Contemporary Painters Series

This book presents a comprehensive view of the work of American painter Philip Taaffe (b.1955), who has expanded the parameters of painting through his use of silkscreen, linocuts, collage, stencils, gouache, chine-collé, marbling, acrylic, enamel, watercolour and gold leaf. Possessing many technical skills, Taaffe has moved decisively between unique pictorial inventions and appropriations, as well as overlaying divergent modes of representation, through cultural patterns found in ornament, and biomorphic abstraction.

John Yau's insightful text is the first to look at every part of Taaffe's artistic development, from the works he made at Cooper Union while a student of Hans Haacke, to the present. It pays special attention to Taaffe's acquisition of different techniques, as well as investigating his various sources of inspiration, which include the work of experimental filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner and Harry Smith, the Natural History illustrations of Ernst Haeckel, and the ancient art of paper marbling.

Thomas Nozkowski

by John Yau

Published 7 September 2017

This book offers the first detailed account of the paintings of American artist Thomas Nozkowski (born 1944), creator of modestly-sized abstract works that swiftly convey what one writer described as 'a remarkable sense of freedom within constraint.' As an emerging artist in the 1970s, Thomas Nozkowski's mature style developed in the wake of Minimalism, Pop Art and Colour Field painting and during a decade which became defined by movements - such as Conceptual and Performance art - that eschewed painting. While many artists identified with the notion of 'painting's terminal condition', Nozkowski chose to express personal experience through small-scale canvases that refused to adhere to 'a signature style' or align themselves with a particular movement. Through John Yau's perceptive text, the trajectory of Nozkowski's very individual artistic pathway is clearly presented. Offering insightful context and discussion of specific works, this book provides the definitive narrative of an artist gifted with an original vision.

Liu Xiaodong

by John Yau

Published 27 May 2021

The remarkable plein air paintings of Liu Xiaodong (b.1963), which chronicle everyday lives within our diverse modern world, are the focus of this first monograph of his career to date.

Immersing himself in communities around the globe, Xiaodong seeks to present people who often sit on the fringes of society who find themselves marginalised within a contemporary world striving for homogenisation. At first glance a traditional realist painter, closer examination reveals an artist exploring a range of media while interrogating the opportunities presented by modern technology. The result is an outstanding body of work, often monumental in scale, that examines, reconsiders, and extends observational painting in fresh directions, while bringing into question the lines between fact and fiction, the traditional and the contemporary, to create a wholly original vision.