Isabelle Graw – författare

This publication was produced by Sadie Coles HQ in collaboration with 47 Canal, New York, as a limited edition of 1000. Through numerous colour images and exhibition views, this book traces Abeles’s artistic output between 2010-2016 and includes an in-depth conversation between art critic Isabelle Graw and Michele Abeles, in which they discuss her methodological approach and photographic practice.

The first comprehensive study on the work of visionary painter William MonkWilliam Monk is a British-born, New York-based artist known for his enigmatic and vibrant paintings that often investigate the same motif or theme in different permutations. Deeply interested in the idea of creating images that are not a direct transcript of the real world but a product of his mind, Monk creates starkly divisional compositions carrying irregular intensities of detail, line, foreground, and background, pushing his work and the foundational elements of painting to the point where model and subject become two separate entities.

On the specificity and generality, materiality and immateriality, production and reproduction of artistic labor.Artistic Labour Now sheds light on the specificity of artistic labour in view of an increasingly globalized and digitized art economy.In these collected essays, art historians, critics, artists, and writers consider emergent possibilities for the production and distribution of art created by recent developments in virtual reality, blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies within today’s immersive media landscape. In this expansive new sphere, notions of value, labour and economy in the broadest sense must be renegotiated, as the lines between specificity and generality, materiality and immateriality, production and reproduction are blurred.In Artistic Labour Now, contributors examine modern and contemporary artistic labour to contemplate the relationship between the value-form of the unique artwork and the subject position of its maker from numerous angles, including Marxist theories of value, feminist theories of reproductive labour and contemporary theories of affective and immaterial labour. ContributorsChristian Berger, Sabeth Buchmann, Huey Copeland, Aria Dean, Simon Denny, Larisa Dryansky, Sylvia Federici, Isabelle Graw, Josh Kline, Michelle Kuo, Jaleh Mansoor, Friederike Sigler

In response to recent developments in pictorial practice and critical discourse, Painting beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-medium Condition seeks new ways to approach and historicize the question of the medium. Reaching back to the earliest theoretical and institutional definitions of painting, this book—based on a conference at Harvard University in 2013—focuses on the changing role of materiality in establishing painting as the privileged practice, discourse, and institution of modernity. Myriad conceptions of the medium and its specificity are explored by an international group of scholars, critics, and artists. Painting beyond Itself is a forum for rich historical, theoretical, and practice-grounded conversation.

ContributorsCarol Armstrong, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Sabeth Buchmann, René Démoris, Isabelle Graw, David Joselit, Jutta Koether, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Julie Mehretu, Matt Saunders, Amy Sillman

Institut für Kunstkritik Series

Examinations of Francis Ponge's texts on Jean Fautrier's “Hostage Paintings,” Jack Whitten's Memorial Paintings, and Banksy's auction stunt Love is in the Bin.

This book contains three case studies on very different artists, analyzing their work through their respective historical contexts: the writer Francis Ponge (1899–1988) and his seminal text on Jean Fautrier's “Hostage Paintings” from 1943; visual artist Jack Whitten's (1939–2018) Memorial Paintings and Banksy's notorious auction stunt Love is in the Bin from 2018.

Examining all three artistic propositions from a value-theoretical point of view, Graw finds Ponge's text on Fautrier to be “doubly materialist” insofar as it (seemingly) reveals its own material conditions while simultaneously grasping the specific materiality of Fautrier's paintings; suggests that the indications of value in Whitten's painting to be more indirect; and reveals Banksy's value reflections to have a very different generational thrust.

Gaw shows that Ponge's text is full of value-reflexive insights but that Ponge himself is an ambivalent figure. She finds that the dedication of Whitten's paintings inscribes them in a system of exchange. And, finally, the deliberate aesthetic meagerness of Banksy's Love Is in the Bin points to an emptiness at the heart of value.

Institut für Kunstkritik series

A diaristic novel on contemporary friendship and its importance.Isabelle Graw’s latest book reflects on the purposes and struggles of friendship in competitive social milieus. By focusing on her own social milieu—the art world—Graw demonstrates how friendships are neither totally disinterested nor reduceable to their use. Written in the intimate form of a fictional diary, this book laments useful friendships while praising true friendship in all its forms. For Graw, friendship is an existential necessity—if only because it points to how we relate to and depend on others. Friendship, she finds, is as important as the air we breathe—with it, we are able to fully live.