The incredible detail and scale of Lari Pittman's mesmerizing paintings are gloriously recreated in this lushly-illustrated retrospective book. One of the most prolific and exuberant painters of the past three decades, Lari Pittman creates works that mirror the social fabric of his time. This volume follows Pittman's trajectory as his visual language evolved and his technical mastery grew ever more sophisticated. From his early works--defiant affirmations of identity in the increasingly conservative 1980s--to his more recent subjects that feature emblems of cultural regression and commercialism, Pittman's paintings are uniquely operatic and ambitious. This book features over sixty paintings and thirty drawings, including Pittman's mural-scale series Flying Carpets. Alongside these illustrations are essays that place Pittman's imagery within both Modernism and recent histories of Los Angeles, and examine the work's political commentary as well as its many literary references. Serving as a cipher for the political tensions around the body and transcultural identity, Lari Pittman emerges as an artist who speaks truth to power through a visual language that reflects the contemporary world. Published with the Hammer Museum

A Decorated Chronology accompanies the first American museum exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Lari Pittman in more than 15 years. It comprises a range of recent work and a selection of earlier paintings. Over the past three decades, Pittman has developed a body of work that is internationally celebrated for its exuberant use of color and painstakingly rendered detail to address such contentious subjects as sexuality, desire and violence. His multilayered depictions of images and signs--ranging from human figures and body parts to animals, plants, furniture, text and even credit cards--meditate on the overwhelming richness and sadness of everyday life. Embracing the critical potential of figurative painting, Pittman provides incisive commentary on the medium's ability to intertwine the personal with the political.

". . . big, visually gripping and psychologically strange [paintings]." -The New York Times Lari Pittman's meticulously rendered paintings employ a complex mix of symbols and images to create dense and compelling narratives on love, violence, and desire. Drawing upon design, folk art, and decorative traditions, Pittman's brightly colored paintings incorporate and rework a range of styles and genres—Victorian silhouettes, social realist murals, and Mexican retablos—to conjure a hallucinatory effect unique in contemporary painting. Pittman has earned numerous accolades in the art world and has been included in the Venice Biennale, Documenta X, and four Whitney Biennials. The first monograph on his thirty-year career, this book will be a vital addition to any art enthusiast's library.

Lisa Lyons, guest curator for Los Angeles's Getty Museum, chronicles a series of commissioned works in an array of media by eleven acclaimed artists in response to objects at the Getty. Fine bandw illustrations. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Newsweek calls him “exhilarating and deeply engaging.” Time Out New York calls him “smart, provocative, and a great writer.” Critic Peter Schjeldahl, meanwhile, simply calls him “My hero.” There’s no one in the art world quite like Dave Hickey—and a new book of his writing is an event. 25 Women will not disappoint. The book collects Hickey’s best and most important writing about female artists from the past twenty years. But this is far more than a compilation: Hickey has revised each essay, bringing them up to date and drawing out common themes. Written in Hickey’s trademark style—accessible, witty, and powerfully illuminating—25 Women analyzes the work of Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley, Fiona Rae, Lynda Benglis, Karen Carson, and many others. Hickey discusses their work as work, bringing politics and gender into the discussion only where it seems warranted by the art itself. The resulting book is not only a deep engagement with some of the most influential and innovative contemporary artists, but also a reflection on the life and role of the critic: the decisions, judgments, politics, and ethics that critics negotiate throughout their careers in the art world. Always engaging, often controversial, and never dull, Dave Hickey is a writer who gets people excited—and talking—about art. 25 Women will thrill his many fans, and make him plenty of new ones.

New York-based British painter Cecily Brown (born 1969) makes sumptuous oil paintings combining abstract and figurative elements, art-historical references and erotic, fragmented bodies in compositions so densely layered that one of Brown's paintings can look "like an enormous colored anthill, with thousands of insects following each other, climbing over each other, hiding and reappearing, leaving colorful traces of their movements," as Danilo Eccher writes in his catalogue essay. This substantial monograph is published to accompany Brown's survey exhibition at the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, and features nearly 50 works, including paintings, works on paper, gouache and watercolors as well as seven monotypes, representing the range of Brown's work as well as its unifying concerns. Also included are newly commissioned essays by Danilo Eccher, Alessandro Rabottini and Anna Musini.

Employing such decorative elements as scrolls, arrows and patterns, Los Angeles-based Lari Pittman--one of the most influential and challenging voices in contemporary painting--expertly directs our eye through his busy constellations of fragmented imagery (landscapes, domestic interiors, roots, flames, rope, spiderwebs), cobbling together a truly unique language. Critic Alex Farquharson has noted that Pittman's work is cut up, overlayered and elaborately stylized... The very excess of imagery in the paintings, and the innumerable narratives they spark off, has the comparable effect of flattening illusionistic depth. This echoes the horizontal sprawl of L.A.'s diverse communities, and the pluralistic languages of commerce and dwelling with which each gives its pitch and establishes its patch. This collection of works from 2005 to 2008 features texts by independent curator and writer Klaus Kertess and Anthony Vidler, Dean and Professor at The Cooper Union School of Architecture.