2019 Holiday Book Sale and Gift Guide

For this holiday season, The Drawing Center bookstore will be offering 20% off all of our Drawing Papers catalogs, including our latest publication Drawing Papers 140: The Pencil Is a Key. **offer applies to in-store purchases only

The first Drawing Papers catalog was published in 1991 and the publication series continues to provide cutting-edge context for contemporary and historical drawings today. Accompanying each of The Drawing Center’s major exhibitions, the Drawing Papers serve as a scholarly forum to explore the medium of drawing through multi-disciplinary subjects. Below is a selection of some of our favorite Drawing Papers – all of which are on sale now in the bookstore lobby!

Drawing Papers 140
The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists  • $30 $24

Our newest publication accompanies our current exhibition The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists on view through January 5, 2020 and documents the practice of drawing among individuals experiencing a loss of freedom. Featuring drawings from all over the globe and produced over a roughly two-hundred-year period, the exhibition catalog serves as a compendium to the study of drawing as a humane tool to asserting individuality and creative expression.

Drawing Papers 128 
Cecily Brown: Rehearsal • $30 $24

The 2016 exhibition Rehearsal by Cecily Brown was the first solo museum exhibition dedicated to the artist’s drawings. Where Brown’s canvases revel in the visceral immediacy of paint, her drawings offer fragmentary motifs that build upon and undo each other. Their logic productively relates to the concept of ‘rehearsal’—a term derived from the Old French rehercier that originally meant to go over something again with the aim of more fully understanding it. The catalogue features essays by Claire Gilman and David Salle.

Drawing Papers 23 
Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs • $5 $4

The 2001 exhibition Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs featured approximately 130 drawings, song manuscripts, and other texts inspired by the unique spiritual practices and beliefs of the American religious community known as the Shakers. The exhibition was curated by France Morin, and the drawings and texts were lent by several major public and private collections around the United States.

Drawing Papers 135 
Terry Winters: Facts and Fictions • $20 $16

Terry Winters: Facts and Fictions features cycles of drawings and large-scale works on paper by Terry Winters, a leading figure of the art world for decades. Representing the patterns and schema that undergird physical and intellectual life, Winters’s drawings of grids, networks, and knots illustrate complex encounters between biological drives, technological systems, and mental processes. The catalogue features contributions by Claire Gilman, Peter Cole, and Rachel Kushner.

Drawing Papers 132 
Exploratory Works: Drawings from the Department of Tropical Research Field Expeditions • $25 $20

Exploratory Works: Drawings from the Department of Tropical Research Field Expeditions features an archive of images from the Department of Tropical Research that illustrate the formation of our modern definition of nature. Led by William Beebe, the Department of Tropical Research (DTR) was a pioneering lab that hired women lead scientists and field artists. Among the hired artists was Isabel Cooper, one of America’s greatest popularizers of ecological thinking and biological science. The catalogue features an Introduction and Timeline by Mark Dion, Katherine McLeod, and Madeleine Thompson, an Interview with Richard Drayton by Katherine McLeod, and original field texts by William Beebe, Else Bostelmann, Isabel Cooper, Gloria Hollister, and George Alan Swanson.

Drawing Papers 61 
Eva Hesse: Circles & Grids  • $15 $12

The 2006 exhibition Eva Hesse: Drawing was one of the first exhibitions to focus on the role of drawing in the achievements of Eva Hesse (1936-1970), one of the most influential artists of the postwar era. The catalog is a rare opportunity to view Hesse’s fascinating works on paper, including sketches and working notes, which help illuminate the complex and rich crossover between drawing and sculpture in Hesse’s work.

Drawing Papers 137 
Neo Rauch  Aus Dem Bodem / From the Floor • $25 $20

Neo Rauch: Aus dem Boden / From the Floor, was the first exhibition entirely devoted to Rauch’s drawings in the United States. Neo Rauch is one of the best-known artists from the Leipzig school in Germany. His psychologically complex paintings have been widely collected and written about for more than twenty years. Featuring more than one hundred fifty never or rarely seen works that span over thirty years of Rauch’s career, the catalog presents drawing as an essential but often overlooked aspect of his oeuvre.