suspicious of <\/a>the capitalist machinations behind the art-fashion hybrids taking over contemporary culture. But a new book by cultural historian Uri McMillan convincingly troubles that easy read, highlighting experimental Black and Brown artists of the 1970s who moved between the commercial and avant-garde realms with transgressive bombast, irreverent especially toward the art world\u2019s elitism. A memorable chapter describes the formative friendship of Grace Jones and Ming Smith\u2014who met modeling, then formed a kind of creative coalition. \u2014Emily Watlington<\/p>\n\tMinor Black Figures<\/p>\n
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\n\tBy Brandon Taylor<\/p>\n
\n\tBrandon Taylor\u2019s third novel is set in the restless summer of 2022, when Manhattan was still wired with memories of protest and pandemic. In a fifth-floor walk-up on the Upper East Side, Wyeth, fresh from a Midwest MFA, is struggling to make a painting. Scenes inspired by the films of Ingmar Bergman and Eric Rohmer have won him a modest following, but now he strains to square his style with expectations for Black painting. Old questions assume new stakes: What do we owe ourselves? Does art belong to life? Must it? If sometimes too scrupulous in its commitment to the quotidian, Taylor\u2019s is a rigorous portrait of the artist as a young-ish man confronting the \u201cwhole dizzy business of trying to be a black painter\u201d in a post\u2013George Floyd world. \u2014Emily Cox<\/p>\n
\tBarnett Newman: Here<\/p>\n
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\n\tBy Amy Newman<\/p>\n
\n\tThe vibrant titles Barnett Newman gave to his paintings\u2014Onement I\u00a0and\u00a0Vir Heroicus Sublimis, to name just two\u2014sometimes refer to mysterious affective sates. But in this new biography of the Abstract Expressionist, art historian Amy Newman (no relation) suggests that these game-changing canvases were, in fact, rooted in something highly specific: his upbringing as a Jew in a time of pervasive antisemitism. Across 700-plus pages, she thrillingly explores Newman\u2019s vexed relationship to his religion, which shaped his entire worldview, even as he exhibited certain later paintings under names derived not from the Torah but Christian texts such as the New Testament. \u2014Alex Greenberger<\/p>\n
\tPrivate I: A Memoir<\/p>\n
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\n\tBy Lynn Hershman-Leeson<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s well known that too many women artists working in the 20th century (and earlier) were unjustly neglected. But in a new memoir, Lynn Hershman-Leeson (b. 1941) captures the textures of what it felt like to work in the shadows, the daily life of an artist perservering without much reception or support. In recent years she\u2019s starred in retrospectives around the world, and is now recognized as an artist ahead of her time for fusing art, science, and technology before it was cool. But for decades, she was roughing it. Her conceptual video and performance work was largely relegated to unlikely spheres\u2014department store windows, hotels, and San Quentin State Prison\u2014in lieu of the art world mainstream. The book details how she resourcefully endured periods of poverty while staying committed to her art. \u2014Emily Watlington<\/p>\n
\tJean Baudrillard<\/p>\n
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\n\tBy Emannuelle Fantin & Bran Nicol<\/p>\n
\n\tThis biography is a short one, as Baudrillard left few details about his life, insisting instead that he was merely \u201ca simulacrum of myself.\u201d But the details the authors tracked down are consistetly uproarious: such as that his famous Simulacra & Simulation was perhaps the only philosophy book to ever appear in a Gucci ad, a model holding his book and proving his point. Baudrillard\u2019s biographers show how their subject practiced what he preached, merging philosophy into a kind of performance art: allegedly, he forged Sophie Calle\u2019s diploma, and in his writing, he would fabricate quotes from famous thinkers. As you devour fun facts like these, you\u2019ll get a good sense of his prophetic world view. To quote from a recent Baudrillard conference, he \u201cmay no longer be around to analyse our world. But he has already done so.\u201d \u2014Emily Watlington<\/p>\n
\tArchigram: The Magazine<\/p>\n
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\n\tEdited with text by Peter Cook. Text by Archigram et al. Reader\u2019s guide edited by Thomas Evans, Steve Kroeter.<\/p>\n
\n\tArchigram was one of the most influential architecture groups of all time, even though they never built anything. That was deliberate: their designs were meant to be provocative rather than practical. With their colorful, Pop- and psychedelic-inspired pamphlets of the 1960s, they worked against the sterility of midcentury Modernism\u2014and inspired Richard Rogers\u2019 and Renzo Piano\u2019s Centre Pompidou in the process. These days, archival pamphlets now sell for hundreds of dollars\u2014until this first ever re-issue. More art object than coffee table book, this clamshell collection boasts a popout pamphlet as well as new essays by Tadao Ando, Beatriz Colomina, and Mike Davies. \u2014Emily Watlington<\/p>\n
\tThe Four Spent the Day Together<\/p>\n
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\n\tBy Chris Kraus<\/p>\n
\n\tA new true-crime novel by the artist-writer, of I Love Dick fame, is set in the \u201cmeth community\u201d of Minnesota. Our protagonist, Catt Greene, splits her life between the LA art world and the frozen Midwest with its rural poverty, as does Kraus. In Minnesota, Catt\u2019s husband works as an addiction therapist, himself a recovering addict. Shuttling between, Catt experiences a kind of class whiplash. When she learns of local lore\u2014that three teens were charged with killing their older acquaintance\u2014she becomes obsessed. As did Kraus: the murder at the heart of the book is based on a true story that entranced the writer. \u2014Emily Watlington<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"October brings an exciting, eclectic set of new releases that dive into art, fashion, philosophy, and fiction. They…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":["post-197743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-books","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}