Karen Tsujimoto

Jennifer R. Gross

Widely recognized as one of the West Coast's most important and critically acclaimed practitioners of conceptual and installation art, David Ireland (born 1930) has taken the concept of art itself as one of his subjects. A self-described "post-discipline" artist, guided by Zen thought and postmodern aesthetics, Ireland moves fluidly from making small drawings to creating sculptures as large as houses. Freely incorporating anything within his conceptual or physical reach—dirt, concrete, wire, and other everyday materials—his work is subtle, puzzling, and witty, and consistently challenges traditional definitions of art. In this book accompanying the first full-scale retrospective of Ireland's work, curator and author Karen Tsujimoto provides an insightful overview of more than thirty years of the artist's accomplishments, from his drawings, sculptures, and site-specific installations to his remarkable series of architectural transformations, including his well-known house at 500 Capp Street in San Francisco. Chronicling Ireland's circuitous route to his calling, Tsujimoto explores how key life experiences have influenced his artistic perspective—from his early art-student days, through his years as an African importer and safari guide, to his long-standing interest in Eastern, and particularly Zen, philosophy and his deep connections with the San Francisco Bay Area conceptual art community. An illuminating essay by art historian and curator Jennifer R. Gross also considers Ireland's art in terms of historical materialism—assessing his use of neglected materials and artifacts as a process of cultural preservation.

The Way Things Are

The Art of David Ireland

"Mina Loy (1882-1966) was one of the most inscrutable artists and poets of the twentieth century. Born in London and formally trained as an artist in London, Munich, and Paris, Loy was elected as a member of the Salon d'Automne in Paris at the age of 23. Her modernist enlightenment came through her introduction to the Italian Futurists, and her subsequent structurally startling and provocative poetry and manifesto-writing brought her immediate notoriety and the embrace of the American avant-garde. Upon her arrival in New York in 1916 she was featured as the prototype of the "Modern Woman" in a profile in the New York Evening Sun. Her writings were published in Camera Work, Little Review, Rogue, and elsewhere, and her art was included in the groundbreaking 1917 Independents' Exhibition. She was Marcel Duchamp's date for the Blind Man's Ball-a friendship that lasted throughout their lives, as Duchamp organized Loy's final exhibition in 1955. Today, Loy is remembered primarily as a poet. Mina Loy: Strangeness Is Inevitable is the first book to examine the full scope of her career, including her visual work. The book follows Loy on her transatlantic passage to America as an immigrant in 1936 and features over 50 of her paintings, drawings, and constructions alongside a selection of her poetry and writings, all of which reveal her omnivorous creativity as an image-maker, author, and cultural arbiter. These works are complemented by extensive, never-before-assembled archival materials that provide context for her art within the arc of her extraordinary life. Contributing authors will show how indispensable of a force she was in introducing Italian futurism to America, radicalizing the aspirations of feminism, expanding the aesthetics of surrealism, and presaging American pop art through her assemblage constructions. Introducing the full breadth of Loy's creative expression-painting, drawing, poetry, prose, art criticism, and fashion design-Mina Loy presents the remarkable vision of this iconoclast"--

Strangeness Is Inevitable

Mina Loy

Lynne Warren

Alexi Worth

Favoring fantastical invention, biting wit, and distorted figuration, with roots in mid-20th-century pop culture, Jim Nutt creates wildly original work ranging from paintings on Plexiglas to phantasmagoric portraits of imaginary women. Nutt (b. 1938) first exerted his artistic influence in the 1960s as a member of Hairy Who, a group of artists who, along with other Chicago artists of the era, are more commonly referred to as the imagists. Since 1990 he has focused exclusively on rendering female heads with radically distorted features in spare line drawings and richly detailed paintings accompanied by customized frames. Working with tiny brushes and thinned acrylic paint, Nutt often spends a year creating a single portrait. Jim Nutt is the first major publication on the artist in almost two decades, as well as the first to concentrate on Nutt's portraits. Detailing 70 of the artist's works from 1966 to the present, this important selected retrospective examines these paintings and drawings through their precedents in Nutt's work and demonstrates the artist's consistent and inimitable contributions to the art world.

Jennifer R. Gross

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