Search results for ""Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd""

The remarkable plein air paintings of Liu Xiaodong (b.1963), which chronicle everyday lives within our diverse modern world, are the focus of this first monograph of his career to date. Immersing himself in communities around the globe, Xiaodong seeks to present people who often sit on the fringes of society who find themselves marginalised within a contemporary world striving for homogenisation. At first glance a traditional realist painter, closer examination reveals an artist exploring a range of media while interrogating the opportunities presented by modern technology. The result is an outstanding body of work, often monumental in scale, that examines, reconsiders, and extends observational painting in fresh directions, while bringing into question the lines between fact and fiction, the traditional and the contemporary, to create a wholly original vision.

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Rural Scotland is a charged landscape, alive with history, soaked in myth and often rather sublime. For those of us living an urban existence, the countryside is a retreat for refuge and decompression, but it is also a place where infrastructures strain to reach and in which livings must be made. The countryside is resistant to easy explanation and is thus vulnerable to stereotyping. The nine building stories told in this book show how rural households and communities define themselves, and the role architecture plays in this. Illustrated with beautiful photography and drawings, the projects, from affordable housing on the islands to exquisite renovations of traditional agricultural stock, and all recognised by the Saltire Society’s Housing Design Awards, are visually rich both in themselves and the contexts in which they sit. The houses are set firmly within historic, economic and social contexts and are much more than bolt holes from the urban. Some of our buildings are active participants in rural regeneration and others reflect, in a profound way, what authenticity really means in the countryside. Like architecture everywhere, they present a mirror to a society’s preoccupations and values. However, this is a book too about architecture’s capacity to inspire and endlessly delight.

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Amongst the pioneering exponents of Californian Abstract Expressionism was Frank Lobdell (b. 1921) - peer to painters such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn and a significant artist in his own right, who takes centre-stage in this groundbreaking book. Centred around Lobdell's career, the narrative's scope is ambitious, charting the events during those crucial and revolutionary years in California so helping to define the role and participation of each of its protagonists. For Lobdell, the early training and exposure to these artists helped to shape his remaining career as a painter, draughtsman and printmaker. Unrivalled, Frank Lobdell makes an important contribution to the scholarship available on this fascinating slice of American art history, while shedding light on the career of an important artist of the period.

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New ideas and technologies are transforming the ways we build and inhabit underground space. This book explores how these innovations can help to make our increasingly dense, climate-stressed cities both more resilient and more of a pleasure to live in. While it sets out practical design approaches, Underground Cities is not a technical manual. Designed for everyone with an interest in the future of our cities, it is beautifully illustrated and written in an accessible style that draws on the rich tradition of underworlds, both real and imagined, in art, history and poetry. Global in scope, the book ranges across continents as it surveys the vast expansion in the potential of the underground. The opening section, 'A New Frontier', looks at two pioneering cold-climate cities, Montreal and Helsinki, which developed new uses for the underground from the 1960s on. The closing section, 'Looking Forward', offers glimpses of the city of the future - of what we might be able to achieve in the next 50 or 60 years. Focusing on Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, it shows projects that are going deeper, achieving a greater synergy of uses and preparing the way for new urban forms. In between, it reviews a range of innovative ideas and presents buildings and projects by leading international architects and artists, among them Jun'ya Ishigami, James Turrell, Dominique Perrault and Thomas Heatherwick, which highlight the advances in technology that are making it possible to bring the elements of nature - light, air, vegetation - deep underground. Works include a subterranean oasis, a refuge from the desert heat; a museum extension that deploys light and colour to define space; a multi-modal underground transport hub that evokes the arcades of nineteenth-century Paris, but with an added profusion of plants; and a troglodytic house and restaurant, sunk into the earth to create atmosphere.

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Ordered chronologically, and global in scope, this book provides an account of modern architecture through the prism of 20 of the most influential houses built over the past century. By telling the stories of these houses, it offers a fascinating biography of some of the greatest modern architects.John Pardey examines the ground-breaking ideas, sensitivity to detailing and materials in houses designed by the likes of Gerrit Rietveld, Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Giuseppe Terragni, Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames and Oscar Niemeyer, and seeks to discover what lessons they can still offer for architects practising today.20/20 tells the story of the client, the architect, the house and the events around the construction of each dwelling during the turbulent 20th century. It offers readers a fascinating biography of great architects in which revelations are found in their most intimate projects.

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This is the sixth volume in Lund Humphries’ series of monographs on British sculptor Anthony Caro and the first publication to focus on his use of stainless steel as a distinct body of work.Caro employed stainless steel extensively, from intimately scaled Table Sculptures to extremely large works, over many decades, and in his mature works, Caro's exploration and interrogation of this material became increasingly important. Karen Wilkin analyses Caro’s use of stainless steel in the context of the development of modernist constructed sculpture, pioneered in the UK by Caro and in the US by David Smith, a friend and admired predecessor, from whom Caro inherited most of the stainless steel he first employed, following Smith's untimely death in 1965. Karen Wilkin's text represents a much-needed overview of Caro's late career and a vital expansion of our understanding of 20th-century and early 21st-century modernist sculpture.

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This is the first full-length monograph on the paintings of Bernard Frize (b.1949), an artist whose work straddles movements and styles from Colour Field to Minimalism, Fluxus, and Conceptual Art. Frize's works utilise a carefully constructed range of tools, processes, choreography and collaboration to catalogue, in complex and unexpected abstract form and colour, the possibilities of his chosen materials. Emerging from the politicised 1970s onwards, Frize swam against the tide of opinion regarding painting’s apparent obsolescence to develop a painting practice that could express political commitment and social concerns, while avoiding both overt statement and pure decoration. David Rhodes’ text provides a detailed consideration of Frize’s development, from the earliest works onwards. Placing his paintings in a broader art-historical and philosophical context, a wider conversation about painting itself is presented alongside Frize's significant place within the medium's history.

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Urban character is frequently cited by planners, developers and architects as something they wish to protect and enhance. But little or no effort is ever made to define urban character in specific or quantitative terms.In Designing London, architect and critic Ike Ijeh provides a definitive and comprehensive analysis of London’s urban character. He establishes key principles by which the architecture of the capital’s streets, buildings and spaces can be designed to enhance the character of the city. He first identifies and analyses the constituent physical, social and environmental ingredients that form London’s urban character and reviews the architectural, historic and planning context within which these ingredients operate. Then, through case studies of recent and proposed architectural projects, he discusses examples of how London’s character has either been undermined or enhanced. Ultimately, the book emphasises the enormous value of London’s unique urban character and encourages greater understanding and awareness of how that character is directly affected by architectural design decisions.

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This comprehensive overview provides the first detailed account of the phenomenon of the Arts & Crafts church, examining 150 of the finest examples, mostly built between 1884 and 1918 in England, Scotland, and Wales. Arts & Crafts studies tend to focus on houses and furniture; churches were no longer central to architects' practice. A handful of well-known churches have been written about extensively, but these famous examples obscure the existence of scores of churches that express Arts & Crafts ideas every bit as vividly. They also are rarely set alongside each other, nor seen within the wider context of not only how they were built, but why. These churches are visually arresting, with often quaint, far-fetched, or capricious exteriors. Internally, they often contain beautiful elements, including reredoses, pulpits, stained glass, and altars. They also tell a fascinating story about religion as Britain entered the age of modernity. While the architects were often religiously skeptical, they were still committed to making beauty. Author Alec Hamilton sets out the social and political context in which these churches were designed and constructed in the introductory section. The book is then divided into regional sections. Each section is headed by a short essay highlighting key architects and descriptions of notable churches within each region.

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This book discusses the architectural influence that Japan and the West have had on each other during the last 150 years. While the recent histories of Western and Japanese architecture have been well recorded, they have rarely been interwoven. Based on extensive research, this book provides a synthetic overview that brings together the main themes of Japanese and Western architecture since 1850 and shows that neither could exist in its present state without the other. It should be no surprise that the Bank of Japan in Tokyo is based upon the national banks in Brussels and London, or that Le Corbusier's cabanon at Cap Martin in the south of France is based upon an eight mat tatami room. In considering these histories, this book demonstrates the mutual inter-dependence of both architectural cultures while, at the same time, acknowledging their differences. In conclusion, the book moves beyond style and structure to the Japanese concept of ma - the pause or the space between, and demonstrates how this Zen Buddhist concept has found a place in Western architecture.

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This comprehensive monograph offers a detailed examination of the paintings of the acclaimed German painter Neo Rauch (b.1960). Rauch's paintings deftly blend the iconography of Socialist Realism from his upbringing and art-school training in GDR-era Leipzig with the stylistic mannerisms of the Baroque and Romantic past, conjuring heavily populated sites of great commotion and complexity, remarkably without recourse to preliminary drawing. His compositions and their enigmatic figures are rich with reference and allusion, but the stories they tell are indistinct and somehow out of time. They have an ancient modernity - or the freshness of renewed antiquity. Michael Glover discloses Rauch's working methods, revealing how the artist approaches the making of his work, how his images come into being, and the importance of words and their etymology to the creation or disruption of an artwork. These are works that interrogate the very meaning of the artistic impulse; ruminations in the guise of history painting that in fact question what a painter could and should be creating at this particular historical moment.

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Since the early buildings in the 1950s at Udine in Friuli, Gino Valle has been recognized by international critics as one of the most original and creative European architects of the post-war period. His artistic talent, associated with a great intellectual curiosity and with a genuine passion for the experimentation of new construction systems, led Valle to develop an architectural work resolutely open and multiform. Whether in the smaller towns of Friuli and Veneto or in metropolitan centres as New York, Paris or Berlin, Valle realized a wide range of important works: social housing and banks, factories and offices, town halls and courthouses. These buildings make valuable contributions to debates concerning the relationship between new architecture and historic surroundings, between industrial and open landscape, between urban design and architectural intervention. A very large part of his work was dedicated to typically "modern" working spaces - factories and office buildings - in response to clients firstly regional and national (the industries Zanussi, Fantoni, Olivetti), and subsequently international and multinational (the IBM, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, the Deutsche Bank). This edition makes available for the first time in English the only critical monograph dedicated to the complete work of Gino Valle.

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While much has been written about how photography serves architecture, this book looks at how fine-art photographers frame constructed space – from cities to single anonymous rooms. It analyses various techniques used and reveals resonances and rhythms found in the photographs as they occur at different scales, times and settings. Photographs become vehicles for thinking about the co-existence between individuals and social groups and their surroundings spaces and settings in the city and the landscape. By considering questions of technique and practice on the one hand, and the formal and aesthetic qualities of photographs on the other, the book opens up new ways of looking at and thinking about architecture and how we relate to our environment.

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The singular paintings of British artist Gillian Carnegie (b.1971) have been exhibited and discussed extensively for nearly two decades but this is the first substantial publication on her work.Carnegie’s work is explicitly analytical, systematic yet oblique in its reexamination of traditional painting genres such as still life, landscape, portraits, and the nude – all of them 'genres without a subject', as they have sometimes been called. Yet she makes clear that her impulse to resuscitate these categories is not simply an exercise in formalism, historicism, academic reverence, postmodern pastiche, or nostalgia. And far from being without a subject, far from having no story to tell, Carnegie’s paintings insistently suggest that there is a subject, that there is a story, but that the painting exists not to communicate it but to conceal it, to hold it incommunicado. In contemporary painting Gillian Carnegie's work stands apart, quietly, calmly and insistently uncanny, with an emotional tenor unlike anything else in art today.

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Those involved in the creation of public spaces think a great deal about the users of those spaces. Users think little, if at all, about those who create them. There are many: planners, developers, investors, contractors, special-interest groups, governments from local to national, and above all in this book, designers. The complex sets of relationships in which the designer is enmeshed remain largely unknown, as does the effect of those relationships on the public spaces they design. In ‘super-diverse’ cities like London, a successful public realm, where people can be together in trust and tolerance, is essential. A city’s commitment to design quality indicates a commitment to civic health. In the interests of such commitment, the book asks: What should public space ‘design intentions’ be today?; Who is ‘the public’ of public spaces?; What can/should designers do to protect the ‘publicness’ of public spaces?; Was state financed public space mid-20th century of any higher quality than privately financed public space today?; How significant is the shift from commissioning architects to design public spaces mid-20th century to commissioning landscape architects and public realm architects today?; Does emptiness in public spaces have a value?; Does retail in public spaces narrow the range of people visiting them?

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This book is the first monograph on the paintings of Lois Dodd. It provides invaluable analysis and contextualisation of her work alongside such New York City contemporaries as Alex Katz, Philip Pearlstein and other denizens of the Tenth Street milieu of the 1950s. Emerging from the shadow of Abstract Expressionism, Dodd and this circle cleaved to an observational painting based in the early modernist tradition. Beginning in the 1950s, Lois Dodd has steadfastly pursued her observational painting, remaining aloof from passing trends. She is widely admired as a 'painter's painter' whose landscapes and city scenes display subtle effects of place, light and weather within graphically distilled compositions. Dodd's works capture the intangible character of changing seasons or particular hours of day in locations throughout New York City, rural New Jersey and Maine, but the paintings betray no mark of era. They are curiously timeless.Through extensive studio visits and interviews, Faye Hirsch considers the processes, places and impulses behind Dodd's paintings and reveals her outwardly peaceful, reflective canvases to be the product of an alert and forceful eye and a powerfully efficient execution.

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This book scrutinizes the excesses and extravagances that the 21st-century explosion of the contemporary art market brought in its wake. The buying of art as an investment, temptations to forgery and fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and pressure to produce more and more art all form part of this story, as do the upheavals in auction houses and the impact of the enhanced use of financial instruments on art transactions. Drawing on a series of tenaciously wrought interviews with artists, collectors, lawyers, bankers and convicted artist forgers, the author charts the voracious commodification of artists and art objects, and art's position in the clandestine puzzle of the highest echelons of global capital. Adam's revelations appear even more timely in the wake of the Panama Papers revelations, for example incorporating examples of the way tax havens have been used to stash art transactions - and ownership - away from public scrutiny. With the same captivating style of her bestselling Big Bucks: The Explosion of the Art Market in the 21st Century, Georgina Adam casts her judicious glance over a section of the art market whose controversies and intrigues will be of eye-opening interest to both art-world players and observers.

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This book assesses the paintings of Tal R (b. 1967), an Israeli-born Danish artist whose enigmatic work offers intersections of personal experience and wider history through a visual jigsaw, finely balanced between representation and abstraction, of what the artist has termed 'Kolbojnik', a Hebrew term for leftovers.Tal R's paintings are exceptionally idiosyncratic yet informed by an expansive view of the history of painting, with a diverse range of references including Fauvism, Symbolism and folk art. To the casual observer, his works depict amalgams of people, places and things. But deeper scrutiny reveals them as complex conceptual playgrounds where these seemingly simple categories are exploded and examined as 'construction' sites of both literal material (including collage, photography and sculpture) and meaning.For all students and lovers of painting, Tal R's works, like those of Chris Ofili or Laura Owens, have cleared a pathway for painting to continue after modernism and post-modernism without apology, beyond the worn-out 'death of painting' mantra. Martin Herbert's fascinating text offers an authoritative account of the twists and turns that path has taken so far.

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Set within the fascinating cultural and political world of Vienna from the fin-de-siècle to the present day, this book provides an insightful analysis of the city's extraordinarily rich architectural tradition. Since 1900, Vienna has produced many great architects and their work includes some of the finest masterpieces of the twentieth century, such as Otto Wagner’s Stadtbahn stations, his Postsparkasse and his Majolica House, Adolf Loos’s American Bar and Goldman & Salastch, the Secession building by Joseph Maria Olbrich and Josef Hoffmann’s Palais Stoclet.Beautifully illustrated with paintings, drawings and photographs, the book stresses the importance of the highly polarized cultural politics that engulfed Vienna and produced much of what is modern in every field of culture and science. It shows how leading cultural figures such as Freud, Mahler, Schoenberg, Klimt and Twain encouraged a ‘rebellious’ architecture, which continued in later eras with the Wiener Gruppe, amongst others. The book also relates architectural history to the political economy that has shaped Vienna and highlights the relatively unknown tradition of Viennese social housing, initiated by social democratic Red Vienna in the 1920s. Today, 60% of Vienna’s population lives in the most successful social housing in the world, which has proved to be an important factor in stimulating the successful economy of the country as a whole.

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Edward Ardizzone RA (1900-79) was one of relatively few British artists who defined the field of illustration for their generation. Although his work as an artist and illustrator was wide-ranging, it is for his illustrated children's books, almost continuously available since they were first published from the late 1930s onwards, that he is best known. This book provides the first fully illustrated survey of Ardizzone's work, analysing his activity as an artist and illustrator in the context of 20th-century British art, illustration, printing and publishing. Copiously illustrated with many previously unpublished images, Edward Ardizzone: Artist and Illustrator also contributes more broadly to the current reassessment and investigation of mid-20th-century British art and illustration. Alan Powers (author of the bestselling Eric Ravilious: Artist and Designer) has written a critically considered text which draws for the first time on the family's archives, those of Ardizzone's publishers, and conversations with those who knew the artist. This beautiful and enlightening book, which reflects in its design and production values the aesthetic of an artist who was closely involved in the production of his own illustrated books, will be a fascinating read both for specialists as well as for readers who have grown up with the unforgettable characters of Ardizzone's classic children's stories.

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In Ruskin's Venice: The Stones Revisited, photographer Sarah Quill has selected passages from Ruskin's The Stones of Venice and has linked them to her own photographs of Venetian architecture, so creating a fascinating guide that fuses Ruskin's vision of the city with images of the present day. Covering a wide range of subjects from palaces, churches and town houses, to bridges, courtyards and capitals Quill's glorious photographs illuminate Ruskin's words and record with skill and precision the fine architectural details described by him.This edition of Sarah Quill's bestselling book incorporates up-to-date views of buildings which have been cleaned since originally photographed. Several of Ruskin's watercolours are included, with extracts and reproductions from his Venetian notebooks, now publicly available, and some of his original daguerreotype photographs of Venice. Sarah Quill's expert editorial annotations and commentary, incorporating extracts from Ruskin's letters from Venice, enhance our understanding of Ruskin's text and provide an essential linking thread throughout. The book has been completely re-designed to be even more user-friendly as both a reference book and a guide for travellers to Venice. The result is a beautifully illustrated book that successfully communicates Ruskin's passion for Venice and concern for the city's architectural heritage. Uniting the historical with the present day, Ruskin's Venice: The Stones Revisited is a unique companion guide for both seasoned and first-time travellers to Venice, and will leave the reader determined to retrace Ruskin's footsteps time and time again.

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This is the first book to present a comprehensive overview of the entire career of British artist Richard Eurich (1903-1992), a figurative painter of compelling power and often visionary intensity who brought rare imaginative reserves to his depiction of the world around him, as well as to his apprehension of the mysterious and unseen. Eurich was a private man, not much given to self-promotion, and as such has not received the widespread attention he deserves. The Art of Richard Eurich locates the artist within the context of 20th-century British art, demonstrating his relevance in all quarters of the art world of the period. Eurich was draughtsman, landscape painter, teacher, War Artist, autobiographer, marine painter extraordinaire, portrait painter, figure painter, satirist, genre painter, visual poet of the beach, and occasional sculptor. His many creative talents are brought together in a compelling analysis of how these various parts refer to each other and to the man who was responsible for them. Featuring a wide selection of his artworks, from the topographical to the visionary, from the drawn to the painted, this book unspools the narrative of Eurich's life through expertly chosen examples of his paintings and drawings and places him in relation to his fellow-artists, friends and contemporaries.

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The first part of this essential handbook provides an art-business analysis of the market for art photography and explains how to navigate it; the second is an art-historical account of the evolution of art photography from a marginal to a core component of the international fine-art scene.In tracing the emergence of a robust art-world sub-system for art photography, sustaining both significant art-world presence and strong trade, the book shows the solid foundations on which today's international market is built, examines how that market is evolving, and points to future developments.This pioneering handbook is a must-read for scholars, students, curators, dealers, photographers, private collectors and institutional buyers, and other arts professionals.

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Mary Fedden (1915-2012) is one of Britain's most popular artists. The focus of this acclaimed book, newly available in paperback in celebration of her life's achievement, is the artist's creative process in various different media - oil, gouache, pencil and collage.While Fedden is often considered almost exclusively a still-life painter, still life was far from being her only preoccupation, as this book shows. Fantasy and imagination always also played a strong part, as is particularly evident in her small gouaches. A quietly surreal, enigmatic streak runs through much of her work.Fedden's collages are a witty and affectionate homage to the work of her husband, Julian Trevelyan. They lived, worked and travelled together from 1949 to 1988. The book re-emphasises her debt to him, but also her independence, even during their early life together when he stimulated her move into Modernism. In an engaging text, which draws on numerous conversations with the artist during her final years, Christopher Andreae considers why Fedden has always had such a popular following, looks at the English quality of her work, and talks about the commercialisation of her art and her attitudes to the art market. Fedden is shown to be an original, serious and prolific artist, a draftsman of unusual sensitivity and prowess, and a colourist of power and subtlety.Profusely illustrated with works from private and public collections, this is a book for Mary Fedden's existing devotees as well as newcomers to her work.

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Edward Burra (1905-76) was an English painter who is best known for his paintings of the seedy underworld of urban life. Yet, as this fascinating new monograph on his work reveals, his interests were much broader, incorporating landscape and still-life paintings, stage designs, book illustration and watercolours. Somewhat neglected by histories of modern art because his singular vision was often at odd with the mainstream art world, his work is now due for a re-appraisal.This important book represents the first full-scale monograph on Edward Burra and reproduces 100 key paintings alongside drawings and a range of fascinating contextual material. It positions Burra as a major figure in the history of 20th-century art, placing his work alongside that of the German Expressionists and other important contemporaries and influences. Long awaited, this book will be widely welcomed by all those with an interest in the art of this fascinating maverick and documenter of modern life.

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This book is the valuable Key to A New Arabic Grammar, the bestselling introduction to the Arabic language for over thirty years. Although A New Arabic Grammar is intended primarily as a teaching grammar not as a 'teach yourself' work, it has become clear that it is being used as a means of learning Arabic by many who have no teacher, and it is principally for their benefit that this key has been prepared. The Key contains translations of the English and Arabic exercises, and of the supplementary reading pieces in Arabic. Several generations of students have found the Key a most useful tool for their studies.

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The changing realities of our time - especially the unprecedented situation in 2020 - calls for leadership that moves beyond outdated models or frameworks that are driven by the tired rhetoric of management, business or patriarchal notions of commandment. There is a need for new forms of leadership that are more empathetic and expansive, conversational and communal, and above all, creative. This informative and accessible book examines whether designers can actually be leaders and, if so, whether they can be better leaders because of their creative capability. It then examines how the tools of design, particularly in its most human-centred and collaborative form, might actually hold the key for the next generation of leadership. Creative leadership is based on three values that give everyone leadership potential: creativity, clarity and empathy. Creativity is a universal ability to develop solutions that positively impact ourselves and others; empathy is the hallmark of a 21st century leader; and clarity is the missing link in aligning vision, direction, and communication. Whilst the term 'Creative Leadership' has existed on the sidelines for decades, the articulation of it in this book is unique. The ideas grew from the author's experience in leading over 100 design projects with government, business and the third sector - from small, medium enterprises, to large multinationals. They have been tested out internationally through workshops and research conducted with individuals and organisations.

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There is a long history in the West of viewing Japan through the twin lenses of orientalism and exoticism. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and the re-opening of Japan after a long period of self-imposed isolation there has been a succession of commentators who have sought to present Japan as somehow ‘other’ and not susceptible to ready understanding. Too often the study of Japanese architecture has followed this pattern or has been presented as a series of visual images that are explained as if they emerged from some unique alchemy of sensitivity and mysticism.This book argues that Japanese modern architecture emerged from identifiable events: political, social, economic, historical events, and is as susceptible as any other architecture to analysis and criticism in these terms. Episodic rather than encyclopaedic, it does not describe every twist and turn in the development of modern Japanese architecture, but rather, it examines twenty buildings spanning the 20th century and places them in the context of the political, social and economic, as well as the historical and cultural factors that shaped both them and modern Japan. Each building has been chosen because it reflects a major event in the development of modern Japan and its architecture. In this way, the author provides a more rounded understanding of the development of modern architecture in Japan and the circumstances from which it emerged and offers lessons that are still of relevance. As it entered the modern era, Japan was faced with the necessity of accepting an influx of Western technology in order to catch up. With imported technology came new and different ideas and values. Could the Japanese adopt the technology imported from the West while retaining their own culture and values? How could they identify those values and should they try to retain them or embrace new and different values? In the early 21st century, where we have seen the growth of the Internet and globalisation alongside an increase in nationalism around the world, these should be familiar questions. In a sense we are all Japanese now.

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The exclusive global art market is one which few aspiring artists manage to penetrate. How, then, can a creative person with virtually no arts engagement or formal training, perhaps with mental or other significant health issues, disability, or experiencing difficult social circumstances, find a way in? Witnessing the treatment of people in a day centre took author Marc Steene on a journey which led to the establishment of Outside In, a charity championing and promoting the work by artists encountering significant barriers and with the aim of creating a fairer art world. The book shares some of the most inspiring artwork produced outside of the mainstream. It includes work by respected ‘outsider’ artists and other, mostly contemporary, artists that the author has discovered during his work – art rescued from European asylums, the works of Madge Gill, channelled from her spirit guide Myrninerest, Rakibul Chowdhury whose work draws on his fascination with popular culture, and Drew Fox, whose otherworldly creations result from a series of near-death experiences. Exploring the necessity to create by people on the periphery, the unconventional techniques often utilised and the settings in which this work may be produced, Steene provides a compelling case for inclusivity and change.

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Etel Adnan (1925-2021) was a Lebanese-American poet, essayist and visual artist. This is the first book to present a full account of Adnan’s fascinating life and work, using the drama of her biography, the complexity of her identity, and the cosmopolitan nature of her experience to illuminate the many layers and dimensions of her paintings and their progress over several crucial decades.Adnan came relatively late to painting - her first images were created in the late-1950s in response to the Californian landscape. Her vocabulary of lines, shapes and colours changed little over time, and yet there are huge variations in mood, texture, composition and material. Similarly, there is a balance between understanding her paintings as pure abstractions, emulating the shape of thought, and seeing them for the actual landscapes of the many places Adnan loved, embraced and responded to.Tackling the complexities of her subject with skill and insight, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie unpacks Adnan's multi-layered career to capture the full scope of her artistic endeavours and impressive achievements.

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This is the most comprehensive monograph to-date on the innovative abstract site-related installations of German artist Katharina Grosse (b.1961). Grosse's daring move from the canvas into both architectural space and the landscape, with her signature colourful spray paintings, has resulted in a deeply compelling body of work. From a Toronto airport to a decrepit beach structure on the New York coast and the spaces of major museums worldwide, Grosse's works present thorough, yet temporary, carnivalesque transformations of extant places and situations. Author Gregory Volk has known Katharina Grosse and written about her work since the very outset of her career, and has witnessed her journey from unique talent to radical visionary. As he suggests here, Grosse's continually developing practice, simultaneously ungainly and exhilarating, bewildering and liberating, radically extends the possibilities for contemporary abstract painting.

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Now available in paperback, this book remains the definitive survey of the life and work of Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Carrington burst onto the Surrealist scene in 1936, when, as a precocious nineteen-year-old debutante, she escaped the stultifying demands of her wealthy English family by running away to Paris with her lover Max Ernst. She was immediately championed by Andre Breton, who responded enthusiastically to her fantastical, dark and satirical writing style and her interest in fairy tales and the occult. Her stories were included in Surrealist publications, and her paintings in the Surrealists' exhibitions. After the dramas and tragic separations of the Second World War, Carrington ended up in the 1940s as part of the circle of Surrealist European emigres living in Mexico City. Close friends with Luis Bunuel, Benjamin Peret, Octavio Paz and a host of both expatriate Surrealists and Mexican modernists, Carrington was at the centre of Mexican cultural life, while still maintaining her European connections. Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art provides a fascinating overview of this intriguing artist's rich body of work. The author considers Carrington's preoccupation with alchemy and the occult, and explores the influence of indigenous Mexican culture and beliefs on her production.

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