David Humphrey
2021, Edited with text by Davy Lauterbach. Text by Lytle Shaw, Wayne Koestenbaum. Conversation with Jennifer Coates.
The first monograph on the heterogeneous postmodernist painting of David Humphrey, blending figuration and abstraction, pop and expressionism.
The acclaimed American painter David Humphrey (born 1955) has been exhibiting his work internationally since the 1980s when he first burst upon the New York art scene. His compositions often feature human figures, animals and objects interwoven into abstract passages to create complex narratives that reckon with the dynamics of human relationships, gender, the environment and race, all while resisting any one interpretation.
This is the first comprehensive monograph surveying the totality of the artist’s 40-year career. Edited by Davy Lauterbach in close collaboration with the artist, it includes over 200 full-color reproductions of Humphrey’s painting and sculptural work from the early 1980s to today. The plates are complemented by a selection of archival and detail photographs, and essays by Lauterbach, Wayne Koestenbaum and Lytle Shaw, plus a lively and far-reaching conversation between Humphrey and the painter Jennifer Coates, his frequent artistic collaborator. Published by Fredericks & Freiser, NY (2020).
Blind Handshake: Art Writing + Art, 1990-2008
2010, David Humphrey.
The art criticism of the painter David Humphrey merits an anthology. But neither Humphrey nor Periscope wanted to present his writing as archival documents from 1990 to 2008. We decided it would be more innovative to treat the texts as the starting point for a book that acknowledges and extends the connections between Humphrey's studio practice and his criticism. The outcome is Blind Handshake. It foregrounds the social life surrounding contemporary art-the practices and gestures, the dialogues and monologues that determine its place in the world. Organized thematically, the book considers Coupling Dramas, Unknowable Others, Collective Solitudes, Prosthetic Selves, and Good Liars. Artists drawn into the action include Richard Prince, Chris Ofili, Lucien Freud, Mamma Anderson, Tony Oursler, John Currin, Mary Heilmann, Catherine Murphy, and Amy Sillman. The book's designer Geoff Kaplan employed aspects of graphic novels, magazine layouts, and art monographs in translating the writing and illustrations into a mutant creature. Introductions by Chris Kraus and Alexi Worth provide contexts for understanding the book's presentation of the turbulent intersubjectivity that pervades contemporary art.
Lonely Tylenol
2003, David Humphrey and Sharon Mesmer.
Photographic images with screenprint,
etching, and letterpress text
Edition of 80
