Nato Thompson

The first major and in-depth retrospective monograph on JR, the enigmatic and anonymous Parisian photographer/street artist/activist behind some of the world's most provocative large-scale public photography projects. Created in close collaboration with JR, this book includes all bodies of his work, his collaborations with other artists and institutions such as the New York Ballet and previously unpublished behind-the-scenes documentation of his studios in Paris and New York, where he and his creative collaborators live and work. Introducing JR 's story is a specially commissioned graphic novel by comic artist Joseph Remnant, which charts his rise from graffiti roots and his decision to become a full-time artist. Features a survey essay by Nato Thompson, Chief Curator of Creative Time, New York.

One of the country's leading activist curators explores how corporations and governments have used art and culture to mystify and manipulate us. The production of culture was once the domain of artists, but beginning in the early 1900s, the emerging fields of public relations, advertising and marketing transformed the way the powerful communicate with the rest of us. A century later, the tools are more sophisticated than ever, the onslaught more relentless. In Culture as Weapon, acclaimed curator and critic Nato Thompson reveals how institutions use art and culture to ensure profits and constrain dissent--and shows us that there are alternatives. An eye-opening account of the way advertising, media, and politics work today, Culture as Weapon offers a radically new way of looking at our world.

A monumental, lavishly illustrated book that offers the first global portrait of a complex and definition-defying genre of cultural production. Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives or come out of a community context; they emphasize participation, dialogue, and action, and appear in situations ranging from theater to activism to urban planning to visual art to health care. Engaged with the texture of living, these art works often blur the line between art and life. This book offers the first global portrait of a complex and exciting mode of cultural production--one that has virtually redefined contemporary art practice. Living as Form grew out of a major exhibition at Creative Time in New York City. Like the exhibition, the book is a landmark survey of more than 100 projects selected by a thirty-person curatorial advisory team; each project is documented by a selection of color images. The artists include the Danish collective Superflex, who empower communities to challenge corporate interest; Turner Prize nominee Jeremy Deller, creator of socially and politically charged performance works; Women on Waves, who provide abortion services and information to women in regions where the procedure is illegal; and Santiágo Cirugeda, an architect who builds temporary structures to solve housing problems. Living as Form contains commissioned essays from noted critics and theorists who look at this phenomenon from a global perspective and broaden the range of what constitutes this form.