Vija Celmins - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3865609716 ISBN 13: 9783865609717

Publisher: Walther König, Köln, 2011

Synopsis

The many admirers and devotees of Vija Celmins (born 1938) at last possess a serious overview of the Latvian-born, New York-based artist's work in this volume. For more than a half-century, Celmins has quietly mined a narrow but infinitely rich range of theme and palette, extrapolating whole worlds of photorealist detail from four seemingly simple motifs: the surface of the sea, the night sky, the desert and the spider web. In oil paintings, prints and charcoal or graphite pencil drawings that revisit these motifs over and over, as if researching them to comprehend their infinities of detail, Celmins confines herself to the colors black, white and gray, preserving a spacious sobriety and calm exactitude for her potentially romantic subjects. This essential volume reproduces more than 60 variations of Celmins' precisely depicted seas, skies, deserts and webs, which in the artist's seemingly dispassionate renderings restore vastness and wonder to our sense of the cosmos.

About this title

About the Author:

Lane Relyea is Assistant Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University, Chicago. His essays and reviews have appeared in Artforum, Parkett and Frieze, and his major contributions to exhibition catalogues include Helter Skelter (1992) and Public Offerings (2001), both at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Robert Gober is among the most important American artists to have emerged in the 1980s. Primarily a sculptor and installation artist, Gober's handcrafted works - often based on familiar domestic objects - have been the object of major exhibitions, at, among others, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1997); the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Reina Sofia, Madrid (both 1991); and the Art Institute of Chicago (1988). In 2001 Gober represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Briony Fer is Reader in History of Art at University College London. Her books include On Abstract Art (1997) and The Infinite Line (2004). Fer has written on a wide range of artists including Hanne Darboven, Rachel Whiteread and Eva Hesse.

Review:

"A superb addition to an addictive series."-Time Out On the Contemporary Artists Series "The boldest, best executed, and most far-reaching publishing project devoted to contemporary art. These books will revolutionize the way contemporary art is presented and written about."-Artforum "The combination of intelligent analysis, personal insight, useful facts and plentiful pictures is a superb format invaluable for specialists but also interesting for casual readers, it makes these books a must for the library of anyone who cares about contemporary art."-Time Out "A unique series of informative monographs on individual artists."-The Sunday Times "Gives the reader the impression of a personal encounter with the artists. Apart from the writing which is lucid and illuminating, it is undoubtedly the wealth of lavish illustrations which makes looking at these books a satisfying entertainment."-The Art Book

About this edition

• Publisher: Walther König, Köln
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 3865609716
• ISBN 13: 9783865609717
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 152
• Editor: Friedrich Julia, König Kasper