Ce catalogue d'exposition exxplore la relation entre les artistes Jasper Johns et Edvard Munch.

The author begins this challenging monograph by probing Modernism's surfaces and subjects, its public and private meanings, in order to establish Johns's importance as the modern allegorical artist in the years after Abstract Expressionism. Yet, Figuring Jasper Johns is not an essay that presumes to offer an instant interpretation. Rather, Fred Orton self-consciously constructs a "Jasper Johns" whose work is introduced and explained in three chapters, each of which addresses a specific picture or sculpture like Flag, Painted Bronze (Savarin) and Untitled 1992. These in-depth studies situate individual works in their social context as well as in Johns's oeuvre. Fred Orton's purpose is to get to terms with and find terms for a difficult and elusive body of work by one of the most important artists of the 20th century."

A fascinating look at how Mapplethorpe and Munch, although separated by many years, shared certain affinities in their lives and artwork This revelatory catalogue delves into the many affinities shared between two widely renowned and discussed artists, Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) and Edvard Munch (1863-1944), whose intensely studied work has, until now, never been considered in relation to one another. Mapplethorpe + Munch brings to light how these two monumental figures curiously relate on an existential level, in how they deal with questions concerning sexuality, and in their way of utilizing self-portraiture as a means to explore issues of personal identity. Featuring essays that examine the thematic impulses behind the accompanying exhibition, this publication establishes a previously unexplored association between two equally contentious art figures, while working to impart alternative perspectives and new insight into their respective outputs. Although distinct in their legacies, Mapplethorpe and Munch remain remarkably intertwined. Distributed for Mercatorfonds Exhibition Schedule: Munch Museum, Oslo (02/06/16-05/29/16)

Volume covers the Collection of Prints and Illustrated Books, not the collection of artists' books.

Unveiling the unconventional : Kehinde Wiley's portrait of Barack Obama / Taína Caragol -- "Radical empathy" : Amy Sherald's portrait of Michelle Obama / Dorothy Moss -- The Obama portraits, in art history and beyond / Richard J. Powell -- The Obama portraits and the National Portrait Gallery as a site of secular pilgrimage / Kim Sajet -- The presentation of the Obama portraits : a transcript of the unveiling ceremony.

Tipped-in: One sheet (1 unnumbered page: illustrations (chiefly color); 31 cm), contains artist and authors information.

In Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed, the elderly Edvard Munch stands like a sentinel in his bedroom/studio surrounded by the works that constitute his artistic legacy. A powerful meditation on art, mortality, and the ravages of time, this haunting painting conjures up the Norwegian master’s entire career. It also calls into question certain long-held myths surrounding Munch—that his work declined in quality after his nervous breakdown in 1908–9, that he was a commercially naive social outsider, and that he had only a limited role in the development of European modernism. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} The present volume aims to rebut such misconceptions by freshly examining this enigmatic artist. In the preface, the renowned novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard considers Munch as a fellow creative artist and seeks to illuminate the source of his distinctive talent. The four groundbreaking essays that follow present numerous surprising insights on matters ranging from Munch’s radical approach to self-portraiture to his role in promoting his own career. They also reveal that Munch has been an abiding inspiration to fellow painters, both during his lifetime and up to the present; artists as varied as Jasper Johns, Bridget Riley, Asger Jorn, and Georg Baselitz have acknowledged his influence. More than sixty of Munch’s paintings, dating from the beginning of his career in the early 1880s to his death in 1944, are accompanied by a generous selection of comparative illustrations and a chronology of the artist’s life. The result is an intimate, provocative study that casts new light on Munch’s unique oeuvre—an oeuvre that Knausgaard describes as having gone “where only a painting can go, to that which is beyond words, but which is still part of our reality.”

After completing the installation of his 1996 retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Jasper Johns retreated to his studio in Connecticut to wipe the slate clean, beginning a body of work that was a dramatic departure from anything he had made before. This volume reproduces for the first time the complete series of those magnificent works that Johns, one of our greatest living artists, has made over the last eight years.The first painting in this new series included a string hanging from upper right to lower left, generating a curve called a "catenary," and this curve became the compositional backbone of the entire series. Johns produced a total of 61 paintings, drawings and prints based on the catenary theme, all of which are reproduced in this volume. The work is saturated with autobiographical references, both transparent and opaque, while it simultaneously encourages multiple layers of meaning. Sensual surfaces, fragile constructions, and formal rigor meet allusions to key moments in the history of modern art and motifs from Johns's earlier work. The poetry of Johns's catenary series is explored in an illustrated essay by the scholar Scott Rothkopf, published alongside the catalogue's 51 color plates.

At a time when the dominant mode of painting, Abstract Expressionism, emphasised expressive drama through bold brushwork and largely abstract compositions, Johns’ paintings of the American flag, targets, numbers and the alphabet demonstrated a decided departure from convention. Despite being painted with obvious care, they seemed emotionally reticent, cool and quiet, far from the emotional fireworks then fashionable. “It all began... with my painting a picture of an American flag. Using this design took care of a great deal for me because I didn’t have to design it. So I went on to similar things like the targets - things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels. For instance, I’ve always thought of painting as a surface; painting it in one color made this very clear. Then I decided that looking at a painting should not require a special kind of focus like going to church. A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.” Unlike most artists’ statements in New York during the 1950s, Johns’ remarks contained none of the familiar talk of doubt and angst, and his selection of subject matter appeared deliberate, thoughtful, and far removed from emotional attachments and desires. To younger artists, his art seemed not so much cold and unfeeling as clear-eyed and honest after the excesses of Abstract Expressionism. Furthermore, in selecting recognisable subjects, Johns seemed to reject prevailing abstract modes of painting, yet his subjects themselves - flags, targets, numbers - each possessed a vital characteristic of classic abstraction, namely, a flatness rendering them all but indistinguishable from the picture plane itself. This book underlines how Johns’s work made the polarity between abstraction and representation that had dominated debates about modern art for decades seem suddenly obsolete, opening up other ways of thinking about art’s relation to the world. It also tries to understand why, since his first exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery at the age of twenty-seven, he has remained one of the major artists of the contemporary artistic scene.

"This lavishly illustrated retrospective of Jasper Johns's work offers a new perspective on the artist's work based on his own enduring fascination with mirroring and doubles"--