Swiss Made: Precision and Madness: Swiss Art from Hodler to Hirschhorn
At last, the broader movements of twentieth-century Swiss art--and the individual artists behind them--are tracked through the present day in one standard-setting publication. Swiss Made: Precision and Madness sets the famous Swiss tendency toward precision and order alongside the tendency toward obstinacy and chaos, pairing canonical works with pieces made within the past 40 years. Provocative pairs include Max Bill and John Armleder, Ferdinand Hodler and Urs Lüthi, Alberto Giacometti and Rémy Zaugg, Louis Soutter and Martin Disler, Robert Müller and Sylvie Fleury, Paul Klee and Silvia Bächli, Adolph Wölfli and Ugo Rondinone. Tensions emerge between the focused and the expansive, over everyday life in the Swiss state, and naturally over the mountains. Swiss Made: Precision and Madness is of interest on its own analytic terms, and as an excellent overview of the country's art since 1850.