The Colors covers the past three decades of the American art scene, a period during which the prevailing artistic fashion has shifted as often as the focus of the Whitney Biennial, when art and money, talent and celebrity have often been confused. During this period, figures such as Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring have crossed over from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture, and art dealers, like Hollywood power agents, have often claimed as much attention as those they represented. Anthony Haden-Guest has moved within this world, known the players, and delivers here an authoritative and deliciously inside account.Focusing on the lives and personalities of the art world's main players, and with a sure critical component, Haden-Guest gives us vivid portraits of the period's key artists as they strive to fulfill their ambitions. He does justice as well to the machinations of those who have come to control the larger drama -- the dealers, collectors, and museum curators. Filled with incredible anecdotes, dramatically told stories, and subtle critical assessments, True Colors tells the story of the art world that we have never heard before.

Yes you can! Give the gift of art. Give the gift of creativity. Give the gift of fun. Because now we can all paint with the best of them. Drawn from the annals of America's fondly remembered pastimes, Real Art! is an all-new, cleverly designed paint by number kit and the coolest gift of the season. Open the box and discover everything an artist needs to create a gallery of paintings suitable for framing--ten white "canvas" boards, 18 oversized pots of acrylic paint, and two brushes, one narrow and one medium. The images, newly created by artist Nancy Stahl, are iconic: a still life of luscious pears. A clipper ship in full sail. Tropical parrots in a study of exuberant hue. The geisha. The bustling street scene. And two bona fide masterpieces: van Gogh's Sunflowers and, yes, the Mona Lisa. Plus, pulling the full experience together is a 64-page full-color book of history, appreciation, and instruction. Illustrated throughout, it traces the canon of PBN subjects and artists, including the original brouhaha over its place in the culture; and provides a how-to-paint primer--including how to improvise, from choosing a varied color palette to leaving parts of the canvas blank, à la Warhol; plus tips on displaying your work and, ultimately, becoming a PBN collector.

This is a companion volume to an exhibition which examines how today's most promising artists are exploring our shifting experience of reality. The book explores our constantly changing sense of what is real, and the consequences of not understanding the difference.

Artists and critics explore the concept of Real Abstraction to help understand contemporary cultural production In the Mind, But Not From There: Real Abstraction and Contemporary Art considers how the Marxian concept of Real Abstraction--originally developed by Alfred Sohn Rethel, and recently updated by Alberto Toscano--might help to define the economic, social, political, and cultural complexities of our contemporary moment. In doing so, this volume brings together noted contemporary artists, literary critics, curators, historians, and social theorists who connect the concept of Real Abstraction with contemporary cultural production. Theoretical and artistic contributions from Benjamin Noys, Paul Chan, Joao Enxuto and Erica Love, Marina Vishmidt, Sven Lütticken, and many others help to map out the relationship between political economy and artistic production in the realm of contemporary, globalized cultural exchange. This anthology places economic and social analyses alongside creative projects and visual essays to consider the many angles of contemporary art, and how inquiry into the the production of abstraction through material and social processes can be used to better understand, and hopefully change, the conditions under which art is made, seen, and circulated today. Published in collaboration with [NAME] publications.

In The Return of the Real Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avant-gardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today. After the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s, Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real—to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites. If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avant-gard, it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation—and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.

EDUCATION / Arts in Education