Pepe Karmel

Taking content as a guide to form, this important survey on abstract art breaks open the canon to make room for artists from across the globe. ‘Abstract art is always rooted in experience of the real world.’ So begins art historian Pepe Karmel’s exploration of the origins and evolution of abstract art. Traditional histories of the subject have concentrated on formal innovations – abstraction as a sequence of ‘isms’ – with less interest in how the art relates to the world around us. At the same time, they have tended to privilege a core group of European and North American artists considered central to the subject’s discussion. Moving well beyond the established figures and movements usually associated with abstract art, and focusing on subject matter and content rather than simply colour and form, Karmel reconsiders the history of abstraction from a global perspective, showing us how artists from all parts of the world have used abstract imagery to convey personal, social and political experience. Following an introductory account of the pioneers of abstraction, including Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich and Jackson Pollock, the book forgoes a standard chronological structure to explore the subject through five eclectic, theme-based chapters: ‘Bodies’, ‘Landscapes’, ‘Cosmologies’, ‘Architectures’ and ‘Signs and Patterns’. Taking a figurative artwork as the starting point for each chapter, the author ranges across a wide array of topics – embryos, star charts and calligraphy among them – all the while clearly demonstrating the link between abstraction and the real world. Complementing the text throughout are groups of carefully selected artworks, paired to reveal surprising affinities and significant differences. At the heart of the book is a desire to demonstrate new ways of looking at abstract art through the prism of a broader, more inclusive mix of artists, from Vasily Kandinsky to Ibrahim El-Salahi, Carlos Cruz-Diez to Bridget Riley, Anni Albers to Sean Scully, and Julie Mehretu to Wu Guanzhong.

A major new survey that offers fresh insights on Pablo Picasso's artworks, written by a leading authority on the master. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. This important new monograph, released to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the artist's death, presents Picasso's unparalleled achievements in all media: painting, sculpture, drawing and prints. Art historian and curator Pepe Karmel offers fresh analysis of this great master for a 21st-century audience, considering Picasso's work through the lens of art rather than biography. He demonstrates how Picasso's style, evolving over the course of seven decades, introduced visual languages and narratives that transformed modern art. Arranged chronologically by themes and movements, Looking at Picasso is profusely illustrated with renowned paintings, such as the provocative Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and his monumental Guernica, protesting the horror of war; these are accompanied by numerous lesser-known works, including Picasso's daring sculptures and his animated reinterpretation of Velazquez's 17th-century masterpiece Las Meninas. Numerous exhibitions planned for 2023 will bring Picasso to the forefront. This engaging book will appeal to museum-goers curious to learn more about Picasso's career and anyone interested in modern art.

Taking a radically new approach to the history of abstract painting, Pepe Karmel applies a scholarly yet fresh vision to reconsider the history of abstraction from a global perspective and to demonstrate that abstraction is embedded in the real world. Moving beyond the orthodox canonical terrain of abstract art, he surveys artists from across the globe, examining their work from the point of view of content rather than form. Previous writers have approached the history of abstraction as a series of movements solving a series of formal problems. In contrast, Karmel focuses on the subject matter of abstract art, showing how artists have used abstract imagery to express social, cultural and spiritual experience. An introductory discussion of the work of the early modern pioneers of abstraction opens up into a completely new approach to abstract art based around five inclusive themes – the body, the landscape, the cosmos, architecture, and the repertory of man-made signs and patterns – each of which has its own chapter. Starting from a figurative example, Karmel works outwards to develop a series of narratives that go far beyond the established figures and movements traditionally associated with abstract art. Each narrative is complemented by a number of ‘featured’ abstract works, which provide an in-depth illustration of the breadth of Karmel’s distinctive vision. A wide-ranging examination of topics – from embryos to the surface of skin, from vortexes to waves, planets to star charts, towers to windows – is interwoven with detailed analysis of works by established figures like Joan Miró and Jackson Pollock alongside pieces by lesser-known artists such as Wu Guanzhong, Hilma af Klint and Odili Donald Odita.

Famous as the inventor of the soak-stain technique that ushered in Color Field painting in the mid-twentieth century, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) continued to create powerful, original abstractions throughout her lifetime. This volume focuses on a selection of paintings that reveal the relationship between the pittura and the panorama in her work over the course of four decades. As Frankenthaler scholar John Elderfield notes, this interplay between works that are reminiscent of easel paintings, though made on the floor, and large, horizontal canvases that open onto shallow but expansive spaces, as panoramas do, was intrinsic to the artist's development. In an original essay, Pepe Karmel traces connections between Frankenthaler's sumptuous evocations of what she called the atmosphere of landscape and inspirations ranging from sixteenth-century Venetian paintings to works by Lucio Fontana, as well as her influence on successors including Mary Weatherford. Published to accompany an exhibition organized by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and Venetian Heritage, in association with Gagosian, at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice, this generously illustrated volume offers a close look at a key aspect of Frankenthaler's long pursuit of painting as a means to convey experiences and effects.

Picasso's "Les Demoiselles dAvignon" (Museum of Modern Art, New York) dubbed by Pierre Daix as the first painting in modern art represents a milestone in the history of art. Picasso's radical break with tradition was to be a decisive influence on modern visual art. Only after this painting did Picasso, together with Braque, feel able to launch into the Cubist adventure which literally splintered the visual realm; it was to change the face of painting forever by creating a new visual language and an original perspective on the world.