Karen Kilimnik Book

In the 1980s, critics compared Karen Kilimnik's narrative and jumbled installations to the previous decade's "scatter art," they have since become cult favorites of a new generation of artists and curators. Her drawings and paintings from the early 1990s targeted then-current discussions on art and glamour, and the emergence of women artists whose sensibility was not that of feminist theory. A portrait of Hugh Grant, post-arrest, was likened to Degas, Warhol and Jim Shaw's Thrift Store Paintings. More recently she's taken up fairy-tale themes, with dashing barons, tinkling chandeliers, wolves and sleighs--a magical world in which history, myth and reality coexist. The diversity of Kilimnik's work, which has continued to evolve, can veil the internal coherence of a practice in which the most recent pieces attest to continuous links through all previous media and subject matter. This comprehensive monograph offers a complete panorama of Kilimnik's career production, and allows readers to see beyond the distinctions between her paintings, drawings and installations.