Published: December 2011

The artist's voice is not a feature of the typical monograph or catalogue raisonné. Proxies are enlisted to elucidate intentions, to describe sources and processes, to contextualize, to assess—naturally, in laudatory terms. In the interview section, the artist's voice is directed, constrained by queries. While the monograph as a form is indispensable, its format is a routine and R. H. Quaytman's Spine (Sternberg Press/Sequence Press) is a welcome break.

Published: December 2011

Publisher: Laurence King Publishing

Graphic designer Saul Bass was the first great artist I was ever a fan of. My father, who’d taken night-school art classes as a young man during the Depression, was a jack-of-all-trades in small advertising agencies and had an eye for the good stuff in commercial art.

Published: November 2011

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

With studios in New York and Paris, a band of assistants, gold medals and other distinctions, sculptor Malvina Hoffman (1885[?]-1966) was at the height of her career when, at a dinner party in Chicago in 1929, she importuned Stanley Field for work. He was president of the city’s Field Museum of Natural History and grandson of department store mogul Marshall Field, the museum’s first major benefactor. Hoffman’s boldness paid off: within months, she had a contract to produce 147 sculptures for $109,000 to $125,000, a massive sum at the outset of the Great Depression.

Published: October 2011

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

A passion for self-invention has long marked the American psyche, and nowhere has it seemed more pronounced than in California and, in particular, Los Angeles.

Published: May 2011

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Mitchell’s splendid works, daunting intellect, friendships with many preeminent artists and writers, and mind-bogglingly self-destructive behavior are legendary.