Klaus Ottmann

Honor Titus (born 1989) is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. A self-taught painter, Titus is deeply influenced by his creative past as a musician and poet. Titus’s paintings, often suffused with a sense of romance, are embedded with nostalgic references to a simpler time and feature dark, luminous jewel tones. His works often depict faceless figures in minimal urban landscapes, reflecting the isolation that stems from metropolitan anonymity. Titus’s simplified compositions and striking patches of colour are inspired by Les Nabis while his flat, decorative surfaces echo the graphic hyperrealism of artists inspired by American advertising, such as Alex Katz. This, the artist’s first trade monograph, presents new and recent works, including a body of work presented in his 2022–3 solo exhibition at Timothy Taylor, London, Bourgeoisie in Bloom. Here Titus expands on the themes of ritual, class and nostalgia that have characterised previous work, incorporating debutante balls in which young adults are presented to society. Favouring bright panels of colour, Titus evokes traditions of cultural formality, using precise brushwork to delineate details of old-world glamour such as the tilt of a bow tie and the line of a ballgown. A foreword by artist Henry Taylor considers his first encounters with Titus’s work and their continuing friendship. Taylor describes the biographical factors that inform the subjects Titus paints, including music, referencing the first solo show of the artist’s work held at Henry Taylor Gallery in Chinatown, 2020. A text by Durga Chew-Bose brings the themes of nostalgia and memory into the field of discussion. Anecdotes relayed to Chew-Bose bring forward real experiences in relation with his work. The artist’s own words illuminate filmic, musical, photographic and romantic influences on the paintings, while dwelling, lastly, upon his studio space. Klaus Ottmann’s text reflects philosophically and sociologically on Titus’s oeuvre, bringing key art historical reference points into the discussion. Ottmann’s contribution draws connections to key works of literature and criticism that contextualise his work. Published following the exhibition Honor Titus: Bourgeoisie in Bloom at Timothy Taylor, London, 17 November 2022 – 14 January 2023, the publication has been edited by Chloe Waddington, designed by Joe Gilmore, and co-published in 2023 by Timothy Taylor and Anomie Publishing, London. Honor Titus (b. 1989, Brooklyn, NY) is a self-taught American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Recent solo exhibitions include Honor Titus: Bourgeoisie in Bloom, Timothy Taylor, London, United Kingdom (2022–3); Spotlight: Honor Titus, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2022); Honor Titus: For Heaven’s Sake, Timothy Taylor, New York, NY (2021) and Honor Titus: Goodness Gracious, Studio Henry Taylor, Los Angeles, CA (2020). His work has been part of numerous group exhibitions, including IRL (In Real Life), Timothy Taylor, London, United Kingdom (2021); Parallel Worlds, Nassima Landau, Tel Aviv, Israel (2021); and I will wear you in my heart of heart, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2021); and (Nothing but) Flowers, Karma, New York, NY (2020), among others. His work is represented in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina; Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada; The Bunker Artspace, Palm Beach, Florida; and the Longlati Foundation, Shanghai, China. Titus has been featured in publications including Art in America, Artnet, Frieze, GQ, Interview Magazine, The New York Times, and Town & Country.

This is an exploration of two artists' creative dialogue with gardens and nature: the French post-impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) and the contemporary American artist Jennifer Bartlett (b. 1941). Both were avid gardeners, and gardens, especially the ones they created for themselves, had a lifelong influence on both artists' works. Garden views from both inside the house and the outside became become a defining subject. This volume brings together over 45 paintings, drawings, and prints by Bonnard and Bartlett. Gardens are a recurrent theme throughout Bonnard's oeuvre, from the early days of Le Clos, the Bonnard summer home in the Dauphine, and his first garden at Vernonnet, west of Paris, to his final home, Le Bosquet near Cagnes, which became his favorite place to paint and from which he seldom traveled. Jennifer Bartlett emerged in the mid-1970s to become one of the leading American artists of her time, and one of the first female painters of her generation to be both commercially successful and critically acclaimed. Since the 1990s, Bartlett has been spending her summers in a small cottage near the beach in Amagansett, on Long Island's East End. Like Bonnard's paintings of gardens, Bartlett's In the Garden series continues to reveal its true urgency through of the artist's relationship to nature and dialogue with the many languages in painterly history.

Over the course of a two-year period, photographer Brain Dailey traveled across the country with the objective of capturing individual portraits of the uncelebrated American electorate. From Jackson Square in downtown New Orleans to the open range in Texas, he organized impromptu photo shoots with more than 1,200 citizens, including those with no interest in politics or voting. In the portraits each individual expresses their personal identity casually in dress and pose, while their political identity is a chosen backdrop: blue for Democrat, red for Republican, grey for Independent, green for the Green Party and orange for those who don’t vote. The resulting monograph, Brian Dailey: America in Color challenges our perceptions of the components and individual characters that shape the American political process.

A critical and commercial success since the 1970s, Jennifer Bartlett (b. 1941) has become one of the most visionary and influential artists of our time. In the words of New York Times critic John Russell, Bartlett’s art “enlarges our notion of time, and of memory, and of change, and of painting itself.” Her abundant intelligence and inventiveness allow her to synthesize diverse sources and styles, and imbue her paintings with expressive life and moral imagination. Included in this handsome volume are an intimate interview with the artist and an excerpt from History of the Universe, Bartlett’s first novel, giving further insight into the thought processes of this uniquely creative artist. Distributed for the Parrish Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (06/27/13–10/13/13) Parrish Art Museum (04/27/14–07/13/14)

"Fairfield Porter Raw" is a major survey of the work of this important contemporary artist, and features up to 40 works on paper and board, including a facsimile from one of the artist's sketchbooks reproduced over two-pages of the book. This volume provides a very strong and highly accessible survey of the key developments in the career of this major modern American landscape artist, whose studio was on Long Island's Eastern Shore. It features an introductory essay by Klaus Ottmann, Robert Lehman Curator at The Parrish Art Museum.

"Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008" is the first significant survey of the work and methods of this British-born, Texas- and New York-based 'realist' panoramic painter, and features 25 works from Downes' earliest panoramic work, "A Thaw (1972)" through major examples of painting done in Maine, Texas, New York City and along the New Jersey shorelines. Downes' panoramic paintings, which he developed by studying seventeenth-century Dutch panoramic landscape painting possess a unique balance between realism and abstraction, timelessness and history. Painted from observation they are not 'snapshots' of a scene recreated in the studio; rather, they are chronicles of the human experience, records of social history as it evolves. This volume is a comprehensive compendium of the artist's career, from the current work to pieces that track the growth and development of his themes and concepts over three decades, and will contribute to the discourse concerning the changing nature of painting in the 21st century.