Objects of Desire

by Philip Guston (Artist), Iwan Babij (Artist), Georges Braque (Artist)

An incisive exploration of the still life genre as artists have rediscovered and reshaped it in the 20th century, "Objects of Desire" proves that despite the century's hostility toward older aesthetic conventions, avant-garde artists of many schools have made of the still life a vital opportunity for invention. From Matisse, Picasso, and Braque to the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Pop artists and finally to contemporary creators like Cindy Sherman and Charles Ray, the still life has hardly led a stolid, stable, or staunch existence. Originally a subject reserved for painting, the genre has progressively invaded the arena of sculpture, its themes reinvented in the provocative assemblages called "readymades," its forms recast continuously into the present. Published to accompany a major 1997 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, "Objects of Desire" traces a radical rethinking of the genre in terms of subject matter and formal invention.

Genres: Art

232 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

"Philip Guston (June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980) was a painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. In the late 1960s Guston helped to lead a transition from abstract expressionism to neo-expressionism in painting, abandoning the so-called "pure abstraction" of abstract expressionism in favor of more cartoonish renderings of various personal symbols and objects." - wikipedia