Books by John Yau

The remarkable plein air paintings of Liu Xiaodong (b.1963), which chronicle everyday lives within our diverse modern world, are the focus of this first monograph of his career to date. Immersing himself in communities around the globe, Xiaodong seeks to present people who often sit on the fringes of society who find themselves marginalised within a contemporary world striving for homogenisation. At first glance a traditional realist painter, closer examination reveals an artist exploring a range of media while interrogating the opportunities presented by modern technology. The result is an outstanding body of work, often monumental in scale, that examines, reconsiders, and extends observational painting in fresh directions, while bringing into question the lines between fact and fiction, the traditional and the contemporary, to create a wholly original vision.

The first illustrated monograph to survey the work to date of major American painter Philip Taaffe (b.1955), whose work has expanded the parameters of painting through a fascinating layering of different techniques and imagery, including marbling, silkscreen, collage and linocut.

Focusses on some of the renowned poets and artists, such as John Ashbery, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Creeley. This work contains eleven essays, which include: ""Passionate Spectator: On Frank O'Hara's Art Criticism""; ""At the Movies with Weldon Kees and Frank O'Hara""; ""The Poet as Art Critic (On John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara)""; and more.