Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective
The style of graphics chosen for this ample catalogue and the cover itself—a full-page reproduction of the gouache work Color Bands in Four Directions—pays homage to American artist Sol LeWitt. Published on occasion of the retrospective exhibit organized by the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art—later held at both the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York—the book charts LeWitt’s artistic development: from his works dating to the early Sixties through to his more recent ones from the Eighties, from gigantic wall drawings to works on paper. With over three hundred and fifty images, and critical essays by Gary Garrels, Martin Friedman, Brenda Richardson, and several other curators and art historians, this book clearly reveals LeWitt’s artistic approach: the desire to create art that emerges from a harmonious equilibrium between thought and form, order and chaos, autorialità and serialità.

Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (151 Thirth Street, San Francisco, www.sfmoma.org), 2000, 416 pages, 24,5 x 28,5 cm.

This is for Real
For Real, realizzato in occasione del Municipal Art Acquisitions Programme promosso dallo Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, presenta i lavori di una trentina di giovani artisti residenti nella capitale olandese, rappresentanti di una nuova generazione. I loro lavori uniscono contemporaneamente il genere documentario e contemporaneamente quello legato alla finzione e sembra venire meno, e addirittura scomparire, la distinzione tra la realtà e la fiction. I testi in catalogo, in olandese e inglese e le riproduzioni fotografiche delle opere sono stampati due volte, nella pagina di sinistra (quella della fiction), e poi specularmente sulla pagina di destra (quella della realtà). Il titolo For Real si riferisce all’iniziativa di realizzare da parte degli artisti performance, installazioni, workshop, film, video, fotografie, pittura e progetti Internet in spazi pubblici, esterni e slegati dalla pratica museale.

This is for Real, Nai Publishers (Mauritsweg 23, Rotterdam), 2000, p. 126, 25 x 31,5 cm.

Maurizio Cattelan
This is the first important monograph to be dedicated to Maurizio Cattelan, who, since the '80s, has been one of the best-known Italian artists on the international scene. Part of the “Contemporary Artists” series, the book stands as an indubitable testimony to the versatility of his work, which is a part-playful, part-critical take on the art world. The volume contains an interview with Nancy Spector, curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the critical essay Static on the Line: The Impossible Work of Maurizio Cattelan by Francesco Bonami, who has closely followed the work of this Paduan artist for a number of years, and has chronologically documented his progress. Also contained are a profile by independent curator Barbara Vanderlinden; an extract from Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth and …Or Not to Be: A Collection of Suicide Notes by Marc Etkind, selected by Cattelan. A collection of the artist's writings and some of his interviews bring the book to a close.

Maurizio Cattelan, Phaidon Press (Regent’s Wharf, All Saints Street, London), 2000, 142 pages, 25 x 29 cm.

Wendy Ewald, Secret Games
This large format, hard-backed catalogue was published for the exhibition of the same name that kicked off at the Winterthur Fotomuseum (Switzerland). The book provides a fascinating overall view of the numerous journeys that photographer Wendy Ewald, who was born in Detroit in 1951, has made in various parts of the world. Ewald has been working with children in the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Holland, and India for more than thirty years, teaching them photography and allowing them to experiment with images from their own personal worlds. The catalogue brings together and reproduces, in an elegant, clear fashion, a variety of black and white photographs and a selection of texts, which are subdivided according to the different geographical areas Ewald has visited. Preface by Adam D. Weinberg and Urs Stahel.

Wendy Ewald, Secret Games – Collaborative Works with Children 1969-1999, Scalo Verlag AG (Weinbergstrasse 22a, Zurich), 2000, 336 pages, 22,6 x 29,2 cm.

Twisted
This catalogue was produced for the exhibition of the same name held at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. The show’s central concept was to examine different interpretations of the urban landscape in large metropolitan areas—such as London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and New York—by twelve international artists. The title refers to the complex nature of the representations and visions on display, which range from advertising billboards to cartoons, from pulp fiction to video games and TV series. The works of the artists—each accompanied by a critical text—are reproduced in the form of large color photos.

Twisted, Urban and Visionary Landscapes in Contemporary Painting, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven/Nai Publishers Rotterdam (Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, P.O. Box 235, Eindhoven), 2000, 79 pages, 22 x 34 cm.