Barry Schwabsky Book order

For 15 years, from 1970 until 1985, Lancaster was one of the great centres for live rock music in the world. This superb book tells the full story of this unbelievable period, giving details of the performers and the shows, and revealing what went on backstage.

Amid the turmoil of the pandemic, Barry Schwabsky turned to poetry as a means of grappling with life's uncertainties. His new collection, written during the lockdown, captures the profound discord of a historical moment, blending intimate feelings with broader existential inquiries. Drawing on influences like the Third Century BCE text, his work resonates with themes of hopelessness and resilience. The poems, rich with emotional depth, ultimately reveal themselves as love poems, even in their darkest reflections.

The imposing installation Waterfalls & Clouds consists of three sculptures by the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone (b. Brunnen, Switzerland, 1964; lives and works in New York) and nineteen paintings by the American Pat Steir (b. Newark, NJ, 1940; lives and works in New York). The three large gray monoliths of concrete, sand, and gravel bear the titles Faces, Look, and Twisted and are part of a series of twenty works created in 2018. They are surrounded by nineteen tall and narrow black oil paintings titled Flags for Ugo #1 through #19 (2021); with colorful or white paint streaming down the canvases, they hark back to Steir' s Waterfall series from the 1980s. A symbiotic relationship connects the works: the sculptures, in which erosion is integral to the art, embody time, while the pictures symbolize gravity and hence nature as such.

"Ungestüme Kompositionen" explores the vibrant landscapes of Shara Hughes, drawing inspiration from renowned artists like Matisse and van Gogh. This monograph offers a comprehensive overview of her work, showcasing her bold reinterpretation of traditional landscape painting. Hughes is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited widely.

Gillian Carnegie's work is distinguished by its unique emotional depth and an uncanny quality that sets it apart in contemporary painting. This publication offers a comprehensive exploration of her artistry, highlighting the subtle yet powerful impact of her creations. Through a calm and introspective approach, Carnegie's paintings evoke a profound response, showcasing her distinctive contribution to the art world.

A collection of writings on art by Barry Schwabsky. “Many consider Barry Schwabsky to be the critic on painting today, even if he does write copiously on other art forms,” write editors Rob Colvin and Sherman Sam in their foreword to this selection of Schwabsky's writings. Written since the turn of the millennium, the texts in The Oberver Effect include meditations on the broader context of painting today alongside reflections on such well-known American painters as Alex Katz, Kerry James Marshall, Nicole Eisenman, and Dana Schutz, as well as practitioners from Europe and beyond—Bernard Frize, Tal R, and Ha Chonghyun among them. As Colvin and Sam point out, the book “documents a dialogue between abstraction and the image” in which “images serve less to represent their described subject than to articulate the sort of painting each one desires to be.”

Leading art critic explores the connections between art’s past and present Contemporary art sometimes pretends to have made a clean break with history. In The Perpetual Guest, poet and critic Barry Schwabsky demonstrates that any robust understanding of art’s present must also account for the ongoing life and changing fortunes of its past. Surveying the art world of recent decades, Schwabsky attends not only to its most significant newer faces—among them, Kara Walker, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ai Weiwei, Chris Ofili, and Lorna Simpson—but their forebears as well, both near (Jeff Wall, Nancy Spero, Dan Graham, Cindy Sherman) and more distant (Velázquez, Manet, Matisse, and the portraitists of the Renaissance). Schwabsky’s rich and subtle contributions illuminate art’s present moment in all its complexity: shot through with determinations produced by centuries of interwoven traditions, but no less open-ended for it.

A dynamic overview of the best new contemporary painting from around the world. The first volume of Vitamin P, published in 2002, inaugurated a vibrant period for painting. Since its publication, a whole new generation of painters has emerged, some inspired by the artists who appeared in that book, others taking cues from new sources. Vitamin P2 introduces this new wave of painters to the world. The vast medium of painting continues to be a central pillar of artistic practice, and Vitamin P2 presents the outstanding artists who are currently engaging with and pushing the boundaries of the medium. Over 80 international critics, artists and curators have nominated the 115 artists who have made a fresh, unique or innovative contribution to recent painting. All of the artists in Vitamin P2 have recently emerged onto the international scene, and none appeared in the first Vitamin P. An introduction by Barry Schwabsky, who also wrote the introduction for Vitamin P, provides a broad overview of recent developments in the medium while also looking towards its future.

Alex Katz is a prominent contemporary painter from New York, recognized since the 1960s for his striking portraits of elegant women. His work features masterful use of bold colors and precise techniques, making him a significant figure in the art world.

The twenty book reviews and essays in this new title from Barry Schwabsky, longtime art critic for The Nation, were written across as many years and for as wide a breadth of publications. Though originally conceived as a book of essays on painting, Schwabsky s diverse interests in literary theory (he cites giants Paul de Man and Roland Barthes as influences) and philosophy bring new perspectives to this collection. Walter Benjamin s views on color, E. H. Gombrich s theory of perception, Mel Bochner s and Liz Kotz s narratives of Conceptualism, and Sarah Thornton s peregrinations in the art world are but a few of the topics explored. In an era of hyper-specialization and rigid academic protocols, Barry Schwabsky revives a form of criticism one imagined barely existed a criticism of varied interests and passionate opinions.