Book Release: ‘Frank Bowling: Landscape’
Press Release
Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ new publication on Frank Bowling explores the artist’s engagement with the art-historical tradition of landscape painting
To be released on 26 May, accompanying the artist’s solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth
West Hollywood
Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ latest publication on Frank Bowling focuses on the artist’s recent paintings that engage with the art-historical tradition of landscape painting. Richly illustrated, this volume allows readers to experience the 14 ebullient paintings on view at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood from 26 May. The catalogue features a newly commissioned essay by art historian Dorothy Price, exploring Bowling’s art-historical influences and his approach to abstraction.
Born in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1934, Frank Bowling arrived in London in 1953, where he graduated from the Royal College of Art with the silver medal for painting in 1962. After relocating to New York in 1966, Bowling continued to explore the medium of painting and started experimenting with the ideas of chance and ‘controlled accident.’ Later, he focused on more sculptural paintings which feature embedded objects and thickly textured canvases. Bowling became a Royal Academician in 2005. He was awarded the OBE for Services to Art in 2008 and a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honors in 2020.
The essay ‘A New Sublime’ by Dorothy Price, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, brings Bowling’s works into dialogue with Turner’s seascapes. Examining both artists’ ‘extraordinary abilities to manipulate paint in great swathes of aqueous majesty,’ Price explores the link between Blackness and the sublime since the 18th Century and the ways in which this history is taken up in Turner’s and Bowling’s paintings.
This publication was designed by Swiss book designer Roland Brauchli, who also worked on two previous books on the artist by Hauser & Wirth Publishers: ‘Frank Bowling: London/New York’ (2021) and ‘Frank Bowling: Penumbral Light’ (2022). Brauchli’s sense for the scale and spirit of the artist’s recent work is reflected here with large details and the yellow cloth spine, a nod to the marouflage that often borders Bowling’s paintings. The catalogue features 58 illustrations over 86 pages, including foldouts that allow readers to get close to the textures, washes and found objects on the artist’s canvases.
‘Landscape’ at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood coincides with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) exhibition ‘Frank Bowling: The New York Years 1966-1975,’ the first major US presentation of the artist’s work in more than four decades. Traveling from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the exhibition will be on view from 20 May through 10 September 2023 and will feature nine additional artworks, including an expanded group of paintings made between 2018 and 2022. Celebrating the 70-year anniversary of his arrival in London in May 1953, The Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA) is presenting ‘Arrival’, the first digital artwork by Frank Bowling, on view from 4 May through 30 June on London’s Piccadilly Circus curved billboard alongside screens in Berlin, Milan, Seoul, Tokyo and Los Angeles.
About Hauser & Wirth Publishers
Artists’ voices, exceptional art, scholarship, design and bookmaking are at the heart of Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ program, which has been helmed by Michaela Unterdörfer since 2005. Books are critical gateways to new ways of thinking and seeing; they provide vital, lasting records of artists’ works and ideas and the discourse they inspire. This is why publishing has been a cornerstone of the gallery’s activity since its founding and why Hauser & Wirth Publishers has grown to become a leading imprint for unique, object-like books that encourage an understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art. With the special access granted by artists to their writings and archives, Hauser & Wirth Publishers often brings new and overlooked aspects of an artist’s creative practice into focus. Our backlist offers a robust program that comprises artists’ books, artists’ writings, biographies, monographs, surveys, exhibition catalogs and collectors’ perspectives.
Hauser & Wirth’s publishing activity extends back to 1992, from where it steadily flourished through partnerships with reputable imprints such as Hatje Cantz, JRP|Ringier, Snoeck, Steidl, Thames & Hudson and Yale University Press, before publishing independently under its own imprint. Based in Zurich and New York City, Hauser & Wirth Publishers commissions titles that we believe are keystone resources and references related to the artists represented by the gallery and beyond. Our titles are distributed worldwide via Distributed Art Publishers and Buchhandlung Walther König.
Frank Bowling: Landscape
Release date: 26 May 2023
Essay by Dorothy Price
Book design by Roland Brauchli
English; quarter-bound with cloth
86 pages including one gatefold and three foldouts, 58 illustrations, 248 x 287 mm
ISBN 978-3-906915-79-1
£45 / $50 / €48 / CHF 48 / HKD 400
Press Contact:
Anna-Maria Pfab, Hauser & Wirth Zurich annamariapfab@hauserwirth.com
Press Release
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