PUBLICATIONS

Van Gogh and The artists he loved

Vincent van Gogh’s paintings look utterly unique—his vivid palette and boldly interpretive portraits are unmistakably his. Yet however revolutionary his style may have been, it was actually built on a strong foundation of paintings by other artists, both his contemporaries and those who came before him.

Now, drawing on Van Gogh’s own thoughtful and often profound comments about the painters he venerated, Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Naifeh gives a gripping account of the artist’s deep engagement with their work. We see Van Gogh’s gradual discovery of the subjects he would make famous, from wheat fields to sunflowers. We watch him experimenting with the loose brushwork and bright colors used by Édouard Manet, studying the Pointillist dots used by Georges Seurat, and emulating the powerful depictions of the peasant farmers painted by Jean-François Millet, all vividly illustrated in nearly three hundred full-color images of works by Van Gogh and a variety of other major artists, including Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, positioned side by side.

Thanks to the vast correspondence from Van Gogh to his beloved brother, Theo, Naifeh is able to reconstruct Van Gogh’s artistic world from within. Observed in eloquent prose that is as compelling as it is authoritative, Van Gogh and the Artists He Loved enables us to share the artist’s journey as he created his own daring, influential, and widely beloved body of work.

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“Important . . . inspires us to look at Van Gogh and his art afresh.”

— Dr. Chris Stolwijk, general director, RKD–Netherlands Institute for Art History

Van Gogh: The Life

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith galvanized readers with their astonishing Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography, a book acclaimed for its miraculous research and overwhelming narrative power. In Van Gogh: The Life, Naifeh and Smith have written another tour de force—an exquisitely detailed, compellingly readable, and ultimately heartbreaking portrait of creative genius Vincent van Gogh.

The biography, which was a New York Times bestseller, has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

“The definitive biography for decades to come.”

— Leo Jansen, Curator, the Van Gogh Museum and Co-editor, Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Letters

“In their magisterial new biography, Van Gogh: The Life, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith provide a guided tour through the personal world and work of that Dutch painter, shining a bright light on the evolution of his art. . . . What [the authors] capture so powerfully is Van Gogh’s extraordinary will to learn, to persevere against the odds.”

— Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Brilliant ... Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith are the big-game hunters of modern art history ... [Van Gogh] rushes along on a tide of research ... At once a model of scholarship and an emotive, pacy chunk of hagiography.”

— Martin Herbert, The Daily Telegraph (London)

Jackson Pollock: An American Saga

Jackson Pollock was more than a great artist, he was a creative force of nature. He changed not only the course of Western art, but our very definition of “art.” He was the quintessential tortured genius, an American Vincent van Gogh, cut from the same unconforming cloth as his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and James Dean–and tormented by the same demons; a “cowboy artist” who rose from obscurity to take his place among the titans of modern art, and whose paintings now command millions of dollars.

Naifeh and Smith portray the life behind that extraordinary achievement–the disjointed childhood, the sibling rivalry, the sexual ambiguity, and the artistic frustration out of which both artist and art developed. The biography won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, the basis of the Academy Award-winning film “Pollock,” an inspiration for John Updike’s Seek My Face, and a New York Times bestseller. It was translated into French and Spanish.

“Amazing … An extraordinarily riveting work, full of miraculous research.”

— Meryle Secrest, Chicago Sun-Times

“Clearly the definitive work.”

— Stephen Amidon, Financial Times (London)

“The most thoroughly detailed portrait ever of a U.S. artist. It’s as imposing as a history book, as entertaining as a novel and as close as the reader may ever come to sharing the breadth - and sensing the madness - of artistic genius and the genesis of a masterpiece.”

— David Zimmerman, USA Today

“Unprecedented ... Never before have we had such a thorough and affecting account of an American artist.”

— Artelia Court, Los Angeles Times

Gene Davis

A monograph on the seminal Washington Color School painter, Gene Davis, known for his elaborate orchestrations of vertical stripes, based on Naifeh's Harvard University Ph.D. dissertation.

Culture Making: Money, Success and the New York Art World

An analysis of the economics of New York art world, based on Naifeh’s prize-winning undergraduate thesis at Princeton University.

EXHIBITION CATALOGS

Columbia Museum of Art

Published in May 2013, this catalogue accompanied The Columbia Museum of Art’s retrospective museum exhibition of Naifeh’s paintings and sculpture entitled “Found in Translation: The Art of Steven Naifeh.” Twenty-six large-scale works were on view in the CMA special exhibition galleries from May 18 to September 1, 2013.

Leila Heller Gallery

Published in March 2014 by the Leila Heller Gallery, this catalogue accompanied the artist’s exhibition Found in Translation: The Art of Steven Naifeh, which ran jointly at the Leila Heller Gallery in New York, March 27-April 26, 2014, and at MANA Contemporary in Hoboken, New Jersey, March 2-Augsut 31, 2014. Essay by Heather Ecker.

ARTICLES ON ART

“Gene Davis: Equinox”

with Gregory White Smith, in Kerner, Joseph D., and Jane E. Neidhardt, eds., A Gallery of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis: The Washington University Gallery of Art, 1994

“Jackson Pollock: Under Fire”

with Gregory White Smith, The New York Times, June 9, 1991

“Jackson in Action”

with Gregory White Smith, Mirabella, November 1989

“The Myth of Oshogbo”

African Arts, February 1981

“Beyond the Stripe”

Art International, September-October, 1980

“Gene Davis”

Arts Magazine, October 1979

Selected Lectures on Art

“Bridging Worlds – Contemporary Art and the Art of Islam”

“4th Annual Juried International Exhibition of Contemporary Islamic Art,” Dallas, Texas, October 10, 2015

“On Jackson Pollock: Psychobiography with Dr. Gail Saltz”

92nd Street Y, Tribeca, New York, November 20, 2014

“Van Gogh Repetitions: Conversation with Eliza Rathbone”

Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, November 14, 2013

“Van Gogh Repetitions: Conversation with Teachers”

Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, November 13, 2013

“’Pollock’: The Film”

Columbia Museum of Art, August 18, 2013

“Steven Naifeh: Found in Translation”

Columbia Museum of Art, May 19, 2013

“On Vincent van Gogh: Psychobiography with Dr. Gail Saltz”

92nd Street Y, New York, December 7, 2012

“Becoming Van Gogh: Discussion with Timothy Standring and Louis van Tilborgh”

Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, October 20, 2012