Various Artists, Pop Life Art in a Material World (hand signed, inscribed by all 10 artist, some with drawings) to Fmr Tate Curator Sheena Wagstaff, 2009

Takashi Murakami, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Piotr Uklański, Ashley Bickerton, Gavin Turk, Maurizio Cattelan, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Sturtevant, Tracey Emin

Pop Life Art in a Material World (hand signed, inscribed by all 10 artist, some with drawings) to Fmr Tate Curator Sheena Wagstaff, 2009

Unique Ink drawings and signatures inside of softback book, all dedicated to renowned Tate Gallery curator

Hand signed, inscribed and drawings by 10 artists

10 9/10 × 8 7/10 inches

Unframed

This one-of-a-kind item, absolutely historic Pop Art monograph was published by the Tate Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World at Tate Modern, London, October 1, 2009 - January 17, 2010; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, February 15 - May 9, 2010; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, June 11 - September 19, 2010. (Below is a detailed description of this historic survey, from the Tate Gallery press release):

This book bears unique, original drawings, signatures and ink inscriptions by artists: Takashi Murakami, Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons, Sturtevant, Richard Prince, Piotr Uklanski, Ashley Bickerton, Gavin Turk, Maurizio Cattelan and Cosey Fanni Tutti.

The following artists created drawings near or on the pages if the monograph featuring their artworks:
Jeff Koons -signed Antiquity drawing
Takashi Murakami - drew own Absolut Vodka interpretation (unique signed ink drawing) on the same page with Andy Warhol and Keith Haring's Absolute Vodka designs
Cosey Fanni Tutti - legs drawing
The following artists wrote inscriptions:
Jeff Koons: Thank you for the opportunity to show at the Tate! Great Show! Love Jeff
Tracey Emin: For Sheena, with love, Tracey Emin XO
Sturtevant: For Sheena, my favorite digital girl
Piotr Uklanski: With best wishes
Ashley Bickerton

Provenance:
This book of artists drawings was acquired from the collection of the world renowned curator Sheena Wagstaff who was Chief Curator of Tate Modern from 2001-2012. She then left the Tate and London to become the Leonard A Lauder Chair of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from 2012-2022. In 2023, she was commissioned by the prestigious art fair Frieze Masters in London to curate a section.

Publisher's blurb:
'Good business is the best art.' Andy Warhol's notorious statement provides a starting point for this book, which examines the legacy of Pop art and its most celebrated exponent in the lives and work of succeeding generations of artists. Rather than shying away from the limelight, these post-Warhol artists have wholeheartedly embraced both the cult of celebrity and the commercial cut and thrust of the art market. Keith Haring set up his Pop Shop in Manhattan to sell his own branded products direct to the public; alongside making painting and sculpture, Takashi Murakami produces editions via his multinational corporation, Kaikai Kiki; and Damien Hirst arranged his own, hugely successful auction of his work at Sotheby's, entitled Beautiful Inside My Head Forever.
Jeff Koons's celebration in painting and sculpture of his marriage and sexual union with porn star and latter. day politician Illona Staller (aka La Cicciolina) is just one example of an artist crossing the usually accepted boundaries between the public and the personal, and between art and flagrant sensationalism. British artist Cosey Fanni Tutti caused similar outrage by electing to make performance art by working within the sex industry, appearing as a model in 'adult magazines. For other artists featured, including Tracey Emin, Richard Prince and Martin Kippenberger, their public persona or 'brand" is something to be knowingly manipulated as part of their artistic practice.

Extensively illustrated and with illuminating essays by critics and curators from both the United States and Britain this book is guaranteed to be as entertaining, challenging and provocative as the art it portrays.

About the book:
Publisher: Tate Publishing; 2009
Softback; 192 pages with color and bw illustrations

Press Release from Tate Gallery on the exhibition:
Pop Life: Art in a Material World proposes a re-reading of one of the major legacies of Pop Art. The exhibition takes Andy Warhol’s notorious provocation that ‘good business is the best art’ as a starting point in reconsidering the legacy of Pop Art and the influence of the movement’s chief protagonist. Pop Life: Art in a Material World looks ahead to the various ways that artists since the 1980s have engaged with mass media and cultivated artistic personas creating their own signature ‘brands’. Among the artists represented are Tracey Emin, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince.

Pop Life: Art in a Material World argues that Warhol’s most radical lesson is reflected in the work of artists of subsequent generations who, rather than simply representing or commenting upon our mass media culture, have infiltrated the publicity machine and the marketplace as a deliberate strategy. Harnessing the power of the celebrity system and expanding their reach beyond the art world and into the wider world of commerce, these artists exploit channels that engage audiences both inside and outside the gallery. The conflation of culture and commerce is typically seen as a betrayal of the values associated with modern art; this exhibition contends that, for many artists working after Warhol, to cross this line is to engage with modern life on its own terms.

The show begins with a focused look at Warhol’s late work, examining his related initiatives as a television personality, paparazzo, and publishing impresario. Highlights include a number of works from his initially controversial series known as the Retrospectives or Reversals. Reprising his celebrated Pop icons from the 1960s, in a manner initially deemed cynical, the Retrospectives look ahead to installations by a number of artists including Martin Kippenberger and Tracey Emin, who overtly engage the self-mythologizing impulse manipulating their personas as a medium, like silkscreen or paint.

Pop Life: Art in a Material World includes reconstructions of both Keith Haring’s Pop Shop and Jeff Koons’s seldom reunited Made in Heaven. Haring opened the Pop Shop in 1986 on New York’s Lafayette St. to merchandise his branded artistic signature as editioned objects such as t-shirts, toys and magnets aimed at as wide an audience as possible. Jeff Koons’s Made in Heaven, which debuted at the Venice Bienniale in 1990, immortalized his marital union with the Italian porn star and politician known as La Cicciolina. A specially-commissioned new installation by the celebrated Japanese artist Takashi Murakami debuts in the exhibition’s final gallery.

A gallery dedicated to the so-called ‘Young British Artists’ focuses on their early performative exploits including ephemera from Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’s shop in Bethnal Green where they created and sold their work. Renowned pieces such as Gavin Turk’s Pop 1993 also feature, as does selected works representing Damien Hirst’s recent Sotheby’s auction, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever. Tate Modern will also restage Hirst’s performance originally shown at Cologne’s ‘Unfair’ art fair in 1992. Identical twins will sit beneath two identical spot paintings for the duration of Pop Life: Art in a Material World. Tate Modern is appealing for identical twins to take part in this performance.

The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern and is co-curated by Jack Bankowsky, Artforum’s Editor at Large, Alison M. Gingeras, Chief Curator of the François Pinault Collection and Catherine Wood, Tate Modern Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance, assisted by Nicholas Cullinan, Curator, International Modern Art, Tate Modern. Pop Life: Art in a Material World will travel to the Hamburger Kunsthalle from 6 February – 9 May 2010 and then to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa from 11 June – 19 September 2010. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.