Hatje Cantz Verlag

Trained as a horticulturalist, Swiss photographer Yann Mingard (born 1973) offers a wonderfully intimate view of nature with his close-up views of undisturbed forest underbrush. Mingard takes all his photographs at dusk with a long exposure, revealing fragments of withered grass and dark earth.

Czech photographer Frantisek Drtikol (1883-1961) reinvented the genre of nude photography for the early twentieth century. Drtikol opened his Prague studio in 1907, and his nudes from this early period convey the dreamy eroticism of Art Nouveau and the foreboding accents of Prague Symbolism that he was to return to throughout his somewhat brief career (Drtikol abandoned photography for painting in 1935, and it was not until curator Anna Farova's now legendary 1972 Prague exhibition that this work was rediscovered by a broader public). But Drtikol quickly absorbed into his photography the myriad new idioms of the interbellum years, and freighted his nudes with the dramatic lighting of silent film and the more austere geometric effects and dynamic poses of Futurism, Cubism and Bauhaus. Surveying his daring and expressive nudes of the 1920s and 1930s, this important publication charts Drtikol's adventurous treatments of the nude as they evolved in their quirky conversation with modernist innovations — from the early nymphs and femme fatales to more abstracted studies that dramatize light and kinetic qualities. This smartly conceived volume confirms Drtikol's place as one of the greatest photographers of the early twentieth century.

For their 19,000-mile journey across China, Swiss photographers Monika Fischer and Mathias Braschler made one portrait every day. The resulting series of documentary photos depicts both the winners and losers of the country's economic transformations, from the small farmer who still plows his fields with water buffaloes to the wealthy yacht club owner posing with his Lamborghini.

Alongside Monet, Bazille and Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir laid the foundations of Impressionism in 1860s Paris. But acclaim for his painting was slow in coming, primarily because of the tribulations of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, which put a hiatus on so much artistic activity during the 1860s-70s. As a result, the first two decades of Renoir's career are sometimes ignored, an oversight this superb volume decisively remedies. The artist's most important model during these years was his mistress, Lise Trehot, with whom he was involved from 1865 to 1872. His depictions of Trehot, in classic paintings such as «Woman in a Garden» and «En ete» (both 1868), underscore the importance of Manet for the Impressionists in general, but also show Renoir infusing the older artist's somber palette with the warm, burnished glow for which he is beloved today, and exploring the looser handling of the brush so closely associated with the Impressionist movement. This volume also looks at Renoir's «plein air» landscape paintings and other portraits, such as those of his fellow Impressionists Frederic Bazille and Claude Monet, altogether reproducing 250 works in full color. Revelatory and comprehensive, «Between Bohemia and Bourgeoisie» is the first extensive examination of the painter's early oeuvre and the importance of his close friendships with Bazille, Manet, Monet and Sisley.

In DDR Views, Thomas Hoepker (born 1936) documents life in East Germany from 1959 to the fall of the Berlin Wall: photos of children playing along the wall, party rallies, propaganda posters, ramshackle old facades from the Imperial Era and new apartment blocks, images of Sunday outings and empty supermarket display cases, all tell the tale of a nation that is no more.

My material is light, says Helsinki School photographer Niko Luoma (born 1970), and my process is a combination of... calculation and chance. Inspired by mathematics and geometry, and elaborating on the rich tradition begun by August Strindberg's celestographs, Luoma creates elaborate and marvelously evocative photographic abstractions, in compositions of lines and geometric shapes. His methods are purely and emphatically analog: light-sensitive materials repeatedly exposed to light. The delicate crosshatched networks of lines in his series Symmetrium, for example, were built up through thousands of exposures on a single negative. Working thus, Luoma's approach may said to be both accretive and chance-based, for the composition of the final image, as a collaboration with light itself, is wholly unpredictable. This volume compiles works from the past decade.

The Guidebook is entirely devoted to the artists participating in Documenta 13. Each one is introduced in an illustrated essay written by one of the Documenta's agents, in close collaboration with the artists-who also contribute illustrations, which are as diverse as the projects themselves. These essays are individual visual statements, ranging from drawings to notes. Narrative introductions to the various venues combine factual details with Carolyn Christov-Barkargiev's key ideas and concepts, which are connected to each of the venues. Containing a map of the exhibition and brief descriptions of all of the sites and projects, this short guide is an indispensable tool both for those attending Documenta 13 and anyone unable to visit the show in person.

Figuring Color looks at the work of four artists who use color and shape to represent a metaphorical body. For instance, Roy McMakin's sculpture of a chair is at once a body and an implication of an absent body, where two tables intertwined suggest bodies nestled together. Kathy Butterly's ceramic sculptures are miniature bodies, whose sensuality amplifies clay's potential for delightful form. In Felix Gonzalez-Torres's sculptures, piles of wrapped candy and plastic-bead curtains are experienced through touch, privileging the physical body while still evoking a metaphorical body. Sue Williams's riotously colorful paintings explore the body abstracted, represented entirely through color. Poems by Charles Bernstein, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Jen Bervin, Lee Ann Brown, Miles Champion, Marcella Durand, Craig Dworkin, Tonya Foster, Alan Gilbert, Lisa Jarnot, Vincent Katz, Damon Krukowski and others respond to the book's sensuous theme.

One of India's most influential contemporary artists, Nalini Malani (born 1946) creates paintings, wall drawings, theatrical works, video and shadow plays. Inherited iconographies and cherished cultural stereotypes are challenged from a contemporary urban, internationalist point of view. This catalogue accompanies her show at Documenta 13.

In the early 1960s, what was then the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf received a large gift of Japanese woodcuts (Ukiyo-e), a gift to which the donor would generously add until 1988. This catalogue presents 220 pieces from this collection, by the enormously prolific illustrators Kunisada (1786-1865) and Kuniyoshi (1798-1861), masters of the Utagawa School. The prints of these artists transport the observer into a colorful, imaginative dream world of Kabuki actors, mythical creatures, hauntingly beautiful women and fierce warriors. This publication offers a rare opportunity to compare the two artists' illustrations of the same themes, and includes essays that provide an introduction to nineteenth-century Japanese popular culture and bridge the gap between the centuries by exploring aspects of the grotesque in Japanese art, explaining legends and plays, and presenting some of Kuniyoshi's preliminary studies.

Marking the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ostzeit portrays East Germany through photographs of the Clarchens Ballhaus dancehall and the Marx-Engels monument; Werner Mahler's study of Bad Berka in Thuringia; Harald Hauswald on the comedy of everyday life in the GDR; Ute Mahler on Berlin's 1980 May Day Parade; and other projects.

Like his fellow Pop painters Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Mel Ramos (born 1935) derives the motifs for his work from mass media and advertising. In bold and immediately recognizable canvases, he unites consumer goods with idealized pin-up girls modeled after magazine images dating from the 1950s and 1960s. Ramos immortalizes these models' lascivious poses by entwining them with the featured products in what he calls commercial pin-ups. This monograph illustrates and discusses many of these works, but also provides insight into the artist's multifaceted oeuvre by presenting more than 100 works, from his first portraits of people, comic heroes and heroines, and his prominent pin-up girls, to his latest works from the Galatea series. Celebrating the artist's 75th birthday, this catalogue accompanies a major European retrospective, the first to unite Ramos' drawings, paintings and sculptures.

Famed for her painted portraits, Elizabeth Peyton (born 1965) has also created a wide range of prints over the past two decades, including monotypes, lithographs, woodcuts and etchings. Experimenting with different techniques, she uses a variety of diverse paper stocks and handmade papers as well as various colored and monochromatic inks. In comparison to the diminutiveness of her paintings, the relatively large scale of these prints — in particular of the lithographs and monotypes — is remarkable. Her portrayed subjects here include historical figures such as William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) and Richard Wagner; visual artists such as Frida Kahlo, David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe; pop stars such as Eminem and Kurt Cobain; as well as her friends. More recently, Peyton has turned to the genre of the still life to explore and renew its contemporary relevance. This monograph of Peyton's prints is the first in-depth exploration of the artist as a critical printmaker. It includes essays by Sabine Eckmann and Hilton Als as well as an interview with the artist conducted by Beate Kemfert. Featuring more than 70 of her prints in color, the catalogue also includes the first comprehensive index of her prints to date.

A master of deadpan sculpture and the absurd gesture, the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm (born 1954) is tireless and brilliant in his constant reinvention of sculptural convention. With each new work Wurm seems to think sculpture completely afresh, and always with materials readily to hand, such as cars, houses, or bodies: his One-Minute Sculptures (which marked his international debut) consisted of simple instructional drawings that invited viewers to themselves become sculptures by assuming bizarre poses. Wear Me Out showcases Wurm at his most inventive yet, and spans the full scope of his thinking, from outdoor sculptures such as the fat and melting houses to the artist's latest work in furniture, drawings and — for the first time — clothing, developed in collaboration with the innovative Belgian fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck, specifically for the artist's 2011 exhibition at Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.

Jeff Koons (born 1955) is probably the most famous artist of the 1980s, and certainly one of the most notorious and controversial. In the summer of 2012, the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt are collaborating on a bold and unprecedented simultaneous overview of Koons' sculptural and painterly oeuvre. The Liebieghaus show, titled «Jeff Koons: The Sculptor», creates a dialogue between Koons' sculptures (both world-renowned and recent works) and the nineteenth-century villa whose collection spans 5,000 years of sculpture, from Ancient Egypt to the present. The artist fell in love with the Liebieghaus after visiting the city on his way to the German company Arnold, which produced his oversize works in polished steel, such as the «Balloon Flower» sculptures of the 1990s. The Schirn's exhibit, «Jeff Koons: The Painter», focuses on the artist's monumental paintings, whose motifs draw upon the most varied sources of high and popular culture, from Manet to Popeye. In recent years, following the success of his flower and balloon dogs, Koons has revisited his painting practice, declaring, «I like the sense of warmth that comes from an actual painting and that's why I returned to making paintings». This substantial volume includes 270 color reproductions of sculptures and paintings from the breadth of Koons' 30-year career.

The spoken and the written word have long since found their way into the visual arts: as epigrams, marginal notes, quotes, collaged text fragments, or part of a performance, a video, or a sound installation. In particular since the advent of Conceptual Art, language has even been regarded as the actual and independent material and medium of the visual arts. Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy at the Federation of German Industries has been supporting artists in the areas of architecture, music, literature, and the visual arts since 1953. In 2011/12, a visual arts prize was offered on the theme of “language.” A jury chaired by Dr. Arend Oetker decided in favor of three prize winners, whose works were presented to the public in Essen and Riga and are now being shown in Bremen. “The artists use their media to plumb the limits of language-related possibilities, for instance at the intersection between sound and photography. They set out on a kind of ‘search for traces’ and reflect on access to language and forms of its being passed down at numerous levels.”

Incomparable masterpieces of Netherlandish drawing from the collection of Viennas Albertina. The entire artistic spectrum is opened up page by page: landscapes, seascapes, topographical views, portraits, rural genre scenes, and still lifes. The Albertina owns one of the worlds most important collections of Netherlandish drawings dating from the period 1430 to 1650.

Featuring over two hundred examples of designs, this publication focuses on Jonathan Ive (*1967 in London), Senior Vice President of Industrial Design for Apple, who since 1997 has been responsible for the design of all of the company s products. Over the past decade, Ive and his team of designers wrote electronics design history with their standard-setting iMacs, iPhones, iPods, and iPads. Their user-friendly, distinct, and elegant design has made a significant contribution to the brand s cult status. This volume compares various approaches to design and casts light on numerous aspects of design history, deepening one s understanding of contemporary industrial design. Following an analysis of the forms and functions of the featured products, the book provides an explanation of the innovative production methods and materials applied. Last but not least, it points out Apple design s noticeable references to the simplified forms of the products manufactured by the successful German brand Braun, and lists the Ten Rules for Good Design promulgated by the company s chief designer, Dieter Rams.

Well-traveled photographer and war correspondent Felice Beato (1832 1909) reached the Japanese port city of Yokohama in July 1863 and spent more than twenty years there. He captured unique portraits of geishas in splendid kimonos, samurai, sumo wrestlers, and scenes of everyday life or classic Japanese landscapes. Beato s photographs deeply influenced the style of the Yokohama School, not so his fellow Japanese enthusiasts and contemporaries Charles Wirgman, Raimund Freiherr Stillfried von Rathenitz, and Adolfo Farsari. Characteristic of Beato s photographs which in the early days were exposed on albumin plates is their careful composition, occasionally recalling woodcuts by master artists Hiroshige or Hokusai. However, the Anglo-Italian photographer and his fellow artists were pioneers in hand-colored photography: their vivid impressions provide a view of traditional Japanese society of the waning Edo period, and for a long time they shaped the European notion of the exotic, distant Asian country.

The inimitable works of art by Jeff Koons (*1955 in York, Pennsylvania), one of the most famous artists in the world today, have been causing uproars since the eighties. This publication is an in-depth examination of three major groups of works: The New (1980 87), Banality (1988), and Celebration (ongoing since 1994), each one of which represents a spectacular and consequential phase in Koons s oeuvre. Ready-made objects from The New are transformed in Banality into wondrous, provocative sculptures created with traditional craftsmanship. A few years later, painting and sculpture appeared on an even par in Celebration. Hence, these three influential, manifesto-like stages are capable of providing insight into the work and ideas of Jeff Koons.

In celebration of the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) the Vienna Museum is presenting the first catalogue of its complete collection of the artist s works. The world s largest collection of Klimt s drawings around 400 provides an overview of thematic groups such as the Secession, sketches of the Faculty Paintings, or the nudes. In addition the book features a few paintings, including the portrait of Emilie Flöge (1902). It is one of Klimt s most famous paintings, and the first portrait of a woman in which the ornamentation in and of itself becomes a focal point. Last, but not least, there posters and prints that Klimt designed for the Viennese Secession, including a number of original drafts, as well as the first prints. The collection also contains unique memorabilia, such as the artist s smock, his death mask, and even a drawing by Egon Schiele of Klimt s body. Also featured are rare vintage prints of early portrait photographs and sculptures.

One of today’s best-known contemporary artists, New Leipzig School painter Neo Rauch (born 1960) blends the realistic figuration of Social Realism with Surrealism: brightly colored figures parade through upended environments, and multiple historical periods overlap in a single work. Most recognized for his paintings and drawings, Rauch has also created an impressive output of printed works over the past two decades, which visit the same themes as the rest of his output, and in Rauch’s own words “are accessories to my painting.” This publication presents the artist’s complete oeuvre of prints from 1993 to today, and celebrates Rauch’s gift of an edition of each of his prints to the town of Aschersleben in Germany, where he was raised. The collection will form the basis of a new art foundation and exhibition space, established in the artist’s name. Neo Rauch (born 1960) was born, reared and trained as an artist in Leipzig, where he continues to live. In August 2005, Rauch was awarded the chair of painting at Leipzig University.

“The Neue Sachlichkeit: I invented it.” Thus Otto Dix (1891–1969), looking back with characteristic directness, chose to rewrite the development of the art movement that can be considered the “third path” — alongside Abstraction and Expressionism — taken by progressive artists in the modern era. Situated somewhere between the grotesque and the classical, Dix’s harsh, unrelenting realism produced some of the most horrific depictions of the First World War, and some of the most critical portrayals of the Weimar Republic. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, Otto Dix and New Objectivity is the first publication to fully illuminate the Neue Sachlichkeit against the backdrop of the Weimar Republic and National Socialism. The exhibition brings together around 120 works to investigate what characterizes the New Objectivity and how variously the term has been used and interpreted since the 1920s. Some of Dix’s key works — including the “Metropolis” triptych (1928–29), the great psychological portraits and the landscapes with their hidden symbolism painted during the years Dix spent at Lake Constance — form the departure point for this exploration of his oeuvre. They are placed in context alongside the works of George Grosz, Franz Lenk, Werner Peiner, Franz Radziwill, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter and Georg Scholz, creating a new perspective on this crucial chapter in German art history and illuminating these artists’ various reactions to the National Socialist aesthetic and art policy.

Ron Galella (1931 in the Bronx) moved to Los Angeles in his early twenties, where he trained as a photojournalist. In his free time he took pictures of the stars arriving at film premieres, selling them to the National Enquirer and Fotoplay. His photos are snapshots rather than portraits spontaneous, not staged, and extraordinarily authentic. Whether Jacqueline Kennedy, Marlon Brando, Greta Garbo, Andy Warhol, Sean Penn, Robert Redford, Muhammad Ali, Madonna, Mick Jagger, or Audrey Hepburn Galella managed to get them all in front of his lens. In addition to physical assaults, his photographic approach also caused him to be sued he had to promise Jacqueline Kennedy not to take another picture of her again as long as he lived. Andy Warhol, on the other hand, adored him, and Elizabeth Taylor used his images in her biography. In addition to his spontaneous paparazzi photographs, Galella also took staged pictures, commissioned by magazines such as Time, Rolling Stone, VOGUE or Vanity Fair. The publication presents more than one hundred of his astounding photos.