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Vitamin Txt: Words in Contemporary Art, Evan Moffitt (contributor), Phaidon, 288pp £49.95 (hb)Phaidon’s latest contemporary art survey in the Vitamin series focuses on language and words in art. A selection of curators, critics, museum directors and academics nominated more than 100 artists from 34 countries who “place the use of text centrally within their artistic practices”, according to a publisher’s statement. Artists featured include Ricci Albenda, Hellen Ascoli, Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Sophie Calle, Alejandro Cesarco and Sable Elyse Smith who, according to the publication, “often combines the language of others with her own personal narrative” (Smith is known for her Colouring Book series focused on the US court system). Meanwhile, the career and innovations of Barbara Kruger are analysed in a text by Madeline Weisburg, an assistant curator at the New Museum in New York, who writes that Kruger’s “daring text-based work is legendary for its linguistic spectacle and agitprop conviction”.Hello We Were Talking About Hudson, Steve Lafreniere (ed), Soberscove Press, 216pp, $24 (pb)Feature Inc was the legendary gallery founded and ran by the dealer known simply as Hudson, first in Chicago (1984-88) and then in New York, where the space stayed open from 1988 until Hudson’s death in 2014, aged 63. The gallerybecame known as a space where artists who are well established today, like Richard Prince and Huma Bhabha, had some of their first shows. In a 2004 interview Hudson said: “Critics could be less agenda-oriented, and artists more severe with their editing and more honest with their selection of style and subject matter.” A publisher’s statement adds: “[Hudson] challenged the operating principles of othercommercial galleries, privileging uncertainty, idealism, plurality, and generosity above the business of art.” More than 35 interviews with Hudson’s collectors, colleagues, friends and his artists—such as Charles Ray and Richard Rezac—are included.Focal Points series, Robert Storr, Francesca Pietropaolo (ed), Heni Publishing:Vol. 1,Focal Points: Bruce Nauman, 152pp, £19.99 (hb)Vol.2, Focal Points: Ad Reinhardt, 140pp, £19.99 (hb)Vol. 3 Focal Points: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, 128pp,£19.99 (hb)Focal Points is billed as a brand new book series, offering “fresh interpretations of the varied territory of Modern and contemporary art”, according to a publisher’s statement. It launches with collected essays, articles and reviews, including previously unpublished texts, by the established US curator and art critic Robert Storr. Volume 1 brings together 30 years of Storr’s writings on the American artist Bruce Nauman; Volume 2 assesses the work of the Abstract Expressionist Ad Reinhardt (1913-67); Volume 3 focuses on identity and representation in the works of artists such as David Hammons, Glenn Ligon and Adrian Piper. Storr was the dean of painting at the Yale School of Art from 2006 to 2016 where he is now professor of painting.Barkley L. Hendricks: solid!, Zoé Whitley (ed), Skira and Jack Shainman Gallery, 300pp, $70 (hb)The US artist Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017) was considered primarily a painter, known for his depictions of cool swaggering figures in full length portraits. This new monograph explores Hendricks’s career spanning six decades, “encompassing not only his signature large-scale canvases of distinctively dressed (or undressed) individuals, but evocative landscapes, lush watercolours on paper, hard-edged geometric abstractions, and singular photographs informed by his studies with Walker Evans,” says a publisher’s statement. Hendricks initially specialised in photography at Yale University where he did his Master’s in fine art. Contributors include Richard Powell, a professor of art history at Duke University, and the fashion designer and curator Duro Olowu, while John Jennings, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California, “ushers in new discursive perspectives” on Hendricks’s practice.The Avant-Gardists: Artists in Revolt in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union 1917-1935, Sjeng Scheijen, Thames & Hudson, 504pp, £35 (hb)In the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the art scene also underwent upheaval as Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Lyubov Popova and other avant-garde artists threw “themselves into the revolutionary struggle, transforming the visual landscape with their progressive murals, posters, installations and performances”, says a publisher’s statement. Scheijen throws new light on the Russian avant-gardists, highlighting for instance how Kandinsky, Malevich and Chagall were, for a short period of time, high-ranking officials in the Bolshevik government. The author also references personal documents such as diaries along with government papers, drawn almost exclusively from Russian language sources. “I especially made a detailed reconstruction of the three incarcerations and the torture and death of Kazimir Malevich, in my view one of the greatest and most complete artists of the 20th century,” Scheijen says.
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