A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

Cosmin Costinas, Inti Guerrero & Lesley Ma (Eds.)

Expanded from a touring exhibition originated at Para Site (2013), this part-reader, part-exhibition document critically analyzes the politics of fear in the face of disease and contamination in both the historical and contemporary imagination. Scholars, artists, novelists and journalists begin by addressing Hong Kong’s 200-year history of epidemics—the most recent being the SARS outbreak of 2003, and then tackle the galvanizing power and varied perceptions of contagion in the context of lingering histories, myths, anxieties and memories across the world. While composing a complex picture of the Hong Kong psyche, the contributors speak from a humanistic and global perspective, pointing to the intersections of urban environments and post-colonial psychology, popular culture and racism, public health and migration, national identity and art. Included are excerpts from Taiwan writer Shih Shu-ching’s literary masterpiece, City of the Queen, which vividly portrays the interwoven social relations and colonial structures during the time of the plague, among much more. A chilling but no-holds-barred look at the history of epidemics and their effect on culture.

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JUD FINE

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JUDY FISKIN

Some More Art

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JULIA SCHER

Always There

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KANDINSKY MALEVICH MONDRIAN

The Infinite White Abyss

“The white, free abyss—infinity lies before us,” wrote Supremacist painter Kazimir Malevich in 1919. This compelling catalog from the German museum K20 presents the work of three of the 20th-century avant-garde’s great artists, focusing on their use of white surfaces in major works between 1860 and 1945. The materiality and immateriality of the color white is also analyzed through surprising new research from leading painting conservators. The book—both a covetable art object and an important historical document—is designed to reflect its premise. Its subtly varying off-white tones and finishes from glossy to vellum and dramatically kerned type suggest a constructivist painting. The color’s cultural symbolism across art, science and para-religions is explored through extensive primary documentation and reprinted ephemera as well as essays by curator Marion Ackermann, art historian Linda Darlrymple Henderson, cultural historian Margareta Tillberg and Stedelijk paintings conservator Meta Chavannes, among others.

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Airan Kang

The Bookshelf Enlightened

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ALLAN KAPROW

Painting 1946-1957: A Survey

Andreas Baur (Ed.)

Long recognized as the founding father of the “Happening,” a term he coined in the late 1950s, Allan Kaprow (1927–2006)—co-creator of the Fluxus Group, pioneer of performance art, discoverer of the Action movement, and visionary American artist still recognized for his major contributions in art theory and history—changed the conversation about contemporary art-making worldwide. His long career as artist and theorist is often published, but little is known about his early paintings. Influenced while studying under German Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann at the School of Fine Arts, NY, Kaprow’s early work from 1946 to 1957 is presented for the first time at Villa Merkel, Esslingen (2017). The paintings reveal the role models that led to Kaprow’s investigations into space and action while contextualizing the achievements of his contemporaries, Jackson Pollock and John Cage. This slender but informative catalog documents both unseen paintings along with historical imagery introducing an important portrait of the artist as he began to launch his monumental career.

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KELLY WOOD

The Continuous Garbage Project 1998-2003

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SEAN KERR

Pop

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Aisha Khalid

Name, Class, Subject

This very subtle book looks, at first glance, like a children’s exercise book with ruled pages. However, each page is actually a painting in the Mughal miniature tradition. But in stark contrast to the ornate decoration usually associated with the miniature, Pakistani artist Aisha Khalid’s painted pages are a clever response to the line widths found in handwriting exercise books: half of the pages adhere to the rules employed to teach English, while the rest correspond to those used to teach Urdu. Meeting in the middle, the centerfold reveals a space akin to a no-man’s-land in print. Characterizing the two cultures in relation to the subtle variations of the ruled lines, Khalid’s book project presents a series of juxtapositions that comment on the tensions underlying Pakistan’s past and present.

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