Rudi Fuchs Livres

Jannis Kounellis, einer der wichtigsten zeitgenössischen griechischen Künstler, ließ sich von der Konstellation eines Museums für zeitgenössische Kunst in einer romanischen Klosteranlage zu einer völlig neuen Werkgruppe inspirieren: Aus dem neuen Werkkomplex der Mantelbilder entwickelte Jannis Kounellis eine sehr dichte, unmittelbar auf den historischen Raum bezogene Installation, die Geschichte und Tradition ebenso wenig leugnet wie den direkten Bezug in die Gegenwart. Das Resultat dieser intensiven Auseinandersetzung ist beeindruckend: Gezeigt wird in dieser Publikation die Werkgruppe der Mantelbilder, die Monotypien aus den Jahren 2010 bis 2011 und ältere Arbeiten in der wohl einmaligen Raumkonstruktion des Gebäudes aus dem 12. Jahrhundert.

No discussion of postwar Dutch art--or postwar European art--is complete without mentioning Karel Appel, whom many consider Holland's most important painter. Appel attended the Academy of Arts in Amsterdam from 1940 to 1943, and then bided his time painting landscapes and portraits in an era when artists were forbidden to buy materials or exhibit unless they joined the German "Chamber of Culture." After the liberation, as reproductions of works by Picasso and others began to find their way to Holland, Appel rebelled against his studio training, founded several avant garde groups (including Cobra), and then moved to Paris. Years of travel and experimentation with subjects, colors and materials, left him with a close relationship to the American art community and studios all over the world. Appel is a sculptor and a ceramist, too, but he is above all an expressionist, a man of passion led by spontaneity, who has conversely made a lasting mark.

This book is a creative guide to the making of arguably the most extraordinary art object to be made in the 21st century. Published to accompany the 2007 exhibition Damien Beyond Belief at White Cube, London, it gives a fascinating pictorial insight into how Hirst's diamond skull piece "For the Love of God" was conceived and produced. Illustrated with candid behind-the-scenes photographs by Johnnie Shand Kydd, the book includes a number of preparatory drawings by Damien Hirst and a fold out image of the diamond skull. Accompanying this is an essay by the art historian Rudi Fuchs, who "The skull is out of this world, celestial almost. I tend to see it as a glorious intense victory over death." A number of leading experts in the fields of archaeology and dentistry have also contributed detailed studies on the diamond skull, including analyses of its age and ancestry.

Dutch art spans the history of Western easel painting from the Middle Ages to the present, and has a psychological development of its own which makes it a fascinating field of study. With a fresh and critical eye, Fuchs reviews its evolution from the foundation of Netherlandish realism in the fifteenth century with the Van Eycks, through the elevated style of Renaissance history painting, the language of symbols of the seventeenth century and the work of its masters--Claesz's still-lifes, the portraits of Hals and Rembrandt, and Ruisdael's landscapes--and on through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century realism, right up to Van Gogh's pioneering Expressionism, the radical simplification of Mondrian, and the art of Dibbets and Brouwn. 197 illus., 20 in color.

Exploring the intersection of art history and popular culture, Glenn Brown's work embodies a dreamlike quality, merging the abstract with the visceral. His recent paintings, some of his largest, challenge conventional still life and portraiture, featuring rich textures beneath sleek surfaces. This approach creates a vivid dialogue between beauty and grotesqueness, alluding to themes of mortality reminiscent of traditional memento mori. Brown's unique artistic language invites viewers into a space where accumulated subconscious images come to life.

Recent landscape paintings by Dutch architect Robert Zandvliet showcase a transition toward abstraction, characterized by large-scale works and broad brush strokes. These pieces evoke the essence of landscapes while moving away from detailed representation, highlighting the evolution of his artistic vision.

Krabbe wanted to explore what the self-portrait can still be in today's age. He wanted to gauge changing emotions, capture a moment and find the right tone. This book shows the diversity of solutions and styles he used. It includes a number of self-portraits made in the period between the Summer of 2004 and the Summer of 2005.

A survey of the work of Jean Brusselmans, one of the most original of all Belgian Modernists.