Intended as a touchstone for all those interested in Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s work for years to come, this monograph, dedicated to the artist, encapsulates over ten years of paintings and works on paper, and provides multiple perspectives and insights into Quinn’s career to date. Archival photographs of the artist and his studio, offer a peak into Quinn’s working process and reference materials. With an introduction by Larry Gagosian, the book features new texts by Dawn Ades and Andrew Winer. An in-depth interview between the artist and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis examines Quinn’s approach to his practice, his vision, and everything in-between.

This monograph is the first comprehensive survey of Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s work, featuring paintings made since 2013. Quinn’s images combine bodily fragments derived from sources that include both personal images and those culled from the media. Working without preliminary sketches, he forms composite images of faces and figures that resemble collages but are in fact painted and drawn. Developed with oil paint, charcoal, gouache, oil stick, and pastel, these works address the hybridity of perception and identity.

The book includes over 125 color plates of Quinn’s paintings, as well as studio photographs that offer an insight into his process. An introduction from Larry Gagosian is followed by an essay by Andrew Winer which discusses his work in terms of representation, abstraction, and memory. The volume also features a conversation between the artist and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis that offers firsthand reflections on the painter’s practice, as well as an essay by Dawn Ades contextualizing Quinn’s work in relation to Modern and contemporary collage, painting, and portraiture.

About The Author

Sarah Elizabeth Lewis is an associate professor of humanities and of African and African American studies at Harvard University, and the founder of Vision & Justice, an initiative that generates original research, curricula, and programs that reveal the foundational role visual culture plays in generating equity and justice in America.

Dawn Ades is professor emerita of the history and theory of art at the University of Essex, a fellow of the British Academy since 1996, professor of the history of art at the Royal Academy, and a former trustee of Tate and the National Gallery. She was awarded a CBE in 2013 for her services to Higher Education. Ades has curated many exhibitions in the UK and internationally over the past forty years and has published works on photomontage, Dada, Surrealism, women artists, and Mexican muralists.

Andrew Winer is the author of the novels The Marriage Artist: A Novel (2010) and The Color Midnight Made (2002). He writes and lectures on art, philosophy, and literature. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, he is presently completing a novel and a book on the contemporary relevance of Friedrich Nietzsche’s central philosophical idea, the affirmation of life.