Daniel Zamani - Böcker

This volume examines the relationship between occultism and Surrealism, specifically exploring the reception and appropriation of occult thought, motifs, tropes and techniques by Surrealist artists and writers in Europe and the Americas, from the 1920s through the 1960s. Its central focus is the specific use of occultism as a site of political and social resistance, ideological contestation, subversion and revolution. Additional focus is placed on the ways occultism was implicated in Surrealist discourses on identity, gender, sexuality, utopianism and radicalism.

This volume examines the relationship between occultism and Surrealism, specifically exploring the reception and appropriation of occult thought, motifs, tropes and techniques by Surrealist artists and writers in Europe and the Americas, from the 1920s through the 1960s. Its central focus is the specific use of occultism as a site of political and social resistance, ideological contestation, subversion and revolution. Additional focus is placed on the ways occultism was implicated in Surrealist discourses on identity, gender, sexuality, utopianism and radicalism.

Alongside artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–1992) was one of the most important pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. Sixty outstanding works from all creative phases allow us to immerse ourselves in the colourful and multifaceted oeuvre of this remarkable artist.The American avant-garde movement of Abstract Expressionism radically changed the course of modern painting. Like many of his fellow artists, Pousette-Dart was intensely preoccupied with themes such as myth, spirituality, and the archaic. His light-flooded works often evoke ideas of transcendental force through motifs reminiscent of the firmament or the charged energy of celestial bodies. This opulent volume impressively presents Pousette-Dart’s art as a poetry of light.

This book pays homage to the illusory power of painting and at the same time takes a worldwide tour through the everyday culture of the modern age: images of vehicles with gleaming chrome in middle-class residential areas, brightly coloured candies, shimmering lipstick cases, deserted fast-food restaurants and garish advertisements – they all captivate through their technical brilliance and astounding precision, which seeks to compete with photography while consciously turning away from abstraction.Artists: Alexandra Averbach, John Baeder, Robert Bechtle, Charles Bell, Roberto Bernardi, Tom Blackwell, Pedro Campos, Andres Castellanos, François Chartier, Chuck Close, Robert Cottingham, Don Eddy, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Ben Johnson, Ralph Goings, Richard McLean, Malcolm Morley, Johannes Müller-Franken, Ron Kleemann, Karin Kneffel, David Parrish, Rod Penner, Gerhard Richter, John Salt, Raphaella Spence, Craig Wylie et al.

An encounter with Simon Hantaï is always rewarding, as he created an oeuvre that resembles a fireworks display of colour and form. Based in Paris, he became influenced by Art Informel and the work of Jackson Pollock in the 1950s. A radically experimental search for new modes of expression was central to him, and beginning in 1960 he developed the pliage technique, with intensely coloured patterns generated through the chance act of folding. This defined his work and continues to captivate an international audience today.

This stunning exhibition catalog celebrates Max Liebermann, the pioneering figure of German Impressionism, whose own painting and artistic leadership transformed the nation’s cultural landscape.As a groundbreaking painter and head of the Berlin Secession, Max Liebermann championed modernism and introduced French Impressionism to the German Empire. His influence reached far beyond Berlin, sparking a diverse movement that flourished in cities such as Dresden, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, and Munich.Focusing on Liebermann’s life and legacy, the catalog also examines his achievements as a collector and advocate for the avant-garde. It showcases his celebrated masterpieces alongside works by prominent peers such as Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth, as well as contributions from more underappreciated figures including Gotthardt Kuehl, Maria Slavona, Lesser Ury, and Fritz von Uhde.With numerous chapter introductions and five longer research essays, the book offers a wide-ranging perspective, including topics such as the artistic exchange between France and Germany; the role of Jewish patrons in fostering Germany’s embrace of French art; and the challenges Liebermann faced during the rise of the Nazi regime.Lavishly illustrated and expertly curated, this catalog provides an essential study of Max Liebermann as the central figure of German Impressionism while situating his work within the broader artistic and historical contexts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Among the most celebrated works of Modigliani’s brief butbrilliant career are his large-format nudes. Drenched in colorand glowing with the artist’s deep appreciation of women andthe female form, these works ushered in a new era of nudeportraiture, while also causing an enormous scandal. Thisstunning exhibition catalog offers a new perspective on thisaspect of Modigliani’s work by examining for the first time hisportraits of emancipated women sporting coupe garçonneshaircuts and wearing loin cloths. Modigliani was one of thefirst chroniclers of the femme moderne, which also influencedhis nude painting and the scandal they caused. Featuringlavish reproductions and astute texts by leading scholars, thisvolume also examines Modigliani’s cultural context in EuropeanClassicism, from Toulouse-Lautrec and Cezanne to the work ofhis contemporaries, including Paula Modersohn-Becker, GustavKlimt, Egon Schiele, Jeanne Mammen and Wilhelm Lehmbruck;and traces his impact on future European Modernism and NewObjectivity.

This lavishly illustrated exhibition catalog features seventy career-spanning works by the French avant-garde painter, one of the twentieth century's great colorists and a major proponent of Fauvism.After his participation at the Paris Salon d’Automne of 1905, Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) quickly established himself as a leading figure of the French avant-garde. More than any other member of the Fauves, he keenly identified with the attribute of wildness and early on propagated the image of a modern artist rebel who resolutely turned his back on the rules of academic painting. His central source of inspiration was the oeuvre of Vincent van Gogh, whose works Vlaminck studied at the large solo exhibition which took place at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in 1901. Van Gogh’s training as an autodidact as well as his burgeoning myth as an artist genius and social outsider strengthened this identification, which would remain key throughout Vlaminck’s later career. This catalog provides a wide-ranging overview of the painter’s entire oeuvre: from the first compositions he executed at the beginning of the 20th century, through the experiments with Cubism that were inspired by Cézanne and Picasso, to some of his very last landscapes. Throughout, the book recalls Vlaminck’s vital contribution to the development of 20th-century painting, notably his role as one of the most important precursors of Expressionism.

Following World War II, Western painting went in completely new directions. A young generation of artists turned their backs on the dominant styles of the interwar period: Instead of figurative representation or geometric abstraction, painters in the orbit of Abstract Expressionism in the US and Art Informel in Western Europe pursued a radically impulsive approach to form, color, and material. As an expression of individual freedom, the spontaneous artistic gesture gained symbolic significance. Large-scale color-field compositions created a meditative space for ruminating the fundamental questions of human existence. The exhibition and catalogue examine the two sister movements against the background of a vibrant transatlantic exchange, from the 1940s through to the end of the Cold War. This lavishly illustrated volume brings together works by more than 50 artists, amongst them Alberto Burri, Jean Dubuffet, Helen Frankenthaler, K. O. Götz, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Georges Mathieu, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Judit Reigl, Mark Rothko, Hedda Sterne, Clyfford Still, and Jack Tworkov.

For as long as humans have been making art, they have turned to the sun as the source of light, warmth and life itself. It appears as a symbol of limitless power, as the personification of gods and of Christ, and as a harbinger of change. Artists have also used the sun as a means of exploring light and color and as an entrée into discussions about climate. The first of its kind, this catalog investigates visual representations of the sun from antiquity to the present day. It is divided into seven roughly chronological sections that look at both epoch-spanning and period specific examples, including symbolic, allegorical representations, the iconography of mythological subjects, and mimetic qualities such as typology, phenomenology, and emotional effect. It includes more than two hundred stunning reproductions of well- and lesser-known works. Incisive and enlightening texts explore how solar symbolism figured in pre-Christian objects through 17th-century depictions of the “Sun King” Louix XIV; how artists such as Rubens and Monet employed the sun in their narrative paintings; how the Impressionists first investigated the sun’s effects on a landscape; how Neo-Impressionist such as Seurat experimented with color based on the Newtonian analysis of the solar spectrum; and how 20th-century artists incorporated a broad array of abstract, surrealistic, and transformative modes of solar representation into a variety of media.