Élisabeth Lebovici

The first comprehensive monograph on visual artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba, one of the most critically acclaimed artists working today Rosa Barba is a Berlin-based artist whose work offers a crucial deconstruction of film and sculpture and how the two relate to each other. While her installations and site-specific interventions challenge and reconstitute the viewer’s notions of cinema and its staging vis-à-vis gesture, genre, documents, and information, her films settle at an ambiguous point between experimental documentary and fictional narrative, thriving in a contemporary moment while hinging on fleeting memory and encroaching uncertainty. Predicated by extensive study in a variety of places, and occasionally enhanced by live performances conceived to activate her pieces, Barba’s art provides an experience that brings back the audience to the bewildered, complex reality that surrounds us every day. Extensively illustrated with more than 150 photographs, this first monograph on the groundbreaking artist includes essays and texts from art-world luminaries, an illuminating new interview with Barba, studio photography, and more.

“...perhaps the definitive tome on her life and career." – Nena Hawke, BlackBook "...an important new monograph about Alice Neel, one of the greatest portrait painters of the 20th Century, whose work continually pushes the boundaries of social justice" – The Art Newspaper "This is the defining treatise on Alice Neel." —Booklaunch “I have always believed that women should resent and refuse to accept all the gratuitous insults that men impose upon them.” – Alice Neel, 1971 One of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century, Alice Neel’s vibrant, expressionistic paintings revealed a breath-taking depth of emotion within her subjects. From works exploring loss and grief, to communist political art, Neel’s work pushed boundaries of social justice throughout the 1900s. Her dedication to capturing the truth of humanity is evident: she painted those rejected by society, the victims of social or gendered oppression. Latin American and Puerto Rican immigrants, African-American writers excluded from the intellectual elite, single mothers struggling to raise their children, homosexual couples – all were presented with equal candidness by Neel’s brush. Her unflinching approach to the female body took a ground-breaking step towards reclaiming the nude from the male gaze, and the activism inherent to her art resonates with viewers to this day. This book highlights Neel’s political and social commitment to her art, as a figurative painter at odds with the artistic styles of the avant-gardes of her time. Structured in two thematic parts – social injustice and gender inequality – this retrospective includes some 60 paintings and drawings as well as numerous documents. Following the artist from her first works in the 1920s to her final evocative self-portrait, made shortly before her death, this is the defining treatise on Alice Neel. '"Neel places us directly in front of her models to engage our look. She literally pushes her subjects into our personal space to make us confront individuals who are normally invisible..." Angela Lampe finishes up with the following: "With great pictorial power, Neel forces them upon us: look at them!"

The first-ever monograph on Reynaud-Dewar, one of today’s most celebrated multimedia artists French artist Lili Reynaud-Dewar creates environments and situations in which she uses her own body to examine the dual experience of vulnerability and empowerment that results from acts of exposing oneself to the world. Evolving through a range of media such as performance, video, installation, sound, and literature, her work considers the fluid border between public and private space, challenging conventions related to the body, sexuality, power relations, and institutional spaces. This is the first book to document her remarkable career.

A rebel and feminist, the Switzerland-born Miriam Cahn is one of the major artists of her generation. Widely known for her drawings and paintings, she also experiments with photography, moving images, sculptures, and performance art. Cahn’s diverse body of work is disturbing and dreamlike, filled with striking human figures pulsing with an energy both passionate and violent. These pieces, along with Cahn’s reflections on artistic expression, have always responded to her contemporary moment. In the 1980s, her work addressed the feminist, peace, and environmental movements, while the work she produced in the 1990s and early 2000s contains allusions to the war in the former Yugoslavia, the conflict in the Middle East, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Her recent production tackles ever-evolving political conflicts, engaging with the European refugee crisis and the “#metoo” movement.Miriam Cahn: I as Human examines different facets of the artist’s prolific and troubling oeuvre, featuring contributions from art historians, critics, and philosophers including Kathleen Bühler, Paul B. Preciado, Elisabeth Lebovici, Adam Szymczyk, Natalia Sielewicz and .