Robert Storr

This catalogue is in addition to the exhibition at de MoMa on the paintings of the lives and deaths of the Baader-Meinhof group. The late 1960s, the Baader-Meinhof group had become Germany's most feared terrorists. Although the prisoners' deaths were pronounced suicides, the authorities were suspected of murder.

The fifteen works in October 18, 1977 evoke fragments from the lives and deaths of the Baader-Meinhof group. Richter has worked in a range of styles over the years, including show more painterly and geometric abstraction as well as varieties of realism based on photography; the slurred and murky motifs of this work derive from newspaper and police photographs or television images. Shades of gray dominate, the absence of color conveying the way these second-hand images from the mass media sublimate their own emotional content. An almost cinematic repetition gives an impression, as if in slow motion, of the tragedy's inexorable unfolding. Produced during a prosperous, politically conservative era eleven years after the events, and insisting that this painful and controversial subject be remembered, these paintings are widely regarded as among the most challenging works of Richter's career. show less

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, one of the most influential artists of his generation, lived and worked resolutely according to his own idealistic principles, determined to "make this a better place for everyone." He combined elements of Conceptual art, Minimalism, political activism, and poetic beauty in an ever-expanding arsenal of media, including public billboards, give-away piles of candy and posters, and ordinary objects--clocks, mirrors, light fixtures--used to startling effect. His work show more challenged the notions of public and private space, originality, authorship and--most significantly--the authoritative structures in which he and his viewers functioned. Editor Julie Ault has amassed the first comprehensive monograph to span Gonzalez-Torres's career. In the spirit of his method, she rethinks the very idea of what a monograph should be. The book, which places strong emphasis on the written word, contains newly commissioned texts by Robert Storr and Miwon Kwon among other notables, as well as significant critical essays, exhibition statements, transcripts from lectures, personal correspondence, and writings that influenced Gonzalez-Torres and his work. Ample visual documentation adds another important layer of content. We see works not just in their completed state, but often in process, which for Gonzalez-Torres could mean the process of disappearing as viewers interacted with them. A crucial reference. show less

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Gerhard Richter. 40 Years of Painting at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, this publication represents a broad range of Gerhard Richter's paintings of the last 40 years.

Gerhard Richter's diverse body of work questions broadly held attitudes about the inherent importance of stylistic consistency for an artist. It ranges from photo-based pictures all across the board to gestural abstraction. The 'natural' evolution of individual artistic show more sensibility, the spontaneous component of creativity and the relationship of technological means and mass media imagery to traditional studio methods and formats. Richter has always kept his distance from revolutionaries and conservatives alike regarding what painting “should” be. This has resulted in what has been among the most convincing renewal of painting's vitality in late 20th- and early 21st-century art.

This publication consists of a critical essay by curator Robert Storr, a rare interview with the artist himself, a chronology, an exhibition history, and nearly 300 colour and duotone reproductions. show less

»I prefer a doomsday mood and I love to laugh at bad news«
It was arguably during the 1960s that painting got caught up in the loop of permanent rehash and constant transformation, which—in contrast to the hypothesis of progress—forms the working principle of postmodernism. Peter Saul (* 1934 in San Francisco) is one of the most important protagonists of this radical change that is often, and rather inaccurately, connected exclusively to the advent of Pop Art. With his painterly and show more graphic work, Peter Saul has created a complex amalgam of high and counterculture, combining comics, Pop, surrealism, and abstract expressionism with the radical (and in part quite trivial) social critique of the Haschrebellen (Hashish ­Rebels). As a matter of course, such a painter would have never been a champion of American troops in ­Vietnam, never a party-supporter of Reagan or Bush, but politically reducing his work to agitprop would mean overlooking the hedonistic impulse of a baroque compositional joy within his images. After publications on the work of the last few years in the USA, this first individual exhibition in Europe including this catalog, devised by Martina Weinhart and the Schirn, focuses on the work of the 1960s, as sex and crime, politics, drugs, karma and revolt first began to penetrate the world. Some of Saul's works, in their pastel tones, may be reminiscent of Philip Guston, the other great US painter of late glory. Asked about this, Peter Saul only said that Guston's paintings had never interested him; in his opinion they were too »softcore«. He thought his attitude towards the subject was too amusing and that personally he rather preferred a doomsday mood; he said, he loved to laugh at bad news.

Exhibitions:
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, June 2 – September 3, 2017
Deichtorhallen Hamburg/Sammlung Falckenberg, September 30, 2017 – January 28, 2018

Long before Bad Painting became a central concern of contemporary art, San Francisco born painter Peter Saul (b. 1934) deliberately offended good taste. Employing a crossover of Pop Art, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, San Francisco funk and cartoon culture of the 1960s, Saul addressed the pressing political and social topics of his time. Vietnam, Reagan, protests, sex, drugs and the American dream clash in paintings rendered in screaming Day-Glo colors. Returning to San Francisco from Europe in 1956, Saul became a major figure in the 1960s and 1970s before moving to Austin, Texas, in 1980. His early work from the 1960s, recently reembraced by young curators and artists in the United States and Europe, has led to this first solo exhibition in Germany at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2017). The vividly illustrated softcover catalog captures Saul s vision of this tumultuous time in over 100 color reproductions. Saul s work has long been collected by museums worldwide, from Centre Pompidou, Paris, to MoMA, NY. show less