Susan Davidson – författare

Edited by Susan Davidson, the monograph is the first comprehensive publication dedicated to Wesselmann s most famous body of work, the Great American Nudes (1961 73), which combines sensual depictions of the female figure with references to art history and popular culture. The book will include full-color reproductions of each artwork in the series (totaling one hundred numbered works, plus proofs, and all color variations for editioned works), as well as related drawings, studies, and relevant works from associated series. Tom Wesselmann (1931 2004) was one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s. Departing from Abstract Expressionism, he went on to explore classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape, while incorporating everyday objects and advertising ephemera.

In the mid-1980s, Robert Rauschenberg's creative attentions turned toward the visual and plastic properties of junk metal when he began to assemble found metal objects and screenprint his photographic images onto aluminum, bronze, brass and copper. His first body of work in this vein was Gluts, a series begun in 1986 and continued intermittently until 1995, in which ornate metalwork seemingly derived from a bedpost might attach to a slice of mesh wire, or twisted petals of yellow metal might sprout from the remains of an eviscerated toaster. Asked to comment on his novel use of the word "gluts," Rauschenberg said, "It's a time of glut. Greed is rampant... I simply want to present people with their ruins... I think of the Gluts as souvenirs without nostalgia." Published to accompany the Peggy Guggenheim Collection's exhibition Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts (the first show to focus on Rauschenberg's sculpture since 1995), this fully illustrated catalogue features a selection of approximately 40 sculptures drawn from the holdings of institutions and private collections in the United States and abroad. It includes a reassessment of Rauschenberg's work as a sculptor by author and painter Mimi Thompson, an essay by Trisha Brown, an illustrated exhibition history, a preface by Philip Rylands and introduction by Susan Davidson that focuses on Rauschenberg's relationship to the Guggenheim and the artist's engagement with Venice in particular.

Robert Motherwell: Early Collages, published to accompany an exhibition devoted exclusively to Motherwell's works on paper from the 1940s and early 1950s, reexamines the origins of the artist's style and his revelatory encounter with the papier colle technique that he described in 1944 as 'the greatest of our discoveries'. Motherwell's enthusiasm for and dedication to the collage medium for the remainder of his career sets him apart from other artists of his generation and went beyond the mere physical presence of pasted cut-and-torn papers. Featuring approximately sixty works and four essays that delve into artists' engagement with collage in the first half of the twentieth century, Motherwell's early career with patron Peggy Guggenheim, underlying humanitarian themes during World War II, and the artist's materials, Early Collages provides a vital reassessment of Motherwell's work in the collage medium.

Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim celebrates the late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth- century masterworks at the core of the institution’s holdings, and the trailblazers – artists and early patrons alike – whose contributions helped define the forward-looking identity of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Central to Visionaries is the story of museum founder Solomon R. Guggenheim, who with support from his trusted advisor, Hilla Rebay, become a great champion of ‘nonobjective’ art and assembled a radical collection against the backdrop of economic crisis and war in the 1930s and ’40s. A lead catalogue essay by museum curator Megan Fontanella explores Solomon Guggenheim’s fascinating activities in this period, together with that of five similarly pioneering art patrons whose personal holdings would become essential components of the foundation collection: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early School of Paris artworks from Justin K. Thannhauser; the eclectic Expressionist inventory of émigré art dealer Karl Nierendorf; the incomparable abstract and Surrealist paintings and sculptures from self-proclaimed ‘art addict’ Peggy Guggenheim; and key modern examples from the estates of artists Katherine S. Dreier and Rebay. Alongside vibrant illustrations of works by such iconic artists as Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, and Jackson Pollock, Visionaries also features essays by six curators examining touchstone works from the foundation collection.

An intensely intellectual painter, Robert Motherwell is renowned for his distinctive Abstract Expressionist style. The seminal artist permeated his gestural works with an expressionism and austerity reflective of the human psyche; at the same time his oeuvre addressed political and humanitarian themes. Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting is an in-depth exploration of his artistic practice. Leading art scholars examine the American artist’s turn from Surrealism to abstraction and analyze the major series that developed over his fifty-year career. The catalogue studies the dialogue between Motherwell’s art and the nineteenth-century French painting tradition, investigates his relationship to Spanish techniques and processes, with an emphasis on their underlying political significance, and delves into Motherwell’s use of ochre pigment, with its evocation of both deep geological time and avant-garde practices.