Artists for Tichy - Tichy for Artists

Miroslav Tichy, born in a small Czech village in 1926, was a trained artist with a background in painting and drawing and a 30-year career as photographer (specializing in unauthorized, low-grade pictures of local women--on the streets or in the pool--made with jury-rigged cameras of his own design) when he abruptly ended his artistic production in 1990. Since then, he has avoided the public eye and generally refused to sell his artworks. In this volume, more than 30 contemporary artists contribute works in response to Tichy's: among them we find photographs of alpine snowboarders by Walter Niedermayr, an erotic drawing by Arnulf Rainer, an enigmatic sculptural work and a drawing of a gallerist standing on an artist's head by Erwin Wurm, a hand-drawn score by Michael Nyman, collaged works by Jonathan Meese, a large round acrylic painting by Katharina Grosse, a Surrealistic photo series by Anna and Bernhard Blume, a kittenish diptych by Fischli and Weiss and sundry dark and mysterious works by Thomas Ruff, Andro Wekua and others. The original Tichy images featured here are gorgeous, enigmatic and erotic, and are accompanied by portraits of the artist and his fascinating DIY cameras.