Artist Johanna Goodman’s “The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings” is an ongoing series of work begun in 2016 that sprang from over 20 years of portraiture and collage work. Now at over 400 plates, the body of work seeks to explore a range of themes in popular culture, including the role of the individual in fashion, history, the artistic imagination and, more broadly, the collective consciousness. The body of work draws its inspiration from a wide spectrum of sources, including Magical Realism, Surrealism and Symbolism — and, more specifically, references such cultural artifacts as talismans, idols, totems and all of the material detritus that surrounds all of us all the time. These characters are composites embodying notions of “the warrior,” vulnerability, industry, the universal and the personal. They reference these identities as they’ve been depicted historically through art, literature and commerce. Both visually riveting and psychologically evocative, these images — which exist somewhere between portraiture and iconography — have resonated with a host of different entities such as magazines, galleries and others, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York and West Elm.
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 396
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 149
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 72
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 148
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 159
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 255
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 411
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 248
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 444
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 452
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 33
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 122
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 345
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 203
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 48
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 100
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 419
The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 137
Year of the Tiger, Lunar New Year 2022
New York-based artist Johanna Goodman graduated from Parsons School of Design with a bachelor of fine arts degree in illustration. She has been a freelance illustrator and practicing fine artist ever since. Her work has garnered awards from the Society of Publication Design, American Illustration and Communication Arts. She was also awarded a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship grant for printmaking/drawing/book arts for her work on the Catalogue of Imaginary Beings.
Goodman and her work have been featured in profiles in numerous publications, including the Observer/Guardian, Vogue Portugal, Frankie Magazine, Flow Magazine, Marie Claire Maison, Le Courier International, Tempo Travel, Uppercase Magazine, the Creative Review, WePresent by WeTransfer, Adobe Create, Trendland, This is Colossal, and Inspiration Grid, to name but a few.
Her work has been included in several books about art, collage and illustration, such as “The Age of Collage: Contemporary Collage in Modern Art 1” (Gestalten 2016), “The Age of Collage: Contemporary Collage in Modern Art 3” (Gestalten, 2021), “Collage by Women” (Promopress Editions, 2019), “The Collage Ideas Book” (Octopus Publishing Group, 2018), “Every Body” (Little Brown & Co, 2020), and “Rolling Stone: The Illustrated Portraits” (Rizzoli, 2020).
Her work is in many private and public collections, and she has exhibited her work widely in New York, Berlin and London.
For more about Johanna Goodman, visit her website.