Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art

A global survey of more than 100 artists, chosen by art-world professionals for their work with threads, stitching, and textiles Celebrating tapestry, embroidery, stitching, textiles, knitting, and knotting as used by visual artists worldwide, Vitamin T is the latest in the celebrated Vitamin series in which leading curators, critics, and art professionals nominate living artists for inclusion. As boundaries between art and craft have blurred, artists have increasingly embraced these materials and methods, with the resulting works being coveted by collectors and exhibited in museums worldwide. Vitamin T is a vibrant and incredibly timely survey - the first of its kind.

Arts & Photography

Editors, Phaidon

Porter, Jenelle

History & Criticism

Phaidon Press

Dirt on Delight is the catalogue for the ICA Philadelphia's hit exhibit of 2009; in a rave review for The New York Times, Roberta Smith observed that this "close to groundbreaking" show, in its diversity, reminds us that ceramics "has one of the richest histories of any medium on the planet," and the works gathered here range from modestly-scaled pots to larger installations, crossing false delineations between fine arts, crafts and "outsider" practices. Among the artists included are Robert Arneson, Kathy Butterly, Nicole Cherubini, Lucio Fontana, Viola Frey, Jane Irish, Ron Nagle, George Ohr, Ken Price, Sterling Ruby, Peter Voulkos, Beatrice Wood and Betty Woodman.

Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay

Adamson, Glenn

Schaffner, Ingrid

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania

Charline von Heyl (born 1960) synthesizes elements of Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and the brasher imagery of popular culture in a fascinating brand of abstraction that seems eternally poised on the lip of figuration. Resolutely devoted to energetic gesture and joyous expression, von Heyl also aspires to create images that declare an enigmatic self-sufficiency: “What I’m trying to do is to create an image that has the iconic value of a sign but remains ambiguous in its meaning,” she told Bomb magazine in a 2010 interview. “Something that feels like a representation but isn’t.” In the spirit of von Heyl’s work, this volume--published for the artist’s first U.S. museum survey-- attempts to break free of the conventions of the museum catalogue, with an artist-designed cover and poster-sized reproductions of each of the 18 paintings included in the show.

Charline von Heyl

Individual Artists

Impure Americana, a slightly acidic nostalgia that evoked sideshows, tramp art and old travel posters with infusions of feminist wit. –Roberta Smith, New York Times
Margaret Kilgallen: that’s where the beauty is. is published on the occasion of Kilgallen’s first posthumous museum exhibition, and the largest presentation of her work in more than a decade. Using the artist’s exhibition history as a chronological tool, that’s where the beauty is. examines Kilgallen’s roots in histories of printmaking, American and non-Western folk history and folklore, and feminist strategies of representation, expanding the narrative around her work beyond her association with the Bay Area Mission School and the "Beautiful Losers" artists. Kilgallen’s graphic, schematic style came from a deep engagement with the handmade in wildly divergent forms―from folk art to letterpress printing to freight train graffiti, among many other sources. “I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world anywhere in the world,” she said, embracing the idiosyncrasies and imperfections that come from hand craft. “I think that’s where the beauty is.” Kilgallen’s work, in form and content, celebrates the handmade, making heroes and heroines of those who live and work in the margins and challenging traditional gender roles, hierarchies and mainstream culture. This publication offers a comprehensive look at Kilgallen’s work, revisiting the ongoing legacy and idiosyncratic spirit of one of California’s most innovative artists. American artist Margaret Kilgallen (1967–2001) died at the age of 33, just as her work was gaining recognition and prominence. She is best known for her association with the Bay Area Mission School―a loosely associated group of artists from the early 1990s―and for her inclusion in the legendary exhibition Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture (2004).

Margaret Kilgallen: that’s where the beauty is.

Zuckerman, Heidi

Finn, Courtenay

Aspen Art Press

Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art &amp; Design is a multigenerational survey of strategies of pattern and decoration in art and design. Borrowing its ethos from Robert Venturi’s infamous retort to Mies van der Rohe’s modernist edict “less is more,” it includes works that privilege decoration and maximalism over modernism’s “ornament as crime” philosophy. The catalog begins in the 1970s with artists who sought to rattle the dominance of modernism and minimalism, such as those affiliated with Pattern &amp; Decoration. Less Is a Bore includes experiments in patterning by Sanford Biggers, Jasper Johns and Miriam Schapiro; the transgressive sculpture and furniture of Lucas Samaras and Ettore Sottsass; and the installations of Polly Apfelbaum, Nathalie du Pasquier and Virgil Marti. Also included are works by Roger Brown, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Jeffrey Gibson, Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Ellen Lesperance, Sol LeWitt, Howardena Pindell, Lari Pittman, Pae White and Betty Woodman, among others.

Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design (INSTITUTE OF CO)

Auther, Elissa

Goldin, Amy

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

This lavish book documents the developments in the field of fiber-related art over the past half century. The 1960s saw a revolution in fiber art. Where once the focus was on knotting, twining, and coiling thread into works that were immediately recognizable, and therefore connected to utilitarian crafts, fiber artists of the later 20th-century began to experiment with abstract forms that were closer to sculpture than craft. Influenced by postmodernist ideas, these works are the product of experimentation with materials and technique while at the same time confronting important cultural issues. This book traces that development from the mid-twentieth century to the present. In the words of Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers, the expressive quality of fiber is essentially a “language of thread.” That language is beautifully displayed in full-color spreads and individual illustrations in this book. Scholarly essays address the feminist movement of the 1970s; the expanded use of materials in the ‘80s and ‘90s; and the more recent employment of fiber as one more material in the creation of freestanding works. In addition to a section of full color illustrations, this book also includes profiles of all of the genre’s most influential artists.

Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present

Prestel

A survey of the work of Arlene Shechet, this book presents more than two decades of sculpture in the artist’s characteristically diverse assortment of materials. Arlene Shechet has emerged as one of contemporary art’s most inspiring and innovative sculptors. This book presents over twenty years of work in a diversity of materials, from plaster to cast paper, and from glass to ceramic. These materials, unlike most, are liquid before they are solid. Over the last ten years Shechet has generated a body of work remarkable for its embrace of clay―a medium often overlooked because of its associations with craft. Shechet’s remarkable body of work has been described by the New Yorker as “grotesque, hilarious, lovely.” The recipient of broad recognition and numerous awards, Shechet’s entire oeuvre is examined here in one stunning volume.

Arlene Shechet: All at Once

Shechet, Arlene

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