Published by Matthew Marks Gallery. Text by Jean-Pierre Criqui.
Though Los Angeles artist Ken Price (1935–2012) is best known as a sculptor in ceramic, drawing was always a central component of his art: “For me drawing is really flexible,” he once stated, “and I use it in different ways. It’s my way of developing ideas.” Ken Price: Drawings brings out this facet of Price’s work fully for the first time.
Featuring 78 of Price’s works on paper—all reproduced for the first time, many at actual size—this book is the most comprehensive ever published on the subject. Technical innovations like five-color printing capture Price’s drawings in all their wayward vitality. From preparatory works, like Price’s early 1960s drawings exploring forms and colors for his abstract sculptures, to his 2000s landscapes featuring wild scenes of erupting volcanoes, cyclonic skies and turbulent seas, Ken Price: Drawings offers a long-overdue survey of Price’s work on paper.
PUBLISHER Matthew Marks Gallery
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 14.25 x 11.25 in. / 100 pgs / 90 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 10/22/2019 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2019 p. 139
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781944929220TRADE List Price: $60.00 CDN $85.00 GBP £53.00
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery. Text by Jean-Pierre Criqui.
Drawing was essential to the art of Ken Price (1935–2012): “For me drawing is really flexible, and I use it in different ways. It’s my way of developing ideas.” This volume provides the most substantial overview of Price’s widely lauded drawing practice. Price’s earliest drawings, from the 1960s, explore forms and colors for his abstract sculptures, but he also drew bizarre objects, like cups with a leaping frog or a cavorting nude for a handle. By the end of the 1960s the imaginary spaces they inhabited were fully realized in high-key colors and precise detail. Around 2002, when Price and his family moved permanently to Taos, New Mexico, the landscape of his drawings grew wilder. In their erupting volcanoes, cyclonic skies and turbulent seas, nature is a dominant force. By 2005 Price had begun incorporating his sculptural forms into this same primordial world, reimagining them as monumental figures.
PUBLISHER Matthew Marks Gallery
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 11.5 x 14.5 in. / 108 pgs / 85 color / 5 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 10/25/2016 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2016 p. 93
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781880146996TRADE List Price: $49.95 CDN $64.95
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery. Text by Alex Kitnick.
For over five decades, Ken Price (1935–2012) produced small-scale ceramic sculptures with brightly colored finishes that achieved a balance between form and surface. Then, in the last years of his life, he initiated a dramatic shift in scale and finish. Ken Price: The Large Sculptures unveils this final body of work in its entirety. With dimensions that echo those of the human body, these sculptures speak directly to the viewer’s corporeality. Cast in bronze composite and painted with color-shifting automotive paint, the large sculptures are in one sense the culmination of Price’s long career and in another the beginning of a new path cut tragically short. This large-format book includes a detailed essay by Alex Kitnick that situates these works in the history of modern sculpture. The plates section features multiple views of the works’ seemingly ever-shifting forms. Completing the book are numerous unpublished photographs of the fabrication process at Price’s studio.
Published by The Drawing Center. Text by Douglas Dreishpoon.
This publication accompanies the first survey of drawings by Los Angeles artist Ken Price (1935–2013), best known for his abstract, brightly colored ceramic sculptures. Price’s work was only widely exhibited later in his life, but scholars have long admired his highly original forms. As early as 1966, Lucy Lippard commented: “No one else on the East or West Coast is working like Kenneth Price.” Like his better-known sculptures, these drawings feature an idiosyncratic array of amorphous shapes. The book includes an in-depth 44-page illustrated essay by exhibition curator Douglas Dreishpoon, a 20-page section detailing a rarely seen large-scale scroll drawing from 1962, and color plates of all of the nearly 70 works in the exhibition, tracking the evolution of Price’s drawings over 48 years and demonstrating a wide range of characters and techniques.
Ken Price: Drawings
Ken Price: The Large Sculptures
Ken Price: Slow and Steady Wins the Race