Stuart Collection: Kiki Smith - Standing

Rapidly becoming established as one of America's leading contemporary artists, Kiki Smith has confronted in her art the most urgent social and spiritual issues of our day through her explorations of the human body and the natural world. This magnificent collection of her work includes 160 colour and 73 black-and-white prints. Art critic Helaine Posner uncovers the origins of the artist's work and an interview with Smith by David Frankel gives further insight into her artistic thought.

Through her explorations of the human body and the natural world, internationally acclaimed artist Kiki Smith has confronted the most urgent social and spiritual issues of our day. Direct and accessible, Smith's expressive art engages social and cultural issues in a sometimes viscerally disturbing way. In her recent work, Smith has extended these themes, incorporating rites of passage and cycles of life, death, and rebirth through an iconography of animal, human, and fairy tale imagery. Helaine Posner's monograph is a comprehensive survey of Smith's work in installation, sculpture, and graphic media. She discusses its origins and proposes an interpretive framework, locating it with the artistic traditions that have nourished Smith and tracing its development from the 1980s to present. An interview with Smith adds the artist's own perspective on the work.

This richly illustrated book offers a full retrospective of Kiki Smith's work. Artist Kiki Smith has produced an astoundingly varied body of work that deals powerfully with the political, social, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of human nature--especially in the way they relate to women. Smith's earlier works reflect the social discourse of the 1980s, particularly focusing on death and the AIDS epidemic. She later turned to issues of feminism, abortion rights, and animal rights. This comprehensive book provides an overview of Smith's artistic development, focusing on her sculpture, from the early 1980s to the present day. Images of her radical, unflinching work reveal an artist who is not afraid to explore subjects such as the human body or a society's archetypes. Filled with the beauty, vitality, and charm that are the hallmarks of Kiki Smith's art, this book urges viewers to think and feel.