View all essays

Beth Katleman

Beth Katleman
2016

Monograph with essays by Anthony Haden-Guest, David Revere McFadden and Sarah Archer
Todd Merrill Studio Contemporary

Upon your first glimpse of Beth Katleman's Folly you may feel that you have been fortunate enough to return to some world you once knew or imagined, an enticing but safe and proper place. Creamy-white islands, each just the right distance from each, float through a blue world, like clouds floating across a sky or islands in a waveless ocean. You know exactly where you are. At once pastoral and classy, neo-classical and faux-Orientalist, it's the world of blue-and-white china or of 18th century wallpaper toile de jouy come to vivid three-dimensional life. And I do mean life. Because approach more closely and you will find yourself increasingly puzzled by goings-on in this Arcadia.

Anthony Haden-Guest
 POST-IMPERIAL LONGINGS: Beth Katleman's Naughty Arcadia