Shelfology Book Pairing

by Wolfgang Tillmans

Few artists have changed the manner in which photographic images are made, read, and received over the past two decades as dramatically as German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968). One of the most important and distinctive artists to emerge in the 1990s, Tillmans’s work is internationally recognized for its powerful reflections on the often overlooked objects and moments in everyday life. With images culled from the entirety of Tillmans’s career, this generously illustrated book accompanies the artist’s first retrospective exhibition in the United States and features the potent effects of his portraits, abstractions, and structural and sculptural motifs. Essays by leading scholars examine the context of the German art and pop cultural scene in which Tillmans first began working in the late 1980s; his use of magazines as both venue and source materials; his unique approach to portraiture; his ability to create a sense of intimacy between the viewer and subjects ranging from his friends to cultural figures and heads of state; and his distinctive approach to presenting his images in displays and installations. A fascinating loo�k at the breadth of Tillmans’s career to date, including his most recent new work, this book demonstrates the renowned abilities of one of the art world’s most revolutionary photographers.

Black and White

by Alice Neel

Alice Neel's remarkable drawings are intimate explorations of her personal life: her loves and her family, her friends, people she met in New York and the art world. Spontaneous and dynamic, the works on paper in Black and White provide insight into her environments, exterior and interior. In them she positions universal themes -- motherhood, death, longing -- within the sphere of her private existence and her social unconscious. While a handful of the drawings are urban cityscapes and others are domestic settings, the majority are portraits. And when Neel, the self-named Collector of Souls, composed a portrait, she never posed her sitters. Instead, she studied and spoke intimately with her subjects as they unconsciously assumed their most natural attitude, which she believed exhorted all their character and life experience. The images she created, full of distinctly innate gestures, stemmed from her succinct understanding and assembled memory, and coalesced into a unique impression of a person.