Michelle White - Böcker

As the focal point of numerous high-profile exhibitions, the sculpture of Richard Serra (b. 1939) has drawn international acclaim. Yet even those who have marveled at Serra's intellectually rigorous and large works of sculpture may not be familiar with his equally intriguing drawings. This handsome book brings together for the first time Serra's drawn work, considering the artist's investigation of medium as an activity both independent from and linked to his pioneering sculptural practice. First working in ink, charcoal, and lithographic crayon on paper, Serra originally used drawing as a means to explore form and perceptual relations between his sculpture and the viewer. Over time, his drawings underwent significant shifts in concept, materials, and scale and became fully realized and autonomous works of art. The grand, bold forms he created with black paintstick in his monumental Installation Drawings were designed to disrupt and complement existent spaces and eventually began to occupy entire rooms. In the late 1980s, Serra explored the tension of weight and gravity through layering, and his most recent work experiments with surface effects, using mesh screens as intermediaries between the gesture and the transfer of pigment to paper.Distributed for The Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art(04/11/11-08/28/11)San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (10/15/11-01/16/12)The Menil Collection (03/02/12–06/10/12)

The first survey of more than fifty years of drawing by a legendary sculptor and draftswomanLee Bontecou (b. 1931) established a significant reputation in the 1960s with pioneering sculptures and reliefs made of raw and expressionistic materials. Her art is simultaneously organic and mechanical, and infused with biological, geological, and technological motifs.  These same qualities also animate a less-known but compelling body of work: her drawings. Ranging from her early soot on paper works created using powder from a welding torch to recent drawings in pencil and colored pencil that evoke cosmoses and microcosmic worlds, this stunning book is the first retrospective survey of Bontecou’s consistently innovative drawings.  More than sixty full-color plates, populated by imagery ranging from black voids to mechanomorphs to hybrid descendants of teeth, plants, and fish, are complemented by original essays from leading scholars who explore themes such as the drawings’ historical contexts, Bontecou’s use of the iconography of the void, and the eco-apocalyptic themes of an artist who came of age in the roiling political atmosphere of the 1960s.  Distributed for The Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:The Menil Collection, Houston(01/31/14–05/11/14)Princeton University Art Museum(06/28/14–09/21/14)

This stunning book examines the collection of works by self-taught artists assembled by Stephanie and John Smither over the last thirty-odd years. A team of prominent curators, writers, critics, and art historians focuses on key works by twelve artists, including the boisterous assemblages of Thornton Dial; brightly colored visual interpretations of the Bible by Sister Gertrude Morgan; Oscar Hadwiger’s detailed wood models of fantastical architecture; and Carlo Zinelli’s narrative tableaus of stylized figures and animals. Also featured are works by the ceramicist Georgia Blizzard; drawings by Hiroyuki Doi, Solange Knopf, Martín Ramírez, and Dominico Zindato; paintings by Jon Serl and Johnnie Swearingen; and carved wood sculptures by Charlie Willeto.  Distributed for The Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:The Menil Collection(06/10/16­–10/16/16)

A fresh and engaging look at the groundbreaking work of contemporary artist Mona HatoumThe work of London-based artist Mona Hatoum (b. 1952) addresses the growing unease of an ever-expanding world that is as technologically networked as it is fractured by war and exile. Best known for sculptures that transform domestic objects such as kitchen utensils or cribs into things strange and threatening, Hatoum conducts multilayered investigations of the body, politics, and gender that express a powerful and pervasive sense of precariousness. Her works are never simple and often elicit conflicting emotions, such as fascination and fear, desire and revulsion.   This copiously illustrated presentation of Hatoum’s oeuvre offers critical and art historical essays by Michelle White and Anna C. Chave and imaginative texts by Rebecca Solnit and Adania Shibli, which contextualize the artist’s work and its relationship to Surrealism, Minimalism, feminism, and politics. With extensive discussions on a selection of significant sculptures and installations, some of which are previously unpublished, Mona Hatoum: Terra Infirma provides an insightful look at one of the most exciting and influential artists working today.Distributed for The Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:The Menil Collection, Houston(10/13/17–02/25/18)Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis(04/06/18–08/11/18)

Describing drawing as her “primary activity,” for over thirty years Roni Horn (b. 1955) has created innovative and experimental works on paper marked by both conceptual and technical complexity. This carefully curated survey of the artist’s drawings from the early 1980s through 2016 explores works revolving around the mutability of identity and the fragility of place, time, and language; it also delves into Horn’s unique approach to mark-making and her process of cutting up and reassembling words and images. With sumptuous illustrations, this catalogue features an insightful look at and selected details of Horn’s large-scale—sometimes over ten feet tall—works on paper; the artist’s series of cadmium red drawings; and her cut-and-pasted word drawings that combine well-known literary texts by Gertrude Stein and William Shakespeare with colloquial expressions.   Distributed for The Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:The Menil Collection, Houston(02/15/19–09/01/19)

A beautiful presentation of a new suite of works made for the Menil Collection by Allora & Calzadilla  The Puerto Rico–based collaborative duo Allora & Calzadilla created Specters of Noon as a group of seven large-scale works specifically for the Menil Collection. The ensemble is orchestrated around the idea of solar noon, a notion derived from Surrealist texts by Caillois, Césaire, and others that probe the transcultural mythology of noon—a time when shadows vanish and delirious visions momentarily reign. The works include light projections, guano, ship engines, live vocal performance, and coal. Using the Menil’s Surrealist holdings as a point of departure, Specters of Noon is infused throughout with a Caribbean perspective that addresses the instability of environmental and colonial politics; one work is a power transformer damaged in Hurricane Maria that is half-sheathed in bronze. Filled with stunning installation photography and insightful texts both commissioned and reprinted, this volume captures the spirit of Jennifer Allora (b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla’s (b. 1971) deeply researched and multifaceted work.Distributed for the Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:Menil Collection, Houston(September 26, 2020–June 20, 2021)

A timely reassessment of the artist’s early performances and feminist sculptures, affirming their radical engagements and art historical significanceThis volume is a focused look at two bodies of work, the Tirs (“shooting paintings”) and Nanas (“dames”), in the experimental 1960s practice of the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002). Alongside a poetic response to the work, four essays treat Saint Phalle’s oeuvre as works of radical performance and feminist art, as well as highlighting her transatlantic projects and collaborations. A chronology with photo-documentation and known participants details for the first time all Tirs shooting events in Europe and the United States, and another timeline recaps Saint Phalle’s life in the 1960s. Tirs were made by firing a .22 caliber rifle at the surfaces of paintings. The bullets pierced bags of pigment, aerosol paint cans, or even food embedded in dense assemblages covered in painted plaster. Saint Phalle’s increasingly liberated female figures with outstretched arms, curvaceous forms, and powerful poses developed into her well-known Nanas, an evolution contemporaneous with the rise of a Euro-American feminist movement.Distributed for the Menil Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San DiegoExhibition Schedule:Menil Collection, Houston(September 10, 2021–January 23, 2022)Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego(April 9–July 17, 2022)

The first major publication in more than thirty years on contemporary artist Chryssa, an innovator of light art  Chryssa & New York offers a timely reassessment of Greek-born artist Chryssa (Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali, 1933–2013). Chryssa was a leading figure in the postwar New York art world and in the use of signage, text, and neon, yet her work, which bridges Pop, Conceptual, and Minimalist approaches to art making, remains under-recognized.  Focusing on the artist’s early career, in particular her time in New York from the 1950s to the 1970s, this book charts the emergence of her singular aesthetic, especially her formal innovations with neon, and culminates in the development of her monumental and rarely seen installation The Gates to Times Square (1964–66). Essays situate Chryssa’s art alongside that of other New York-based practitioners in the 1950s and 1960s, consider her work through the lenses of queer theory and the Greek diaspora, and uncover her crucial influence on light art today. Rounding out the volume, a conversation on the technical aspects of her practice and a comprehensive chronology make this the definitive publication on Chryssa for years to come.  Distributed for Dia Art Foundation and the Menil Collection, Houston  Exhibition Schedule:  Dia Chelsea, New York(March 2–July 23, 2023)  Menil Collection, Houston(September 29, 2023–March 10, 2024)  Wrightwood 659, Chicago(May 1–August 15, 2024)

A survey of Robert Rauschenberg’s innovative use of cloth in the 1970s and its significance in the artist’s oeuvre  Centering on a period of Robert Rauschenberg’s career that has not received much attention, this book focuses on three series by the artist that feature fabric: the idiosyncratic Venetians, 1972–73; the gauzy Hoarfrosts, 1974–76; and the large, simple Jammers, 1975–76. Fascinated by the expressive potential of textiles, including silks, gauze, cheesecloth, and drop cloths, Rauschenberg experimented with the ability of woven materials to capture color and light, hold printed images, and move in the air.  Essays contextualize Rauschenberg’s work with cloth in the history of 1970s late modernism and Postminimalism, as well as his career-long interest in the intersection of art and the body through his work in scenography and costumes for dance. Michelle White provides an in-depth overview of the three series and related works, while Branden Joseph explores how they connect with the era’s cultural and economic precarity. Nick Mauss examines how the artist used fabric to create a sense of intimacy and revisit past practices, relationships, and dynamics of collaboration. And Joseph N. Newland discusses Rauschenberg’s costumes and scenic designs for the dance companies of Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown.  Distributed for the Menil Collection  Exhibition Schedule:  The Menil Collection, Houston, TX(September 19, 2025–March 1, 2026)

The influence exercised by Queen Henrietta Maria over her husband Charles I during the English Civil Wars, has long been a subject of interest. To many of her contemporaries, especially those sympathetic to Parliament, her French origins and Catholic beliefs meant that she was regarded with great suspicion. Later historians picking up on this, have spent much time arguing over her political role and the degree to which she could influence the decisions of her husband. What has not been so thoroughly investigated, however, are issues surrounding the popular perceptions of the Queen that inspired the plethora of pamphlets, newsbooks and broadsides. Although most of these documents are polemical propaganda devices that tell us little about the actual power wielded by Henrietta Maria, they do throw much light on how contemporaries viewed the King and Queen, and their relationship. The picture created by Charles and Henrietta's enemies was one of a royal household in patriarchal disorder. The Queen was characterized as an overly assertive, unduly influential, foreign, Catholic queen consort, whilst Charles was portrayed as a submissive and weak husband. Such an image had wide political ramifications, resulting in accusations that Charles was unfit to rule, and thus helping to justify Parliamentary resistance to the monarch. Because Charles had permitted his Catholic wife to interfere in state matters he stood accused of threatening the patriarchal order upon which all of society rested, and of imperilling the Church of England. In this book Michelle White tackles these dual issues of Henrietta's actual and perceived influence, and how this was portrayed in popular print by those sympathetic and hostile to her cause. In so doing she presents a vivid portrait of a strong willed woman who had a profound influence on the course of English history.