John Yau

"As the anagram of its title suggests, the poems, prose, lyrics, and memoir in Paradiso Diaspora focus on an inescapable duality. It is the duality of living in both painted gardens and in the shadows of historic events that sweep one along. John Yau explores the language of telling, of biography, auto and otherwise, of landscapes that are simultaneously imaginary and real, of ways to enter and leave "the kingdom of poetry." This is a book of displacements and unpredictable associations, of "last confessions" and "coming attractions," at once haunted and haunting. Book jacket."--Jacket.

If the "I" cannot be representative, what or who can it represent? In John Yau's new collection, Borrowed Love Poems, the reader encounters artists (Hiroshige and Eva Hesse), poets (Marina Tsvetayeva and Georg Trakl), actors (Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre), and memorable figures (a retired wrestler and a private eye named Genghis Chan). Each becomes a spectral, sonorous presence inhabiting the polymorphic body of the page, a shadow of a shadow lit from within. Yau's poems are dazzling explorations of the multiple, shifting sands of identity, of the fictional, fake, factual, and autobiographical selves that pass like ghosts through the empty space known as "I." Able to seamlessly merge a strict yet eccentric methodology with wild flights of the imagination, Yau moves into a rich, complex realm, where the flickering edges of consciousness-the dream state-become poetry.

Art critic and poet John Yau closely examines the identity and meaning behind Jasper Johns's recent paintings. Johns's work has earned a prominent place for itself in art history since it was first exhibited in 1958. Yau's brilliant analysis of two of Johns's best-known early works, Flag (1955), and Map (1963), provides us with unique insights into his latest paintings, two of which are reproduced here for the first time. Johns is considered both the founder of Pop Art and Minimalism, as well as a hermetic figure whose work has confounded critics for nearly forty years. Yau's view of Johns's paintings not only makes many aspects of the artist's work accessible for the first time, but also reveals the profoundly emotional tenor of this supposedly aloof figure. Yau's descriptions and meditations are united with Johns's own thoughts, culled from conversations between poet and artist over the past ten years. The result is fresh insight into an artist whose work has beguiled viewers for nearly forty years.

"By the time he died in 1987, Andy Warhol's notoriety extended far beyond the rarified confines of the New York art world, beyond the fifteen minutes of fame he predicted for everyone's future, and into the vast realm of pop-culture. Warhol's public image was no less fascinating or controversial than his portraits of Campbell's soup cans, Brillo boxes, and movie stars. And the powerful mythology that surrounds both the man and his art continues to excite curiosity and demand attention." "Some critics have called Warhol an authentic visionary while others have branded him a charlatan. In this unique series of prose meditations, poet and art critic John Yau examines the artist's identity in the inseparable context of his work, bringing fresh insight both to "the surface" and what may in fact be "behind it"." "Yau balances the polarized opinions about Warhol by considering the general state of affairs in twentieth century visual art and placing him in the context of such artistic influences and compatriots as Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons and composer John Cage. He also explores Warhol's creative energy in terms of cultural stereotypes and psychological factors such as voyeurism, vindictiveness, fear of intimacy and need for acceptance." "What emerges from these meditations is a clear-eyed portrait of the myriad forces, both internal and external, that shaped the most highly acclaimed postwar artist in America. Yau pinpoints and dissects the central irony of Andy Warhol's life and work: that "The artist who helped demystify art has, it seems, become an impenetrable mystery""--BOOK JACKET.

"Ghada Amer blends feminine figures and embroidered texts, attaching togther what before she had treated seperatly. In fact it is the first time the bodies and texts images and words are literally woven together...The current work of Ghada Amer marks another particularity: the creation of metal sculpures."

69 p. : 22 cm

"Published on the occasion of the artist's eightieth birthday and accompanying a major retrospective exhibition, this book brings together 120 of Thiebaud's most important paintings, watercolors, and pastels. Essays by Steven A. Nash and Adam Gopnik trace the course of his career from the 1950s, when he first began to emerge as a significant national artist. They assess Thiebaud's role in the history of American modernism and his place in the tradition of realism, and examine the surprisingly wide variety of art historical sources to which his paintings refer, including Chardin, Sargent, Hopper, Mondrian, Morandi, and Diebenkorn."--BOOK JACKET.