Bøker av Isabelle Graw

A diaristic novel on contemporary friendship and its importance. Isabelle Graw's latest book reflects on the purposes and struggles of friendship in competitive social milieus. By focusing on her own social milieu--the art world--Graw demonstrates how friendships are neither totally disinterested nor reduceable to their use. Written in the intimate form of a fictional diary, this book laments useful friendships while praising true friendship in all its forms. For Graw, friendship is an existential necessity--if only because it points to how we relate to and depend on others. Friendship, she finds, is as important as the air we breathe--with it, we are able to fully live.

Examinations of Francis Ponge's texts on Jean Fautrier's "Hostage Paintings," Jack Whitten's Memorial Paintings, and Banksy's auction stunt Love is in the Bin.This book contains three case studies on very different artists, analyzing their work through their respective historical contexts: the writer Francis Ponge (1899-1988) and his seminal text on Jean Fautrier's "Hostage Paintings" from 1943; visual artist Jack Whitten's (1939-2018) Memorial Paintings and Banksy's notorious auction stunt Love is in the Bin from 2018. Examining all three artistic propositions from a value-theoretical point of view, Graw finds Ponge's text on Fautrier to be "doubly materialist" insofar as it (seemingly) reveals its own material conditions while simultaneously grasping the specific materiality of Fautrier's paintings; suggests that the indications of value in Whitten's painting to be more indirect; and reveals Banksy's value reflections to have a very different generational thrust. Gaw shows that Ponge's text is full of value-reflexive insights but that Ponge himself is an ambivalent figure. She finds that the dedication of Whitten's paintings inscribes them in a system of exchange. And, finally, the deliberate aesthetic meagerness of Banksy's Love Is in the Bin points to an emptiness at the heart of value. Institut für Kunstkritik series

Blending memoir and social critique, elegantly written essays explore a world that feels different, from Brexit and Trump to #MeToo and the death of parents.This book merges memoir and social critique in an original fashion. By combining personal observations with a general systemic analysis, it seeks to propose a new genre of writing. Isabelle Graw manages to capture radical political, social, and cultural changes that have occurred since 2014 in elegantly written observations, also analyzing how these macro-shifts reach into her own life. Addressing topics that range from Brexit, Trump, and a general rightward turn to #MeToo, men with beards, and Balenciaga, Gaw registers the symptoms of a world that clearly feels different. Meditating on irretrievable personal losses, she describes how we find ourselves literally "in another world" after the death of our parents. With a theme of mourning running throughout, her book is an attempt at exposing and analyzing painful emotions.

In response to recent developments in pictorial practice and critical discourse, Painting beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-medium Condition seeks new ways to approach and historicize the question of the medium. Reaching back to the earliest theoretical and institutional definitions of painting, this book—based on a conference at Harvard University in 2013—focuses on the changing role of materiality in establishing painting as the privileged practice, discourse, and institution of modernity. Myriad conceptions of the medium and its specificity are explored by an international group of scholars, critics, and artists. Painting beyond Itself is a forum for rich historical, theoretical, and practice-grounded conversation.ContributorsCarol Armstrong, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Sabeth Buchmann, René Démoris, Isabelle Graw, David Joselit, Jutta Koether, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Julie Mehretu, Matt Saunders, Amy SillmanInstitut für Kunstkritik Series

This is the first monograph on the work of Michele Abeles (b. 1977), an artist based in New York who works primarily with photographic imagery. Through numerous colour images and exhibition views, the book traces Abele's prolific and diverse output over the last seven years. An extensive interview with the art critic Isabelle Graw offers new and extended insights into the artist's thinking and methodology. Abeles's works pursue a range of conceptual and compositional questions - from the idea of spatial depth in photography and painting, to the status of the female body as a 'readymade' armature, to the relationship between different methods of compressing and conveying information (visual and non-visual, digital and analogue). Please note: The book cover image is all white, with raised design.