Dan Nadel

Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969

Art Out of Time

Originally published by Chicago's Black press, long neglected by mainstream publishing, and now included in a Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago exhibition, these comics showcase some of the finest Black cartoonists. Between the 1940s and 1980s, Chicago’s Black press—from The Chicago Defender to the Negro Digest to self-published pamphlets—was home to some of the best cartoonists in America. Kept out of the pages of white-owned newspapers, Black cartoonists found space to address the joys, the horrors, and the everyday realities of Black life in America. From Jay Jackson’s anti-racist time travel adventure serial Bungleton Green, to Morrie Turner’s radical mixed-race strip Dinky Fellas, to the Afrofuturist comics of Yaoundé Olu and Turtel Onli, to National Book Award–winning novelist Charles Johnson’s blistering and deeply funny gag cartoons, this is work that has for far too long been excluded and overlooked. Also featuring the work of Tom Floyd, Seitu Hayden, Jackie Ormes, and Grass Green, this anthology accompanies the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s exhibition Chicago Comics: 1960 to Now, and is an essential addition to the history of American comics. The book's cover is designed by Kerry James Marshall. Published in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, on the occasion of Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now, June 19–October 3, 2021. Curated by Dan Nadel.

Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940 - 1980

It's Life as I See it

Rick Moody

Fred Tomaselli

Michael Schmelling

Examining the pictorial, literary, and musical world that Wilco conjure up on record and on stage this book is created in collaboration with Jeff Tweedy, Wilco and Tony Margherita. Primarily visual, The Wilco Book shows what Wilco does, how they do it and where it all comes together. The band narrates the book in the form of long captions accompanying the images. Just as the band assembles its disparate talents, this book coheres in the end to reveal a 40 minute CD of original, unreleased songs. This truly is a translation of the band's sensibility from sound into print.

The Wilco Book

Lauren Cornell

Takeshi Murata (born 1975) first became known as an early innovator of datamoshing, a form of glitch art that requires compressing two videos together until their respective pixels merge into one mashed-up picture. Since then, inspired by Giorgio de Chirico and traditional 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting, Murata's work has ventured into the realm of hyper-realism in a series of uncanny prints and videos that explore our inner and exterior lives via everything from B-grade horror film imagery to relics of a 1980s childhood. Part monograph and part artist's book, Takeshi Murata includes an essay by New Museum curator Lauren Cornell, an interview with the artist conducted by Alex Gartenfeld, Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and an essay by Dan Nadel.

Takeshi Murata

Judith Tannenbaum

What Nerve! reveals a hidden history of American figurative painting, sculpture and popular imagery. It documents and/or restages four installations, spaces or happenings, in Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit and Providence, which were crucial to the development of figurative art in the United States. Several of the better-known artists in What Nerve! have been the subject of significant exhibitions or publications, but this is the first major volume to focus on the broader impact of figurative art to connect artists and collectives from different generations and regions of the country. These are: from Chicago, the Hairy Who (James Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, Karl Wirsum); from California, Funk artists (Jeremy Anderson, Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Robert Hudson, Ken Price, Peter Saul, Peter Voulkos, William T. Wiley); from Detroit, Destroy All Monsters (Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, Jim Shaw); and from Providence, Forcefield (Mat Brinkman, Jim Drain, Leif Goldberg, Ara Peterson). Created in collaboration with artists from these groups, the historical moments at the core of What Nerve! are linked by work from six artists who profoundly influenced or were influenced by the groups: William Copley, Jack Kirby, Elizabeth Murray, Gary Panter, Christina Ramberg and H.C. Westermann. Featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and videos, as well as ephemera, wallpaper and other materials used in the reconstructed installations, the book and exhibition will broaden public exposure to the scope of this influential history. The exuberance, humor and politics of these artworks remain powerfully resonant. Much of the work in this book, including installation photos, exhibition ephemera and correspondence, is published for the first time. What Nerve! represents the first historical examination of the circumstances, relationships and works of an increasingly important lineage of American artists.

Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present

What Nerve!

Mike Kelley

Destroy All Monsters 1973 - 1977 : Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, Jim Shaw

Return of the repressed

Nicole Rudick

Destroy All Monsters were an influential Detroit group that made music, art, zines and an elaborate junk-based self-mythology. Two of its members have become renowned artists: Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw. But aside from the zines, the actual output by the members has never been examined as independent art objects. This is the first retrospective of the artwork itself, as opposed to the zines and memorabilia produced. Nearly all of this work has never been published. Included are dozens of candid photographs of the group, offering a snapshot of a proto-punk unit.

Destroy All Monsters, 1973-1977

Return of the Repressed

This is the first complete presentation of the artists' books, posters, prints and ephemera produced by The Hairy Who (Chicago, 1966-69), which was composed of Jim Falconer (born 1943), Art Green (born 1941), Gladys Nilsson (born 1940), Jim Nutt (born 1938), Suellen Rocca (born 1943) and Karl Wirsum (born 1939). Over the course of five exhibitions in Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, DC, The Hairy Who represented a de facto rebuke to the chilly ironies of Pop and forged new ways of crafting figurative painting. As likely to use Plexiglas as canvas and employing a language based on verbal confusion, visual puns and an almost ecstatic use of line and color, the members of the Hairy Who produced publications, posters and even buttons, and their exhibitions were immersive environments unequalled at the time. The Hairy Who has enjoyed a renewed popularity recently, thanks to a documentary film and multiple exhibitions by the contributing artists. This publication presents all of the printed works related to the Hairy Who exhibitions--important documents in the history of contemporary art and artists' books. Formatted like comic books, they are among the very first full-color self-published artists' books, containing work made especially for publication. Studying these works is important to an understanding of post-1960s art and artists' books.

The Collected Hairy Who Publications 1966-1969

Presents an eclectic compendium of the work of nearly thirty little-known American cartoonists whose work has been overshadowed by more famous contemporaries, showcasing the influential work of these pioneering cartoonists, who worked from 1900 to 1969, including Raymond Crawford Ewer, Howard Nostrand, Ogden Whitney, and Dick Briefer, among others.

Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969

Norman Hathaway

'Electrical Banana' is an examination of the international language of psychedelia, focusing on the important practitioners in their respective fields. Compiling hundreds of unseen images plus exclusive interviews and essays, it revises and expands the common perception of psychedelic art, revealing it to be more innovative, compelling and revolutionary than is usually acknowledged. The book documents the great virtuosos of psychedelic art - men and women whose work combines avant-garde design with highly sophisticated image-making. Launching a million Day-glo dreams, the artists include - Marijke Koger, the Dutch artist responsible for dressing the Beatles; Mati Klarwein, who painted the cover for Miles Davis' 'Bitches Brew'; Keiichi Tanaami, the Japanese master of psychedelic posters; Heinz Edelmann, the German illustrator and designer of the Beatles' animated film 'Yellow Submarine'; Tadanori Yokoo, whose prints, books and fabrics defined the 1960s in Japan; Dudley Edwards, a painter, car decorator and graphic artist on the London rock scene; and the enigmatic Australian Martin Sharp, whose work for Cream and underground magazines made him a hippie household name in Europe. 'Electrical Banana' features a lengthy historical essay and interviews with all of the artists.

Dan Nadel

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