Monacelli Press – serie

‘Erudite and sumptuous’ – The New York TimesA groundbreaking, global survey of queer art, featuring more than 300 artworks made following the introduction of the term ‘homosexual’ in 1869An unprecedented and historic new book, The First Homosexuals traces the evolution of the homosexual identity through an archive of more than 300 paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs, and film stills from around the world – many presented in a queer, global, and colonial context for the first time. Accompanying the works are twenty-two original, insightful essays by leading experts in art and queer history, each focusing on one geographical region – from Japan to Australia to the Indigenous populations of South America. Ranging from well-known masterpieces to works by unknown artists and pieces rarely considered in the context of sexuality, The First Homosexuals offers a stunning and illuminating look at the first self-consciously queer art. The book accompanies a groundbreaking exhibition of the same name presented at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago.Featured artists include Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Félix Vallotton, Harriet Hosmer, Katsushika Hokusai, Kitagawa Utamaro, Frederic Leighton, Simeon Solomon, Giovanni Boldini, Jacques-Émile Blanche, Berenice Abbott, Clare Atwood, Duncan Grant, Laura Rodig, Carl van Vechten, Beauford Delaney, Anna Klumpke, Sarah Bernhardt, Walter Sickert, Florence Carlyle, Florence Wyle, Frances Loring, Ottilie Roederstein, Florine Stettheimer, Nasta Rojc, Glyn Philpot, Romaine Brooks, Ismael Nery, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Roberto Montenegro, María Izquierdo, Emilio Baz Viaud, Konstantin Somov, Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, Alice Austen, Emilie Mundt, Bertha Wegmann, Thomas Anshutz, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Marie Laurencin, Gerda Wegener, Lili Elbe, Gregorio Prieto, Jorge Larco, Pavel Tchelitchew, Andrey Avinoff, Gustave Courtois, Carlos Baca-Flor, Gustave Moreau, Henry Scott Tuke, Sascha Schneider, Ludwig von Hofmann, Max Oppenheimer, Eugène Jansson, Osmar Schindler, George Platt Lynes, Agnes Goodsir, Tamara de Lempicka, Pedro Lira, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Ladislav Mednyánszky, F. Holland Day, Kristian Zahrtmann, Violet Oakley, Rupert Bunny, Saturnino Herrán, David Paynter, Lionel Wendt, Richmond Barthé, Richard Bruce Nugent, Lady Una Troubridge, Jean Cocteau, Léon Bakst, Lumière Brothers, Marie Höeg & Bolette Berg, José Guadalupe Posada, Claude Cahun, Toyen, Toni Ebel, and Elisàr von Kupffer (Elisarion).

Venture beyond the impeccably styled rooms and into the private gardens of the world’s most celebrated interior designersThrough stunning photography and intimate narratives, Glorious Gardens offers a glimpse into the outdoor sanctuaries that serve as sources of endless inspiration for renowned interior designers. From Timothy Whealon’s urban oasis above Gramercy Park in New York City to Michelle Nussbaumer’s exuberant San Miguel de Allende retreat in Mexico to Veere Grenney’s magical hideout in Tangier, Morocco – as well as other gardens across the United States, England, and Scotland – each is a verdant reflection of its creator’s unique design philosophy.The book invites readers into the enchanting outdoor spaces that serve as personal retreats and wellsprings of inspiration for famed designers including Katie Ridder, Maxine Sloss, Stephen Sills, Thomas O’Brien, Mark D. Sikes, Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Paul Wiseman, and Charlotte Moss, among others. Richly illustrated with hundreds of stunning images across the book’s oversized pages, Glorious Gardens is a feast for the eyes, showcasing the intricate details and sweeping vistas of these extraordinary gardens.

This collectible volume introduces Vonnegut’s legion of fans to an entirely new side of his irrepressible creative personality – his work as a gifted graphic artist.Readers around the world know Kurt Vonnegut as the iconic author of books such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle. Far fewer fans know that Vonnegut was also a talented graphic artist who drew as prodigiously as he wrote.Kurt Vonnegut Drawings brings together the finest examples of Vonnegut’s funny, strange, and moving drawings in one beautifully designed volume. With a hint of cubism, mixed with a Paul Klee gift for caricature, a Calder-like ability to balance color and line, and more than a touch of sixties psychedelic sensibility, Vonnegut’s aesthetic is as idiosyncratic and defiant of tradition as his books. For Vonnegut, making art was a joyful activity; his delight is evident in the work featured here.Featuring 150 illustrations, some never before published, Kurt Vonnegut Drawings also includes an introduction by Vonnegut’s daughter, Nanette, who shares an intimate remembrance of her father, and an essay by Peter Reed, a scholar and Vonnegut’s longtime friend.

Revered interior designer David Kleinberg invites readers inside a selection of projects representing the height of sophistication, luxury, and refinementFor over 35 years, David Kleinberg, whom Architectural Digest calls a designer of ‘singular rooms [that] adhere to the traditional values of elegance, beauty, practicality, [and] comfort,’ has created a body of work that is wide-ranging in style yet always modern in sensibility. Kleinberg is revered for creating spaces that not only epitomize sophistication and luxury, but that also function effortlessly for his clients.In his newest monograph, Kleinberg shares eleven recent residential projects, some of which have never been photographed until now, in glamorous locales across the United States – in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Aspen, and Palm Beach – as well as on London’s Eaton Square. The book opens with Thom Brown and Andrew Bolton’s townhouse, which was immaculately restored and filled with exquisite furnishings and art from varying periods and closes with an intimate tour of Kleinberg’s own private garden in East Hampton.Featuring a foreword by Thom Brown and Andrew Bolton, and written with Architectural Digest’s West Coast editor, Mayer Rus, the text offers readers insights into the process of the celebrated interior designer. Wrapped in grey linen and featuring a tipped-in detail shot that shows Kleinberg’s signature mix of contemporary art with period details, the book’s luxe package reflects the elegant, upscale interiors within.

The definitive publication on internationally acclaimed artist Shahzia Sikander, one of the most influential feminist artists working todayBorn in Pakistan and active in New York since the 1990s, Shahzia Sikander navigates the interplay of multiple identities, encompassing a range of artistic disciplines in her work and critically reinterpreting South Asian material history. Sikander’s distinctly feminist iconography focuses on the narratives of immigrant women to challenge Eurocentric art histories and counter Orientalist scholarship. This volume, published to coincide with a major mid-career retrospective that premiered during the Biennale Art in Venice and will be held concurrently at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, is the first comprehensive exploration of Sikander’s ideas and art. With hundreds of images, many presented as a full page or an entire spread, the richly illustrated book immerses readers in Sikander’s vibrant and subversive art.

The long-awaited first career survey from photographer Amos Badertscher, who comprehensively documented a uniquely American queer underworldAcross several decades, self-taught photographer Amos Badertscher (1936–2023) made thousands of photographs of a liminal queer world: young male sex workers, drag performers, trans pioneers, and Baltimore, Maryland’s inclusive, ribald nightlife. The encounters with these marginalized figures helped Badertscher understand his own queer identity and reveal a confident body of work that stakes out an important corner of queer art and aesthetics.Made between the 1960s and early 2000s, the photographs featured here constitute an unparalleled chronicle of a culture of the era particular not only to Badertscher’s hometown, but universally identifiable, one which began to fade with the movement of LGBTQ+ rights and liberation. The hundreds of images are accompanied by Badertscher’s writings about the history and experiences of his subjects, further illuminating the intimate inner lives of people who were frequently dismissed, feared, and objectified by mainstream culture. Amos Badertscher Images and Stories is a landmark introduction to a figure who is now finally receiving his due as a major twentieth-century portraitist and chronicler of queer subculture.

The astonishing debut monograph from contemporary abstract expressionist painter Genesis TramaineGimme Some Sugar is the much-anticipated first monograph from Genesis Tramaine, the renowned American artist whose star continues to rise in the international art world. Rooted in her 1980s New York City upbringing and strong spirituality, Tramaine imbues her abstract portraits of men and women with a transcendent emotion, devotion, and soundless musicality, borne from rhythmic brushstrokes and a visceral use of chromatic color. In her gestural style, she seeks, at once, to represent and universalize the humanness of the American Black face by obscuring the specificity of individual features, choosing instead to portray the inner turmoil and inner joy of one’s mind and being.The book presents over 125 vibrant, full-color images of the artist’s dynamic and enthralling portrait paintings, which are an inextricable homage to her deep faith, sense of self, and her Sunday mornings at church. Bound in a rich and tactile faux-leather indigo case intended to evoke a modern Bible, Gimme Some Sugar also features a mini-sketchbook insert whose pages reveal the raw, instinctive line drawing studies for Tramaine’s large-scale masterwork paintings.

‘[Emily Thompson] changed floristry in New York.’ – Martha StewartAn extraordinary first book celebrating contemporary floral designer Emily Thompson, known for her unique and dramatic artistryFor the first time, innovative floral designer Emily Thompson showcases her 15-year body of work, which reveres the raw and wondrous beauty of flowers, plants, and trees. With an inspirational and transportive journey, this new book demonstrates Thompson’s signature style of infusing a sense of the exotic and mysterious into her stunning compositions by using wild, unruly materials from the forest, field, and beyond.Featuring nearly 200 vivid images of her spectacular floral design work, the book includes projects ranging from indoor studio and outdoor in situ photography, to high-profile public and private commissions for restaurants including The Grill and The Modern in New York, fashion designers Jason Wu and Ulla Johnson, cultural institutions like the MAD Museum, New York, and Sotheby’s, and editorial work for T Magazine and AD China.Organized by theme, the book features chapters evocatively named and inspired by the life forces and organisms that influence and make up her work. In her own words, she walks the reader through her creative process, explaining the visceral and intellectual approach for generating and germinating the seeds of her ideas for her lush and kaleidoscopic floral arrangements. In addition to her own text, the book includes a foreword by esteemed floral designer and florist to the British Royal Family, Shane Connolly, and an introduction by lauded design writer Nancy Hass.

This powerful collection of Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s electrifying paintings, paired with lyrical, incisive text by Nina MacLaughlin, captures the current American moment in all its chaos, contradiction, and complexity‘Taken together, Celeste’s paintings become essay, epic, and hymn…She drops herself into the American mythology and the multiple, fractured, contradictory feelings and beliefs and events that define it. She shows us what’s here.’ – Nina MacLaughlinWith an unflinching eye and a painterly sensibility rooted in both the classical and the contemporary, acclaimed artist Celeste Dupuy-Spencer created tender yet charged portrayals of American life. Her arresting compositions grapple with memory, identity, politics, and faith through expressive brushwork and deeply personal scenes.Burning in the Eyes of the Maker is Dupuy-Spencer’s first full-length publication. Spanning the last decade of her career before her passing in 2026, this momentous volume pairs 63 beautifully reproduced paintings, including new and never-before-published artworks, with equally urgent, layered prose by acclaimed author Nina MacLaughlin.Taking the paintings as a jumping-off point, MacLaughlin creates narrative impressions of the often riotous scenes depicted. She guides readers inside the thoughts of the figures on the canvas, through the histories of the rooms they occupy, and into Celeste’s mind, past, and creative ethos. A plethora of luscious, full-page details bring the intricacies of these canvases to life.Equal parts visual archive and literary meditation, Burning in the Eyes of the Maker is an emotionally resonant, uncompromising look at our contemporary moment.

Since its publication - Delirious New York (1978) has attained mythic status. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the variety of human behaviorAt the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle - "the culture of congestion" - and its architecture. "Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper.Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.