High quality exhibition catalogue includes full color images from the exhibit as well as detailed annotation and background on the pieces.

Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective

Arts & Photography

Rondeau, James

Wagstaff, Sheena

History & Criticism

Art Institute of Chicago

Named the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year for 2013, Imran Qureshi combines traditional motifs and techniques of Islamic art with contemporary reflections on the relationship between Islam and the West. His investigations into ornamentation reference both the miniature painting of the Mughal tradition, in which he was trained, and large, site-specific installations in architectural space, which address both the building itself and its historical and political meanings. In May 2013, Qureshi will create the latest rooftop installation for the Metropolitan Museum. This volume discusses the specific interplay between the artist’s vision and the particulars of the space for which the work was created. An interview with Qureshi highlights the traditions from which his work derives, as well as the political and aesthetic connotations that inform this latest creation.

Imran Qureshi

Alteveer, Ian

Haidar, Navina Najat

Qureshi, Imran

Metropolitan Museum of Art

French conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe (b. 1962) is known for experimental and complex works that employ a variety of media, including photography, film, drawing, sculpture, music, and even public happenings and living organisms. His thought-provoking and innovative pieces have been presented internationally to great acclaim over the past 20 years. This book presents Huyghe’s site-specific installation for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Roof Garden, and contextualizes this work within his career. The creatively designed publication includes striking full-color images of a number of Huyghe’s celebrated works as well as a fold-out poster cover of the installation. An interview with Huyghe by Sheena Wagstaff allows this articulate artist to explain his work directly to the reader. An essential companion to the must-see Roof Garden installation, this book provides a focused study of one of today’s most fascinating contemporary artists.

Pierre Huyghe: The Roof Garden Commission

Turner Prize–nominated British artist Cornelia Parker (b. 1956) is well known for her large-scale, site-specific installations.  Her work has been featured in many solo exhibitions and is included in collections around the world.  Often composed of ordinary objects, her installations make the familiar extraordinary, whimsical, and even poignant. Her work for the 2016 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum, documented here, merges two iconic examples of American architecture: the red barn and the infamous mansion on a hill from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Psycho – itself inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper. The resulting piece is brilliantly allusive, exploring the tension between the tropes represented by these two cultural symbols. This slim volume includes an interview with the artist in which she eloquently illuminates her work and influences.  

Cornelia Parker: The Roof Garden Commission

Galilee, Beatrice

Individual Artists

Explores how artists from the European Renaissance to the global present have used sculpture and color to evoke the presence of the living body Since the earliest myths of the sculptor Pygmalion bringing a statue to life through desire, artists have explored the boundaries between sculpture and the physical materiality of the body. This groundbreaking volume examines key sculptural works from 13th-century Europe to the global present, revealing new insights into the strategies artists deploy to blur the distinction between art and life. Sculpture, which has historically taken the human figure as its subject, is presented here in myriad manifestations created by artists ranging from Donatello and Degas to Picasso, Kiki Smith, and Jeff Koons. Featuring works created in traditional media such as wood and marble as well as the unexpected such as wax, metal, and blood, Like Life presents sculpture both conventional and shocking, including effigies, dolls, mannequins, automata, waxworks, and anatomical models. Containing texts by art and cultural historians as well as interviews with contemporary artists, this is a provocative exploration of three-dimensional representations of the human body.

Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body

Syson, Luke

Bowyer, Emerson

Kumar, Brinda

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

A compact volume that illuminates the work of Huma Bhabha and chronicles her piece for the 2018 Met Roof Garden commission Often described as “post apocalyptic,” the work of Pakistani sculptor Huma Bhabha (b. 1962) responds to the violence and turmoil in the world around her through depictions of anthropomorphic figures that often appear to be dismembered, melted, or dissected. This compact volume, accompanying a site-specific installation at the Metropolitan Museum’s Roof Garden, features an interview with the artist that provides new insight into her diverse influences. Essays discuss the impact of cinema and science fiction on Bhabha’s sculpture, explore art historical connections, and illuminate the artist’s process and oeuvre over the past 20 years. Like the installation, this book—the sixth in a series devoted to the Met’s Roof Garden Commissions—connects Bhabha’s contemporary practice to both art history and global current events.

Huma Bhabha: We Come in Peace: The Roof Garden Commission

Halter, Ed

Jhaveri, Shanay

A book that documents Alicja Kwade’s 2019 Roof Garden commission at The Met—large-scale sculptures that reference celestial bodies Contemporary artist Alicja Kwade (b. 1979) has received international acclaim for her minimalist, large-scale sculptures and installations intended to parse, but not resolve, various scientific and metaphysical conundrums. Kwade’s site-specific installation for the 2019 Roof Garden commission at The Met consists of two immersive sculptures that resemble an astrolabe, the instrument historically used to measure the location of the stars and planets over time. This compact volume presents images and analysis of this new installation, setting its creation in the context of the artist’s past work. An interview with Kwade conducted for this publication sheds further light on her process and inspirations.

Alicja Kwade, ParaPivot: The Roof Garden Commission

Baum, Kelly

A lavishly illustrated monograph that spans the entire career of one of the most celebrated contemporary artists Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post–Second World War Germany, in both broad and very personal terms. This handsomely designed book features approximately 100 of his key canvases, from photo paintings created in the early 1960s to portraits and later large-scale abstract series, as well as select works in glass. New essays by eminent scholars address a variety of themes: Sheena Wagstaff evaluates the conceptual import of the artist’s technique; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh discusses the poignant Birkenau paintings (2014); Peter Geimer explores the artist’s enduring interest in photographic imagery; Briony Fer looks at Richter’s family pictures against traditional painting genres and conventions; Brinda Kumar investigates the artist’s engagement with landscape as a site of memory; André Rottmann considers the impact of randomization and chance on Richter’s abstract works; and Hal Foster examines the glass and mirror works. As this book demonstrates, Richter’s rich and varied oeuvre is a testament to the continued relevance of painting in contemporary art.

Gerhard Richter: Painting After All

Buchloh, Benjamin H.D.

An engaging exploration of multidisciplinary artist Alex Da Corte’s site-specific 2021 installation on The Met’s Roof Garden\nKnown for his use of familiar objects, icons, and brands in surprising and surreal contexts, Alex Da Corte (b. 1980) often confronts themes of identity, cultural hegemony, and consumerism in his videos, sculptures, paintings, and installations. In As Long as the Sun Lasts—his most recent work and the subject of the 2021 installment in The Met’s Roof Garden Commission series—he draws together the beloved Sesame Street character Big Bird and the kinetic sculptural works of Alexander Calder. This compact volume presents images and analysis of the new installation, considering it in the context of his past work and featuring fascinating records of the artist’s process, including sketches and images from his studio. An interview with Da Corte provides further insight into his diverse artistic inspirations, which range from Renaissance painting to horror films, and elaborates on how art history, politics, and religion inform his work.\nPublished by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press\nExhibition Schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
(April 16–October 31, 2021)

Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts: The Roof Garden Commission

HALBERSTAM, JACK

Spanning 170 years, from William Henry Fox Talbot's first negative to Jeff Wall's latest constructed tableau, Singular Images collects thought-provoking essays on individual photographs, one image per writer. The essayists consider, sometimes in highly personal ways, the artist's intention, their own response, the work's technical complexities, its historical context or its formal properties. Each text captures a sense of how challenging it is to create a perfect single piece. Art photography has been increasingly well-surveyed in recent years, but individual works have rarely been written about at length, perhaps because of lingering doubt that a single photograph can command the kind of sustained attention often given to individual paintings or sculptures. Singular Images is a lively inquiry into the value of analyzing individual photographs, and it persuasively encourages the reader to engage at length and in depth with one remarkable piece at a time. With its broad scope and diverse range of issues, it can also be read as an informal--and thoroughly entertaining--introduction to art photography. Featuring essays by some of the most brilliant critical minds in the field, including David Campany on Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, Darsie Alexander on Nan Goldin and Liz Jobey on Diane Arbus.

Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs

Marien, Mary Warner

Warburton, Nigel

Alexander, Darsie

Jobey, Liz

Campany, David

Batchen, Geoffrey

Willsdon, Dominic

Williams, Val.

Hargreaves; Roger

Photography & Video

Aperture

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wagstaff, Sheena. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wagstaff, Sheena