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      Colossal’s Favorite Art Books of 2024

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      Colossal’s Favorite Art Books of 2024

      December 4, 2024

      ArtBooksPhotography

      Colossal

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      As we get ready to say goodbye to 2024, we’re celebrating some of our favorite books shared on Colossal throughout the year. We published dozens of articles about spectacular new monographs, photography, architecture, painting, science, history, and more. Peruse our top 10 below, and find many more in the Colossal Shop and on Bookshop.

      Shirin Neshat, “Land of Dreams” (2019), film still. © Shirin Neshat, courtesy of the artist, Gladstone Gallery, and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and London

      The Women Who Changed Photography: And How to Master Their Techniques

      From bold black-and-white visages to masters of disguise, identity plays a vital role in many of the practices featured in The Women Who Changed Photography. The tome investigates the trailblazing practices of Lee Miller, Shirin Neshat, and many more, chronicling the individuals, aesthetics, and approaches that have shaped the field.

      Available in the Colossal Shop

      Detail of Astrolin Color Card, Établissement Georget Fils Peintures Laquées et Vernis, Chantenay-Lès-Nantes (c. 1906). Image courtesy of Bibliothèque Forney, Paris

      Color Charts: A History

      From chemists’ plant-derived dyes to consumer paint swatches displayed at the hardware store, the history of color charts reflects a varied relationship between pigments, science, culture, and commerce. Anne Varichon explores the entwined evolution of this categorization through nearly 200 vibrant samples from the 15th century to modern day.

      Available in the Colossal Shop

      The Art Book for Children

      Two decades ago, Phaidon published the first volume in The Art Book for Children series, which quickly became beloved by children and parents the world over. To share its legacy with a new generation of readers, this edition pairs a selection of “best of” artists from the original series with 30 brand-new contemporary entries.

      This year was a plentiful time for children’s art books, and we also enjoyed the informative narrative, I Am an Artist.

      Available in the Colossal Shop

      Sacred Sites (Library of Esoterica)

      From ancient pyramids to subterranean labyrinths to mountaintop meccas, we have always been drawn to visiting or building sites that inspire reverence and awe. Sacred Sites celebrates how we traverse and transform the world around us through ritual and art. Compiled by Jessica Hundley, the volume surveys a remarkable array of places and artworks through more than 400 images centered around pilgrimage, performance, and devotion.

      Available in the Colossal Shop

      Beth Moon, “Heart of the Dragon” (2010), archival pigment inks on cotton paper, 32 × 48 inches. Image © Beth Moon

      Tree: Exploring the Arboreal World

      Spanning 3,500 years of art, science, culture, and history, Tree: Exploring the Arboreal World surveys the awe-inspiring beauty and romance of trees. The volume includes more than 300 illustrations ranging from ancient wall paintings and botanical illustrations to captivating photography and multimedia work by today’s leading artists.

      Available in the Colossal Shop

      Image © Ivan McClellan

      Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture

      Eight Seconds comprises 118 images by Ivan McClellan, a Portland, Oregon-based photographer who’s spent nearly a decade documenting the lives, wins, and losses of the Black rodeo community from Alabama to Los Angeles. He offers an insider’s view, capturing the addictive energy of the sport and the rich sense of camaraderie it fosters.

      Available on Bookshop

      Camo

      Camo is the first publication to chronicle the work of Thandiwe Muriu, celebrating her vibrant portraits that combine cultural textiles and beauty ideologies. Muriu takes us on a colorful, reflective journey through her world as a woman living in modern Kenya as she reinterprets contemporary African portraiture.

      Available in the Colossal Shop

      Cover of ‘Hidden Portraits: Old Masters Reimagined,’ featuring “Hidden Jacometto” (2019), from “Portrait of a Young Man” (1480s) by Jacometto Veneziano

      Hidden Portraits: Old Masters Reimagined

      This monograph gathers a quintessential selection of Volker Hermes’s works into one volume. Highlighting the artist’s wry commentary on luxury, social status, and fame, the selection delves into the history of portraiture through a humorous lens.

      Available on Bookshop

      Great Women Sculptors

      Presenting a more expansive and inclusive history of sculpture, Great Women Sculptors surveys the work of more than 300 trailblazing artists from more than 60 countries, spanning 500 years from the Renaissance to the present day.

      Available in the Colossal Shop

      Artwork by Christina Fong

      Art Is Art: Collaborating with Neurodiverse Artists at Creativity Explored

      Spurred by the belief that art changes lives, Florence and Elias Katz founded Creativity Explored in 1983, a San Francisco-based nonprofit studio and gallery designed for disabled, neurodivergent artists. More than 135 people currently participate in its programming, learning techniques across painting, drawing, clay, textiles, and more. In Art Is Art, Ann Kappes, Creativity Explored’s director of artist partnerships, celebrates the organization’s 40th anniversary through hundreds of artworks.

      Available on Bookshop

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      Endless Fields of Detritus Blanket Cássio Vasconcellos’s Aerial Composites

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      Detail of “Air Force.” All images courtesy of Cássio Vasconcellos and Nara Roesler Gallery, shared with permission

      Endless Fields of Detritus Blanket Cássio Vasconcellos’s Aerial Composites

      November 12, 2024

      ArtClimatePhotography

      Kate Mothes

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      Where do jets go when they no longer fly? What happens to shipping containers when they aren’t useful anymore for cargo? The answer is invisible to most of us, but for Cássio Vasconcellos, abandoned trains, planes, and automobiles are far from forgotten.

      For more than four decades, the São Paolo-based artist has been fascinated by the relationship between humans and the landscape. Over the years, his work has captured dramatic impressions of sprawling cities around the globe, often from the air, spurring an ongoing series called Collectives that condenses details of urban infrastructure like highways and parking lots into sprawling, all-over compositions.

      “Collective 11: Airplanes”

      Collectives 2, to which these images belong, focuses solely on the mesmerizing—and mind-boggling—quantity of scrapped vehicles and metal indefinitely parked in nondescript places. Vasconcellos draws from tens of thousands of aerial photographs he has made of junkyards, scrap heaps, airplane graveyards, and dumps to create remarkable, large-scale composite images.

      The artist has mapped all of the junkyards around São Paolo, plus numerous more near the Brazilian cities of Cubatão, Santos, and Rio de Janeiro. He has also documented desert landscapes in the U.S. that serve as final resting places for commercial airliners and military jets.

      “Over,” for example, considers numerous associated meanings, like “overview,” “all-over,” “overdose,” or “game over.” The title references not only excess but the overflow of visual information in contemporary society.

      “Seeing an image like this is to make clear that there is no ‘throw away,’” Vasconcellos says in a video about “OVER,” which took him about a year and three months to complete. “This volume of things that are in the work… they are out there,” he adds. “I just put them together.”

      Detail of “Over”

      “These photos may look like post-apocalyptic scenarios, but they could be our future,” the artist says in a statement. “We still have to learn that by throwing things away and taking them out of our sight, we don’t make themdisappear. In fact, they keep existing somewhere else, outliving us mostof the time.”

      Vasconcellos cuts out individual shipping containers, trucks, dumpsters, and piles of detritus in a meticulous and time-consuming digital process. He never repeats an element in a composition, and each piece is scaled and situated so that the shadows align with the directionality of the light. He then adds dust and dirt to the surfaces, simultaneously emphasizing the patina of time and an eerie sense of timelessness.

      Devoid of people, Vasconcellos’s images nevertheless describe the human predilection to produce, consume, and cast aside. “It’s kind of nonsense, because there are some paths, but you don’t really understand how a person or a car can get in there—or get out,” Vasconcellos says. “It is a possible world, but at the same time, an absurd one.”

      Vasconcellos is represented by Nara Roesler Gallery, and you can explore more of his work on his website and Instagram.

      “Collective 12: Boats”

      “Collective 10: Containers”

      “Air Force”

      “Collective 7: Metal Scrap”

      Detail of “Collective 7: Metal Scrap”

      “Collective 9: Scrap Dumpster”

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      In ‘Keep the Kid Alive,’ Arielle Bobb-Willis Reaches for Exuberance

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      New Jersey (2017). All images © Arielle Bobb-Willis, shared with permission

      In ‘Keep the Kid Alive,’ Arielle Bobb-Willis Reaches for Exuberance

      November 1, 2024

      ArtBooksPhotography

      Grace Ebert

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      Color, movement, and sweeping, expertly choreographed gestures permeate the works of Arielle Bobb-Willis. The Los Angeles-based photographer blurs the boundaries between art and fashion imagery, rejecting “the notion that Black expression is limited—or limiting.”

      A slim monograph collects 90 of Bobb-Willis’s photos, highlighting her distinctive eye and bold, conceptual compositions. Published by Aperture, Keep the Kid Alive positions observation and imagination as useful tools to inspire awe for the overlooked. Models dressed in bright, color-blocked garments pose in parks or alleyways, their joyful dances and chromatic clothing enriching the nondescript spaces.

      New Jersey (2017)

      Bobb-Willis first picked up a camera at 14 and through moves from New York to Aiken, South Carolina, to New Orleans, found the medium was both cathartic through chronic depression and loss and also an essential tool for developing her taste and confidence.

      “Photography is how I keep my inner child alive. Photography has taught me to fall in love with life,” she shares with Nicole Acheampong in an interview in the book, adding:

      I love finding unexpected rainbows, and sunshine and a beautiful green park and kids’ chalk drawings on the sidewalk and melted ice cream and butterflies and flowers and Black girls with bright-blue braids and sweet graffiti poetry! I keep my inner child alive by taking pictures of my every day. I’m always finding things that I’m so in love with. …Photography is, and will always be, a daily practice of falling in love with as many things as I can.

      Whether captured in a Los Angeles parking lot or against a purple wall in New Jersey, Bobb-Willis’s images are dynamic and vivid, drawing beauty and exuberance from unassuming spaces.

      Keep the Kid Alive is available on Bookshop, and you can find more from Bobb-Willis on her website and Instagram.

      New Orleans (2021)

      Los Angeles (2020)

      Williamsburg (2016)

      New Jersey (2018)

      New Orleans (2017)

      New Jersey (2019)

      New Jersey (2022)

      New Orleans (2016)

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      Dressed to the Canines: Helga Stentzel Styles Playful Clothesline Illusions

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      All images courtesy of Helga Stentzel, shared with permission

      Dressed to the Canines: Helga Stentzel Styles Playful Clothesline Illusions

      October 25, 2024

      ArtPhotography

      Grace Ebert

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      The cat’s pajamas take on new meaning in Helga Stentzel’s fashionable menagerie. Working in what she calls “household surrealism,” the London-based artist styles cheeky illusions from socks, sweatshirts, and even onesies that, once draped over a washline, appear like a cow grazing in a pasture or a sloth hanging lazily from a branch. Her latest projects roam from the snowy mountains of Austria to the River Thames to the brightly colored buildings of the island city of Burano in the Venetian Lagoon.

      Stentzel is currently collaborating with Portmanteau, a Helsinki-based performance company on a production with her chic compositions. She has select prints available in her shop, and keep an eye on Instagram for new clothesline creatures.

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      Mulyana Transforms Plastic Yarn and Netting into Arresting Ocean Textures

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      Photo by Ign Raditya Bramantya. All images courtesy of Mulyana and Sapar Contemporary, shared with permission

      Mulyana Transforms Plastic Yarn and Netting into Arresting Ocean Textures

      October 16, 2024

      ArtClimatePhotography

      Kate Mothes

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      From thousands of plastic bags, nets, and hanks of yarn, Indonesian artist Mulyana (previously) illuminates the fragility of marine ecosystems.

      In his solo exhibition Remembering Our Collective Future at Sapar Contemporary, the artist has incorporated recyclable materials and distilled the palette to white, evoking a symbol of purity and drawing attention to the consequences of human impact on our oceans, such as coral bleaching.

      “Betty 21” (2024), plastic yarn, plastic net, and cable wire, 82 5/8 x 76 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches

      Curated by John Silvis, the show invites viewers to reflect on the effects of the climate crisis and the critical importance of environmental preservation. Photographs by Ign Raditya Bramantya highlight a living, breathing embodiment of coral as it traverses the city streets, bringing the ocean to daily life.

      Mulyana painstakingly twists, knots, and wraps plastic netting, cable wire, and plastic yarn into sculptures and wall hangings resembling coral and cartoonish sea creatures.

      Running concurrently at the Charles B. Wang Center at SUNY Stony Brook, an exhibition of the artist’s vibrant yarn works showcases costumes and characters inspired by marine life. Yarnscapes: Mulyana’s Environmental Tapestries presents a playful counterpoint to the monochrome pieces, nevertheless urging us to remember and evaluate our relationship to our oceans.

      Remembering Our Collective Future runs from October 22 to November 20 in New York City, coinciding with Yarnscapes in Stony Brook through December 10. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      Photo by Ign Raditya Bramantya

      Photo by Ign Raditya Bramantya

      Detail of “Betty 25” (2024), plastic yarn, plastic net, and cable wire, 74 3/4 x 78 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches

      “Betty 28” (2024), plastic yarn, plastic net, and cable wire, 86 5/8 x 86 5/8 x 13 3/4 inches

      Photo by Ign Raditya Bramantya

      Detail of “Betty 26” (2024), plastic yarn, plastic net, and cable wire, 65 x 51 1/8 x 13 3/4 inches

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      ‘The Women Who Changed Photography’ Chronicles 50 Trailblazing Artists

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      Shirin Neshat, “Land of Dreams” (2019), film still. © Shirin Neshat, courtesy of the artist, Gladstone Gallery, and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and London. All images courtesy of Laurence King Publishing, shared with permission

      ‘The Women Who Changed Photography’ Chronicles 50 Trailblazing Artists

      October 16, 2024

      ArtBooksHistoryPhotography

      Kate Mothes

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      In 1929, sought-after New York fashion model Lee Miller moved to Paris to apprentice with surrealist photographer Man Ray, joining an influential circle of artists. She and Ray worked so closely together, in fact, that many of her photos have been erroneously attributed to him.

      Like many women, Miller’s work was often overshadowed by her male counterparts. A new book, The Women Who Changed Photography: And How to Master Their Techniques, marks Miller’s contribution to photography among 49 more groundbreaking artists who incorporated unique techniques blazed a trail for future generations.

      Cindy Sherman, “Untitled #577” (2016)

      From Zanele Muholi’s bold black-and-white visages to masters of disguise, like French surrealist Claude Cahun (1894-1954) and contemporary artist Cindy Sherman, identity plays a vital role in many of the practices featured.

      Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, for example, often delves into the complexities of womanhood within Islamic cultural and religious value systems. Pushpamala N. employs narrative and figuration in images that critique stereotypes of women in India.

      Released by Laurence King Publishing last month, The Women Who Changed Photography chronicles the individuals, aesthetics, and approaches that have shaped the field. Grab your copy on Bookshop.

      Pushpamala N., “Yogini F-24” (2000–2004) from Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs

      Claude Cahun, “Self Portrait (Holding Mask)” (undated)

      Julie Cockburn, “Feed the Birds (Women)” (2019)

      Shirin Neshat, “Rebellious Silence” (1994)

      Julia Margaret Cameron, portrait of Julia Jackson Duckworth (1846-1895)

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      From Early Computers to Ships at Sea, Lola Dupre Warps Everyday Objects

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      From Early Computers to Ships at Sea, Lola Dupre Warps Everyday Objects

      October 9, 2024

      ArtPhotography

      Grace Ebert

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      How would you find home row in fourth-grade typing class if there were 1,700 keys in front of you? Lola Dupre’s latest collages would be intimidating to even the most ambitious student.

      The artist (previously) continues her disorienting manipulations with a pair of early Apple desktops, ships with enough stories to rival a high-rise, and a cow so bloated she needs eight legs to stand. Each work pushes the limits of legibility as limbs and common objects undergo exaggerated distortions.

      Dupre’s work is on view through November 23 at Prescription Art in Brighton, and she has another show slated for April at Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles. Until then, find more on Instagram.

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      Collaged Portraits by Emma Odumade Draw on the Past to Face the Future

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      “Call of Duty (A New Anthem)” (2024), charcoal, acrylic, ink, vintage photos, and black tea on canvas, 101.6 x 101.6 centimeters. All images courtesy of the artist and Unit London, shared with permission

      Collaged Portraits by Emma Odumade Draw on the Past to Face the Future

      October 8, 2024

      ArtPhotography

      Kate Mothes

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      Growing up in Lagos, Emma Odumade always drew cartoons and created collages on paper. As he continued to make work, his interest grew in highlighting the world around him, especially young people in his community.

      Odumade’s vibrant portraits and self-portraits, the latter of which he makes toward the end of every year, reflect a sense of unity, a search for self, love, and anticipation of the future. These particular works arose as “an attempt to have a diary—I never had one,” he says. “I needed to rediscover myself; see myself from an angle—from a third eye. My art became a mirror, through which I was a reflection.”

      “Mister Fly” (2024), charcoal, acrylic, vintage photos, ink, graphite, colored pencil, and black tea on canvas, 147.32 x 119.38 centimeters

      Portraits serve as records of activities and experiences, documenting the artist’s observations and referencing history and culture to tell personal stories. He combines images with other mediums like charcoal, acrylic, ink, and repurposed earlier sketches, invoking what he calls “stamps of moments”—a collection of memories viewed through the spectrum of past, present, and future.

      “I love that I can reference historical events, stolen African artifacts, and my humble beginnings through a photo,” Odumade tells Colossal. He collages the backgrounds of many compositions with numerous black-and-white images dyed with tea to give an antique appearance. “The vintage brown look of the old photos is to remind viewers about [the] past and to give a ‘test of time’ feeling.”

      Five new works will be presented by Unit London at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London, which runs from October 10 to 13. Explore more of Odumade’s practice on Instagram.

      “My Favorite Albert’s Theory” (2020-2021), charcoal, acrylic, ink, black tea, and sketch paper on canvas, 163 x 148 centimeters. Additional credit to Lekan Abatan

      “Seth; Why Run Away From Light Equals Infin9s” (2021-2022), charcoal, graphite, acrylic, ink, sketches, old photos, and black tea on paper. Additional credit to Ken Nwadiogbu

      “A Wave to Remember” (2024), charcoal, acrylic, black tea, and vintage photos on canvas, 146.05 x 119.38 centimeters

      “Three Sequences” (2021), charcoal, acrylic, black tea, ink, and old photos on canvas, 124 x 97 centimeters. Additional credit to Eshinlokun Wasiu

      “First Motion to Fly (Mr. Professor)” (2024), charcoal, acrylic, ink, vintage photos, feather, and black tea on canvas, 147.32 x 119.38 centimeters

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