Abcduane: A Duane Michals Primer - Hardcover

Duane Michals

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580934056 ISBN 13: 9781580934053

Publisher: Monacelli Press, 2014

Synopsis

"Duane Michals is the foremost visual storyteller of our time, and in ABCDuane, he wends through his own creative and biographical narrative in depth. The alphabet explodes into a mythopoeic system in the artist's hands, careening through the ideas, artists, and themes that obsess him. The book is heavily illustrated not only with Michals' own works including rarely seen and never-before-published portraits, painted tintypes, and colour pieces but also with pieces from his private art collection. Whether a portrait of Eugene Atget by Berenice Abbott, a collage by Joseph Cornell, or an etching by Manet, the works of these masters sit side by side with Michals' inspired images, further revealing the artist's creative process. Funny, intimate, and unguarded, ABCDuane is the perfect primer and creative autobiography of this beloved artist. "

About this title

Review:

A TIME Best Photobook of 2014

"What is disarming--and unique--about Duane Michals' ideas is the humble means by which he chooses to translate them. His repertoire of special effects is stubbornly unflashy. Instead of smoke machines or lens distortion or solarized tone reversal, or anything in the digital toolbox, he makes long exposures and has his actors move. The treat of Mr. Michals' own art collection inlcudes drawings by Balthus, David Hockney, an etching by Giorgio Morandi and lithographs by Magritte. Most artists wouldn't risk the comparison. Mr. Michals has nothing to fear. His art doesn't look like anyone else's."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Michals has continually rebelled against and expanded the documentary and fine art traditions. As an expressionist, rather than going out into the world to collect impressions of the eye, he looked inward to construct the images of his mind, exploring the unseeable themes of life, death, sensuality, and innocence. Once a radical outlier, now a father of dominant trends, he inspired generations of photographers from Jim Goldberg and Cindy Sherman, to the countless others staging, scribbling over, and painting on their photographs today."
--American Photo

"This is a retrospective not of Duane Michals' work but, rather, his sensibility. Here in one small volume is all the wit, charm, serious intent, and artfulness of Michals himself, plus his signature antic wisdom to make it a joyful ride."
--TIME

"Duane Michals shares stories and work, much of it previously unpublished. Many of the stories are highly personal anecdontes, while others reveal something of his inspiration and philosophy."
--Photo District News

"A delectable smorgasbord of creative output. . . . Duane Michals is as skillful and entertaining in his writing as in his visual art, and the book's A-to-Z structure allows for serendipitous leaps, from the personal foibles of Lucien Freud to a poignant narrative of the death of Michals's mother, from a stunning photo of postfame Veronica Lake to irresistible Edward Lear sketches-cum-rhymes inspiring Michals's own doggerel. This quirky memoir-collage collage communicates an intelligence and generosity of spirit that derives from an alchemical amalgamation of childlike playfulness unmarred by the wisdom of experience."
--Publishers Weekly

About the Author:

Duane Michals (b. 1932) is an American photographic artist noted for his creative extension of the possibilities of the photographic medium. Alongside a career as a freelance photographer working in fashion and advertising, Michals explored multiple exposures, sequences, series, and combinations of text and drawings. Ever since his first major solo exhibition, at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, his work has been consistently published and exhibited worldwide.

About this edition

• Publisher: Monacelli Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1580934056
• ISBN 13: 9781580934053
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192