It's Raining Men

Gustave Courbet

Published by Hatje Cantz.
Text by Sylvain Amic, Kathryn Calley Galitz, Laurence des Cars, Dominique Lobstein, Bruno Mottin, Thomas Galifot, Bertrand Tillier.

Nowadays it is difficult to conceive of the impact that Gustave Courbet’s paintings made on French art of the mid-nineteenth century. At once casting himself as revolutionary, bohemian and peasant, Courbet (1819-1877) overturned a deeply-entrenched tradition of academic painting in France, and, eschewing the Romanticism of Delacroix and the NeoClassicism of Ingres, coined instead an idiom he named “Realism.” Realism was not pretty, classically proportioned or literary; rather, it confronted the conditions of rural working life, then an unimaginable subject for art. The first masterpiece of this new style was “Burial at Ornans” (1849-1850), a colossal anti-epic that depicted an ordinary funeral in Courbet’s home town. The contrast between the work’s scale and its subject matter was pronounced, and its murky earth tones struck critics as willfully ugly--a defining reaction that would recur throughout the Modern period, particularly in the reception of early works by Manet and Picasso. Courbet’s palette emphasized mass and body politically--that is, in a manner that affirmed the world itself rather than the transcendence of it. His equally famous “The Origin of the World” of 1866, which presented the female genitalia close-up, made this stance explicit. The conceptual beginnings of the “painting of Modern life” are as much in Courbet’s Realism as in Charles Baudelaire’s famous essay of the same name.
In this new assessment, published on the occasion of a major 2008 traveling exhibition, renowned experts shed light on the development of Courbet’s realistic, critical style and trace his influence on his contemporaries and subsequent generations, as well as his relationship to early photography. At 480 pages, this monumental volume provides a long-overdue reckoning of this great artist’s work.

PUBLISHER
Hatje Cantz

BOOK FORMAT
Hardback, 9 x 12 in. / 480 pgs / 350 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/1/2008
Out of print

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Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 20   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783775721097 TRADE
List Price: $85.00 CDN $100.00

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Felipe Ehrenberg

Manchuria Peripheral Vision

Published by Editorial RM/Diamantina.
Edited by Fernando Llanos. Text by Guillermo Arriaga, Issa María Benítez Dueñas, Martha Hellion, César Martínez, Felipe Ehrenberg, Guillermo Gómez Peña.

Felipe Ehrenberg is recognized in Mexico as an extraordinary draftsman, but is better known internationally as a mail and media artist and for his performance and installation works. He also has a prestigious reputation as a book artist and has produced several seminal works in this field. This artist's book is extraordinary not only for its contents and its outstanding design--it is perhaps one of the best looking artist's books on our list this season--but also for the way it took shape. "I don't believe in being baroque," the artist wrote to the designer, "but I chose Manchuria because it shares the 'M' with Mexico; you could have green, white and green like a soldier's fatigues... everyone has heard of Manchuria, few know where it is... just like my work." The very title of the book is a faithful reflection of Mexico's situation at the beginning of the new millennium.

PUBLISHER
Editorial RM/Diamantina

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8 x 9.75 in. / 320 pgs / 65 color / 322 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 8/1/2008
Out of print

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Catalog: FALL 2008 p. 95   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9789685208963 TRADE
List Price: $65.00 CDN $75.00

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Greg Gorman: In Their Youth

Early Portraits

Published by Damiani.
Text by Audrey Wells.

In Their Youth: Early Portraits comprises over 200 of the California-based photographer's previously unpublished portraits from the last three decades, featuring famous actors shot when they were still unknown young men, from teen years into their early twenties. "I decided to do a project that expressed my infatuation with male beauty," Gorman explains, "especially in terms of youth... the portraits don't have lots of backgrounds, they're straightforward. It's really about the person, not the elements. It boils down to the graphics of the individual more than the graphics of the setting." Gorman's intimate celebrity portraits hinge on the sense of his subjects' vulnerability. Here, famous young men are juxtaposed with photographs of promising unknowns: one of the first shots of Tom Cruise, for instance, shares a spread with some anonymous ephebe that Andy Warhol met at Studio 54.
Greg Gorman discovered his calling after taking a borrowed camera to a Jimi Hendrix concert in 1968. In 1990, after producing images for over 20 years, he published his first book, Greg Gorman Volume One, which reveals his skills as a portraitist. Gorman has created innumerable unforgettable images (for instance, a 2000 portrait of Jeff Koons shows the artist perched on a filthy toilet, flanked by two leather-clad ladies). His work has been featured in ad campaigns and has been featured on the covers of a number of magazines, including Esquire, GQ, Interview, Vogue, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.

PUBLISHER
Damiani

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8.25 x 10.25 in. / 140 pgs / 200 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/31/2009
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
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Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 37   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788862080972 TRADE
List Price: $50.00 CDN $60.00

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Robert Rauschenberg: Combines

Published by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Edited and introduction by Paul Schimmel.

Poetic and lush, Robert Rauschenberg's Combines present layers of complex and sometimes conflicting information. This approach, first explored by Rauschenberg in the early 1950s, proved prescient and has become increasingly relevant in the current age of cascading information, when even the most ground-breaking artists are referencing and sampling disparate elements to create new forms. The Combines suggest the fragility of definitions, the fluidity of materials and the complexity of forms that are characteristic of Rauschenberg's works. The artist's handling of materials provides a precise physical evolutionary link between the painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism and iconographical, subject-driven early Pop art. This book focuses on the works created roughly between 1954 and 1964, the most important decade in the artist's 50-year career, and constitutes the most complete survey of the Combines ever presented, as well as the most rigorous analysis of their political, social, autobiographical and aesthetic significance. An introductory essay by exhibition curator Paul Schimmel titled “Reading Rauschenberg” offers an iconographic analysis of the earlier Combines, based on in-depth conversations with the artist. Other texts help to contextualize the Combines, such as Thomas Crow's essay that calls them the major artistic statement of their time, and the one body of art that could simultaneously hold its own from de Kooning to Pop art.

PUBLISHER
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 9.75 x 12.25 in. / 324 pgs / 172 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/15/2005
Out of stock indefinitely

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2005 p. 9   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783865211453 TRADE
List Price: $75.00 CDN $99.00 GBP £65.00

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Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures

Published by Aperture.
Text by Jock Reynolds, Taro Nettleton. Interview by Carrie Mae Weems.

For the past 15 years, Dawoud Bey has been making striking, large-scale color portraits of students at high schools across the United States. Depicting teenagers from a wide economic, social and ethnic spectrum--and intensely attentive to their poses and gestures--he has created a highly diverse group portrait of a generation that intentionally challenges teenage stereotypes.
Bey spends two to three weeks in each school, taking formal portraits of individual students, each made in a classroom during one 45-minute period. At the start of the sitting, each subject writes a brief autobiographical statement. By turns poignant, funny or harrowing, these revealing words are an integral part of the project, and the subject's statement accompanies each photograph in the book. Together, the words and images in Class Pictures offer unusually respectful and perceptive portraits that establish Dawoud Bey as one of the best portraitists at work today.

PUBLISHER
Aperture

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.75 x 11 in. / 164 pgs / 70 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 9/1/2007
No longer our product

DISTRIBUTION
Contact Publisher
Catalog:

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781597110433 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CDN $55.00

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Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole

Published by JRP|Ringier.
Edited by Massimiliano Gioni. Text by Jessica Morgan, Bice Curiger, Massimiliano Gioni.

In a move that now seems prescient, Swiss artist Urs Fischer--who was born in 1973--literally pulled the floor out from under viewers for a 2007 exhibition at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York, by digging through the gallery foundations and exposing the dirt and rubble beneath. Best known for this kind of dramatic transfiguration of the exhibition space, as well as for his unexpected transformations of quotidian objects and his lack of allegiance to any one style, Fischer consistently projects a sense of transience and existential uncertainty. This volume--which includes newly commissioned essays by Massimiliano Gioni and Jessica Morgan, as well as over 200 images of Fischer's work, including installation views and studio shots--functions like a search engine, cross-referencing Fischer's thought processes. Published concurrently with his solo exhibition at New York's New Museum, it was conceived by designer Scipio Schneider in close collaboration with the artist.

PUBLISHER
JRP|Ringier

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.75 x 12.5 in. / 482 pgs / 450 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 12/31/2009
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 85   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783037640371 TRADE
List Price: $69.95 CDN $85.00

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Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent

Published by La Fábrica.
Edited and text by Noriko Fuku, John P. Jacob.

Unconcerned But Not Indifferent is one of the most beautifully produced and revelatory monographs on Man Ray ever published. It draws exclusively on one of the largest Man Ray archives, that of the Man Ray Trust, which has remained largely unexcavated since it was brought to the U.S. in the late 1990s, and whose full scope has never before been published. The book is structured chronologically across the four phases of Man Ray's working life, in New York, Paris, Los Angeles and Paris again. Works reproduced here range from typographic studies done in 1908, through paintings, objects and sculptures to Man Ray's pioneering photography, from the "Rayographs" (abstract photographs produced from found objects) and "Solarizations" (a procedure of tonal reversion developed by Man Ray and Lee Miller), to his fantastic portraits of André Derain, Erik Satie, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Hans Bellmer, Joyce Mansour and many others--plus many rare images from his L.A. years. It also features supplementary materials to works and a useful chronology. As an object, Unconcerned But Not Indifferent is unmistakably a labor of love, from its contents to its binding (the cloth front board features an embossed emblem of the artist's bowler hat, and the paper for both plates and text is especially fetching), and a model of what a monograph can be.
The artist known as Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, in 1890. A nomadic soul, like his lifelong friend Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray relocated many times throughout his life, and likewise stopped short of joining the ranks of either Dada or Surrealism, though he was informally close to both movements. He died in 1976 and was buried in in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. His epitaph reads: "unconcerned, but not indifferent."

PUBLISHER
La Fábrica

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 9 x 11 in. / 392 pgs / 85 color / 249 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 12/31/2009
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
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Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 177   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788496466807 TRADE
List Price: $65.00 CDN $75.00

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Male

From the Collection of Vince Aletti

Published by PPP Editions.
Text by Collier Schorr.

From the collection of the renowned photography critic and curator Vince Aletti, Male collects photographs, paintings and artifacts on the theme of the male body, amassed over the last 30 years. Aletti's collection was first presented at New York's White Columns gallery in February 2008, and is a wild blend of anonymous and iconic art and photography from the nineteenth century to the present, a visual cacophony that distinguishes Aletti's taste and appetite as a collector. Among the known photographers in the collection are Alexandr Rodchenko, Nan Goldin, Marco Breuer, Aaron Siskind, Gary Schneider, Peter Hujar, Bill Jacobson, McDermott and McGough, Weegee, George Platt Lynes, Larry Clark, Danny Lyon and Malick Sidibe. Alongside reproductions, a gatefold page displays the works as they are installed in Aletti's New York home, and Collier Schorr contributes an essay recording the impact the collection has had on her own work and view of photography. Schorr writes: “Art history, written mainly by men, has shied away from the male figure... Aletti's collection… creates a Cosmos: at once a microcosm of gay male life, a personal fantasy, and the infinite, enveloping World.”

PUBLISHER
PPP Editions

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 10 x 12.5 in. / 272 pgs / 72 color / 132 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/28/2010
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2010 p. 87   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780971548060 TRADE
List Price: $120.00 CDN $145.00

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Paul Gauguin: The Breakthrough Into Modernity

Published by Hatje Cantz.
Text by Agnieszka Juszczak, Heather Lemonedes, Belinda Thomson.

In 1889, Paris hosted the legendary Exposition Universelle (World's Fair), a massive cultural exhibition which transformed the face of French culture to come. The Eiffel Tower was built for it, the composer Claude Debussy first heard Javanese music there, and the painter Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), reacting against his exclusion from its arts component, organized an exhibit called L'Exposition de Peintures du Groupe Impressionniste et Synthésiste, on the walls of the Café Volpini, presenting the newest works by himself and his friends. It was the moment at which he "became Gauguin," for it was here that he premiered what is now known as the Volpini Suite, an amazing portfolio of 11 lithographs printed on radiant canary yellow paper, which marked the coalescence of his motifs (the fruitbearers, the mourning Eve, the woman in the waves) and the commencement of his mature style. The Suite also gives a chronicle of Gauguin's travels in Martinique, Brittany and Arles, and records the constellation of the Pont Aven group. Gauguin reconstructs this landmark exhibition, demonstrating the radicality of the works produced by Gauguin and his friends (Charles Laval, Léon Fauché, Emile Schuffenecker, Louis Anquetin, Georges Daniel, Émile Bernard, Louis Roy and Ludovic Nemo), and examining all paintings, woodcuts, ceramics, prints and drawings by Gauguin related to the show.

PUBLISHER
Hatje Cantz

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 10 x 11 in. / 248 pgs / 234 color / 20 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/30/2009
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
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Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 68   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783775724272 TRADE
List Price: $60.00 CDN $70.00

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Michael Doster: 80s-90s

Published by Damiani.
Foreword by Regina Stahl. Text by Katinka Omir.

From the glory days of big hair, big shoulder pads and ostentatious wealth--or at least the illusion of it--comes Michael Doster: 80s & 90s. The internationally celebrated German photographer Michael Doster captured the fashion elite in the days before digital cameras hit the scene and before post-production effects were prevalent and airbrushing quite so rampant. This collection tells the story of haute couture when the labels Ungaro, Oscar de la Renta and Chanel were on everyone's lips and models like Marpessa, Iman, Linda Evangelista and Gia were fresh on the scene. Both in the studio and on the streets, Doster perfectly captured the ethos, drama and sexuality of these two decades. After completing photography school in his native Zurich, Doster began his fashion career in Munich and worked in Milan and Paris before he settled in New York in 1974. Doster was just in time for the advent of contemporary fashion: the term "supermodel" came into regular usage in the 1980s and the women caught by Doster's lens were soon known affectionately to people all over the world by their first names. As model Claudia Schiffer defined it at the time, "in order to become a supermodel one must be on all the covers all over the world at the same time so that people recognize you." And as this edition demonstrates, Doster was instrumental in making that happen.

PUBLISHER
Damiani

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.75 x 13.25 in. / 304 pgs / 127 color / 132 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/31/2009
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 32   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788862080910 TRADE
List Price: $69.00 CDN $85.00

AVAILABILITY
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