Alice Neel: Late Portraits and Still Lifes

I think John Sonsini may be the greatest portrait painter in the country.
— David Pagel, Los Angeles Times

What I want is for the portrait to be like a thumbprint on a water glass—a broad reminder that someone has been there.
— John Sonsini

When art critic David Pagel realized he had written five reviews about John Sonsini over the past thirty years, this book project was born. Even though he had been covering the work of the Los Angeles-based painter for three decades, they had never met until they began collaborating on this project. The unique, intimate compilation brings together an extensive essay by Pagel—including facsimile reproductions of the original five articles—along with illustrations, plates, and archival pieces that cover Sonsini’s artistic trajectory, from early works to his most recent watercolors and large-scale commissions. Broad Reminders provides a rambling, joyful, engaging look into the world of art and artists, critics, and creators.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s early watercolor paintings: vivid, free-wheeling and full of surprise.

– Karen Wada, Los Angeles Times

Georgia O'Keeffe: Watercolors catalogs the first major exhibition in 2016 of the nearly 50 watercolors created by O’Keeffe between 1916 and 1918, while she lived in Canyon, Texas. These years mark a period of radical innovation for the artist, during which she firmly established her commitment to abstraction. While her work in Texas is often understood as merely a prelude to her career in New York City, these watercolors and drawings mark a seminal stage in O’Keeffe’s artistic formation, representing the pivotal intersection of her disciplined art practice and her allegiance to the revolutionary techniques of her mentor, Arthur Wesley Dow. 

O’Keeffe’s watercolors explore the texture and landscape of the Texas desert and the artist’s own body in an exceptionally fragile and sensitive medium, representing a substantial achievement in their own right. These early works also relate to O’Keeffe’s large-scale oil paintings, which in their handling of color and texture in some ways seem to aspire to the condition of watercolor.

Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1988–2009 is the first book to explore the late period of Frankenthaler’s art and life.

Profusely illustrated with more than 95 plates and 40 archival images, the book features essays by Douglas Dreishpoon and Suzanne Boorsch; a roundtable discussion with Katharina Grosse, Pepe Karmel, and Mary Weatherford; an illustrated chronology and selected bibliography. Initiated by Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné and Chief Curator Emeritus at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the book complements an exhibition of Frankenthaler’s late paintings on paper and canvas organized by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and curated by Dreishpoon that premiered in 2021 at the New Britain Museum of American Art before traveling to the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Palm Springs Art Museum, and Artis—Naples/The Baker Museum.

Frankenthaler’s invention of the soak-stain technique expanded the possibilities of abstract painting with references to figuration and landscape. In later years, her practice continued to evolve through the use of diverse media and processes, as she shifted from painting canvas on the floor to using larger sheets of paper that were laid out on the floor or on table tops for easier accessibility. The continuity between the late work and what came before is striking, as the painter, graced with a vast art-historical image bank, and technical prowess, moved in whatever direction suited her mood and imagination. 

. . . the tales of courage that Ms. Drucker and Ms. Block uncovered among ‘ordinary people’ defy the stereotypical images of heroism.

— Rahel Musleah, The New York Times

First published in 1992 to widespread acclaim, Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust is a landmark addition to the sacred memory of the Holocaust. Featuring photographic portraits, archival materials and interviews, it was the first book (and exhibition) by Houston-born photographer Gay Block; the exhibition has been seen in over fifty venues in the US and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

Block spent more than three years traveling in eight countries, accompanied by author Malka Drucker, documenting testimonies from more than 100 rescuers—people who risked their lives to rescue Jewish victims from the Holocaust. The stories range from those who saved one life to those who worked in the resistance and saved thousands, always with the threat of death and torture if they were discovered. This new edition features a complete redesign and new foreword by scholar of Jewish American art Samantha Baskind.