It’s not a mistake to see a shape in the cloud. That’s what it is to be alive with your eyes open; to be constantly, promiscuously, putting things together. – William Kentridge.

William Kentridge is one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. His work spans many genres – film, printmaking, books, tapestry, sculpture, and opera and theatre design – but all of these are linked back to the discipline of drawing, which for Kentridge is ‘thinking aloud’, that he finds the most direct way to address ‘an art (and politics) in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay’. With over a hundred illustrations, this survey by author and artist Kate McCrickard is an ideal introduction to his diverse achievements.

Author: Kate McCrickard, English, Monograph, Softcover, 270 x 210 mm, full colour, 128pp, ISBN: 978 0 958 497541,
Price: (ZA)R 240

David Krut Projects New York

Opening Reception: March 2, 2012, 6-8 pm
On view: February 23 – April 14, 2012

David Krut Projects is pleased to present Print Me, the first exhibition dedicated to Chakaia Booker’s prints. Booker began collaborating with Master Printer, Phil Sanders, of Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in 2009, and has created over 100 unique prints to date. The title of the exhibition, Print Me, refers to the collaborative dialogue between Booker and Sanders, in which Booker would leave hand written notes for Sanders once her compositions were finished and ready to print. This exhibition features a selection of these collaborative prints, which highlight Booker’s investigation of the two-dimensional framework through experimental print media.

Taking full advantage of the various tools and materials available in the print studio, Booker cut into woodblocks with drills, chisels and grinders and painted on paper with gouache, watercolor and film ink to create an array of lively marks: some sharp and rough, others organic, swirling and energetic. A departure from the characteristically dark color palette of her sculptural work, Booker layered thin, hand-painted and printed Asian papers, combining bright reds and yellows with muted earth tones and blues. Once composed, these papers were adhered together through the process of chine collé, a method Sanders refers to as “sculpture with a 2-D outcome.”

Best known for her large sculptural works made from discarded tires which are cut, looped, layered and reassembled, Booker’s prints explore similar ideas of recombination and transformation through analogous printmaking processes.  Just as Booker cuts and recombines materials in her sculptures, her prints are created by tearing, layering and recomposing paper into dynamic new forms, some patterned and abstract and others quietly figurative and playful.

A full-color, 64 page catalogue will be released in conjunction with this exhibition, featuring an essay by Phil Sanders and quotes from Chakaia Booker.

Chakaia Booker received a B.A. in Sociology from Rutgers University (1976) and a MFA from the City College of New York (1993). She was selected for the Whitney Biennial in 2000, awarded the Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2002 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 Booker’s work has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Select solo exhibitions include: The National Museum of Women in the Arts; Milwaukee Art Museum; The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Queens Museum of Art; Katonah Museum of Art and Storm King Arts Center. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Art and Design, Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, among others. Her work is the collections of the following selected institutions: the Bronx Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Orleans Museum of Art; Newark Museum and The Snite Museum of Art. Booker lives in New York City and her studio is located in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She is represented by Marlborough Gallery in New York.

Design is by Ellen Papciak-Rose, who has previously worked with David Krut Publishing on Handspring Puppet Company, William Kentridge: Flute, Art and Justice and TAXI-015: Paul Stopforth.

Please note that orders for this publication will require an extended shipping period.

Author: Phil Sanders and Chakaia Booker, English, Monograph, Softcover, 240x190mm, 34 plates, full colour, 64pp, ISBN: 978-0-9584975-5-8,
Price: (ZA)R 195

The unique bookstore at David Krut Projects Cape Town, located at the Montebello Design Centre in Newlands, specialises in books on South African and International arts and arts-related subjects, design, literature and architecture,  but also stock many titles on South African culture and politics.

The bookstore has become an invaluable resource to book and art enthusiasts as well as educators in the arts, owing to the specialist range that we carry. Occupying pride of place are David Krut Publishing titles, such as the TAXI Arts book series of monographs. We also have a substantial range of publication on William Kentridge. David Krut Publishing is the sole distributor of TATE in South Africa.

We have some interesting new arrivals in our bookstore to start the year off with some good reading:

ART & DESIGN

De Kooning: A Retrospective

Published in conjunction with the first large-scale multi-medium posthumous retrospective of Willem de Kooning’s career, this publication offers an unparalleled opportunity to appreciate the development of the artist’s work as it unfolded over nearly seven decades, beginning with his early academic works, made in Holland before he moved to the United States in 1926, and concluding with his final, sparely abstract paintings of the late 1980s.
read more

William Kentridge & Peter L. Galison: The Refusal of Time

In this notebook, artist William Kentridge and science historian and filmmaker Peter L. Galison preview their Documenta 13 collaboration on the subject of non-standardized temporality, realized in drawing, text, music and film.
read more

William Kentridge: Lexicon

Lexicon is a facsimile cloth edition of an antiquarian Latin-Greek dictionary which the internationally celebrated South African artist William Kentridge (born 1954) has embellished with black ink drawings of what might seem at first to be animal silhouettes.
read more

G – An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design and Film

The European avant-gardes of the 1920s, eager to revolutionize making and thinking for the modern world, yet lacking the means to test their ideas in practice, presented their work in numerous small but influential international journals. Contemporaneous with better-known periodicals such as De Stijl and L’esprit nouveau was the Berlin-based journal G: Materialen zur Elementaren Gestaltung [G: Materials for Elemental Form-Creation], which until now had been all but forgotten. A new volume edited by the late Detlef Mertins and Michael W. Jennings, two distinguished scholars of Weimar-era culture, restores G to international circulation while arguing for its historical importance as channel of avant-garde discourse.
read more

Julian Opie: Editions 1984 – 2011

One of the most important protagonists of contemporary British art for more than two decades, Julian Opie’s prints and editions are fully documented in a new 280 page Catalogue Raisonné, to accompany a major retrospective at the Alan Cristea Gallery (9 June – 9 July 2011).
read more

John Martin: Apocalypse

John Martin (1789–1854) is one of the most extraordinary figures in British art. His dramatic paintings depicted catastrophe, war, apocalypse, and nature on an epic scale and appealed to a wider and more diverse audience than had ever previously been engaged by art.
read more

Richard Dadd: The Artist and The Asylum

Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum, [is] a witty and insightful account of the extraordinary life of Richard Dadd, a 19th-century artistic visionary ¿ Tromans must be congratulated for his no-nonsense criticism and his brisk insights – The Telegraph
read more

Modern Views

The Farnsworth House and the Glass House rewrote the history of modern architecture and are the sources of inspiration for nearly 90 works of art in this exclusive project with the National Historic Preservation Trust.
read more

George Lois: The Esquire Covers

As Esquire cover guru from 1962 to 1972, George Lois created the unforgettable iconography of an era. Every image tells a story & every name (JFK, Warhol, Muhammad Ali) is a force in American culture. In 2008, the Museum of Modern Art acquired a wide range of George Lois’ groundbreaking Esquire magazine covers and put them on display for a full year.
read more

FASHION, TRAVEL & LIFESTYLE

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969–2010) was one of the most influential, imaginative, and provocative designers of his generation. Featuring the most iconic and radical designs of his prolific career, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the designer’s evolution from the start of his fledgling label, to his years as creative director at Givenchy in Paris, and finally to the collections of his own world-renowned London house.
read more

American Fashion Designers at Home

American Fashion Designers at Home offers an intimate look into the private quarters of more than 100 members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America—from the classic elegance of Carolina Herrera’s Louis XV–influenced New York apartment to the pink-mirrored, flower-filled flat of Betsey Johnson. This collectible, one-of-a-kind sneak peek into the lives of CFDA stars reveals that fashion’s most creative minds also take their work home them.
read more

American Fashion Travel

The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) members are always on the go. These globetrotting design stars share their favorite destinations, hotels, restaurants, stores, and sources of inspiration in this new title from Assouline’s bestselling CFDA American Fashion series
read more

Conde Nast Traveler: Room with a View

Nothing compares to the moment when a hotel room’s drapes are drawn back to reveal the world outside—a world that seems to belong to you alone. This compendium from Condé Nast Traveler, gathers 140 of the most breathtaking hotel room views of all time.
read more

Antiquaires: Paris Flea Markets

Paris insiders know the best place to go for inspiration is not the Louvre. And the finest shopping isn’t on the Boulevard St. Germain: It’s the famous antiques markets of St. Ouen. Which explains why Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, André Breton, and Rudolf Nureyev all browsed at St. Ouen, the largest marketplace of secondhand clothing, housewares, and art objects in the world.
read more

DKW Workshop Manager Jillian Ross and Printer Mlungisi Kongisa guide the viewer through the processes of printmaking as they relate to William Kentridge’s six plate print “Scribble Cat” at DKW Arts on Main. In this film one can see the preparation of the ink, paper and plate, and the final printing of the image.

Camera: Ben Schellpfeffer

Editor: Liesl van Wyk

© TAXI Art Films and David Krut Publishing

Works | Bio | Exhibitions | News | Reviews

[Show as slideshow]

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The walkabout will take place at the projects space on Sunday 5 February from 11:30am.

For more on Arts on Main on Sundays, watch the video Raphael Klatzo made of the Arts on Main Sunday market and Jessica Webster’s exhibition opening last week:

http://vimeo.com/35536197

Opening Reception: March 2, 2012, 6-8 pm
On view: February 23 – April 14, 2012

David Krut Projects is pleased to present Print Me, the first exhibition dedicated to Chakaia Booker’s prints. Booker began collaborating with Master Printer, Phil Sanders, of Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in 2009, and has created over 100 unique prints to date. The title of the exhibition, Print Me, refers to the collaborative dialogue between Booker and Sanders, in which Booker would leave hand written notes for Sanders once her compositions were finished and ready to print. This exhibition features a selection of these collaborative prints, which highlight Booker’s investigation of the two-dimensional framework through experimental print media.

Taking full advantage of the various tools and materials available in the print studio, Booker cut into woodblocks with drills, chisels and grinders and painted on paper with gouache, watercolor and film ink to create an array of lively marks: some sharp and rough, others organic, swirling and energetic. A departure from the characteristically dark color palette of her sculptural work, Booker layered thin, hand-painted and printed Asian papers, combining bright reds and yellows with muted earth tones and blues. Once composed, these papers were adhered together through the process of chine collé, a method Sanders refers to as “sculpture with a 2-D outcome.”

Best known for her large sculptural works made from discarded tires which are cut, looped, layered and reassembled, Booker’s prints explore similar ideas of recombination and transformation through analogous printmaking processes.  Just as Booker cuts and recombines materials in her sculptures, her prints are created by tearing, layering and recomposing paper into dynamic new forms, some patterned and abstract and others quietly figurative and playful.

A full-color, 64 page catalogue will be released in conjunction with this exhibition, featuring an essay by Phil Sanders and quotes from Chakaia Booker.

Chakaia Booker received a B.A. in Sociology from Rutgers University (1976) and a MFA from the City College of New York (1993). She was selected for the Whitney Biennial in 2000, awarded the Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2002 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 Booker’s work has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Select solo exhibitions include: The National Museum of Women in the Arts; Milwaukee Art Museum; The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Queens Museum of Art; Katonah Museum of Art and Storm King Arts Center. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Art and Design, Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, among others. Her work is the collections of the following selected institutions: the Bronx Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Orleans Museum of Art; Newark Museum and The Snite Museum of Art. Booker lives in New York City and her studio is located in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She is represented by Marlborough Gallery in New York.

Design is by Ellen Papciak-Rose, who has previously worked with David Krut Publishing on Handspring Puppet Company, William Kentridge: Flute, Art and Justice and TAXI-015: Paul Stopforth.

Please note that orders for this publication will require an extended shipping period.

Author: Phil Sanders and Chakaia Booker, English, Monograph, Softcover, 240x190mm, 34 plates, full colour, 64pp, ISBN: 978-0-9584975-5-8,
Price: (ZA)R 195

This is second publication on Victor’s work from David Krut Publishing. The main body of text was written by author Karen von Veh. She has also contributed extensively to the TAXI-013 Diane Victor monograph. von Veh is President of SAVAH (the association of South African Visual Arts Historians), and is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Visual Art, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, at the University of Johannesburg. Her particular interests are in contemporary South African’s woman’s art, gender studies in art history, and, lately, the transformation of religious icons in contemporary art. On these topics she has presented many conference papers, both locally and internationally, and contributed articles to local art history journals.

Ashes to Ashes and Smoke to Dust is a body of work divided into two exhibitions. The first is a church window installation of smoke on glass which is ideally suited to the elongated format of the UJ Art Gallery. Burdens and Offerings forms the first part of the show with its religious undertones, created solely on drawings made in candle smoke. Victor says, “My images attempt to explore the metaphorical burdens people attach to themselves and drag through their lives as proof of their positions as scapegoats and martyrs.” After visiting an exhibition, called Vaudou, at the Foundation Cartier in Paris earlier in the year, she became fascinated with the West African fetish effigies from collections of Jacques Kerchache (1942 – 2001).  She goes on to say, “I responded to the psychological implications that these bound and burdened figures evoked, transferring them into our obsession with contemporary fear and indulgences.”* Offerings, which extends from the series of glass drawings exhibited at the Nelspruit abattoir. Much like Brief Lives this new series of portraits include images of domestic meat animals which aim at exploring ideas of innocence and sacrifice. The second part of the exhibition is the continuation of the process of working with smoke and ash where she is furthering her exploration into the potential of book ash as a drawing material. The ash drawings featured here are sourced from specific “lost words” from documents and texts which are burnt, dusted and fixed onto paper.

TAXI-013: Diane Victor, David Krut Publishing, 2008.

Author: Karen von Veh, English, Monograph, Softcover, 200 x 200mm, full colour, 104pp, ISBN: 9780958497534,
Price: (ZA)R 180

This publication will accompany the opening of the second half of the exhibition Ashes to Ashes and Smoke to Dust, comprising a new series of works created from ash.

Following the launch there will be an informal discussion panel with Diane Victor, during which members of the public are welcome to share their own views on or engage with topics surrounding the work.

On Wednesday 25 January 2012 at 19:00 there will be a closing ceremony at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery.

For more information about the exhibition contact the UJ Gallery on +27 (0)11 559 2099 or aedempsey@uj.ac.za.
For information about the book please click here.

The townships of Cape Town burst with creativity. They are the place where traditional African culture meets global youth cultures. Hip-hop has reached South Africa and is reinterpreted according to local conditions. Styles in fashion, dance and music are a way out of poverty. For the first time this fascinating street culture is presented outside South Africa. Tomorrow’s global subcultures are born in the big cities of the Third World.

Photographer Per Englund offers a brand new image of South Africa. In The Beautiful Struggle, the reader will meet youths talking about their lives and dreams. But life is still a struggle in a society in which the Apartheid structure is still evident.

The texts are written by Per Englund, Mlamli Figlan, born and raised in the township Guguletu and the Danish anthropologist Karen Waltorp. Foreword by Marika Griesehl, Swedish Television’s former Africa correspondent.

Author: Englund & Figlan & Griesehl & Waltorp, English, Monograph, Hard Cover, 205mm x 265mm, 143 pages, colour photographs, ISBN: 9789197398152,
Price: (ZA)R 180.00

In 2008, the Museum of Modern Art acquired a wide range of George Lois’ groundbreaking Esquire magazine covers and put them on display for a full year. The Esquire Covers @ MoMA catalogs entire exhibit along with unseen images from Lois’ private collection, including personal photographs of the designer at work and outtakes of a shoot with Andy Warhol.

George Lois, who led advertising’s creative revolution in the 1960s, was hand-picked by the legendary editor Harold Hayes to convey visually that Esquire – a leading proponent of another creative revolution of the time, New Journalism – was on the cutting edge of profound changes in American culture.

With images of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr. watching over Arlington National Cemetery; of Richard Nixon under the makeup artist’s powder-puff; and of Muhammad Ali as the martyred Saint Sebastian, he did just that.

Author: George Lois, English, Design, Hardcover, 350 x 230mm, full colour, 120 images, 200pp, ISBN: 9782759404346,
Price: (ZA)R 500.00

Author: Laura Vechere, photography by Laziz Hamani
Price: (ZA)R750.00

Author: Klara Glowczewska, Introduction by André Aciman, English, Travel, Hardcover, 330 x 250mm, full colour, 140 images, 232pp, ISBN: 9782759404476,
Price: (ZA)R 700.00

Author: Council of Fashion Designers of America, English, Design, Hardcover, 280 x 230mm, full colour, 195 images, 144pp, ISBN: 9782759405091,
Price: (ZA)R 500.00

Author: Rima Suqi, English, Design, Hardcover, 300 x 230, full colour, 325 images, 280pp, ISBN: 9782759404711,
Price: (ZA)R 650.00

Featuring the most iconic and radical designs of his prolific career, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the designer’s evolution from the start of his fledgling label, to his years as creative director at Givenchy in Paris, and finally to the collections of his own world-renowned London house. It reveals how McQueen adapted and combined the fundamentals of Savile Row tailoring, the specialized techniques of haute couture—such as lacework, embroidery, and featherwork—and technological innovation to achieve his distinctive aesthetic. It also focuses on the highly sophisticated narrative structures found in McQueen’s collections and in his extravagant runway presentations, which suggested the most avant-garde installation and performance art.

Published on the occasion of an exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute, this stunning book includes a preface by curator Andrew Bolton; an introduction by Susannah Frankel; an interview with Sarah Burton, creative director of the house of Alexander McQueen, conducted by Tim Blanks; and illuminating commentary from the designer himself. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty celebrates the astounding creativity and originality of a designer who relentlessly questioned and confronted the requisites of fashion.

Author: Andrew Bolton, with contributions by Susannah Frankel and Tim Blanks; Photography by Sølve Sundsbø, English, Monograph, Hardcover, 340 x 250mm, full colour, 240pp, ISBN: 9780300169782,
Price: (ZA)R 500

Author: Phyllis Lambert, Introduction by Paul Goldberger, English, Architecture, Hardcover, 330 x 240mm, full colour, 100 illustrations, 200pp, ISBN: 9782759404674,
Price: (ZA)R 750.00

The most brilliant young artist of his generation, Richard Dadd (1817-1886) made his name with a sequence of minutely executed fairy paintings of huge imaginative power. Following a long tour of the Middle East in the early 1840s he succumbed to a psychotic illness, murdered his father, and fled to France where he was apprehended by police and judged to have become insane. After being returned to England, Dadd spent over forty years in Britain’s most famous lunatic asylums, Bethlem Hospital and Broadmoor, never ceasing to work as an artist.

Interpretations of Dadd’s art have been coloured by Romantic notions of creativity and madness, by enthusiasm for Outsider Art, and by the ideas of Michel Foucault and the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In the first full account of Dadd’s life and career, the author examines Dadd’s artistic legacy and uses his case to investigate the encounter between art and the treatment of mental illness in the nineteenth century. In the enclosed world of the asylum, Dadd’s doctors were both his custodians and his patrons, while the legends of modern medicine became part of the larger mythological systems that informed the artist’s work.

The public appetite for Dadd’s bewitching art has never been greater, and this long-overdue reassessment provides a vivid account of one of the most fascinating artists of the Victorian era.

Nicholas Tromans is Senior Lecturer at Kingston University, London. He is the editor of The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting and has published widely on art of the nineteenth century.

Author: Nicholas Tromans, English, Monograph, Hardcover, 280 x 210 mm, full colour, 208pp, ISBN: 978 1 85437 959 7,
Price: (ZA)R 400

Edited by Martin Myrone
Price: (ZA)R 280

One of the most important protagonists of contemporary British art for more than two decades, Julian Opie’s prints and editions are fully documented in a new 280 page Catalogue Raisonné, to accompany a major retrospective at the Alan Cristea Gallery (9 June – 9 July 2011). Julian Opie: Editions 1984-2011 charts the development of the artist’s work from early, very reductive landscapes and portraits, to silhouettes, animations, lenticulars and LED animations. With an introduction by Jonathan Watkins, director of the IKON Gallery, Birmingham, this exhaustive work will reveal new insights into his working practices, and highlight his diverse sources of inspiration; from Manga films, cheese labels and billboard signs, to Tintin comics and graveyards, Dutch Old Master paintings and Japanese woodblock prints, Opie ‘paints’ using a vast array of media and technologies, and he continues to push the boundaries of ‘traditional’ artistic practice.

Born in London in 1958, Julian Opie studied at Goldsmith’s College of Art from 1979 to 1982. Exhibiting widely, both nationally and internationally, his editions can be found in many public collections worldwide including The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The British Museum, The Tate Gallery, London and MoMA, New York.

Author: Alan Cristea and Jonathan Watkins, English, Monograph, Hardcover, 272 pp, ISBN: 9780956487698,
Price: (ZA)R 1 050.00

G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923–1926 binds three interdependent projects in one bright-red volume. It is simultaneously a meticulous restoration, a modern translation, and a critical history. If today’s readers are to appreciate G as “one of the earliest journals of modern visual culture,” as Edward Dimendberg suggests, then we must have access to its look and feel as well as to its content. And to our great satisfaction, we do. Through exacting graphic and typographical reconstruction executed by Chris Rowat Design, the newly translated text is presented to the English-language reader much as it originally appeared in German, including long-lost typefaces and intricate layouts. The first two issues are faithfully reproduced in the form of fold-out tabloids tucked inside the book’s back cover. The editors exercised restraint in not attempting to correct or annotate the errors and inconsistencies in the original, allowing the reader to encounter these problems directly. Instead, the critical force is centered in the scholarly essays by Mertins, Jennings, Dimendberg, and Maria Gough, plus a foreword from Barry Bergdoll, which interrogate G while illuminating its place and time.

Author: editors Detlef Mertins and Michael W. Jennings
Price: (ZA)R 350.00

In this notebook, artist William Kentridge and science historian and filmmaker Peter L. Galison preview their Documenta 13 collaboration on the subject of non-standardized temporality, realized in drawing, text, music and film.

Author: William Kentridge and Peter L Galison, English and German, Monograph, Softcover, 250 x 175 mm, black and white, 48pp, ISBN: 9783776728584,
Price: (ZA)R 150

504 pages, 628 illustrations.

Author: John Elderfield. With Jennifer Field, Delphine Huisinga, Lauren Mahony, Jim Coddington and Susan Lake, English, Monograph, Hardcover, 310 x 250mm, full colour, 504pp, ISBN: 9780870707971,
Price: (ZA)R 850

A Decade of Printmaking
A Picasso Portfolio
British Prints from the Machine Age
Contemporary Art in Print
Deborah Bell’s Alchemy
Frank Auerbach: Etchings & Drypoints 1954 – 2006
Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age or Durer and Titian
Howard Hodgkin: The Complete Prints
How to Identify Prints
Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now
Ink, Paper, Metal, Wood: How to Identify Contemporary Artists’ Prints
Lucian Freud on Paper
Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings
Magical Secrets about Aquatint
Magical Secrets about Chine Colle
Magical Secrets about Line Etching and Engraving
Paula Rego: New Etchings 2009
Paula Rego: Printmaker
Paula Rego: The Complete Graphic Work
Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Processes
Printmaking in a Transforming South Africa
Rorke’s Drift: Empowering Prints
The British Museum: Durer
The Graphic Unconscious
The Printmaking Bible
The Rembrandt House: A Catalogue of Rembrandt Etchings
Tilson: The Printed Works
William Kentridge Prints

Author: Eva Ornstein-Van Slooten & Marijke Holtrop, English, Monograph, Soft cover, 280x214mm, 176pp, ISBN: 978 90 400 8325 9,
Price: (ZA)R 220.00

The catalogue offers over 40 artists, more than 200 images and a dozen interviews. It presents nine highly-readable essays by the Philagrafika curatorial team who provide thoughtful discussions of the concepts, issues and terminologies of print today.

For more information about the Philagrafika2010 festival please click here.

Author: Jose Roca and the curators of Philagrafika 2010, English, Group Show, Softcover, 254 x 216mm, full colour, 256pp,
Price: (ZA)R 295

Unknown Author, English, Monograph, Hardcover, 190x160mm, full colour, 96pp, ISBN: 9780714126647,
Price: (ZA)R 180.00

Author: Philippa Hobbs, Elizabeth Rankin, English, Softcover, 242 Pages, Full colour, 10.3x8cm, ISBN: 1-919930-13-2,
Price: (ZA)R 275.00

Author: Paula Rego, English, Monograph, Softcover, 230x191mm, Full Colour, 24pp, ISBN: 9781904373790,
Price: (ZA)R 150

Richard Calvocoressi was for many years Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and is now Director of the Henry Moore Foundation. Sebastian Smee has written frequently on Freud. He is the author of Lucian Freud 1996–2005 and Freud at Work.

Author: Richard Calvocoressi, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-0-8478-3233-0
Price: (ZA)R: 1020.00

Author: Catherine de Zegher (Editor), Cornelia Butler (Editor), English, Hardcover, 269 x 234 mm, 228pp, ISBN: 978-0-87070-782-7,
Price: (ZA)R 700

“This book gives readily accessible information on all forms of intaglio line, from drypoint and engraving to wax-based hard and soft grounds. Health and safety is addressed where necessary. Wonderfully illustrated with step-by-step photographs of the processes, the book includes works by more than 20 artists including Chuck Close, Anish Kapoor and Judy Pfaff. The accompanying DVD provides another route of access, ideal for those who may be intimidated by the written word. Kathan Brown’s appendix on printing is well laid-out with diagrams and photographs. Interestingly it does not follow the ways of printing often found in the US but describes the Crown Point Press way that she learned while studying at London’s Central School of Art. It is extremely refreshing to see such clear explanation of traditional methods.” -Alan Smith, Etching Instructor- Royal College of Art, London, Printmaking Today, 2008

“Line” is one of the seven “Elements of Art,” ingrained into students vocabulary in art classes across the globe. (I taught art in Ghana, and the students had these terms memorized like the days of the week.) Catherine Brooks’ book on Line Etching & Engraving lays down the foundation of intaglio printmaking and gives step-by-step instructions on how to use the specific tools and accomplish the techniques. Asphaltum. Acid. Hotplate. Scraper. Burnisher. Copper Plate. Drypoint Needle. These all sound like archaic tools used in the middle ages, and in fact, intaglio printmaking is a centuries old process. However, this book shows how contemporary artists like Julie Mehretu, Anish Kapoor, and Richard Tuttle, made prints in the Crown Point Press studio that are distinctly modern and cool. There are excellent photographs of the artists working on plates and beautiful reproductions of their prints. The step-by-step instructions are written in a clear voice and the reader can follow the photos that illustrate the technical process. I would recommend this book to a printmaking student, print-shop professional, or someone who is interested in prints and wants to expand their knowledge of printmaking. There are also fantastic and sometimes humorous quotes from the artists dotted throughout the book. I like this one by Tom Marioni, “I am fascinated by art that can only be seen if you know it is art. If something that’s not painting or sculpture seems interesting and is in an art context, it might be a work of invisible art.” In short, this book will improve your printmaking skills immensely, it could inspire you to do something creative, or as an art collector, you might even find a new love of prints. The dvd is absolutely worthwhile–it brings the whole thing together, especially for a visual learner. I wish I had this book when I was a printmaking student in art school! Reviewed by Dana Zullo; October 2, 2008.

Author: Nicola Moorby, Ian Warrell, English, How-to, Softcover, 144pp,250 colour illustrations, 270 x 210 mm, ISBN: 9781854378835,
Price: (ZA)R 295.00

This book draws extensively on the artist’s own correspondence to provide a new understanding of his artistic aims and achievements, and reassesses his role in the development of modern art.

William Vaughn is Pevsner Professor of History of Art at Birbeck College, University of London. He has published widely on Romanticism and on British Art.

Author: William Vaughn, English, Monograph , Soft cover, 80 pages, 240 x 140 mm, 53 colour and 10 black and white illustrations, ISBN: 978 1854 374349,
Price: (ZA)R 175.00

This pioneering book discusses the most influential artists internationally from Eadweard Muybridge to Robert Rauschenberg, Bill Viola and Pipilotti Rist-and those seminal works which have radically transformed the map of world art.

Author: Michael Rush, English, Softcover, 248 Pages, 21x15cm, ISBN: 0 500 20378 4,
Price: (ZA)R 145.00

Author: Kathan Brown, English, Anthology, Hardcover, 230x180mm, 107 pp, 90 color images., ISBN: 1 891300 11 3,
Price: (ZA)R 200.00

Author: Swoon, English, Art General, Softcover, 64pp, 190 x 277mm, ISBN: 978 0977868667,
Price: (ZA)R 225.00

Each artist has created an in-situ photograph to accompany their stencil, showing how they would use it, along with other imagery. There is also a short biography for each artist.
The book opens with an interview with one of the founders of stencil art, the Paris-based artist Blek Le Rat, who has also created a stencil for the book.
A collector’s item in its own right, the book is a must for artists, illustrators and anyone who loves street art.

Author: On Studio, English, Softcover, 250 x 250 mm, 90 pages, ISBN: 97818566970 9,
Price: (ZA)R 320

All of the artists in the book have roots in graffiti. Some are world renowned such as 123 Klan (Canada), Faith47 (South Africa) and Hera (Germany); others are lesser known or starting to get reputations.

Each artist received the same brief: to design all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet within the limits of a single page of the book. How they approached this and selected the media with which to express their ideas was entirely up to them.

This highly original book will inspire fans of street culture as well as typographers, graphic designers, advertising and communication students and design professionals worldwide.

Author: Claudia Walde, English, Design, Softcover, 278 x 215 mm, 320pp, ISBN: 9780500515594,
Price: (ZA)R 280

In the land of Hollywood, gang wars and beach bums, Los Angeles graffiti teems with the city’s myriad cultural influences. From intricately tagged walls that seem to grow out of blooming roadside flower beds to spray-painted palm trees, Los Angeles Graffiti illustrates how the landscape of America’s anti-city has fomented a distinct brand of graffiti, recognized the world over. Compiled by Roger Gastman, author of Freight Train Graffiti and co-founder (with Shepard Fairey) of Swindle magazine, this colorful book benefits from Gastman’s long-term, intimate involvement with L.A. graffiti writers. Recruiting friends and graffiti legends, like SABER and RETNA, Los Angeles Graffiti documents the history of the unique, world-class graffiti scene that thrives in Los Angeles. In particular, the interview with L.A. graffiti luminary POWER breathes history into these photographs of work created by the famous, infamous, and anonymous.

Author: Roger Gastman and Sonja Teri, English, New Arrival, Hardcover, 285 x 215 mm, full colour, 130 pages, ISBN: 9780979048616,
Price: (ZA)R 270

“Whether you’re gathering your bearings in the heart of a city, or staring at its skyline from miles away, you can usually tell where you are by looking at the unique landscape of any city. The common threads that run through so many urban environments – tall buildings, crowded sidewalks, street vendors – are always interwoven with the distinct features that come with a city’s geography, architecture, and, most importantly, its residents. Cities become epicentres of culture when their hippest citizens get together and create grassroots movements that eventually become the trends that spread to their suburbs and beyond. Eventually, the efforts of those people all come together to give each city its unique character. After all, what is a city, if not a man-made creation?”

From New York and Los Angeles, to the Brazilian mega-cities, South African townships, and Mumbai, the authors highlight cultural hotspots around the world – in more than 100 topics and more than 1,000 colour photographs.

Author: Roger Gastman, Caleb Neelon, Anthony Smyrski, English, Art General, hardcover, 384 pages, 235 x 220 mm, over 1000 colour illustrations, ISBN: 978 0500513859,
Price: (ZA)R 400.00

Female writers have always been in the vanguard of the graffiti movement, though often shunted to the sidelines by their male counterparts. This exhaustive volume places them front and center, featuring 1,000 full-color illustrations from some of the world’s most prominent artists, including Brazil’s Nina, Japan’s Sasu, Mexico’s Peste, and the Americans Lady Pink, Swoon, and Miss 17.

Two eight-page fold-out collages, a fold-out poster jacket, and an authoritative text round out the impressive package. The first and only comprehensive survey of its kind, this book is sure to attract and expand upon the wide and enthusiastic readership that made Graffiti World such a runaway success.

Author: Nicholas Ganz, English, Multimedia, ISBN: 978 0 500 51306 4,
Price: (ZA)R 400.00

Through a combination of illustration and clear, accessible texts, King traces the development of polemical imagery in Russia from the simple effectiveness of a handbill distributed on the morning of the October Revolution in 1917 to the sophistication of the photo-montages of Alexander Rodchenko and Gustav Klutsis. The way that imagery was arrived at, manipulated and deployed in the service of the Revolution is explored using a wealth of examples. Iconic posters of heroic figures are shown alongside the original photographs from which they were taken. Painted portraits of Lenin are shown to draw on the traditional skills of Russian religious iconography. Rare photographs document the bitter struggles of the Second World War. These remarkable images are accompanied by compelling explanatory texts that lead the reader through the extraordinary history of the Soviet Union.

The book’s layouts are designed in the clear, visually striking style that have made David King one of the most renowned art editors of his generation.

David King is the author of The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of  Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia (1997) and Ordinary Citizens: The Victims of Stalin (2003). He was art editor of The Sunday Times Magazine between 1965 and 1975 and is the owner of one of the world’s pre-eminent collection of Russian artefacts.

Author: David King, English, Art General, Hardcover, 290x245mm, 352pp, 550 full colour, black and white, ISBN: 9781854376862,
Price: (ZA)R 550.00

The installation of works in IMPRINT is reminiscent of 19^th century salon hangings, in which artwork is placed almost from floor to ceiling. The visual impact of this style of installation, true to another of the title’s definitions, imparts a vivid impression of complex interest.

IMPRINT includes work by Ryan Arenson, Frank Auerbach, Deborah Bell, Wilma Cruise, Christiaan Diedericks, Marlene Dumas, Jose Ferreira, Mischa Fritsch, Claire Gavronsky, Stephen Hobbs, Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge, David Koloane, Virginia Mackenny, Maja Maljevic, Colbert Mashile, Whitney Mcveigh, Andrzej Nowicki, Richard Penn, Robyn Penn, Paula Rego, Alexandra Ross, James Siena, Diane Victor, Mary Wafer, Jessica Webster and Alastair Whitton.

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Author: Starr Figura, English, Art General, hardcover, 144 pages, 310 x 235 mm, illustrations, ISBN: 978 0870707063,
Price: (ZA)R 450.00

Since its first publication in 1986, this comprehensive guide has established itself as the essential reference book for print and book collectors, dealers in prints and illustrated books, art librarians, art professors and students, and everyone interested in graphic art.

This book simplifies accurate identification of any printed image. Included are manual methods, as well as the mechanical processes that constitute the vast majority of printed images around us. In all, some ninety different techniques are described, both monochrome and colour. Of particular value are the many details of various techniques under strong magnification.

The one great change during the last twenty years has been the high-quality inkjet and laser prints that are now part of everyday life. How can one tell whether an attractive image is valuable in its own right or merely an appealing reproduction? As cheap printing processes become more sophisticated, it inevitably becomes harder to identify correctly an image of this kind. Bamber Gascoigne’s new observations in this area, added for this revised edition, will prove invaluable.

Author: Bamber Gascoigne, English, Soft cover, 249×219 mm, 208 pp, 272 illustrations, ISBN: 978 0500 284803,
Price: (ZA)R 400.00

Author: Silver and Wykoff, English, Art General, Hardcover, 285×270, full colour, ISBN: 9780300135795
Price: (ZA)R600

For those who only know Auerbach through his paintings, it is probably difficult to imagine how he might find an equivalent for the tactile paint surface of his pictures in the linear medium of etching. But Auerbach had a strong appreciation of the magic of printmaking and in their distinct way his etchings reveal the essential quality of his art.

Author: Craig Hartley, English, Monograph, Soft cover, 240x215mm, 48 pp, fully illustrated, ISBN: 978 0904 454765,
Price: (ZA)R 120.00

Author: Clifford S. Ackley, English, Hardcover, 248x223mm, full colour, 224pp, ISBN: 978-0500238479,
Price: (ZA)R 290

Howard Hodgkin’s prints form an extraordinary body of work, a parallel and very different achievement from his paintings. They have been internationally celebrated and passionately collected, but never brought together.

As a painter, Hodgkin has mostly preferred to create small works using oils and working on wood. As a printmaker, he has challenged the format, techniques and expressive potential of the medium, making over 140 works on paper.

An interview with Hodgkin sheds light on the genesis of the prints and investigates his conviction that printmaking is an independent process.

With over eighty colour plates and a fully illustrated catalogue raisonné, plus a chronology, an extensive bibliography and a list of solo and group exhibitions, this first ever comprehensive survey and catalogue raisonné, was compiled by Liesbeth Heenk and includes a major essay by Nan Rosenthal.

Liesbeth Heenk is a print expert who works for Sotheby’s in the Netherlands. Nan Rosenthal is Senior Consultant in the Department of Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Author: Liesbeth Heenk, English, Monograph, Softcover, 30x26cm, 240 Pages, 209 illustrations, 83 in colour,126 in duotone, ISBN: 978-0500284391,
Price: (ZA)R 480.00

Author: Paula Rego, English, Monograph, Softcover, 220x172mm, full colour,48pp, ISBN: –1904372252,
Price: (ZA)R 200

“The third in crown Point Press’s series on printmaking, this book does exactly what it says on the cover. Its meticulous, step-by-step approach means that even printmakers who are confident with aquatint will find it helpful.

The book is like a Russian doll in its presentation of the technique-each chapter revealing a different aspect of the process. While it can sometimes seem a little short of illustrations, the excellent text more than compensates. The ‘how to’ descriptions are also richly supported by the masterful images that the author has chosen to exemplify particular effects. Many are the work of some very famous artists: Al Held, Ed Ruscha, Tony Cragg, Elaine De Kooning and Francesco Clemente among them. Crown Point Press is, after all, among the most celebrated of all American print studios.

Whether you are a lover of aquatint or among those who have often found themselves frustrated by it, this is the book for you. The accompanying CD is 2 1/2 hours long (as long as it took me to read the book!) but being able to see the master printmaker at work, as described in the book, is a huge bonus.” –Megan Fishpool, Artist-printer & writer, UK, Printmaking Today, 2009

Specialized information. Beautiful color reproductions of artwork. Step-by-step instructions. Informative artist biographies. Very valuable dvd, detailing the entire processes. This book is a veritable handbook for aquatint! It contains a wealth of specific information which is written in a straight forward approach. There are many worthwhile insights into this process-heavy technique. Also, through the analysis of artists work, a window is opened into Crown Point Press’s history, and into the very studio were artists make etchings. It is the third volume in a series dedicated to the intaglio printmaking processes. The appendix reveals how to print your plate, The Crown Point Press Way, and you will be amazed at the difference in quality! This book is a perfect element to enhance every student’s printmaking studies. An essential tool in any print shop. Excellent addition to an art bookstore or library. A distinguished hardcover book to add to a collector’s shelf. (I also love the Sol LeWitt print on the cover!) Reasonably priced for the amount of information and detail provided. The book is worth the price alone; think of the dvd as a bonus! Reviewed by Dana Zullo; September 25, 2008

Author: Emily York and Crown Point Press, English, How-to, ISBN: 9781891300219,
Price: (ZA)R 600.00

Author: Kathan Brown, English, Monograph , Soft cover, 250x200mm, 59 pages, b&w illustrations,
Price: (ZA)R 135.00

Author: Philippa Hobbs, Elizabeth Rankin, English, Softcover, 204 Pages, 63 Colour illustrations, 204pp, 275x215mm, 64 colour plates, ISBN: 9780864863348,
Price: (ZA)R 150.00

Techniques covered:

INTAGLIO

• Etching
• Mezzotint
• Drypoint
• Collograph
• Metal Engraving

RELIEF

• Woodcut
• Linocut
• Wood Engraving

LITHOGRAPHY

• Stone
• Zinc PLate
• Polyester

SCREENPRINTING

• Surfaces
• Stencil
• Photo

MONOTYPE

• Transfers
• Oil-based
• Water-based

Author: Ann D’Arcy Hughes & Hebe Vernon-Morris, English, Art General, Hardcover, 265x235mm, 416pp, full colour, ISBN: 9780811862288, LOC: JHB,
Price: (ZA)R 550.00

Since many students are now interested in combining digital media with traditional methods, this book will demonstrate how to use the computer as an image-making tool and translate digital images into tangible works of art.
Each chapter features clear, step-by-step illustrations plus expanded case studies, which help the student understand the technical aspects of each printmaking technique. Also, each chapter features a profile with  an international contemporary printmaker, including an interview as well as examples of their work.
Useful appendices featuring troubleshooting charts, which cover the common problems the beginning printmaker might face, as well as sources for further information, complete this useful textbook for beginners.

Bill Fick is a printmaker and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Duke University who has exhibited his work internationally. He is also the director of Cockeyed Press, which specializes in the production of satirical linocut prints.
Beth Grabowski is a printmaker and a Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Most recently her work was exhibited in Berlin at an exhibition honouring Käthe Kollowitz. She is the author of ‘A Printshop Handbook’ (1991).

Contents

1. Practical Matters
2. Digital Processes
3. Screen Printing
4. Relief
5. Intaglio
6. Collagraph
7. Lithography
8. Monoprint
9. Mixed Media

Author: Bill Flick and Beth Grabowski, English, Softcover, 292 x 220 mm, 240pp, 657 illustrations, ISBN: 978 1 85669 600 5,
Price: (ZA)R 320.00

In 1954, the South African Library recieved a large number of posters produced in the Soviet Union during World War II. In 1991, the posters were presented to the South African National Gallery, and an exhibition of selected works was shown at the Gallery in 1997.

The posters are the famous TASS WINDOWS which were first produced and printed shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in 1941. They are large, brightly coloured posters accompanied by a didactic text or often by a lengthy poem. The posters are printed using a highly sophisticated stencilling technique called pochoir.

In addition to the posters, there is a display of lithographs printed in Russia during the Second World War, as well as material clearly showing the strength of the support in South Africa for the Soviet Union during the war years.

The idea to curate another exhibition of the posters came from Jonathan Berndt, whose research has been incorporated into this exhibition. Sadly, Berndt passed away in August 2010. This exhibition is a tribute to his memory and work.

Enquiries: Joe Dolby,
Tel: 021 481 3966
email: jdolby@iziko.org.za

IN OUR BOOKSTORE:

Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union
The Russian Revolution instigated some of the most startling advances in the fields of art, photography and graphic design seen in the twentieth century; their impact on the development of modernism was immeasurable and is still felt today… read more

Faith47 is a self taught artist, best known for her graffiti and street art. While her home and studio are based in Cape Town, the artist is a seasoned traveller, spending much of her time exploring the world and creating art based on compelling and touching experiences with the people and places she encounters. November 2011 saw her back in Johannesburg where she spent some time working in studio at DKW, Arts on Main. She developed a suite of monoprints that originated from a combination of woodblock print and monotype techniques.

On a recent trip to Greece, she was inspired by an abandoned car featured in the first monoprint. The image, for her, resonated with the economic situation and the general mood of the country at the time. The broken down car is accompanied by the Greek slogan, which translates to “wake up and fight or bow down and pray”.

The pack of wolves is a reworking of a painting she did on a wall in Slovakia earlier this year. She describes the energy of the animals as reflecting an energy that we each hold internally. That violent surge is expressed in society, particularly in South African society, with a certain wild, untamed animalistic charge.

In between making the monoprints in the workshop, Faith also painted a large mural at the crossing of Goud and Main Street, not far from Arts on Main. The mural developed from an artwork on wood, called power and enlargement, created in her studio in Cape Town. The tiger image and title reference the fliers often seen pasted on walls and signs around town advertising North African doctors and their promises of returning lost lovers and medicines for penis enlargement. Her studio work and street art seem to co-exist symbiotically. In the same way that the artworks emanate from her travels and urban experiences, they find their way back onto street walls, inspiring and reflecting the people that see it every day.

Faith says, “My experiences painting on the street have bled over into my studio work and into these prints, bringing in the moods and textures of the urban environment as well as the scrawlings, sentences, poems  and texts that are left behind by disenfranchised homeless people, stowaways and gangs tags that I’ve been documenting over the past few years.”

Incorporated text courtesy of Faith47.

The prints are now available from David Krut Projects. For more information, please call the gallery on 021 685 0676 or email alastair@davidkrut.com

—

IN OUR BOOKSTORE:

Graffiti Woman
From the author of the enormously successful Graffiti World comes this spectacular follow-up, celebrating the contributions of women to contemporary graffiti and street art… read more

Street World – Urban Culture from Five Continents
A new global street culture has emerged, uniting the world’s diverse subcultures. Graffiti and skateboarding, DJ-ing, fashion and printmaking – this packed book celebrates the street as a stage for the creativity of a generation… read more

Los Angeles Graffiti
In the land of Hollywood, gang wars and beach bums, Los Angeles graffiti teems with the city’s myriad cultural influences. From intricately tagged walls that seem to grow out of blooming roadside flower beds to spray-painted palm trees, Los Angeles Graffiti illustrates how the landscape of America’s anti-city has fomented a distinct brand of graffiti, recognized the world over… read more

Street Fonts
Claudia Walde has spent over two years collecting alphabets by 154 artists from 30 countries. All of the artists in the book have roots in graffiti. Some are world renowned such as 123 Klan (Canada), Faith47 (South Africa) and Hera (Germany); others are lesser known or starting to get reputations… read more

The Street Art Stencil Book
A pure celebration of the art of the stencil. The 20 stencils featured, printed on perforated card stock so that they can be torn out and used, have been created by a list of international artists encompassing the contemporary street art scene, from the masters to the new kids on the block… read more

Swoon
When the 27-year-old Brooklyn street artist Swoon had her first one-person gallery exhibition at New York’s Deitch Projects in 2005, the area surrounding the gallery was so overrun with fans and friends that neither cars nor pedestrians could pass through… read more

SO MUCH of the way the rest of the world perceives Africa and South Africa is via images. Images on TV, in magazines and from the cameras of famous South African photographers who are often well-armed with their particular beliefs and agendas.

These images, sometimes edgy and dramatic, become fixed representations serving as benchmarks of how we are seen, sometimes long after their shelf life has expired. That said, at the other end of the spectrum, the same could be said of travel photography with its bias towards beautiful exotic places.

At a walkabout of Postcards from the Road, Don Pinnock, one of the exhibitors, suggested that probably none of the photographs in this exhibition would get into a magazine. Why not? The 28 photographs on exhibit are not immediately threatening.

They follow the traditional composition found in documentary travel photography, there’s no ground-breaking way of looking at the subject, format, technique or composition here. However Pinnock explained that these images would be rejected on the grounds that travel magazines want pretty pictures.

Granted some of the images just can’t help being pretty even when the context is decidedly not. Silk prayer flags flapping against the desolate Himalayas in Kashmir, the shadow of foliage on a wall during a solar eclipse and drying clothing artistically laid out on a dry river bed.

What Pinnock and co-exhibitor Justin Fox are keen to bring to the viewer are images and their accompanying stories that don’t make it into a magazine.

As Pinnock says “all these images are not what we would normally take” and yet they are how he and Fox write, which is “writing beyond the obvious” and the stories behind the narrative.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of Postcards from the Road is the unorthodox process by which the photographs were selected.

Drawn from archives containing thousands of images, they were culled to just 14 images per photographer ranging from as close as Mozambique, to as far afield as Antarctica and China. Co-curator Jacqueline Nurse writes in the prologue that an “instinctual process” was used, one which has its roots in “the old parlour game, Consequences, adapted by the Surrealists into what is now known as cadavre exquis or the Exquisite Corpse” which allows the unconscious to serve as a filter. Even more unusual was that the photographers had no say in the selection. Pinnock and Fox were however allowed carte blanche regarding the texts.

Although the viewer will enjoy these images which are free from the confines of an editor’s brief, it’s the text that carries the charge, and the audience at the walkabout were party to some interesting and at times heightened responses and projections.

For example, the text accompanying Fox’s image of trinkets from the Jiayuguan market in China bearing images of Chairman Mao which state that “Hitler’s rule caused the deaths of 60 million people, Mao’s rule killed between 40 and 70 million people” brought about a strong response from a Chinese national who insisted that many Chinese still regard Mao as a hero and the deaths he caused were not necessarily directly related to his rule as those directly attributed to Hitler were.

Other strong reactions were to the text accompanying Fox’s image of a bricked doorway in Ibo Island where unseen on the other side were squatters going about their lives. Fox wrote “Frelimo offered a brave new, Marxist future that would be plagued with the stupidity of social engineering and the dark evils of civil war.”

The notion of “stupidity of social engineering” was taken up and grilled. Even Fox’s Stooped Man in Barcelona, a very tender image of an elderly man stooped with osteoporosis against an immense wall, created a reaction. This time the public response was not within the political context of the photographer but a highly personal one about the horrors of ageing.

Finally Pinnock’s image, Shirt House, Lucira, Angola, which shows a beautifully colourful habitat fashioned from T-shirts donated for wear, also raised issues. Firstly the impulse of giving was criticised as serving the self rather than being altruistic and, furthermore, the lack of regard to the recipients’ context was criticised, shade rather than warmth is what is required in Africa.

Although the text may both limit and extend these interpretations, nevertheless the images of Postcards from the Road allow for many interpretations. The result is big responses from small scale images.

Check it out.

read article on IOL

David Krut Projects is pleased to present IMPRINT, a selection of editions and works on paper by local and international artists, running from 10 December 2011 until 24 March 2012.

The definitions of the word “imprint” encapsulate the central tenets of the show. All works have in common the fact of their production through various printmaking techniques, which involve running paper through a press in order to create the imprint of an inked plate. The word can also refer to the details of the publisher, printed at the bottom of a work, which in this context draws attention to the chop (or blind stamp) used by publishers of editions to identify their work and the workshop in which it was produced.

From a metaphorical point of view, the word “imprint” can refer to a distinctive influence on thinking. Printmaking is, by nature, a collaborative exercise involving artist, printer and publisher, the impressions of each collaborator’s thought processes left as conceptual and technical traces in the final work. In a broader sense, as a result of being tethered to its time, every work of art created becomes an impression absorbed into collective memory. The same can be said for any exhibition of a group of artwork: combination creates a particular environment for the viewing of the work, the juxtapositions of and conversations between individual pieces opening up meaning that may be otherwise obscured.

The installation of works in IMPRINT is reminiscent of 19^th century salon hangings, in which artwork is placed almost from floor to ceiling. The visual impact of this style of installation, true to another of the title’s definitions, imparts a vivid impression of complex interest.

IMPRINT includes work by Ryan Arenson, Frank Auerbach, Deborah Bell, Wilma Cruise, Christiaan Diedericks, Marlene Dumas, Jose Ferreira, Mischa Fritsch, Claire Gavronsky, Stephen Hobbs, Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge, David Koloane, Virginia Mackenny, Maja Maljevic, Colbert Mashile, Whitney Mcveigh, Andrzej Nowicki, Richard Penn, Robyn Penn, Paula Rego, Alexandra Ross, James Siena, Diane Victor, Mary Wafer, Jessica Webster and Alastair Whitton.

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IN OUR BOOKSTORE:
A selection of books related to printmaking will also be on display.

A Decade of Printmaking
A Picasso Portfolio
British Prints from the Machine Age
Contemporary Art in Print
Deborah Bell’s Alchemy
Frank Auerbach: Etchings & Drypoints 1954 – 2006
Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age or Durer and Titian
Howard Hodgkin: The Complete Prints
How to Identify Prints
Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now
Ink, Paper, Metal, Wood: How to Identify Contemporary Artists’ Prints
Lucian Freud on Paper
Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings
Magical Secrets about Aquatint
Magical Secrets about Chine Colle
Magical Secrets about Line Etching and Engraving
Paula Rego: New Etchings 2009
Paula Rego: Printmaker
Paula Rego: The Complete Graphic Work
Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Processes
Printmaking in a Transforming South Africa
Rorke’s Drift: Empowering Prints
The British Museum: Durer
The Graphic Unconscious
The Printmaking Bible
The Rembrandt House: A Catalogue of Rembrandt Etchings
Tilson: The Printed Works
William Kentridge Prints

Leading up to the event of his show at NIROX Projects Space, Partenheimer produced an artist book including poetry of Lebo Mashile, printed in collaboration with Mark Attwood at his Artist’s Press Studio in White River. Additionally he contributed to his South African Diaries with a suite of prints made at David Krut Print Workshop at Arts on Main with printmakers Jillian Ross and Mlungisi Kongisa. These three large prints are independent works that collectively form a triptych. When David Krut invited Partenheimer to create a suite of prints at the workshop, the idea of a small group, which form an interrelated and coherent energy, appeared very appealing. During the preparation of the prints, which combine linocut, different etching techniques and chine collé, proofs of preparatory forms turned into independent prints and extend the suite by three small linocut editions. The title of the prints, Folded Spirits corresponds directly to Jürgen Partenheimer´s notes, drawings, watercolours, texts, poems, and his artist book.

The abstract quality created in his works are best described by the Director of the Pinacoteca Do Estado in São Paulo, Marcelo Mattos Araújo: “Like a musical composition, they vibrate with the rhythm, repetition and juxtaposition of forms; they seem to express a state of uncertainty and inconsistency, seductively calling in question the viewer’s own preconceived certainties.”

The prints will be released early in 2012.

[Show as slideshow]

David Goldblatt’s portrait photography is explored in a new retrospective, while photojournalists Justin Fox and Don Pinnock document their travels.

■ Artist David Goldblatt quotes two American photographers to explain his philosophy of ­portraiture. Bill Brandt, who claims a good portrait tells something of the ­subject’s past while ­suggesting his or her future, and Evelyn Hofer, who claims that regardless of who they shoot, ­photographers ­photograph ­themselves.

Portraits, which brings together old and new ­portraits of South Africans taken over the course of Goldblatt’s 50-year career, reveals both these approaches. With ­subjects ranging from politicians to ­domestic workers, Goldblatt refuses to acknowledge the ­difference between grand and small subjects or grand and small ­questions relating to everyday life. His images serve to reveal the ­similarities between us rather than the differences. The show includes the series Ex-Offenders, in which Goldblatt invites convicted and alleged criminals to revisit the scene of the crime of which they had been accused and to be photographed there.

Challenging the spectacle of “the event” of the crime, these works burrow under the statistics to reveal a starker, more honest, much sadder face of crime in South Africa.

Goodman Gallery, 3rd floor, Fairweather House, 176 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, until December 10. Tel: 021 462 7573/4. Website: goodmangallerycape.com.

■ An artistic dialogue, a travelogue, a collection of stories and images, both visual and verbal, ­irreverent and brilliant, Postcards from the Road brings together works by renowned photojournalists Justin Fox and Don Pinnock.

Presented as postcards, with image and text in juxtaposition, the works form a narrative of the places to which the photojournalists have travelled and the different ways in which these journeys can be seen.

Reveling in inconsistencies, games and chance encounters, Fox and Pinnock aim not simply to bridge distances but to illuminate them. ­Underlying the ­narrative’s delightful sense of whimsy lies a deeply ­penetrating seriousness about absence and ­presence and the capacity for ­surroundings to act as portraits.

David Krut Projects, ­Montebello Design Centre, 31 ­Newlands ­Avenue, Newlands, until December 3. Tel: 021 685 0676. ­Website: davidkrutprojectscapetown.com.

click here to read review on M&G Online

Virginia Button’s engaging, fully-illustrated survey is the perfect introduction to Nicholson’s 60-year career, providing new insight into the techniques and motivations of one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century.

Virginia Button is a writer and curator based in Cornwall, and author of Christopher Wood and The Turner Prize.

Price: (ZA)R 300.00

“This art memoir is also truly an interesting personal memoir, for Marioni starts with his life as a child in Cincinnati in the ‘40s, tells us about his family and friends, and brings us forward with him to the present. He recounts many interesting coincidences in his life where his life touches famous artists and architects early in his career, and then later he becomes friends with them or creates works that are part of their works—like his relationship with John Cage and Marcel Duchamp and his commissioned sculpture for the Marin Civic Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. These stories and the explanations and descriptions of his many conceptual works of art and the circumstances surrounding their evolution and development, create a text of engaging interest with important historical context and documentary evidence.” Frank Cebulski, Sculpture magazine, July/August 2004

Author: Tom Marioni, English, International Literature, Softcover, 251x161mm, black and white, 222pp, ISBN: 978-1891300172,
Price: (ZA)R 200

Beckett on Film was awarded the ‘Best TV Drama’ award at the sixth South Bank Show Awards ceremony, which took place on Wednesday 6th February 2002 at the Savoy in London. Voted for by a panel of industry experts and key national media, the South Bank Show awards are chaired by the show’s editor and presenter, Melvyn Bragg and are regarded as a celebration of artistic achievement at the highest level. After seeing off competition from Bob and Rose (Red Productions for ITV1) and Othello (LWT FOR ITV1), producers  Michael Colgan and Alan Moloney from Blue Angel Films accepted the award on behalf of all those involved in the project.

‘Commendably ambitious and remarkably successful, a truly unique collection’.
Michael Dwyer, Film Correspondent, The Irish Times.

For more information visit the official Samuel Beckett website.

Author: Samuel Beckett, English, Multimedia, DVD,
Price: (ZA)R 1750.00

English, Multimedia, Hard cover, 165x226mm, 80 pages, 60 illustrations, ISBN: 9782843234149,
Price: (ZA)R 190

“Although women formed the majority of the Bauhaus’s student body in its early years, the role they played in shaping the school’s radical agenda has been largely ignored. Now Bauhaus Women comes along to correct the historical record.” – New York Times

This monograph—published to coincide with the Bauhaus exhibition at the MoMA (November 8, 2009-January 25, 2010)—celebrates the work of twenty women artists who created feverishly in all the teaching, workshop, and production branches of the Bauhaus—women who should have been included in the major art histories of the twentieth century long ago, but whose names, masterpieces, and extraordinary lives have only gradually become known to us. Recognized figures such as Anni Albers—the first textile artist to be exhibited at the MoMA—and Marianne Brandt—whose elegant geometric tableware have become classic Alessi designs—are showcased alongside previously unknown artists such as Gertrud Grunow, who taught “Harmonizing Science”; Helene Börner, who led the textile workshop; and Ilse Fehling, a sculptor and the most sought-after set and costume designer of her generation. Founded in 1919, the Bauhaus and most of its students were poor and lacking in just about everything. What it did have, however, was an abundance of enthusiasm, talent, and innovative creativity. Furthermore, over half of those seeking to enroll at the school were women. This tornado of the “fairer sex” was initially seen as a threat, and the weaving mill was quickly turned into a separate “women’s facility.” Nevertheless, over the years the mill became a hotbed of groundbreaking production, whose impact far surpassed national borders, as demonstrated by the international acclaim of photographers Lucia Moholy, Florence Henri, and Grete Stern.

Ulrike Müller studied ecclesiastical music, philosophy, theology, and literary sciences in Hamburg. She lives in Weimar where she works as a museum curator and city guide.

Author: Ulrike Muller, English, Art General, Hardcover, Jacket, 280x220mm, full colour, 152pp, ISBN: 9782080301208,
Price: (ZA)R 425

Author: Jim Houser, English, Monograph, Hard cover, 231x183mm, 120pp, 245 colour illustrations, ISBN: 1 58423198
Price (ZA)R 250.00

Axel Vervoordt transcends the roles of decorator and collector. He understands the power of objects to conjure up an entirely new atmosphere and knows exactly where to place them to transform the space. This gorgeous book will be an inspiration to anyone interested in a home that is elegant and personal without being ostentatious or superfluous.

Price: (ZA)R 1140.00

Full of information on shelving and lighting and with advice on organizing and caring for books, At Home with Books takes us into the houses of forty booklovers to view their very personal libraries and reading spaces.

Styles range from the oak-panelled elegance of the Duke of Devonshire’s library to the minimalist light-filled loft of Joan Vass; from well-organized studies to book-filled bedrooms. Each room has been photographed especially for this book, and the resulting full-colour pictures, accompanied by descriptive commentaries and interviews with each owner, provide an excellent visual reference for anyone seeking ideas for creating their own personal library.

At Home with Books also includes hints on how to start a collection, information about bookbinders and conservationists, a chapter exploring the ‘booktown’ Hay-on-Wye, and finally a resource directory with details of book dealers, shops, book fairs, lighting and furniture.

Author: Estelle Ellis, Caroline Seebohm, Christopher Simon Sykes, English, Anthology, Softcover, 256 Pages, 30.5x23cm, 350 colour illustrations, ISBN: 0500286116,
Price: (ZA)R 395.00

Art: The Whole Story traces the development of art period by period, with the illustrated text covering every genre, from painting and sculpture to conceptual art and performance art. Cultural timelines are there too, to help to the reader with historical context.

• The most accessible history of world art ever assembled
• More than 1,100 colour illustrations of iconic pieces
• Covers every genre of art, from painting and sculpture to conceptual art
• Designed in an easily navigable and user-friendly fashion

Written by an international team of artists, art historians and curators, this absorbing and beautiful book will give you insight into the world’s most iconic images.

Masterpieces that epitomize each period or movement are highlighted and analysed in detail. Everything from use of colour and visual metaphors to technical innovations is explained, enabling you to interpret the meanings of world-famous masterpieces – Mughal miniatures; Japanese prints in the nineteenth century; the colour theories behind Seurat’s remarkable La Grande Jatte; and why Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon was so shocking in its day.

Author: Edited by Stephen Farthing, English, Art Theory/History, Softcover, 250 x 180 mm, Full colour,576 pages, ISBN: 9780500288955,
Price: (ZA)R 320

Author: Helen Searing, English, Art General, softcover, 136 pages, 270 x 220 mm, illustrations, ISBN: 978 1854373984,
Price: (ZA)R 342.00

Tracks:

1. Henri Rousseau
2. Frida
3. Turner
4. The Kiss
5. Jackson
6. Ophelia
7. Wassily Kandinsky
8. The Cubist Revolution
9. William Blake
10. St Ives

Author: Agnes and Aubrey, English, Multimedia, ISBN: ISBN 1 85437 683 7,
Price: (ZA)R 200.00

Author: Various, English, Catalogue , Soft cover, 290x204mm, 688 pp, illustrations, ISBN: 978 37757 18127,
Price: (ZA)R 504.00

Author: John Peffer, English, Art General, Softcover, 340pp, 252 x 176mm,, ISBN: 9780816650026
Price: (ZA)R 330

Cervin Robinson is one of America’s bestknown architectural photographers. Joel Herschman is Associate Professor of Art History at Fordham University.

Author: Cervin Robinson & Joel Herschman, English, Art General , Softcover, full colour, ISBN: 9780262680646 ,
Price: (ZA)R 540.00

Professor Raman and Jako Olivier will then present on the publication Architecture of the Third Landscape which goes beyond a mere description of the architecture of the buildings and locates them in the specific physical and cultural landscapes of the Free State.

Author: Pattabi G Raman and Jako Olivier, English, Architecture, Softcover, 155pp, 240x240mm, ISBN: 9780620459471,
Price: (ZA)R 375

The 2004 publication of Erwin Hauer Continua resurrected the extraordinary but little-known work of this Austrian-born sculptor whose designs of perforated wall screens and modular structures are symphonies of measured elegance. Now available in paperback, Erwin Hauer Continua gathers stunning photographs, drawings, and descriptions of these classic works of design.

Author: Erwin Hauer, English, Monograph, Softcover, 272x260m, full colour, 108pp, ISBN: 9781568987279
Price: (ZA)R 360

Few artists have enjoyed the popular acclaim and critical profile that Antony Gormley has gained in recent years. From the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square to the remote desert of central Australia, his work generates lively debate, connecting readily with an audience beyond the reach of most contemporary art.

Gormley has succeeded in taking his work beyond the gallery to engage the public in previously untried settings. Large-scale projects, such as the Angel of the North at Gateshead, or the 100 cast-iron sculptures in the sea off Crosby Beach that is Another Place, have provided new, iconic landmarks for the communities in which they are situated, making him one of the most celebrated and talked about artists of his generation. While much of his sculpture has been based on casts of his own body, recent works have taken off in new and unexpected directions, often involving audience participation.

Providing an overview of Gormley’s entire career, an in-depth analysis of six key works and over 100 colour illustrations, this is an accessible and up-to-date introduction to one of the most popular and engaging artists at work today.

Martin Caiger-Smith is a writer and lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where he heads the MA Curating Programme.

Author: Martin Caiger-Smith, English, Monograph, Softcover, 270x210mm, full colour, 96pp, ISBN: 9781854377975,
Price: (ZA)R 240.00

Author: Anton Kannemeyer, English, New Arrival, Softcover, 84pp, 280x280mm, ISBN: 9781431400775,
Price: (ZA)R 280

Here’s what they had to say:

The TAXI Art Books, published by internationally renowned David Krut Publishing, have become invaluable reference works in terms of providing comprehensive information on a selection of South Africa’s key contemporary artists.  The TAXI Art Books series comprises monographs on 15 contemporary South African artists from Noria Mabasa through to Steven Cohen.

The TAXI Art Books are listed in a numbered series from TAXI-OOI to TAXI-OI5 and cover the following artists: Jo Ratcliffe, who works with photo-based media, video and installation; Samson Mudzunga, known for his performance work, wood carvings and in particular his ‘coffin drums’; Jeremy Wafer, who works with sculpture and print; Santu Mofokeng, photographer; Lien Botha, who works in photo-based media; David Koloane, a seminal South African artist who focuses on drawing and painting; Noria Mabasa, renowned for her large woodcarvings and figurative ceramic work; Steven Cohen, often controversial and challenging creator of ‘living art’; Kagiso Pat Mautloa, painter and installation artist; Deborah Bell, painter, sculptor and printmaker; Willem Boshoff, installation maven; Sandile Zulu, who works with fire and canvas; Diane Victor, who works with drawings and prints; Mmakgabo Mmapula Mmankgato Helen Sebidi, painter and sometime ceramicist; and Paul Stopforth, who works in sculpture, drawing, painting, and printmaking.

Each book in the TAXI series has been authored and/or co-authored by respected arts writers, critics or commentators; academics; educators; artists and designers who possess the knowledge and insight required to focus on the artists’ media and their position on the contemporary South African art scene. Notable contributors include Shaun de Waal, Brenda Atkinson, Ashraf Jamal, John Hodgkiss, Ivan Vladislavic, Stephen Hobbs, Veronique Tadjo, Pippa Stein, Robyn Sassen, Ruth Sack, Elizabeth Rankin, Andries Oliphant and Philippa Hobbs among notable others.

Each volume is a significant commentary on contemporary South African art and artists, and thus South African art history in-the-making, beautifully illustrated with full colour images.

Launched in 2002, the TAXI series includes associated educational supplements for use in schools and educational institutions, encouraging learners and students to engage with each artist’s work, creative motivation and background, through conceptual and practical projects.

Books currently available in the series include: TAXI-003: Jeremy Wafer, TAXI-006: David Koloane, TAXI-010: Deborah Bell, TAXI-011: Willem Boshoff, TAXI-012: Sandile Zulu, TAXI-013: Diane Victor, TAXI-014: Mmakgabo Mmapula Mmankgato Helen Sebidi and TAXI¬015: Paul Stopforth. The Compendium of TAXI Art Educational Supplements is also available.

From a young age Robyn Penn has romanticised the landscape, deeply influenced by German Romantic landscape painter, Caspar Friedrich. Her work navigates dialectic between spaces that are fractured and the sublime; the image before our eyes and all that it suggests. She describes her work as a product of “the madness of the space [she] works in,” a small home studio in an apartment where she is surrounded by the constant interruptions of domesticity and the streets below. Clouds appear as her subject matter and as metaphor for the distractions she negotiates daily. “They’re clouds which have been added to the landscape,” she explains referencing Muybridge who used photographic techniques to add clouds to the sky of his landscapes. There is an emphasis on process in Penn’s finely detailed, yet expansive views; and an obsession with multiple images. She nurtures a deep irony in the beautiful rendering of perhaps the most horrific moment in human history, the dropping of the atomic bombs that extends into the works titles.

Robyn Penn lives and works in Johannesburg as a fine artist. She has an honours degree, with distinction, in Fine arts from Canterbury University, New Zealand and also spent one year training in Fine Arts at The University of the Witwatersrand. Penn also read for a BA in Psychology from Wits University. She later relocated from New Zealand to London where she painted and developed drawing classes before returning to South Africa again in 2000. Her earliest works were miniature paintings. This progressed to painting on paper in oil and naturally moved towards printmaking. Working on paper seemed to inspire new ideas for her and it solved the issue of having to work in a small studio. As an artist with an interest in neuropsychology, her expansive sky-scapes and endless ocean-scapes depicted on a very small scale present a fascinating dynamic.

When Penn was studying in New Zealand she was living on the South Island. Circumstance made it necessary for her to move to the North Island, but because she was still studying she had to travel to the South Island every month for a week to present her course work. The experience of flying so frequently and constantly seeing the clouds and landscapes from a far informed a lot of her university work. Eventually she resorted to posting her artworks, she took the postcard-sized canvas boards and would stick the stamp directly onto the artworks sending them with nothing else but the address on the back. Her first paintings on her return to South Africa were of postcard skies and landscape.

Please join us for the opening exhibition of Pretty World, a selection of prints and paintings created by Robyn Penn over the last year. The exhibition is comprised of an unusual combination of large and small artworks depicting clouds and atom bomb explosions.

BIO
Robyn Penn (nee Arenstein) was born in South Africa in 1973. She lives and works in Johannesburg as a fine artist. Penn has an honours degree, with distinction, in Fine arts from Canterbury University, New Zealand and also spent one year training in Fine Arts at The University of the Witwatersrand. Penn also read for a BA in Psychology from Wits University, South Africa. Penn relocated from New Zealand to London where she painted and developed drawing classes. She returned to South Africa in 2000. Penn has assisted prominent South African artists in a curatorial capacity, in commissions and consulting. In 2009 she had her first solo exhibition at the Brodie/Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg; and completed her BA in Clinical Psychology. Penn’s work has been exhibited in New Zealand and South Africa and is represented in collections in South Africa, New Zealand and Europe. Currently she works as an independent artist; is the co-owner of STRANGE Blue duck animations, which runs creative enrichment workshops for corporates and children; she teaches art classes privately; and is the mother of two children.

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IN OUR BOOKSTORE:

Why Draw a Landscape?
In this book, Brown answers the question in the title in a different way for each artist and discusses attitudes and ideas that affect the relationship of the self to the real world… read more

New Media in Art
Modern art, reflecting and defining new intellectual, scientific and technological developments, has radically extended the conventional media of sculpture and painting. This pioneering book discusses the most influential artists internationally from Eadweard Muybridge to Robert Rauschenberg, Bill Viola and Pipilotti Rist-and those seminal works which have radically transformed the map of world art… read more

John Constable
John Constable was also a brilliant innovator who brought a new vivacity to the observation of nature. He practiced oil painting in the open air with unprecendented dedication, capturing in particular the ‘effervescent’ effects of atmospherics – as can be seen, for example, in his wonderful studies of clouds… read more

How to paint like Turner
J.M.W. Turner was one of the greatest artists Britain has ever produced. His watercolours, with their extraordinary effects of shifting light and dramatic cloudscapes, are especially highly regarded… read more

EXHIBITION PROGRAMME

Wednesday, 16 November 2011 at 18:30 for 19:00 – Exhibition Opening

Please join us for the opening of the first part of the exhibition. The guest speaker for the event is Bronwyn Law-Viljoen.

Saturday, 19 November 2011 at 11:00 – Artist’s Walkabout

Diane Victor will be available for the morning, providing insight into the method and thought process involved in her work. A short film by photographer Paul Mills documenting the recent work of the artist will also be shown.

Wednesday, 4 January 2012 at 09:00 – Gallery Reopens

The second part of the exhibition is unveiled. This section will explore the potential of book ash as a drawing material.

Saturday, 21 January 2012 at 11:00 – Book Launch

Join us for the official launch of the second publication on Diane Victor to be produced by David Krut Publishing. Following this, there will be an informal discussion panel with Diane Victor, during which members of the public are welcome to share their own views on or engage with topics surrounding the second instalment of work.

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 at 18:00 – Closing Ceremony

The end of the exhibition will be marked with a final closing ceremony. Diane Victor will be available for book signing.

The University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, in collaboration with David Krut Publishing, is pleased to invite you to the opening of Diane Victor’s first solo exhibition at the Gallery. Owing to the prolific output of the artist and the importance of the weighted issues with which she deals, there will also be a series of events that will take place throughout the duration of the exhibition which are intended to create more of an exploration and discussion of the ideas surrounding the artist and her work.

Unlike the more conventional openings, Victor’s show will be unveiled in two sections. The first aims to showcase her experimental glass work and smoke drawings on paper, followed by an artist’s talk. In the new year, her works exploring the potential of book ash as a drawing material will be shown.  Sourced from specific documents and texts, this lost information and lost words are dusted and fixed on the paper. This second part will be accompanied by the launch of the latest publication on the artist on 21 January and a closing ceremony on 25 January 2012.

The release of Victor’s second  publication (the first being TAXI-013 Diane Victor) aims to document and discuss the works created over the last three years and how her progressive processes have led to a dynamic shift in exhibiting and working. The book includes text from Karen von Veh, who contributed extensively to the TAXI-013 book, and it serves as an invaluable source of knowledge on Victor’s work. There will also be text contributed by Juliet White, from David Krut Projects, who has been involved in writing about and documenting most of Victor’s movements and projects leading up to this event.

2011 marks a significant turning point in Victor’s approach to art. Upon returning from her three-month stay in the USA at the beginning of this year, Victor began focusing on alternative and faster methods of working. While she maintains her role as an educator, she is often under a lot of pressure to put as much focus and energy into her teaching as she does into her art-making. In many ways, this pushed her to work increasingly with ash and candle smoke: the process is faster and requires the work to be completed in one sitting.

Having returned to South Africa in March this year, she went straight to Oudtshoorn, where she installed work for the ABSA KKNK.  It was here that she was encouraged to interact with the surroundings of the town, more so than the exhibition space. Victor chose to show in three spaces: a funeral home, where she exhibited an ash portrait; a butchery, where she exhibited smoke drawings of animal heads; and a car dealership that allowed her to place her shark imagery in the window. Later in the year, she pushed the idea to a new level: taking over an abandoned abattoir in Nelspruit during the annual Innibos arts festival. She wanted to engage with the space more by creating ghostlike portraits of typical farm animals. Understanding that the space now plays a larger role in terms of her art, Victor chose to work on glass for the first time, so as not to disturb the feeling of the space.

Victor is known for her heavy subject matter. The need to review and relook  her work, which too often repels the viewer before they grasp the essence of the idea, is paramount. The profundity of the image and subtle nuance and humour expertly embedded within the chaos and sophisticated draughtsmanship of her work deserves further engagement and dialogue. This exhibition is not about walking into the Gallery and merely looking: it is about continuing interaction, education and intervention.

For more information please contact Annali Cabano-Dempsey at the UJ A rt Gallery on 011 559 2099.

Exhibition duration:
16 November – 14 December 2011 and 4 – 25 January 2012

Gallery hours:
Mon – Fri: 09 00 – 18 00, Sat:   09 00 – 13 00 Closed on public holidays

Location:
UJ APK Campus, cnr Kingsway/University Rd, Auckland Park

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IN OUR BOOKSTORE:

TAXI-013: Diane Victor
The tension generated by Diane Victor’s impressive body of drawings and prints arises not simply from her biting social commentary and the sometimes macabre nature of her images and narratives, but from an interplay between the tough and the fragile, between the hard edges of her visual narratives and the delicate mark-making and fragility of her preferred media… read more

Impressions from South Africa: 1965 to Now
Published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this book introduces the vital role of printmaking in South Africa through works by more than twenty artists in the Museum’s collection. Featured artists include Bitterkomix, Kudzanai Chiurai, Sandile Goje, Diane Victor, William Kentridge, Senzeni Marasela, John Muafangejo, Cameron Platter, Claudette Schreuders, and Sue Williamson… read more

Magical Secrets about Line Etching & Engraving
Author Catherine Brooks is a master printer at Crown Point Press, printers and publishers of etchings since 1962, and she draws on the venerable history of that institution to create an inspirational and highly usable how-to book… read more

On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century
This publication explores the radical evolution of drawing that took place during the last century and through to the present day, as numerous artists subjected the traditional concepts of the medium to a critical examination… read more

Handspring Puppet Company was founded by Basil Jones, Adrian Kohler, Jill Joubert and Jon Weinberg in 1981. They have produced eleven plays and two operas, collaborated with many different artists―including Mali’s Sogolon Puppet Troupe and South African artist William Kentridge―and opened in over 200 venues in South Africa and abroad.

The Handspring Puppet Company book explores the creators’ Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler’s work in adult puppet theatre, from Episodes of an Easter Rising (1985) to War Horse, providing insights into their philosophy of puppetry and their technical innovations. It is richly illustrated with images from the Handspring archive and includes essays by theatre practitioners and writers, including William Kentridge, who have collaborated with the company over the years.

• Handspring Puppet Company
• Jane Taylor, Adrian Kohler, Adrienne Sichel, William Kentridge, Lesego Rampolokeng, Gerhard Marx, Basil Jones
• 275 x 210 mm
• Full colour, 250 photographs
• 280 pages
• ISBN – 978-0-9814328-3-0 [SC], 978-0-9814328-5-4 [HC]
• R 480 softcover; R650 hardcover

11am @ David Krut Projects Cape Town
Montebello Design Centre, 31 Newlands Avenue

To read about the exhibition, click here
To view installation shots of the exhibition, click here

ACT Trustee Melissa Mboweni said of Sebidi: “When looking at the life and talent of Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi, we see an artist that overcome many barriers in life and still provided a lifetime of inspiration for others. She has also given back selflessly and ensured that her talent and skill is shared with many others. We honour and salute Helen who is, undeniably, a guiding light for many in the South African art world.”

For more information on the event and the awards please click here.
Or see the November 2011 issue of ClassicFeel.

TAXI-014: Mmakgabo Mmapula Mmankgato Helen Sebidi (DKP, 2009)

The most famous of all the craft products of Botswana is the basket. As an intergral part of the Botswana agricultural culture, baskets have been made and used traditionally for thousands of years.

Closed baskets with lids are used for storing grain, seeds, and sometimes sorghum beer. Large, open bowl shaped baskets are used by the women for carrying items on their heads and for winnowing grain after it has been threshed. Smaller, plate shaped baskets are used for winnowing grain after it has been pounded.

The main producers of baskets are the women of the Bayei and Hambukushu tribes in northwestern Botswana. Although baskets are still very much a common sight in rural Botswana, more and more are being produced today for the commercial market. Expansion and diversity of weaving techniques, designs and the use of colour are encouraged through upgrading courses, annual competitions and exhibitions. Today, the baskets of Botswana are a very fine art form.

Botswanacraft was established in 1970 by the Botswana Development Corporation to develop the rural based handicraft industry of the country. Dedicated towards improving the quality of life for rural Batswana and the management and utilisation of our natural resources, Botswanacraft complements locally made products by importing handicrafts from the southern African region and other developing countries.

L E B O G A N G   M A S H I L E
Poetry

NIROXprojects Arts on Main Johannesburg 08.11. 2011 at 18.30

Internationally renowned German artist Jürgen Partenheimer, currently a resident at NIROX Foundation with the support of the Goethe Institute, will show part of the work produced during his residency and launch his artist book “Seeds & Tracks and Folded Spirits”, which includes poetry by Lebogang Mashile.

The artist book was printed by Mark Attwood at Artist’s Press studios in White River, loose leafed in a solander box created by Lunetta Bartz, Johannesburg Partenheimer’s series of artist’s books is widely acclaimed and collected, with representation in international museums, including MoMA, New York.

Lebogang Mashile will read and perform her poetry for the opening of the exhibition at NIROXprojects, at 6.30pm on 8 November.

The exhibition includes a suite of prints belonging to the artist’s ‘South African Diary’, produced in collaboration with Jillian Ross and Mlungisi Kongisa of David Krut Print Workshop.

Author: Julia Peyton-Jones, English, Hardcover, 257 x 221 mm, 240pp, ISBN: 978-3865609168,
Price: (ZA)R 495

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Anish Kapoor showing at the Royal Academy 26 September to 11 December 2009 and has 190 pages with approximately 120 illustrations, measuring 31 x 24.5cms.

The catalogue contains 2 posters (54 x 45cms) of the exhibition works Svayambh, 2007 and Shooting into the Corner, 2008-2009.

Unknown Author, English, Monograph, Hard cover, 310x250mm, colour Illustrations, 189 pg, ISBN: 9781905711505,
Price: (ZA)R 720.00

Author: Margaret Manning Krug, English, Art General, Softcover, 256pp, 256 x 165mm, ISBN: 9781856695237,
Price: (ZA)R 190

Author: James Danziger, English, Multimedia , Soft cover, 142 x 180 mm, 472 pages, 250 illustrations, ISBN: 9782843236990,
Price: (ZA)R 240.00

Author: Francisca Matteoli, English, NonArt, Hardcover, Jacket, 280x200mm, full colour, 160pp, ISBN: 9782759402700,
Price: (ZA)R 540

The book culminates with a look at the contemporary talents of today who continue to export their individual visions of modern American fashion on a global stage. Also included is a collection of portraits of the CFDA’s historic and contemporary designers. Elegant and definitive, with over 300 iconic photographs and the work of more than 100 designers, the book captures the superlative work of American designers as seen by the century’s greatest photographers and illustrators. American Fashion is the essential modern atlas for over 70 exciting years of great American fashion.

Author: Charlie Scheips, English, Art General , Hardcover, 235x298mm, 320 pages, full colour, ISBN: 9782759401611 ,
Price: (ZA)R 600.00

Author: Robert E. Bryan, English, Photography, Hardcover, 300 x 240mm, full colour, 250 images, 280pp, ISBN: 9782759404094,
Price: (ZA)R 550.00

Author: Lisa Marsh and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, English, NonArt, Hardcover, 286x227mm, full colour, 128pp, ISBN: 978-2759404056,
Price: (ZA)R 540

Author: Kate Betts, English, Design, Hardcover, 360 x 300mm, full colour, 130 images, 160pp, ISBN: 9782759404872,
Price: (ZA)R 550.00

Author: Jessica Hillout, English, Hardcover, 208pp, 305 x 245mm, ISBN: 9780620466042,
Price: (ZA)R 600

Earhart’s career in the public eye began in 1928, when she was selected to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, in part because of her physical resemblance to Charles Lindbergh. In a time when aviators were glamorous symbols of adventure and modernity, Earhart was launched into instant celebrity — aided considerably by one of the flight’s promoters, publisher George Palmer Putnam, whom Earhart later married. Between 1928 and her disappearance, Earhart was frequently pictured in newspapers and magazines, which profiled her record-breaking flights, forays into clothing design, or her endorsements for everything from cigarettes to luggage.
Earhart, in turn, capitalized on the fame that her flying accomplishments (paired with Putnam’s relentless promotional machine) brought her to champion the advancement of women and other causes about which she was passionate and outspoken. In her unconventional pants and leather jacket, she became the embodiment of the new roles that began to seem possible for American women in the 1920s and 30s. Through magazines, newspapers, original press photos, and advertisements, the exhibition will trace the construction of Earhart’s image and its continued resonance.

Author: ICP, English, Art General , Hardcover, 228x280cm, 160 pages, 120 tritone plates, ISBN: 3-86521-407-2 ,
Price: (ZA)R 204.00

Author: Alvar Aalto, English, Hardcover, 210x165mm, full colour, 128pp, ISBN: 9788434311435,
Price: (ZA)R 252.00