Search results for ""Five Continents Editions""

Overview of the Aboriginal Art, focusing on the first large-scale exhibition staged by the Fondation Opale (Switzerland). The common thread running right through this work is man's link with the land, the legacy of the ancestors that still echoes in the present. It is no accident that Before Time Began is one of the expressions used by Aboriginal artists in central Australia to refer to the creation of the world, in an oneiric sense. Understanding and following this underlying bond enables the reader to explore the art's narrative content in its association with dreams and the passage of time, elements that inevitably distinguish the temporal dimension in the different societies. But it is also a way of exploring the first stirrings of contemporary art in an Aboriginal context through works made at the beginning of the 1970s in Arnhem Land and in the territory of the Papunya, as well as more recent paintings by artists living in the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara). These last examples in particular highlight the fusion between contemporary art and traditional customs, in which ancestral knowledge is fused with elements drawn from the inevitable march of progress.

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The Buddhist monument of Borobudur was built in the eighth and ninth centuries on the island of Java. It is one of the most famous and studied religious buildings in the world, but it is also one of the most enigmatic. Since it was rediscovered by the West at the start of the nineteenth century, its ruins – swallowed up by the tropical jungle, suggestive of an ancient civilisation with a glorious past – have constantly been a source of fascination. Its unusual structure in the form of a tiered pyramid, its huge size, and the delicacy of its low reliefs, which include some 1,300 carved narrative panels, have ensured that Borobudur has taken its rightful place among the masterpieces of the world’s architectural heritage. However, given the absence of reliable historical documentation, a wide variety of hypotheses have been advanced to shed light on the secrets of its form, iconographic repertoire, and symbolism. Text in French.

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The fashion, history, and development of Jewish dress tells a story that spans the globe and crosses many cultures. In this colourful volume, Jewish communities - particularly those established for centuries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa - are revealed through their garments. Stunning photographs spin tales of family traditions and religious devotion, with a special section dedicated to jewellery worn by brides and grooms. Superb photographs of specific garments, with many close-up details, are juxtaposed with rare contextual photographs from The Israel Museum's archives to create a tapestry of a people revealed through textiles, costume, and images. More than 350 revelatory illustrations tell us how these precious articles of dress were originally worn.

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The photographer's eye offers a unique view of this great monument, placed on UNESCO's World Heritage list in 1979, which stands on a rocky islet on the bay of the same name at the mouth of the river Couesnon in Normandy. Once known as Mont Tombe, it was consecrated to the worship of the archangel Michael in 708 with the construction of a small oratory. In 966, Richard I, Duke of Normandy, founded the Benedictine monastery. A few years later, in 1017, abbot Hildebert II began the great construction project, but because of economic difficulties, it was not completed until 1502, five centuries later. A ring wall surrounds the town, traversed by a single road lined with dwellings, most of which date back to the 15th and 16th centuries. The monastery stands on the top of the rock with the abbey in the middle.

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The nearly 300 precious works shown here are artifacts of a once-flourishing jewellery tradition. The first book to examine the rich jewellery traditions of the Batak people in Indonesia is a gorgeous tribute to a vanishing way of life. Batak jewellery is characterised by a wide variety of materials and forms, and has many functions: Jewels can be status symbols, badges of rank, attributes of membership of a certain age group, amulets and talismans, or simply ornaments. Men, women, small children, and even babies were once adorned with gold, silver, brass, bronze, or the gold-and-copper alloy known as suasa. Today, the Batak wear traditional jewellery only for celebrations like weddings, and these stunning works are rapidly disappearing, being melted down or sold.

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Joel Denot (b.1961) is a French photographer. His images are centred on the essential elements of photography: light, colour and shape. They are neither figurative nor abstract, with coloured surfaces floating in a void, framing each other and projecting shadows of overlapping colours: orange then pale pink then blue then bright pink; red then green then pink then grey-blue. Produced entirely during the shoot, they are a purely photographic gesture, created without laboratory work. This is the first monograph on his career. Text in English and French.

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Passion, intellectual curiosity, and intuition inspired His Royal Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe CFR, over a period of 40 years, to collect and support artists from his native Onitsha, southeastern Nigeria, Ghana, the broader West African region, and indeed the African continent. Accompanying the opening of his Chimedie Museum to the public — a repository to house and display his personal art collection—this volume chronicles the Obi of Onitsha’s journey as a collector and patron and it is written in an easily navigable language by some of the finest scholars on the subject. Carefully selected are 322 masterpieces across a broad diversity of media from the almost 5,000 — ranging from drawings, paintings in oil, acrylic, and mixed media, photography, prints, etchings, and sculpture in bronze, wood and ivory to installations and site-specific commissioned friezes in the royal palace — that underscore the His Royal Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe Collection as one of the largest and most comprehensive African-owned private collections of African art. Includes critical essays by Sylvester Ogbechie, Frank Ugiomoh, Edwin Bodjawah, Babacar Mbow, Krdyz Ikwuemesi, Jerry Buhari, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Oliver Enwonwu, Chichi Anyagolu- Okoye, Chika Okeke-Agulu, and Olu Oguibe

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This volume is the first monograph devoted to Woods Davy and collects the works made by the artist from 1978 to the present, highlighting their context, the stories connected to their creation, and the artistic development to which they bear witness. Woods's growth is in fact marked by an evolution: his early practice is characterised by bold architectural abstractions and monumental installations, while his later work possesses a more reflective character. These latter pieces are compositions of smooth, rounded stones that appear to float in the air, defying gravity. The publication also focuses on an in-depth analysis of his Cantamar series.However, Woods's work also draws upon ideas derived from his passion for art collecting, in particular the masks used by the Songye and Luba peoples that inhabit the south eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He in fact owns what is certainly the most important private collection of Kifwebe masks. The connection between t

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This catalogue documents an exhibition at the Baur Foundation that brings together work by the French painter Pierre Soulages (b.1919) and the Japanese master bamboo artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV (b. 1973). Soulages, still working at 102 years old, has painted almost exclusively in black since 1979 and is known as the “master of luminous blacks”. Tanabe Chikuunsai IV is a renowned bamboo artist, known for his twisting organic sculptures and room-sized installations made from tiger or black bamboo. The aim of this exhibition is to explore how their work resonates, despite different approaches, in the dark and light effects of their materials. Text in French and English. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Baur Foundation in Switzerland, a museum of Far Eastern Art, from November 2021–March 2022.

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This book offers a review of Matteo Pugliese’s art over the past 20 years. The figures the Milanese sculptor creates are distinguished by their great power, revealing an inner torment that can no longer be disguised. The men depicted in his sculptures are all trying to break free of the wall that holds them, to throw off their limitations and assert their value as individuals in the hopes of escaping from dull uniformity and social and family expectations. These are people who are attempting to achieve a painful rebirth by struggling against materialised restraint — a wall — that seeks to prevent them expressing themselves, growing and therefore existing. The artist chooses to portray the moment of greatest effort, of supreme tension, the instant when a man regains control of his life and struggles against what is holding him trapped so as to restore a sense of purpose in his life. The carefully studied poses of his figures recall ancient models, in the same way as the material from which they are fashioned is also ancient. Luigi Spina’s lens knowingly lingers on these figures’ troubled birth and enables the reader, admirer, and art historian to acquire an intimate understanding of the sculpture and even to feel a part of the travails and manifest vulnerability that grip all of humanity. Text in English and Italian.

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The theatre is the central theme of this fourth volume in our series titled 'Art Brut - The Collection', published to coincide with the fourth Art Brut Biennale. After exploring architecture, vehicles, and bodies, attention turns to the theatre, a theme that is developed in its various aspects. The simplest example is the depiction of theatrical architecture, as in the work of Eugen Gabritschevsky or Victorien Sardou. Other artists create works that are intimately connected to the world of theatre, however without necessarily being a part of it. For example, for Giovanni Battista Podesta or Vahan Poladian, a public stage is a place where they put on a 'performance' that responds to a society that consigns them to its margins. Their intrinsically ephemeral approach uses clothing or accessories as a means of communication and to have their voices or protestations heard. Other artists conceive whole cosmogonies that take the form of a gigantic staging of a fanciful, phantasmagoric world, as in the case of Aloise Corbaz, whose work is to be viewed as a 'Theatre of the universe', or in that of Marguerite Burnat-Provins, with her graphic work titled 'Ma Ville'. The book includes over 100 illustrations, many of which are published for the first time, carefully chosen to enable the reader to explore the theme of the theatre in Outsider Art, or Art Brut. Also available in the series: Vehicles ISBN 9788874396580, Architecture ISBN 9788874397105, Body ISBN 9788874397884.

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Bricks, one of the earliest materials associated with both housing and the body, are the subject and object of this publication. In terms of human agency, bricks are the basic unit through which the artist introduces his designs in the landscape. Kaufmann uses this simple, yet tough, material to build up an imaginative world that is not linked solely to the bricks as such, but also to the symbolic charge they possess (the concept of transparency, physical and metaphorical walls, and their associated imaginative world). A total of ten works will be exhibited and Kaufmann himself presents each in the book. The introduction is edited by Anne-Claire Schumacher, who discusses Kaufmann's development and his place in the history of ceramic art and in contemporary art as a whole. This is followed by a contribution by Luca Pattaroni, who views the topic from a socio-political perspective. The five main works set in the park of the Ariana Museum and the continuation into the museum's basement are described and commented by the artist. Text in English and French.

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When Joan Miró moved to Majorca in 1956 he already enjoyed an international reputation and still had twenty-five years to live, dying on the Balearic island in 1981. Confident in his capabilities and status and spurred on by a kind of creative freedom, he spent these years in his studio experimenting to the greatest degree. He developed, or rather perfected, his own inimitable style: elementary forms became a personal iconography as he placed increasing faith in the expressive power of the brushstroke and the impact of the paint itself. His work displays the most varied influences and all are strongly present: the cave paintings at Altamira, Romanesque art, Catalan landscapes, and the inventiveness of Gaudí. But he also found inspiration in the East, in the rhythms of poetry, and in action painting. They all nurtured his theme of transformations, of metamorphoses. The book, which includes over 150 illustrations of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, many of which extremely large and previously unpublished, will be released to coincide with the Joan Miró exhibition to be held in Quebec (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 30 May - 8 September 2019), an event that sees the artist's work return to Canada after a hiatus of thirty years. Text in French.

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, at a time of turmoil when art was undergoing unprecedented upheaval, the West, and especially France, began to turn its eyes towards distant cultures until then largely neglected. Artists were in the throes of questioning all canons and were seduced by the freshness they found in the art of these cultures. The outcome is what we know today as 'Primitivism'. But at the same time, through a sort of aesthetic empathy, art lovers, critics, poets, and dealers developed a passion for the intrinsic beauty of these objects, which began to arrive in Europe in large numbers, brought home by colonial administrators, missionaries, or officers on overseas postings. The extraordinary expressiveness and at the same time great harmoniousness of the best of these works enchanted them. Guillaume Apollinaire was not afraid to talk of 'the very principles of great art' when discussing African art. This book acknowledges this art's role in world art and looks at the way beauty was perceived through the 'eye' of great art lovers. Some of these are mentioned in this publication, which discusses the works they painstakingly amassed. Many of these works are now famous and indeed have come to be regarded as 'icons'. Others of the greatest artistic importance collected by these aficionados are reproduced here, highlighting the particular genius of peoples, the existence of which is testified only through their sculpture. Many of these have never, or in some cases only very seldom, been published. The art of Africa, Oceania, America, and Southeast Asia are all represented, revealing the extraordinary variety of artistic forms developed in these four regions of the world. Certain cultures were discovered and appreciated in the West in the early twentieth century, while others were brought to the attention of the international community in the 1950s. This book tells the story of how discoverers, collectors, and dealers brought tribal art to France over a period of some eighty years. This is the first time a full survey has been attempted, especially as regards the post-war period, and many of the protagonists in this enthralling adventure are virtually forgotten. One of this book's great strengths is its double focus on art collecting, explored from both an aesthetic and a historical standpoint.

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Pretiosa Vitrea, whose title is inspired by the Latin definition of glass given by Gaius Petronius in the Satyricon written in the late first century AD, emphasises the heritage of glass manufacturing through the showcase of artifacts nowadays preserved in the state museums of Tuscany and in important private collections within the region. The quality of these 100 findings is comparable in excellence to the artifacts that can be found in the most renowned international museums. The book brings together such relevant archaeological findings of Roman glass manufacturing in Tuscany, as the glass cameo from Torrita di Siena or the chrysography of Arezzo. Alongside these exclusive glass products, a wide variety of findings will be showcased to illustrate the evolution of mass-production techniques, from the use of moulds to the discovery of the glass-blowing technique in the middle of the first century BC, which soon demonstrated clear advantages compared to the traditional ceramic production in terms of lower cost and preserving unchanged the taste of contained food and liquids. Text in English and Italian.

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The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum houses an extraordinary collection of 'prisoners' objects'. These were made by prison inmates and presented to the ICRC delegates who visited them, as provided for by the Geneva Conventions. For over a century, these objects have borne mute witness to the numerous violent episodes that continue to ravage our planet, from Chile, Vietnam, Algeria and Yugoslavia, to Rwanda and Afghanistan. Made from simple materials - whatever comes to hand in a prison - these objects express the need to escape the world of the jailbird. As a Lebanese inmate puts it, 'Creating is a way of acquiring freedom of expression, it gives us a means to say what we think while everything we see around urges us to keep quiet and to forget who we are.' While some of these works touch us through their simplicity, others astonish us with their beauty or ingeniousness. Each bears the imprint of a personal story loaded with emotion, inviting us on a journey through time and collective history.

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Micro Monumentality is the first title in a new series, Micro-Africa, which aims to highlight the artistic and cultural value of miniature objects made in Africa. The whole series will be based on a single private collection. Forthcoming titles will be dedicated to different ethnic groups and/or varieties of objects (jewels, talismans, containers, boxes, fetishes). The first volume introduces the concept behind the series, offering a broad overview of objects and materials created and used by a large number of different African ethnic groups. With superb full-page photographs and close-ups of single details, Micro Monumentality extols the wealth of expression found in talismans, weights, boxes, containers, fetishes, jewels, and other objects made from wood, ivory, bone, bronze, iron, aluminium, and stone. None of these exceed 15 cm (just under 6 inches) in height or length, and though indeed 'microscopic', they are as expressive as much larger works, and are even 'monumental' in their own right. Showcased here are approximately 150 objects from a unique collection of 20,000 pieces, purchased from renowned art galleries, exchanged between collectors, or found in Africa during decades of enthusiastic research. Representing the quintessence of African thought, religiosity, and prodigious formal inventiveness, this private collection is a celebration of the union of the miniscule, the sacred, and the precious. Including a long interview in which the collector talks about the origin of his passion, this book plunges the reader into a poetic odyssey of materials, forms, and rituals composed on a smaller scale. Text in English and French.

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A new kind of figurative art appeared during the 1960s in Europe and the United States. While in New York Pop Art offered a fresh perspective on an America in the throes of frenzied change, in Paris French painters and others from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Iceland also began exploiting images that had their origins in advertising, cinema and the popular press. Grouped under the umbrella term Narrative Figuration, they soon became the uncompromising critics of what was dubbed the consumer society. They were for the most part politically committed artists and many of them were actively involved in the political agitation that led up to the events of May 1968 in France. Once standard bearers, the Narrative Figuration artists have now been rediscovered by museums, which, like the Centre Pompidou, are dedicating increasing numbers of exhibitions to their work. Thanks to the acquisition of major works, the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art in Geneva now provides what is without doubt one of the most exhaustive selections of works by Adami, Aillaud, Arroyo, Erró, Fromanger, Jacquet, Klasen, Monory, Rancillac, Schlosser, Stämpfli, Télémaque and Voss, to name a few. Edited by Jean-Paul Ameline, who curated the Figuration narrative, Paris, 1960-1972 exhibition, held at the Grand Palais in 2008, this catalogue includes all its key works, with commentary and analysis by curators and art historians specialising in a movement that left an indelible mark on 1960s Europe.

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This book is the fruit of twelve years' study of the rituals performed by ethnic-Igbo Nigerians living in Italy. It is first and foremost a journey through the customs, rites, and ceremonies carried out in makeshift places of worship created by men and women who gather together on abandoned football pitches or in hangars. Since human vicissitudes have led to many of these rites no longer being performed in Africa, this research also tells us much about the role of memory and the importance of what once was; these rituals have now become part of our postmodern culture. The desire to reproduce an event as it was experienced in its place of origin is an unavoidable instinct that tends to build an elementary form of transnationality. These Nigerians thus turn into "healthy bearers" of a particular culture in their relations with the host population or with their compatriots, who today often seem cut off from their roots. It is ritual that makes a place sacred: the Nigerian community performs its rituals in a particularly run-down environment, but man s action turns it into a place of purity. This sense of sacredness pervades the photographs of Aniello Barone, where the darkness of the night is lit up by a "brightness" that seems to emanate from the soul of succour. The observer, the witness to the rite, man, the camera, and the actors end up as part of the same symbolic world.

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A survey of contemporary artists who use cut paper - from small-scale intricate cuttings to monumental architectural interventions and sculpture - as an art form. Eclectic, eccentric and tirelessly innovative, art crafted from cut paper has experienced an exciting renaissance in recent years. Published to accompany a travelling exhibit organised by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Slash: Paper Under the Knife examines the resurgence of traditional handicraft materials and techniques in contemporary art and design. Highlighting the work of forty-five international artists, among them Olafur Eliasson, Tom Friedman, William Kentridge, and Kara Walker, the book features not only cut but also burned, torn, laser-cut, shredded and sculpted paper art. In addition, the book includes cut-paper animation, as well as cut paper incorporated in photography and fashion. Works range from small-scale intricate cuttings to large-scale architectural inventions and sculptures. With an essay by well-known decorative arts expert David Revere McFadden, this singular book reveals that, with ingenuity and craftsmanship, one of our most familiar implements can be transformed into unforgettable works of art.

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This is the first catalogue raisonne of Frans Post (1612-1680) published in over 30 years. Post is the first trained artist from the Old World to paint landscapes of the Americas. He lived seven years in Brazil (1637-1644) where he painted seven canvases that are highly regarded today and were the subject of an exhibition at the Musee du Louvre in Paris in 2005. Back in Holland he painted another 148 works that have been sought by collectors and museums in the past decades. The book shows all the 155 paintings known to this day, 57 drawings and 35 prints that form his oeuvre. The authors have been joined by four renowned international experts to establish the 'corpus' of authentic works.

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The study of fifteenth-century painting in France was inaugurated a century ago by the exhibition Primitifs français (1904) and has developed considerably over the past few decades, especially thanks to the work of Charles Sterling, Michel Laclotte, Nicole Reynaud, and François Avril. This research has led to the revival of several forgotten figures (Barthélemy d Eyck, André d Ypres, Antoine de Lonhy, Jean Hey, Jean Poyer, etc.) and the reassessment of many centres of artistic production. Linked together, they formed a crucial part of the trade network across Europe. It is this extremely complex artistic geography that this book's three sections attempt to recreate. The first is devoted to the interplay between the French courts and Paris, as a thriving centre of artistic production at the time of the flowering of international gothic (1380-1435). The second examines the spread of ars nova (the illusionist art of Flanders) and its selective adoption in the kingdom of France in the time of Charles VII and Louis XI (1435 1483). The third concentrates on the gradual development of a generally accepted standard form of the French language, based on the model of Jean Fouquet and evolving in parallel to the work of the grand rhetoricians under Charles VIII and Louis XII (1483-1515).

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This study of the wooden Serpent figures/headdresses of the Baga people of Guinea is a collaboration by the author, as an art historian, with many contributions from diverse perspectives, including scientists preeminent in their fields, Robert J. Koestler, Roy Sieber, Dennis William Stevenson, Mark T. Wypyski, and Peter J. Zanzucchi. The text begins with a thorough exploration of the ethnological and art historical evidence for the Serpent masquerade among the Baga of Guinea, bearing an immense wooden serpent figure on top of the head representing a python. Never witnessed or photographed by an outsider, it disappeared in the 1950s along with most ritual performance after an Islamic jihad instated strict prohibitions against indigenous religions. The ritual context is followed by an in-depth analysis of the Serpent masquerade figures now extant in collections in Europe, the Americas, and Africa, as well as other representations of the python in the ritual art of the region. The final sections present the arguments, as a debate, between interested persons in the arts, including art historians, dealers, appraisers, collectors, and curators, and the scientific examinations by specialists in botany, chemistry, physics, entomology, and conservation concerning one particular Serpent figure in question.

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"Photography should not reproduce the visible; it should make the invisible visible.” - Franco Fontana Italian photographer Franco Fontana (b.1933), a pioneer of colour photography, is best known for his boldly coloured abstract landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes. This book features previously unpublished and experimental images from his archive alongside some of his best-known works. Over the 60 years of his career, Franco Fontana photographed that which cannot be seen, and was able to capture images abstracted from reality, independent of the subject portrayed. This meticulously compiled volume is dedicated to those who are approaching this artist’s practice for the first time, as well as to those who wish to go deeper into his work by exploring these previously invisible spaces which the sensitive eye of the photographer has glimpsed and translated into a unique and unprecedented image. Text in French.

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Headrests from Southern Africa - The architecture of sleep presents the subject of southern African headrests in a fascinating new light. The book, richly illustrated – often with in situ photographs, offers unique historical and personal information collected from many of the original owners and carvers of the headrests. So, for the first time African headrests are brought to life with detailed information and the stories of their creation, ownership, use and significance. The 438 headrests from the collections of Bruce Goodall from Cape Town and Frédéric Zimer from Paris are presented according to 3 geographical areas: KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo (where the Ntwane people live) and Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland). Since 2003, Goodall has made numerous field trips collecting, as well as interviewing and photographing the owners and carvers of headrests. In 2017, Goodall’s collection grew substantially with the purchase of a comprehensive collection of headrests from the Msinga area of KwaZulu-Natal. This collection had been assembled and meticulously documented by the late Anglican priest Clive Newman and his friend and assistant, Mavis Duma, between the late 1980s and the mid-2000s. The Zimer collection has been built up since the 1990s through his many travels in Africa, and his acquisitions from collectors and African art dealers around the world. This publication not only offers insight into the personal and historical dimensions of this important southern African tradition through the text written about the headrests and their owners by Bruce Goodall, but includes essays by Newman, Nel and Leibhammer and a text about collecting by Duma. Together these facilitate a penetrating understanding of these valued items as well as a respectful appreciation of the cultures and individuals who made and used them.

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The full-size plaster models that represented the passage from a preliminary designing phase to the production of the marble sculpture were of great significance to Italian sculptor Antonio Canova's creative process. As the subtitle emphasises, the temporal dimension holds great importance in the neoclassic sculptor's creative and productive phases: the plaster artefact posits a before and an after. Before comes the preparatory study; after is the finished work. Plaster stands in between, it is central. The plaster forms are not the finished works, however they contain all their power and potential. This volume explores this meaningful and little-known phase in the creative process of Antonio Canova, along with quality close-up photo sequences that expose the plaster surfaces, bringing a greater focus and appreciation to the plaster form.

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Born into slavery around 1853-4 on a cotton plantation in Benton, Alabama, Traylor has become one of the most important self-taught artists of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most celebrated African-American artists, along with Thorton Dial and William Edmondson. The story of Bill Traylor's life and work is a remarkable one. It is a story that deserves attention both nationally and internationally. This publication, generously illustrated with full-page high-quality reproductions, provides a close examination of Traylor's recurrent themes, composition schemes, favoured iconography, and contextual information related to the artist's biography, creative process and tools, visual environment, and artistic mindset. Each artwork is considered in a context beyond that of an isolated image and in response to one another, forming a series of intricate and consistent narratives, intriguingly cinematic in its development. The elements of Traylor's biography are the anchors of an individual mythology. Instead of merely being a basic depiction, the subject becomes a visual statement structuring Traylor's mind, bringing together hidden symbols from Kongo Vodou, Hoodoo, Southern Baptist, Freemasonry, and Blues sources, as well as layers of references: slavery, uncensored violence in the Jim Crow era, and turbulence within the black enclave known as 'Dark Town' in Montgomery, Alabama. Text in English and French.

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