BRACEWELL, Michael; ASPREY, Charles
Beauty: In Some Recent Art

The weather in London during the late sumer of 1972 was unusually cool and dry. Pale haze presaging autumn. The mood of the city was changing: a domain between sleeping and waking, as though the wavelength-wandering babble of a typical post-war wummer had suddenly been switched off.
The modern, like the dawn, began with a moment of pure silence.

This book proposes a timely and controversial assertion of beauty as vital to the energy of contemporary art. As such it surveys work by an international group of artists who share an intense and highly individualistic focus on the processes of making, authorship and aesthetic poise. An essay by Michael Bracewell shares with its subjects the return of aesthetics to the science of feelings; to the individual as opposed to “identity”; and to a sensibility in visual art that is literary, flees the stereotype and rejects sociopolitical verbiage. It is a concept of beauty in some recent art that is less about representation than it is about memoir, fictional devices, cultural connoisseurship as praxis and the profundity of human relationships.

The essay is accompanied by annotated plates – an exhibition in book form! – that extends Bracewell’s reflections, with works by the likes of  & George, Isa Genzken, Kai Althoff, Lucy McKenzie, Lukas Duwenhögger, Berkeley Hendricks, Wolfgang Tillmans, Pati Hill, Lily McMenamy…

The book is dedicated to the late Marc Camille Chaimowicz & features Japanese Takeo papers <3

Published by Ridinghouse, 2025
Design by Guillaume Chuard (Ardwords)
Essays / Scenes / Art Theory / Manifestos