Naima J. Keith

Los Angeles-based artist Henry Taylor (born 1958) applies his brush both to canvas and to unconventional materials--suitcases, crates, cereal boxes, cigarette packs--using everyone and everything around him as source material. While Taylor drew and painted in his youth, he studied art formally only later in life, attending the California Institute of the Arts after working for ten years as a psychiatric nurse at a state hospital. This experience sharpened his interest in, and appreciation for, individuals from all economic and social backgrounds, and encouraged a passion to create an intensely empathetic style of portraiture. Published on the occasion of Taylor’s 2012 exhibition at MoMA PS1, where the artist established his New York studio for the duration of the show, the publication explores Taylor’s ambitious and deeply humanistic project to present a worldview defined by the people--extraordinary and ordinary--with whom we live.

You Should’ve Heard Just What I Seen explores how music shapes the experience of making and looking at art, with original contributions from over 50 leading contemporary artists, curators and gallerists. Invited to submit pieces that touch on the way music factors into both their lives and practice, the conversations, poems, essays, lists, show flyers, t-shirts, paintings and photographs they provided are collected in this supreme reader on contemporary art and sound. Featuring works and texts from an international group of artists, the publication is both a lively reader and a visually compelling document of the art of today. The contributors are Kelly Taxter, Maureen Brenner, Elizabeth Peyton, Charlemagne Palestine, Jay Sanders (Whitney Museum of American Art), Chris Ofili, Jeremy Deller, Steven Baker, Dave Muller, Jeff Poe (Blum & Poe), Anne Collier, Lesley Vance, Margaret Lee (47 Canal), Tyson Reeder, Alex Olson, Kelley Walker, Rashid Johnson, Martin Creed, Andrew Kuo, Macrae Semans, Jim Drain, Charles Long, Sarah Thompson, David Kordanksy / Stuart Krimko (David Kordansky Gallery), Roe Ethridge, Matt Anderson (DJ Matt), Spencer Sweeney, Yoshitomo Nara, Christoph Gerozissis (Anton Kern Gallery), Scott Reeder, Kai Althoff, Dan Aran / Uri Aran, Thomas Lax (Studio Museum of Harlem), Laura Owens, Amy Granat, Peter Doig, Trisha Donnelly, Edgar Arceneaux, Brian Degraw, James Fuentes (James Fuentes), Barry Johnston, Naima J. Keith (The Studio Museum in Harlem), Nicholas Party, Berry Van Boekel, Adam Putnam, Brendan Fowler, Mike Watt and Matthew Higgs (White Columns).

Widely regarded as one of the leading exponents of postminimalist art in the late 1970s, Charles Gaines (born 1944) is known primarily for his photographs, drawings and works on paper that investigate systems, cognition and language. Considered against the backdrop of the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s and the rise of multiculturalism in the 1980s, the works in Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989 are radical gestures. Eschewing overt discussions of race, they take a detached approach to identity that exemplifies Gaines' determination to transcend the conversations of his time and create new paths. Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989 gathers significant examples from several of the artist's most important series, including 75 key works from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s. It features drawings and photographs from public and private collections--some of which were previously considered lost--and essays by leading scholars and curators.