Thinking Print: Books to Billboards, 1980-95

by Vija Celmins (Artist), Luis Cruz Azaceta (Artist), Judith Francisca Baca (Artist)

From Barbara Kruger's screenprinted feminist billboards to Felix Gonzalez-Torres's stacks of posters featuring head shots of people killed by guns; from Elizabeth Murray's colorful abstract lithographs to Anselm Kiefer's woodcuts embedded in Germany history; from Lucian Freud's moody figure study etchings to Donald Judd's rigid, monochromatic, serially geometric woodcuts-- Thinking Print is a broad, ambitious, and varied survey of printed art from the last two decades . Exploring the role of prints, deluxe illustrated books, inexpensive artist's books, and editioned multiples in contemporary art, this exceptionally comprehensive volume covers 235 works by some 147 artists, and includes essays on techniques, formats, and themes, as well as biographic notes on all of the artists and publishers. Originally published on the occasion of a 1996 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Hardcover

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

American painter, sculptor, object-maker and draughtswoman, of Latvian birth. In 1944 her family fled to eastern Germany, eventually settling near Esslingen am Neckar (Baden-Württemberg) in the west. In 1948 they moved to the USA, staying briefly in New York before resettling in Indianapolis. Celmins studied painting at the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis (1955–62) and regularly visited New York to see the work of the Abstract Expressionists. After attending the summer session at Yale University, New Haven, where she met a strong community of students and artists, she decided to become a painter (1961). She then attended the University of California, Los Angeles (1962–5). From 1966 Celmins took photographs as subjects for paintings. In painted and drawn works since 1968 she drew upon photographs from books, magazines and those taken by herself, including views of the sea, desert and constellations.