Louisiana Museum of Modern Art – serie

Works from the past two decades and a new series from the Swedish master of the oneiric and the unsettlingMamma Andersson (born 1962) ranks as one of the most important painters of her generation. The Swedish artist is an eminent interpreter of the unique language of painting. With a sharp sense of mood, color and materiality, she has developed a personal take on the classical genres of painting: still lifes, interiors and landscapes are at the crux of her work. Her signature aesthetic is the result of repeated applications and overpainting. Oil on canvas is covered in spray paint, paint is dragged in thin bands across the surface, producing a material fullness and variety.This catalog accompanies the Louisiana’s exhibition Mamma Andersson: Humdrum Days, and contains contributions from the author Karl Ove Knausgård, the playwright Magnus Florin and the art writer and poet Barry Schwabsky, in addition to a conversation between Mamma Andersson and the exhibition’s curator, Marie Laurberg.

A sweeping retrospective for radical Pop artist Marisol, an enigmatic and overlooked figure of the 1960sMarisol (1930–2016) was one of the most radical and visionary artists of her generation. Combining found objects, plaster casts of her own body, and a singular blend of Pop and folk art, she created large tableaux that were by turns unsettling and humorous, colorful and dark. Her works posed sharp existential questions and made powerful statements on entrenched gender roles and equality. A close friend of Andy Warhol and a fixture in his early experimental films, Marisol enjoyed critical acclaim in the United States during the 1960s. In the following decade, she turned away from Pop toward more overtly political art, challenging the public and critics alike. Undeterred by changing tastes, she pursued an uncompromising practice across sculpture, drawing, printmaking and photography.This book accompanies the first major European presentation of Marisol's work, reclaiming her position as a forgotten classic through a swath of pieces spanning her career. Essays explore her place among female Pop artists, the gendered readings of her sculptures and the remarkable breadth of her creative vision.

An essential overview of Jafa's sweeping, dynamic and disquieting video portraits of Black American lifeThough he has worked in film and music for decades, American video artist Arthur Jafa only garnered acclaim in the art world in 2016 for his video work Love is the Message, the Message is Death. Composed of found images and videos, his oeuvre revolves around Black American culture, the history of slavery, and ongoing structural and physical violence against Black Americans. As Jafa put it in his 2003 text “My Black Death”: “The central conundrum of black being (the double bind of our ontological existence) lies in the fact that common misery both defines and limits who we are. Such that our efforts to eliminate those forces which constrain also function to dissipate much which gives us our specificity, our uniqueness, our flavor by destroying the binds that define we will cease to be, but this is the good death (boa morte) to be embraced.”This essential overview presents Jafa’s best-known works, such as Love is the Message, the Message is Death and its 2018 follow-up piece The White Album, alongside never-before-seen projects and essays by notable scholars. Filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa (born 1960) grew up in Mississippi, where his lifelong fascination with found imagery manifested in his childhood hobby of assembling binders of photographs culled from various sources. As a cinematographer and director of photography, Jafa has collaborated with Stanley Kubrick, Solange Knowles and Spike Lee, among many others. His work on Julie Dash’s 1991 film Daughters of the Dust won him the Best Cinematography award at Sundance. At the 2019 Venice Biennale, he was awarded the Golden Lion for The White Album. Jafa lives in Los Angeles.

A handsome, affordable introduction to the modernist polymath who charted the rhythms of color across textiles, illustration, painting and moreSonia Delaunay was a true pioneer of modernist abstraction; breaking with the figurative vocabulary that subordinated color to subject matter, she placed dynamic color interaction at the core of her vision, whether expressed through painting, book illustration or costume and textile design. Drawing inspiration from both traditional Russian crafts and the modern frenetic metropolis, Delaunay’s work reflects the drastic changes ushered in by industrialization. Through her polyvalent practice, Delaunay helped construct the new modern woman that she herself embodied: equal parts avant-gardist, creative entrepreneur and businesswoman.This richly illustrated catalog showcases the range of Delaunay’s work as it unfolded over 60 years, from abstract paintings and works on paper to textile design, garments, fashion photography, books and carpets—even a brightly colored sports car.Born in Odessa, Ukraine, Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) migrated to Paris in 1906 and became a key figure in the city’s avant-garde scene. During these early years, her paintings underwent a formal shift influenced by the vivid colors of Fauvism. She soon met her husband, fellow artist Robert Delaunay, and the couple pioneered a fusion of Cubism and Neo-Impressionism that they termed Simultanism, which denotes abstract painting that uses color in a manner comparable to the use of sound and rhythm in music. In 1964, Delaunay became the first living woman artist to have a retrospective at the Louvre.

Black light: a concise introduction to the beloved modernist and fabled painterGeorgia’s most famous artist, Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) is a fabled figure in the story of early modernism. The painter, self-taught and penniless during his lifetime, was heralded posthumously for his "naive" style. Pirosmani’s paintings are simple—blunt, colorful depictions of rustic scenes gleaming against black canvas backgrounds, extraordinary icons of glowing intensity.This exhibition catalog showcases around 50 rarely seen Pirosmani masterpieces alongside a historical text on the artist written in 1926 by Kirill Zdanevich (who "discovered" Pirosmani); a fictional (but historically accurate) essay discussing Tbilisi as the Paris of Pirosmani’s age by the Danish art historian and writer, Kaspar Thormod; an interview with the Georgian art historian Nana Kipiani and her artist husband Levan Chogoshvili by Swiss curator Daniel Baumann; and reflections on the artist by contemporary artists Thea Djordjadze, Mamma Andersson and Tal R.

A multipronged analysis of the Dominican American artist’s cartographic palimpsestsIn her monumental paintings and installations, the Dominican American artist Firelei Báez (born 1981) creates images bursting with symbols from folktales, colonial occupation, legendary creatures and revolutions. She paints images on top of maps, book pages and found ephemera that combine abstraction and figuration, personal perspectives with grand historical narratives and Caribbean mythology with science fiction. This colorful publication serves as an introduction to Báez’s work. The artist discusses how she interrogates powerful concepts such as truth and history throughout her practice. Special attention is paid to her “palimpsests,” paintings on top of colonial maps or construction plans for colonial architecture, both of which represent the establishment’s notion of objectivity. Inspired by Báez’s works, poet Warsan Shire and author Katrine Rasmussen Kielsen contribute texts considering the legacy of colonialism.

In the ultimate homage to Claes Oldenburg, Alex Da Corte recreates his Mouse Museum project with his own unique twistDesigned as a “mutant facsimile” of the 1979 Rijksmuseum/Museum Ludwig catalog for Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing, Mouse Museum is a codex for the eponymous installation by Alex Da Corte (born 1980). Oldenburg’s original installation, created between 1965 and the late 1970s, is a Mickey Mouse–shaped room filled with ephemera the artist collected over the years. Da Corte, a fervent admirer of Oldenburg’s, updates his original concept for the 21st century, using his own collection of accumulated objects including glass fruit, McDonald’s Happy Meal toys and fake flowers. The room itself is shaped like one of Mickey Mouse’s ears: in this case, the left ear, referencing Van Gogh. Documentation, inspirations and reflections presented in the artist’s voice form an unprecedented picture of both an artwork and a holistic contemporary practice. Each object in Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) is photographed for a total of over 300 color images.

A visual voyage through the enigmatic ocean, where science meets art and where myth meets realityWe know more about the surface of Mars than we do about our planet’s oceans. And yet the ocean remains an alluring prospect to humanity: as an artistic icon, an object of scientific inquiry or even a financial resource. Encompassing art, film, literature, archeology and natural history, Ocean is a journey of discovery above and below the surface. Offering a cross section of art and cultural history, the exhibition and catalog are arranged into three themes: the ocean between art and science; the mythological ocean; and the Anthropocene ocean. From the woodblock prints of Utagawa Kuniyoshi to Jean Painlevé’s photographs of aquatic life and Susan Hiller’s mapping of sea coasts, Ocean offers a mosaic view of this infinite yet imperiled source of life.Artists include: John Akomfrah, Anna Atkins, Jeanette Ehlers, Caspar David Friedrich, Susan Hiller, Pierre Huyghe, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Jean Painlevé, Howardena Pindell, August Strindberg, Wolfgang Tillmans, Francesca Woodman.

Upson's first museum exhibition following her untimely death shows the range of an artist already well on her way to becoming a modern classicAt her untimely death from cancer in 2021 at the age of 51, Kaari Upson (1970–2021) was widely regarded as one of the most significant and versatile American artists of her generation with a practice spanning sculpture, drawing, performance, film and painting. Though her career was cut short, she left behind a rich, intense and strongly personal body of work that revolves around identity, body, sex, relationships, memory, illness and loss. Published on the occasion of the Louisiana’s retrospective exhibition, the catalogue comprises the Los Angeles–based artist’s most important works: from her dollhouses to The Larry Project, where she conducted something close to a criminological "investigation" of a person who once lived across from her childhood home in San Bernardino, California; her Mother’s Legs tree trunk installation and her never-before-shown large series of "foot face" drawings that she made just before she died.

Influenced by Byzantine art, Fauvism and German Expressionism, Jawlensky explored color, religious iconography and portraiture in his masterful serial paintingsRussian German painter Alexej Jawlensky (1864–1941) found his own artistic voice late in life. He was part of the revitalization of painting in the early 20th century, developing his Expressionist style through exchanges with the Fauves in Paris and his peers in Germany, including friends in and around Der Blaue Reiter. Until arthritis ended his ability to paint, Jawlensky explored color, religious iconography and portraiture in his masterful serial paintings. HIs last series of works, Meditations, comprises more than 1,000 paintings: modest in format, yet sensational. These paintings, which he described as "prayers in color," became an artistic redemption for Jawlensky, who throughout his life sought to connect his spiritual reflections with his painting. Featuring a clothbound spine, this small, slender and appealing volume features essays on Jawlensky's unique artistic projects, as well as an encyclopedia of his life and work.

Using the head as a site of investigation, Basquiat's frenetic drawings of faces are at once immediate and contemplativeBetween 1981 and 1983, Jean-Michel Basquiat made between 50 and 100 drawings of heads. Working with oil stick on paper, he created a series far removed from his public paintings and collages filled with words and symbols—a more concentrated, private study whose pieces are rarely exhibited and seldom offered for sale. Stripped of external references, they read as intimate meditations on identity, perception and the fragile balance between presence and disappearance.Bringing this exceptional group together for the first time in decades in an oversize folio, Headstrong sheds new light on a lesser-known aspect of Basquiat's practice. Essays by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als and artists including George Condo and Julie Mehretu explore the drawings' formal invention and psychological intensity, showing how Basquiat transformed the head into a vessel for everything he was thinking and feeling—a space where imagination, history and lived experience converge.Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–88) is one of the most successful Black visual artists in history, despite his brief career. He emerged on the New York City arts scene in the late 1970s and quickly skyrocketed to international fame, becoming one of the most important artists of his generation. Basquiat's work and legacy continue to influence popular culture, especially art, music and fashion.