Billy al bengston biography books
Billy Al Bengston
Paintings & Watercolors
Emil Nolde (1867–1956) ranks among the best-known classic modernists. Contemporary perceptions of the artist and his oeuvre are informed by mythmaking as well as its deconstruction. After the Second World War, Nolde himself and art historians of the time portrayed him as a victim of Nazi persecution. More recent critics have drawn attention to his anti-Semitic views and his opportunism in his dealings with the Nazi authorities.
With support from the Nolde Foundation, Seebüll, the Düsseldorf-based conceptual artist Mischa Kuball (b. 1959) delved into the documentary record to shed light on this profoundly ambivalent figure and frame a critical perspective on Emil Nolde’s output and actions. The first fruits of his endeavors were shown at the Draiflessen Collection, Mettingen, in the winter of 2020–2021.
Kuball continued his research at the invitation of the documenta archive, Kassel. Based on his findings, the exhibition project “nolde / kritik / documenta” illuminates the ways in which life and oeuvre are interwoven and inquires into the contradictions of modernism, which Emil Nolde as a man and artist may be said to have embodied. The focus of the new project is on the staging of Nolde’s works at the first three editions of the documenta exhibition series (1955, 1959, 1964), which were instrumental to establishing the “Nolde myth.”
An enlarged and revised edition of the catalogue “nolde / kritik / documenta” is released in conjunction with the exhibition at the Fridericianum, Kassel (December 9, 2022–February 19, 2023).
Mischa Kuball has been professor of public art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and associate professor of media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design/ZKM since 2007.
Billy Al Bengston: Paintings & Watercolors
This is the first monograph on the Californian pop artist in more than thirty years, with a representative selection of works from 1957 to 2014. Billy Al Bengston is the very personification of the cheerful, carefree attitude towards life in California--in both his work and his personal life. After studying at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the Otis Art Institute, he exhibited at the legendary Ferus Gallery in 1957 and was the central figure among a group of artists that included Frank Gehry, Edward Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, and Ken Price. BAB, as he apostrophizes himself, inserts car and motorcycle parts as motifs into his otherwise abstract paintings. He uses lacquer and spray paint instead of oil and aluminum panels with dented surfaces instead of the traditional canvas. Art and lifestyle combine to create the individual "Bengston iconography" of California Cool.
Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. Over 100 Color & B/w Illustrations (illustrator). 1st Edition. 1968/1988. Set of two books (Billy and Billy II), each signed, inscribed and dated 2003 on acetate dust jackets. Billy: First edition, first printing (1968). Inscribed and signed by Bengston, "For the sweetest of Malibu kooks / Billy Al Bengston / AKA Moondoggie." Soft cover. Sandpaper wrappers with the title "Billy" in pink flocking on cover, bound with machine screws and nuts, with a pink satin ribbon page marker. Paintings by Billy Al Bengston. Text by James Monte. Includes a list of plates, exhibition history and bibliography. Designed by Ed Ruscha. Unpaginated (64 pp.), with 10 four-color and 36 black and white plates and additional illustrations printed in Los Angeles by Toyo Press. 9 x 11 inches. This first edition was limited to 2,500 copies. Published on the occasion of the 1968 exhibition "Billy Al Bengston" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (installation designed by Frank Gehry). No ISBN. [Cited in Andrew Roth, ed., The Open Book. (G�teborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center in association with Steidl Verlag, G�ttingen, Germany, 2004).] Very scarce. Billy II: (Paintings of Three Decades): First edition, first printing (1988). Inscribed and signed by Bengston, "To the cool Malibu kooks / Billy Al Bengston / AKA Moondoggie." Soft cover. Photographically illustrated French-fold wrappers. Paintings by Billy Al Bengston. Text by Jane Livingston, Karen Tsujimoto, Henry T. Hopkins and Maurice Tuchman. Includes a chronology, exhibition checklist, selected exhibitions and a selected bibliography. Designed by Dana Levy. 144 pp. (including two 2-page gatefolds), with 60 four-color plates and numerous black-and-white illustrations. 9-5/8 x 10 inches. This first edition was limited to 7,500 copies. Published on the occasion of an exhibition organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and The Oakland Museum. ISBN: 0877014736. Bi .