Walter Pfeiffer. Welcome Aboard! Photographs 1980-2000
Welcome Aboard! Photographs 1980-2000 is at once a complete monograph dedicated to the Swiss artist Walter Pfeiffer and a photographic novel. Following his work of the ’70s and ’80s, the painter, photographer, and director celebrated his personal interpretation of beauty and glamour with a sophisticated and elegant irony by making a large number of photographic still lifes, landscapes, and portraits of women and friends. The high-quality reproductions in the catalogue transmit his elaborate and sometimes artificial use of color and light, which render each represented subject an “honest image of true feelings,” as described in the accompanying text by Martin Jaeggi. Texts in English and German.

Walter Pfeiffer. Welcome Aboard! Photographs 1980-2000, Editions Patrick Frey, c/o Scalo Publishers (Weinbergstrasse 22a, Zurich), 2001, 268 pages, 20.5 x 27.5 cm.

Louise Bourgeois’ Spider
This theoretical essay was written by Mieke Bal, a cofounder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis in the Netherlands. As her jumping-off point, Bal uses the sculpture Spider, created in 1997 by the French artist Louise Bourgeois. The author maintains that this piece cannot be appreciated or entirely perceived in one viewing due to its enormous size. The Dutch scholar argues that the precise moment of an artwork’s observation is far more important for the spectator than the artist’s biographical information or various academic, critical, or theoretical interpretations. Text in English.

Mieke Bal, Louise Bourgeois’ Spider: The Architecture of Art-Writing, The University of Chicago Press (1427 East 60th Street, Chicago,www.press.uchicago.edu), 2001, 134 pages, 16.5 x 22 cm.

Bernhard Martin. Softcore
This is the accompanying catalogue to Bernhard Martin’s solo show at the Mannheimer Kunstverein. The German artist describes his work, an artistic practice of reappropriation and mimicry, as a kind of “hoarding and vagabondism.” Reproducing quotidian, even banal, objects in an alien manner—such as the fanciful trash can on the book’s cover—he renders them unfamiliar; similarly, he remanipulates images in montage-like compositions, providing an entirely new point of view for looking at the world. Vanessa Joan Müller of the Frankfurt Kunstverein has penned the critical text. In the introductory essay, the artist recounts how he grew up in Kassel and saw his first Documenta when he was only seven years old; “I have always imagined myself to be one hundred and forty artists and that I could put on a Documenta all by myself.” Texts in German, English, and Spanish.

Bernhard Martin, Softcore, Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg (Luitpoldstrasse 5, Nuremberg, www.moderne-kunst.org), 2001, 125 pages, 20 x 26 cm.

Alberto and Diego Giacometti
Two volumes accommodated in one sleeve are dedicated to the Giacometti brothers, Alberto and Diego. Yves Bonnefoy was a friend of the former and has already written a number of well-researched monographs on him; in this case, he presents a wide-ranging and fascinating portrait, both as a man and artist. Bonnefoy kicks off his critical text re-positing his theory of the “necessity” Alberto Giacometti, made clear in the essay’s title, inasmuch as an artist he really responded to the most profound desires of his epoch. In the other volume François Baudot, writer, critic, and journalist, records the figure of Diego Giacometti, Alberto’s younger brother. The catalogue has rare photographs of the works themselves as well as the artists at work in their studios.

Yves Bonnefoy, François Baudot, Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Editions Assouline (26/28 Rue Danielle-Casanova, Paris), Assouline Publishing Inc. (601 West 26th Street, New York, www.assouline.com), 2001, 78 pages and 79 pages, 16 x 22 cm.

Somaini. Sculture, dipinti e disegni 1950/2001
This is the catalogne published to coincide with Francesco Somaini’s one-man show, curated by Luisa Somaini and Fred Licht, a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York. The exhibition was shown at Broletto, the Fondazione Antonio Ratti, and in other areas of the city of Como, such as the courtyard of the Palazzo Cernezzi. The volume is a carefully prepared anthology of the sculptor’s development, with photographic reproductions in both color and black and white. It begins with his early works from the ’50s, such as Lotta con il mostro up to the recent Piccola Baccante of 2001. From 1988 through 1994 Somaini founded and ran, together with Giuliano Collina, the Scuola Superiore di Disegno della Fondazione Ratti. The catalogne has English and Italian texts by Giovanni Maria Accade, Maria Corti, and Fred Licht.

Somaini. Sculture, dipinti e disegni 1950/2001, Electa Elemond (Via Trentacoste 7, Milan, www.electaweb.com), 2001, 207 pages, 25 x 28.5 cm.