ARTBOOK BLOG

RECENT POSTS

DATE 4/1/2023

Rizzoli Bookstore presents Pattie Boyd in conversation with Dave Brolan

DATE 3/25/2023

Artbook at Hauser & Wirth LA Bookstore presents the Los Angeles book launch and signing for 'Ash Kolodner: Gayface'

DATE 3/18/2023

The spirit of exploration in 'Thor Heyerdahl: Voyages of the Sun'

DATE 3/15/2023

192 Books presents a Tony Feher panel discussion

DATE 3/14/2023

Celebrate Pi Day with 'Einstein: The Man and His Mind'

DATE 3/14/2023

Revised 'Philip Guston Now' on view at National Gallery of Art

DATE 3/10/2023

Hot book alert! 'Cyberfeminism Index' is out now from Mindy Seu and Inventory Press

DATE 3/8/2023

Midcentury Modern bliss in 'Room 606'

DATE 3/6/2023

Peculiar beasts in 'Jon Huck: At the Drop of a Hat'

DATE 3/5/2023

Artbook at MoMA PS1 presents Tammy Nguyen and Mina Stone

DATE 3/2/2023

Mast Books presents Jameson Green in conversation with Dan Nadel

DATE 3/1/2023

Celebrate Women's History!

DATE 3/1/2023

Celebrate Women's History Month, 2023!


IMAGE GALLERY

"The Trees" (2008) is reproduced from Michaël Borremans: As Sweet as It Gets, distributed for Hatje Cantz by ARTBOOK | D.A.P.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/12/2014

Michaël Borremans: As Sweet as It Gets

"Like Michaël Borremans himself, the title of his mid-career survey As Sweet as It Gets is, on one level, humorous and open, and yet also possessed of potentially darker intentions. The expression 'as sweet as it gets' seems emphatic and clear: it conveys nothing less than a feeling of absolute contentment, the sense that everything is right with the world. At the same time, this simple phrase, oddly familiar and intentionally vague, raises any number of questions. Connotation is everything of course, and meaning is often determined solely by inflection. As anyone who has spent time in the American South knows, for instance, the innocuous wish, 'Good for you!' can mean either 'aren't you great' or 'aren’t you stupid!' In a similar vein, As Sweet as It Gets may imply either the embrace of a sunny present or a resigned acceptance that things are as bad as they will ever get. The tense ambiguity lingering in that expression provides an appropriate metaphor for Michaël Borremans’ work, characterized as it is by subtle symmetries of stunning beauty and disturbing abjection, humor and despair, strength and fragility, and life and death. For lurking in the shadows of the sunny construction, 'as sweet as it gets,' resides something darker: a sensibility that recognizes that if anything is 'as sweet as it can get,' it can quite easily—and will most likely—soon turn bitter." Excerpt from Jeffrey Grove's essay and Borremans' 2008 painting "The Trees" are reproduced from Hatje Cantz's remarkable new oversized volume.

Michaël Borremans: As Sweet as It Gets

Michaël Borremans: As Sweet as It Gets

HATJE CANTZ
Hbk, 11.5 x 13.25 in. / 304 pgs / 120 color.





Pure Couture

DATE 2/9/2023

Pure Couture

Into the meat grinder

DATE 1/21/2023

Into the meat grinder

Why Omaha?

DATE 1/10/2023

Why Omaha?

Raise your fist!

DATE 10/24/2022

Raise your fist!