When Acne Paper was relaunched last year, it arrived as a hybrid between a book and a magazine, reimagined in a new format and bold design direction: expanding to 500 pages. The new issue of Acne Paper has taken the idea of a hybrid one step further.
Part biography, part novel, part cultural art journal, part fashion magazine, this experimental and interdisciplinary issue is imagined around the story of Atticus: a fictional personality in the art world who will celebrate his one hundred year birthday during the Acne Paper launch in Milan this November.
Acne Paper 17 is our most important art issue to date, featuring the work of more than fifty contemporary artists, including (in alphabetic order): Kai Althoff, Felipe Baeza, Maria Bartuszová, Louise Bonnett, Victor Brauner, Enrico Castellani, Julie Curtiss, Chioma Ebinama, Inka Essenhigh, Lucio Fontana, Marguerite Humeau, Marina Karella, Sarah Lucas, René Magritte, Piero Manzoni, Fabio Mauri, Minoru Nomata, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Christina Quarles, Eileen Quinlan, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Ed Ruscha, Anj Smith, John Stezaker, Salman Toor, Cy Twombly, Paloma Varga Weisz, Andy Warhol and Lian Zhang, to name but a few.
The centerpiece of the publication is a written memoir by Atticus. Within its five chapters Atticus narrates us through his cultured life where he starts out as a dancer, first with Balanchine, then with Merce Cunningham, before becoming an art world personality. In his vivid reflections illuminating chosen moments of his life we meet a dazzling gallery of art world giants, dancers, musicians, writers, designers, architects and people Atticus has admired, encountered and befriended.
Intersected throughout the issue are fashion stories by Luis Alberto Rodriguez and Raphael Hirsch, Cho Gi-Seok and Robbie Spencer, Paul Kooiker and Beat Bolliger, Justin French and Glen Mban, William Waterworth and Pierre-Alexandre Fillaire, as well as a surreal still-life story by Keisuke Otobe and Dimitra Louana Marlanti, and a intimate self portrait portfolio by Ibrahim Kamara.
At the heart of Atticus’ biography is the relationship with Desmond, the love of his life. We are reminded of a time when men who loved men, and women who loved women, were considered delinquents. Atticus also recalls the dramatic AIDS epidemic and the many loved and talented people who perished with it.
In a special portfolio we pay tribute to the work of artists Darrel Ellis, Arch Connelly, Jimmy Wright, and Larry Stanton whose paintings and drawings will be the subject of a special Acne Studios collaboration to benefit an AIDS charity.
