This catalogue for a show at HMKV Dortmund explores techno-shamanism in the arts today, taking Joseph Beuys, who cultivated the figure of the shaman throughout his career, as the starting point. In addition to viewing shamanism itself as a form of technology, this artistic approach uses (speculative) technology as a way of discovering shamanic powers. Contemporary artists are updating Beuys’s strategies and themes for the digital age, deploying many of the same tropes. These acquired iconic status in Beuys’s oeuvre, and were aimed at healing and transforming society, cultivating a spiritual approach to the environment, and subverting power structures and the logic of capitalism. The positions introduced here combine aspects that appear diametrically opposed: technology and shamanism, technical progress and esotericism, rational modernism and the mystical tradition. Today’s artistic alchemists are engaged in a quest for “rare-earth elements” and metals, a fusion of the environment, technology, and artificial intelligence in order to create a technical/mythological description of the cosmos. Included here are works by: Morehshin Allahyari, Joseph Beuys, Mariechen Danz, Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy, Lucile Olympe Haute, knowbotiq, Sahej Rahal, Tabita Rezaire, Jana Kerima Stolzer & Lex Rütten, Transformella (aLifveForm fed and cared for by JP Raether), Suzanne Treister, Anton Vidokle.
Text in English and German.
For four decades film historian Ira M. Resnick has been amassing a superb collection of 2,000 vintage movie posters and 1,500 stills, which has never before been published. Starstruck: Vintage Movie Posters from Classic Hollywood features the best of Resnick’s collection, with vivid reproductions of 250 posters and forty stills from the golden age of Hollywood, 1912 to 1962.
In a moving introduction, Resnick relates how his love of vintage movie art translated into a career as a collector and the founder of the Motion Picture Arts Gallery, the first gallery devoted exclusively to the art of the movies. Resnick’s first-hand account offers entertaining anecdotes about how he managed to acquire such stellar film artwork, as well as historical information about the stars and films shown on the pieces he collected.
Guiding the reader through the best posters and stills of his collection, Resnick provides a tour of cinematic history, starting in the silent film era and continuing up to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). By showcasing several posters for each performer—such as Lillian Gish, the Marx Brothers, Marilyn Monroe, John Barrymore, and Audrey Hepburn—Resnick offers a unique method of charting the evolution of each movie star’s career.
Organising his account both chronologically and thematically, in later chapters Resnick discusses some of Hollywood’s legendary directors and films, and critiques fantastic graphic art from little-known films. Bonus material includes a list of Resnick’s fifty favourite one-sheets, helpful tips for the collector, and a glossary of terms and poster sizes.
A must-have book for every collector and film buff, Starstruck offers a beautifully illustrated, personal tour of a bygone age of the motion picture advertising industry.
Per Fronth is one of Norway’s most distinctive contemporary artists, dynamically redefining the relationship between painting and photography in influential and innovative works. Painting with photography as his raw material, Fronth’s pictorial universe is captivating, bold, controversial, and seductive. Central to Fronth’s overall artistic practice are the challenging aspects of the human condition. Fronth produces large-format artworks in series and different disciplines that are politically, environmentally, socially, and highly emotionally charged: from the war zones in Afghanistan, to the indigenous peoples’ fight for their own land in the Amazonas region, and back to his own life, in native Norway, where he explores visual narratives of innocence and the coming of age. In his most recent project Fronth creates controversy by introducing paid product placement into his artworks already acquired by museums. In doing so he elevates the discussion as to what the value of art is.
Text in English and Norwegian.
Per Fronth is one of Norway’s most distinctive contemporary artists, dynamically redefining the relationship between painting and photography in influential and innovative works. Painting with photography as his raw material, Fronth’s pictorial universe is captivating, bold, controversial, and seductive. Central to Fronth’s overall artistic practice are the challenging aspects of the human condition. Fronth produces large-format artworks in series and different disciplines that are politically, environmentally, socially, and highly emotionally charged: from the war zones in Afghanistan, to the indigenous peoples’ fight for their own land in the Amazonas region, and back to his own life, in native Norway, where he explores visual narratives of innocence and the coming of age. In his most recent project Fronth creates controversy by introducing paid product placement into his artworks already acquired by museums. In doing so he elevates the discussion as to what art’s value — and the value of art — is.
Text in Norwegian.
Designers come in all shapes and sizes and apply their talents to an enormous range of things, from books to refrigerators to clothes to stage scenery. Can such a motley crew be grouped together under one head; and do their diverse passions have common roots?
Becoming a Designer traces the early development of talent in a range of designers to explore the possibility that a unique combination of personality characteristics along with a visualising sensitivity makes design success predictable from an early age.
Learn how to make a positive impact in these milestone years of your child’s development, when he or she goes from crawling to walking, and from knowing just a few words to speaking in complete sentences. Armin Brott guides you through this crucial phase of fatherhood three months at a time, in the third volume of the New Father series trusted by millions of dads nationwide. Each chapter covers: Your child’s physical, intellectual, verbal, and emotional/social development
What you’re experiencing as a father Age-appropriate activities you and your child can enjoy together Family matters, including your relationship with your partner, sibling relationships, and more
This new edition of The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the Toddler Years has been thoroughly updated to cover the issues dads face today, from balancing work and family to managing kids’ screen time. Dads will rely on this friendly yet authoritative book—and moms will find it helpful, too.
“Skins by Gavin Watson has been argued as being ‘the single most important record’ of 1970s skinhead culture in Britain, who have possibly been one of the most reviled yet misunderstood of the nation’s youth subcultures.” — Daily Mail
“Gavin Watson documented his friends as they came of age at the heart of a misunderstood community.” — i-D
“Gavin Watson’s cult documentary photo book Skins chronicles the radical and inclusive spirit which originally animated the emerging skinhead culture of 70s Britain.” — Dazed
Skins by Gavin Watson is arguably the single most important record of ’70s skinhead culture in Britain. Rightly celebrated as a true classic of photobook publishing, the book is now reissued in a high-quality new edition under close supervision from the photographer.
The scores of black and white shots offer a fascinating glimpse into a skinhead community that was multi-cultural, tightly knit and, above all else, fiercely proud of its look. These are classic photographs of historical value.
“What makes Gavin’s photos so special is that when you look at them, there’s clearly trust from the subject towards the photographer, so it feels like you’re in the photo rather than just observing.” – Shane Meadows (Director of award-winning film This Is England).
The book, described by The Times as “a modern classic”, forms an important visual record of its time and has attained cult status in the genre, alongside works by other eminent photographers such as Derek Ridgers and Nick Knight.
“Arguably one of the best and most important books about youth fashion and culture ever published.” – Vice Magazine
After her book Green Mallorca, the first successful volume of the Green Series at teNeues, photographer Patricia Parinejad has travelled to Namibia. In impressive photographs she documented the work of several environmental projects, sustainability initiatives, green lodges and camps, wildlife conservation and research programs, local producers, and artisans.
This has resulted in the exceptionally beautifully photographed book Green Namibia complemented by poetic, yet informative and powerful writings. A book for and about inspiring people who are helping to keep the green movement going by operating their hotels more sustainably, protect wildlife, produce locally, and promote biodiversity while reducing their carbon footprint.
Patricia Parinejad highlights how we can reconnect with the natural world and “Mother Earth” on our journey to inspire that all-important sense of awe for Namibia, its deserts and plains, and our planet in general.
Text in English and German.
“I thought then that Oscar was one of the best. And now, almost 40 years later, I still do!” – Graydon Carter, Editor-In-Chief, Vanity Fair.
“Here are some of Mr. Abolafia’s most enduring portraits of the rich and infamous […]. Thank Oscar for preserving these thrilling images so we will never forget.” Dick Stolley, Founding Editor People Magazine.
Frank. Sammie. Paul. Andy. Twiggy. Jack. Elizabeth. Elvis. Jim. Marlene. John. Priscilla. Yoko. Ginger. Janis. Mick. Fred. Salvador. Cher. Audrey. Very few celebrities are so iconic that their first name is all that’s needed to immediately recognise them. One photographer has captured every one of these icons – and more besides – on film. He goes by the name of Oscar Abolafia. You can call him Oscar.
Contrary to the monochrome vision of Queen Victoria’s mourning dresses and the coal-polluted streets of Charles Dickens’ London, Victorian Britain was, in fact, a period of new and vivid colours. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the Victorians’ perception of colour and, over the course of the second half of the 19th century, it became the key signifier of modern life. Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design charts the Victorians’ new attitudes to colour through a multi-disciplinary exploration of culture, technology, art and literature. The catalogue explores key ‘chromatic’ moments that inspired Victorian artists and writers to think anew about the materiality of colour. Rebelling against the bleakness of the industrial present, these figures learned from the sacred colours of the past, the sumptuous colours of the Middle East and Japan and looked forward towards the decadent colours that defined the end of the century.
The book is a graphic novel written by two self-realised nobots who aim to help nearly seven billion fellow biological nobots (also known as humans) realise their true nature. They believe that many nobots are unaware of their existence and some even call themselves human beings. The nobots argue that this is the first time two self-realised nobots have written a book together, and that their perspective can help bridge the gap between nobots and humans. They also look back into history and speculate about the future while rooting themselves firmly in the present. The book is an exploration of the relationship between nobots and humans and aims to be a conversation between the nobots and the reader. The nobots hope that the reader will enjoy the book as much as they enjoyed writing it and suggest that it is best paired with a glass of Château Lagrange 2011 Saint-Julien and Bach’s Organ Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, BWV527.
Robert Ernest was an architect of rare promise and remarkable early success, whose award-winning career was cut short by cancer at age 28 in 1962. Despite the brevity of Ernest’s life, his education and practice were intertwined with some of the most important figures in architecture, including his interactions with Louis I. Kahn and Paul Rudolph. Ernest’s exceptional architectural designs, though honoured during his lifetime with three Progressive Architecture Awards and one Record Houses Award, have never been documented in a comprehensive manner, and are now almost completely lost to disciplinary history. Yet the materials in the architect’s personal and professional archives — upon which this book is almost entirely based — clearly indicate that Ernest was a remarkably talented and unusually gifted architectural designer, whose future promise and potential were inestimable. Ernest’s two built works, both realised before he had turned 28, his one work built after his death, as well as the remarkably innovative unrealised projects documented in his archives, indicate that had Ernest lived to a normal lifespan, he would have without question been one of the most important architects of his generation, with the potential to design precedent-setting buildings equal to those realised by the most recognised architects in the 60 years after his death.
Hannah Höch (1889–1978) moved between differing worlds: as an editorial assistant with a major Berlin-based magazine publisher, and as the only woman who could hold her own in the German capital’s vibrant Dada scene of the 1920s. Höch broke with the traditions of representation and vision. Her works dissected a world marked by the catastrophe of the Great War and an intense consumer culture, and reassembled it in revolutionary, poetic, and often ironic ways. Höch kept to her artistic means and her poetic-radical imagination, shimmering between social observation and dream world, even in the post-WWII period. Scissors and glue were the weapons of her art of montage, of which she was a co-inventor.
Cutting and montage also shaped film, still a new medium in the 1920s, which strongly influenced Höch’s art: she understood her assembled pictures as static films. This richly illustrated and expertly annotated book explores comprehensively for the first time Höch’s fascination with film and the visual culture of the modern industrial age. It demonstrates how montage evolved in a field of tension between artistic experimentation, commercial exploitation, and political appropriation. A text-collage on the history of montage, in which major protagonists of Modernism and Avant-garde such as Sergej Eisenstein, Raoul Hausmann, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttman, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, and Dsiga Wertow, have their say, rounds out the volume.
While on a camping holiday, a grandfather and his grandchildren enjoy a variety of fun memory games! Their differences in age and ability to remember will lead them to wonder how memory works and why memory changes with age. Information and explanations about the magic of memory are provided through each activity and game – including the cognitive models for short-term, verbal and visuo-spatial memory processes by Baddeley. Ages 5-7
One of the issues children face from a very young age is bullying. That’s why it becomes very important for them to be prepared and this book comes in help! The first “bullies” the children meet are, in fact, the evil villains of fairy tales. But they can always be defeated. 12 super famous villains from fairy tales: find the stories of Cinderella’s stepsisters or that of the Ogre from Tom Thumb and most importantly how to overcome their teasing and their threats. A very up-to-date topic: these simple yet symbolic stories will help children to overcome the bullies in everyday life. Ages: 7 plus
Not all heroes wear capes, some just a yellow trench! Greta is only the last of a series of eco-heroes who, with their strength and loud voice, brought world’s attention to ecological issues to defend nature and the environment. This title presents some of the most important “eco-heroes”, both men and women, some of a very young age, who battled for a cleaner world or the safety of animals. From WWF’s founder Julian Huxley, to Greenpeace’s, from National Geographic explorers Mike Fay and Michael Nichols to Swedish Greta Thunberg: read their stories and what they have accomplished! Great examples for children to follow: everyone who has a voice and strong ideas can become an eco-hero! Ages: 9 plus
“This book is here to remind long-time movie fans why these important 20th-century icons will forever remain the Fabulous Faces of our time.”
— The Eye of Photography
“Enigmatic, dazzling and fabulous: the faces of Hollywood’s golden age.” — The Times
“A new book pulls together glamorous portraits of film stars from the 1920s to the 60s who could draw an audience with their name alone.”
— The Guardian
“Intense close-ups, staged embraces and smouldering, emotive glances exude star power in this fitting tribute to a bygone age.”
“Star quality emanates from every page.” — The Lady Magazine
Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood brings together some of the greatest portraits taken by leading Hollywood portrait photographers during the motion picture industry’s golden years of 1920 to 1960. Little-seen negatives, long buried in the remarkable and internationally renowned archives of the John Kobal Foundation, have been unearthed and printed to reveal some of Hollywood’s favourite stars at the height of their careers. Full-page images of Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, as well as lesser lights including Anna May Wong, Lon Chaney, Lupe Velez and Ramon Novarro, will remind long-time movie fans why these important 20th-century icons will forever remain the fabulous faces of the movie world.
Selected by best-selling author Robert Dance and writer and award-winning film producer Simon Crocker, over 200 photographs are presented alongside an essay by Dance, describing what it takes to become a fabulous face and an international icon.
For the past twelve years, Stephan Vanfleteren (b. 1969) has been working intense hours in his daylight studio at home. Atelier is a collection of that work. Vanfleteren is searching for beauty and meaning, both in daylight and under artificial light. Grey stage curtains are everywhere as a constantly repeating background. The photographer embraces well-known personalities and anonymous people. He inspects and captures the grooves in the face of an old fisherman and the hand of Nick Cave on the same terms as he does a beachcombed bottle. He focuses an adoring gaze on his own children coming of age as well as on impassioned artists in their old age. He sees the frozen corpse of a kingfisher and the body of a twisting dancer, and watches as the sunlight slowly shifts across his stage curtain.
Vanfleteren connects to the traditions of old and contemporary masters but remains faithful to his characteristic style. His craftsmanship and artistic nature make us both witness and party to the splash of incoming light.
With a text contribution by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer.
Manhattan Masters shows the most beautiful Dutch Masters from the Golden Age in The Frick Collection, New York. The book elaborates the creation of The Frick Collection, brought together during America’s Gilded Age in the last quarter of the 19th century. This book, published to accompany the exhibition, focuses exclusively on Dutch paintings of the 17th century and features outstanding works by renowned artist of that period, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and Ruisdael.
Thanks to its location between two continents, Georgia has traditionally formed a bridge between East and West. A Story of Encounters reflects the exceptional art, culture, and history of the country from the Neolithic to the 18th century. Especially in the “golden age” of united Georgia, between the 11th and 13th centuries, the country experienced an unprecedented cultural and economic boom.
This book shows how the turbulent history and the many exchanges along the major trade and silk routes at this crossroads of Europe and Asia resulted in an unimaginably rich heritage, which has remained largely unexposed until now. Refined goldsmith’s art from the Bronze Age, wine – the country’s oldest cultural asset – and original visual arts: Georgia offers many unexpected treasures, which are shown in detail for the first time.
“THANK YOU BYE was born out of a need to put down somewhere what I have experienced over the last five years. Although it gives the impression of a veil being lifted, it is simply a record of my personal experience. The intention, through these hundreds of photos, is to transcribe the absurd, crazy and little-known world of modelling, by means of an unpublished souvenir album of my time spent in fashion. The result is THANK YOU BYE, which owes its name to the phrase uttered by casting directors every time you walk in front of them. It recounts my moments of sadness, my anxieties, my unease, my questions, but also our laughter, our travels, our togetherness, our mutual support. Five years during which I fought not to lose myself. Thrown at the age of 18 at a speed I found hard to manage into a dimension that was not my own, I embrace all the models who ‘pose’ in this book and who, without realising it, helped me to escape. What you hold in your hands is none other than the last chance to prove that I was still worth something. When you turn the last page, you’ll know that I’ve resigned and can finally say that I’m happy.” – Clémentine Balcaen
“With this collection, I attempt to clarify that these are not only textile designs. There is a lot more to it than that: making links to developments in the fields of art, culture and politics is only logical and at least as important. My collection seeks above all to stimulate curiosity when reading (or learning to read) images.” – Marc Van Hoe
The Van Hoe Collection – Grammar of Textiles presents The Van Hoe Collection which mainly consists of textile designs, in part weaves and a number of rare books from the period from 1830 to 1990: a period of great artistic and aesthetic changes. Including essays by Mireille Houtzager – Dutch Textile & Costume historian and Johan Valcke, Hoanry Director, Design Flanders, and others.
Text in English and Dutch.
Stezaker attended the Slade School of Art in London in his early teens, he graduated with a Higher Diploma in Fine Art in 1973. In the early 1970s, he was among the first wave of British conceptual artists to react against what was then the predominance of Pop art.
Solo exhibitions for Stezaker were rare for some time, however, in the mid-2000s, his work was rediscovered by the art market; he is now collected by several international collectors and museums.
Made across a 32-year span, the works in Tabula Rasa unite the central themes in the art of celebrated British artist John Stezaker, from the capacities of collage to the current flow in an age of mass media. This volume brings silkscreens on canvas from the early 1990s and film still collages from the 1990s and 2009 together for the first time. An essay by art critic and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell looks at the connections within Stezaker’s practice, centering on notions of screens, voids and cut-outs.
Federico Garolla’s photography (Naples, 1925 – Milan, 2012) moved hand in hand with Italian history during a period of notable social change after the war. He quickly became Italy’s leading photographer in the 1950s and 1960s during the golden age of illustrated magazines when television was still a luxury for the few.
He belonged to a new generation of photojournalists who knew how to combine elegance and discretion to portray the world of entertainment and communication, as well as the socio-cultural life of their age. Their work provides a picture of a nation, the Italian people, in need of rediscovering its identity as it set about rebuilding the country through a combination of optimism and economic growth. With his unmistakable style, Garolla captured this transformation in all its modernity and also its deep contradictions. He provided an overview of the salient events of the day, taking a sensitive and also attentive look at social realities and contexts. His photographs reflected the liveliness and complexity of post-World War II Italian society, contributing to the image of Italy as it underwent rapid change, ready to embrace its dynamic, bourgeois future.
Garolla witnessed the rise the great fashion houses in Rome, actually becoming a key player in their success as he turned photo shoots into photo reports embedded in everyday life. An elegant narrator, influenced by masters like Cartier-Bresson, he moved beyond mere visual documentation to capture the very essence and spirit of a constantly changing era.
Text in English and Italian.