In art today, one phenomenon has scarcely received the attention that its proliferation would warrant: the use of live vegetation as an artistic medium Plants emerge in a whole variety of thematic and visual contexts - with the spectrum ranging from subversive horticultural-sculptural experiments using individual plants through interior biotopes to complex garden designs. The editor of this volume - the first of its kind in the world - is Barbara Nemitz, artist and professor of art. Since 1994 she has been in charge of the project Künstlergarten Weimar, which forms the basis for this volume along with an extensive archive and the plant art at the Ilmpark in Weimar created by leading international artists. Besides Barbara Nemitz's own contribution, there are also essays and articles by Kim Levin (New York) and Peter Herbstreuth (Berlin) covering many of the numerous aspects of this theme as well as looking back to the sixties and seventies when first signs of the end of the division between art and Nature appeared among artists. Works by over 60 artists are gathered together here in text and image. The artists: Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Dan Graham, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Hermann De Vries, Mark Dion, Carsten Höller, Olaf Nicolai, Tobias Rehberger and many more

This information brochure, the first in the series, discusses major issues of documenta X: the cultures of the world and their relationship to modernism, in an essay by the philosopher Jean- Christophe Bailly; and the questions raised by French author Paul Virilio on art in the "age of absolute velocity". Finally, the architect Erik Steinbrecher's "Views" will offer an insight-ful tour of the venues of documenta X in Kassel.

English edition available (ISBN 3-89322-548-X)

Between 1532 and 1536/37, the Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck traveled to Rome. Most of the drawings made there come from a sketchbook that he filled with motifs during his wanderings and whose original binding is now lost. Recent art-technological investigations at the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett allowed for the extensive reconstruction of the original order of the book pages. This forms the basis of the present facsimile. In fascinating studies, van Heemskerck captured ancient sculptures and ruins as well as cityscapes. In doing so, he demonstrated a particular flair for compositions and perspectives as well as the highest drawing sensitivity. In the sketchbook, the artist found his personal experimental field and at the same time created a valuable treasure trove of motifs.

This book is also available in English.

TATJANA BARTSCH has been deputy head of the photographic archive of the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History since 2011.

CHRISTIEN MELZER has been curator for Dutch and English art before 1800 at the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin since 2020.

In her photographs that refer to Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia Claudia Rogge (*1968 in Düsseldorf) unfolds a kind of imagistic theater whose aesthetic opulence astonishes viewers, while countless nude figures cast their spell over them. The large tableaux in her new cycle, EverAfter, recall the cohesive compositions of Christian paintings, such as the famous murals in the Sistine Chapel, yet they are assembled from a variety of disparate visual elements. The realistic effect of these digital collages exceeds that of painting and is immediate, sometimes disturbingly so. The configuration of a mass—images of nude bodies, in this case—has long been an overarching subject of the artist’s work. Picking up on the central theme of “mass” and the exorbitant distance between heaven and hell, this publication presents Rogge’s latest work, which recovers a measure of beauty in the midst of horror.

 

Exhibition schedule: Museo Madre, Museum for Contemporary Art, Naples | Galleria Franz Paludetto, Rome | Galleria Franz Paludetto, Turin | Arte Fiera, Bologna January 27-30, 2012 | Arco Madrid, February 15-19, 2012 | Art Cologne, April 18 22, 2012 | Art Brussels, April 19-22, 2012 | Art 43 Basel, June 13-17, 2012

 

With his very personal images, Hungarian photographer André Kertész (1894–1985) skillfully succeeded in capturing the fleeting, emotional moments in his environment. His works had a pronounced influence on artistic photography in the mid-twentieth century and on artists such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and Brassaï. Three important periods mark his oeuvre: Budapest, 1914–25; Paris, 1925–36; and New York, 1936–85. While this first retrospective deals with all phases of Kertész’s career, it sheds particular light on his work for magazines, his Distortions—photographs of nude models taken with mirrors from unusual perspectives—and the Polaroids, a series shot from the window of his home that features fascinating images of personal objects against the skyline of New York.

 

Exhibition schedule: Jeu de Paume, Paris, September 28, 2010–February 6, 2011 | Fotomuseum Winterthur, February 26–May 22, 2011 | Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, June 11–September 11, 2011 | Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, Budapest, September 30–Dezember 31, 2011

 

This book is only available in Germany. If you would like more detailed information, please consult our German website. You can also contact Hatje Cantz directly.

The piece originally conceived by the duo Hubbard/Birchler for the Swiss Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennial reconstructs the life story of the American artist Flora Mayo. Mayo had a romantic relationship in the 1920s with the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti. While he is now one of the most famous artists of the twentieth century, her work was destroyed, and her life forgotten. Hubbard/Birchler reanimate Mayo’s gripping biography from a feminist perspective, linking reconstruction and documentation to form a multi-layered type of narrative. The catalogue, produced for the current exhibition at the Sammlung Goetz, explains the research the artists engaged in and documents the installation in an impressive manner.

The artists Teresa Hubbard (*1965 Dublin, Ireland) and Alexander Birchler (*1962, Baden, Switzerland) are based in Austin, Texas, and Berlin and have been working together since 1990. Their installations include sculpture, photography, and film. They first exhibited at the Venice Biennial in 1999.

EXHIBITION

Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich / Sammlung Goetz
March 1 – May 24, 2019

In the course of nearly three decades of experimental exploration into the potential it holds for art, Katharina Sieverding has developed photography into a form of expression that has played a pioneering role in the growth of contemporary art photography. Featuring the photo-artist's contribution to the 1997 Venice Biennale, this book offers an up-to-date look at Katherina Sieverding's artistic development. The four work groups featured here represent a renewed attempt to deal with the question of how it is possible to create identity in a reality that denies the Other, the invisible, indeed death itself an existence of its own in favor of its "photographable face". They show counter-images achieved through the montage of photographic images of reality, pictures that direct an animated gaze "back" into an ambivalent future. The artist: Katharina Sieverding, born 1944 in Prague; studies at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, 1963-1964; studies at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, master student under Joseph Beuys, 1964-1972; travel and studies in the US, the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, 1972-1988; professor at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, since 1992; lives and works in Düsseldorf.

This book is in German. The English edition is published by Guggenheim Publications, New York.

This book presents a selection of large-scale paintings and a number of works on paper completed by Tom Drake Bennett in 2002 and 2003. Born in England of Irish parents in 1952, Bennett now lives and works in Berlin and Ireland. In his most recent paintings he pursues creative ideas that originally emerged during a stay as artist-in-residence in Cork, Ireland in the winter of 2001/02. The book also features two essays devoted to the artist and his work. In her article entitled "Language in Exile," art critic and historian Doris von Drathen discusses Bennett's paintings in oil and acrylic on canvas. Art historian Horst Bredekamp approaches the artist's recent work through an in-depth examination of his complex gouaches and collages, in which he discovers "enigmas within the natural realm of chance."

Berlin-based painter Olav Christopher Jenssen, who was born in Norway in 1954, is an artist who has consistently resisted hasty labeling. Always willing to leave past accomplishments behind in pursuit of new goals, he has developed an oeuvre of striking complexity and stylistic richness in the course of the past two decades. Studying Jenssen's work thus entails exposing oneself to an "inexhaustible wellspring of invention" that defies categorization. His art moves back and forth between formal precision and baroque excess, between sensitive peinture and poetic, verbal allusion that is often expressed in cryptic textual references. All of these facets of Jenssen's oeuvre are presented impressively in this book, which focuses primarily on the works completed during the past ten years. Exhibition schedule: Kunstmuseum Bonn, October 2 - November 30, 2003

Chiharu Shiota (*1972 in Osaka, Japan) is one of the most sought-after artists in the world, at the latest since the presentation of her installation in the Japan Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice in 2015. Everyday objects, mementos, and objets trouvés characterize the artist’s pictorial language and stand for the subject matter in her oeuvre—recollection, homeland, migration, death, and life. The key figures in her expansive installations with wool threads are old suitcases and shoes, keys, pieces of clothing, furniture, and letters, which she enthrallingly integrates into her works and performances. In the present publication, photographs, film stills, drawings, prints, and objects from the artist’s archive comprehensively document the stations in Shiota’s oeuvre and illustrate her mostly site-specific, temporary installations. The book is published on the occasion of the first retrospective of the Berlin-based artist and concentrates on her creative work of the last twenty years.

The spectacular series by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto (*1948 in Tokyo) are characterized by matchless clarity and presence. His works are always an absolute embodiment of his chosen visual motif, reduced to its essence.
Our exquisite monograph is the first to feature works selected from all of the series produced to date— including, of course, his most famous: Sugimoto's celebrated portraits of wax figures seem to face up to their living audiences; his Seascapes show us nothing less than a person's first conscious view of the ocean; the extremely long exposures of Theaters elevate the white, luminescent cinema screen, transforming it into a magical image of an altar; and the fascinating Dioramas—photographs of scientific display cases— allow us to travel with the artist far into the past to observe extinct animal species or the daily life of early man. (English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-1640-6)

Exhibition schedule: K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, July 14, 2007–January 6, 2008 · Museum der Moderne Salzburg, March 8–June 15, 2008 · SMB Nationalgalerie, Berlin, July 4–October 5, 2008 · Kunstmuseum Luzern, October 25, 2008–January 25, 2009 

South Africa has always stimulated imaginations around the globe. Around twenty photographers, including Bob Gosani, Peter Magubane, David Goldblatt, Ranjith Kally, Cedric Nunn, Santu Mofokeng, Mikhael Subotzky, Pierre Crocquet, Jodi Bieber, and anonymous photographers for DRUM Magazine (BAHA Archives), provide insight into the history and culture of South Africa from 1950 to the present day. These mainly black-and-white pictures are divided into three periods: Apartheid, 1950–1976; Struggle, 1976–1994; and Freedom, 1994–2010. They document social, political, cultural, and everyday life, the country’s economic situation, and the struggle for survival in the mega-cities.

South Africa is a very complex country that is forcefully attempting to maintain a sense of its past and its visual legacy. This publication represents an important contribution beyond all the familiar superficialities and stereotypes.

 

Exhibition schedule: Willy-Brandt-Haus, Berlin, May 28–July 1,2010 | Museum Goch, May 30–September 5,2010 | Stadthaus Ulm, June 19–September 5, 2010

Fragments of the many practices of the American architect Peter Eisenman are the subject of Barefoot on white-hot walls, published in conjunction with the exhibition at the MAK, Vienna. This volume gathers critical texts by Peter Eisenman and other authors, including Mark Wigley, Greg Lynn, and Emmanuel Petit, ample project illustrations from Eisenman's entire career, such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and the City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, as well as documentation of the exhibit installation itself. Both the catalogue and the exhibition are collections of autonomous fragments of different moments in Eisenman's varied practice as an architect, including design projects since the 1970s, building analyses, lecture excerpts, biographical information, and critical writings. It is as much a retrospective of nearly forty years of Eisenman's work as it is a document that considers the contemporary relevance of some of his architectural key concepts. The architect: Peter Eisenman was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1932. Fellow at the American Institute of Architects; founder and CEO of Eisenman Architects of New York City. M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Cambridge University. He founded the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies in 1967 and was its director until 1982. Editor of the journal Oppositions from 1973 to 1984. Peter Eisenman has received numerous awards and prizes for his work, including a Stone Lion for his contribution to the 3rd Venice Biennale of Architecture in 1985. He has served on the faculty of several universities, including Yale, Princeton, and Cambridge, and is currently a professor at Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University. He is the author of numerous publications on contemporary architecture. Exhibition schedule: MAK, Vienna, December 15, 2004-May 22, 2005

“I am an artist whose profession is architecture,” writes Zvi Hecker (*1931 in Cracow), and nothing embodies this more than Sketches—a compilation Hecker’s architectural drawings that stand alone as works of art while providing a handbook on the singular process of design that has given rise to the Spiral Apartment House, the Heinz-Galinski-Schule Berlin, and the Mountains Housing Project, a work that anticipated current architectural concerns to an unprecedented degree. Leading the reader from the embryonic conception of an idea through to the implementation of it, and accompanied by reflections on topics varying from beauty to education, Sketches—designed by Hecker himself—presents a unique glimpse into the workings of one of the world’s most original architects.