Lawrence Rinder

Charles Howard: A Margin of Chaos accompanies the first museum exhibition dedicated to American artist Charles Houghton Howard (1899–1978) since 1956. Howard, part of a circle of artists that included Alexander Calder, Gordon Onslow Ford, Grant Wood and Ben Nicholson, had an active and distinguished career in midcentury America and England. His enigmatic, meticulous paintings, often intimate in scale, bridge figurative, Surrealist and abstract currents in modern art. Though his work evolved over his career, Howard said that all of his pictures “are closely related … They are in fact all portraits of the same general subject, of the same idea, carried as far as I am able at the time.” The first scholarly publication on Howard, this fully illustrated volume includes essays by Apsara DiQuinzio, Robert Gober and Lauren Kroiz, a reprint of one of Howard’s own essays from 1946, an illustrated chronology and exhibition history.

Hans Hofmann, a representative of Abstract Expressionism and American Modernism during the 20th century with European roots, had a fundamental influence as a teacher on the development of modern art in America. His brightly coloured paintings, watercolours and drawings can now be discovered in a European retrospective. From 1904 until 1914, the painter Hans Hofmann (1880 – 1966), who was a friend of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, the Fauves and Robert and Sonia Delaunay, witnessed and absorbed the new art in Paris, the centre of European art. In his art school, founded in Munich in 1915, he became a mediator of French modernism and achieved international fame as an art teacher. In 1932 he emigrated to the United States and two years later opened the Han s Hofmann School of Fine Arts in New York. He influenced a new generation of American artists, including Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler and Barnett Newman.

Combining studio, classroom, library, gallery and stage, The Possible offered a new model of museum exhibition. Rather than presenting existing artworks, artist/curator David Wilson hosted over 100 artists and collectives--with “artist” understood in the broadest sense. The BAM/PFA galleries were transformed into studios that were used by both guest artists and museum visitors. The exhibition made itself during its four-month run, as works created in the studios were exhibited in an adjacent gallery. The catalogue is conceived in a similar vein, as one of the experiments of The Possible created by guest artists Luke Fischbeck and Lauren Mackler of Public Fiction, a Los Angeles–based project space and journal. Created partially onsite, it is inspired by the exhibition’s spirit of improvisation and collaboration. It gathers essays, photographic documentation and printed artifacts generated in the exhibition itself.

This is the first major exploration of the works of American abstract painter and watercolorist Suzan Frecon (b. 1941), critically acclaimed for her sensitive arrangement of color, form, and texture, and for the philosophical resonance of her art. By restricting herself to nonrepresentational forms, earth-based colors, and, in the case of her watercolors, “found” pieces of paper, Frecon achieves an unequaled sense of balance and openness in her work. The book features ten oil paintings and thirty watercolors dating from the late 1990s to 2007. form, color, illumination celebrates the uniqueness of Frecon's painting and articulates how her work distinguishes itself within the history of abstract painting. The authors describe in-depth how her artistic process and materials are an integral part of her focus and aesthetic. Included is an essay revealing the "ethics” of her aesthetics––an argument for abstraction and an attention to truth that is not divorced from social and environmental concerns. Distributed for The Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:The Menil Collection, Houston (March 6 – May 11, 2008) Kunstmuseum Bern (June 11 – September 28, 2008)

Avery Preesman's work makes the term "organic" relative. His paintings and sculptures naturalize our relationship to what can only be called a forest of signs, confirming the extent to which what we see and how we see it are in fact already abstract. Based on formal impressions of quotidian and personal subjects, Preesman's brand of abstraction is very open-ended. The elements of his work tend to be spare, their relationships simple, and the handling of materials highly tactile. Although the work is staunchly abstract, it is hardly autonomous, welcoming an engagement with architecture and unafraid to court idiosyncratic narratives. A quirky mixture of the symbolic and diagrammatic, Preesman's geometry is of the humanist variety where rationality is not privileged over expression, no matter how consuming the preoccupation with form and structure. This book, elegantly designed by the acclaimed Dutch typographer Walter Nikkels, is a companion publication to two exhibitions collaboratively organized by The University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and The Renaissance Society. These were the first exhibitions of Preesman's work in the United States. This book documents both The University Gallery's survey of Preesman's body of work to date, and his new works presented by the Renaissance Society, including several site-specific pieces. Co-published with The University Gallery, University of Massachusetts.

Entertaining, lyrical and informative, Art Life is a selection of essays by well-known contemporary art curator Lawrence Rinder, all written since 1991. Rinder's work is distinguished by a concern for art's role in reflecting and shaping daily life. Informed by history, philosophy and popular culture, these essays provide keys to understanding a broad range of contemporary practices--from painting and drawing to net art and video installation. In each of these texts, Rinder muses on how the intersection of material, image and idea creates meaning in some of the most compelling artworks of the past few decades. Among the many artists discussed are Luc Tuymans, Sophie Calle, Martin Creed, Ara Peterson, Jim Drain, Louise Bourgeois, Mark Lombardi, Jack Smith and Irit Batsry. All of the essays in Art Life are unified by Rinder's clear writing style--seamlessly interspersed with a selection of images--and his consistent engagement with the experience of art and art's relevance to our daily lives. Ideal for scholars and students alike.