Ellsworth Kelly - Hardcover

Paik, Tricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714869473 ISBN 13: 9780714869476

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2015

Synopsis

The definitive monograph, created in close collaboration with the artist (1923-2015), a pioneer of abstract art, who influenced subsequent generations of artists such as Tauba Auerbach, Matt Connors and Alex Israel.

This definitive monograph, and the last book to be created in close collaboration with the artist, a pioneer of abstract art and one of the most distinctive and influential artists of our time, maps his prolific and diverse oeuvre from the 1940s to his final projects before his death in late 2015.

Encompassing his paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, postcards and prints, and including the iconic monochromatic paintings for which he has become best known, this monograph includes a chronological survey by Kelly expert Tricia Y. Paik. Enriched with in-depth interviews with Kelly, images from his personal archive, artworks by the artists who have inspired him and his own works, this survey celebrates Kelly's individual approach to his art.

This monograph also features short essays by leading writers and critics, Robert Storr, Richard Shiff, Gary Garrels and Gavin Delahunty, and an illustrated narrative chronology mapping Kelly's life and work, with many never before published images.

Features:
– Beautiful book production values including topped-in divider pages and a red cloth slipcase with stamping.
– All of his major works and periods, from his early figurative art to his distinctive paintings featuring blocks of single, flat colours and silhouetted shapes; from his prints and drawings to his large scale outdoor sculptures.
– A survey text and narrative chronology by Kelly expert Tricia Y Paik features new insights from the artist following in-depth interviews, as well as never-before-published images, sketches and other material from his personal archives.
– Short essays by leading art historians, curators and writers: Robert Storr, Richard Shiff, Gary Garrels and Gavin Delahunty.

About this title

About the Author

Tricia Y. Paik is director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in Massachusetts. She was previously curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and has held positions at the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Review

"For the consummate minimalist, here's a maximalist book on 92-year-old artist Ellsworth Kelly's lifetime of groundbreaking work. Curator Tricia Y. Paik guides us through the artist's color-soaked career in 400 illustrations and scholarly essays. It's a must for any Kelly fan: the only book, in fact, to completely span the artist's entire oeuvre." —Bloomberg Pursuits

"This work of beauty and scholarship proves that Kelly is one of the great master artists of the last century." —Publishers Weekly

"A new monograph from the ever-innovative Phaidon amply shows just how extraordinary his output has been... beautifully captures Kelly's diverse output... The New Yorker said: "What other artist except Matisse makes effulgent hues seem at one with cool intelligence?" Phaidon's book - and the work itself - provide the answer." — Roll Royce Magazine

"The first [monograph] to cover his whole career and is rich in illustrations, not just of his work but of his milieu... the essays in this book help to reveal his human as well as artistic personality" —The Sunday Times

"Brighten an art aficionado's Christmas with Phaidon's definitive monograph on pivotal modern artist Ellsworth Kelly. Kelly was always ahead of his time, making monochromes and multi-panel works more than a decade before the term minimalism was coined. Kelly's career spans eight decades, and the book places him among other modernist masters, such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso." — Aesthetica

"There is a ruthless efficiency of your work—your color, your lines. But there is a tenderness to your work at the same time. It's pristine and efficient and yet deeply emotional." —Gwyneth Paltrow, Interview Magazine

"It would be misleading to suggest that Kelly is the kind of genius who can do no wrong; truer to say that even his mistakes are generally worth our time." — Frieze

"Part magician, part mathematician, he works with the precision and clarity of a poet." — The Guardian

"With lovely light-handedness, it demonstrates that Kelly's prints are more like books than movies. Each monochrome and multicolor abstraction is an intimate affair." — The Los Angeles Times

" [Kelly's] seven-decade career has been an unwavering exploration of shape, line and color in their purest forms. While many other artists of his generation were appropriating images of American flags or movie stars or newspaper clippings, Mr. Kelly was relentlessly immersed in abstraction: creating color spectrums and panel paintings with nothing but a giant curve or rectangle, or making drawings depicting the simple outline of a leaf." — The New York Times

"At 90, [Ellsworth] has spent more than half a century creating elegant, monochromatic canvases in uncannily luminous color—paintings whose spare beauty and grace are as self-evident as facts of nature and have placed him among the most eminent artists of his generation." — Vogue

"There is plenty of new information and Paik has done an excellent job of keeping the narrative fresh... [Robert] Storr is one of four writers who have contributed essays to this publication [...] Inviting these critical voices to speak outside the main narrative enriches the book with new insights." —Burlington Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0714869473
• ISBN 13: 9780714869476
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368