History of art Books

Book SynopsisHow the modernist avant-gardes from Dada to constructivism reconceived their roles, working as propagandists, advertisers, publishers, graphic designers, curators and more, to create new visual languages for a radically changed world?We regarded ourselves as engineers, we maintained that we were building things ? we put our works together like fitters.? So declared the artist Hannah Höch, describing a radically new approach to artmaking in the 1920s and ?30s. Such wholesale reinvention of the role of the artist and the functions of art took place in lockstep with that era?s shifts in industry, technology, and labor, and amid the profound impact of momentous events: World War I, the Russian Revolution, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the rise of fascism. Highlighting figures such as Aleksandr Rodchenko, Liubov Popova, John Heartfield and Fré Cohen, and European avant-gardes of the interwar years?Dada, the Bauhaus, futurism, constructivism and de Stijl?Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented demonstrates the ways in which artists reimagined their roles to create a dynamic art for a new world.These ?engineers,? ?agitators,? ?constructors,? ?photomonteurs,? ?workers??all designations adopted by the artists themselves?turned away from traditional forms of painting and sculpture and invented new visual languages. Central among them was photomontage, in which photographs and images from newspapers and magazines were cut, remixed, and pasted together. Working as propagandists, advertisers, publishers, editors, architects, theater designers and curators, these artists engaged with expanded audiences in novel ways, establishing distinctive infrastructures for presenting and distributing their work.Published in conjunction with a major exhibition, Engineer, Agitator, Constructor marks the transformative addition to MoMA from the Merrill C. Berman Collection, one of the great private collections of political art. Illuminating the essential role of women in avant-garde activities while mapping vital networks across Europe, this richly illustrated book presents the social engagement, fearless experimentation and utopian aspirations that defined the early 20th century, and how these strategies still reverberate today.

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Book Synopsis"I lived in a haunted apartment." Davisson opens this definitive work on Japan's ghosts, or yurei, with a personal tale about the spirit world. Shifting from anecdotes to deep research to translation of ancient ghost stories, he explores the persistence of yurei in modern Japan and their continued popularity throughout the West. Color images of yurei appear throughout the book.

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Book SynopsisMeet artist Mari Ichimasu's collection of traveling cats, an adorable array of water-color kitties teeming with personality. Viola wears binoculars, ready to watch the whales. Maka is barefoot with a guitar and a bottle of beer peeking out of her pack. Jake dons snowshoes, a thick sweater, and a scarf as he heads to snow country. These water-color illustrations are accompanied by simple sweet poems that tell of each cat's journey. Meet all 45 traveling felines in this debut collection.

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking and endlessly surprising history of how artisans created America, from the nation's origins to the present day.At the center of the United States' economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technologywhile craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing makers' central role in shaping America's identity. Examine any phase of the nation's struggle to define itself, and artisans are therefrom the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's maker movement. From Mother Jones to Rosie the Riveter. From Betsy Ross to Rosa Parks. From suffrage banners to the AIDS Quilt. Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to beand still remains to becrafted.

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Book SynopsisA colossal, panoramic, much-needed appraisal of the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories across six centuries Named one of the best books of 2021 by Artforum Afro-Atlantic Histories brings together a selection of more than 400 works and documents by more than 200 artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries that express and analyze the ebbs and flows between Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. The book is motivated by the desire and need to draw parallels, frictions and dialogues around the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories—their experiences, creations, worshiping and philosophy. The so-called Black Atlantic, to use the term coined by Paul Gilroy, is geography lacking precise borders, a fluid field where African experiences invade and occupy other nations, territories and cultures. The plural and polyphonic quality of “histórias” is also of note; unlike the English “histories,” the word in Portuguese carries a double meaning that encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, personal, political, economic and cultural, as well as mythological narratives. The book features more than 400 works from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as Europe, from the 16th to the 21st century. These are organized in eight thematic groupings: Maps and Margins; Emancipations; Everyday Lives; Rites and Rhythms; Routes and Trances; Portraits; Afro Atlantic Modernisms; Resistances and Activism. Artists include: Nina Chanel Abney, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Emanoel Araujo, Maria Auxiliadora, Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Paul Cézanne, Victoria Santa Cruz, Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Melvin Edwards, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ben Enwonwu, Ellen Gallagher, Theodore Géricault, Barkley Hendricks, William Henry Jones, Loïs Mailou Jones, Titus Kaphar, Wifredo Lam, Norman Lewis, Ibrahim Mahama, Edna Manley, Archibald Motley, Abdias Nascimento, Gilberto de la Nuez, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Dalton Paula, Rosana Paulino, Howardena Pindell, Heitor dos Prazeres, Joshua Reynolds, Faith Ringgold, Gerard Sekoto, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Rubem Valentim, Kara Walker and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.Trade ReviewThe page compositions are dynamic and move the reader through the book in a lively manner—complimented by the wonderfully bold and vibrant color palette. -- Kimberly Varella * AIGA *A powerful corrective has arrived in the form of “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” a visual survey of the diaspora […] An odyssey that extends from seventeenth-century Kongo to present-day Puerto Rico. -- Julian Lucas * New Yorker *A broad, long-overdue examination of the visual legacy of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora to accompany a show that’s sure to generate high interest. -- Taimur Dar * Library Journal *A feast of images and ideas... Afro-Atlantic Histories raises the stakes of so-called global modernism by boldly setting forth the conditions of an art history that is for, rather than against, a global majority—a majority with which existing institutional structures have only just begun to reckon. -- Joan Kee * Artforum *If you want to educate yourself on this vast history, spanning centuries and involving millions of people, then this art book is for you -- Charlotte Stace * Daily Art Magazine *

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Book SynopsisA celebratory visual chronicle of the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves Spanning over two centuries from around 1800 to the present day, Black American Portraits chronicles the ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves in their own eyes. Remembering Two Centuries of Black American Art, curated by David C. Driskell at LACMA 45 years ago, this book is a companion to the exhibition of the same name that reframes portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters and spaces. This selection of approximately 140 works from LACMA’s permanent collection highlights emancipation, scenes from the Harlem Renaissance, portraits from the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, multiculturalism of the 1990s and the spirit of Black Lives Matter. Countering a visual culture that often demonizes Blackness and fetishizes the spectacle of Black pain, these images center love, abundance, family, community and exuberance. Black American Portraits depicts Black figures in a range of mediums such as painting, drawing, prints, photography, sculpture, mixed media and time-based media. In addition to work by artists of African descent, Black American Portraits includes several works by artists of other backgrounds who have exemplified a thoughtfulness about, sensitivity toward and commitment to Black artists, communities, histories and subjects. Artists include: Alvin Baltrop, Edward Biberman, Bisa Butler, Jordan Casteel, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Bruce Davidson, Stan Douglas, rafa esparza, Shepard Fairey, Charles Gaines, Sargent Claude Johnson, Deana Lawson, Kerry James Marshall, Alice Neel, Lorraine O'Grady, Catherine Opie, Amy Sherald, Ming Smith, Henry Taylor, Tourmaline, Mickalene Thomas, James Van Der Zee, Carrie Mae Weems, Charles White, Kehinde Wiley and Deborah Willis.Trade ReviewA celebratory visual chronicle of the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves through their own eyes. * Outword *Included in Publisher Weekly's Spring 2023 Announcements: Art, Architecture & Photography * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisExploring the convergence of art and science in the map renderings of one of the world’s most beloved artists Marcel Proust declared View of Delft by Johannes Vermeer (1632–75) “the most beautiful painting in the world.” Indeed, viewers have been captivated by Vermeer's extraordinary art since the 19th-century rediscovery of the Dutch painter. Maps, an intricate fusion of art and science, held an important and multifaceted place in the Netherlands in the 17th century and were of particular interest to Vermeer. Of the approximately 34 paintings attributed to the Delft-based artist, wall maps and other cartographic objects are depicted in nine of them, including the renowned Officer and Laughing Girl and his masterpiece, The Art of Painting. With stunning reproductions and incisive text, this book is the most comprehensive study of the artist's depiction of wall maps to date. Drawing on rare surviving examples of the maps and other primary sources, author Rozemarijn Landsman examines this intriguing aspect of Vermeer’s work, greatly enriching and expanding our understanding of the art and life of the “Sphinx of Delft.”Trade ReviewVermeer’s Maps is a dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched labor of love. It is a beautiful book, not only in its dazzling array of maps and paintings but also in the elegance of its writing and the deftness of its arguments, which at moments seem overwhelming with its factography and data. -- Nenad Georgievski * Vintage Cafe *Questions arose concerning the purpose of these maps. Were they just products of the time's fashion, or do they give a deeper meaning to Vermeer's masterful work? These are just a few inquiries Landsman examines in Vermeer's Maps through incisive text and exceptional reproductions. -- Kame Hame * Widewalls *

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Book SynopsisReplete with complexities, abjection, beauty and joy, Women Painting Women offers new ways to imagine the portrayal of women, from Alice Neel to Jordan Casteel A thematic exploration of nearly 50 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works, Women Painting Women includes nearly 50 portraits that span the 1960s to the present. International in scope, the book recognizes female perspectives that have been underrepresented in the history of postwar figuration. Painting is the focus, as traditionally it has been a privileged medium for portraiture, particularly for white male artists. The artists here use painting and women as subject matter and as vehicles for change. They range from early trailblazers such as Emma Amos and Alice Neel to emerging artists such as Jordan Casteel, Somaya Critchlow and Apolonia Sokol. All place women—their bodies, gestures and individuality—at the forefront. The pivotal narrative in Women Painting Women is how the artists included use the conventional portrait of a woman as a catalyst to tell another story outside of male interpretations of the female body. They conceive new ways to activate and elaborate on the portrayal of women by exploring themes of the Body, Nature Personified, Selfhood and Color as Portrait. Replete with complexities, realness, abjection, beauty, complications, everydayness and joy, the portraits in this volume make way for women artists to share the stage with their male counterparts in defining the image of woman and how it has evolved. Artists include: Rita Ackermann, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Emma Amos, María Berrío, Louise Bonnet, Lisa Brice, Joan Brown, Jordan Casteel, Somaya Critchlow, Kim Dingle, Marlene Dumas, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Nicole Eisenman, Tracey Emin, Natalie Frank, Hope Gangloff, Eunice Golden, Jenna Gribbon, Alex Heilbron, Ania Hobson, Luchita Hurtado, Chantal Joffe, Hayv Kahraman, Maria Lassnig, Christiane Lyons, Danielle Mckinney, Marilyn Minter, Alice Neel, Elizabeth Peyton, Paula Rego, Faith Ringgold, Deborah Roberts, Susan Rothenberg, Jenny Saville, Dana Schutz, Joan Semmel, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Arpita Singh, Sylvia Sleigh, Apolonia Sokol, May Stevens, Claire Tabouret, Mickalene Thomas, Nicola Tyson and Lisa Yuskavage.Trade ReviewA tour de force of portraiture from women over the past half century, “women’s work” their male contemporaries could only dream of matching. -- Chad Scott * Forbes *So, how do women paint women? It's less about seeing them differently from men, than showing them different. For centuries, artists' male gaze saw women as objects of desire, idealized and voluptuous, with luscious white skin and dimpled knees. Women artists in this exhibition, like Alice Neel and Emma Amos and others, show women as differently beautiful: pregnant, overweight, sometimes despondent. As we are, wrapped in our truths. -- Susan Stemberg * NPR *

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Book SynopsisHoule’s painting blends Western abstraction, postmodernism and conceptualism with First Nations art history and techniques, challenging expectations about Indigenous aesthetics An extensive survey spanning more than 50 years, Robert Houle: Red Is Beautiful celebrates Houle’s ongoing career as an internationally recognized Indigenous artist, curator and writer, calling attention to First Nations and settler-colonialist histories through the critical lens of his impressive oeuvre. Painful personal experiences from the time he spent in residential school as a youth are brought into sharp relief through painting. Houle’s visual commentary tackles global topics including commercial appropriation, Indigenous resistance movements, land rights, religion and war, among others. A leader in challenging systemic racial biases, Houle has played a significant role at successfully introducing Indigenous art and its relationship to the contemporary art world in Canada and beyond. Rare excerpts from the artist’s archive are featured alongside major scholarly texts, poetic writings and personal anecdotes from fellow prominent Indigenous thinkers and creators, offering new insights about an artist ahead of his time. Robert Houle (born 1947) teaches at the OCADU and has collaborated on projects that seek to establish awareness of First Nations contemporary art, such as the Land, Spirit, Power exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 1992. He is represented by Kinsman Robinson Galleries in Toronto.

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Book Synopsis“That is the archaeology I am unearthing: the specter of police violence and state control over the bodies of young Black and brown people all over the world.” –Kehinde Wiley Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence features a new body of paintings and sculptures by American artist Kehinde Wiley confronting the legacies of colonialism through the visual language of the fallen figure. It expands on a subject the artist first explored in his 2008 series Down—a group of large-scale portraits of young Black men inspired by Wiley’s encounter with Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22) at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Holbein’s painting triggered an ongoing investigation into the iconography of death and sacrifice in Western art that Wiley traced across religious, mythological and historical subjects. An Archaeology of Silence extends these considerations to include men and women around the world whose senseless deaths, often unacknowledged or silenced, are transformed into a powerful elegy of global resistance against state-sanctioned violence. The resulting paintings of Black bodies struck down, wounded or dead, all referencing iconic historical paintings of slain heroes, martyrs or saints, offer a haunting meditation on the violence against Black and brown bodies through the lens of European art history. Kehinde Wiley (born 1977) is a world-renowned visual artist. Working in the mediums of painting, sculpture and video, Wiley is best known for his vibrant portrayals of contemporary African American and African-diasporic individuals that subvert the hierarchies and conventions of European and American portraiture. Wiley became the first African American artist to paint an official US Presidential portrait for former US President Barack Obama. Wiley has held solo exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, and his works are included in the collections of over 40 public institutions worldwide. He lives and works in Beijing, Dakar and New York.

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Book SynopsisThe first in-depth survey of Whitney's endless experimentation with colorThe esteemed American painter Stanley Whitney has, for 50 years, created joyful, immersive abstractions characterized by a bold, experimental palette and unique rhythm. Over the last 20 years, he has structured his paintings as loose grids: a consistent framework that frees him to work through seemingly infinite painterly variations and allows viewers to focus not on each painting's subject, but rather on our own response to color. These large-scale paintings are joined by improvisatory small paintings; drawings and prints, which constitute their own practice for Whitney; and the artist's sketchbooks, which offer a view into Whitney's engagement with the written word and politics.This traveling North American exhibition is Whitney's first museum survey, presenting 170 paintings and works on paper spanning from the 1970s to the present day. The catalog includes an introduction by exhi

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Book SynopsisDrawings, videos and murals center the experience of the Deaf community in an auditory worldIn this monograph, the groundbreaking work of the American-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim (born 1980) is explored through essays, short texts and reflections, an interview and abundant large-scale images of Kim''s work. An artist who foregrounds the visual, physical and political dimension of sound, Kim challenges the notion that sound is solely an auditory experience. Kim, whose first language is American Sign Language (ASL), uses elements from various information systems, such as musical notation, infographics and ASL, to develop a dryly humorous visual vocabulary in a variety of mediums, including performance, drawing, video, lectures and more. She aims to draw attention to the power imbalances between the hearing world and the Deaf community, as well as to celebrate the generative possibilities and creative energy that can arise from interactions betwe

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Book SynopsisPortrayals of James Baldwin and others in his circle highlight the iconic writer's activismThe American writer and activist James Baldwin (192487) considered himself a witness as he challenged perspectives on America and its history through his work. He was often recognized for speaking out against injustice when other like-minded artists, collaborators and organizers were overshadowed or silenced. By bringing together artworks that feature James Baldwin alongside portraits of other key figures who had an impact on his life, This Morning, This Evening, So Soon situates Baldwin among a pantheon of culture bearers who were instrumental in shaping his life and legacy, particularly in relationship to his advocacy for gay rights. The book accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, curated by the National Portrait Gallery''s Director of Curatorial Affairs, Rhea L. Combs, in consultation with Pulitzer Prizewinning author Hil

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Book SynopsisThe extraordinary story of the theft of priceless Chinese antiques around the world and the connection to crimes spanning more than two centurieswith present-day implications.

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Book SynopsisTo the question of "what is art?", it is often simply responded that art is whatever is produced by the artist. For John Molyneux, this clearly circular answer is deeply unsatisfying. In a tour de force spanning renaissance Italy and the Dutch Republic to contemporary leading figures, The Dialectics of Art instead approaches its subject matter as a distinct field of creative human labour that emerges alongside and in opposition to the alienation and commodification brought about by capitalism. The pieces and individuals Molyneux examines -- from Michelangelo’s Slaves to Rembrandts Jewish Bride to the vast drip paintings of Jackson Pollock – are presented as embodying the social contradictions of their times, giving art an inherently political relevance.In its relationship of creative and dialectical tension to prevailing social relationships and norms, such art points beyond the existing order of things, hinting at a potential future society not based on alienated labour in which creative production becomes the property and practice of all.Trade Review'The Dialectics of Art by John Molyneux is a reflection on the role played by the visual arts in Western society, from the Renaissance up to the present day, a reflection that is unapologetically Marxist in character. However, I urge the reader not to be turned off by that.' - Dublin Review of Books‘This book is written with less emphasis on resolving theoretical disputes in the seminar room and more on the role culture can play in activating and articulating political struggle.’ – Marx & Philosophy Review of Books‘For those interested in social change and the importance of art as a challenge to the alienating core of capitalism, The Dialectics of Art is an excellent place to start.’ – New Politics JournalTable of ContentsIntroductionWhat is art?How we judge artMichelangelo and Human EmancipationRembrandt and RevolutionPicasso: Les Desmoiselles D’AvignonSensation ExhibitionTracey EminShort Reviews: Jackson Pollock; Andy Warhol; Francis Bacon; RubensThe Liberty Of Appearing: Yasser AlwanHow Art DevelopsDialectics of ModernismConclusion

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Book Synopsis“A Nazi resistance story like none you’ve ever heard or read.” —Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers and On Desperate Ground"Every page is gripping, and the amount of new research is nothing short of mind-boggling. A brilliant book for the ages!” —Douglas Brinkley, author of American Moonshot A Stonewall Honor Book in Nonfiction Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionPaper Bullets is the first book to tell the history of an audacious anti-Nazi campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair: two French women, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute “paper bullets”—wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive fictional dialogues designed to demoralize Nazi troops occupying their adopted home on the British Channel Island of Jersey. Devising their own PSYOPS campaign, they slipped their notes into soldier’s pockets or tucked them inside newsstand magazines. Hunted by the secret field police, Lucy and Suzanne were finally betrayed in 1944, when the Germans imprisoned them and tried them in a court martial, sentencing them to death for their actions. Ultimately they survived, but even in jail, they continued to fight the Nazis by reaching out to other prisoners and spreading a message of hope. Better remembered today by their artist names, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, the couple’s actions were even more courageous because of who they were: lesbian partners known for cross-dressing and creating the kind of gender-bending work that the Nazis would come to call “degenerate art.” In addition, Lucy was half Jewish, and they had communist affiliations in Paris, where they attended political rallies with Surrealists and socialized with artists like Gertrude Stein.Paper Bullets is a compelling World War II story that has not been told before about the galvanizing power of art, and of resistance.Trade ReviewA Stonewall Honor Book in NonfictionLonglisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction'A Nazi resistance story like none you’ve ever heard or read.' —Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers and On Desperate Ground'Every page is gripping, and the amount of new research is nothing short of mind-boggling. A brilliant book for the ages!' —Douglas Brinkley, author of American Moonshot A Booklist Editors' Choice, Biography Memoir “Every page is gripping, and the amount of new research is nothing short of mindboggling. A brilliant book for the ages!” —Douglas Brinkley, Rice University Professor and bestselling author of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race “This is a Nazi resistance story like none you’ve ever heard or read, a story with two unlikely heroines who risked their lives in their subversive—and often wildly creative—struggle to face down evil. Paper Bullets prompts us to explore the boundaries of art, love, gender, and politics—and to question the true meaning of courage.”—Hampton Sides, bestselling author of In the Kingdom of Ice and On Desperate Ground “Cataloguing everything from their small but fearless acts of resistance to their harrowing stints in prison cells, author Jeffrey H. Jackson had us utterly riveted. His well-researched history goes deep into the characters of these two unlikely heroes, whose rebellion was fueled by love and compassion. Malherbe and Schwob’s inspiring story is barely known, but Paper Bullets will make you want to shout it from the rooftops.” —Apple Books (Best Book of November) “A captivating tale of queer love and resistance during World War II . . . Jackson’s research is impeccable and his writing is lively . . . Paper Bullets is a gem of a historical text about two women who stood up to power defiantly, living on their own terms.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review) “A remarkable story of creative courage . . . exceptional and inspiring.” —Booklist(starred review) “The book, at once tense and tender, is a scrupulously researched account of [Cahun and Moore's] lives. It is the first biography to comprehensively weave together their lifelong romance, radical art and fearless political resistance during World War II . . . Yet, even with its piercing wartime depictions of rationing and hunger, intimidation and depravity, and nail-biting acts of resistance, Paper Bullets is at its core a story of devotion.”—The Washington Post “A fascinating examination of community and resistance, gender and sexuality, and what it means to recognize the humanity in every person.”—Chapter 16 “Jeffrey Jackson brings to light Lucy and Suzanne’s courage and savvy in this book that reads like a classic WWII spy thriller, but with a modern focus on how these two heroes took society’s default tendency to underestimate women’s power and agency, especially during wartime, and used it to undermine the Nazis. We marvel at how they hide in plain sight as they stealthily fight the very forces trying to exterminate who they really are. And not only do they outsmart their German foes, but they survive to tell about it.” —Emily Yellin, author of Our Mothers’ War “A unique WWII history and absorbing story of two bold, unconventional women.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Paper Bullets has it all — it's a tale of romance in spite of the odds, a slice of art history, and an inspirational World War II story. It is, simply put, nearly impossible to put down.” —Memphis Flyer “Impeccably researched and meticulously sourced, Paper Bullets is a welcome and timely portrait of courage and creativity.” —Bookpage “Readers will delight in this unique and well-crafted story of wartime resistance.” — Publishers Weekly “This is a satisfying contribution to World War II scholarship, highlighting a sophisticated, cultured, and still grassroots resistance effort.” —Library Journal “Paper Bullets reads like a well-paced, nail-biting thriller. Jeffrey H Jackson leads us through a novel-like tale of intrigue, scandal and plucky war-time resistance . . . The power of art and the impact of political artists makes for a gripping rollercoaster ride that we thoroughly enjoyed.” —Daily Art Magazine “A gripping story. The lesbian couple Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe deployed their intellectual capacities and peacetime experience in dissembling their identities to challenge the German occupiers with artistic 'paper bullets.' The contest between the baffled Nazis and the crafty traitors animates this historical thriller.” —Bonnie G. Smith, author of Women In World History “A regular occurrence in queer history is erasure. This book allows the past to speak for itself. Jackson elevates and highlights these Nazi-fighters and avant-garde artists—better known today as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore—and reminds us to use spiritual arms instead of firearms in the face of growing division and hate.”—Tommy Kha, artist and winner of the 2019 Creative Review Photography Annual “Riveting. Breaks new ground in our understanding of collaboration and resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe and the impact of women in wartime. A must-read for anyone interested in World War II, resistance, women's history, or the defense of democratic ideals during times of tyranny and oppression.”—Michael D. Bess, Vanderbilt University Professor and author of Choices Under Fire

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Book SynopsisGerman artist Neo Rauch, championed as “the painter of the zeitgeist” by The New York Times’s Roberta Smith, presents new paintings in PROPAGANDA.Rauch is widely celebrated for his captivating compositions that bring together figurative painting and surrealism into an entirely new kind of visual encounter. They often hint at broader narratives and histories—seemingly reconnecting with artistic traditions of realism—but they remain dreamlike and impossible to reduce to a single story. Though his art is highly refined and executed with great technical skill, Rauch himself stresses the intuitive, deeply personal nature of how he works. As the artist notes, “My process is far less a reflection than it is drawing from the sediments of my past, which occurs in an almost trance-like state.”Eight large-scale canvases and seven smaller, more intimately scaled works continue the artist’s exploration of figuration and the ambiguous nature of meaning in visual art. In some of the larger works, the saturation of the canvas with characters, objects, and, forms, all rendered at different scales and in conflicting arrangements, creates a collage-like quality—a figurative scrapbook of Rauch’s personal iconography. The publication features a short story by German novelist and playwright Daniel Kehlmann, which was inspired by the paintings in this book. The fantastical text moves between present-day New York and an unknown time of enchanted forests, knights, and witches, exploring the many layers found in Rauch’s canvases. Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong in 2019, Neo Rauch: PROPAGANDA is available in both English only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

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Book SynopsisKerry James Marshall is one of America’s greatest living painters. History of Painting presents a groundbreaking body of new work that engages with the history of the medium itself. In Kerry James Marshall: History of Painting, the artist has widened his scope to include both figurative and nonfigurative works that deal explicitly with art history, race, and gender, as well as paintings that force us to reexamine how artworks are received in the world and in the art market. In all the paintings in this book, Marshall’s critique of history and of dominant white narratives is present, even as the subjects of the paintings move between reproductions of auction catalogues, abstract works, and scenes of everyday life. Essays by Hal Foster and Teju Cole help readers navigate Marshall’s masterful vision, decoding complexly layered works such as Untitled (Underpainting), 2018, and Marshall’s own artistic philosophy. This catalogue is published on the occasion of Marshall’s eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner, London in 2018.

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Book SynopsisLauded by Jerry Saltz as “one of the most reactionary yet radical visions of art,” The Young and Evil tells the story of a group of artists and writers active during the first half of the twentieth century, when homosexuality was as problematic for American culture as figuration was for modernist painting. These artists—including Paul Cadmus, Fidelma Cadmus Kirstein, Charles Henri Ford, Jared French, Margaret Hoening French, George Platt Lynes, Bernard Perlin, Pavel Tchelitchew, George Tooker, Alexander Jensen Yow, and their circle—were new social creatures, playfully and boldly homosexual at a time when it was both criminalized and pathologized. They pursued a modernism of the body—driven by eroticism and bounded by intimacy, forming a hothouse world within a world that doesn’t nicely fit any subsequent narrative of modern American art. In their work, they looked away from abstraction toward older sources and models—classical and archaic forms of figuration and Renaissance techniques. What might be seen as a reactionary aesthetic maneuver was made in the service of radical content—endeavoring to depict their own lives. Their little-known history is presented here through never-before-exhibited photographs, sculptures, drawings, ephemera, and rarely seen major paintings—offering the first view of its kind into their interwoven intellectual, artistic, and personal lives. Edited by Jarrett Earnest, who also curated the exhibition, The Young and Evil features new scholarship by art historians Ann Reynolds and Kenneth E. Silver and an interview with Alexander Jensen Yow by Michael Schreiber.

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive and inspiring collection of essays by Larry Neal, a founder of the seminal Black Arts Movement“The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America.” —Larry Neal, The Drama Review, 1968 Larry Neal, a poet, dramatist, and critic, was a founding figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s in New York. Writing as the arts editor for Liberator magazine, a radical journal published in Harlem, Neal called for Black artists to produce work that was politically oriented, rooted in the Black experience, and written for the Black community. Engaging with fiction, music, drama, and poetry in his texts, he challenged the dominance of the Western art-historical canon and charged Black artis

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Book SynopsisThis seminal 1929 surrealist novel by the painter Giorgio de Chirico merges the realms of dream and reality. In the artist's only novel, de Chirico invites the reader into a world where language, time, space, and meaning are fluid, highlighting themes of mystery, myth, and the uncanny. Following the titular character Hebdomeros as he embarks on a series of philosophical musings and bizarre experiences divorced from a specific place or time, Hebdomeros embraces ambiguity in a profound exploration of the subconscious mind. Highly visual passages evoke the landscapes and compositions of de Chirico's metaphysical paintings, and non sequiturs mirror the freedom that Surrealism allowed for in art of all categories. An introduction by the scholar Fabio Benzi contextualizes de Chirico's work within a broader modernist framework, highlighting its influence on surrealism and its resonance with the literary and artistic movements of the early twentieth century.

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Book Synopsis The strength and vitality of Denver artist Paul Kontny?s work reflected his passion for life and the inspiration he found in his environment. Happy to have escaped death during World War II, he relished the opportunity to paint and sculpt those subjects that fascinated him. He took images from the visual world and recast them in works ranging from the representational to the abstract and never ceased to evolve in a career that spanned more than fifty years. Kontny?s creative output?works on paper, sculptures, and oils done in his signature marble dust technique?derived from his keen observation of people and the world around him, whether in Europe or on his trips to North Africa, Central and South America, and the Pacific or later in the United States and Mexico.Paul Kontny: A Modern Artist in Europe and America is rich in the history of early twentieth-century Poland and the plight of soldiers conscripted into the German army?and the life of an architect dedicated to helping rebuild and then embarking on a transcontinental life as an artist. The book includes photographs and images of Kontny?s life and travels, input from friends, collectors, and family, and more than 100 color reproductions of his striking and varied works. Published in Association with the Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art.

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Book SynopsisPrescient prints from the golden age of Dutch satire This volume explores the satirical visual strategies that early modern Netherlandish printmakers—such as Joan Blaeu, Romeyn de Hooghe, Willem Jacobsz and Claes Jansz Visscher—used to memorialize historical events, lionize (or demonize) domestic and international leaders, and instigate collective action. While some of their prints employ visual puns that even the illiterate could enjoy, others were captioned in Latin, French or Dutch, prompting educated elites across Europe to consider the relationship between text and image in earnest. Published for an exhibit at Krannert Art Museum, Paper Knives, Paper Crowns provides a chronological arc and thematic overview of Netherlandish political prints, addressing multiple types of printmaking as well as the medium’s relationship to other art forms, engaging with art historical scholarship and studies of early modern political history and theory in the process.

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Book SynopsisCelebrate more than three decades of filmmaking by diving into the brilliant, twisted mind of Quentin Tarantino, and discover the artistic process of an Oscar-winning legend.Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1963, Quentin Tarantino spent many Saturday evenings during his childhood accompanying his mother to the movies, nourishing a love of film that was, over the course of his life, to become all-consuming. The script for his first movie took him four years to complete: My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987), a seventy-minute film in which he both acted and directed. The script for his second film, Reservoir Dogs (1992), took him just under four weeks to complete. When it debuted, he was immediately hailed as one of the most exciting new directors in the industry. Known for his highly cinematic visual style, out-of-sequence storytelling, and grandiose violence, Tarantino’s films have provoked both praise and criticism over the course of his career. They’ve also won him a host of awards—including Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTA awards—usually for his original screenplays. His oeuvre includes the cult classic Pulp Fiction, bloody revenge saga Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and historical epics Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood.  Featuring an all-new chapter on the director’s latest award-winning film Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, this stunning retrospective catalogs each of Quentin Tarantino’s movies in fascinating detail. The book is a tribute to a unique directing and writing talent, celebrating an uncompromising, passionate director’s enthralling career at the heart of cult filmmaking.

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Book SynopsisA visual journey of Caribbean art profiling more than 60 contemporary Caribbean artists, curated by award winning multidisciplinary artist and textile surface designer, Malene Barnett​. Through powerful interviews with more than 60 artists and designers of Caribbean heritage, accompanied by gorgeous photographs, Crafted Kinship takes readers on a unique journey through the world of Black Caribbean creativity. Each maker crafts a kinship with the land, the people, the culture of their country of origin. Their art explores and reflects deeply on themes like African origins, ancestors, Black womanhood/Black manhood, identity, joy, memory, and the complicated and painful history of migration and diaspora. An art that is more often than not multidisciplinary, created by makers who eschew traditional labels by reshaping the boundaries around art and design. Curated by Malene Barnett, an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and textile s

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Book SynopsisNAMED A BEST NEW POTTERY BOOK TO READ IN 2022 BY THE BOOK AUTHORITYLavishly illustrated with over 250 full-color photographs of unique designs and rare methods, providing an in-depth look at the pottery produced in the FayoumThe Fayoum, a broad, fertile depression in Egypt’s Western Desert, known for its great salt lake, its rich green fields, and its unique pharaonic and Greco-Roman remains, is also home to three very different centers of pottery production. The potters of Kom Oshim specialize in decorated garden pots and other utilitarian ware, and guard the special secret of how to make the largest clay vessels in Egypt, up to an extraordinary two and a half meters tall. At al-Nazla, ancient traditions are kept alive, as members of a single extended family continue to use millennia-old techniques passed down from generation to generation, hand-forming among other things their distinctive spherical water jars with amazing dexterity and speed. In the small village of Tunis, the establishment of a pottery school by a Swiss couple in 1990 led to a complete transformation, and the village now hosts more than twenty-five pottery workshops and showrooms, whose products are sold in Cairo, London, and New York.In this lively insight into a varied and vital craft, the author reveals the stories of the three villages and the skilled potters who make their living there, looking at how they learned their trade and how they work, from the preparation of the clay to the formation of the pots on the wheel or by hand, to the decoration, the glazing, and the firing, and finally to the display or distribution and sale of the finished product.For past and future travelers to Egypt, lovers of the craft of pottery, practitioners, and collectors, this beautifully illustrated exploration of the ceramics of the Fayoum will inspire and enchant.Trade ReviewA Best New Pottery Book To Read In 2022 (The Book Authority)"An informative and lyrical celebration of the Fayoum, the potters, and their craft, Fayoum Pottery balances information and historical context with an almost poetic description of time and place. This is a book I’ve been waiting for."—Carol Sidky, Louis Farouk (London)"The production of pottery is central to three villages in the Fayoum of Egypt. This book presents a close look at each pottery’s distinct techniques, wares, and business." —Ceramics Monthly"A vivid and intimate portrait of the life and work of contemporary potters in the Fayoum"—AramcoWorld"A beautifully illustrated and thoroughly researched look at pottery making in Egypt that will appeal to anyone interested in the art form."—Library Journal"This well-researched, beautifully illustrated book describes the remarkable pottery traditions that have been evolving for thousands of years in the Fayoum oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert . . . Recommended."—CHOICE"Inherently fascinating and impressively informative, Fayoum Pottery: Ceramic Arts and Crafts in an Egyptian Oasis will have a strong and enduring appeal to lovers of the craft of pottery—both practitioners, and collectors alike."—Midwest Book Review

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Book SynopsisChristianIslamic encounters through religious arts, architecture, and material culture in the medieval eraThe coexistence of Christianity and Islam in the medieval Mediterranean led to an interchange of knowledge in architecture and material culture that went well beyond religious and geographical boundaries. The use of Islamic objects in Christian contexts, the conversion of churches into mosques, and the mobility of craftsmen are only some manifestations of this process. From crosses found in mosques to European-Christian coins with pseudo-shahada inscriptions, medieval material culture is rich with visual evidence of the two faiths intermingling in both individual objects and monuments. In this volume, thirteen international scholars explore various aspects of pan-Mediterranean Christian-Islamic encounters in material culture and art, from textiles to precious oils, and from metalwork to ceramics, covering most of the Mediterranean, as well as parts of its extended hinterland, from Spain and Italy to Egypt and Georgia. Within this frame, one of the most relevant, yet underexplored lines of investigation is that of the aesthetic space, the notion that aesthetic pleasure transcends boundaries, paving the way to a cross-religious experience and appreciation. Indeed, God is beautiful, and He loves beauty, as mentioned in a Hadith narration, a universal cry of visual beauty that resonates with all cultures and civilizations.Contributors:Paschalis Androudis Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, GreeceFaruk Bilici Inalco, Paris, FranceMaria Bormpoudaki Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Piraeus, GreeceSami Luigi De Giosa University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab EmiratesHélène Fragaki University of Augsburg, Augsburg, GermanyHani Hamza Independent scholar, Cairo, EgyptAna Cabrera Lafuente Instituto de Turismo de España (Turespaña/Tourspain), Madrid, Spain Alison Ohta Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, London, United KingdomRichard Piran McClary University of York, York, United Kingdom Nino Simonishvili Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, GeorgiaNikolaos Vryzidis Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, GreeceArielle Winnik Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, United States

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Book SynopsisCAR MA is artist and musician Alison Mosshart’s first printed collection of paintings, photographs, short stories, and poetry. It is a book about cars, rock n’ roll, and love. It’s a book about America, performance, and life on the road. It’s a book about fender bender portraiture, story tellin' tire tracks, and the never- ending search for the spirit under the hood. ​Mosshart imagines the auto body shop like some other Coney Island. And America’s highways- the last great roller coasters. Shows us that the engine on fire is connected to the guitar feeding back since birth. And the sensation of walking on stage and facing an audience is like the laugh before the scream in a car without brakes. She ruminates that automobiles- with their doors and mirrors and windows, engines and wheels and radios- portray us. Mirror our need to be in or to exit, our inward reflections and outward visions, our lifetimes of tinkering with the mysterious heart. That which runs until it doesn’t. Throughout history the car has been a symbol of freedom and hopeful adventure. It stands to reason it is also a symbol of our subsequent spinning out… over things we never thought could happen during a song that fucking good with the volume up that fucking loud. If you’ve ever found yourself feeling holy, pulling out of the gas station with a full tank, like the last beautiful free soul on this planet- This book is for you. In fact it’s probably about you.Trade ReviewCAR MA is a love letter to the motorcar, a book about rock & roll and love.“Part road diary, part automobile love song, part personal history, Car Ma dives deep into the soul of the American drive.”

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Book SynopsisA revelatory, beautifully produced compendium of the influential Japanese commercial design journal, with posters, billboards, shop window displays and moreFrom 1928 to 1930, Tokyo publisher Ars issued The Complete Commercial Artist: a fully illustrated journal of commercial design for both commercial retail spaces and print design. Featuring countless original designs, its 24 volumes were dedicated to topics ranging from posters, packaging, flyers, page layout and typography to neon signage, billboards and shop window displays. Under the guidance of lead editor and writer Hamada Masuji, a passionate advocate for commercial design, the publication became the most importantand visually dazzlingdocument of Japanese design in its time.This generous volume from Letterform Archive Books shares hundreds of exuberant and whimsical pages from all 24 volumes of the now-rare publication. An extensive historical essay and volume-by-volume walk-throughs by art

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Book SynopsisR. Sikoryak is the master of the pop culture pastiche. In Masterpiece Comics, he interpreted classic literature with defining twentieth-century comics. With Terms and Conditions, he made the unreadable contract that everyone signs, and no one reads, readable. He employs his magic yet again to investigate the very framework of the country with Constitution Illustrated. By visually interpreting the complete text of the supreme law of the land with more than a century of American pop culture icons, Sikoryak distills the very essence of the government legalese from the abstract to the tangible, the historical to the contemporary. Among Sikoryak s spot-on unions of government articles and amendments with famous comic-book characters: the Eighteenth Amendment that instituted prohibition is articulated with Homer Simpson running from Chief Wiggum; the Fourteenth Amendment that solidifies citizenship to all people born and naturalized in the United States is personified by Ms. Marvel; and, of course, the Nineteenth Amendment offering women the right to vote is a glorious depiction of Wonder Woman breaking free from her chains. American artists from George Herriman (Krazy Kat) and Charles Schulz (Peanuts) to Raina Telgemeier (Sisters) and Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For) are homaged, with their characters reimagined in historical costumes and situations. We the People has never been more apt.

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Book SynopsisTwo of Canada's most famous visual artists take on the book medium in their own hilarious wayLibrary is a collection of paintings by two of Canada's most influential contemporary artists, Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber. From the simple premise of the book title comes a series of images that are laugh-out-loud funny. A collection of book covers adorned with titles painted in simple handwritten fonts are displayed on brightly colored hardboard. Each book forms part of an ongoing series Dumontier and Farber started in 2009.In Dumontier and Farber's Library, titles like I Lost the Human Race, Change Your Relationship to Your Unchangeable Past, and I Have a Medical Condition That Makes It So I Don't Have to Talk to You offer surprising and astute observations, all in the duo's characteristic deadpan style. The simplicity of the shapes and text evokes an immediate but lasting profundity, with each piece causing one to wonder about the

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Book SynopsisA personal and intimate perspective on one of Canada''s most prominent 20th century multidisciplinary artists, who was once described as "abstraction’s poet-philosopher."Charles Gagnon (1934-2003) was a painter, photographer and filmmaker considered by many to be an important figure in Quebec and Canadian art in the 20th century.His early career emerged alongside the American Abstract Expressionists and his growing multidisciplinary practice broke away from the singularity of painting shared by his Montreal contemporaries of the Automatistes and the Plasticiens. The complexity and depth of his work as a painter, photographer, and filmmaker was distinguished by a probing, introspective quality. His paintings were simultaneously rigid and free-flowing, with self-imposed rules and structure contrasted by rich fracture and gestural brush work. Across all disciplines he played with multiple levels of perception, and many works evoke the liminal space of the threshold, or multi-plane spaces.In Charles Gagnon: The Colour of Time, the Sound of Space, this long-standing multidisciplinary work is brought into full view with texts that explore Gagnon’s various practices, from painting to photography to film. An English-language essay by art historian and curator Roald Nasgaard chronicles Gagnon’s artistic evolution from his early years in New York in the 1950s to his final productive years in the late 1990s in Quebec, and situates him within an expanded international historical context of artists, artworks, and art movements. Filmmaker and professor Olivier Asselin’s French-language essay engages Gagnon’s use of different media, including the role of sound and music in his artworks. Michiko Yajima Gagnon, the wife of the late artist, gives insight into the inseparability of everyday life and Charles’s creative undertakings: his friendships with other artists (Tōru Takemitsu, Lee Friedlander), travel (to New York, Japan, and, particularly, the American Southwest), and the relationship between the landscapes surrounding his studios and his artwork.Featuring more than 250 art reproductions and archival images, Charles Gagnon is an intimate portrait of an artist and the celebration of a life’s work.

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Book SynopsisAn eighty-year overview of wood and argillite carving by Indigenous women artists on the Northwest Coast.Though women of the Northwest Coast have long carved poles, canoes, panels, and masks, many of these artists have not become as well known outside their communities as their male counterparts. These artists are cherished within their communities for helping to keep traditional carving practices alive, and for maintaining the dances, songs, and ceremonies that are intertwined with visual art production. This book, and an associated exhibition at the Audain Art Museum, gathers a range of sculptural formats by Indigenous women in order to expand the discourse of carving in the region. Both the exhibition and publication are co-curated by Dana Claxton, artist, filmmaker and head of the University of British Columbia’s Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory; and Dr. Curtis Collins, the AAM’s Director & Chief Curator. Commentaries by Skeena Reece, Claxton, and Marika Swan, and interviews with artists Dale Campbell and Mary Anne Barkhouse are presented alongside more than one hundred artworks from public and private collections across North America, including several newly commissioned pieces.Featured artists include: Ellen Neel (Kwakwaka''wakw, 1916-1966) Freda Diesing (Haida, 1925-2002) Doreen Jensen (Gitxsan, 1933-2009) Susan Point (Musqueam, b. 1952) Dale Campbell (Tahltan, b. 1954) Marianne Nicolson (Kwakwaka’wakw, b. 1969) Arlene Ness (Gitxsan, b. 1970s) Melanie Russ (Haida, b. 1977) Marika Swan (Nuu-chah-nulth, b. 1982) Morgan Asoyuf (Ts’msyen, b. 1984) Cori Savard (Haida, b. 1985) Cherish Alexander (Gitwangak, b. 1987) Stephanie Anderson (Wetsuwet’en, b. 1991) Veronica Waechter (Gitxsan, b. 1995)

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Book SynopsisA testament to the impacts of colonization and a record of adaptation and resourcefulness, Worlds on Paper presents never-before-published drawings from artists in Kinngait (Cape Dorset) made between 1957 and 1990. These works lie outside of the artistic norms typically associated with Inuit art of the era, revealing a community in a time of transformation.Inuit works on paper have long been renowned for scenes of wildlife, hunting and camping, as well as depictions of animistic spirituality and transformation. Historically, drawings were selected from the Kinngait Drawing Archive to be made into prints at the discretion of tastemakers from the South. The recently digitized 90,000-item drawings archive (1957-1990) from the celebrated printmaking studio in Kinngait is an unparalleled cultural and social document. Housing scores of fascinating and revealing drawings of community, family, contact with newcomers, and life on the land, as well as seldom seen portraits and examples of Inuit Futurism, Worlds on Paper presents a vivid record of lived experience and personal stories long buried.This groundbreaking publication and exhibition, led by Inuit curator Emily Laurent Henderson and staged by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, animates the legacy of Kinngait Studio and its role in generating, nurturing, and promoting artists who continue to challenge expectations and provoke fresh understandings. With essays by Susan Aglukark, Kyle Aleekuk, Mark Bennett, Napatsi Folger, Jamesie Fournier, Janice Grey, Jonas Laurent Henderson, Jessica Kotierk, Nicole Luke, Malayah Maloney, Jocelyn Piirainen, Krista Ulujuk Zawadski, and others, Worlds on Paper explores cultural transformation through the lens of art.

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Book SynopsisAn eclectically curated collection reveals a kaleidoscopic portrait of the many and diverse talents working in and around BC’s art scene over the past forty years.As a musician, performer, activist, collector, John David Lawrence has long held an important, if underrecognized, position in Vancouver’s creative community. After settling in the city in the mid-1980s he participated in and advocated for performance spaces and artist-run centres, building deep roots in the community, and since 2000 he has been the proprietor of DoDa Antiques. Over several decades, Lawrence amassed an idiosyncratic personal collection that includes ceramics, Indigenous art, jewelry, folk art, photography, and plant life. Through the stories of some of these pieces and of Lawrence himself, as well as extensive new photography of his holdings, The Place of Objects illuminates the rich cultural production that is often overlooked by Vancouver’s established artistic community.Released to coincide with a Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition of 300 ceramic works from Lawrence’s collection, The Place of Objects opens with an engrossing conversation between scholar Dr. Michael J. Prokopow and Lawrence that uses specific objects and the diverse areas of his collections to reveal Lawrence’s enigmatic biography and ponder the broader cultural obsession with things. The second half of the book features texts by artists, scholars, friends, and curators who highlight objects of art with historical, cultural, or personal significance. The publication also includes a visual index—a two-dimensional genogram of the objects in his collection—to map the tentacular threads that have informed Lawrence’s collecting practices over the decades.Contributors:Glenn Alteen, Daina Augaitis, Nicholas Bell, Allan Collier, Diana Freundl, Donna Hagerman, Richard Hill, Mandy Ginson, Jenn Jackson, Diane Jillings, Hilary Letwin, Carol Mayer, Siobhan McCracken Nixon, Edmond Melnychuk, Michael J. Prokopow, Esther Rausenberg, Stephanie Rebick, among others.Artists:Mollie Carter, John Charnetski, Stanley Clarke, Hans Coper, Olea Davis, Walter Dexter, Beau Dick, Denny Dixon, Pat Dixon, Sandra Dolph, Axel Ebring, Gathie Falk, Ken Foster, Ken Gerberick, Herta Gerz, Kathleen Hamilton, Frances Hatfield, Richard Hawbolt, Michael Henry, Gillian Hodge, Robin Hopper, Ben Houstie, Henry Hunt, Gordon Hutchens, Avery Huyghe, Tam Irving, Elsie John, Charmian Johnson, Thomas Kakinuma, Bob Kingsmill, Zoltan Kiss, Roy Kiyooka, Zeljko Kujundzic, Sam Kwan, Corey Larocque, Heinz Laffin, David Lambert, Laura Wee Láy Láq, Bernard Leach, Janet Leach, Glenn Lewis, Luke Lindoe, Des Loan, Brian Lynch, Mad Dog, Edmond Melnychuk, Grace Melvyn, Joseph Mihalic, Santo Mignosa, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Ellen Neel, Gailan Ngan, Wayne Ngan, Oraf, Leonard Osborne, Mary Osborne, Davide Pan, Randy Pandora, Bill Reid, John Reeve, Bill Rennie, Hilda Ross, Debra Sloan, Russell Smith, Ian Steele, Roger Stribley, Gordon Thorlaksson, Ron Tribe, Hiro Urakami, Jan Wade, Jean Marie Weakland, among others.

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Book Synopsis'There's no place like home'; 'safe as houses'; 'home is where the heart is': ideas of the house and home are rich in cultural cliches and contradictory meanings. Playing at Home explores the different ways in which artists have engaged with this popular everyday theme - from 'broken homes' to haunted houses, doll's houses, mobile homes and greenhouses. The book considers how issues of gender, identity, class and place can overlap and interact in our relationships with 'home', and how certain artworks disturb our comfortable ideas of what it means to be 'at home'. While other books have touched on examples of the 'uncanny' and surreal presentation of houses in art, this one argues that an understanding of the role of irony and play, and the critical potential of the 'everyday', are equally important in our interpretations of these intriguing works. The author draws on the work of philosophers, cultural theorists and art critics to enrich our understanding of this genre. Covering the work of well-known artists, including Tracey Emin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Rachel Whiteread, Cornelia Parker, Vito Acconci, Michael Landy, Richard Wilson, Mike Kelley and Louise Bourgeois, the book also looks at artists who travel across continents, for whom home is a shifting notion, such as Do-Ho Suh and Pascale Marthine Tayou. Discussing a wide range of media, including installation and film, and richly illustrated, Playing at Home is a compelling survey of one of contemporary art's popular themes.

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Book SynopsisAmong his many captivating exploits, the French artist Yves Klein (1928 - 1962) invented his own brand of colour: the inimitable International Klein Blue. Denounced as a charlatan and feted as a mystic, Klein scandalized the art world with his enthusiastic embrace of the highs and lows of post-war mass culture and his exploitation of controversial publicity tactics. Today it is clear that Klein was not only one of the most radical artists of the post-war period but an iconic role model for contemporary practices: he reinvented abstract painting, conceived new horizons for performance art and was a trailblazer in the interdisciplinary realm of land, body and conceptual art. Nuit Banai examines the relationship between Klein's brief but incandescent life and his wide repertoire of artistic practices. The book establishes that Klein's brilliance was above all performative, as he created and inhabited a cast of public identities: avant-garde artist, bourgeois, judo expert, painter, charlatan, collaborator, politician, middle-class mystic, fascist and showman.With each persona, Klein invented new ways to communicate his paradoxical message of spiritual enlightenment and Dada iconoclasm to an unsuspecting, bemused and entranced audience. This new critical biography illuminates Klein's influential and multifaceted artistic career. Alongside contemporaries like Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys and postmodern chameleons like Cindy Sherman, Klein's protean performance of multiple roles stands as a landmark example of the artist's transformational status. An invaluable introduction to the life and work of this flamboyant individual, Yves Klein will appeal to students and scholars of Klein as well as those interested in contemporary art and twentieth-century culture.

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Book SynopsisDedicated to art practices that mobilize the model of the archive, this book demonstrates the ways in which such 'archival artworks' probe the possibilities of what art is and what it can do. Through a variety of media, methodologies and perspectives, the artists surveyed here also challenge the principles on which the notions of organization, evidence and documentation are built. The earliest examples of the modern archival artwork were made in the 1930s, but it is since the 1960s that archival principles have increasingly been used by artists to inform, structure and shape their works. This includes practices that consist of archive construction, archaeological investigation, record keeping or the use of archived materials; however, they also interrogate the principles, claims and effects of the archive. Staging the Archive shows how artists read the concept of the archive against the grain, questioning not only what the archive is and can be but what materials, images or ideas can be archived. In this book Ernst van Alphen examines these archival artists and artworks in detail, setting them within their social, political and aesthetic contexts. Exploring the work of Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Broodthaers, Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Fiona Tan and Sophie Calle, among others, this book reveals how modern and contemporary artists have used and contested the notion of the archive to establish new relationships to history, information and data.

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Book SynopsisWhen R.S. Thomas died in 2000, two seminal studies of modern art were found on his bookshelves - Herbert Read's Art Now (1933) and Surrealism (1936), edited by Read and containing essays by key figures in the Surrealist movement. Some three dozen previously unknown poems handwritten by Thomas were then discovered between the pages of the two books, poems written in response to a selection of the many reproductions of modern art in the Read volumes, including works by Henry Moore, Edvard Munch, George Grosz, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte and Graham Sutherland - many of whom were Thomas's near contemporaries. These poems are published here for the first time - alongside the works of modern art that inspired them. Thomas's readings of these often unsettling images demonstrate a willingness to confront, unencumbered by illusions, a world in which old certainties have been undermined. Personal identity has become a source of anguish, and relations between the sexes a source of disquiet and suspicion.Thomas's vivid engagements with the works of art produce a series of dramatic encounters haunted by the recurring presence of conflict and by the struggle of the artist who, in a frequently menacing world, is 'too brave to dream'. At times we are offered an unflinching vision of 'a landscape God / looked at once and from which / later he withdrew his gaze'.

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Book SynopsisArt Since 1980 charts the story of art in contemporary global culture while holding up a mirror to our society. With over 300 pictures of painting, photography and sculpture, as well as installation, performance and video art, we are led on an illuminating journey via the individuals and communities who have shaped art internationally.The political and cultural transformations of the early 1980s developed a new era of accord between communist states and western-style economics. The art world has since been reconceived and today we see record-breaking sales of contemporary art and a dramatic rise in the number of students taking courses in the visual and performing arts.Kalb approaches art from multiple angles, addressing issues of artistic production, display, critical reception and social content. Alongside his analysis of specific works of art, he also builds a framework for readers to increase their knowledge and enhance critical and theoretical thinking.

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Book SynopsisMunch's The Scream. Van Gogh's Starry Night. Rodin's The Thinker. Monet’s water lilies. Constable's landscapes. The nineteenth-century gave us a wealth of artistic riches so memorable in their genius that we can picture many of them at an instant. However, at the time their avant-garde nature was the cause of much controversy. Professor Laurie Schneider Adams brings vividly to life the paintings, sculpture, photography and architecture of the period vividly with her infectious enthusiasm for art and detailed explorations of individual works. Offering fascinating biographical details and the relevant social, political and cultural context, Adams provides the reader with an understanding of both how revolutionary the works were at the time and of their enduring appeal.

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Book SynopsisOur world is saturated with images. Overwhelmed by this proliferation of visual stimuli, our gaze becomes increasingly bored and distracted. Do we ever really read and engage with images? Can they ever provide the sense of meaningfulness we crave? French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas confronted and subverted these questions. A superficial reading of his works might indicate an ambivalence if not a wholesale critique of the visual, whose mode of signification remains, for him, objectified, finite and flat. Yet an enigmatic statement - 'Ethics is an optics' - recurred throughout his work. Hagi Kenaan takes this mysterious idea as the starting point for a strikingly original philosophical argument on the place of visuality in Levinas' ethics. The Ethics of Visuality analyses Levinas' philosophy of the human face in order to show how his vision of 'Otherness'(alterity and transcendence) can open up for us a new and surprising kind of optics that is so needed for an ethical living in the contemporary world. Where other critical approaches have largely undermined Levinas' ambivalence towards the visual, The Ethics of Visuality uncovers the relevance of Levinas' bias against the visual to developing a radical philosophy/theory of visual meaning in which the aesthetic is always already intertwined with the ethical.Trade ReviewAn excellent book. The questions it asks are most acute and they renew the analysis of the question of the Face in Levinas's philosophy, which is quite an achievement. Dr Hagi Kenaan is not content with explaining the main lines of Levinas's thought on the Face, he proposes a fine phenomenological approach of what it means "to see" in general and what it means to see a Face in particular, while giving concrete examples which is a very good pedagogical approach too. His knowledge of the different phenomenological philosophers is excellent and he refers to them in a most appropriate way. His analysis of the act of speaking (dibour) and of its subtle and necessary link to the Face, is also very well done. I also want to underline Dr Hagi Kenaan's qualities of explanations and rational deductions in his book. This is a fine and clever book. Professor Catherine Chalier, Professor of Philosophy, University of Paris X- Nanterre Kenaan's brilliant study reveals what Levinas' 'ethical turn' has to teach us about the ethical potential of the visual. His study offers nothing less than a guide for restoring us to an ethics of vision in our postmodern world. It is an urgent, compelling and, ultimately, hopeful work. Martin Berger, Professor and Chair, History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California at Santa Cruz. The Ethics of Visuality is an extraordinary achievement. The author offers a brilliant meditation not only on Levinas' thought but also through it, engaging and going beyond it, culminating in profound insights. It is a must-read for anyone seriously interested not only in visuality but also in the very condition of what it means to speak with responsibility about appearance. Lewis R. Gordon, Professor of Philosophy, African American Studies and Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut at Storrs and author of Disciplinary Decadence.Table of ContentsContents Preface: The Rule of the Frontal Ethics is an Optics: Preliminary Remarks Face 1: The Gleam of Infinity Face 2: How a Face Looks Face 3: Face and Object Face 4: Why A Face, All of a Sudden Face 5: Vision, Gaze, Other Face 6: Face and Resistance Face 7: Outside Talk 1The Face of Language Talk 2Expression Talk 3The First Word Talk 4Saying and Betraying Talk 5Word, Window, Screen Talk 6Listening to a Big Bird Talk 7The Open References

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Book SynopsisClaude Cahun is the most important artist you've never heard of - until now. Writer, photographer, lesbian; revolutionary activist, surrealist, resistance fighter - Cahun witnessed the birth of the Paris avant-garde, lived through two World Wars and, as 'Der Soldat ohne Namen', risked death by inciting mutiny on Nazi-occupied Jersey. And yet, she's until recently been merely a peripheral figure in these world-shaping events, relegated by academics to the footnotes in the history of art, sexual politics and revolutionary movements of the last century. Now more so than ever, Cahun demands a significant presence in the history of surrealism and the avant-garde - even, in the literary canon of early twentieth-century literature. Indeed her one major book, Disavowals, is a masterpiece of anti-memoir writing. Much has been made of her as a photographer, but Claude Cahun 'the writer' was one of the most radical and prescient leftists of the century. At a time when her star is rising like never before Claude Cahun: The Soldier With No Name represents the first explicit attempt in English to posit Cahun as an important figure in her own right, and to popularise one of the most prescient and influential artists of her generation.

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