MARKUS LÜPERTZ

Architecture Dithyrambic: Drawings and Paintings 1964–1977

Matthia Löbke (Ed.)

What critics sometimes label as “anti-modern” behavior by visionary artist Markus Lüpertz was in fact a revelation for art in postwar Europe. Lüpertz’s attitude comes from a deep confrontation with historical utopian architecture— specifically that of Bruno Taut and his “Alpine Architecture”—a prevalent topic among artists in the years following World War I. This slim volume is focused on a pivotal period in the artist’s career from 1964 to 1977, beginning with colorful architectural drawings focused on the theme of the house, which he interprets as living space, studio and family home, extended through the decade to his fanciful imagined territory, “Lüpiland.” During this time, Lüpertz’s works were included in the first Berlin Biennale (1974) as well as Documenta VI. Art historian and curator Siegfried Gohr contributes an excellent essay for the catalog.

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LUTA CA CABA INDA

Time Place Matter Voice 1967–2017

Filipa César, Tobias Hering & Carolina Rito (Eds.)

Assembled by Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Filipa César (b. 1975), Luta Ca Caba Inda (The struggle is not over yet) is an archive of film and studio material from the West African country Guinea-Bissau. On the verge of complete ruin, the film footage testifies to the birth of Guinean cinema as part of the decolonizing vision of Amílcar Cabral, the liberation leader who was assassinated in 1973. In collaboration with the Guinean filmmakers, Sana na N’Hada and Flora Gomes, and others, Filipa César imagines a journey where the past operates as prism. Digitized in Berlin and screened at various locations in what would come to resemble a transnational itinerant cinema, the archive brings together debates, storytelling and forecasts. From screenings in isolated villages in Guinea-Bissau to European capitals, the silent reels are now a place from which people may search for antidotes to a world in crisis. Cesar’s work uses the reanimation of media and its materiality to elaborate counter-narratives to historical violence. Selected film festivals include Khiasma, Paris (2015); Mumok, Vienna (2016); Biennial Contour 8, Mechelen (2017).

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JIM LUTES

Ponies & Psychos

Ensnarled in Lutes’ semi-abstractions is a cast of unlikely witnesses to the violent histories of the Pacific Northwest. Citizens, horses, landscapes and the artist himself are depicted as though risen from an untold and painful American narrative, one that is stained by the ongoing betrayal of Native American populations in the 19th-century. Published alongside the first New York solo exhibition by Jim Lutes in over 20 years, this catalog is co-published by Chicago’s Valerie Carberry Gallery.

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M/M (PARIS) AND FIAC PRESENT:

THE ART WORLD

For every FIAC (Paris International Contemporary Art Fair) since 2005, M/M Paris, the hyper-influential, music and fashion focused design firm, has assembled a collection of photos to be used as promotional material. This newest collection has an arousing vagueness: each of these photos shows a place—sometimes empty, sometimes inhabited; urban or perhaps bucolic; identifiable or ambiguous— yet in each one, it is clear that art is somehow being made. Like much of M/M’s design work, each photo projects a deceptively simple message, less by its content than by the site where it appears, and its implied recipients. The book becomes a sort of geographical manual defining the movements of art works, bringing them to a specific territory, to its peripheries. With a foreword in French and English by curator/critic Eric Troncy.

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M + M

Come to Me First!

From the art duo Marc Weis and Martin de Mattia, an exhibition catalog and first comprehensive overview of their oeuvre, including photographic, film and installation work. And as in their previous volume, Pie Bible, the work relates to the intimate promises, synchronous levels of meaning and different identities standing for current trends in our society. The duo’s work is deeply influenced by childhood television programs, such as Bonanza or Get Smart, then later by other films which became embedded in the collective consciousness. This complicated book, with extensive color reproductions and odd-sized bound pages, includes a long interview with the artists, discussing their approach to narrative and “the morality of pictures.” A fascinating presentation of Weis and de Mattia’s works, which often produce discomfort, and always provoke new ideas.

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M/M (PARIS) PRESENTS: SLATÚR / SLAUGHTER

Mathias Augustyniak—partner in the trendsetting design firm M/M (Paris)—was invited to Iceland by musician Björk to participate in the traditional making of slatúr (sausages made out of lamb meat). From this journey, Augustyiniak collected and edited intriguing pictures and stories to create this second volume in the agency’s noted book series. The photographic report follows two parallel stories: the celebration around this ancient cooking tradition and the visit to a folk museum of Icelandic artifacts. The text weaves the present-day story with the kind of tales that have long been told at the end of supper, as Icelandic authors and poets Ófeigur Sigurðsson and Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir narrate the lives and deeds of famous and infamous local heroes. The publication altogether opens a window on an Iceland that few people know of.

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M/M (PARIS) PRESENTS: THE ALPHADICKS

Twenty-Six Loaded Cowboys Featuring 26 Drawings by Mathias Augustyniak

Launching a new, wide-ranging series of limited-edition artist’s books by the dynamic creative duo M/M (Paris), The Alphadicks: Twenty-Six Loaded Cowboys brings together an original series of drawings by Mathias Augustyniak (one of the Ms in M/M) in a numbered edition of 1000 copies. The black-and-white drawings portray 26 elegant young men with giant phalluses protruding from their backs, breaking out of their hats or draped delicately around their shoulders like a stole. The drawings are freely inspired by Willy Vanderperre’s photographs made for Arena Homme+ in 2008, when the magazine was under the creative direction of M/M (Paris). A series of ornamented numbers, sketched especially for the book, introduces the illustrations. This is the first volume in a series of collectors’ books by M/M (Paris).

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Heinz Mack

Light – Space – Colour

In honor of the 80th birthday of minimalist master Heinz Mack, this indispensible exhibition catalog documents the artist’s most comprehensive retrospective ever. Mack is a co-founder of Germany’s seminal ZERO Movement, one of minimalism’s cutting-edge groups, which began in the 1960s. Mack’s sculptural works, paintings and magical light art, found in major collections worldwide such as MoMA NY, have had a profound influence on contemporary art for half a century.

Mack’s work is grouped into chapters by type, including Installations, Wings, Rotors, Light Objects, Cubes/Prisms, Sculpture and Painting. An unusual feature adds 24 selected writings on Mack by critics, art historians and other artists. Going back more than 50 years, these fascinating texts are paired with photos of the works they discuss, showing how the works were received at the time they were made. The overall impression reinforces Mack’s tremendous importance to the art world throughout his career.

A conversation between Mack and Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum creates a bridge of understanding between today’s observers and this wise elder, who is still a vital producer and observer of art. “Light has an existential significance for me – whereby I naturally think about shadow as well in a strictly dualistic and dialectical way,” Mack says. “To paraphrase Leonardo: light is waning darkness and darkness is waning light.”

The book includes a complete biography, list of solo and group exhibitions, and bibliography.

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THE MAGIC CIRCLE

On The Beatles, Pop Art, Art-Rock and Records

Jan Tumlir

Pivoting off The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), LA art writer Jan Tumlir’s latest book is a meditation of the ecstatic kind—think whirling dervish—on this concept album as the birth of art-rock. Citing sources as varied as Theodore Adorno, Thomas Edison, Walter Benjamin, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Charles Manson and Marshall McLuhan, Tumlir charts a first-person present-tense path of historical analysis and speculative association on the openly commer- cial self-reflexive art object. Conflating methodologies from each field, Tumlir describes the concept album as a point of convergence between the previously distinct worlds of rock and art. This compact volume bursts with a dense bold text interleaved with color and black-and-white illustrations, equally varied, that further blend these worlds. As an erstwhile DJ and inveterate collector of cultural artifacts, Tumlir’s imperative in all forms of production is to select, sequence and mix.

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MAGIC MARKINGS

Tantra, Jain & Ritual Art from India

Angela Koo (Ed.)

Tantra—a term known in the West for its associations with sex, magic and esoteric mysticism—has had an impact on religions and philosophies including Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Jainism, Vajrayana, Bönpo and Ayurveda. The philosophy of Tantra claims that reality (prakriti) is pure consciousness, pure being, pure bliss. It’s a reality that is, however, veiled by illusion (maya). Through purification, elevation and reaffirmation of identity, Tantra aims to help us return to an unadulterated state of being. This beautifully illustrated catalog accompanies an exquisite exhibition of 90 tantric and Jain objects, paintings, manuscripts and drawings. The book contains two specially-commissioned articles by Madhu Khanna and Alexander Gorlizki, and a contribution by William Dalrymple. It was co-published by Joost van den Bergh Ltd. and Ridinghouse on the occasion of the 2016 exhibition Magic Markings in London. Magic Markings is an engaging step outside the contemporary world.

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