PUBLISHER
D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Flexi, 9.5 x 13.5 in. / 256 pgs / 275 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 4/28/2015
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2015 p. 11   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781938922688 TRADE
List Price: $29.95 CAD $39.95

AVAILABILITY
In stock

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/12/2015

Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art

"There is only convention in the 'realistic' depiction of the body. The body depicted always tends towards exaggeration, either in the convention of the grotesque or the convention of the ideal. There are few images less interesting than an exact anatomical drawing of the human form.
This problem arises from the corresponding problem of the absence of stance. Grotesque realism is emblematic of the body’s knowledge of itself, a knowledge of pieces and parts, of disassociated limbs and an absent center. The realism of the ideal is emblematic of the body’s knowledge of the other, a knowledge of facades, of two dimensions. Only in the embrace is the other’s body known as one’s own, in parts. Perhaps this is why the grotesque has become the domain of lived sexuality, while the ideal has tended toward the domain of the voyeur and the pornographer." Excerpt from Susan Stewart's On Longing: Narratives in the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, and Louise Bourgeois' 2007 gouache, "The Feeding" (made when the artist was in her late nineties) are reproduced from D.A.P.'s indispensible new survey of contemporary figuration, Drawing People. continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/24/2015

Drawing People

"Sleeper 02 (Vintage Hat)," Chloe Piene's 2005 charcoal drawing on vellum, is reproduced from Drawing People, launching tomorrow night at the Drawing Center with a lecture and signing featuring Piene and Dasha Shishkin. Author Roger Malbert writes, "Analogies abound in Chloe Piene’s graphic works: between Eros and death, the human and the animal, and drawing and masturbation. Naked, skinny women – possibly self-portraits – recline or sprawl, isolated in space, the contours of their bodies traced in tremulous charcoal lines that sometimes digress to reveal the skeletal frame beneath the skin’s surface. Skulls, grinning malevolently, are juxtaposed with rounded breasts, and bony fingers intimately caress flesh. This morbid meditation on death is evocative of the Mexican Day of the Dead and of the allegorical danse macabre or ‘dance of death’ of medieval Europe – in fact, it is the Northern European tradition with which the artist claims the closest artistic affinity. Her drawings could seem trite, yet the bodies are so sensitively and vivaciously drawn: a wavering line scoops up the contour of an arm and then floats away loosely into what may be a string of small bones, the beads of a necklace or pure abstraction." continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/24/2015

Drawing People

Join us tonight at the Drawing Center! In celebration of Drawing People, the Drawing Center's Brett Litmann will appear in conversation with artists Chloe Piene and Moscow-born Dasha Shishkin, whose "We Are Not Afraid for Comparable Lives" (2011) is featured here. (Signing to follow.) Drawing People author Roger Malbert cites Shishkin's "loose, splashy technique" and "wildly perverse imagery, a febrile blend of Toulouse Lautrec and Henry Darger, executed with the spontaneous energy of the Surrealist Matta." An emphatic colorist and the daughter of a puppeteer, Shishkin often includes the character Pinocchio in her "phantasmagorical scenes of decadent society women partying in brilliantly lit, lavish interiors, their noses and nipples sprouting phallic extensions as they feast on dishes of dismembered body parts." continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/9/2015

Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art

"Drawing is one of the most direct forms of visual expression," Roger Malbert writes in his introduction to Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art, this year's best survey of contemporary figurative drawing. "It’s where art begins, literally, both in human evolution and the development of the individual. Before writing, there are images, scratched onto a cave wall or scribbled in crayon on cheap paper. And among the first subjects, along with animals and the sun, is the human figure." Releasing this week, Drawing People, features an international roster of 70 artists working with pencil, ink, watercolor, charcoal and crayon. They include Francis Alÿs, Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Marlene Dumas, Marcel Dzama, Dr. Lakra, Paul McCarthy, Barry McGee, Nalini Malani, Wangechi Mutu, Raymond Pettibon, Amy Sillman, Kara Walker and Elizabeth Peyton, whose drawing, "Klara (Klara Liden) 10 October 2009 Berlin," is featured here. continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/14/2015

Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art

Philip Guston's "Untitled" (1975) is reproduced from Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art, the best contemporary figurative drawing survey of 2015. Of Guston, who made the break from the dominant mode of Abstract Expressionism at the most difficult time possible, author Roger Malbert writes, "For two years, from 1967 to 1968, he abandoned painting and did nothing but draw. He was later to say, ‘I cannot make a dot or a line which doesn’t represent a known thing.’ Thus, one of the most dramatic paradigm shifts in modern art – the return to figuration – was essentially accomplished through drawing." Though Drawing People focuses on figurative drawing of the last decade by artists like Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton and Paul McCarthy, it's nice to remember where it comes from. continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/11/2015

Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art

Poetic and prescient, this 2011 drawing for William Kentridge's animated film, Other Faces, is reproduced from Drawing People, D.A.P.'s essential new guide to the latest developments in international figuration. Drawing is the medium in which Kentridge thinks, according to author Roger Malbert's chapter on artists working on themes of social reality. "His procedure for making an animated film is to draw with charcoal, walking back across the studio to photograph the drawing, then walking back to the paper to erase or alter it, then back to the camera and so on, hundreds of times a day. The traces of erasure and change remain, giving a rippling fluidity to the narrative that helps him to present history and social experience an innovative ways. Preconceived ideas are kept to the minimum, and there is no storyboard; thinking evolves through activity." continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/15/2015

Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art

Normally associated with provocative sculpture, installation and performance/videos in which he enters into a "regressive persona with shamanistic abandon," LA-based Paul McCarthy first generates the imagery for his larger works through drawing, where he allows his unconscious to run riot. "323-825-0915 (Blockhead Drawing 2 of 4)" (2000) was produced for McCarthy's 2013 performance WS, a lurid parody of Disney's version of the German folk tale, Snow White. It is reproduced from Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art, in which Roger Malbert writes, "McCarthy regards his drawings as performative works in their own right, made 'in a sort of trance.... It's more about making than telling. Drawing is a form of analysis. I'm not controlling it, just allowing it to unfold. It's not about clarity, it's about each piece suggesting the next one in a continuum.'" continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/13/2015

Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art

"The artist begs the public to be indulgent with him, because he has neither imitated other works, nor even used studies from nature," Goya wrote in 1799. "The imitation of nature is as difficult as it is admirable, if it is really perfect. But an artist may also, surely, remove himself entirely from nature and depict forms of movements which to this day have only existed in the imagination... Painting, like poetry, selects from the universe whatever it considers most suitable for its purposes. It unites qualities and characters which nature has scattered among different individuals and concentrates them in a single fantastic being. Thanks to this creative combination, the artist ceases to be a mere copyist and acquires the title of an inventor." Text excerpt and Raymond Pettibon's "No title (Once the judge)" (2006) are reproduced from Drawing People; Pettibon is one of 70 contemporary artists featured in this important new contemporary figurative drawing survey. continue to blog

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/22/2015

Drawing Center to Launch 'Drawing People' with Chloe Piene & Dasha Shishkin

Join us Wednesday, June 24 at the Drawing Center, where Executive Director Brett Littman will host a conversation with artists Chloe Piene and Dasha Shishkin, two of the featured artists in Drawing People, our new survey of innovative contemporary figure drawing. Piene and Shishkin will discuss their practices and lives within one of the most creatively rich and emotionally powerful forms of art being made today. Book signing to follow.
continue to blog