Visual Arts

What was your first artwork to receive recognition? What materials do you use, and how did they come into your practice? What advice would you give a young artist just starting out? Joe Fig asked a wide range of celebrated artists these and many other questions during the illuminating studio visits documented inInside the Artist's Studio--the follow-up to his acclaimed 2009 book,Inside the Painter's Studio. In this remarkable collection, twenty-four painters, video and mixed-media artists, sculptors, and photographers reveal highly idiosyncratic production tools and techniques, as well as quotidian habits and strategies for getting work done: the music they listen to; the hours they keep; and the relationships with gallerists and curators, friends, family, and fellow artists that sustain them outside the studio.

"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." Chuck Close Inside an art gallery, it is easy to forget that the paintings there are the end products of a process involving not only creative inspiration, but also plenty of physical and logistical details. It is these "cruder," more mundane aspects of a painter's daily routine that motivated Brooklyn artist Joe Fig to embark almost ten years ago on a highly unorthodox, multilayered exploration of the working life of the professional artist. Determined to ground his research in the physical world, Figbegan constructing a series of diorama-like miniature reproductions of the studios of modern art's most legendary painters, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. A desire for firsthand references led Fig to approach contemporary artists for access to their studios. Armed with a camera and a self-made "Artist's Questionnaire," Fig began a journey through the workspaces of some of today's most exciting contemporary artists. Inside the Painter's Studio collects twenty-four remarkable artist interviews, as well as exclusive visual documentation of their studios. Featured artists were asked a wide range of questions about their day-to-day creative life, covering everything from how they organize their studios to what painting tools they prefer. Artists open up about how they set a creative mood, how they choose titles, and even whether they sit or stand to contemplate their work. Also included are a selection of Fig's meticulously detailedminiatures. In this context Fig's diminutive sculpturesreproducing minutiae of the studio, from paint-tube labels and paint splatters on the floor to the surface texture of canvasesbecome part of a fascinating new form of portraiture as diorama.Inside the Painter's Studio offers a rare look into the self-made universe of the artist's studio.Inside the Painter's Studio features interviews with Gregory Amenoff, Ross Bleckner, Chuck Close, Will Cotton, Inka Essenhigh, Eric Fischl, Barnaby Furnas, April Gornik, Jane Hammond, Mary Heilmann, Bill Jensen, Ryan McGinness, Julie Mehretu, Malcolm Morley, Steve Mumford, Philip Pearlstein, Matthew Ritchie, Alexis Rockman, Dana Schutz, James Siena, Amy Sillman, Joan Snyder, Billy Sullivan, and Fred Tomaselli.

A revered teacher and the most influential feminist artist of our time, Judy Chicago provides an autobiographical look at higher education in art, a must-read for aspiring artists and educators in studio art programs. nbsp; How should women--and men--be prepared for a career in today's art world? For more than a decade, Judy Chicago has been formulating a critique of studio art education, in colleges or art schools, based upon observation, study, and, most importantly, her own teaching experiences, which have taken her from prestigiousnbsp;universities to regional colleges, and across the country from Cal Poly Pomona to Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. nbsp; Founder of the first program dedicated to feminist art, at California State University, Fresno, in 1970, she went on to initiate the Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts with artist Miriam Schapiro, the first program at a major art school to specifically address the needs of female art students. nbsp; Creator of the celebrated The Dinner Party, a monumental art installation now on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum, Chicago reviews her own art education, in the 1960s, when she overcame sexist obstacles to beginning a career as an artist and became recognized as one of the key figures in the dynamic California art scene of that decade. She reviews the present-day situation of young people aspiring to become artists and uncovers the persistence of a bias against women and other minorities in studio art education. Far from a dry educational treatise, Institutional Time is heartfelt, and highly personal: a book that has the earmarks of a classic in arts education.