Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting

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. Vitamin P illustrates the richness, eclecticism and dynamism of painting today. It is a critical sourcebook and reference work for seasoned art world veterans as well as newcomers to contemporary art. 
A stimulating introductory text is provided by Barry Schwabsky, who writes regularly for Artforum. He is currently Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmiths College in London.

Arts & Photography

Bang Larsen, Lars

Chua, Lawrence

Colombo, Paolo

Painting

Phaidon Press

Network theory book - read in conjunction with neoliberal theories and posthumanist texts.

NETWORKS /ANGLAIS (DOCUMENTS OF CO)

WHITECHAPEL GAL

The birth of abstract art is typically associated with Kandinsky and others in the early 20th century. Houghton’s work, however, predates this momentous artistic breakthrough by half a century. In this respect, she anticipates the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), whose work is now appreciated for its significance in the early history of abstraction. Houghton was a prominent figure of the early spiritualist movement in Victorian England, which played a significant role in various spheres of 19th century culture and was later championed by such influential figures as Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Spiritualism emerged as the belief that contact with a spirit realm was possible and that such communication could bring one closer to God. Houghton, a trained artist as well as a medium, pioneered the use of drawing as a method of channeling and expressing communications with spirit entities. During the 1860s and 1870s, she produced a series of unprecedented abstract watercolors as part of her practice as a spirit medium. Houghton called these works ‘spirit drawings’. Remarkably complex, layered watercolors and technically highly accomplished, their bold colors and fluid forms have a mesmerizing and deeply absorbing effect. Detailed inscriptions on the back of the works declare that her hand was guided by various spirits, including family members, several Renaissance artists, such as Titian and Correggio, and higher angelic beings. Although produced in a very different context, Houghton’s abstract works have close connections to the ways in which 20th Century artists developed abstract languages of art to transcend the everyday realm of representation and consciousness. In 1871 Houghton rented a prestigious gallery space in Bond Street and presented 55 of her spirit drawings to a perplexed London audience. The critic from The Era newspaper pronounced it to be “the most astonishing exhibition in London at the present moment.” The Daily News likened the works to “tangled threads of colored wool” and concluded that “they deserve to be seen as the most extraordinary and instructive example of artistic aberration.” Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings will present more than 20 of these remarkable works. Unlike anything typically associated with Victorian culture, it will be a fascinating opportunity to consider their place within the history of art; both as products of their times and as precursors of radical 20th Century art.

Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings

Pasi, Marco

Grant, Simon

Individual Artists

Paul Holberton Publishing

This is the first comprehensive publication on the work of Chris Martin (born 1954), one of America’s finest contemporary abstract painters. Martin’s enormous, sunny canvases are enthusiastic in execution, heroic in scale while also expressing something of the rogue spirit of outsider art. Many of them are dedicated to such artists and musicians as Harry Smith, Frank Moore and James Brown, whose names are inscribed in coarse strokes upon the works. Martin’s paintings are underlain with such everyday detritus as stuck-on coins, vinyl records, banana skins, newspaper articles and slices of bread. Despite such rough, utterly profane surfaces, it is a spiritual tradition of abstraction that Martin’s work draws from: Native American folklore, religious mysticism, anthroposophist symbolism, the landscape painting of North American romanticism--and the great melting pot of New York City itself, where Martin has lived since 1975.

Chris Martin: Staring into the Sun

Nickas, Bob

Evers, Elodie

Koch, Alexander

Walther König, Köln

Sophie Podolski (Multilingual Edition)

KRAUS, CHRIS

Convert, Jean-Philippe

Dumalin, Caroline

MERCATOR

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