Anna Weyant

This first monograph of Anna Weyant’s work illustrates most of the New York–based artist’s paintings to date, including those featured in Baby, It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over, her 2022 debut exhibition with Gagosian, in New York. Weyant is known for her depictions of precisely rendered figures, primarily young women, that simmer with tensions between feminine sexuality and purity, tragedy and comedy. Her still-life compositions are similarly uncanny and emblematic, alluding to the historical tradition of the vanitas while subverting its conventions.

Approximately seventy paintings that Weyant made between 2019 and 2023 are reproduced in loosely chronological order, while a series of texts illuminates various aspects of her evolving practice. An essay by curator and art historian John Elderfield explores the artist’s themes and imagery, while art historian Yvonne Owens focuses on her references to classical still-life painting and writer Naomi Fry delineates some of her pop-culture touchstones. In a conversation with New Yorker cartoonist Edward Steed, Weyant discusses the manifestation and significance of humor in her work.