Caitlin Haskell – författare

A New York Times best art book of 2021  “[A] gold mine of a book . . . Funny, biting, morbid, it’s a page-turner for sure.”—Holland Cotter, New York Times  Ray Johnson (1927–1995) was a renowned maker of meticulous collages whose works influenced movements including Pop Art, Fluxus, and Conceptual Art. Emerging from the interdisciplinary community of artists and poets at Black Mountain College, Johnson was extraordinarily adept at using social interaction as an artistic endeavor and founded a mail art network known as the New York Correspondence School.  Drawing on the vast collection of Johnson’s work at the Art Institute of Chicago, this volume gives new shape to our understanding of his artistic practice and features hundreds of pieces that include artist’s books, collages, drawings, mail art, and performance documentation. In keeping with Johnson’s democratic, rhizomatic, and antihierarchical ethos, this indispensable resource on the artist’s oeuvre contains 700 illustrations, many of them never before published, and twenty-one short essays by various contributors that allow readers to dip into and out of the book in a nonlinear manner.  Distributed for the Art Institute of ChicagoExhibition Schedule:Art Institute of Chicago(November 26, 2021–March 21, 2022)

An exploration of the captivating work and mystical outlook of the modern artist Remedios Varo, focusing on her years in Mexico CityWinner of the Gold Medal, Fine Art category, 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs)  This publication offers a definitive look at the artistic practice of Remedios Varo (1908–1963) following her emigration from Spain to Mexico City in 1941. Her work from 1955 to 1963 made a lasting contribution to modern art and the legacy of Surrealism. In Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, fresh historical and material findings establish the integral relationship between Varo’s layered interests—in alchemy, architecture, magic, mysticism, philosophy, and science—and her beguiling technical approach to art making. Essays detail specific works’ complex stories and spectacular surfaces. An illustrated taxonomy of Varo’s artistic techniques, including automatic mark making as well as careful manipulation of materials and media, offers new insights into the artist’s craft. An illustrated inventory of a major portion of Varo’s library—published here for the first time—reveals the artist’s engagement with a wide range of subjects. Stunning new photography of many of her artworks are presented within a dynamic geometric design inspired by the artist’s work. Situating Varo as a woman working in midcentury Mexico City and living among a tight-knit community of local and émigré artists, poets, and thinkers, the catalogue illuminates the complex worldview that shaped her search for individual and collective transcendence.  Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago, in partnership with the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City  Exhibition Schedule:  Art Institute of Chicago(July 29, 2023–November 27, 2023)

The richly illustrated story of a brief yet pivotal encounter in Paris between Frida Kahlo and Mary Reynolds, two luminaries of the Surrealist movement In February 1939, while visiting Paris at the invitation of writer André Breton, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) became sick and convalesced at the home of American expatriate Mary Reynolds (1891–1950), an avant-garde bookbinder, collector of Surrealist artist books, and partner of Marcel Duchamp. This book traces the story of Kahlo and Reynolds’s connection and its influence on their work, even after the friendship had elapsed. Kahlo and Reynolds’s intense encounter unfolds in this volume through the artworks they each made, their shared exploration of Reynolds’s expansive Surrealist library, and letters from Kahlo to her lover, American photographer Nickolas Muray, in which she recounted her time in Paris. Included in this focused study are paintings and drawings by Kahlo, selections of books by Reynolds, photographs by Muray of Kahlo, depictions of Reynolds by artists in Paris, and a selection of letters between Kahlo and Reynolds describing their defining experience together. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: Art Institute of Chicago(March 29–July 13, 2025)

A look at Ellsworth Kelly’s eight Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance collages and how they set the foundation for his career-long exploration of abstract, minimalist art  Revered for his iconic color field paintings, Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) is one of the most influential artists in American Abstraction. His body of work, encompassing paintings, sculptures, and prints, illustrates his unprecedented experiments with form and color. Less well known are his eight collages, known as Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance (1951), which led directly to some of the artist’s most iconic early works. Made from papier gomette, or sticky squares of colored paper used by French schoolchildren, these collages represent Kelly’s early exploration of non-compositional strategies. Created by using chance operations to place the gomette on grids, Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance boldly anticipates the evolution of Kelly’s innovative methods. Alongside brilliant photographs that bring the reader into intimate contact with Kelly’s series of collages, a wide-ranging roundtable conversation with artist Jacqueline B. Humphries, art historian Hannah Higgins, and Kelly’s widower, the photographer Jack Shear, explores the origins of these groundbreaking works and their continued resonance today, bringing to life the story of his bold, experimental designs.   Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago