Kirjahaku

A groundbreaking look at art made in China during the Cultural Revolution Although numerous books on the Cultural Revolution have been published, they do not analyze the profound shift in aesthetic values that occurred in China after the Communists took power. This fascinating book is the first to focus on artwork produced from the 1950s to the 1970s, when Mao Zedong was in leadership, and argues that important contributions were made during this period that require fuller consideration in Chinese art history, especially with relevance to the contemporary world. Previously, historians have tended to dismiss the art of the Cultural Revolution as pure propaganda. The authors of this volume (historians, art historians, and artists) argue that while much art produced during this time was infused with politics, and individual creativity and displays of free thought were sometimes stifled and even punished, it is short sighted to overlook the aesthetic sophistication, diversity, and accessibility of much of the imagery. Bringing together more than 200 extraordinary artworks, including oil paintings, ink scroll paintings, artist sketchbooks, posters, and objects from daily life, as well as primary documentation that has not been published outside of China or seen since the mid-20th century, this invaluable volume sheds new light on one of the most controversial and critical periods in history.Published in association with the Asia Society MuseumExhibition Schedule:Asia Society Museum (September 5, 2008 – January 4, 2009)

The first and only comprehensive volume exploring the artist’s best-known and most spectacular series This book presents world-renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s most famous series, the Infinity Mirror Rooms, and charts its influence on the course of contemporary art for over 50 years. Kusama’s rooms are filled with multicolored lights that reflect endlessly. Ranging from peep-show-like chambers to multimedia installations, each of Kusama’s kaleidoscopic environments offers the chance to step into an illusion of infinite space. This definitive publication traces these installations and reveals how, over the years, the works have come to symbolize different modalities, from Kusama’s “self-obliteration” in the Vietnam War era to her more harmonious aspirations in the present. By examining her early unsettling installations alongside her more recent atmospheres, this publication historicizes her pioneering work amid today’s renewed interest in experiential practices. Generously illustrated, this book invites readers to examine the series’ impact over the course of the artist’s career. Yayoi Kusama (born 1929) has worked not only in sculpture and installation but also painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction and other arts. In her early career in Japan, she produced mostly works on paper. With her late-1950s move to New York City, she joined the ranks of the avant-garde, working in soft sculpture and influencing the likes of Warhol and Oldenburg. At this time, she was also involved with happenings and other performance-oriented works and began to deploy her signature dots. Her work fell into relative obscurity after her return to Japan in 1973, but a subsequent revival of interest in the 1980s elevated her work to the canonical status that it still enjoys today.

Inventive text collages made from Calvin and Hobbes comicsLos Angeles-based Tony Lewis (born 1986) is part of an exciting generation of artists working to collapse the boundaries between genres and forms. He has quickly established himself in the art world by forming a distinct visual vocabulary that integrates poetry and text with the properties of abstraction. His monochromatic drawings pull from various visual and written sources, ranging from the personal to the political. Separating, rearranging and erasing text, he shifts the way we read to open up new and unexpected meanings.To create Anthology 2014-2016, Lewis deconstructed hundreds of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, reordered them and shaped them into poems through a process of erasing, editing and rearranging dialogue. Each poem is assembled as a collage of individual drawings that explores the collaborative nature of creativity and authorship, leaving meaning open to a range of interpretations.