Phaidon Focus – serie

Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986) sculptor, painter, draughtsman, teacher, theorist and political activist – ranks among the most radical and influential artists to emerge during the second half of the twentieth century. An enigmatic figure whose complex imagination drew on his research across a wide range of themes – including mythology, zoology, botany and the spiritual theories of Rudolf Steiner – Beuys strove to establish a truly democratic approach towards artistic creativity, and prove that modern art need not be confined to the museum or the gallery.This book illustrates how from Beuys's provocative 'Actions' of the 1960s and 1970s, to his ambitious environmental project 7000 Oaks – which would lead to the mass planting of trees in a series of events that continued after his death – he was never one to shun controversy. His anti-authoritarian approach gained him respect and notoriety in equal measures. As Antliff effectively demonstrates, the ecological and political issues that informed much of Beuys's art can be considered as relevant today as they were in his own lifetime.

The perfect introduction to the life and work of Richard Estes

The perfect introduction to the life and art of Jasper Johns.

American artist Brice Marden (b. 1938) has had a profound impact on painting today. During his career there has been a sea change in art movements, yet Marden has unwaveringly adhered to modernist principles of abstraction.From his early monochromatic paintings of the 1960s and 1970s – sculpturally layered using oil paint and light-absorbing beeswax to explore subjectively the connections of colour to person, mood or idea – to themes inspired by Asian art and culture, composed of vivid and calligraphic loops and webs, Marden's deeply personal work incorporates multiple art historical and cultural inspirations.

The perfect introduction to the life and work of Jackson Pollock

Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008) was one of the most prolific and innovative artists of the post-war period, whose work, ranging across a number of disciplines, has had a profound influence on avant-garde art since the 1950s.By working in what he called ‘the gap between art and life’, Rauschenberg aimed to bring a new scale and physicality to his paintings. Early on in his career, Rauschenberg produced groups of monochrome paintings, white, followed by black, and red. The White Paintings (1951), canvases painted with white latex house-paint, function as hypersensitive surfaces that register changes in their surroundings. This new emphasis encouraged viewers to attend to phenomena ordinarily ignored when looking at a painting, such as the play of shadows across its surface.In his Combines, works melding painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg brought elements of popular culture and everyday life into his art through the process of collage, integrating a staggering array of materials into his compositions. His first and most famous combines was titled Monogram, a 1959 work that consisted of a stuffed angora goat, a tire, a police barrier, the heel of a shoe, a tennis ball, and paint. Rauschenberg’s ‘gap’ became the site of more than half a century of endeavours through which he redefined not only what materials could comprise a work of art but what a work of art could be. From the Combines, Rauschenberg branched out into printmaking, silkscreen paintings, performance, works involving technology and many other activities.Widely illustrated with Rauschenberg's works and photographs of the artist in performance and in his studio, this book also examines Rauschenberg's extensive involvement in the performing arts, tracing his connections to avant-garde dance in America and addressing his own performances and work with the well-known choreographers Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown.

Cindy Sherman (b. 1954) is her own subject matter. One of the most celebrated female artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries she has, for a period spanning more than thirty years, used make-up, prosthetics and props to present herself in the guise of numerous different personae, placed in contexts that draw on the visual conventions of film, television and the media. Such settings and characters invite the viewer to consider the relation of appearance and identity and also the way in which female stereotypes have been perpetuated not only by the media but also by the art world itself.This book introduces some of Sherman's most important works, from her seminal 1970s series Untitled Film Stills, which references film noir movies by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock and Jacques Tourneur, to her progression into colour photography in the 1980s series Centerfolds. It also follows her decision to remove herself from the picture by allowing her props and prosthetics alone to represent the subjects that she wished to critique, such as pornography and war photography.In the last decade Sherman has reintroduced herself into her work, for example in her History Portraits where she playfully appropriates the subjects of the Old Masters, as well as introducing us to a whole new cast of characters in her Clowns and Headshots (or Hollywood/Hampton Types). It also presents her most recent pieces – large-scale murals and photographs, in which more ambiguous identities are played out within epic landscapes.

One of the best-known American sculptors of the modern period, David Smith (1906 – 1965) was a true innovator. He revolutionized the possibilities of metal sculpture by introducing the industrial process of welding and economical materials such as steel into the studio. As a result, Smith was able to manipulate metal into the most extraordinarily balanced compositions – using metal to ‘draw in space’.Smith was a pioneer in abstract sculpture – previously a figurative medium – and achieved a new scope by creating layered planes and burnishing or painting surfaces. A reclusive figure, Smith spent increasing time at his studio and foundry at rural Bolton Landing, the surrounding fields of which became filled with his monumental sculptures. Predominantly known as a sculptor, the book also sheds light on his prolific practice of drawing, sketching, writing and photographing his sculptures.