Search results for ""Royal Academy of Arts""

On Charles II's restoration to the throne in 1660, four of his supporters were provided with plots of land in a leafy suburb of London, on which to build their extravagant town palaces. The only one to survive - built for the poet and courtier Sir John Denham (1615-1669) and now situated in the heart of Piccadilly - became the home of the Royal Academy of Arts, its exhibitions and its Schools. This important study charts the history of the estate through its many owners, including the 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753), who gave the house not only its name but also its distinctive and influential architecture. In his day, the house was host to leading scholars and celebrities, who met within Burlington's cutting-edge creation, which remains an unparalleled example of the Palladian style in England. Nicholas Savage's meticulous research examines 350 years of social and architectural history, as well as revealing the next phase in the life of the estate, as the Royal Academy opens up Burlington House as never before in an exciting redevelopment led by Sir David Chipperfield CBE RA to celebrate the institution's 250th anniversary.

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Published in association with the Royal Academy of Arts, London Animated by an unprecedented study of its collections, this book tells the story of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and illuminates the history of art in Britain over the past two and a half centuries. Thousands of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and engravings, as well as silver, furniture, medals, and historic photographs, make up this monumental collection, featured here in stunning illustrations, and including an array of little-studied works of art and other objects of the highest quality. The works of art complement an archive of 600,000 documents and the first library in Britain dedicated to the fine arts. This fresh history reveals the central role of the Royal Academy in British national life, especially during the 19th century. It also explores periods of turmoil in the 20th century, when the Academy sought either to defy or to come to terms with modernism, challenging linear histories and frequently held notions of progress and innovation.Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Royal Academy of Arts, London

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Featuring the vibrant work of 12 Royal Academicians or RA-exhibited artists (the leading talents Nancy Cadogan, Brian Oxley, Gabriella Buckingham, Philip Sutton, Ali Mackie, Gabrielle Nesfield, Mary Barnes, Kaffe Fassett, Sarah Wood, Martin Leman, Wendy Jacob and Julia Hamilton), this wall art calendar displays bright, original, modern and contemplative still life paintings, to be enjoyed by all. The datepad features previous and next month's views. Printed on FSC-certified paper, with plastic-free packaging.

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This mini wall calendar will brighten your day with the delightful animals portrayed by a range of young artists who featured in the RA Young Artistsâ Summer Show 2023. Information from the artists accompanies each work and the datepad features previous and next monthâs views. Printed on FSC-certified paper, with plastic-free packaging.

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A selection of Michael Craig-Martin's paintings, prints and sculptures, with an interview. This book is the result of a collaboration between The Gallery at Windsor, Florida, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Born in Ireland, the artist Michael Craig-Martin studied in America. On returning to the UK, he became a key figure in British conceptual art and an influential educator, linked in particular to the YBAs including Damien Hirst and Gary Hume. Craig-Martin's works transform recognisable objects - such as sneakers, headphones, watches and, most recently, Modernist buildings - with bold colour and simplified lines. He cites his 'rationalism' as the root of his practice. Craig-Martin is the latest subject of a three-year curatorial partnership between The Gallery at Windsor, Florida, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, initiated to celebrate the Academy's 250th anniversary. This lively book reproduces a selection of his paintings, prints and sculptures, with an insightful essay by the art critic Ben Luke and an interview between Tim Marlow and the artist. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Gallery at Windsor, Florida, 26 January - 26 April 2019. Ben Luke is the art critic at the London Evening Standard. Tim Marlow is artistic director at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Below images, left to right: Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, Untitled (watch fragment yellow), 2017. Acrylic on aluminium, 90 x 90 cm. Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, Double Take (iPhone), 2017. Acrylic on aluminium in two panels, 2018, 90 x 180 cm. Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, Untitled (trainer fragment), 2017. Acrylic on aluminium, 60 x 60 cm. Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, Untitled (lightbulb blue), 2017. Acrylic on aluminium, 90 x 90 cm. All images courtesy Gagosian. Photos Mike Bruce.

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Each year between 1819 and 1825, John Constable (1776-1837) submitted a monumental canvas to the Royal Academy of Arts in London for display in the annual Exhibition. These so-called six-footers vividly captured the life of the River Stour in Suffolk, where Constable grew up and where he returned to paint each year. The Leaping Horse, the last of these, now a major work in the Academy's collection, is the subject of this fascinating new book. Humphreys explores Constable's often avant-garde working methods, as well as his struggle to gain full acceptance within the art establishment of the early nineteenth century. With reproductions of his full-scale preliminary sketches as well as brand new photography of the painting itself, this book is the ideal companion for art lovers who seek a deeper appreciation of Constable's iconic depictions of the English countryside.

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In The Miserable Lives of Fabulous Artists, Chris Orr turns his humorous gaze on some of the most famous - and fabulous - artists of the past. With over 30 new works, accompanied by Orr's captions, artists from Edward Hopper to Pablo Picasso find themselves in weird and wonderful situations. Edvard Munch holidays at the seaside, John Constable RA is disturbed at his easel by frolicking nudists and there's an unfortunate incident in Barbara Hepworth's studio... No one can escape Orr's imagination: Walter Sickert is distracted from a spreadeagled model by a fly in his soup, Dame Laura Knight RA is caught shoplifting, and Frida Kahlo enjoys a fry-up. Each image is packed with detail to pore over, and the book concludes with notes from the artist, accompanied by preparatory drawings for the finished work. This new collection, published to coincide with an exhibition of Orr's works at the Royal Academy of Arts, is a charming romp which affectionately pokes fun at well-loved artists.

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New site-specific works by Phyllida Barlow fill the Royal Academy's Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries in early 2019. This accompanying publication provides a lively account of the artist's role in modern British sculpture. The British sculptor Phyllida Barlow CBE RA (b. 1944) studied at Chelsea College of Art (1960-63) and the Slade School of Art (1963-66), where she later taught for much of her career. In recent years, she has been elected a Royal Academician, created new work for Tate and the Royal Academy, had numerous solo shows and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. Barlow's large-scale sculptures eschew serenity, balance and beauty in favour of instability, obstruction and oddness. They invade the spaces they inhabit, instead of neatly complementing them. Her use of inexpensive, everyday materials - concrete, plywood, cardboard, plaster, fabric and paint - suggests that her works are a double act of recycling: both of the materials she uses and the images she draws from her memory. With installation shots of the artist's new works at the Royal Academy and photography from the studio, this book situates Barlow as a key figure within contemporary sculpture. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 16 February-23 June 2019. Alastair Sooke is an art critic and broadcaster. Edith Devaney is Head of Summer Exhibition and Curator of Contemporary Projects at the Royal Academy.

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Drawing on the artist''s substantial and fascinating archive, the renowned design historian Tanya Harrod puts into their rich context the many strands of the work of Leonard Rosoman OBE RA (1913-2012). The range of Rosoman''s output is extraordinary, encompassing his time in the Auxiliary Fire Service in London and as an Official War Artist in the far east, his work for the theatre and as an illustrator, painter and teacher, and his large-scale murals for the restored chapel at Lambeth Palace and the RA Restaurant at Burlington House, home of an institution of which he was an integral part for over half a century. In her engaging assessment of Rosoman''s remarkable achievement throughout his long career, Harrod gives the reader a thorough grasp of this underrated artist and his world.

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Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA (b. 1941) is an important figure in British conceptual art, and among the most influential artists and teachers of his generation. Since his rise to prominence in the late 1960s he has moved between sculpture, installation, painting, drawing and print, creating works that fuse elements of pop, minimalism and conceptual art. His work transforms everyday objects from buckets and ladders to trainers, mobile phones and laptops with bold colours and simple, uninflected lines. Renowned as an art educator, he has inspired generations of artists, including the YBAs. This handsome book, the catalogue of the largest exhibition of Craig-Martin's work to have been mounted in the UK, contains thought-provoking texts by the critics Michael Bracewell and Richard Cork, and an illuminating conversation between the artist and the writer Carolina Grau.

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Born in 1942 in Worthing, David Remfry RA studied at Hull College of Art. His first solo show in London in 1973 has been followed by more than 50 international solo exhibitions. He is well known both for his large-scale watercolours of dancers, and for his drawings and watercolours of his neighbours and friends at the Hotel Chelsea in New York, where he lived from 1995 to 2016.Remfry's skill in capturing dancers in movement in spontaneous watercolour is shown to particularly good effect in these pocket-sized sketches of tango aficionados. Characteristically, he shows us neither their heads nor their feet, instead concentrating entirely on their midriffs in this charming celebration of the most seductive and passionate of dances.

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Working principally in drawing and print media on paper, Emma Stibbon RA depicts landscapes and environments that are undergoing dynamic transformation, among them the polar regions, volcanic areas, deserts and coastal and urban locations. Her approach is driven by her desire to understand how human activity and the forces of nature are shaping our surroundings: As an artist, I feel committed to representing the impact of these changes, be they natural or human. My impulse is to draw, to act as a witness.'A regular traveller, Stibbon undertakes field research alongside geologists and scientists; on her return to her Bristol studio, she works from her sketches and photographic records to create large-scale drawn and printed artworks that testify to the fragility of our existence.Full of Stibbon's new work, this beautifully designed book contains a foreword by Caroline Lucas MP, an engaging interview with the artist by Sara Cooper, a text on the sublime in nature and art

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The Hispanic Society of America in New York is the vision of Archer M. Huntington (1870–1955). From an early age, Huntington developed an abiding love both of Hispanic culture and of museums and libraries. He resolved to devote his considerable fortune to combining these two passions, and carried out his project so resourcefully that the collections he assembled remain exceptional for their depth and richness, displaying the culture of Spain and Latin America in the broadest sense. Their scope ranges from the prehistoric era to the early 20th century, including antiquities, decorative arts, Islamic works, manuscripts and rare books as well as superb canvases by Old Masters such as El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. This handsome new publication features an introduction to Archer M. Huntington and the Hispanic Society by Patrick Lenaghan, the Society’s Head Curator of Prints, Photographs and Sculpture, and plates and catalogue entries on some of its greatest treasures by the Society’s curators.

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The Franco-Swiss photographer Hélène Binet (b. 1959) is renowned for making images that express an intimate experience of architecture. Using a combination of analogue and digital techniques, her photographs are both a representation and a discovery of her subjects, all of them buildings that break the mould, pushing daringly at the boundaries of their time. In this selection of some ninety of her photographs – ranging from the baroque London churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor and the Jantar Mantar Observatory in Jaipur through to buildings of contemporary architects Le Corbusier, Peter Zumthor, John Hejduk, Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid – her work is revealed in all its subtlety and quiet sensitivity.

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A collection of the award-winning architect's travel sketches, showing inspirational buildings across the globe. Includes Sydney Opera House, St Paul's Cathedral and the Tokyo skyline. Chris Wilkinson, the founder of the architectural practice WilkinsonEyre, is responsible for beautiful buildings and structures in London and beyond, including the Gasholders at King's Cross, the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. In this appealing publication, Wilkinson presents the sketches he makes while travelling for business and leisure, usually focusing on inspirational buildings or urban cityscapes. His travels have taken him as far afield as the West Indies, Russia, Egypt, Australia and Japan. Wherever he goes, he finds an hour or two to sit and sketch - whether in a hotel room with a view or on a cafe terrace with a cappuccino. From the medieval Tuscan town of Lucca to ancient Egyptian architecture, the Sydney Opera House and the skylines of London, Tokyo and New York, Wilkinson introduces each sketch and ruminates on his work, his travels, and the cities and buildings that have most inspired him.

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The Lammermuir Hills have been an important trade route between Scotland and England for generations, as well as an effective barrier when necessary. Drawn by the long history of south-eastern Scotland and the many conflicting elements in play in its natural environment – among them wind farms, pylons, forestry plantations, grouse moors and sheep – the distinguished Scottish painter and printmaker Barbara Rae CBE RA has made numerous studies of these wild expanses. This handsome volume reproduces a wide selection of her intensely colourful images with accompanying photographs and maps, and texts by the art critic Duncan Macmillan, Emeritus Professor of the History of Scottish Art at the University of Edinburgh, and Maureen Barrie, who worked for many years at National Museums Scotland.

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The Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831–1889) was celebrated for his exciting impromptu performances at calligraphy and painting parties. Dynamic, playful and provocative, Kyōsai delighted his audience with spontaneous and speedy paintings of demons, skeletons, deities and Buddhist saints. These were often satirical, reflecting a time of political and cultural change in Japan. Among his most charming and inventive works are his brilliant depictions of animals, which humorously play the roles of protagonists of modern life. Kyōsai’s important place in Japanese art is here explored in depth by Sadamura Koto, a leading authority on the artist, in this catalogue of the exceptionally rich holdings of the Israel Goldman Collection.

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Emma Stibbon's drawings and prints depict volcanoes, tectonic plates and powerful glaciers. Includes commentary by the artist on the making and location of each image. The artist is fascinated by environments in flux. Her work often explores the impact of natural forces: the shifting tectonic plates, volcanic activity and powerful glaciers that shape and transform the Earth's surface. Stibbon has accompanied research expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, lived and worked among volcanoes in Hawai'i, and has made several visits to Stromboli, off the coast of northern Sicily, Iceland and Norway. This book presents the sketches she made during her travels. They have the immediacy that results from an artist working at speed and often in difficult circumstances. Readers will discover the unexpected visual effect of ink that has frozen on contact with the paper. The book is introduced by the artist who, informed by her discussions with vulcanologists and glaciologists, explains why she is drawn to depict nature's extremes.

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Over five decades, the painter Humphrey Ocean RA's work has filtered into our national culture. This includes his series of portraits entitled A handbook of modern life displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in 2013; his portrait of Christopher Le Brun, President of the Royal Academy of Arts; and the cover of Sir Paul McCartney's 2007 album Memory Almost Full, which featured one of the Chair series. Ocean's practice encompasses painting, printmaking, sculpture, book-making and drawing. Of the last, he has said: 'Paper is lovely, immediate and personal. I draw as an end in itself.' In 2019 his exhibition 'Birds, Cars and Chairs' is on display at the Royal Academy of Arts. Of these subjects, he says: 'Birds, cars and chairs are, in that order, ancient, modern and intimate. Without them life would be a lot less bearable.' These works are reproduced alongside others in the book to provide a fascinating overview of Ocean's career, with an essay by Ben Thomas, which sets out to discover exactly what it is that makes Ocean's art so appealing and universal.

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In October 2018 Cornelia Parker's Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) lands in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. This meticulous and unsettling installation - first shown on the roof of The Metropolitan Museum of Art against the skyline of New York's Central Park - is half stage set, half sculpture. The work, which draws on archetypal images of American culture such as the red barn and the infamous Bates motel from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, will now be seen against a backdrop of Burlington House's neoclassical buildings. Cornelia Parker was elected a Royal Academician in 2009. She has since had solo shows at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, and the Frith Street Gallery, London. She is well known for her installations, including Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), a reconstruction of an exploded shed, which now forms part of Tate's collection. Generously illustrated with supporting imagery and installation shots, this book comprises a conversation with the artist and a text on the work's installation in London. Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) will be on display in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, from October 2018 to March 2019.

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Internationally renowned, highly educated and very well connected, Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) led a brilliant career as a pioneering history painter, an innovative portraitist and one of only two women among the founding membership of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. ‘The whole World is angelicamad’ – thus a Danish diplomat described the effect of her art and personality during her lifetime. Kauffman was admired by Goethe and Herder, and her clients included queens and emperors from across the continent. Her extraordinary life and work are beautifully presented in this handsome volume, which contains her finest paintings and drawings.

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A handsomely illustrated study of one of the world’s greatest contemporary artists, including Johns’s most iconic paintings, sculptures, works on paper and collages.

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The history of architecture is a story of continual innovation, and yet at certain points within that story comes an architect whose vision completely defies convention. Mavericks: Breaking the Mould of British Architecture focuses on twelve such figures from the history of British architecture, including Sir John Soane, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Cedric Price and Zaha Hadid. From the stripped-back classicism of Soane''s Dulwich Picture Gallery to Hadid''s neofuturistic Olympic Aquatics Centre in London, their work is bold, frequently controversial, often radical; it is architecture that actively resists being pigeon-holed into a particular style or period. What connects this naturally disparate group of free creative spirits is the way each has charted their own course, often deliberately evading conventions of taste, fashion and ways of working. This book will offer a fresh take on their work, establishing new and sometimes surprising historical connections, while posin

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Over his long and successful career David Remfry MBE RA RWS has achieved a mastery of watercolour that few have matched. Unusually for the medium, he works on a large scale and often focuses on people, exploring the dance hall and the nightclub in breathtaking images that are at once beautiful and edgy. This book is the first full-length monograph devoted to the artist's watercolours. Its author, James Russell, is well known for his writing on 20th-century British artists. Russell brings his scholarship, humour and fascination for people and their lives to his study of Remfry’s career, tracing the evolution of a remarkable talent, looking in depth at the most significant works and placing Remfry in the context of both the British watercolour tradition and international contemporary painting. This is at once a glorious art book and an intimate portrait of city life. Having spent 20 years living and working at the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York, Remfry has a following on both sides of the Atlantic. New Yorkers – often in party mode – feature in many of his watercolours, and his recollections of people and places add colour to the text.

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Pablo Picasso's artistic output is astonishing in its ambition and variety. This handsome publication examines a particular aspect of his legendary capacity for invention: his imaginative and original use of paper. He used it as a support for autonomous works, including etchings, prints and drawings, as well as for his papier-collé experiments of the 1910s and his revolutionary three-dimensional 'constructions', made of cardboard, paper and string. Sometimes, his use of paper was simply determined by circumstance: in occupied Paris, where art supplies were hard to come by, he ripped up paper tablecloths to make works of art. And, of course, his works on paper comprise the preparatory stages of some of his very greatest paintings, among them Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937). With reproductions of more than 300 works of art and additional texts by Violette Andres, Stephen Coppel, Emmanuelle Hincelin, Christopher Lloyd, Johan Popelard and Claustre Rafart Planas, this sumptuous study reveals the myriad ways in which Picasso's genius seized the potential of paper at different stages throughout his career.

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At first glance, there may appear to be more to separate Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Bill Viola (b. 1951) than to unite them: one, the great master of the Italian Renaissance; the other, the creator of state-of-the-art immersive sound and video installations. And yet, when Martin Clayton showed Viola Her Majesty The Queen's unsurpassed collection of Michelangelo drawings at Windsor in 2006, parallels began to emerge. This book presents a new perspective on both artists' works. Stills and sequences from ten key video pieces by Viola are reproduced alongside fourteen of Michelangelo's presentation drawings, as well as the Taddei Tondo, the only Michelangelo marble sculpture in the UK and a treasure of the Royal Academy's collection. Texts by Martin Clayton examine how existential concerns - the preoccupation of many Renaissance artists, not least Michelangelo - are explored in Viola's often profoundly moving video installations, while Kira Perov provides insight into Viola's working processes.

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Norman Ackroyd CBE RA has been a familiar face to the boatmen of the British Isles for the past 50 years, often requiring their services to take him out on the water, where he paints the coastal landscape in vivid watercolours. An Irish Notebook is a collection of 40 such sketches created by Ackroyd on the west coast of Ireland. From Malin to Mizen, via the rocky outcrops of Puffin Island and the emerald depths of Roaringwater Bay, Ackroyd records the Irish coast in all its rugged beauty.

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Accompanying catalogue for the Marina Abramović exhibition at the Royal Academy from 23 September – 1 January 2024. Over the past half century, Marina Abramović has earned worldwide acclaim as a pioneer of performance art. This handsome new book records the first UK exhibition to include works from her entire career. Re-performances of some of her best-known and most radical pieces appear alongside new and recent work. An augmented-reality app for iOS and Android enables readers to watch films of Abramović’s original performances while reading the book. An essential purchase for all followers of Abramović’s extraordinary 55-year career, this important publication brings expert voices into the debate that her groundbreaking art engenders. How far should an artist push herself in pursuit of her work? What role does the audience play in creating a performance? How can performance art outlive the moment in which it takes place?

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Pablo Picasso's artistic output is astonishing in its ambition and variety. This handsome new publication examines a particular aspect of his legendary capacity for invention: his imaginative and original use of paper. He used it as a support for autonomous works, including etchings, prints and drawings, as well as for his papier-collé experiments of the 1910s and his revolutionary three-dimensional 'constructions', made of cardboard, paper and string. Sometimes, his use of paper was simply determined by circumstance: in occupied Paris, where art supplies were hard to come by, he ripped up paper tablecloths to make works of art. And, of course, his works on paper comprise the preparatory stages of some of his very greatest paintings, among them Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937). With reproductions of more than 300 works of art and additional texts by Violette Andres, Stephen Coppel, Emmanuelle Hincelin, Christopher Lloyd, Johan Popelard and Claustre Rafart Planas, this sumptuous study reveals the myriad ways in which Picasso's genius seized the potential of paper at different stages throughout his career.

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At the beginning of 2020, just as global Covid-19 restrictions were coming into force, the artist David Hockney was at his house, studio and garden in Normandy. From there, he witnessed the arrival of spring, and recorded the blossoming of the surrounding landscape on his iPad, a medium he has been using for over a decade. Working outdoors was an antidote to the anxiety of the moment for Hockney – 'We need art, and I do think it can relieve stress,' he says. This uplifting publication – produced to accompany a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts – includes 116 of his new iPad paintings and shows to full effect Hockney's singular skill in capturing the exuberance of nature.

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Francis Bacon is considered one of the most important painters of the twentieth century. A major exhibition of his paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts, planned for 2020 but postponed because of the pandemic, explores the role of animals in his work – not least the human animal. Having often painted dogs and horses, in 1969 Bacon first depicted bullfights. In this powerful series of works, the interaction between man and beast is dangerous and cruel, but also disturbingly intimate. Both are contorted in their anguished struggle, and the erotic lurks not far away: ‘Bullfighting is like boxing,’ Bacon once said. ‘A marvellous aperitif to sex.’ Twenty-two years later, a lone bull was to be the subject of his final painting. In this fascinating publication – a significant addition to the literature on Bacon – expert authors discuss Bacon’s approach to animals and identify his varied sources of inspiration, which included wildlife photography and the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge. They contend that, by considering animals in states of vulnerability, anger and unease, Bacon was able to lay bare the role of instinctual behaviour in the human condition. Images below, left to right: Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Fragment of a Crucifixion, 1950. Oil and cotton wool on canvas, 140 x 108.5 cm. Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Photo Hugo Maertens Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Study for Portrait (with Two Owls), 1963. Oil on canvas, 198.1 x 144.8 cm. Private collection. Photo Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Man with Dog, 1953. Oil on canvas, 152 x 117 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gift of Seymour H. Knox Jr, 1955, inv. K1955:3. Photo Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd All images © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020.

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Dame Laura Knight RA (1877-1970) was the first female member to be elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, submitting Dawn, her now famous painting of two female nudes, as her Diploma Work in 1936. In 1965 the Academy's major retrospective of her work recognised her importance in British art. This autumn an exhibition of Knight's drawings opens at the RA. Drawing was a key part of her practice, and allowed her to capture at speed her various subjects, which include travellers, circus performers, boxers, ballet dancers and ice skaters. Drawing allowed her to capture with immediacy the exuberant life of her models, as well as being a vital recording tool when she witnessed one of the most important events of the twentieth century: the Nuremberg trials. In this new publication on the artist, Annette Wickham and Helen Valentine present the Academy's holdings of her drawings with an in-depth analysis focused on three key subjects within her work: the nude, the working woman and country life.

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From the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, the Royal Academy of Arts in London has occupied a prominent, occasionally controversial and always individual position in the art world. Its Annual Exhibitions, now known as the Summer Exhibitions, have seen artistic reputations rise and fall, and its enduringly popular international loan exhibitions have helped to shape the public's appreciation of the visual arts. Packed with illustrations, this brief introduction to the Academy's 250-year story considers how its homes and some of its characters have made it what it is.

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In 2018 the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts will host major exhibitions of the work of Tacita Dean. Each will provide a different encounter with her art. This book brings together new and existing works from all three exhibitions - LANDSCAPE, PORTRAIT, STILL LIFE - with texts offering a unique insight into Dean's work by leading writers including Alexandra Harris, Alan Hollinghurst and Ali Smith. Published at a particularly prolific period for Dean, this book provides a new and authoritative view of a hugely influential artist who has been at the forefront of British art for over twenty years. The volume is published with three different covers.

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Masterpieces of nineteenth-century French painting from the Ordrupgaard Collection in Copenhagen are travelling to the Royal Academy of Arts in the spring of 2020. Drawn from the remarkable collection of the Danish insurance magnate and art lover Wilhelm Hansen, these works represent the very best of French Impressionism. Having already built up an impressive collection of Scandinavian art, at the beginning of the First World War Hansen had ambitious plans to extend his collection to encompass French art. A burst of acquisitions from 1916 to 1918, during which he took advice from the influential Parisian art critic Theodore Duret, saw his collection grow to include works by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Sisley, Courbet, Morisot, Matisse, Pissarro and - forming a particular highlight of the collection - a group of significant paintings by Paul Gauguin. With stunning reproductions of sixty works, the authors explore the history of the collection and provide detailed analysis of the works themselves.

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Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) created many of the most beautiful and important drawings in the history of Western art. Many of these were anatomical and became the yardstick for the early study of the human body. From their unique perspectives as artist and scientist, brothers Stephen and Michael Farthing analyse Leonardo's drawings - which are concerned chiefly with the skeletal, cardiovascular, muscular and nervous systems - and discuss the impact they had on both art and medical understanding. Stephen Farthing has created a series of drawings in response to Leonardo, which are reproduced with commentary by Michael, who also provides a useful glossary of medical terminology. Together, they reveal how some of Leonardo's leaps of understanding were nothing short of revolutionary and, despite some misunderstandings, the accuracy of Leonardo's grasp.

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The subjects and styles of Anthony Whishaw encompass an exceptional range. He paints in concurrent series, which sometimes overlap to form unexpected hybrids. His paintings vary in scale from only 20 cm to nearly 7 metres in length, and a similar breadth of scope also exists within his subject-matter, which examines both macro- and microcosms, from the depths of space to electrochemical activity in the brain. His paintings can be both figurative and abstract, illustrative and allusive. Whishaw also employ a broad range of media. He uses acrylic and collage techniques on canvas, board and paper, often adding sand, soil, ash or metal to help his exploration of the plastic quality of paint. His work has been exhibited at venues including the ICA and the Barbican Centre in London. He has many awards to his name, including the Royal College of Art Drawing Prize, and the Arts Council of Great Britain Award. He was elected an Associate Royal Academician in 1980 and a Royal Academician in 1989. He lives and works in London.

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Over the past decade, Frank Bowling has enjoyed belated attention and celebration, including a major Tate Britain retrospective in 2019. This comprehensive monograph, published in 2011, is now available in an updated and expanded edition. Born in British Guiana in 1934, Bowling arrived in England in his late teens, going on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and Derek Boshier. By the early 1960s he was recognised as an original force in the vibrant London art scene, with a style that brilliantly combined figurative, symbolic and abstract elements. Dividing his time between New York and London since the late 1960s, he has developed a unique and virtuosic abstract style that combines aspects of American painterly abstraction with a treatment of light and space that consciously recollects the great English landscape painters Gainsborough, Turner and Constable. In a compelling text the art writer, critic and curator Mel Gooding hails Bowling as one of the finest British artists of his generation.

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The Royal Academy's legendary Summer Exhibition has been an annual event since 1769 and is always an occasion for innovation, experiment and debate. But 2020 may prove to be its most extraordinary year yet: prevented from opening in May by the closure of the Royal Academy during the Covid-19 pandemic, the exhibition this year opens in the autumn. A committee of artists and architects, led by the artistic duo Jane and Louise Wilson RA, will hang over 1,000 works in the galleries of Burlington House, all while navigating the challenges of social distancing, travel restrictions and shielding. The Summer Exhibition Illustrated was first published in the 1870s and presents the highlights of the show, which this year include works by Korakrit Arunanondchai, Karen Kilimnik and Chris Ofili. In their conversation that opens the book, the Wilsons expand on the experience of opening the exhibition in such exceptional circumstances and celebrate the resilience of artistic practice and its power to bring people together. The Summer Exhibition 2020 will run from the 6 October 2020 to 3 January 2021.

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In 1964 Lucian Freud set his students at the Norwich College of Art an assignment: to paint naked self-portraits and to make them 'revealing, telling, believable... really shameless'. It was advice that the artist was often to follow himself. Visceral, unflinching and often nude, Freud's self-portraits give us an insight into the development of his style as a painter. The works provide the viewer with a constant reminder of the artist's overwhelming presence, whether he is confronting the viewer directly or only present as a shadow or in a reflection. Essays by leading authorities - including those who knew him well - explore Freud's life and work, and analyse the importance of self-portraiture in his practice and the intensity that he maintained when studying his own.

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Accompanying catalogue for the Marina Abramović exhibition at the Royal Academy from 23 September – 4 January 2024. The exhibition travels to the Stedlijk in March 2024. Over the past half century, Marina Abramović has earned worldwide acclaim as a pioneer of performance art. This handsome new book records the first UK exhibition to include works from her entire career. Re-performances of some of her best-known and most radical pieces appear alongside new and recent work. An augmented-reality app for iOS and Android enables readers to watch films of Abramović’s original performances while reading the book. An essential purchase for all followers of Abramović’s extraordinary 55-year career, this important publication brings expert voices into the debate that her groundbreaking art engenders. How far should an artist push herself in pursuit of her work? What role does the audience play in creating a performance? How can performance art outlive the moment in which it takes place? Text in Dutch.

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The first monograph on this important but overlooked artist. Coincides with a major show of new work at Alan Cristea Gallery, London, 27 June to 31 July, 2019. Mick Moon RA was born in Edinburgh in 1937 and grew up in Blackpool. He studied at the Chelsea School of Art (1958-62) and later taught at the Slade School of Fine Art (1973-90). He was elected a Royal Academician in 1994 and his work now forms part of many public collections including those of the Scottish National Gallery, Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Moon's paintings and prints combine a wide variety of media and techniques in complex and intriguing layers. More recently, photographic elements have formed part of his practice, along with textural materials such as wood and cloth which Moon combines with ink and paint. The art historian Mel Gooding provides an authoritative insight into Mick Moon's practice and a definitive overview of his career. He argues that Moon is one of the most important artists of his generation and asserts his place as one of the key figures of post-war British art.

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Despite being at the forefront of high-tech innovation in architecture, Chris Wilkinson obe ra is an architect who believes passionately in the importance of drawing by hand. Where many practices are now dominated by computeraided design, Wilkinson still uses drawing as a way to think through ideas, to grapple with design problems and as a tool of communication. This volume brings together images selected from twenty years of Wilkinson's sketchbooks, presenting a fascinating record not just of draughtsmanship but of the creation of architectural narrative. Covering every stage of the design process, this unique insight into the working drawings of a hugely influential architect includes sketches for many of his practice's most groundbreaking works - from structures for the London Olympics to the restoration and reconstruction of the three Grade II listed gas holders in Kings Cross, London - as well as a gazetteer with photographs of the final projects. Chris Wilkinson: Sketchbooks is both an essential purchase for anyone interested in the development of architectural draughtsmanship and a powerful demonstration of its importance.

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