Jim Shaw: Distorted Faces & Portraits, 1978-2007

Almost 16 inches tall and 12 inches wide, and jacketed in a 53x37-inch fold-out poster of Jim Shaw's deeply disturbing black-and-white oil painting of Ronald Reagan's distorted face (layered with smaller, ghostlike figures of American violence like Charles Manson and Rambo), this darkly riveting limited-edition artist's book contains works from five series of portraits made over the course of the artist's four-decade-long career: the "Distorted Faces" drawings (1978-85) and paintings (1986-2007); the "Noir" portraits of 1978; the sketches for Shaw's "Giant Face" paintings (1992) and other assorted faces from 1993-2006. The format and print quality of this one-of-a-kind publication truly allow Shaw's legendary graphic abilities to shine--particularly in the hyperreal "Distorted Faces" series. According to Alison M. Gingeras' catalogue essay, "The jingle-like language of Pop has been transformed into rambling, run-on sentences that describe fragmented ideas, associative thoughts and schizophrenic images. Too strange, too perverse, too lurid, too precise: Shaw is an elusive character that defies categorization."