Stefan Banz

The first and highly-anticipated monograph on one of the most successful, collected, and exciting painters today Swiss-born Nicolas Party, one of the most successful and critically acclaimed artists working today, is known for his color-saturated paintings of everyday objects, with distinctly personal yet very accessible and recognizable imagery - bright, graphic patterns applied to canvases, ceramics, furniture, floors, ceilings, doorways, and walls. He captures the essence of his subjects in surprising ways, heightening their physical and emotional resonance. Fascinated by the power of paint to alter our perception of the built environment and, within a gallery context, how we experience art, Party regularly paints murals, either as stand-alone works or as carefully orchestrated settings for his practice. This is the first book dedicated to his practice and the first to examine in totality his career to date - it will be a must-read for collectors and followers of the contemporary art scene.

During his stay in Switzerland in 1946, Marcel Duchamp spent a few days at the Hotel Bellevue in Chexbres, high above the Lake of Geneva and one of Switzerland's most famous and attractive vistas. The nearby waterfall Le Forestay, cascading through the steeply sloping vineyards of the Lavaux towards the lake, inspired Duchamp's last great masterwork, the assemblage "Aetant donnes: La chute d'eau, Le gaz d'eclairage". He photographed the scenery and included the image to his enigmatic work. The three-dimensional environmental tableau offers an unforgettable and untranslatable experience to those who peer through the two small holes in the solid wooden door. The artist-duo Caroline Bachmann and Stefan Banz found out where exactly Duchamp stood with his camera and reversed the situation. They took countless pictures of the breathtaking views of the lake, the high mountains of the Savoy Alps across and the vineyards of the Lavaux along its shore. Their work "What Duchamp Abandoned For the Waterfall" consists of more than 150 colour photographs, atmospheric images of one of Switzerland's most extraordinary and attractive landscapes. The new book "What Duchamp Abandoned For the Waterfall" presents this previously unpublished work for the first time. The accompanying essay looks at the artist's research on the relevance of Duchamp's Aetant donnes, how he made use of the location for his artistic intentions and what photographing this particular waterfall meant to him.