Philip Taaffe: Recent Paintings

This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Philip Taaffe: Recent Paintings at Gagosian’s former gallery on Wooster Street in New York. Taaffe combines natural, cultural, and art historical motifs to produce large-scale mixed-media canvases distinguished by interwoven forms and patterns made using collage, painting, and printmaking techniques.

The catalogue reproduces the exhibition’s works, in which images of feathers, starfish, skulls, pineapples, and other organic forms are arranged in complex patterns. It also includes an essay by Rene Ricard that positions the works in the context of classical Greek and Roman art, citing Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis as one of Taaffe’s sources of inspiration.