Vitamin P is an image-filled book that provides an international overview of the state of painting today. Documenting the most recent concerns, ideas and trends, Vitamin P explores the work of a vibrant new generation that is revitalizing this traditional, but continually updated, medium. Included are 114 of painting's leading practitioners, who were nominated by esteemed critics, curators and other experts from around the world. Each artist is represented by numerous examples of his or her work, accompanied by an explanatory text and short biography.
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About the book In recent years, abstract painting has developed a rich complexity that, more than ever, rewards intensive viewing. Bob Nickas introduces the reader to the key issues in contemporary abstraction while profiling eighty artists who, in the last five years, have made it one of the most exciting areas in contemporary art. Each artist's paintings are illustrated in lavish full-colour images and accompanied by a text that leads the reader through the work in language both accessible and illuminating. The product of extensive new research and several dozen studio visits with artists around the world, Nickas's text brings out the key details and distinctions in their work, creating a vivid picture of a field awash in creative innovation. Painting Abstraction is an essential reference tool for curators, critics, artists and collectors, and a major statement on the future of painting from one of contemporary art's most respected voices.
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A new breed of contemporary artists is celebrating new found international recognition for their style and approach to creating art that is sprouting from and largely influenced by visual subcultures. The Upset documents the burgeoning artists in this new movement whose works are often figurative and narrative employing classical techniques with great skills to create sculpture, illustration design and painting with the use of spray cans, sharpies and elaborate colour palettes on canvas. In addition to the striking visual work, the book features portraits of artists as well as in-depth interviews with selected artists who are creating outstanding cutting-edge contemporary fine art.
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This comprehensive study of the art of drawing provides both a commentary on leading contemporary practitioners and a ‘how to explore drawing’ style approach to the art form, celebrating drawing as the process of seeing made visible. From studying our relationship with drawing right from our earliest encounters with it as children, before a distinction between writing and drawing is made, the book explores the freedom of expression that the pencil allows us. Drawing is revealed as a mirror to the process of looking, thereby becoming a visual reflection of the person that created the image.
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“The Pulse of Mixed Media is all about community. Our community. The thing is, 144 pages is not nearly enough space to showcase and highlight all the creative people out there. And that just ain’t right. Our community is nothing if not inclusive. I want everybody to be part of The Pulse.” ~Seth Apter
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A comprehensive guide to oil painting practice and technique, this reference offers an informative A-to-Z section of valuable skills such as how to build up a painting and how to make brushwork describe forms and textures—as well as a wealth of stimulating ideas for the canvas, including combining oil paints with other media, mixing paint with sand and sawdust, and applying it with such tools as knives, rags, or even the fingers. The second half of the book shows all the techniques in context. Illustrated with a gallery of paintings by well-known artists and full of detailed, step-by-step demonstrations, the guide shows how each artist applies knowledge of oil painting techniques to the interpretation of a subject, whether landscape, portrait, or still life.
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As with most art forms, it's best to comprehend traditional drawing techniques before you break the rules. But once you've mastered the basics, you may find that you gravitate to more abstract ways of rendering everything from still lifes to figures. However, this book is not only about avant-garde style; it is experimental in that it forces the artist out of his or her comfort zone, whatever that might be.
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The art of portraiture approached its apex during the sixteenth century in Europe with the discovery of oil painting when the old masters developed and refined techniques that remain unsurpassed to this day. The ascendance of nonrepresentational art in the middle of the twentieth century displaced these venerable skills, especially in academic art circles. Fortunately for aspiring artists today who wish to learn the methods that allowed the Old Masters to achieve the luminous color and subtle tonalities so characteristic of their work, this knowledge has been preserved in hundreds of small traditional painting ateliers that persevered in the old ways in this country and throughout the world.
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Drawing is experiencing an unparalleled surge in the art world. Passé notions that once defined drawing as being a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture have long since been cast aside. Drawing is now fully recognized as its own art form—in the biennials, art fairs, museum exhibitions, and beyond. Drawing has come of age. Contemporary artists are increasingly discovering that drawing is something unique and different from painting. It is an intense, sensitive, compelling, personal, and utterly direct art form, one with its own concepts, characteristics, and techniques. In addition, contemporary drawing is not governed by any particular imagery, but rather encompasses a variety of approaches, including realist, abstract, modernist, and post-modernist.
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Widely regarded as one of the most important American painters of the 20th century, Alice Neel is internationally recognized for her contributions to Abstract Expressionism, especially her perceptive portraiture. Neel (1900–1984) was a portrait painter at a time when this was traditionally the role of a male artist. After ascending to prominence in the 1960s as the feminist movement gained momentum, she has remained an iconic figure in the history of American painting.
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After a century in which the lexicon of artists' materials expanded from the classic oil, canvas, stone and plaster to include photography, film, performance, found objects and concepts, the spotlight has finally swung back. A new generation of artists--as well as some who never abandoned figurative painting in the first place--is relishing the solitary, slow, subtle set of processes involved in not just painting, but painting people. They are choosing paint's unique ability to distill a lifetime of events rather than photography's glimpse of a frozen moment. Painting People, edited by the prominent London art historian and critic Charlotte Mullins, unites and contrasts the work of a key group of artists from around the world, and investigates their richly varied accomplishments in lucid text with detailed commentaries, accompanied by more than 150 reproductions. The list of contributing artists is stellar, ranging from photo-based painters like Luc Tuymans, Peter Doig and Marlene Dumas to Pop artists like Sigmar Polke and Alex Katz, photorealists like Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter, Neoexpressionists like Cecily Brown, and comics-inspired painters like Yoshitomo Nara, Inka Essenhigh and Takashi Murakami. There are erotic grotesques from John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage, meditations on the muse by Elizabeth Peyton and Lucian Freud, "Repro-realistic" work from Neo Rauch and of course self-portraits by Philip Akkerman and Marcel Dzama, among others.
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Examining the intersection of music, psychology, and neuroscience, Music, Thought, and Feeling surveys the rapidly growing field of music cognition and explores its most interesting questions. Written in clear, engaging language that balances scientific and artistic perspectives, this book provides an excellent introduction to--and critical analysis of--the major issues in music cognition, making it ideal for courses in psychology of music. Assuming minimal background in music or psychology, the book begins with an overview of the major theories on how and when music became a widespread aspect of human behavior.
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