Betr. u. a. Werke von Paul Klee (S. 156-167). - Engl. Übers.: Fondation Beyeler.

The quality of expressiveness--an outcry of the human soul against the mechanization of life--runs like a red scar through the entire history of modern art and up to the present day. If expressionism is associated first and foremost with the German contribution to Modernism, evoking the artists associated with Die Brcke (Kirchner, Heckel and Nolde) and Der Blaue Reiter (Marc and Kandinsky), but also the Austrian Schiele and Kokoshka, and the Parisian fauves, it nevertheless goes further. Beginning with the fathers of expressionism, Gauguin, van Gogh and Munch, the most important inspirations for a movement laden with emotions and endowed with the furor of rebellion, the red scar bleeds through the expressive tendencies of the interwar artists (Beckmann, Soutine and Picasso) and the postwar artists (Dubuffet, de Kooning and Bacon), and all the way to neo-expressionism (Baselitz, Lpertz, Lassnig) and 80s neo-fauvism (Clemente, Basquiat and Disler), ending with Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman. In accompanying essays, philosopher and art historian Donald Kuspit sets out to trace the meaning of the term "expressive"; curator Markus Brderlin explores expressionism by looking backwards from neo-expressionism; and numerous short texts round off the exploration by focusing on individual works of art.

At last, the broader movements of twentieth-century Swiss art--and the individual artists behind them--are tracked through the present day in one standard-setting publication. Swiss Made: Precision and Madness sets the famous Swiss tendency toward precision and order alongside the tendency toward obstinacy and chaos, pairing canonical works with pieces made within the past 40 years. Provocative pairs include Max Bill and John Armleder, Ferdinand Hodler and Urs Lüthi, Alberto Giacometti and Rémy Zaugg, Louis Soutter and Martin Disler, Robert Müller and Sylvie Fleury, Paul Klee and Silvia Bächli, Adolph Wölfli and Ugo Rondinone. Tensions emerge between the focused and the expansive, over everyday life in the Swiss state, and naturally over the mountains. Swiss Made: Precision and Madness is of interest on its own analytic terms, and as an excellent overview of the country's art since 1850.

"Time and again, we read shocking newspaper reports about people who have lain dead in their homes for months, or even years, without any of their neighbors taking notice of them. These events are symptomatic of the increasing isolation of human beings - and not just senior citizens - in our society. In large cities, the risk of falling into complete anonymity is particularly acute." "In her works, In Sook Kim examines how people confront the threat of isolation. Her elaborate, psychologically persuasive settings show how we use television, computers, sex, alcohol, psychotropics, or illegal drugs in our futile attempts to fill the agonizing void, to drown out the terrible silence and painful awareness of our loneliness. Kim's work, Saturday Night, condenses all of these escapes into one image: the illuminated windows of a high-rise provide an unobstructed view into the abyss of human existence." --Book Jacket.

New York-based painter Philip Taaffe became internationally known as part of the early-80s Appropriation art movement for his unique approach, which combined abstraction with ornamental art from a variety of cultures. Poet and critic John Yau has written, "In attempting to connect the microcosmic with the macrocosmic, Taaffe constructs a metaphysical vertical axis that connects earth to sky, as well as the ancient to the postmodern." Taaffe has traveled extensively, building a lexicon of imagery from cultures with a history of ornate decorative art, among them Arabic, Asian, Celtic and Pre-Colombian. Within the confines of his canvases, imagery from these civilizations mingles freely together, and merges with influences from the Western canon, such as Art Nouveau, Op art and Abstract Expressionism. Taaffe also uses non-art sources like early botanical photography. This substantial new monograph provides an overview of Taaffe's entire oeuvre, with all works beautifully reproduced on full-page color plates. The volume also includes a visual essay by Taaffe and a series of photographs showing him at work in his studio.