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This handsomely illustrated book is the first monograph devoted to the work of Joel Perlman (b. 1943), an acclaimed sculptor in steel and bronze, whose works are represented in the permanent collections of America’s top museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Perlman’s best works from the 1970s to the present day — from the austerely abstract Chevy Short (For Jeannie Day), shown at the 1973 Whitney Biennial, to the lyrical Sky Spirit, a monumental commission completed in 2004 — are depicted in here in stunning full-page photographs, most in full color. All readers with an interest in contemporary sculpture will appreciate not only the book’s striking illustrations but also its thoughtfully written text, which relates Perlman’s art to his life.

Author Philip F. Palmedo, drawing on extensive interviews with his subject and his subject’s colleagues, engagingly describes how each chapter of Perlman’s life — from his early days of teaching alongside Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski in the Bennington College art department to his struggle, ultimately very successful, to establish himself in SoHo’s vibrant 1970s art scene — served to strengthen his commitment to his own abstract, Modernist aesthetic. This thoughtful narrative, which seamlessly synthesizes Perlman’s intimate art-world anecdotes and Palmedo’s own keen critical observations, is beautifully complemented by an insightful foreword by renowned art dealer André Emmerich, whose gallery represented Perlman for twenty years.

Swiss artist Laurence Rasti has immersed herself with the inmates of a prison in the Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel. At La Promenade penitentiary in the town of La Chaux-de-Fonds, she encountered lives largely characterised by precarity and exile. In conversation with prisoners, researchers, and scholars, she questions a concept of imprisonment apparently geared towards poverty rather than crime. Rasti’s artistic research is based on a collaborative approach in which the inmates themselves also take pictures using pinhole cameras and engage in transcribing interviews.

The focus of Rasti’s photographic investigation is on the people deprived of their freedom. It reflects on the correlation of prison, precarity, and migration: topics that, in the case of a prison like La Promenade, are closely linked and of great social significance.

Text in English and French.

Mork-Ulnes Architects is an internationally operating architecture firm with offices in San Francisco and Oslo. Since its founding by Casper Mork-Ulnes in 2005, the firm has built on three continents and worked on projects at a variety of scales, from master plans and mixed-use buildings to ground-up residences and 100-square-foot cabins. They approach projects with both Scandinavian practicality and a Californian can-do spirit of innovation, resulting in buildings that are characterised by both playfulness and restraint.

The Craft of Place is Mork-Ulnes Architects’ first monograph. In a reflective manner structured around themes of materials, traditions, sustainability, scale, and light, this work explores the firm’s approach to integrating architecture within diverse environments. The book delves into their method of balancing object and landscape, an approach rooted in the distinct cultural topographies of California and Norway, discussing as well the influence of local vernacular and materials.

The beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated volume showcases Mork-Ulnes Architects’ dedication to detail, context, and the evolution of their architecture through the interplay of tradition and innovation.

A photographic narrative that crosses the world’s main cities to witness the shared intentions and feelings that bind the single Pride events in one big wave that envelops and crosses all countries, exalting the uniqueness and variegated compositions of identities and modes. A snapshot of global LGBTQIA+ pride, with a focus on Pride parades marking momentous anniversaries, including New York Pride in 2019, 50 years after the events of Stonewall, and London Pride in 2020, 50 years after the birth of the Gay Liberation Front.

The book also bears witness to the spread of the Wave in the countries of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Australia, which since the end of the 1990s, with particular regard to the last decade, has been gaining spaces for listening and rights.

The Pride project recounts, celebrates and enhances LGBTQIA+ pride around the world, through the faces and claims of the protagonists of a struggle that involves us all: that for a fair and inclusive world, in which no person should feel excluded or discriminated against for their way of being, living and loving.

Text in English and Italian.

What unites the pop star Elton John, Britain’s King Charles III, the former French president François Mitterrand (1916–96), and Mr. & Mrs. Sharples, pigeon fanciers in Lancashire? They all sat for distinguished British painter Bryan Organ. Born in 1935, Organ studied art at Loughborough College of Art and Royal Academy Schools before setting out to pursue painting as a full-time career. He received his first commission in 1967, and since then monarchs, politicians, artists, designers, and business executives from around the world have asked him to paint them. His portrait of Princess Diana attracted more than 100,000 visitors within the first 72 hours on public display in 1981. No other contemporary artist is represented with more works in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Yet remarkably, no full-scale monograph on Bryan Organ has been published to date. Bryan Organ: Picturing People fills this gap, featuring around 80 of his portraits in full-page plates, alongside preliminary studies and numerous works in other genres, such as animal paintings, still lifes, and designs for album covers. Essays on his life and art by critic Charlotte Mullins, the directors of Holburne Museum in Bath, Chris Stephens, and London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, Tristram Hunt, and journalist and news anchorman Jon Snow round off this entertaining and illuminating volume.

Sculptor Martin Kargruber (b. 1965), from South Tyrol, Italy, forms each of his distinctive sculptural objects from a single piece of solid wood. He consciously uses the wood’s natural properties and organic materiality in his architectural and landscape motifs, employing traditional techniques and interpreting them anew in extraordinary ways. He transforms the rigidity of the material into a seemingly gentle movement, incorporating the workmanship itself into an explicit part of the design. His representative motifs are characterised — above and beyond the formal concept — by intensive exploration into the reality of the living world and a high level of poetic abstraction.

Text in English, German and Italian.

James Ensor (1860–1949) was a Belgian painter known for his provocative and innovative works, often featuring masks and grotesque figures. Through mediums like etching and lithography, Ensor delved into themes of existential exploration and the macabre. His graphic oeuvre showcases his mastery of line and form, inviting us into a realm where masks, skeletons, and surreal landscapes converge to challenge conventions and provoke thought. But how did Ensor make prints? What techniques did he use? Which old masters inspired him and in what way did he experiment with this medium? James Ensor and the Graphic Experiment gathers the most remarkable results of Ensor’s graphic experiments: preparatory drawings, copper plates and various states of prints.

Image © Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp

Dive into the mesmerising world of Emile Claus (1849-1924), a master of Impressionist Luminism, with this stunning monograph celebrating the artist’s centennial. From his early works to his later masterpieces, this book offers a comprehensive overview of Claus’s spectacular oeuvre, showcasing his mastery of light, colour, and atmosphere. With insightful commentary and exquisite reproductions, one will be transported to the idyllic landscapes and enchanting scenes that defined Claus’s legacy. Whether you’re a seasoned art enthusiast or discovering Claus’s brilliance for the first time, this volume is a must-have addition to any art lover’s collection.

A visual exploration between the work of acclaimed photographer Dirk Braeckman (1985) and symbolist painter Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946). The omnipresence of the colour black, in its myriad shades and nuances, defines their works and adds a nuanced layer to their shared artistic expression. Braeckman’s black-and-white photographs convey a sense of stillness, and combine intimacy and distance to create a private, secluded world whose meaning remains undefined.

Text in English and Dutch.

Images © Dirk Braeckman

Readers will buy this book because they’re intrigued by the sketches. They’ll read it because it’s a compelling story of lighthouse road trips with sidebars introducing a wealth of lighthouse information.

This is a history of lighthouse building on the Great Lakes. Road trip sojourns introduce about 140 lighthouse sketches. Captions explain each lighthouse story and drawings introduce even more captioned lighthouses. Sidebars present a wealth of information explaining how lighthouses and their components work as well as the lighthouse establishment itself and other support services. An epilogue contains thumbnail sketches of lighthouses from around the world. In all about 400 sketches, maps, and diagrams illustrate the book.

If Paul Lévi and Jean-Paul Poirot are to be believed, rue Lafayette, which has been home to the majority of Parisian gem dealers since the 19th century, is thought to have been home to almost 300 fine pearl merchants between the two world wars, between numbers 1 and 100. The sheer size of this number is striking when compared with the current state of the fine pearl market, both within the capital and worldwide. As well as unravelling the final mysteries surrounding this biomineral, the main aim is to show the extent to which pearls inspired Parisian jewellers and artists of all kinds, both young and old. They all seem to have been driven by the same pearlomania, whatever their medium, from opera to cinema, painting, photography, posters or illustrated books, to the point of making the pearl one of the symbolic forms of the Roaring Twenties.

Text in English and French

This book is the first to explore the history of Le Corbusier’s studio at 35 rue de Sèvres in Paris, known as 35S. It looks at the many artists with whom Le Corbusier worked, including Charlotte Perriand, André Wogenscky, Sahakura, Roger Aujame and Pierre Jeanneret. It includes many previously unpublished documents.

Text in English and French.

In Anouk Masson Krantz’s most expansive work to date, she travels tens of thousands of miles across the Americas, broadening her focus from the United States to both American continents. In her exquisite, large-scale photographs – all new for this book – Anouk captures sweeping landscapes and paints an intimate portrait of the enduring cross-boundary legacies of the North American cowboy, Central American vaquero, and South American gaucho. Her time spent at ranches and rodeos across The Americas has culminated in a magnificent book honouring a way of life many around the world dream of but rarely have experienced first-hand.

Frontier builds upon Anouk’s renowned body of work with her bestselling Wild Horses of Cumberland Island (2017); West: The American Cowboy (2019); American Cowboys (2021); and Ranchland (2022). Her stunning black and white, large-scale photographs capture a culture deeply rooted in principled, timeless values, sacrifice, strength, and self-reliance. From stunning panoramas to the intimate everyday lives of working cowboys and their families, Frontier is a must-have addition to her impressive body of work.

During the cherry blossom season of April 1924, 100 years ago, on his only trip to the Land of the Rising Sun, Alfred Baur, an extraordinary entrepreneur and founder of the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva, was charmed to discover the sparkling poetry of the “images of the floating world” (ukiyo-e), combined with the landscapes of the great masters of the print and the delightful motifs found throughout the objects in his superb collection of Japanese art.

Echoing his taste and pioneering spirit, and as part of the celebrations marking the 160th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Switzerland and Japan, this book, thanks to contributions from leading specialists in the fields of handicrafts and textiles, takes an in-depth historical, technical and comparative look at the desire for lightness that underpins the aims, aesthetics and meaning of the work of Michiko Uehara, a virtuoso weaver.

In her studio bathed in the subtropical sunshine of Okinawa, in the archipelago in the far south of Japan where she was born and which is renowned for its textiles, she succeeds in pushing the material to the very edge of nothingness, weaving and dyeing sublime fabrics in three-denier threads*, as fine and transparent as “a dragonfly’s wing” (akezuba in the local language).

This bonding relationship – combining the physical and the spiritual – which links Uehara to silk fibres and more generally to nature itself, gives rise to “woven air”, as she puts it: an aerial, rhythmic journey, free of borders and attuned to living things.

As this book suggests, this quest is not unrelated to some of the research carried out by Swiss explorer Bertrand Piccard, whose solar aircraft, a giant, silent dragonfly whose carbon-fibre ribs combine extreme strength and lightness, intelligently weaves a harmonious path between humanity, earth and sky…

* The Denier (Den) is a measure of continuous thread, i.e. its weight in grams per 9000 metres of thread; i.e. 1 Den = 1 gr./9000m of thread

Text in English and French.

FLOSS is a monographic series of retrospective portraits photographed by Roger Erickson on urban fashion, Hip Hop and Rock’n Roll artists from the 1990s through the early 2000s. These uniquely stylised images explore the aspirational, unrestrained and often extravagant nature of artists during an era when urban pop culture burst into international prominence. His wholly original vision captures the vitality of urban music, arts and culture in the ’90s. Often delving into the psyche of these personages for his inspiration, crafting iconic conceptual portraits that have become synonymous with the recording artists. The celebrities include Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre, Eminem, Joan Jett, Neil Young, Ozzy Osbourne, Ice Cube, Lil’KIm, Chaka Khan, LL Cool J, Fat Joe, Da Brat, Ja Rule, Nelly, EVE, and many more.

Jaime Fernandes was born in 1899, in a small village, near one of the most unspoiled and rebellious rivers of Portugal, the River Zêzere. He grew up in an idyllic rural landscape, a crossing site with a geography of fertile lands, where gold, wolfram, and tin were extracted from its entrails. A small rural landowner, he married and watched over his five children up to 38 years of age, when he entered Miguel Bombarda Lunatic Asylum in Lisbon, 300 km from his village.

He is the most important Portuguese author of art invented in a psychiatric asylum context. About ninety drawings in ink, lead pencil, and ballpoint pen on paper, of varied sizes and quality, are known.

His artistic activity, entirely lacking the supervision of any visual art atelier, was encouraged by his hospital psychiatrist, who collected most drawings by Jaime. The crudeness of these drawings impresses the unwitting observer: they are anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations — cattle, goats, elephants, fish, and birds. The human figures burst through as bodies are placed on hold, arms in the air, eyes wide open that observe, others, sometimes, appear merged with animals. Jaime practiced drawing and wrote lengthy semantically indecipherable texts, in a singular calligraphy, where time is set in long numbers.

He did this solely motivated by the pure pleasure gained from this slow exercise of revisiting his memories. In that pleasure, he would have acquired a taste for the imaginary, the world of dreams and fantasies of creation, of being cherished by all who participated in the portraits that he gave us to observe. Jaime died in Lisbon in 1969.

Text in English and French.

This well-designed publication features new photographs by London-based artist Bettina von Zwehl (b.1971 in Munich). Following her graduation from the Royal College of Art in 1999, von Zwehl has completed high-profile residencies and had solo exhibitions at museums around the world, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Freud Museum, Holburne Museum, and the New York Historical Society Museum. During a residency in Oxford, von Zwehl researched the Ashmolean’s founding collections and the many narratives embedded within the historical objects. This served as inspiration for a unique Wunderkammer book and exhibition that seamlessly transition between still-life, portraiture, monumental and miniature elements, as well as non-art objects and specimens from natural history collections. The artist’s aim is to rekindle wonder and curiosity as critical tools for exploring new ideas and unique practices, expanding the boundaries of the photographic medium.

A landmark publication that invites New Yorkers to look up — and marvel at some of the city’s greatest unsung architectural treasures, its sheet-metal cornices.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the facades of many, if not most, residential and commercial buildings in America’s cities were crowned with sheet-metal cornices. These offered certain practical advantages over stone or brick cornices — for example, they were lighter and safer to install — but the easy workability of sheet metal also allowed for greater decorative possibilities. It was in the sheet-metal cornice, in fact, that the architectural eclecticism of the era found some of its most elaborate and impressive expression; in their complex play of geometric elements, of light and shadow, of multiple symmetries, the finest cornices can almost rival the ornament of a Gothic cathedral or a Moorish mosque. And of all the cities where these cornices were installed, New York may preserve the greatest number and variety — particularly in such Manhattan neighbourhoods as Chinatown, the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Harlem.

Henry C. Millman first became fascinated with New York’s sheet-metal cornices when, as a draftsman for a building preservation firm, he had the unusual opportunity to examine their remarkable workmanship close up, from scaffolding or a swing stage. Decades later, he surveyed nearly every building in Manhattan to select some one hundred examples that would showcase the artistry and variety of the sheet-metal cornice. He then orchestrated an ambitious drone photography campaign to document these cornices, and made a detailed elevation drawing of each one, to illustrate its scale, structure, and graphic patterns with the utmost clarity. This volume presents the fruits of Millman’s multiyear project, organised by neighbourhood, along with his incisive text exploring the history, construction, and design of these sheet-metal marvels.

Ornamental Cornices is an essential volume for architects, builders, and curious urban wanderers alike — but it is also an eloquent plea for the preservation of Manhattan’s metal masterpieces, which even now are falling victim to time and elements.

Welcome to 111 Places in Richmond That You Must Not Miss, a collection of the sites and experiences that make the River City such a special place. To those who don’t know Richmond, you’ll find the city itself to be a hidden gem, the cradle of 400 years of American history, steward of the magnificent James River, and the unlikely home to heralded culinary masters.

To those who do know Richmond, the self-deprecating but proud populace inured to its remarkable features, by flipping through these pages you will uncover secrets about your city, new and old. You know Hollywood Cemetery, but do you know the final resting place of our famous psychic horse? Have you kept an open mind about our smaller neighbours to the North and South and gazed at the Heavens from “the Center of the Universe” or seen the Petersburg residence constructed entirely from tombstones?

There’s something for everyone within these pages, whether nature lover, history buff, aesthete, epicurean, tippler, or just an adventurous soul seeking curiosities – the River City welcomes you to partake in its treasures. Join us in discovering the secret spots that Richmond hides so well.

London is full of strange and beautiful sights. It is a place for traditions and rebels, for the establishment and every alternative subculture. This book celebrates the diversity of the city. It invites you to see Little Ben or the fake 10 Downing Street, and answers both conventional and unusual questions. What, apart from Rolling Scones, will you see at God’s Own Junkyard? Where does an old-school gentleman buy his wine and umbrellas? Why did Robbie Williams feud with his next-door neighbour? How has the city commemorated the Queen Mother and Princess Diana? In which park do 100-year-old naked ladies cavort on the banks of the Thames? Where did Lenin and Julian Assange campaign for their beliefs? And which bridge rolls itself up?

Our ever-increasing demand for energy, rapidly changing eating habits and rampant consumerism are rapidly leading to the degradation of our planet. Industrial Scars reveals unseen views of the effects of such production on our environment, exposing the secrets from oil drilling, hydro-fracking and coal-ash waste, to large scale agricultural production and abandoned mining operations. Each of Fair’s striking images, presented here in exquisite detail, are accompanied by detailed explanations. Award-winning science writer Lewis Smith writes about each of the processes in captivating detail, describing the development of each industry through time and across the world. The foreword is written by a leading environmentalist Bill McKibben of 350.org. The overall message is clear – Fair is committed to reveal the evidence of the devastating costs of our choices on our planet. It is up to us to accept a consumer responsibility and environmental awareness, and to change our habits if we want to ensure a better world for future generations to enjoy.

A handy and stylish pocket guide to Rioja, The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide covers everything you need to know about Spain’s most famous wine region, its fascinating 150-year relationship with Bordeaux, the history of its great bodegas, the complex business of barrel ageing, the differences between modern and classic Rioja – and where to find the best tapas in Rioja. This is a guide written by wine experts for the wine-interested tourist. Everything about this complex region is covered: the difference between Rioja Alta and Rioja Alavesa, wine routes to take you past architectural masterpieces like Frank Gehry’s Marques de Riscal and Calatrava’s Bodegas Ysios. The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide series is written in collaboration with Club Oenologique, with comprehensive listings of restaurants, hotels, cafés and bars, points of wider cultural interest such as art galleries and museums, which bodegas you can visit, how to read a Rioja wine list, Rioja winemakers’ favourite restaurants and more.

A handy and stylish pocket guide to Bordeaux, The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide covers everything you need to know about the world’s greatest wine region, from its centuries-long history and the geography of its famous wine appellations, to where to get the best steak frites in the city of Bordeaux. This is a guide written by wine experts for the wine-interested tourist. Everything about this complex region is covered: the difference between St Emilion and Pomerol, wine routes to take you past the legendary châteaux of the Médoc, how to read a Bordeaux wine list. The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide series is written in collaboration with Club Oenologique, with comprehensive listings of restaurants, hotels, cafés and bars, points of wider cultural interest such as art galleries and museums, which châteaux you can visit, Bordeaux winemakers’ favourite restaurants and more.

When they met at a party in the early 1950s, Marilyn Monroe remarked to Eve Arnold that she’d seen the photographer’s images of Marlene Dietrich. ‘If you could do that well with Marlene,’ Monroe said, ‘can you imagine what you could do with me?’ A star in her day and one that continues to captivate the world, Monroe’s multifaceted persona is brilliantly captured through Arnold’s lens in this revised and redesigned edition of the 1987 publication, Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation.
Including newly discovered and restored photographs in colour and in black and white, alongside insightful commentary, Eve Arnold takes us on a photographic journey of Monroe’s life. A detailed biography in Arnold’s own words allows a rare glimpse into the stories behind the photographs and her unique relationship with Monroe. As these two female artists come together in the creation of this stunning photographic collection, an important historical testimonial has been actualised, showing women striving in a male-oriented world and succeeding in reaching the top of their game.