Austrian sculptor Sébastien de Ganay (born 1962) creates minimalistic sculptures ambiguously oriented between art and design. For Transposition and Reproduction, de Ganay’s site-specific aluminum sculptures respond to the Gothic architecture of the Dominican Church of Vienna.
Published by Kerber. Edited by Silke von Berswordt-Wallrabe, Jörg-Uwe Neumann, Agnes Tieze. Text by Norbert Lammert, Karen van den Berg, Silke von Berswordt-Wallrabe, et al.
The art of the early 20th-century avant-garde—decried and suppressed by the National Socialists as “degenerate art”—has been widely studied and exhibited to the public in recent decades. The art favored by the Nazis—realistic paintings of fair-haired maidens and pale, strong bodies—silently disappeared into warehouses after 1945, rarely resurfacing in public exhibitions in Germany or abroad. Nazi art was intimately connected to the regime’s ideology and propaganda; it was supposed to stabilize the system, hearten in difficult times and communicate values such as a fighting spirit, family and tradition. Compliant Art: Art and Politics in the National Socialist Era, a rare study of the official art of the time, documents the period’s conflicts, juxtaposing works that conformed to Nazi ideology with those by persecuted artists, and investigates what happened to the “good,” compliant artists after the end of the war.
Published by Onestar Press. Essay by Benedikt Ledebur. Introduction by Richard Dailey.
Sébastian de Ganay's almost life-sized full body portraits consist of his trademark folds of plastic that literally create waves of relief--there is a balanced push-pull, background-foreground figure effect that is supported by the luminous white void on which all the figures float. They sometimes read as sculptures. On the other hand, the walls, cubes, cylinders and circles of de Ganay's sculptures, with their bright car-paint monochromes and curved or straight geometric picture planes, foreground their viewers almost like the figures in his portraits against their white voids. They sometimes read as paintings. This comprehensive full-color volume of de Ganay's portraits and sculptures includes an essay on his work, as well as an interview with the artist.
PUBLISHER Onestar Press
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 7.25 x 11.5 in. / 112 pgs / illustrated throughout.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/15/2005 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2005 p. 131
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9782915359077TRADE List Price: $40.00 CAD $54.00
Compliant Art
Sébastien De Ganay: Portraits And Sculptures