{"product_id":"francis-picabia-our-heads-are-round-so-our-thoughts-can-change-direction-9781633450035","title":"Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy rejecting consistency  Picabia powerfully asserted the artists freedom to change Irreverent and audacious  restless and brilliant  Francis Picabia achieved fame as a leader of the Dada group only to break publicly with the movement in 1921. Moving between Paris  the French Riviera  Switzerland  and New York  he led a dashing life  painting  writing  yachting  gambling  racing fast cars  and organizing lavish parties. Like no other artist before him  Picabia created a body of work that defies consistency and categorization  from Impressionist landscapes to abstraction  from Dada to stylized nudes  and from performance and film to poetry and publishing. A primary constant in his career was his vigorous unpredictability. Illustrated with nearly 500 reproductions  this sweeping survey of Picabias eclectic career embraces the challenge of his work  asking how we can make sense of its wildly shifting mediums and styles. In her opening essay  curator Anne Umland writes that with Picabia  familiar oppositions \"between high art and kitsch  progression and regression  modernism and its opposite  and success and failure are undone.\" In 15 superb essays  additional authorsincluding distinguished professors George Baker  Briony Fer  and David Joselit and renowned Picabia scholars Carole Boulbs and Arnauld Pierredelve into the radically various mediums  styles  and contexts of Picabias work  discussing his Dada period  his abstractions  his mechanical paintings  his appropriations of source imagery  his multifaceted relationship with print (both in his paintings and as a publisher and contributor to vanguard journals)  his forays into screenwriting and theater  and his complex politics. Marcel Duchamp  of course  but also Nietzsche and Gertrude Stein make repeat appearances along the way. Turning to Picabias contemporary legacy  Cathrine Hug maps the history of his critical reception and interviews contemporary curators and artists  including Peter Fischli  Albert Oehlen  and David Salle. A lively 30-page chronology illustrated with archival photographs and ephemera gives readers a year-by-year account of the artists colorful life and of his interactions with fellow artists and critics  friends  and lovers. Together these essays suggest that the unruly genius of Picabia offers us a powerfully relevant and provocative alternative to the familiar narrative of modernism. Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction accompanies the major 2016 exhibition on the artist  jointly organized by The Museum of Modern Art  New York  and the Kunsthaus Zrich. Francis Picabia was born in 1879 in Paris  the only child of a Cuban-born Spanish father and a French mother. His first success came as a painter in an Impressionist manner. He went on to become one of the principle figures of the Dada movement in New York and Paris. In 1925 Picabia moved to the south of France  where he lived and worked through World War II. Following the war  Picabia returned to Paris  where he died in 1953.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45666094907445,"sku":"ByrdShop_1633450031","price":103.92,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781633450035.jpg?v=1782419144","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/francis-picabia-our-heads-are-round-so-our-thoughts-can-change-direction-9781633450035","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}