Paintings and painting Books

Book SynopsisRudolf Steiner's architectural masterpiece, the double-domed building known as the first Goetheanum, featured decorated ceilings that were designed and partly painted by Steiner himself, utilizing vegetable colors and a new layering technique. Steiner emphasized that he was seeking a new artistic conception based on a conscious understanding of the nature of color. Contemporaries report the extraordinary effect of the domed ceilings' paintings combined with the multicolored light emanating from the engraved glass windows. The cupolas depicted the creation and ages of the world, the initiators of the various cultural epochs and the figure of Christ. Tragically, the 'complete work of art' that was the first Goetheanum burned down on New Year's Eve 1922 - so today we can only get an impression of the lost paintings and windows from Rudolf Steiner's pastel sketches and drawings and a handful of photographs. In this lavish volume, the result of decades of research and study, Hilde Raske provides a detailed examination of the artistic work on the two cupolas, including Rudolf Steiner's draft sketches and his written and verbal statements. Featuring 30 color and more than 100 black-and-white illustrations, this printing is a high-quality facsimile of the long out-of-print original edition from 1983. HILDE RASKE, an artist and eurythmist, worked and experimented for many years to understand Rudolf Steiner's art and use of color. Raske grew so familiar with his unique works that she could vividly and clearly describe every detail. She referred to Steiner's artworks as 'events' in color and light-and-dark, with living colors that 'spoke' to her. It is said that, in the course of the many years preparing the manuscript for The Language of Color in the First Goetheanum, she would remark: 'I can hear my paintings. And if I don't hear them, then they're just not quite right yet.'

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Book SynopsisThe painter and architect Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) was a pupil of Michaelangelo who worked mainly in Florence and Rome. He is famous today, however, as the author of LIVES OF THE PAINTERS, SCULPTORS AND ARCHITECTS, the work which effectively founded the study of art history and remains one of its greatest monuments. Vasari''s distinctive blend of biography and criticism has exerted an immeasurable influence on all subsequent historians, but its value for contemporary readers consists as much in the liveliness and piquancy of the stories his book contains, and the vivid light it casts on the great masters of early Italian painting.

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Book SynopsisA window provides access to two of life's essentials, light and air, but it is more than just a means to an end. Windows also have symbolic, expressive and architectural qualities that have for centuries inspired some of the world's greatest artists. In this engaging new study, Christopher Masters celebrates the multiple roles of the window in art through five key themes, from the window as a status symbol to its use as a provider of physical and spiritual illumination; from its employment as a literal window on the world outside the confines of a room to its function as a mirror, reflecting the emotions of the artist or the individuals depicted; and finally to the immense architectural variety of windows that animate interior and exterior scenes throughout Western painting. With superb reproductions of 90 works by major artists from Giotto to Banksy, and spirited analysis of the paintings' meanings, this is a remarkable exploration of an important but hitherto neglected subject in art history.Trade Review'thought-provoking and illuminating ... it offers an intriguing perspective on this often overlooked feature' - HOMES & GARDENS MAGAZINE 'Some very famous works have hidden windows and once the are pointed out we wonder how we missed them before so this volume becomes a window into the subject itself and one that enriches our looking. This is an intriguing subject and one not to be missed.' - THE YORKSHIRE PRESS

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Book SynopsisCaspar David Friedrich (1774 1840), the greatest painter of the Romantic movement in Germany, was perhaps Europe's first truly modern artist. His melancholy landscapes, often peopled by lonely wanderers, represent experiments towards a radically subjective art, one in which, as Friedrich wrote, the painter depicts not what he sees before him, but what he sees within him. Yet in their awesome power to capture the individuality of visible forms Friedrich's pictures also accept and express the irredeemable otherness of Nature. Winner of the 1992 Mitchell Prize for the History of Art, this compelling and highly original book is now made available in a compact pocket format. Beautifully illustrated, "Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape" is the most comprehensive account ever published in English on this most fascinating of nineteenth-century masters.Trade ReviewThere's a haunting coda to Koerner's scholarly analysis of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, and his place in art history ... This has many reproductions more true to Friedrich's winter colouring than I've seen before. The Guardian Provides insights not only into the nature of Friedrich's art, but also into the whole predicament of art in the early nineteenth century ... It is a book that should be read by all who have an interest in the art of the period Burlington Magazine This is a model of interpretative art history, taking in a good deal of German Romantic philosophy, but founded always on the immediate experience of the picture ... It is rare to find a scholar so obviously in sympathy with his subject The Independent One of the best books about the work of a single artist that I have read for a long, long time. It seems to me to have everything -- Frank Whitford

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Book SynopsisTo celebrate the centenary of one of the most exciting expeditions of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration comes "Nimrod Illustrated". The book is a remarkable collage of expedition photographs, paintings and ephemera in a deliberate reminiscence of the expedition scrapbooks kept by so many of the expedition participants at the time. Many of the images are rarely seen, if ever before published, whilst others are better known.Together with quotations from the diaries of expedition participants, they tell the story of the British Antarctic Expedition 1907-1909 which saw the first use of ponies and motor cars in the Antarctic; achieved the first ascent of Mount Erebus; achieved the first attainment of the South Magnetic Pole; and, took Shackleton within 100 miles of the South Geographic Pole to attain a dramatic new 'Farthest South' record. This was the expedition that made Shackleton's name as an explorer and for which he was awarded his knighthood. Edited by Dr. D. M. Wilson, "Nimrod Illustrated" is a treat for anyone interested in Shackleton, the Antarctic, polar exploration or the atmosphere of the Edwardian age. It is a part of the well regarded series commenced with "Discovery Illustrated: Pictures from Captain Scott's First Antarctic Expedition" (2001).Trade ReviewNimrod Illustrated will never be bettered. A magnificent work of gathering and arrangement, devotedly and thoroughly researched, it reproduces and explains a great number of original images, many of them hard to find, of Shackleton's less familiar but quite extraordinary expedition. This lively, well designed and produced volume should surely be in the private libraries of all discriminating Heroic Age enthusiasts. (Jan Piggott).

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Book SynopsisJ. D. Fergusson (1874-1961) is one of the four artists known as the Scottish Colourists, the others being F. C. B. Cadell, G. L. Hunter and S. J. Peploe. Fergusson was born in Leith, and was essentially a self-taught artist. In Paris 1907 he became involved with the avant-garde scene and exhibited at the progressive Salon d'Automne. More than any of his Scottish contemporaries, Fergusson assimilated and developed the latest developments in French painting. In 1913 Fergusson met the dance pioneer Margaret Morris (1891-1980). Morris's creative dance movements and her students continued to be one of Fergusson's main sources of inspiration and models. In 1929 Fergusson returned to Paris where he was involved with the Anglo-American art circles. Most summers were spent in the south of France where Morris held her celebrated Summer Schools. The couple moved to Glasgow in 1939 being founder members of the New Art Club and of its off-shoot the New Scottish Group. This book reasserts the artist's place at the forefront of British modernism.

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Book Synopsis"The artist should not only paint what he sees before him," claimed Caspar David Friedrich, "but also what he sees in himself." He should have "a dialogue with Nature". Friedrich's words encapsulate two central elements of the Romantic conception of landscape -- close observation of the natural world and the importance of the imagination.Exploring aspects of Romanticn landscape drawing in Britain and Germany from its origins in the 1760s to its final flowering in the 1840s, this exhibition catalogue consiers 26 major drawings, watercolours and oil sketches from The Courtauld Gallery, London, and the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, by artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Samuel Palmer, Caspar David Friedrich and Karl Friedrich Lessing. It draws upon the complementary strengthsy of both collections -- the Morgan's exceptional group of German drawings and The Courtauld's wide-ranging holdings of British works. A Dialogue with Nature offers the oppotunity to consider points of commonality as well as divergence between two distinctive schools.

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Book SynopsisThis groundbreaking reconstruction of Goya's so-called 'Witches and Old Women' album will offer rich insights into the artist's concerns and preoccupations and will immeasurably deepen our understanding of the artist. With its themes of witchcraft, madness and nightmares, the predominant imagery of the album offers a particularly important perspective on the development of Goya's interest in old age and its relationship to the fantastic and diabolical.

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Book SynopsisParsons? unnerving tension between surface and depth in her paintings evoke insightful responses from artists, authors and psychoanalystsLondon?based artist Vicken Parsons (born 1957) makes intimate panel paintings of interior spaces and landscapes. Her work has beguiled writers from the fields of art, literature and psychoanalysis. Their collected written responses to her ?visual poems? are gathered here for the first time.

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Book SynopsisGrand, fluid brushstrokes infuse Woods? coloristic portraits and still lifes with a sense of the sublimeBritish artist Clare Woods (born 1972) is known for her portraits and still lifes that are infused with poetic romanticism and an unnerving psychic charge. This monograph showcases her recent paintings, whose bold and gestural brushstrokes are influenced by her training in sculpture.

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Book SynopsisAnna Freeman Bentley’s paintings use architectural imagery to explore the emotive potential of space. Grounded in an interest in the baroque her source material includes junk shops, restaurants, private members clubs, flea markets and designed interiors. Central to her work is an investigation into surface, tension and the atmosphere evoked by these different interior surroundings. The spaces she depicts are empty, yet visual signifiers point to evidence of people and social happenings.This, Freeman Bentley’s third publication to date, is centred on the relationship between painting and cinema and is divided into sections dedicated to major paintings on canvas and panel, and a number of works on paper (all works 2021–22). Freeman Bentley’s work here is focused on sets from 'The Colour Room' (2021), a film that tells the story of the early career of celebrated British ceramicist Clarice Cliff (1899–1972).The foreword to the book is written by Rollo Campbell and Matt Incledon of Frestonian Gallery. An essay by writer and critic Thomas Marks draws out the importance to her work of historic and contemporary cinema and temporary architecture. Marks notes a change in palette in these new paintings, with Freeman Bentley embracing pastels and tracing parallels between the artist herself and Cliff. An interview with Georgie Paget, co-founder of Caspian Films, production company for 'The Colour Room', meanwhile, provides insight into the artist’s particular interest in the artifice of film props and of the film set as a layered space ‘steeped in meaning, purpose and potential.’ The two discuss the reciprocity of painting and cinema in detail, recounting Freeman Bentley’s experiences on the film’s sets and discussing her working processes, beginning with taking photographs on set, through to oil sketches and the later development of large-scale canvases.The publication is edited by Matt Incledon and Matt Price. It is designed by Joe Gilmore, printed and bound by Gomer, Wales, and co-published by Frestonian Gallery, London, and Anomie Publishing, London. The publication coincides with the second solo show by Anna Freeman Bentley at Frestonian Gallery, by whom the artist is represented. The exhibition, also titled ‘make believe’ is divided between two sites: the 2022 Armory Show, New York, and Frestonian Gallery, London.Anna Freeman Bentley studied Painting at Chelsea College of Art, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee and the Royal College of Art. Awards and residencies include Palazzo Monti Residency, Brescia, Italy, 2019; The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant 2019 and 2017, and Artist in Restaurant residency at Michelin-starred restaurant Pied à Terre, London, 2012. Selected exhibitions (* denotes solo) include DENK Gallery, Los Angeles, 2019*, Ahmanson Gallery, Irvine, 2018*; Space K, Seoul, 2017; 68projects, Berlin, 2017; the East London Painting Prize 2014 and 2015; Workshop Gallery, Venice, 2012*; MAC Birmingham, 2011; Prague Biennale, 2011, and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2009. Her work is part of the Hotel Crillon collection, Paris; Saatchi Collection, London; Hogan Lovells Collection, London; the Ahmanson Collection, California, and numerous private collections worldwide.

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Book SynopsisKathryn Maple (b. 1989, Canterbury) is an artist specialising in drawing and painting. Her large-scale paintings feature urban, suburban and rural landscapes which are frequently populated by human figures. Her work is distinctive for its use of intensely layered mark making, lending the work both urgency and intimacy. The places and people depicted, rendered in a range of painting and drawing materials, are frequently afforded a sense of wildness or mystery by dint of their colour palette, collage-like compositions and recurring motifs such as wind-blown trees and winding pathways.This, her first monograph, features 379 images, many of which are reproduced for the first time. These include the presentation of her recent major series of oil pastel on paper works 'A Year of Drawings', alongside reproductions of her mixed media works on paper, as well as large oils on canvas.An essay by Kathryn Lloyd, writer, artist and Contemporary Art Editor at The Burlington Magazine, offers insight into Maple’s impulse to explore the world around her through her work. Large-scale paintings, replete with dense layers of marks, are constructed by means of personal encounter, memory and imagination. Details of man-made objects, tree bark and human skin, for instance, become composite, crucial in capturing fleeting experiences of place and of people. Lloyd brings out the symbolism of Maple’s work, making art historical comparisons while connecting these to the specific local characteristics of Maple’s familiar South London landscapes and the importance of walking to the artist’s practice.An interview with independent curator and critic Anneka French is focused on 'A Year of Drawings', a series of 365 drawings made daily since January 2022 outside the artist’s studio. They discuss the process, materials and art historical and literary influences upon Maple’s work, with a focus on how her drawing and painting strands of work impact each other. Their conversation provides an insight into the thinking of the artist at a crucial stage in Maple’s career.Taking its title from the lyrics of The Cure’s A Forest (1980), Editor Matt Price’s essay 'Into the Trees' offers an introduction to, and an overview of,' A Year of Drawings', discussing examples of the works and considering aspects of the series ranging from art historical precedents to themes, recurring motifs and interpretation.The monograph is published to coincide with the exhibitions: Under a Hot Sun, by Kathryn Maple, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 11 February – 30 April 2023 and Kathryn Maple: A Year of Drawings, Lyndsey Ingram Gallery, London, 1–17 March 2023. It has been edited by Matt Price, designed by Anomie Studio, printed by Mixam, Watford, and published by Anomie, London.Kathryn Maple was born in Canterbury in 1989, and lives and works in South London. She graduated in 2011 with a degree in fine art printmaking from the University of Brighton, before undertaking a postgraduate programme at the Royal Drawing School in 2012–13. Maple has featured in exhibitions at venues including Barber & Lopes at the British Art Fair, London, The Royal Academy, London, Beers London, Messums Wiltshire, Flowers Gallery, London, Frestonian Gallery, London, Christies New York, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, and Drawing Room, London. Maple was the winner of the Times Watercolour Competition 2014 and 2016, and The John Moores Painting Prize 2020. Her exhibition Under the Hot Sun at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2023, was awarded to Maple as part of her prize for winning the latter.

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Book SynopsisTom de Freston (born 1983) is a British artist and writer, living and working in Oxford. De Freston’s multimedia art tackles themes of trauma, humanity and intimacy across paintings, films and performance. He builds rich visual narratives, drawing on literature, art history and social issues. He graduated from Cambridge University in 2007 and since 2008 has exhibited his work in over twenty shows to date. A prolific author, Granta published de Freston’s debut non-fiction book, Wreck, in 2022 and his second will be released in 2024. Julia and the Shark (Hachette, 2021), created with his wife Kiran Millwood Hargrave, won the Waterstones Children’s Gift of the Year and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation. De Freston was chosen to illustrate the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of David Almond’s Skellig, published in 2023.I Saw This was born out of a collaboration between de Freston, filmmaker Mark Jones and Dr Ali Souleman after de Freston was introduced to the academic in 2017. The paintings and mixed-media works that resulted from the project are an exploration into Souleman’s experiences of terrorism, displacement and war in Syria and ruminate on how art can attempt to represent suffering and terror. In 1996, a bomb explosion in Damascus on New Year’s Eve nearly killed Souleman and left him blind. A sensitive and highly-charged topic, Souleman explained to de Freston the importance of engaging with what is happening in Syria. Disembodied mouths, hands and feet appear frequently in the works. Circles recur as a motif, which bear an uncomfortable resemblance to eyes and eye sockets. In the Mirror paintings which stand upright in black boxes, de Freston embeds ash, screws, thick glue, dirt and bits of wood into the canvas. They are corporeal and volcanic, visceral and abstract. The sense of molten heat in the paintings was compounded by a fire in de Freston’s studio in 2020, which was simultaneously destructive while giving the artist and the collaboration new momentum.The singular artistic process between the three men involves de Freston describing the paintings to Souleman through words and touch. Souleman brings fresh meaning to the works by reading them in new ways, grounding them in his psychological landscape. Mark Jones captures these interactions in striking photographs and film footage. The collaborators’ close relationships, with each of their practices feeding into the others’, shine through.Habda Rashid, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Kettle’s Yard and the Fitzwilliam Museum, introduces I Saw This and considers the challenges and significance of incorporating elements from real life. Journalist Yasmina Floyer’s contribution describes her reaction to de Freston’s work at his From Darkness exhibition at No 20 Arts, where she found that the sooty-black feet stencils and inky circles depicted resonated with her own experience of child loss. The moving text shows how de Freston’s art carries both specific and universal meanings. Editor Matt Price elaborates on the collaborative process and identifies layers of symbolism across the project, structuring his essay with fascinating quotes from Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri, the eleventh-century blinded Arab philosopher. Crucially, de Freston, Jones and Souleman’s voices are present in the book, with each shedding light on their part in the project. De Freston’s art is rooted in empathy and I Saw This is a culmination of this, successfully translating Souleman’s world of memory and metaphor.

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Book SynopsisGideon Rubin (b. 1973, Israel) is an artist who lives and works in London. Exploring identity, history and the inheritance of trauma in his enigmatic paintings, Rubin’s subject matter draws on myriad references such as film, popular culture, art history and literature, creating and investigating mythologies from the recent past. Haunting and subtly theatrical, the paintings often feature faceless yet familiar figures. Underlying each work is Rubin’s expressive mark-making, muted palette and understated use of negative space and raw canvas.Look Again is Gideon Rubin’s second major trade monograph and showcases his substantial body of work since 2015, including studies of people in nature and scenes of solitude and intimacy. Author and art critic Jennifer Higgie discusses the evolution of his artistic style and his many influences – Balthus, De Kooning, Guston and Diebenkorn to name a few. Dr Matthew Holman’s expansive essay touches on Rubin’s cinematic characters, source material, his use of artistic conventions and engagement with sexuality. Holman investigates the meaning of redaction in Rubin’s work, both in his faceless portraits and in Black Book – a work in which Rubin used black paint to erase the contents of a 1938 English translation of Mein Kampf. Exhibited at the Freud Museum in London in 2018, Black Book is an exploration of what is left out of history, as much as what is remembered.Painting is essential to Rubin, as both a creative and therapeutic act; ‘a log keeping him afloat in the middle of the sea’, as he puts it. In conversation with fellow artist Varda Caivano, Rubin analyses his motivations, processes and doubts, and explains his surprising route to painting. Despite coming from a lineage of painters on his father’s side, it was largely his mother’s academic love of art that galvanised his artistic career, as well as a transformational experience in South America that opened him up to painting. An emotive poem by South Korean author Park Joon sheds further light on Rubin’s imagination.Rubin studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and then at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. He has had numerous international one-man shows and his works are included in a number of international private and public collections. Recent exhibitions include 13, Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milan (2023), Dark Noise, The Kupferman House Collection, Israel (2023), Portrait without a Face, Fox Jensen Gallery, Tokyo (2023), a solo show at CASSIUS&Co., London (2023) and Living Memory, a two-person show with Louise Bourgeois in a Grade II listed chapel in London (2023). Rubin’s work has been featured in publications such as Artribune, San Francisco Examiner, Vestoj, Koln Kultur, Galerie Magazine, Südostschweiz Newspaper and Elephant among others. The publication has been supported by Galerie Karsten Greve, who represent Rubin’s work in Paris, Cologne and St. Moritz.

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Book SynopsisKnown today for his atmospheric views of the river Oise, Charles Francois Daubigny was a pioneer of modern landscape painting and an important precursor of French Impressionism. Although commercially highly successful he was often criticised for his broad, sketch-like handling and unembellished view of nature, and was dubbed the leader of 'the school of the impression'. As a result he drew the attention of the next generation of artists, among them Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, who were inspired by Daubigny's frank naturalism, bold compositions and technical innovations. Theirs was an artistic dialogue which spanned thirty years, from the early 1860s to the end of Van Gogh's short life.

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Book SynopsisA draughtsman of remarkable ability, matching even his mentor Augustus John, Henry Lamb (1883–1960) was a founder-member of the Camden Town Group, exhibiting at their inaugural exhibition in 1911. He was a powerful and original War artist, and an engaging and sensitive portrait painter, whose group portraits in particular are as successful as those by any British painter of the age. To date unfairly eclipsed by the glamorous and culturally infl uential circle around him, Lamb is now probably best known through these fi gures and his many compelling portraits of them, amongst them Lady Ottoline Morrell, Evelyn Waugh and Lytton Strachey, whose monumental full-length portrait by Lamb in Tate Britain is probably the artist’s best-known work. Lamb abandoned a promising medical career in Manchester to pursue his training as an artist at the London art school run by William Orpen and Augustus John. He found inspiration in the rural simplicity of Brittany, and a later visit to Ireland inspired his great genre painting Fisherfolk, Gola Island of 1913 – not seen in public since the last major retrospective in 1984. Following active service during the First World War as an army medical offi cer (for which he was awarded a Military Cross), he contributed two of the greatest artworks to the proposed National Hall of Remembrance a year after armistice in 1919. Following a productive period in Poole after the War, where he produced some evocative townscapes of its streets and skylines, he eventually settled in Coombs Bissett near Salisbury. Here he established a reputation as a sought-after portrait painter, executing a constant stream of landscapes, still lives, genre pictures and fi ne domestic subjects. Accompanying an exhibition at Salisbury Museum in 2018 and Poole Museum in 2019, Henry Lamb: Out of the Shadows will focus on over 50 works by the artist from across his career. As well as loans from major national collections, the group will include signifi cant works from private collections, including a substantial archive from the artist’s family and a number of re-discovered masterpieces. The catalogue will also feature an introductory essay by Lamb’s cousin, the writer Thomas Pakenham who knew the artist well.

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Book SynopsisMorgan Howell paints classic 7" singles and takes into account every crease, every tear, every imperfection-producing a one-off, truly unique artwork, almost identical to the owner's original copy, but blown up, supersize, to 70 by 70 cm, and three-dimensional, with the spindle in the centre, as if the record is ready to play. This completely original approach has resulted in Howell attracting a cult following amongst art collectors and musicians alike-with paintings commissioned by the likes of Neil Diamond, Jude Law, Edgar Wright, and The Stone Roses' Ian Brown, and major music labels selecting the artist's work for display in their headquarters, indeed, Howell's painting of David Bowie's The Jean Genie is displayed at the Sony Music Building in London, and Yesterday by The Beatles has been shown at the Capitol Building in L.A. Morgan Howell at 45 RPM, published by Black Dog Press, beautifully documents 95 of Howell's creations, from 'Tutti Frutti' by Little Richard to 'Heart of Glass' by Blondie, to 'Gimme Shelter' by The Rolling Stones, to 'Waterloo Sunset' by The Kinks. The artworks are shown in full, alongside evocative commentaries from fans of Howell's work, including The Smiths' Johnny Marr, Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp, comedian Al Murray, journalist Tony Parsons, actress Kay Mellor, Happy Mondays' Shaun Ryder, producer William Orbit and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. The book features Forewords by Sir Peter Blake and Andrew Marr, plus an in-depth interview with Morgan Howell, exploring his process as an artist and why, for him, music and art are intrinsically linked. With a format perfectly designed to fit on record shelves, this book is a must for vinyl junkies, music heads and art lovers everywhere.Trade ReviewVinyl is returning to my life in a big way, in the form of Morgan Howell and Supersize Art. Ziggy Stardust, by David Bowie, is the one I bought. The one that will soon be staring down at me from my study wall. Vinyl. It's back. In a big way. Dylan Jones, The Independent; Rarely has the MOJO office been so galvanised than when Morgan Howell popped in to show us his Supersized Singles. The 3D quality is uncanny, just like an original single has been blown up with some science fiction enlargement machine and plonked on your wall. MOJO Magazine

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Book SynopsisThere is surprisingly little, and certainly nothing comprehensive, written about the contemporary Russian scene now. What appear in the West are mostly reports about so-called ‘dissidents’, not about what is happening in this vast culture, taken as a whole. Too often, these reports seem to be primarily inspired by a desire to demonstrate Western cultural and political superiority. The aim of Russian Art in the New Millennium is not to support any one cause, but to look at the situation as it now exists objectively and to give as wide and truthful a view as possible. Russian art during the period under review – the last two decades – has been evolving rapidly and in many directions. Hence there are sections on digital art, landscape paintings, graffiti, religious art and others. Furthermore, in addition to the continuing influence of the traditional centres for art – Moscow and St Petersburg – a number of provincial Russian cities have developed distinctive art worlds of their own. Russian Art in the New Millennium attempts to discover this terra incognita and to encompass this extremely various, but also intensely national art scene in Russia in one volume.

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Book SynopsisIn The Compact Beginner's Guide to Painting, we'll guide you throughthe basics of the most popular mediums, from watercolours to oil. We'llexplore the kit you need to give yourself a head start, and reveal thetechniques you need to master to unleash your inner artist.

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Book SynopsisAdam Bruce Thomson (1885-1976) was one of the most quietly impactful artists of his generation. Born in Edinburgh, he was among the earliest intake of students to train at the newly established Edinburgh College of Art. He went on to have a long-running teaching career at the College, supporting and encouraging successive cohorts. In his own practice, Thomson worked across a range of media, producing etchings, drawings, watercolours and oil paintings. A committed member of several artist-led societies, he exhibited widely and was well-respected by his peers. To date, however, his contribution to twentieth-century Scottish art remains largely unexplored. _Adam Bruce Thomson: The Quiet Path_ celebrates the achievements of this talented yet modest figure. It provides an in-depth account of his life and career, charting his creative development and examining his role as a teacher, mentor and friend to other artists. The book is fully illustrated, and draws from previously unseen archival material. It accompanies a major exhibition at Edinburgh's City Art Centre in 2024.

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Book SynopsisThere are many myths about the artist Edgar Degas—from Degas the misanthrope to Degas the deviant, to Degas the obsessive. But there is no single text that better stokes the fire than Degas and His Model, a short memoir published by Alice Michel, who purportedly modeled for Degas.Never before translated into English, the text’s original publication in Mercure de France in 1919, shortly after the artist’s death, has been treated as an important account of the master sculptor at work. We know that Alice was writing under a pseudonym, but who the real person behind this account was remains a mystery—to this day nothing is known about her. Yet, the descriptions seem too accurate to be ignored, the anecdotes too spot-on to discount; even the dialogue captures the artist’s tone and mannerisms.  What is found in these pages is at times a woman’s flirtatious recollection of a bizarre “artistic type” and at others a moving attempt to connect with a great, often tragic man. The descriptions are limpid, unburdened; the dialogue is lively and intimate, not unlike reading the very best kind of gossip, with world-historical significance. Here in these dusty studios, Degas is alive, running hands over clay, complaining about his eyes, denigrating the other artists around him, and whispering salaciously to his model. And during his mood swings, we see reflected the model’s innocence and confusion, her pain at being misunderstood and finally rejected. It is an intimate portrait of a moment in a great artist’s life, a sort of Bildungsroman in which his model (whoever she may be) does not emerge unscathed.

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Book SynopsisBelleroche was an integral part of the Parisian art scene during the Belle Époque - he was a close friend of the artist John Singer Sargent with whom he shared studios in Paris and London; he was admired and collected by luminaires such as Degas and Renoir - anbdchampioned by the art critic Roger Marx. With Toulouse-Lautrec he shared the celebrated model Lily Grenier. And it is even said that Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray was inspired by Belleroche. Belleroche was considered by his contemporaries to be an innovator. In the art of lithography he developed techniques that built on the experiments of Degas and other Impressionist, (with whom he shared a fascination for monotypes). Despite all these fascinating facets of his life and art, his story remains largely unknown.

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Book SynopsisLos Angelesbased artist and writer Walead Beshty (born 1976) started his Industrial Portraits series in 2008. He realizes them wherever he goes, asking all the art people he works with to pose in their working environment and working clothes: studio assistants, gallery staff, curators, lab technicians, critics, fellow artists, collectors, art handlers and even the machines, which contribute to an artwork's progress from studio to gallery and beyond. Captioned first as framer, Fedex courier or darkroom assistant and then identified with the location and date of the shoot, together his models form a nonhierarchical, kaleidoscopic yet very detailed facebook of the art world, following in part the tradition of great American anthropological photographic surveys. This publication gathers together the Industrial Portraits created between 2008 and 2012. A second volume will be published to span the subsequent years.

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Book SynopsisThe second installment in Dietmar Elger's ambitious six-volume Gerhard Richter publishing project The oeuvre of Gerhard Richter (born 1932) embraces in excess of 3,000 individual works. Over a period of five decades he has created a stylistically heterogeneous, complex body of work that testifies to his status as the most important living artist of our time. Dietmar Elger, director of the Gerhard Richter Archive at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, has spent years researching and preparing the six-volume catalogue raisonn' that will be published through 2020. This second volume encompasses the works that Richter assigned numbers 199 to 388, covering the years 1968 to 1976. A total of over 500 paintings and sculptures are listed. Aside from the richly colored illustrations (many of them full-page), it includes full technical details, information about the artist's handwritten notes and the provenance, bibliography and exhibitions of each individual work. This information is supplemented by commentary, quotes and comparison images.

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Book SynopsisThe immediate physical presence of color is central to Katharina Grosse’s creative endeavor. Through an open-ended creative process in which painting takes on the form of a performance, color embodies movement, making its emotional potential tangible. These issues are not only driving her dramatically large in situ works painted across various surfaces in public places. They also inform her studio paintings, which have played an equally central role in her practice from the start. This book is the first study focusing on Grosse’s studio practice from the late 1980s to the present. Five essays and an insightful interview with the artist explore how Grosse expands the concept of painting - not just in open space, but also on canvas - through creating an ephemeral character and removing the limitations of its traditional frame.

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Book SynopsisAn intensely intellectual painter, Robert Motherwell is renowned for his distinctive Abstract Expressionist style. The seminal artist permeated his gestural works with an expressionism and austerity reflective of the human psyche; at the same time his oeuvre addressed political and humanitarian themes. Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting is an in-depth exploration of his artistic practice. Leading art scholars examine the American artist’s turn from Surrealism to abstraction and analyze the major series that developed over his fifty-year career. The catalogue studies the dialogue between Motherwell’s art and the nineteenth-century French painting tradition, investigates his relationship to Spanish techniques and processes, with an emphasis on their underlying political significance, and delves into Motherwell’s use of ochre pigment, with its evocation of both deep geological time and avant-garde practices.

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Book SynopsisSpiritual-Surreal Imagery Jakub Julian Ziolkowski's vibrant works are bizarre and alluring. In his wild, surreal cosmos of mutant humans, organic forms and circulatory systems, the Polish painter mixes cultural symbols, the decorative and the fantastical. Juxtaposing the spiritual and the microscopic, he creates a universe bristling with detail and a kaleidoscope of references - from Hiernoymos Bosch visions of heaven and hell and James Ensor's grotesque allegories to Philip Guston. Yet, his paintings show a highly personal world that is populated by a recurring cast of characters. This publication is the first comprehensive overview of his work from 2005 to the present, giving insights into his artistic practice in different media: from painting to sculpture, ceramics as well as drawing. The book includes essays by Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and Cecilia Alemani, curator of the 59. Venice Biennale, an in-depth interview with the artist, as well as texts by philosopher Kajetan Mlynarski and psychologist Bartlomiej Dobroczynski.

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Book SynopsisShowing What Cannot Be Explained Along the three major themes of technique, art epochs, and pictorial genres, art history can delve into the smallest details. “Don't think, but look!” concern is diametrically opposed. Foregoing any commentary text, this book is about the conscious act of seeing without distraction in order to recognize the essential—the “unexplainable”— in the work of art. This publication does not intend to be a comprehensive history of art. Instead, this quite subjective selection of 338 paintings aims to provide an unclouded view of the chronological development of Western painting over seven centuries. The key painting is on the cover: Cezanne’s Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) that, like a gateway, opens the path to the non-representational image of our time.

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Book SynopsisElegant sailing ships, expansive seascapes, crystal - clear spread - out views of architecture – with his unique pictorial language and range of subjects Lyonel Feininger became one of the most important artists of Classic Modernism, whose works remain very popular to this day. It was in Paris that Lyonel Feininger (1871 – 1956) abandoned his successful career as a caricaturist and began a life as an independent artist. Initially his pictures are peopled with grotesque, wild, travesty - like figures inspired by the street scenes of Paris. Shortly afterwards he discovered the typical pictorial subjects which would make him world-famous. Seldom has Feininger’s artistic development from his early works to his last pictures in the United States been shown with such brilliance. With unpublished photographs and extracts from the unpublished diary of his wife Julia, this artist monograph provides an in-depth insight into the life and work of Feininger and will even surprise those who are familiar with his art.

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Book SynopsisConrad Felixmüller (1897–1977) is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the Second Generation of German Expressionism. He celebrated initial major successes with his art during the Weimar Republic. This volume illustrates the life and work of this unusual artist, whose creative career reflects more than half a century of art and contemporary history. In January 1919 Felixmüller founded the avant-garde Dresdner Sezession Gruppe 1919, whose members also included Otto Dix and Peter August Böckstiegel as well as other fellow artists. The works from the early 1920s reflect not only his interest in these people but also his political commitment. Under National Socialism Felixmüller’s works were proscribed as “degenerate”; after 1945 he endeavoured to continue his work in the GDR, albeit under new auspices. Ten years before his death, Felixmüller moved to West Berlin, where he lived to see the rediscovery of his work.

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Book SynopsisA discovery: Polish Symbolism between decadence and a new beginning The turn of the century was a golden age for Polish art. The publication shows about 130 masterpieces of painting from this era between decadence and a new beginning and describes its roots in Polish history, culture and nature as well as the close connections with the European art scene. Polish painting in around 1900 carries us into a world of myths and legends, into dream-like landscapes, old traditions and customers, into the depths of the human soul. In a nation without its own state – until its independence in 1918 Poland was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary – a young generation of artists emerged to renew painting. They gave it a common identity, but joined forces at the same time with the European avant-gardes. Artists featured: Teodor Axentowicz, Olga Boznańska, Józef Chełmoński, Władysław Czachórski, Julian Fałat, Wojciech Gerson, Aleksander Gierymski, Gustaw Gwozdecki, Vlastimil Hofman, Władysław Jarocki, Konrad Krzyżanowski, Jacek Malczewski, Jan Matejko, Józef Mehoffer, Edward Okuń, Józef Pankiewicz, Władysław Podkowiński, Witold Pruszkowski, Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Kazimierz Sichulski, Władysław Ślewiński, Kazimierz Stabrowski, Jan Stanisławski, Henryk Szczygliński, Włodzimierz Tetmajer, Wojciech Weiss, Stanisław Witkiewicz, Witold Wojtkiewicz, Leon Wyczółkowski, Stanisław Wyspiański

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Book SynopsisAround 1500, Lucas Cranach the Elder steps onto the world stage – in Vienna. The publication explores this, the artist’s earliest period of work and presents all the paintings he produced during this time, their expressiveness radically different from the courtly-elegant compositions he subsequently produced as court painter in Wittenberg. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) produced his earliest works around 1500 in Vienna, shortly before moving to Wittenberg to become court painter to the Elector of Saxony. These brilliant paintings, drawings, and woodcuts document both the thirty-year-old’s close contacts with the humanist circles of Konrad Celtis and Johannes Cuspinian, and identify him as a precursor of the so-called Danube School.

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Book SynopsisQuite apart from her position as the wife and model of Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Charlotte Berend-Corinth (1880–1967) shone as an artist and was, like Käthe Kollwitz, one of the few women members of the Berlin Secession. This bibliophile monograph is dedicated to the highly gifted, successful and unfairly neglected artist and presents an impressive synopsis of her oeuvre. Berend-Corinth pursued a remarkable career with ultra-modern, radical subjects in the Berlin of the 1910s and 1920s until her Jewish descent compelled her to leave Germany and to emigrate to the United States. Her early work, in which she captured the permissive mood of the Berlin art and theatre scene during the 1910s and 1920s, represents one main area of focus, as do the later portraits of famous personalities of her time and some of her remarkable self-portraits, still lifes and landscape pictures.

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Book SynopsisThis monograph examines the multidisciplinary practice of conceptual Irish artist George Bolster, who addresses the crises facing our species, and our willingness to live in the past through belief systems. Bolster’s ambitious immersive text and image works encompass film, installation, tapestry and photography. When Will We Recognize Us examines the practice of research-based artist George Bolster, who addresses the crises facing our species, long-term conservation of art objects as they relate to climate change, our ignorance of tangible reality, and our willingness to live in the past through outmoded belief systems. Bolster’s ambitious multidisciplinary text and image works encompassing film, and installation, conducted in concert with a range of scientists have resulted in pieces that philosophically address astronomy, and our self-appointed place in evolution.

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Book SynopsisThe youngest member of the Blauer Reiter group was overshadowed for a long time by fellow painters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, and Paul Klee. But in recent years, Heinrich Campendonk has enjoyed an unparalleled rediscovery and a new critical assessment of his extensive oeuvre. Biermann described Campendonk’s early work as a unique symphony of color and rhythm. Just a few years later, his pictures would be defamed as “degenerate,” driving him into exile in the Netherlands, where he remained until his death in 1957. In this beautiful volume, the author reveals Campendonk to be one the most fascinating artists of the last century, bringing to life the extraordinary overlap of his artist development with his life and times.

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Book SynopsisLife and work of the artist and style icon Frida Kahlo in a compact overview. Frida Kahlo has become an icon of art with her powerfully expressive work. Her pictures not only reflect a view of herself, her fears, the biography of her illness, her passions and her joie de vivre; they also take up subjects which were regarded by society as taboo. As a pioneer of the feminist movement, this Mexican artist serves women the world over as a figure of identification. Pride and strength, vulnerability and bitterness all lie close to each other in Frida Kahlo’s art. Her self-portraits, which make up the principal part of her work, not infrequently show a charismatic woman dressed in traditional Tehuana costume, which the artist wore as a visible sign of her culture and her Mexican roots, but also to hide her wounds. Kahlo’s biography had a direct influence on her subjects: her not uncomplicated marriage to the artist Diego Rivera, her tragic accident, and her childlessness, loneliness and grief.

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