Unruly Tools: Contemporary Artists and the Reinvention of Painting

The first book to examine the role of unconventional tools in contemporary painting is required reading for anyone interested in painting’s recent past and future.

Painting, often regarded as the oldest of art forms, has been repeatedly declared “dead.” In this original and compelling study, technical art historian Pia Gottschaller thoroughly dismantles that notion, revealing how painters radically reimagined the medium in the years following World War II. No longer confined to the paintbrush, artists began to experiment with new methods, employing found, fabricated, and repurposed objects—as varied as an Afro comb, the human body, and a robotic airbrush—to create paintings unlike any seen before, revolutionizing the course of art history.

• Begins in 1945 with Jackson Pollock and the Gutai Art Association in Japan and traces the transformation of painting across the globe from the post-war period to the present.
• Explores the work of thirty-eight contemporary painters, including Amoako Boafo, Helen Frankenthaler, Yves Klein, Julie Mehretu, Beatriz Milhazes, Howardena Pindell, Kazuo Shiraga, and Andy Warhol.
• Richly illustrated with over 240 images of artists and their creations.

Unruly Tools is the first study of this kind and offers essential testimony to painting’s continued vitality and reinvention.