Art Gallery of New South Wales – förlag

Spanning six decades of the artist's work, Matisse: Life & Spirit presents an extraordinary immersion in the range and depth of the art of Henri Matisse, one of the world's most beloved, innovative and influential artists. The works reach from his early adventures in colour as a Fauvist through to the serene and distilled designs for his chapel in Vence in the south of France. Through paintings, drawings, sculptures and a compelling presentation of his triumphant cut-outs, it reveals how Matisse renewed his vision time and again over his long career, seeking new ways of celebrating the seen world and expressing the energy he felt in it.Highlights include the especially important early work Le luxe I 1907; the mid-career masterpiece Decorative figure on an ornamental ground 1925; and the majestic self-portrait, The sorrow of the king 1952, one of the largest of the famous cut-outs that the artist created in his late career.Filled with brilliant colour, dynamic energy, visual joy and emotional power, Matisse: Life & Spirit offers an inspirational journey through the life and art of this ceaselessly inventive and life-affirming painter.Developed in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which holds an exceptional collection of works by the artist, Matisse: Life & Spirit is the greatest single exhibition of Matisse masterworks ever to be seen in Sydney.

Through her photographs, Hoda Afshar examines the politics of image making. Deeply researched yet emotionally sensitive, her bodies of work are a form of activism as much as an artistic inquiry. Alert to the duplicity of the documentary image—to its imperfect relationship to fact—Afshar signposts this explicitly. Her work forces us to contend with violence and brutality not through blunt imagery but through evocation. She exposes a poetics of empathy and in doing so implicates us all. This book examines the critical urgency and political imperative of Afshar's practice but also considers her subversive use of the photographic medium. It addresses the way Afshar complicates our understanding of the photographic image and amplifies its ethical and emotive impact. Richly illustrated, the book features both photography and film from her bodies of work from 2004 to 2023. Amassed for the first time, Afshar's works offer a poignant reminder of the power of images and their coercive potential. The book also includes new writing on the artist by curator and editor Isobel Parker Philip and seven commissioned authors who bring critical insights into Afshar's practice as well as creative and experimental responses to her work. This timely new book will be published in conjunction with a major exhibition on the artist, the first midcareer survey of her work to be held in a public art gallery in Australia.Exhibition Dates: Art Gallery of New South Wales, September 2, 2023–January 21, 2024

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) was one of the most influential artists of the past century. Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? explores the powerful emotional and formal tensions that drove Bourgeois's extraordinary art: between night and day, rage and tenderness, need and resistance, geometry and gesture, anxiety and calm, fear and ferocity.Spanning the seven decades of Bourgeois's career and featuring more than 120 works from intimate watercolors to large sculptures by the artist, Louise Bourgeois brings home the sense of perpetual and productive crisis—of the works as crises—that characterize Bourgeois's long life in art. Richly illustrated, the book features new writing by the curator and commissioned authors that offer critical insight into Bourgeois's practice as well as personal insights.

A contemporary reimagining of solstice traditions by the renowned Australian video artistAngelica Mesiti is one of Australia's leading contemporary artists. Celebrated for her distinctive moving-image and sound-based works, the Sydney-born, Paris-based artist explores individual and communal forms of expression, ranging from sign language, choreographic gesture, Morse code, and whistling to ancestral musical traditions, body percussion, and communication between nonhuman species.The Rites of When, Mesiti's first solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, pays tribute to ritual practices of seasonal renewal, both ancient and contemporary. The monumental, seven-channel video installation—comprising two sweeping movements that conjure hibernal (winter) and aestival (summer) solstice celebrations—is an immersive reflection on the age-old and continuing relationship between humankind, the natural world, and the cosmos. With choreographed performance, new music compositions, and soaring aerial views, the exhibition offers a vision of an enmeshed world and the renewal of hope.Angelica Mesiti: The Rites of When documents the second major commission for the postindustrial Tank space at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Richly illustrated with stills from Mesiti's cinematic video installation, it features a new essay by Isobel Parker Philip and an interview by Beatrice Gralton. An additional visual section illuminates the influences that shaped the work.

Published in association with a major survey of the work of the pioneering Belgian surrealist artistRené Magritte is renowned for his thought-provoking and enigmatic paintings that challenge perceptions of reality. His exploration of the subconscious and the juxtaposition of ordinary objects in surreal contexts have left an indelible mark on the art world, influencing generations of artists and thinkers. Magritte provides an engaging, accessible, and in-depth survey of the artist's practice, giving insights into the evolution of his art. It features reproductions of more than one hundred artworks drawn from public and private collections alongside rarely seen archival materials, commercial work, and photography. The images are accompanied by four essays and a transcript of an interview originally recorded for Belgian television in 1965, which together offer nuanced perspectives on the aesthetic foundations of Magritte's work while also considering the social and artistic context for his practice. An essay by curator Nicholas Chambers leads us through the arc of the exhibition, revealing the artist's extraordinary capacity for innovation and reinvention. Other essays focus on the artist's milieux during the formative 1920s, the reception and promotion of his art outside of Europe, and his remarkable use of humor. An extensive, illustrated chronology charts the artist's life and career.

With the backdrop of 1950s New York and its burgeoning advertising industry, Adman focuses on the formative years of one of the twentieth century's most influential artists, Andy Warhol. Essays by Warhol scholars and other experts in their fields provide surprising insights into the beginning of Warhol's career, from his award‐winning work as a commercial illustrator to his first, little‐known exhibitions. With more than 250 illustrations including rare drawings and photographs, vintage advertisements, artist books, and archival material, Adman explores this early phase of Andy Warhol's art practice and his career inadvertising between 1949 and 1961. The typography of Warhol's mother, Julia Warhola, is also featured. The book is published in association with The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

Tony Tuckson's story is not a simple one. He was an artist, arguably Australia's most significant abstract expressionist painter, but he also played a crucial role in shaping the modern art museum in Australia. This new book looks at Tuckson through the many and varied prisms that reveal his critical role in and to art in Australia. Tuckson had been painting long before his first solo exhibition in 1970 and although he was a dedicated and serious artist he was a very private one who exhibited rarely. Tuckson began his 23 years at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1950 as an attendant. He quickly moved to assistant to the director Hal Missingham, and then to deputy director. For ethical reasons he kept his artistic practice separate, even secret. When his curatorial responsibility shifted to Aboriginal and Oceanic art, he began exhibiting. His first solo exhibition was in 1970 at Watters Gallery in Sydney. At the Art Gallery of New South Wales he introduced dedicated spaces for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art; electric lighting; a program for the care and documentation of the collection; the ability to show new media art; and spaces for education and general visitor programs, amongst many other things. Once of his greatest legacies is challenging the accepted thinking of the day to see Aboriginal art as 'art' and bring it into the Gallery. With Dr. Stuart Scougall, Tuckson spent time in Yirrkala and on Melville Island with Aboriginal artists resulting in the acquisition of a major work ‐‐ the pukamani poles ‐‐ which laid the foundation for the Art Gallery of New South Wales's collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.