One of the most admired artists of the twentieth century, Max Ernst was a proponent of Dada and founder of surrealism, known for his strange, evocative paintings and drawings. In Prehistoric Future, Ralph Ubl approaches Ernst like no one else has, using theories of the unconscious—surrealist automatism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the concept of history as trauma—to examine how Ernst’s construction of collage departs from other modern artists. Ubl shows that while Picasso, Braque, and Man Ray used scissors and glue to create collages, Ernst employed techniques he himself had forged—rubbing and scraping to bring images forth onto a sheet of paper or canvas to simulate how a screen image or memory comes into the mind’s view. In addition, Ernst scoured the past for obsolete scientific illustrations and odd advertisements to illustrate the rapidity with which time passes and to simulate the apprehension generated when rapid flows of knowledge turn living culture into artifact. Ultimately, Ubl reveals, Ernst was interested in the construction and phenomenology of both collective and individual modern history and memory. Shedding new light on Ernst’s working methods and the reasons that his pieces continue to imprint themselves in viewers’ memories, Prehistoric Future is an innovative work of critical writing on a key figure of surrealism.

Prehistoric Future: Max Ernst and the Return of Painting between the Wars

Arts & Photography

Ubl, Ralph

History & Criticism

University of Chicago Press

<p>Willem de Kooning is celebrated in the United States as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century and a leading Abstract Expressionist. In Europe, however, the artist has yet to be fully recognized, particularly with regards to his work of the 1960s and 1970s, when he retreated from urban life to live and work on Long Island. This segment of de Kooning's oeuvre bears the imprint of a fundamental experience of the landscape, for it was in these Long Island works that he developed a new style of figuration, characterized by a transformed sense of color and energetic gesture. This period of vigorous, pioneering creativity is illuminated for the first time in this volume, which features a concentrated selection of large-format paintings. In images and essays by Klaus Kertess, Harold Rosenberg and others, the book illustrates how de Kooning's paintings--although recognizable as landscapes--grew abstract under the influence of his intense experience of nature.</p>

Willem De Kooning: Paintings 1960-1980

Reference

Hatje Cantz Publishers

<p>On the occasion of the Beyeler Fondation’s 20th anniversary, this richly illustrated publication gathers quotes, letters, interviews and writings from Arp, Bourgeois, Cézanne, Degas, Dubuffet, Kandinsky, Klee, Malevich, Matisse, Mondrian, Monet, Picasso, Rousseau, Tillmans, Van Gogh, Wolfson and others.</p>

Foundation Beyeler: The Collection: It Might Turn out Well if The Sunshine Lasts

Boehm, Gottfried

Vischer, Theodora

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Hatje Cantz

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