Editor Donatien Grau and Art Director Thomas Lenthal Foster Illuminating Conversations Between Leading Artists
Editor and art writer Donatien Grau and art director Thomas Lenthal have teamed to launch Alphabet, a new biyearly magazine that celebrates and explores art directly through the perspectives of contemporary artists.
As Grau explains in his first editor’s letter, “Alphabet is the artists’ magazine. Here, they run the show. They write, they make images, they select their own works and the works of others, they interview the figures they admire, they tell us what we did not know about them and what we never could have fathomed about life. This is conceived entirely to put them in the driver’s seat, and to enable readers to become part of the unique vision of some of today’s greatest luminaries.”
Launched earlier this month, the debut issue features contributions from Robert Wilson, Hedi El Kholti, Naomi Campbell, Marc Newson, Michèle Lamy, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Theaster Gates, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Mathias Augustyniak, Eileen Myles, Iké Udé, Claire Fontaine, Juergen Teller, Julian Schnabel, Yohji Yamamoto, Ariana Reines, Edwin Frank, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Paul McCarthy, McKenzie Wark, Es Devlin, Ian McEwan, Michael Chow, Hanna Schygulla, Nicolas Godin, Théo Casciani, Pan Daijing, and more.
In addition to the impressive list of artists carefully curated each issue for their perspective on contemporary creativity and the dialogues their approaches and personalities foster as they cohabitate in the magazine’s pages, Alphabet seeks to explore and incorporate the idea of a magazine itself. “Alphabet is also the magazine of magazines,” writes Grau. “Here, you
find essays, fictions, poetry, visual projects, DIY methods, recommendations from those who know, even games and astrology – and an artist’s alphabet, articulating an entire universe. Anything that has ever formed a section of a magazine could find its way here.
Artists will rejuvenate what magazines are, and we will be kept forever young by and with
them. This is just the beginning.”
