JOSEF MARIA SCHRÖDER

Christoph Kappeler

German painter Josef Maria Schröder (1886–1965) was confronted with all the adversities and deprivations of the war years and the interwar period. A temporary exhibition ban, cancelled commissions, dire financial straits and a general lack of support for the arts made him a representative of the “Lost Generation.” With this release of Schröder’s first monograph, his striking and highly stylized paintings, drawings and abstract works can finally be appreciated. His early artistic explorations culminated in a ballpoint-pen technique that he developed from 1950 on. These later works integrated a wide range of artistic styles from the first half of the 20th-century to produce intensely luminous abstract compositions of a surrealist cast. Until the death of his daughter in 2008, Schröder’s works were never shown or sold. Post Fine Arts acquired the work from the estate in 2012, and by exhibiting the work have brought public recognition to an artist whose work deserves to be seen.

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ANDREAS KARL SCHULZE

B OT BO TBO T

German painter Andreas Karl Schulze’s minimalist color installations flowing through the Albers Museum, Bontrop, are intense and immediate. The staging, structuring and shifting of color ratios in irregular patterns on objects, museum walls and freestanding plywood panels engage and enliven both the museum collection and the gallery spaces. Twenty color plates methodically edited for this intimate exhibition catalog amply convey both the artist’s intent and the dance of Schulze’s color pattern installations among Albers’s iconic paintings of color squares. In terms of perception and reduction, Schulze is an ideal partner for Josef Albers’s homage to the square. An interview by museum curator Heinz Liesbrock with Schulze gets to the heart of the Schulz’s work, which the artist himself describes as turning “attempts to understand into perceiving and experiencing.” Since 1996, Schulze has engaged in grand-scale projects extending to five countries—from the US (Chinati Foundation, Texas, invited by Donald Judd) to Siberia, Russia; Thule, Greenland; Brisbane, Australia; and Hyogo, Japan.

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MEMPHIS SCHULZE

Catalog Raisonné 1969–1993

Max Schulze, Karin Menne & Phillip Schulze (Eds.)

The first detailed catalogue raisonné ever produced on self-taught German painter Memphis Schulze (1944–2008) includes a complete document of the artist’s work through 1993 plus extensive personal photographs of Schulze, his friends including Sigmar Polke and Achim Duchow, and the Dusseldorf art scene of which he was a part for two decades. Assembled by his sons Max and Philip together with writer Katrin Menne, this book is a tribute to an artist little known outside of Europe but deeply influential to many younger artists of his time. An unexpected addition is a complete list of Schulze’s legendary LP collection of American and London rock music from 1955–88, shared with the German art community in those post war years. Essays by Polke specialists Petra Lange-Berndt and Dietmar Rübel elucidate the social and aesthetic relationships within that scene and the influence of America and American culture on the younger German generation.

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DANA SCHUTZ

Waiting for the Barbarians

With lines between fact and fiction increasingly blurring in politics and culture, the recent paintings of New York–based artist Dana Schutz (b. 1976) reflect the anxiety and foreboding that seem omnipresent in society. Viewers of her earlier large-format oil paintings have been reminded of Dix, Kirchner, Grosz, and Picasso. But Schutz’s latest works are more drastic. In Fight in an Elevator 5 carnage seems to have taken place: a grim old man, baring his teeth as he opens an elevator door, holds the severed head of a younger man on his head, and on the ground we see the severed head of a blonde woman. We are not automatically reminded of art-historical examples as we revel in the artist’s dark humor. But we do search for them, not wanting to accept that decapitations take place in our everyday reality. Included is an informative essay by Marcus Woeller. Schutz is represented by Petzel Gallery, NY and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin.

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NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI

Blind Faith

German painter Norbert Schwontkowski’s vision of the world is profound, enigmatic and, frankly, grim. His lonely figures, surrounded by potent symbols from the natural and man-made worlds, give off a sense of menace and sadness. The Bremen-based artist, born in 1949, has had an influential career largely in Europe; after many years out of print, this new publication makes his work accessible again. The paintings are so distinctive that Jens Hoffmann (deputy director at the Jewish Museum, New York), calls them Schwontkowskiesques. The artist’s tragicomic canvases conjure a meeting between Francis Bacon and Edward Hopper on a train to doomsday. Featuring texts from Anna Ballestrem, Jens Hoffmann and Florian Waldvogel.

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WILLIAM SCOTT

1950s Nude Drawing

Celebrated for exploring the space between abstraction and figuration, William Scott is best known for his painting of still lifes, landscapes and the female nude. On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, Karsten Schubert in London presented an exhibition of the artist’s nude drawings from the 1950s. A magnificent series of nearly abstract drawings, this group represents a period of exploration and refiguring for Scott. The works also exemplify his interest in “the modern magic of space, primitive sex forms, the sensual and erotic, disconcerting contours, the things of life.” Twelve drawings are accompanied by Sarah Whitfield’s insightful text plus an essay on drawing by the artist.

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SCULPTURES MADE OF PAPER

Marc Gundel and Kerstin Skrobanek

As early as 1912, Pablo Picasso introduced paper as a modern sculptural material with Guitar. In the 1930s, Kurt Schwitters constructed his famous three-dimensional collage Merzbau. Since then, paper has become an indispensable material in sculptural works. And yet there is no real “tradition” of paper sculpture. Rather, paper appears as a working material whenever artists break with tradition. Gigantic works by Charlotte Posenenske resemble industrial components and serve as caricatures of the monumental aspects of 19th-century sculpture. Erwin Heerich’s cardboard pieces, constructed according to mathematical schemata, can be enlarged and turned into buildings. Meanwhile Dieter Roth attacked any notions of timelessness or eternal validity with his “literature sausages” by pressing softened books and magazines into sausage casings, turning them into sculptural objects. Other artists featured in this book include Karla Black, Dan Flavin, Raymond Hains, Thomas Hirschhorn, Isamu Noguchi, Robert Rauschenberg, Jacques de la Villeglé and Wolf Vostell.

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SEAN KERR

Bruce is in the Garden; So Someone is in the Garden

Call it an exhibition catalog, monograph or exhibition catalog: this extensively illustrated book on the major New Zealand artist Sean Kerr is as surprising as Kerr’s installations. His website opens with a video of him inconspicuously playing a snare drum as people arrive at a gallery. Known for using technology to create comic situations and good-natured affronts to the prevailing culture, he has also made a large and influential body of work in sound, installation, video and 2D formats. This major publication has been produced as a parallel project to a major survey exhibition of Kerr’s work in Aukland. Includes a substantial pictorial chronology of Kerr’s gregariously varied practice, an interview with the artist, and texts by several contributors.

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SECRET SOCIETIES

The Jesuits, Rosicrucians, freemasons, CIA, Mafia, IRA and al-Qaeda are all secret societies, covertly working away behind the scenes to create a world they envision, be it good or evil. The concept behind this exhibition, and its accompanying catalog, is that the contemporary art world is also a secret society, with a small circle of initiated members who possess arcane knowledge. In absorbing essays, Michael Bracewell, Ina Blom and Gary Lachman look at how the contemporary art economy is its own exclusive club. A large selection of artworks chosen by curators Cristina Ricupero, Alexis Vaillant and Jan Verwoert responds to the theme.

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SECRET SIGNS

Calligraphy in Chinese Contemporary Art

Dirk Luckow (Ed.)

Secret Signs, an extensive group exhibition catalog, looks at the role of Chinese calligraphy in relation to contemporary Chinese art over the past three decades as a way of asking fundamental questions of art and art making in China today. In 1956 Mao ordered the radical simplification of the ancient complex calligraphic writing system used by the court by standardizing the characters and their sounds, reducing their form and number, creating a sudden lack of referential symbols and images. Is the sidelining of Chinese calligraphy paradigmatic of modern Chinese culture? How does China deal with its cultural heritage in light of the rapid changes brought about by globalization? These poignant issues are explored through the 38 artists spanning the early 1980s to the present including Ai Wei Wei, Chen Guangwu, Chen Zaiyan and Dai Guangyu along with artist interviews, essays by cultural historians and curators and installation views from the exhibition.

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