John Sonsini + David Pagel: Broad Reminders

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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.

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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.

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John Sonsini: Broad Reminders

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  • Artwork by John Sonsini
    Text by David Pagel

    Hardcover with jacket
    10.5 x 13 inches
    196 pages / 70 images
    Trade ISBN: 9798890180896
    Signed ISBN: 9798890180902

    View the accompanying limited edition here.

  • Over the last forty years, John Sonsini (b. 1950, Rome, NY) has established himself as one of the foremost portrait painters of his generation. Known for his dexterous use of oil paint, Sonsini is renowned for his portraits of men painted directly from life, capturing his sitter’s physical and psychological presence. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

    Recent solo exhibitions include “A Day’s Labor: Portraits by John Sonsini,” Art Design & Architecture Museum, and “Daywork: Portraits” Long Beach Museum of Art. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Hudson River Museum, Tang Teaching Museum, S Phillips Collection, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, the Cantor Arts Center, the National Portrait Gallery,. and at the Whitney Museum of American Art,. His work is in the public collections of the Autry Museum of the American West, AD&A Museum, U Addison Gallery of American Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, The Broad Art Foundation, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Cornell University, The Frances Young Tang Museum, Hammer Museum, Henry Art Gallery, High Museum of Art, Long Beach Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Marieluise Hessel Collection, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, McNay Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Mulvane Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Palm Springs Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Weatherspoon Museum, and The Whitney Museum of American Art.

    David Pagel is an art critic, curator, and professor of art theory and history at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, where he has taught since 1994. His reviews and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, Art issues, Flash Art, and Art in America. Recent publications include Jim Shaw, Lund Humphries, London, 2019 and Talking Beauty: A Conversation Between Joseph Raffael and David Pagel about Art, Love, Death, and Creativity, Zero+, Claremont, 2018, as well as monographs on Ted Larsen (Radius Books) and Augustine Kofie (Zero+), and catalog essays on Jay DeFeo, Brenda Goodman, Gajin Fujita, and Dion Johnson. Pagel has organized more than 90 exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Australia, including, most recently, “Brown Letham: Passion and Paradox (and a little night music),” and “tbd: Jay Erker, Tony Larson, John Mills, Holly Perez, Marissa Reyes, and Jenny Ziomek,” both at Claremont Graduate University.

    Pagel earned a B.A. in Modern Thought and Literature, with Honors and Distinction in the Humanities, from Stanford University in 1985 and an M.A. in Fine Arts from Harvard University in 1987. He was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Contemporary Arts Criticism in 1990, a Macgeorge Fellowship at the University of Melbourne in 2002, and a Thousand People Program Fellowship in Tianjin, China, in 2018. A self-taught diorama builder and an avid cyclist, Pagel is a seven-time winner of the California Triple Crown.