The Davidsons assembled an extraordinary collection of American drawings dating from 1960 to the present, showcasing the continuing currency of realism and humanism. Featuring such artists as William Bailey, Jack Beal, William Beckman, Rackstraw Downes, Janet Fish, Alex Katz, Alfred Leslie, Michael Mazur, Alice Neel, and Philip Pearlstein, the collection has been given to the Art Institute of Chicago, which is exhibiting 125 of its finest examples. This beautiful volume includes biographies of the artists and an important critical essay by Ruth E. Fine. 126 colour illustrations

A fascinating glimpse into the creative process of a major contemporary sculptor, featuring many previously unseen works on paper American sculptor Martin Puryear (b. 1941) creates work that combines the clean elegance of minimalism and the simplicity of traditional materials. His stunning sculptures explore themes of identity, ethnicity, and history, and are rich with social and cultural commentary. Puryear, who is known for abstract, large-scale pieces in wood, stone, and bronze, has captured the attention of the art world for the past 30 years. Despite the apparent simplicity of his works, however, he engages in an extensive iterative process that has, until now, been unknown. Martin Puryear: Multiple Dimensions explores that process, featuring numerous drawings, prints, and small-scale sculptures that have never before been published. This catalogue is the first to examine Puryear's work across media, providing invaluable insight into his visual thinking, from sketches to working drawings and constructions for sculpture. Handsomely illustrated with nearly 120 color plates that demonstrate the evolution of Puryear's ideas between drawings, prints, and sculptures, this beautiful volume draws back the curtain on the methodology of this important and enigmatic artist.

A revelatory reassessment of one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century Charles White (1918–1979) is best known for bold, large-scale paintings and drawings of African Americans, meticulously executed works that depict human relationships and socioeconomic struggles with a remarkable sensitivity. This comprehensive study offers a much-needed reexamination of the artist’s career and legacy. With handsome reproductions of White’s finest paintings, drawings, and prints, the volume introduces his work to contemporary audiences, reclaims his place in the art-historical narrative, and stresses the continuing relevance of his insistent dedication to producing positive social change through art. Tracing White’s career from his emergence in Chicago to his mature practice as an artist, activist, and educator in New York and Los Angeles, leading experts provide insights into White’s creative process, his work as a photographer, his political activism and interest in history, the relationship between his art and his teaching, and the importance of feminism in his work. A preface by Kerry James Marshall addresses White’s significance as a mentor to an entire generation of practitioners and underlines the importance of this largely overlooked artist.

"Romanian-born American artist Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) won international acclaim for his inventive, wry representations of the postwar age. His work appeared on the covers and interiors of the New Yorker for nearly six decades, and his drawings, collages, prints, paintings, and sculptures have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. With essays by cartoonist Chris Ware and curator Mark Pascale, this book traces Steinberg's imagery as it evolved over the full scope of his career, during which he refused to distinguish between high and low art. The 60 works included range from the witty black-ink takes on his newly adopted land of 1940s America to the watercolor paintings he made as a mature artist in the late 1980s"--

Jack Lemon and his Landfall Press is one of a handful of fine art presses who work directly with the leading artists of our day. As Lemon notes, "in the collaborative situation, the artist relies on the printer not just for technical information but for essential judgments. . . . Communicating with artists is something I know how to do." This catalog documents 25 years of such collaboration with artists as diverse as Christo, Vito Acconci, Claes Oldenburg, and Sol LeWitt. Distributed for the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Jasper Johns is rarely considered in relation to monochromatic art. Yet single-colour experimentations have figured predominently in his productions since 1955. This text examines this singular preoccupation, presenting an understanding of and appreciation for Johns as an accomplished tonalist.

This informative book discusses the originality of the print as an art form, and questions the seminal role of the print in order to understand the movements and discourse on the arts in the past decades. In illuminating essays, three Chicago art scholars assess the open, cooperative style that makes Chicago printmaking unique, and consider the history of printmaking in Chicago in the context of the WPA, as well as the WPA's facilitation of interest in, and production of prints, and in its setting the stage for the evolution of contemporary print workshops. Includes 207 color and b/w illustrations.

Otherworldly, provocative, and strange, Audrey Niffenegger's art is a vital a part of her vision as her bestselling novels The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry. Awake in the Dream World is a mid-career retrospective of Nifffenegger's work, reflecting her talent for cultivating a captivating narrative exclusively through pictures and her own confrontations with life, mortality, and magic. Niffenegger's fantastical body of work is reminiscent of renowned pen and ink predecessors such as Edward Gorey, Aubrey Beardsley, Egon Schiele, Edward Dulac, and Horst Janssen, but with a brutally honest and unapologetically strange female perspective that touches upon the universal trials of life - death and decay, love, jealousy, redemption, and the inevitability of change. Her works on paper, lithographs, and aquatints reflect the often surreal narratives of her artist's books. Through self-portraiture, Niffenegger reveals her own self-assurance and whimsy alongside anxiety and loneliness, probing darker corners of the human heart and mind, often exploring the hopeless struggle with what Shakespeare called 'this bloody tyrant, Time'. Essays by Audrey Niffenegger, National Museum of Women in the Arts Curator of Book Arts Krystyna Wasserman, and Art Institute of Chicago Curator and School of the Art Institute Professor Mark Pascale explore the artist's influences and work. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

"Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title organized by and presented at the Art Institute of Chicago from November 19, 2011, to February 26, 2012"--T.p. verso.