their environmental aspects; and their double lives, first as contingent and mutable in the studio and ultimately made permanent, a transformation accomplished via mounting and framing. Richly illustrated to present the cut-outs in all of their vibrancy and luminosity, the book includes an introduction and a conservation essay that consider the cut-outs from new theoretical and technical perspectives, and five thematic essays, each focusing on a different moment in the development of the cut-out practice, that provide a chronicle of this radical medium’s unfolding, and period photographs that show the works in process in Matisse’s studio.

One of modern art’s towering figures, Henri Matisse (1869–1954) was a painter, draftsman, sculptor and printmaker before turning to paper cut-outs in the 1940s. From the clashing hues of his Fauvist works made in the South of France in 1904–05, to the harmonies of his Nice interiors from the 1920s, to this brilliant final chapter, Matisse followed a career-long path that he described as "construction by means of color."

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs

by Samantha Friedman

Matisse's iconic cut-outs, now in paperback Published in conjunction with the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to the paper cut-outs Henri Matisse made from the early 1940s until his death in 1954, this paperback edition presents approximately 150 works in a groundbreaking reassessment of the artist's colorful and innovative final chapter. The result of new research by conservators and curators, the catalogue explores a host of technical and conceptual issues: the artist's methods and materials and the role and function of the works in his practice; their economy of means and exploitation of decorative strategies; their environmental aspects; and their double lives, first as contingent and mutable in the studio and ultimately made permanent, a transformation accomplished by mounting and framing. Richly illustrated to present the cut-outs in all of their vibrancy and luminosity, the book includes an introduction and a conservation essay that consider the cut-outs from new theoretical and technical perspectives, and five thematic essays, each focusing on a different moment in the development of the cut-out practice, that provide a chronicle of this radical medium's unfolding. Period photographs show the works in progress in Matisse's studio.

One of modern art's towering figures, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was a painter, draftsman, sculptor and printmaker before turning to paper cut-outs in the 1940s. From the clashing hues of his Fauvist works, made in the South of France in 1904-5, to the harmonies of his Nice interiors from the 1920s to this brilliant final chapter, Matisse's career followed a path that he described as "construction by means of color."

Cézanne: Drawing

by Jodi Hauptman, Samantha Friedman

Cézanne at his most modern: a major career-spanning appraisal of his extraordinarily experimental drawings
Winner of a PROSE Award | Association of American Publishers (AAP), 2022

A New York Magazine 2021 holiday gift guide pick

Although he is most often celebrated as a painter, Paul Cézanne’s extraordinary vision was fueled by his experiments on paper. In pencil and watercolor, on individual sheets and across the pages of sketchbooks, the artist described form through multiple probing lines; realized compositions through repetitions and transformations; and conjured kaleidoscopic color through layering of watercolor. It is in these material realities of drawing where we see Cézanne at his most modern: embracing the unfinished, making process visible and actively inviting the viewer to participate in the act of perception.

Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, this is the most significant effort to date to unite drawings from across Cézanne’s entire career, tracing the development of his practice on paper, exploring working methods that transcend subject, and devoting both curatorial and conservation-based research to these remarkable works.

What Degas Saw

by Samantha Friedman

What Degas Saw looks at the world through a beloved artist’s eyes and provides insight into his creative process. Walking through the streets of Paris with cape and cane, the French artist Edgar Degas observes the world around him, finding inspiration at every turn. From the blurry faces of passersby glimpsed through a bus window to the sun-dappled landscape seen from a moving train, from the hunched profiles of laundresses at work to light-bathed ballerinas on the opera house stage, the artist—with open eyes and a curious mind—collects impressions of the people and places he sees. Accompanies major MoMA exhibition, Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty, on view March 26 through July 24, 2016.

Dadaglobe Reconstructed

by Tristan Tzara, Karl Buchberg, Samantha Friedman, Adrian Sudhalter, Anne Sanouillet, Michel Sanouillet, Catherine Hug, Lee Ann Daffner

2016 marks the centennial of Dada's birth in Zurich, a landmark in 20-th century culture. Kunsthaus Zurich celebrates the Dada anniversary with the exhibition Dadaglobe Reconstructed. It reunites some one hundred artworks sent to Tristan Tzara for Dadaglobe, the unrealized anthology of the Dada movement.
Had it been realized as planned in 1921, Dadaglobe would have constituted the movement's most ambitious publication: 160 pages illustrated with more than 100 reproductions of artworks by some thirty artists from seven countries. Edited by Tristan Tzara, the Dada movement's Romanian-born co-founder, it was meant to be Dada's apotheosis as an artistic and literary movement of truly international reach.
Dadaglobe was not merely designed to be a vehicle for existing works. Rather, it was intended to serve as one of Dada's most generative catalysts for the production of new ones. Tzara's request for four types of visual submissions--photographic self-portraits, original drawings, photographs of artworks, and book layouts--provided parameters for production and simultaneously encouraged their subversion.
The Dadaglobe Reconstructed exhibition reveals for the first time that many of Dada's most iconic artworks were created in direct response to Tzara's call and conceived specifically for presentation as a reproduction, rather than being admired as an original. Dadaglobe was meant to be a manifesto on the revised status of the artwork in reproduction. Its legacy altered the terms of 20-century artistic discourse.
Due to a lack of funding and many difficulties in organization, Dadaglobe remained unpublished. This left a void where there ought to have been a magnum opus, an absence at the core of Dada and at the heart of twentieth century avant-garde artistic production.
The belated presentation of the artworks intended for Dadaglobe in this exhibition, and their publication as reproductions in the coinciding book, enables a major historical revision. It brings the notoriously unwieldy Dada movement into sharp focus and restores a crucial missing chapter in the history of modernism.
The book features all works submitted for Dadaglobe in a complete reconstruction of Tzara's concept. The essays, examining the history and significance of Dadaglobe as an avant-garde undertaking, are also richly illustrated.
Kunsthaus Zurich's Dadaglobe exhibition is planned to be shown also at the MoMA later in 2016 (TBC). MoMA would do their own edition for sale at the museum only. North American and world sales right remain with VSS.

Georgia O'Keeffe To See Takes Time

by Samantha Friedman

A revelatory new volume on the American modernist's lesser-known works on paper, reuniting many serial works for the first time

Recalling a charcoal she made in 1916, Georgia O'Keeffe later wrote, "I have made this drawing several times--never remembering that I had made it before--and not knowing where the idea came from." These drawings, and the majority of O'Keeffe's works in charcoal, watercolor, pastel and graphite, belong to series in which she develops and transforms motifs that lie between observation and abstraction. In the formative years of 1915 to 1918, she made as many works on paper as she would in the next 40 years, producing sequences in watercolor of abstract lines, organic landscapes and nudes, along with charcoal drawings she would group according to the designation "specials." While her practice turned increasingly toward canvas in subsequent decades, important series on paper reappeared--including charcoal flowers of the 1930s, portraits of the 1940s and aerial views of the 1950s.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, this richly illustrated volume highlights the drawings of an artist better known as a painter, and reunites individual sheets with their contextual series to illuminate O'Keeffe's persistently sequential practice.
Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) first received critical attention when her breakthrough charcoal drawings were exhibited in New York in 1916. Two years later, she moved to the city to work full time on her art. Beginning in 1929, O'Keeffe spent summers in New Mexico, where she would relocate in 1949. The most famous female artist of her age, she thought of herself not as "the best woman painter" but as "one of the best painters."