Etel Adnan

Overview

Etel Adnan (b.1925) is a Lebanese-American poet, essayist and visual artist. This will be the first book to present a full account of Adnan’s fascinating life and work, using the drama of her biography, the complexity of her identity, and the cosmopolitan nature of her experience to illuminate the many layers and dimensions of her paintings and their progress over several crucial decades. Adnan came relatively late to painting - her first images were created in the mid-1960s in response to the Californian landscape. Her vocabulary of lines, shapes and colours has changed little since then, and yet there are huge variations in mood, texture, composition and material. Similarly, there is a balance between understanding her paintings as pure abstractions, emulating the shape of thought, and seeing them for the actual landscapes of the many places Adnan has loved, embraced and responded to. Tackling the complexities of her subject with skill and insight, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie unpacks Adnan's multi-layered career to capture the full scope of her artistic endeavours and impressive achievements.

Reviews

"As Wilson-Goldie charts Adnan's turbulent life, shaped by politics and war, she describes how the artist's creative output has allowed her to meditate on a difficult past." —Isaac Nugent, review, The Burlington Contemporary

Feature relating to the book launch of the book —interview, Daily Star Lebanon, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Arts-and-Ent/Culture/2018/Aug-29/461506-book-paints-a-picture-of-etel-adnan.ashx

This is an article reviewing the major new retrospective of the work of Simone Fattal that has just opened at MOMA PS1 in NY. Simone Fattal is the partner of Etel Adnan. This article references her relationship with Etel Adnan and mentions that Fattal has published Etel Adnan's poetry in the press she founded. We believe MOMA PS1 and MOMA in NY should be approached about selling the Etel Adnan book throughout the duration of the exhibition. —https://hyperallergic.com/492950/simone-fattal-sculpts-poetry-from-chaos/

"In a new survey of the artist's work, Etel Adnan, critic Kaelen Wilson-Goldie nimbly thinks across and between Adnan's [poetry and painting]. Her descriptions of individual works are melodic, vivid set pieces in themselves, keeping steady rhythm with the nearly one hundred reproductions woven throughout the text." —Corrine Fitzpatrick, Bookforum

"Author Kaelen Wilson-Goldie reveals the radical power of abstract painter Etel Adnan's life and work in a new book." —Shirine Saad, Hyperallergic.com  

"Reading this account, our experience of both Adnan's painting and poetry can only be enriched." —Isaac Nugent, http://www.contemporary.burlington.org.uk/

Author Biography

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is a contributing editor for Bidoun and writes regularly for Artforum, Bookforum, Aperture and Frieze. She has travelled extensively in the Middle East and North Africa to cover the relationship between contemporary art and political upheaval, writing for newspapers, magazines, journals and books.