Books published by Distributed Art Publishers

In the summer of 1937, Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and a professor at Harvards new Graduate School of Design, rented a house on Planting Island, near the base of Cape Cod. There, he and his wife, Ise, hosted a festive reunion of Bauhaus masters and students who had recently emigrated from Europe.

The extraordinary journey of an "impossible" sculpture made from the negative form of an ancient Korean gateIn 2006, London-based Korean artist Do Ho Suh (born 1962) began work on a seemingly impossible project-to "make something out of nothing," casting the negative form of a traditional Korean gate in solid acrylic resin. Portal would take nearly a decade to complete, and would provide the site for fundamental developments in Suh's thinking on the role of both artist and museum in the 21st century, as well as the relationship between East and West. This volume tells the epic story of that process through those who made it possible. Through color illustrations and texts, it provides unique access to the typically veiled fabrication process: the process of scanning, modelling and constructing a nine-ton sculpture that would appear as if it was not there, a "living ghost image" cast from negative space.

In 'The Space Between', a generative period in Korean art between the traditional and the contemporary is illuminated comprehensively for the first time. After the centuries-long Joseon dynasty came 35 uninterrupted years of the Japanese colonial period (1910-45) followed by the Korean War (1950-53). During this tumultuous time, Korean artists grappled with issues such as identity and nationalism and experimented with a broad range of media. The book is organized into five categories: The Modern Encounter- foreign influences enter the country in a significant way in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; The Modern Response- how foreign methods are accepted or rejected; The Pageantry of the New Woman (Sinyeoseong) Movement- modern women's attitudes; The Modern Momentum- advances in using foreign styles; and Evolving into the Contemporary- a glimpse into the contemporary. Most notable during this period are the introductions of photography, sculpture and oils, which arrived via Japan and came to define modern art in Korea. At the same time, traditional ink painting reinvented itself: works grew larger in scale while keeping traditional landscape motifs with alterations in the use of color and composition. Artists of modern ink believed that theirs was the true future of modern art, unsullied by elements found in the West. By the end of the Korean War, the magnified status of the US made way for access to American abstract art and, indirectly, European informel. For nearly a decade, abstract expressionist and informel styles dominated Korean art. The volume concludes in the 1960s, setting the stage for contemporary art in Korea. Exhibition: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA (11.09.2022 - 19.02.2023).

The overlooked yet vibrant history of Black participation in American film, from the beginning of cinema through the civil rights movementFrom the dawn of the medium onward, Black filmmakers have helped define American cinema. Black performers, producers and directors--Bert Williams, Oscar Micheaux, Herb Jeffries, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee and William Greaves, to name just a few--had a vast and resounding impact. Black film artists not only developed an enduring independent tradition but also transformed mainstream Hollywood, fueled and reflected sociopolitical movements, captured Black experience in all its robust complexity, and influenced generations to come. As harrowing as it is beautiful, this history of Black cinema and its legacy is often overlooked.Regeneration accompanies a first-of-its-kind exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures exploring seven decades of Black participation in American cinema. Amplifying this underrepresented history in colorful and striking detail, the book features an in-depth curatorial essay and scholarly case-study texts on topics such as early Black independent filmmaking, Black spectatorship during the Jim Crow era and home movies as an essential form of Black self-representation. The volume also makes meaningful connections to the present through interviews with award-winning contemporary Black filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins and Dawn Porter. An extensive filmography and chronology offer an essential resource for anyone interested in Black cinema, while images of contemporary visual artworks further illustrate the volume throughout.

A captivating selection of family snapshots taken from his mother's photo albums, Michael Snow's latest artist's book illuminates patterns and motifs in the passage of timeOver the past half-century, through works such as the milestone avant-garde film Wavelength (1967), Toronto-based artist Michael Snow (born 1928) has explored the nature of perception, consciousness, language and temporality. This last theme is particularly relevant to his latest artist's book, which is dedicated to the life of his adventurous mother, Marie-Antoinette Françoise Carmen Levesque Snow Roig, whose trove of family photographs provide a narrative throughline here. Snow consolidates his mother's photo albums, presenting a total of 1,500 images. In a tenderly penned foreword, he explains the simple impetus for the project: "[The photographs] are so beautiful and so historic that I wish to share them with others." While he has integrated small samples of these albums into his work before-notably figuring in his landmark catalog for the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1970, Michael Snow/A Survey-this volume provides a much larger and more unified selection. As a result, the compiled images tell a more complete biographical story-one that Snow leaves intact on the surface. He brings his own layer of interpretation to the photographs by drawing out patterns within the collection and his mother's writing. Snow creates an album that is fully his own, embracing, as art historian Martha Langford describes, a "deep understanding and surrender to form."

The official catalog accompanying the major retrospective at MoCA LA: Henry Taylor creates a grand pageant of contemporary Black life in AmericaSurveying 30 years of Henry Taylor's work in painting, sculpture and installation, this comprehensive monograph celebrates a Los Angeles artist widely appreciated for his unique aesthetic, social vision and freewheeling experimentation. Taylor's portraits and allegorical tableaux-populated by friends, family members, strangers on the street, athletic stars and entertainers-display flashes of familiarity in their seemingly brash compositions, which nonetheless linger in the imagination with uncanny detail. In his paintings on cigarette packs, cereal boxes and other found supports, Taylor brings his primary medium into the realm of common culture. Similarly, the artist's installations often recode the forms and symbolisms of found materials (bleach bottles, push brooms) to play upon art historical tropes and modernism's appropriations of African or African American culture. Taken together, the various strands of Taylor's practice display a deep observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century, while also inviting a humanist fellowship that pushes outward from the particular. Raised in Oxnard, California, Henry Taylor (born 1958) took art classes at Oxnard College in the 1980s and studied under James Jarvaise, who became a mentor. From 1984 through 1995 Henry Taylor worked as a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Mental Hospital (a facility that is now California State University Channel Islands) while concurrently attending the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, where he obtained his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1995. Taylor has had institutional solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

"A convergence of science and art, maps held a very important place in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, and they were of particular interest to Vermeer, who had something of an obsession with them. Of the thirty-four paintings attributed to him, nine have wall maps and other cartographic objects in them, and this fascination with maps has long intrigued scholars. Other painters of his time were drawn to maps, but none painted them with such precision. This first book to fully explore this intriguing aspect of this beloved artist's work will greatly enrich our understanding of him"--

A visual and conceptual conversation between two leading US photo-artists famed for their mutual explorations of race, class and powerDawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems met in New York in the late 1970s, and over the next 45 years these close friends and colleagues have each produced unique and influential bodies of work around shared interests and concerns. This publication brings together over 140 photographs and video art from the 1970s through the 2010s by two of our most notable and influential photo-based artists.Since first meeting at the Studio Museum in Harlem five decades ago, Bey and Weems have maintained spirited and supportive mutual engagement while exploring and addressing similar themes: race, class, representation, and systems of power. Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue brings their work together in five thematic groupings to shed light on their unique creative visions and trajectories, and their shared concerns and principles.Photographer Dawoud Bey (born 1953) had his first exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. Since then, his work has been presented internationally to critical and popular acclaim. Recent large-scale exhibitions of his photographs have been presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and Tate Modern, London. Bey's writings on his own and others' work are included in Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply and Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities. He is a professor of art and Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago.Famed for her Kitchen Table Series, among other works, Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953) explores power, class, Black identity, womanhood, and the historical past and its resonance in the present moment. In addition to photography, Weems creates video, performance and works of public art, and organizes thematic gatherings which bring together creative thinkers across a broad array of disciplines. Her work has been exhibited across the world, at venues such as the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo and the American Academy in Rome.

Including textiles, paintings and decorative arts, Archive of the World offers a lucid alternative to traditional interpretations of art from the so-called New WorldExquisitely illustrated with new photography, this stunning book represents the first comprehensive study of LACMA's notable holdings of Spanish American art. Following the arrival of the Spaniards in the Americas in the 15th century, the region developed complex artistic traditions that drew simultaneously on Indigenous, European, Asian and African art. In 1565 the Spaniards conquered the Philippines, inaugurating a new commercial route that connected Asia, Europe and the Americas. Private homes and civic and ecclesiastic institutions in Spanish America were filled with imported and locally made objects. This confluence of riches signaled the status of the Americas as a major entrepôt--what one contemporaneous author described as "the archive of the world." Many works created in Spanish America were also shipped across the globe, attesting to their wide appeal.Arranged into five thematic sections, the volume features a conversation about LACMA's collection and nearly 100 catalog entries by various scholars, including Pablo F. Amador Marrero, Aaron M. Hyman, Rachel Kaplan, Paula Mues Orts, Jeanette F. Peterson, Elena Phipps, Maya Stanfield-Mazzi and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, among others. These authoritative texts offer multiple access points to appreciate the material, aesthetic and historical aspects of the works, providing a lasting reference in this increasingly influential area of art history.

A sourcebook, reader and document of the MoMA PS1 exhibition gathering an intergenerational and international group of 47 artists and collectives with deep ties to New YorkThrough images, artist writings, roundtable conversations and oral histories highlighting key artists from the fifth edition of Greater New York at MoMA PS1, this book expands core themes in the exhibition, such as the interrelation of the surrealistic and the documentary; New York as site of Indigenous and diasporic cultural production; and the everyday challenges of living as an artist in a rapidly changing city. Central to the book is a wide selection of primary source materials: writings, poetry, notes, sketches and scripts by exhibition artists--offering, in their own words, a window into their interdisciplinary processes and approaches.Artists include: Yuji Agematsu, Nadia Ayari, BlackMass Publishing, Diane Burns, Kristi Cavataro, Curtis Cuffie, Hadi Fallahpisheh, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Raque Ford, Luis Frangella, Dolores Furtado, Julio Galán, Doreen Garner, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, Robin Graubard, Milford Graves, Bettina Grossman, Avijit Halder, Bill Hayden, Steffani Jemison, G. Peter Jemison, E'wao Kagoshima, Marie Karlberg, Matthew Langan-Peck, Las Nietas de Nonó, Athena LaTocha, Carolyn Lazard, Sean-Kierre Lyons, Hiram Maristany, Servane Mary, Rosemary Mayer, Alan Michelson, Ahmed Morsi, Nicolas Moufarrege, Marilyn Nance, Tammy Nguyen, Shelley Niro, Kayode Ojo, Paulina Peavy, Freya Powell, Raha Raissnia, Andy Robert, Diane Severin Nguyen, Shanzhai Lyric, Regina Vater, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa and Lachell Workman.

British designer Lee Alexander McQueen's collections synthesized his training in Savile Row tailoring, theatrical design, and haute couture with references spanning time, geography, mediums, and technology. Taking a look at McQueen's design process, this book documents the designer's diverse sources of inspiration by displaying McQueen's fashions alongside related artworks. McQueen's encyclopedic references range from ancient Greece and Rome to Tibetan silk brocade patterns, 17th-century Dutch painting, the prints of Goya, and the films of Stanley Kubrick. In each of these cases and beyond, examples of McQueen's work are displayed alongside artworks from LACMA's permanent collection.

Houle's painting blends Western abstraction, postmodernism and conceptualism with First Nations art history and techniques, challenging expectations about Indigenous aestheticsAn extensive survey spanning more than 50 years, Robert Houle: Red Is Beautiful celebrates Houle's ongoing career as an internationally recognized Indigenous artist, curator and writer, calling attention to First Nations and settler-colonialist histories through the critical lens of his impressive oeuvre. Painful personal experiences from the time he spent in residential school as a youth are brought into sharp relief through painting. Houle's visual commentary tackles global topics including commercial appropriation, Indigenous resistance movements, land rights, religion and war, among others. A leader in challenging systemic racial biases, Houle has played a significant role at successfully introducing Indigenous art and its relationship to the contemporary art world in Canada and beyond. Rare excerpts from the artist's archive are featured alongside major scholarly texts, poetic writings and personal anecdotes from fellow prominent Indigenous thinkers and creators, offering new insights about an artist ahead of his time.Robert Houle (born 1947) teaches at the OCADU and has collaborated on projects that seek to establish awareness of First Nations contemporary art, such as the Land, Spirit, Power exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 1992. He is represented by Kinsman Robinson Galleries in Toronto.

Trouvs evident investment in tricks of the eyeand of the mindpaint her as a 21st-century surrealist IArtforum/I

A career retrospective on the conceptually complex sculpture of the Canadian postminimalist

An unprecedented look at Nellie Mae Rowe's art as a radical act of self-expression and liberation in the post-civil rights-era SouthA New York Times critics' pick Best Art Books 2021 During the last 15 years of her life, Nellie Mae Rowe lived on Paces Ferry Road, a major thoroughfare in Vinings, Georgia, and welcomed visitors to her "Playhouse," which she decorated with found-object installations, handmade dolls, chewing-gum sculptures and hundreds of drawings. Rowe created her first works as a child in rural Fayetteville, Georgia, but only found the time and space to reclaim her artistic practice in the late 1960s, following the deaths of her second husband and her longtime employer. This book offers an unprecedented view of how Rowe cultivated her drawing practice late in life, starting with colorful and at times simple sketches on found materials and moving toward her most celebrated, highly complex compositions on paper. Through photographs and reconstructions of her Playhouse created for an experimental documentary on her life, this publication is also the first to juxtapose her drawings with her art environment. Nellie Mae Rowe (1900-82) grew up in rural Fayetteville, Georgia. When her Playhouse became an Atlanta attraction, she began to exhibit her art outside of her home, beginning with Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Art, 1770-1976, a traveling exhibition that brought attention to several Southern self-taught artists, including Rowe and Howard Finster. In 1982, the year she died, Rowe's work received a new level of acclaim, as she was honored in a solo exhibition at Spelman College and included as one of three women artists in the Corcoran Gallery of Art's landmark exhibition .

"Published in conjunction with the touring exhibition, Light, Space, Surface. Itinerary: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy October 2, 2021-January 30, 2022 Frist Art Museum June 3, 2022-September 6, 2022"--