Oil: Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age

From Ernst Haeckel to Wolfgang Tillmans: how oil has fueled the imaginations of artists and photographers

Like no other raw material, oil pervades every area of our life. Oil is how we stay alive and how we get around. Oil: Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age approaches the vast complexity of oil’s place in our lives by exploring how it has inspired art and artists. Surveying the work of 250 artists from antiquity to today with 350 illustrations, this unique catalog captures the diversity of emotions that oil evokes. Artists include: Monira Al Qadiri, Atelier Van Lieshout, Kader Attia, Bernardo Bertolucci, Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Burtynsky, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Christo, Tony Cragg, Walter De Maria, Mark Dion, William Eggleston, Sylvie Fleury, Hans Haacke, Ernst Haeckel, Matt Kenyon, Tetsumi Kudo, Franz Nolde, Kate Orff, Alex Prager, Alain Resnais, Martha Rosler, Ed Ruscha, Shirin Sabahi, Taryn Simon, Robert Smithson, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans and Erwin Wurm.