Josh Smith & Christopher Wool: Can Your Monkey do the Dog

This book is the result of a collaboration between the artists Christopher Wool and Josh Smith. Their method is reminiscent of musical improvisation: to start, one of them proposes an image from his own body of work. From this basic picture, the other generates another image by reworking it through digital programs like Photoshop. Thus, new images made with "four hands" are created. The book is simply designed, with no texts, just black-and-white abstraction after abstraction. Here, the reproduction of the art image is just as important as the work of art. In other words, one can see pixels, blurred brushstrokes, the glare of a flashbulb reflecting off oil paint, or a smudged Xerox effect. It's all part of the work--rather than highlighting the process of painting, the artists are highlighting the process of reproduction itself.