Nick Cave—The Devil: A Life, Museum Voorlinden, 38pp, €59.95 (hb)
The musician Nick Cave lets his imagination run wild in an exhibition at the Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar in the Netherlands. For his first museum show, Cave presents 17 hand-painted ceramic figures reflecting different stages in the life of the Devil, spanning birth to death. This life journey is illustrated in Cave’s first art book that brings to the fore his figurines—reminiscent of garish Victorian antiques—that depict the “devil’s first love” and the “devil in remorse”, among other stages on his life journey. Cave also includes a story he wrote celebrating the figurines in which he declares that “when I try to sleep, I close my eyes and see the figurines parading by in sequence”.
Art Notes, Art, Cynthia Hawkins, Center for Art, Research and Alliances (New York), 184pp, $20 (hb)
The New York-based artist Cynthia Hawkins has “investigated the potentials of abstract painting” since the 1970s, according to Hollybush Gardens gallery, which represents her. Art Notes, Art documents the years between 1979 and 1981, a period during that she recorded her ideas and reflections in a journal. The journal tracks her “continually evolving vocabulary”, throwing light on her early commercial shows such as an exhibition at New York’s Just Above Midtown (JAM) gallery in 1981. The book offers a “picture of the burgeoning Black-owned gallery scene in 1970s and 80s New York that Hawkins was an important participant in”, says a publisher’s statement.
Lauren Halsey: emajendat, Lauren Halsey, Rizzoli Electa, 224pp, $60 (hb)
Lauren Halsey is making waves, transforming London’s Serpentine South gallery into an immersive “funk garden” that draws on her upbringing in the South Central neighbourhood of Los Angeles (until 2 March 2025). “Her work offers a celebration of South Central’s vitality and a creative form of resistance to its evolving gentrification,” according to a Serpentine statement. At this year’s Venice Biennale, she reconfigured the form of Hathoric columns (after the Egyptian goddess), carving them with the likenesses of people from her Los Angeles district. The new publication examines Halsey’s practice and approach, exploring how she “employs the iconography of ancient Egypt as a means to reclaim lost legacies”.
Rembrandt-Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion, Sabine Penot, Hannibal Books, 288pp, £55 (hb)
This analysis, which accompanies an exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (until 12 January 2025), reveals how “Rembrandt influenced, inspired, and competed with his star pupil, Samuel van Hoogstraten”, says a publisher’s statement.Hoogstraten was a native of Dordrecht and the author of an important treatise on painting, Introduction to the High School of the Art of Painting, which was published in 1678, the year of his death. The book and exhibition focus on the illusionistic techniques pioneered by both artists along with their important experiments in perspective.
