History of art Books

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Book SynopsisHave you ever dreamt of having your own private museum tour with one of the world’s most-celebrated artists? Take a walk through art history in the company of one of the pre-eminent American painters of our time, Alex Katz. Describing his personal encounters with the work of over 90 key artists, Katz’s observations offer a fluent, vivid and incisive view, making Looking at Art with Alex Katz the perfect guide both for those looking for an introduction to the world of visual art, and anyone looking for a fresh view on their favorite artist. Includes entries on: Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Paul Cézanne, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Doig, Alberto Giacometti, Philip Guston, David Hockney, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Edvard Munch, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Rembrandt, Henri Rousseau, Titian, Luc Tuymans, Vincent van Gogh, Johannes Vermeer and more.Trade Review“An immensely readable book.” -- The Guardian"The effect of the book is of going round an art gallery with a very knowledgeable and entertainingly opinionated friend–one we'd all be lucky to have." -- House & Garden"Katz's observations offer a fluent, vivid and incisive view of painting. Looking at Art with Alex Katz will make an ideal guide both for those looking for an introduction to the world of visual art, and anyone looking for a fresh take on their favourite art" -- Artists & Illustrators

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Book SynopsisThe Musée du Louvre boasts an exceptional collection of 17th- and 18th-century European pastels. Due to their fragility, there have been scant opportunities to view and learn from these spectacular artworks.This in-depth examination of the collection, reproduced here for the first time in color, delves into their history and how they were created.Produced primarily during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, the workswhose beautiful delicacy has been likened to the powder covering the wings of a butterflyoffer insights into society during the period of the Enlightenment.Featured artists include Rosalba Carriera, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Jean Étienne Liotard, Jean-Marc Nattier, and Élisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, as well as lesser-known masters such as Marie-Suzanne Giroust, Adélaïde Labille-Guirard, Joseph Bose, and Joseph Ducreux. Distributed for Editions Hazan, ParisExhibition Schedule:Musée du Louvre, Paris (06/07/1809/10/18)

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Book SynopsisA fresh look at this giant of 1960s Pop Art--featuring his billboard-sized images of commercial subjects and combining his eye of an advertising man and the heart of a Pop artist.Lipsticks, automobiles, dishwashers, men in business suits, spaghetti, rockets, airplanes, hairdryers, ice cream cones and pigtailed girls: James Rosenquist (1933-2017) has always known how to combine these seemingly disparate but always all-American elements into whirlwind, billboard-sized collages. With airbrushed surreal euphoria, he slammed colors, patterns, and objects into one another with the eye of an advertising man and the heart of a Pop artist. This momentous catalogue, published to accompany the first in-depth survey of the artist's work of the 1960s through 1980s, will give long-overdue attention to Rosenquist's singular achievement in American art during these three decades. From 1957 to 1960, Rosenquist earned his living a billboard painter. This was perfect training, as it tu

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Book SynopsisThis wide-ranging book elucidates the symbolism of veils and highlights the power of drapery in Italian art from Giotto to Titian. In the cities of the Renaissance, display of luxury dress was a marker of status.Florentines decked out their palaces and streets with textiles for public rituals.But cloths are also the stuff of fantasy: throughout the book, the author moves from the material to the metaphorical.Curtains and veils, swaddling and shrouds, evoke associations with birth and death. The central chapters address the sculpture of Ghiberti and Donatello, focusing on how they deployed drapery to dramatic effect. In the final chapters the focus shifts to the paintings of Bellini, Lotto, and Titian, where drapery both clothes the figures and composes the picture. In the work of Titian, the veiled presence of the body is absorbed within the materials of oil-paint on canvas: medium and subject become one.Trade Review“Paul Hills is one of the most creative scholars of Italian Renaissance art”—Bruce Boucher, The Art Newspaper“This thought-provoking study, with its ravishing illustrations, made me long to book the earliest flight to Italy, to drown myself anew in the masterpieces of Tuscany and Venice. It is a model of erudition and attentive looking, and of intelligent book design.”—Ariane Bankes, The Spectator“Marvellous book…It will open your eyes”—Martin Gayford, The Spectator“Enchanting book”—Donal Cooper, Apollo Magazine“As a theologian I rarely read a book of art history that is quite so fruitful to think with as this one.”—Ben Quash, Art and Christianity“Paul Hills is held in high regard by artists for his special sensitivity to the physical and formal beauties specific to painting and sculpture [. . .] Steadily and deeply the insights mount up, always particular and placed in context, but nevertheless tending to the subtler realm of symbolism and revelation, until they reach their apogee with chapters devoted to Donatello and Bellini, Lotto and Titian [. . .] [An] exceptionally handsome book”— Christopher Le Brun, RA Magazine“In his richly illustrated book, Paul Hills discusses the motif of the veil and the act of unveiling in the arts of the early to High Renaissance, focusing on formal variety and changes of meaning”—Joachim Poeschke, Burlington Magazine

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Book SynopsisPrompting a reevaluation of canonical understandings of twentieth century art history, Mapping Modernisms provides an analysis of how indigenous artists and art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas became recognized as modern.Trade Review"The wide-ranging and meticulously researched essays in Mapping Modernisms focus on indigenous artists from Inuit, Zulu, Māori, Pueblo, and Aboriginal cultures, among others, around the world. . . . What emerges from Mapping Modernisms is that Modernism was not a process of diffusion from Western centers to non-Western peripheries, as it is traditionally constructed in Western narratives, but rather a complex web of mutual inuences and exchanges across the globe." -- Naomi Polonsky * Hyperallergic *"Mapping Modernisms is an excellent addition to any collection exploring the history of modernity and the decolonisation of modern art histories, and proposes a new conceptualization of modernity that would benefit any collection looking to re-examine its role in post-colonialism." -- Marianne R. Williams * ARLIS/NA Reviews *"Mapping Modernisms is a concise and carefully compiled selection of essays and art works from across historical and geographical spectrums, which challenge the relationship between postcolonialism and metahistorical concepts of modernity." -- Natalie Ilsley * Visual Studies *"Dispelling assumptions of the past, the authors reveal the artist to be as cognizant of the exigencies of their complicated histories and lives, as they are in command of their expressive forms. Mapping Modernism sheds much needed light onto the artistic production of modernist artists living in post- and neocolonial countries in the early twentieth century." -- Cécile Rose Ganteaume * Transmotion *“Mapping Modernisms keys in to several recent trends in cultural studies and art history, including transnationalism, global Indigeneity, and definitions of modernism and modernity. It addresses all of them in productively thought-provoking—and overtly political—ways. This is a volume with an agenda that is both timely and overdue, and, as their comprehensive and rousing introduction makes clear, the editors know it.” -- Louise Siddons * Canadian Journal of History *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix General Editors' Foreword / Ruth B. Phillips and Nicholas Thomas xiii Preface / Elizabeth Harney and Ruth B. Phillips xv Introduction. Inside Modernity: Indigeneity, Coloniality, Modernisms / Elizabeth Harney and Ruth B. Phillips 1 Part I. Modern Values 1. Reinventing Zulu Tradition: The Modernism of Zizwezenyanga Qwabe's Figurative Relief Panels / Sandra Klopper 33 2. "Hooked Forever on Primitive Peoples": James Houston and the Transformation of "Eskimo Handicrafts" to Inuit Art / Heather Igloliorte 62 3. Making Pictures on Baskets: Modern Indian Painting in an Expanded Field / Bill Anthes 91 4. An Intersection: Bill Reid, Henry Speck, and the Mapping of Modern Northwest Coast Art / Karen Duffek 110 5. Modernism on Display: Negotiating Value in Exhibitions of Māori Art, 1958–1973 / Damian Skinner 138 Part II. Modern Identities 6. "Artist of PNG": Mathias Kauage and Melanesian Modernism / Nicholas Thomas 163 7. Modernism and the Art of Albert Namatjira / Ian McLean 187 8. Cape Dorset Cosmopolitans: Making "Local" Prints in Global Modernity / Norman Vorano 209 9. Natural Synthesis: Art, Theory, and the Politics of Decolonization in Mid-Twentieth-Century Nigeria / Chika Okeke-Agulu 235 Part III. Modern Mobilities 10. Being Modern, Becoming Native: George Morrison's Surrealist Journey Home / W. Jackson Rushing III 259 11. Falling into the World: The Global Art World of Aloï Pilioko and Nicolaï Michoutouchkine / Peter Brunt 282 12. Constellations and Coordinates: Repositioning Postwar Paris in Stories of African Modernisms / Elizabeth Harney 304 13. Conditions of Engagement: Mobility, Modernism, and Modernity in the Art of Jackson Hlungwani and Sydney Kumalo / Anitra Nettleton 335 14. The Modernist Lens of Lutterodt Studios / Erin Haney 357 Bibliography 377 Contributors 409 Index 415

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Book SynopsisVisionary illustrator and author SIMON STÅLENHAG (THE ELECTRIC STATE, TALES FROM THE LOOP) presents a tense, dark tale of ruin and vengeance set among a stunning sci-fi apocalypse like you’ve never seen before.An eight-wheeled vehicle trundles across a barren landscape of ash and ruined buildings toward a lone bunker deep in the wilderness. Inside the vehicle are three passengers: two scientists—who plan to use the outpost as a home base for the study of world-ending phenomena—and a boy named Charlie.As the work unfolds, the isolation and claustrophobia of the compound threatens each member of the expedition with madness. Forced to confront their own dark history and the struggles of the haves and have-nots, the members of the expedition find themselves hurtling toward ruin.

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Book SynopsisThe very best counter-culture, presented in a luxury format.

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Book SynopsisFarah Nayeri addresses the difficult questions plaguing the art world, from the bad habits of Old Masters, to the current grappling with identity politics. For centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon--kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or politically deviant in art. Today, censorship can also happen from the bottom-up, thanks to calls to action from organizers and social media campaigns. Artists and artworks are routinely taken to task for their insensitivity. In this new world order, artists, critics, philanthropists, galleries and museums alike are recalibrating their efforts to increase the visibility of marginalized voices and respond to the people’s demands for better ethics in art. But what should we, the people, do with this newfound power? With exclusive interviews with Nan Goldin, Sam Durant, Faith Ringgold, and others, Nayeri tackles wide-ranging issues including sex, religion, gender, ethics, animal rights, and race. By asking and answering questions such as: Who gets to make art and who owns it? How do we correct the inequities of the past? What does authenticity, exploitation, and appropriation mean in art? Takedown provides the necessary tools to navigate the art world. Trade Review"Beautifully written, thoughtful and thought provoking, relevant to our times." —Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran "An eye-opening look at how contemporary political issues find their ways into the hushed halls of museums and galleries."— Kirkus Reviews"Marvelously lucid."—Hyperallergic "Farah Nayeri’s Takedown, about art and power in the digital age, is a timely book that is uniquely brilliant. The author, backed up by facts, maps out the crazy madness of our current art world which to a great degree reflects today’s extreme capitalism. In a clear and succinct manner, she unravels the giant game of power, money, and competition ingrained in cultural institutions, where issues of individual freedom, gender and religion are at play. The book is easy to read, interesting, and observant. In its conclusion, the author quotes Alice Procter’s answer to the question of how soon a changing of the guard in the art world will happen, 'I think some people have to die' – a fittingly controversial language." — Ai Weiwei"Farah Nayeri’s book is the most complete discussion to date of the impact of Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and 'cancel culture' on the visual arts – in the US, Britain, and France. It includes fascinating and illustrative examples, and concludes with a convincing argument as to why museums should show not only great historical art, but also new, untested art – from all communities. A must-read for every museum director." — Don Thompson, author of The $12 Million Stuffed Shark and The Orange Balloon Dog. Table of ContentsContentsPrologue1. The Clash of Art and Politics2. Just Not Good Enough3. Morally Reprehensible Trash4. Still No Seat at the Big Table5. A Despicable Display of Vulgarity6. All Money Is Dirty7. Take Them All Down8. A Load of RubbishEpilogueImage CreditsBibliographyAcknowledgmentsAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisGlenn Adamson is Head of Graduate Studies and Deputy Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum. He is also author of The Craft Reader (Berg, 2009) and Thinking Through Craft (Berg, 2007).Trade Review[An] engaging, provocative book * Summer Books Guide ‘books of the year’, Financial Times *According to recent lectures and articles... The Invention of Craft represents Adamson’s farewell note to crafts, and if that is the case then it’s a fascinating way to bow out... [The book] illustrates how craft has always been rooted in modernity and that it has long been capable of mutating to make itself relevant to contemporary technology. It’s a message with resonance, and one that needs to be widely heard... there are moments here when you feel [Adamson] has the power to transform permanently the perception of craft. * Crafts Magazine *Glenn Adamson, a curator at the V&A in London, who I think is the best writer on craft since Peter Dormer, is able to convince even a sceptic like me that craft is not only alive, but that it is vital. And interesting ... This book stands up beside anything on craft I have read so far. From the politics of labour to the intricacies of lacemaking, this is a superb book that covers a huge territory and is stuffed full of ideas and unexpected associations. If, like me, you think you’re not really interested in craft, you may be surprised. -- Edwin Heathcote * Icon magazine *Rich and fascinating book. -- Jeff Bearce, Woodworker and Independent Scholar, Berkeley, US * The Craft Journal *Here, the author looks to demonstrate that craft is not a second-class or anti-modern discipline, but rather a skilled process that is crucial for contemporary practices across a wide range of disciplines, including sculpture, painting and contemporary art, fashion, design, architecture and the digitalised industrial fabrication of products... His arguments throughout are well supported by examples of inventions from numerous disciplines dated from the 18th century to the present... You might not imagine it possible to draw connections between the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress and a quilt made by anonymous prisoners at HMP Wandsworth in a discussion of craft, but Adamson, a knowledgeable scholar, does so with ease, while at the same time showing how contemporary practice can be informed by the study of modern craft in its period of invention.... An enjoyable [read], full of examples readers can relate to as they try to understand the meaning of craft in the world we live in. -- Nithikul Nimkulrat, Loughborough University * Times Higher Education Supplement *Adamson again demonstrates he is a scholar whose ideas cannot be ignored; for readers eager to grapple with the identity of craft, add Invention to the required reading list. -- Perry A. Price * American Craft Magazine *This is a very clever book. Not because it is highly erudite with a sophisticated, theoretically informed argument grounded in rigorous historical research – although it is all these things – but because of its underlying argument and approach: that craft is currently undergoing radical change and in order to truly understand this and envisage what might happen in the future we must first re-examine its past… An intellectual history of craft, this book provokes us into challenging craft’s limitations; by helping us to look at its history with fresh eyes it helps us to imagine its future. As such, it makes an invaluable contribution to the ever-expanding, pluralistic field of craft and craft discourse. * Ceramic Review *Glenn Adamson is a friend of craft, but in The Invention of Craft he has come to deconstruct the narrative and many of the beliefs ofboth the practice and the discussion of craft as it operates in the 21st century...His arguments are clever and natural but complex...But, that being said, he has made this book for arguing. Reading the last seven lines of the book, the reader sees not only that Glenn Adamson is a friend of craft but that he is doing everything possible to take us and the whole field further. -- Leopold J. Kowolik * Studio Magazine *Once again, Glenn Adamson has proven adept at pinpointing the hot-button issues in modern craft. The Invention of Craft takes historical ideas about craft that have been canonized in craft scholarship and turns them on their head. His controversial assertions and excellent examples will have scholars and makers buzzing for years. -- Sandra Alfoldy, Nova Scotia College of Art & DesignAdamson presents an array of contextual arguments grounded in rigorous research, which allow the reader to draw their own comparisons as one delves further into the book... By shifting between different centuries and fast-tracking to the present day, Adamson carefully illustrates how craft is not only rooted in modernity but also how it has constantly manipulated itself to remain relevant to contemporary technology. -- Zara Arshad * Designers & Books: 10 Notable Design Books of 2013 *Glen Adamson’s The Invention of Craft is a thought-provoking and challenging book which builds on his earlier monograph Thinking Through Craft … I have no doubt that this book will be very influential in our understanding of craft. -- Jim Cheshire * The Journal of William Morris Studies *Table of ContentsThe Invention of Craft Introduction Part One: Manipulation The Centre Holds The Carved and the Flat The Undisciplined Artisan Poor Plain and Paltry: The Decline of Carving The Cutting Edge The Hands of Others Part Two: Mystery The Age of the Reveal Porcelain: A Modern Arcanum Sleights of Hand An Elastic Age Explained Away: Craft and Cultural Improvement The Task of Re-Enchantment The New Arcanists Part Three: Mechanical All Things But A Self State of Nature Replication and the Industrial Artisan The Reproductive Continuum Analogue Practice In and Out of Touch Part Four: Memory Craft as Memory Work Dismantling Ruskin United and Industrious Affective Relations Stitches in Time Index

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Book SynopsisIn this book, Beatrice E. Kitzinger explores the power of representation in the Carolingian period, demonstrating how images were used to assert the value and efficacy of art works. She focuses on the cross, Christianity''s central sign, which simultaneously commemorates sacred history, functions in the present, and prepares for the end of time. It is well recognized that the visual attributes of the cross were designed to communicate its theology relative to history and eschatology; Kitzinger argues that early medieval artists also developed a formal language to articulate its efficacious powers in the present day. Defined through form and text as the sign of the present, the image of the cross articulated the instrumentality of religious objects and built spaces. Whereas medieval and modern scholars have pondered the theological problems posed by representation, Kitzinger here proposes a visual argument that affirms the self-reflexive value of art works in the early medieval West. InTrade Review'Over the past decades, multiple studies have analysed early medieval representations of the Cross, but Beatrice Kitzinger's fresh approach to the subject sets this book apart from previous publications … Kitzinger's probing, thoughtful, highly original study stands as a major contribution not only to modern understanding of Carolingian crosses and illuminated gospel books, but to medieval image theory as a whole.' Celia Chazelle, The Burlington Magazine'This active component of the iconography is well articulated throughout Kitzinger's scholarly volume.' Eric Ramírez-Weaver, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval StudiesTable of ContentsPart I. The Cross and the Work of Art: Introduction: temporality, utilitas, and the signum crucis; 1. Making the multitemporal cross; Part II. The Cross and the Gospels: 2. Otfrid of Weissenburg's Book of the Gospels; 3. Cross-image and Gospel Book; 4. The angers gospels: sign and story; Conclusion: the fact of manufacture.

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Book SynopsisThe rich context behind one of Andrew Wyeth’s most beloved and mysterious late paintings.   Perhaps nowhere else is Andrew Wyeth’s highly distinctive style more palpable, or moving, than in Snow Hill. His masterful tempera painting of 1989 provides a visual and poetic summary of the Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, residents who had provided artistic inspiration at key points in Wyeth’s career. With the figures depicted in a snowy landscape high above Kuerner Farm, a property of great personal significance to the painter, this enigmatic composition resonates with an elegiac air. Among Wyeth’s most popular works, Snow Hill in some ways encapsulates the spirit of his entire career. James H. Duff, a close acquaintance of the artist for more than three decades, invites an expansive reading of the work, including the wide-ranging art historical influences on this singular American artist. Published in association with tTrade ReviewPerhaps nowhere else is Andrew Wyeth s highly distinctive style more palpable, or moving, than in Snow Hill. His masterful tempera painting of 1989 provides a visual and poetic summary of the Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, residents who had provided artistic inspiration at key points in Wyeth s career. With the figures depicted in a snowy landscape high above Kuerner Farm, a property of great personal significance to the painter, this enigmatic composition resonates with an elegiac air. Among Wyeth s most popular works, Snow Hill in some ways encapsulates the spirit of his entire career. James H. Duff, a close acquaintance of the artist for more than three decades, invites an expansive reading of the work, including the wide-ranging art historical influences on this singular American artist. Published in association with the Brandywine River Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, PA.

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Book SynopsisExplores the relationship between fashion and power in Renaissance Italy, focusing on visual art and culture and the nature of aristocratic masculinity and patriarchal authority.Trade Review“With this vivid account of fifteenth-century fashion, McCall has given us thrilling new ways to interpret the politics, gender posturing, and art of Renaissance Italy. Bringing new light to such well-known historical figures and events—and from such a surprising angle and with so much delicacy in the details of the prose—is what makes Brilliant Bodies a remarkable achievement.”—Emanuele Lugli,author of The Making of Measure and the Promise of Sameness“Readers who worry that McCall’s book might be an academic affair directed toward art historians, costume scholars, archivists, and other specialists need not fear: the chapters are beautifully illustrated, the writing is accessible, the argument is clearly developed with a critical eye toward current debates on gender, identity, and the symbolic valorization of whiteness, or ‘brilliance,’ in the courts of early Renaissance Europe, where aristocratic men and women regularly bleached their hair blond, powdered their hands and faces white, and embellished their clothing with shimmering metallic threads and gems that made their bodies glow like the sun.”—Maria H. Loh Art in America“Readers who worry that McCall’s book might be an academic affair directed toward art historians, costume scholars, archivists, and other specialists need not fear: the chapters are beautifully illustrated, the writing is accessible, the argument is clearly developed with a critical eye toward current debates on gender, identity, and the symbolic valorization of whiteness.”—Maria H. Loh Art in America“Specialists have long awaited the publication of [McCall’s] book, which will turn into an instant classic in the field.”—Ulinka Rublack Journal of Design History“Lavishly illustrated and written in an accessible style, it is a must-read for anyone interested in dress or the Renaissance court.”—Sara van Dijk Virtus“Beautiful, provocative, and stylishly written.”—Charlotte F. Nichols Renaissance and Reformation

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Book SynopsisThe Hippodrome of Constantinople was constructed in the fourth century AD, by the Roman Emperor Constantine I, in his new capital. Throughout Byzantine history the Hippodrome served as a ceremonial, sportive and recreational center of the city; in the early period, it was used mainly as an arena for very popular, competitive, and occasionally violent chariot races, while the Middle Ages witnessed the imperial ceremonies coming to the fore gradually, although the races continued. The ceremonial and recreational role of the Hippodrome somehow continued during the Ottoman period. Being the oldest structure in the city, the Hippodrome has witnessed exciting chariot races, ceremonies glorifying victorious emperors as well as the charioteers, and the riots that shook the imperial authority. Today, looking to the remnants of the Hippodrome, one can imagine the glorious past of the site.Table of Contents1. Introduction; 2. History of the Hippodrome; 3. The Architechture of the Hippodrome; 4. Monuments and Sculptures; 5. The Hippodrome as the Ceremonial Setting of the City; 6. Circus Factions and Chariot Races; 7. The Church's Opposition to the Chariot Races; 8. The Hippodrome during the Ottoman Period; 9. Archaeological Research and Excavations Conducted in the Hippodrome and Vicinity; Bibliography.

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Book SynopsisWhat is the place of painted pictures? What is their relevance? And what is their reality? Thomas Huber is an internationally acknowledged painter whose cool picture constructions, mostly devoid of humans, circle around these questions. In meticulously composed, surreal-looking scenarios he creates a world of paradox combinations and reflections that challenge reality. Thomas Huber (*1955) mostly creates pictorial spaces with an architectural character. In them he has been sounding out the various forms of appearance and effect for more than thirty years. This volume presents mainly recently created works by the artist, who was born in Zurich and now lives in Berlin. They refer to the horizon as a constant of all pictures constructed using perspective and as a metaphor for a boundary between the visibility of the motif and the invisibility of the associated dialogue. Texts by and a conversation with Thomas Huber demonstrate the systematic pictorial theories of the artist.

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Book SynopsisFilled with reproductions of Kehinde Wiley’s bold, colorful, and monumental work, this book encompasses the artist’s various series of paintings as well as his sculptural work—which boldly explore ideas about race, power, and tradition. Celebrated for his classically styled paintings that depict African American men in heroic poses, Kehinde Wiley is among the expanding ranks of prominent black artists—such as Sanford Biggers, Yinka Shonibare, Mickalene Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—who are reworking art history and questioning its depictions of people of color. Co-published with the Brooklyn Museum of Art for the major touring retrospective, this volume surveys Wiley’s career from 2001 to the present. It includes early portraits of the men Wiley observed on Harlem’s streets, and which laid the foundation for his acclaimed reworkings of Old Master paintings by Titian, van Dyke, Manet, and others, in which he replaces historical subjects with

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Book SynopsisAt the invitation of the town of Cannes, renowned German artist Nils-Udo, pioneer of Land Art, will create several ephemeral installations this summer on Ile Sainte- Marguerite, the largest of the Lérins Islands, an exceptionally preserved natural site at the heart of the French Riviera. The event will be immortalised through a collection of original photographs that will complete the monographic exhibition dedicated to the links between Nils-Udo, the Mediterranean and the islands. Through his installations on water, mossy wooden rafts, fleeting installations of turf, flowers and bamboo on the infinite scope of the Mediterranean, the visitor will be taken to Italy and the Spanish islands in order to look with fresh eyes upon the beauty, but also the fragility, of these sites. This exhibition, curated by Frédérique Citéra-Bulot, director of the Musées de Cannes, will take place in the spectacular location of the Musée de la Mer, in the Fort Royal de l’Ile Saint-Marguerite rooms dedicated to contemporary photography.

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Book SynopsisThe first accessible reader on magic’s generative relationship with contemporary art practice. From the hexing of presidents to a renewed interest in herbalism and atavistic forms of self-care, magic has furnished the contemporary imagination with mysterious and often disorienting bodies of arcane thought and practice. This volume brings together writings by artists, magicians, historians, and theorists that illuminate the vibrant correspondences animating contemporary art’s varied encounters with magical culture, inspiring a reconsideration of the relationship between the symbolic and the pragmatic.  Dispensing with simple narratives of reenchantment, Magic illustrates the intricate ways in which we have to some extent always been captivated by the allure of the numinous. It demonstrates how magical culture’s tendencies toward secrecy, occlusion, and encryption might provide contemporary artists with strategies of remedial

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Book SynopsisPioneered by Picasso and Braque, Cubism has been described as the first avant-garde art movement of the 20th century. With inspiration from African and Native American art and sculpture, its practitioners deconstructed European conventions of viewpoint, form, perspective to create flattened, fragmented, and revolutionary images. Picasso’s celebrated painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is typically regarded as the original cubist work, with its radical fracturing of objects and figures into distinct areas, corresponding to multiple different viewpoints. Cubism thereafter developed two distinct trends: Analytical Cubism, which continued to interweave perspectival planes in muted blacks, greys and ochre, and later Synthetic Cubism, characterised by simpler shapes, brighter colors, and collage elements such as newspaper. This book presents the prime protagonists of Cubism, with work from artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, and Robert Delaunay.

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Book SynopsisThe Dresden artist Max Uhlig (b. 1937) created one of the greatest window cycles of contemporary art for the Gothic Church of Saint John in Magdeburg. Vines and coloured foliage together with lines in expressive rhythms which are a revelation in their incisiveness, fill a window area of some 350 square metres with colours and immerse the interior of the church in light. The abstract cycle of six windows in colour and seven in black and white, each 13 metres high, tells of the rebirth of the former parish church in the heart of Magdeburg, destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilt after 1992. The dark earth tones and the luminous yellows and blues interspersed with fiery reds contrast with the vines climbing upwards in the choir windows, which are depicted entirely in black. Max Uhlig is one of the last representatives of plein-air painting in modern art and shows in this magnificent volume about his latest masterpiece that he is at the very height of our times. Languages: English and German

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Book SynopsisA detailed study of the Great Mongol Shahnama, considered to be the greatest of all Persian illustrated manuscripts​The Great Mongol Shahnama is widely considered to be the definitive version of Firdausi’s epic poem, and the greatest of all Persian illustrated manuscripts. The paintings from this manuscript are held in private collections and institutions around the world, and have only been seen together in a single volume once since they were originally dispersed. This monograph reunites the paintings and reproduces them as 67 full-page, high quality color plates, alongside an analysis by leading scholar of Islamic art, Robert Hillenbrand. With newly commissioned photographs and insights into technical aspects of the paintings, The Great Mongol Shahnama is a comprehensive resource for those interested in Persian art and manuscripts. Distributed for Hali Publications Ltd. and the Freer Sackler, Smithsonian. Co-published by Hali Publications Ltd. and the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and supported by Qatar Museums. Exhibition Schedule:Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC (December 2020–June 2021)

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Fabrizio Nevola's beautiful book, Street Life in Renaissance Italy, is rich in detail and imagery.”—Emily Michelson, Times Higher Education"The quality of the present work is indisputable. The book makes a valuable contribution to recent developments within the architectural and urban history of the Italian Renaissance, and to reflections upon the mechanisms that have shaped, and continue to shape, the cities we inhabit. With his ability as a storyteller, Nevola will surely engage a wide variety of readers in a fascinating discovery of street life in Renaissance Italy."—Nele De Raedt, Architectural Histories"This is a beautifully produced and original book that reassesses urban life in ‘Renaissance Italy’ from the street up. It combines material from a wide range of written sources – chronicles, letters, sermons, biographies, statute laws, fictional tales, and architectural treatises – with the visual evidence of buildings, sites, and paintings […] an attractive and valuable contribution to both social and cultural history, and will become a standard point of reference and debate for many years."—Trevor Dean, Cultural and Social History"Nevola's book is an exercise in bridging this binary, between the street as a built environment envisioned by rulers and elites, and a space given meaning through the daily movements of its residents. Formed by multiple forces, Nevola argues, the pre-modern street was the ‘key ecosystem of everyday urban living’ (p. 269). […] The book presents a convincing framework for how to study the daunting complexities of street life. […] Because of the comparative approach and critical application of theory, there is plenty for those interested in other periods and disciplines to chew on. Not only wide-ranging and thorough, the book also raises questions and ideas beyond its scope. […] There may not be a blueprint for how to write about these complex, contested urban spaces, but by committing to look at streets from multiple perspectives Nevola has set a high standard."—Charlie Tavernor, Urban History"In this ambitious book, Fabrizio Nevola explores the interaction between buildings and people in the thoroughfares of the Italian Renaissance city. Street life, like musical performance, is ephemeral and its recovery is a challenging task for the historian. […] Working within [a] theoretical framework, Nevola draws on an impressive range of sources, including documents, chronicles, reports by travellers and ambassadors, novelle, maps, paintings, prints and public inscriptions, and he animates the imagery of urban life by starting each chapter with an anecdote or an extract from a novella."—Deborah Howard, Architectural History“[Street life in Renaissance Italy] offers us a diverse and nuanced account of the complexities of street life in the Italian Renaissance city. It sets a high standard for future research into this intriguing topic.”—David P. H. Napolitano, QFIAB

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“If anything, there’s something to be said that Rembrandt in Amsterdam touches on the literary as well as the brand, and does so in a way that is both respectful and reverential. The result of which is this quintessential treasure that can only be described as captivating, eye-opening and altogether masterful.”—David Marx: Book Reviews

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Book SynopsisRichly-illustrated consideration of the meaning of the carvings of non-human beings, from centaurs to eagles, found in ecclesiastical settings. Representations of monsters and the monstrous are common in medieval art and architecture, from the grotesques in the borders of illuminated manuscripts to the symbol of the "green man", widespread in churches and cathedrals. These mysterious depictions are frequently interpreted as embodying or mitigating the fears symptomatic of a "dark age". This book, however, considers an alternative scenario: in what ways did monsters in twelfth-century sculpture help audiences envision, perhaps even achieve, various ambitions? Using examples of Romanesque sculpture from across Europe, with a focus on France and northern Portugal, the author suggests that medieval representations of monsterscould service ideals, whether intellectual, political, religious, and social, even as they could simultaneously articulate fears; he argues that their material presence energizes works of art in paradoxical, even contradictory ways. In this way, Romanesque monsters resist containment within modern interpretive categories and offer testimony to the density and nuance of the medieval imagination. KIRK AMBROSE is Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University of Colorado Boulder.Trade ReviewAn insightful and overdue study that will pave the way for future research. * SPECULUM *[An] excellent work. ... Ambrose's scholarly contribution is fundamental to the progression of the study of Romanesque sculpture. * MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Profound and intellectually wide-ranging. ... A book that offers both a fresh and profound perspective on monsters and a superb, original, perspective on the current state of the field and some of its central questions. * BURLINGTON MAGAZINE *Fascinating. To the wonderful sculptures on which the author focuses, he brings knowledge and sound judgment. -- Christopher Howse * DAILY TELEGRAPH *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Approaching Monsters Past Present Ideal Bodies (Il)Legibility Creating Monsters Imagining Cosmos Epilogue

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Book SynopsisA beautiful celebration of six decades of work by Edgar Degas, published in the centennial year of the artist's death

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