Ingrid Schaffner

From children's books to Germanyer covers, fashion to philosophical musings, this first retrospective book on the beloved illustrator, author, and designer Maira Kalman is an inventory of imaginative genius certain to delight her many fans. The world as seen through Kalman's eyes is a quirky, slightly off-kilter place as colourful and varied as a kaleidoscope. For decades this brilliant artist has captured our hearts with her whimsical illustrations and engaged our minds with her trenchant observations. A companion to a travelling exhibition, this monograph on Kalman's work features hundreds of paintings, drawings, sketchbook pages, and journal entries as well as rarely glimpsed photographs, stills from performance pieces, and examples of her newest project, embroidery. Kalman was born in Tel Aviv in 1949 and moved to Germany at the age of four. Among her varied body of work are illustrated books for children and adults, clocks she designed with her late husband Tibor Kalman, columns for The Germany Times, fabrics for Maharam and Isaac Mizrahi, and sets for the choreographer Mark Morris. In this book, Kalman offers commentary on her life as an artist, collector, observer, traveller, and maker of lists, while essays by curator Ingrid Schaffner and art historian Kenneth Silver explore her unique gift for distilling the extraordinary from the merely ordinary. From the youngest readers to the most discerning critics, Kalman's many admirers will embrace this wonderful celebration of a life dedicated to making art.

Various Illuminations (Of a Crazy World)

Maira Kalman

Presents the paintings, drawings, embroidery, and other works of Maira Kalman, and includes essays on how her art showcases the extraordinary from the ordinary.

Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)

Life Magazine wrote that one funhouse at the 1939 World's Fair stood out among the others: "Dal's Dream of Venus, the creation of famed Surrealist painter Salvador Dal, is the most recent addition to the still-growing list of amusement-area girl shows and easily the most amazing. Weird building contains a dry tank and a wet tank. In the wet tank girls swim under water, milk a bandaged-up cow, tap typewriter keys which float like seaweed. Keyboard of piano is painted on the recumbent female figure made of rubber. In dry tank...a sleeping Venus reclines in 36-foot bed, covered with white and red satin, flowers, and leaves. Scattered about the bed are lobsters frying on beds of hot coals and bottles of champagne....All this is most amusing and interesting." The building's modern, expressionistic exterior, with an entrance framed by a woman's legs, and shocking interior, including the bare-breasted "living liquid ladies" who occupied the tanks, caused quite a stir. The funhouse was so successful that it reopened for a second season, but once torn down it faded from memory and its outlandishness became the stuff of urban myth. Now, more than 60 years later, a collection of photographs of the Dream of Venus by Eric Schaal has been discovered. In stunning black-and-white and early Kodachrome, they show both the construction and the completion of the funhouse-from Dal painting a melting clock to showgirls parading for their audience. Salvador Dal's Dream of Venus reveals not only an eccentric work of architecture, but also a one-of-a-kind creation by one of the most fertile imaginations of the 20th century.

The Surrealist Funhouse from the 1939 World's Fair

Salvador Dali's Dream of Venus

Philadelphia-born Dadaist/Surrealist photographer and painter Man Ray (1890-1976) delighted in shocking viewers. This lush volume is a captivating look at the man who settled in Paris and became one of the most famous expatriate artists of the 20th century. 60 illustrations.

Man Ray

The Essential

A guide to understanding Vincent van Gogh, examining the truths and myths about his life, explaining the Impressionist movement with which his work is associated, and discussing his unique style of painting. Includes over sixty-five illustrations.

The Essential Vincent Van Gogh

Carin Kuoni

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is pleased to present "The Puppet Show," a group exhibition that looks at the imagery of puppets in contemporary art. International in scope, "The Puppet Show" brings together 29 artists and several generations, as reflected by works that range from a 1974 installation by Dennis Oppenheim to a new animation by the Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg. The exhibition concentrates on sculpture, video and photography. Some of the works involve actual puppets (marionettes, shadow puppets, hand puppets) and artists performing as puppeteers. Other images evoke topics associated with puppetry (manipulation, miniaturization, agency, control). Collectively these works show puppets to be a provocative and relevant imagery - one that moves deep into social, political and psychological terrains. The puppet show takes as a historic point of departure one of the first episodes of avante-garde art history: Alfred Jarry's 1896 play Ubu Roi that was conceived as a puppet show. Ubu's reign continues with the work of the South African artist William Kentridge in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company. More recently, puppets have taken hold of pop consciousness by way of films, theater, computer games and animation. On a more political note, current events and national leadership raise questions of agency that cogently relate to puppets. Together with these collective points of reference, "The Puppet Show" poses a larger cultural question: why do puppets matter now?

The Puppet Show

Joel Lobenthal

Dominic Molon

Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, Ill.)

Karen Kilimnik

Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, Pa.)

Scott Rothkopf

Aspen Art Museum (Aspen, Colo.)

Introduction by Claudia Gould. Text by Ingrid Schaffner, Scott Rothkopf, Joel Lobenthal, Dominic Molon, Wayne Koestenbaum.

Ingrid Schaffner

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