Scott Rothkopf - Böcker

Mel Bochner (b. 1940) is considered a pioneer of the Post-Minimal and Conceptual art movements. Perhaps best known for his paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Bochner became deeply involved with photography in the mid- to late 1960s, although most of these works have only recently been exhibited. This significant book provides the first critical look at a virtually unknown body of Bochner’s extremely varied photographs dating from 1966–1969. Some 75 of his photographs are presented, many in color and most published for the first time. Also included are a number of Bochner’s drawings that directly informed his photographic works.Scott Rothkopf explores the crucial role of photography in Bochner’s artistic development as well as key issues in the relation of photography to Minimal and Conceptual art. In Bochner’s photography, Rothkopf argues, a clear arc can be traced from his grappling with Minimalism toward a more rigorous and nuanced articulation of Conceptual art. Examining this shift, the author compares Bochner’s work with that of other artists who were engaged with photography during this period, among them Robert Smithson, Sol LeWitt, and Bruce Nauman. For Bochner and others, Rothkopf concludes, photography was used as a response to the limits of minimal sculpture and helped make possible the birth of Conceptual art. The book also features an essay by Elisabeth Sussman on the relevance of Bochner’s 1966 film experiments to his later photographic projects. Published in association with the Harvard Art Museum

A fresh and engaging look at the controversial work of Jeff Koons, with insightful analyses and illustrations of all of his iconic pieces alongside preparatory works and historical photographsExamining the breadth and depth of thirty-five years of work by Jeff Koons (b. 1955), one of the most influential and controversial artists of the 20th century, this highly anticipated volume features all of his most famous pieces. In an engaging overview essay, Scott Rothkopf carefully examines the evolution of Koons’ work and his development over the past thirty-five years, offering a fresh scholarly perspective on the artist’s multi-faceted career. In addition, short essays by a wide range of interdisciplinary contributors—from academics to novelists—probe provocative topics such as celebrity and media, markets and money, and technology and fabrication. Also included are preparatory sketches and plans for sculptures and paintings as well as installation photographs that shed light on Koons’ artistic process and trace the development of his work throughout his landmark career.  Koons has risen to international fame making art that reimagines and recontextualizes images and objects from popular culture such as vacuum cleaners, basketballs, and balloon animals. Created with painstaking attention to detail by a team of fabricators, these objects raise questions about taste and popular culture, and position Koons as one of the most lauded and criticized artists working today. Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American ArtExhibition Schedule:Whitney Museum of American Art(06/27/14–10/19/14)Centre Pompidou (11/26/14–04/27/15)Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao(06/05/15–09/27/15)

A richly illustrated, expansive mid-career survey of the stand-out American artist’s pioneering and influential workPublished to coincide with a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art that travels to Dallas and Los Angeles, this book on the work of Laura Owens (b. 1970) features an incisive introduction by Scott Rothkopf, critical essays, literary texts, and short commentaries on a variety of subjects related to the artist’s broad interests, which range from folk art and needlework to comics and wallpaper.Reflections by more than twenty of Owens’s fellow artists, collaborators, assistants, dealers, family members, and friends offer an array of perspectives on her work at different periods in her life, beginning with her high school years in Ohio and ending with her current exhibition. A rich trove of more than a thousand images, drawn from the artist’s personal archive and largely unpublished before now, includes personal correspondence, journals, academic transcripts, handwritten notes, source material, exhibition announcements, clippings, and installation photographs.Together, all of these elements provide a rare and intimate look at how an artist might make her way in the world as well as how art gets made, movements take hold, and relationships evolve over time.Each book includes a specially designed set of stickers that readers can use to customize their own cover.Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American ArtExhibition Schedule:Whitney Museum of American Art, New York(11/10/17–02/04/18)Dallas Art Museum(03/25/18–07/29/18)The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles(11/01/18–03/01/19)Dallas Museum of Art(03/25/18–07/29/18)The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles(11/04/18–03/25/19)

An innovative retrospective look at the work of one of America’s most iconic artists, utilizing the concepts of mirroring and doubling, which have long preoccupied JohnsJasper Johns (b. 1930) is arguably the most influential artist living today. Over the past 65 years, he has produced a radical and varied body of work marked by constant reinvention. Inspired by the artist’s long-standing fascination with mirroring and doubles, this book provides an original and exciting perspective on Johns’s work and its continued relevance. A diverse group of curators, academics, artists, and writers offer a series of essays—including many paired texts—that consider aspects of the artist’s work, such as recurring motifs, explorations of place, and use of a wide array of media. These include Carroll Dunham on nightmares, Ruth Fine on monotypes and working proofs, Michio Hayashi on Japan, Terrance Hayes on flags, and Colm Toíbín on dreams, among many others. The various themes are further explored in a series of in-depth plate sections that combine prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures to draw new connections in Johns’s vast output. Accompanying “mirroring” exhibitions held simultaneously at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this lavishly illustrated volume features a selection of rarely published works along with never-before-published archival content and is full of revelations that allow us to engage with and understand the artist’s rich and varied body of work in new and meaningful ways.Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of ArtExhibition Schedule:Philadelphia Museum of Art(September 29, 2021–February 13, 2022)Whitney Museum of American Art, New York(September 29, 2021–February 13, 2022)

A reevaluation of American art of the 1960s that foregrounds the role of surrealism during a period of social and political upheavalChallenging what we think we know about art of the 1960s, this volume moves beyond the established movements of pop art, minimalism, and conceptualism to shine a light on how American artists created a unique type of surrealism, making works suffused with eroticism, dread, wonder, violence, and liberation. A series of essays reveals how this new surrealism enabled artists to reconnect art to an increasingly untethered reality following the period of rapid postwar transformation and to imagine new worlds and models for art rooted in political and social change.Presenting a new framework to understand the work of artists such as Lee Bontecou, Franklin Williams, Nancy Grossman, Mel Casas, Yayoi Kusama, Jim Nutt, John Outterbridge, Ralph Arnold, H. C. Westermann, Romare Bearden, Louise Bourgeois, Christina Ramberg, and Robert Arneson, this study features an expansive chronology that highlights how a broad group of artists across the United States connected to each other through exhibitions, galleries, and collectives, offering a fresh perspective on how artists in the 1960s harnessed psychoanalysis, wordplay, and assemblage, among other strategies, to create new horizons for subject matter and form that continue to reverberate in American art today.Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American ArtExhibition Schedule:Whitney Museum of American Art, New York(September 24, 2025–January 29, 2026)