Books by Thomas Lax
member: Pope.L, 1978–2001
by Naomi Beckwith, Danielle Jackson, Adrian Heathfield, Adrienne Edwards, André Lepecki, Malik Gaines, Martha Wilson, Thomas Lax, Mark Bessire, C. Carr, EJ Hill, Martine Syms
An absurdist provocateur and brilliant interventionist, Pope.L is a seditious force in contemporary American art
Pope.L is a consummate thinker and provocateur whose practice across multiple mediums―including painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, theater and video―utilizes abjection, humor, endurance, language and absurdity to confront and undermine rigid systems of belief. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that will feature a combination of videos, photographs, sculptural elements, ephemera and live actions, member: Pope.L, 1978–2001 presents a detailed study of 13 early works that helped define Pope.L’s career. Essays by curators, artists, filmmakers and art historians, plus an interview and artistic interventions by the artist, establish key details for each work and articulate how the artist continues to think about the legacy of these ephemeral projects unfolding in time.
Among the works included are performances rooted in experimental theater, such as Egg Eating Contest (1990), Aunt Jenny Chronicles (1991) and Eracism (2000), as well as street interventions such as Thunderbird Immolation a.k.a. Meditation Square Piece (1978), ATM Piece (1997) and The Great White Way: 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street (2001–09), among others. Together these works highlight the role that performance has played within a seditious, emphatically interdisciplinary career that has established Pope.L as an influential force in contemporary art.
Pope.L (born 1955) is an acclaimed and prolific interdisciplinary artist best known for his provocative performances, such as ATM Piece (1997) and his decades-long Crawl series―most notably Times Square Crawl (1978), Tompkins Square Crawl (1991) and The Great White Way: 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street (2001–09)―in which the artist drags his body across New York City. Pope.L received his MFA from the Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University and has exhibited internationally. He lives and works in Chicago.
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James 'Son Ford' Thomas: The Devil and His Blues
by William Ferris, Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Thomas Lax, Jonathan Berger, David Serlin, Velma Allen
James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas: The Devil and His Blues accompanies the eponymous show at Studio Museum and New York University’s 80WSE Gallery, the largest ever devoted to Thomas’ work. Thomas (1926–1993)―a self-taught African-American artist and musician who lived in severe poverty for most of his life―created small, often painted clay busts of friends and family and people he met. "When I do my sculpturing work things just roll across my mind. I lay down and dream about the sculpture," he wrote. "That gives you in your head what to do. If you can’t hold it in your head, you can’t do it in your hand." Nearly 100 of these sculptures are displayed alongside full-bleed installation shots and text contributions by David Serlin, William Ferris, Thomas J. Lax and Kinshasha Holman Conwill, among others.
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Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art
by Thelma Golden, Thomas Lax, Antwaun Sargent, Jamillah James, Jessica Brown, Graham Boettcher, Connie H. Choi, Anthony Graham, Lauren Haynes, Hallie Ringle, Adeze Wilford, Gordon Dearborn Wilkins, Bernard Lumpkin
What’s new, now and next from contemporary Black artists
A New York Times 2020 holiday gift guide pick
This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art. As mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have championed emerging artists of African descent through museum loans and institutional support. But there has never been an opportunity to consider their acclaimed collection as a whole until now.
Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent (author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion), Young, Gifted and Black draws from this collection to shed new light on works by contemporary artists of African descent. At a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, and establishment voices such as the New York Times are declaring that “it has become undeniable that African American artists are making much of the best American art today,” Young, Gifted and Black takes stock of how these new voices are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.
Young, Gifted and Black contextualizes artworks with contributions from artists, curators and other experts. It features a wide-ranging interview with Bernard Lumpkin and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and an in-depth essay by Antwaun Sargent situating Lumpkin in a long lineage of Black art patrons. A landmark publication, this book illustrates what it means (in the words of Nina Simone) to be young, gifted and Black in contemporary art.
Artists include: Mark Bradford, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sadie Barnette, Kevin Beasley, Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Bethany Collins, Noah Davis, Cy Gavin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Tomashi Jackson, Samuel Levi Jones, Deana Lawson, Norman Lewis, Eric N. Mack, Arcmanoro Niles, Jennifer Packer, Christina Quarles, Jacolby Satterwhite, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith, Chanel Thomas, Stacy Lynn Waddell, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Brenna Youngblood, and more.
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$49.95
Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done
by Adrian Heathfield, Malik Gaines, Thomas Lax, Giampaolo Bianconi, Ana Janevski, Harry CH Choi, Vivian A. Crockett, Danielle Goldman, Elizabeth Gollnick, Martha Joseph, Victor “Viv” Liu, Jenny Harris, Sharon Hayes, Benjamin Piekut, Kristin Poor, Julia Robinson, Gloria Sutton
Using "ordinary" movements, the Judson Dance Theater stripped dance of its theatrical conventions
A New York Times Book Review 2019 holiday gift guide pick
Taking its name from the Judson Memorial Church, a socially engaged Protestant congregation in New York's Greenwich Village, Judson Dance Theater was organized as a series of open workshops from which its participants developed performances. Redefining the kinds of movement that could count as dance, the Judson participants―Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Philip Corner, Bill Dixon, Judith Dunn, David Gordon, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Fred Herko, Robert Morris, Steve Paxton, Rudy Perez, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Carolee Schneemann and Elaine Summers, among others―would go on to profoundly shape all fields of art in the second half of the 20th century. They employed new compositional methods to strip dance of its theatrical conventions, incorporating "ordinary" movements―gestures typical of the street or home, for example, rather than a stage―into their work, along with games, simple tasks, and social dances to infuse their pieces with a sense of spontaneity.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done highlights the workshop's ongoing significance. The catalog charts the development of Judson, beginning with the workshops and classes led by Anna Halprin, Robert Ellis Dunn and James Waring, and exploring the influence of other figures working downtown such as Simone Forti and Andy Warhol, as well as venues for collective action like Judson Gallery and the Living Theatre. Lushly illustrated with film stills, photographic documentation, reproductions of sculptural objects, scores, music, poetry, architectural drawings and archival material, the publication celebrates the group's multidisciplinary and collaborative ethos as well as the range of its participants.
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