Poetry and Time

by Joachim Sartorius and Max Neumann

Published 2 July 2019
For nearly half a century, German artist Max Neumann has worked to create, hone, and elaborate a visual vocabulary that is dark, compulsive, and forceful. A lifelong collaborator, Neumann's paintings have accompanied the work of Cees Nooteboom, Seamus Heaney, Fernando Pessoa, and Laszlo Krasznahorkai, among many others.

In Poetry and Time, Neumann's haunting images are accompanied by a lyrical and penetrating text from poet Joachim Sartorius, who notes that a certain silence is at the very heart of poems, stating: "They know what it is they do, but do not say it." Exploring this mystery, he considers examples from Dickinson, Rilke, and Shakespeare, among others, and examines the realities of transience and mortality at the center of poems' reasons for being, their urge to form their own reality and abolish time while being inextricably bound to time. Sartorius's ruminations beautifully complement Neumann's series of thirty poignant paintings, making this volume is an extraordinarily rare and exquisite book.

Some Heads

by Max Neumann and Hubertus von Amelunxen

Published 4 May 2023
A beautifully produced volume featuring the work of a major German artist.

While a face may be considered a head, a head does not necessarily carry a face. Between 2015 and 2017, German artist Max Neuman, known for painting anonymous figures, drew a series of heads. Each head is a moment, each facing the viewer as if looking into a crowd, each distinguishable from the other. Who are they? May we call them portraits? Do they look back? Do they resemble spirits? Some Heads reproduces these haunting drawings along with an essay by cultural theorist and curator Hubertus von Amelunxen that questions the heads and faces while dwelling upon the effacement of individuality.