Mural Art – Studies in Paintings in Asia is a collection of 10 articles by the best scholars on murals in Afghanistan, China, Tibet, Burma, Thailand and Mongolia – from the 5th to the 18th century. Covering diverse issues including preservation and digital reconstruction of lost murals, this important new book provides information with challenging perspectives based on the latest findings and research. It also reveals murals never before published, recently rediscovered and endangered. This unique publication on murals in Asia counts as a precious testimony of a fragile and inspiring heritage.
This catalogue assembles sumptuous photographs of the world’s leading collection of Cham sculpture, along with the most recent insights of Vietnamese and international scholars. The Champa culture thrived in magnificent temples, sculpture, dance and music along the central and southern coast of today’s Vietnam from the 5th to the 18th century. A focused exploration here uncovers this brilliant yet almost lost culture to newcomers and experts alike. The Danang Museum has been recently expanded and refurbished to house what is generally considered the world’s greatest collection of Cham Art.
“Pure and beautiful, she glows like the moon behind clouds.”
The time is the 12th Century, the place Cambodia, birthplace of the lost Angkor civilisation. In a village behind a towering stone temple lives a young woman named Sray, whom neighbours liken to the heroine of a Hindu epic. Hiding a dangerous secret, she is content with quiet obscurity, but one rainy season afternoon is called to a life of prominence in the royal court. There her faith and loyalties are tested by attentions from the great king Suryavarman II. Struggling to keep her devotion is her husband Nol, palace confidante and master of the silk parasols that were symbols of the monarch’s rank.
This lovingly crafted first novel by former Washington Post correspondent John Burgess revives the rites and rhythms of the ancient culture that built the temples of Angkor, then abandoned them to the jungle.
In telling her tale, Sray takes the reader to a hilltop monastery, a concubine pavilion and across the seas to the throne room of imperial China. She witnesses the construction of the largest of the temples, Angkor Wat, and offers an explanation for its greatest mystery – why it broke with centuries of tradition to face west instead of east.
On 5 February 1916, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, together with Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, and Jean Arp, inaugurated the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. The evening marked the birth of Dada as an artistic movement, and Cabaret Voltaire with its legendary performances became a place of historic significance. It was soon to be followed by the short-lived, while no less significant, Gallery Dada in Zürich, where the Dadaists staged four exhibitions over the course of half a year. Dada’s further evolution was significantly shaped by these two spaces, each with its own particular atmosphere, constituting the differing poles of the Dada movement. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Spring 2016 to celebrate the Dada centenary, this new book for the first time tells the full story of Dada’s genesis. It sheds light on the early years of 1916 17 in Zürich in historical context and, from today’s point of view, and also explores the intellectual and social background that informed Dada, considering aspects such as the Great War, psychoanalysis, or the art scene of the time. Genesis Dada illustrates how Dada turned into a worldwide phenomenon with which artists and intellectuals such as Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau, or Man Ray were associated, and which has lost nothing of its momentum and topicality over time. Also available: Dadglobe ISBN 9783858817754
Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) and Carola Giedion-Welcker (1893-1979) were among the most distinguished and influential scholars of art and architectural history during the 20th century’s earlier dacades. Of particular impact was their role in connecting leading protagonists of modernism in architecture, art, and literature, such as Alvar Aalto, Hans Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Breuer, Max Ernst, Walter Gropius, Barbara Hepworth, Le Corbusier, László Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, or Sophie Taeuber-Arp. The discourses they initiated, for example on the New Vision in photography or a ‘Synthesis of Arts’, have lost nothing of their relevance and provide new starting points through to the present day.
The estate of Sigfried and Carola Giedion-Welcker is today kept in Zurich at ETH Zurich’s Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, the Swiss Institute for Art Research, the University of Zurich’s Institute of Romance Studies, and the James Joyce Foundation. It comprises some 16,000 letters, 10,000 photographic prints and negatives, a wealth of other papers, and a vast library.
This new book offers a re-evaluation of Sigfried and Carola Giedion-Welcker’s work, impact, and lasting significance. The editor and contributors were the first to draw fully on the estate, which has been opened entirely to researchers only recently. Featuring a vast number of previously unpublished documents and other images alongside excerpts from the extensive correspondence the two maintained with their artist friends and colleagues in academia, it provides a unique and manifold insight into the ‘Giedion universe’.
As an effect of the recent economic and financial crisis in the USA, a vast number of people have suddenly lost their jobs and income and often also their home. Many of them still live in their cars or even just in the streets. In spring 2007, the young Swiss photographer Eberhard began talking to some of these homeless people and invited them to his studio to take a portrait of them. He paid them a fee and built a relationship with these individual personalities that can be traced in his photographs. Eberhard’s In Good Light series shows a sensitive and respectful approach to difficult situations of life in which these people find themselves, in most cases through no fault of their own, sometimes by their own choice. They are impressive personalities who have kept their dignity and show great power despite the struggle of living on the edge of society. Eberhard’s images are complemented in the new book by an introduction by curator Karen Sinsheimer and a literary essay by the celebrated German novelist Bernhard Schlink. Text in English & German.
Lawrence Weiner, born 1942 in the Bronx, New York City, is a key protagonist of early conceptual art. His work is characterised by his use of language as an artistic medium. It is descriptive rather than prescriptive and does not instruct the viewer to perform a particular action or interpret a piece in any unequivocal sense. Rather, it presents the viewer with an infinite number of meanings and equally infinite possibilities for realisation. ATTACHED BY EBB & FLOW is an installation Weiner created for Museo Nivola in Orani, Sardina. The title refers to the tides and relates to Sardinia-born artist Costantino Nivola’s experience of exile and relocation, as well the current migrant crisis in the Mediterranean Sea. Sentences are translated from English to Italian to local Sardu, using different words and verbal constructs and presented simultaneously to open manifold possibilities to read and interpret: something may be lost in translation, yet much more can be found. Text in English and Italian.
Aerial photography had a special place in the business of the legendary former Swiss airline Swissair. Walter Mittelholzer (1894-1937), aviation pioneer and one of Swissair’s founders, trained as a photographer before turning to aviation. The airline had a specialised subsidiary, Swissair Photo AG, producing well over 100,000 pictures between 1931-2001, when Swissair ceased operations, and still exists as an independent enterprise, BSF Swissphoto. The photographs show landscapes, towns and villages, and mountains, but also industrial plants, infrastructures, and individual buildings in Switzerland and abroad. Swissair – Aerial Photography features around 300 striking, beautiful and informative images, revealing changes in landscape and settlements over nearly a century. It is also an inventory of lost elements making a landscape, untamed rivers, orchards, receding glaciers or vanished historical buildings that shows how an idyllic agricultural country turned into one of the most densely inhabited places over a few decades. With an introductory essay that explores the content of the collection now held at ETH Bibliothek and what can be read from these images today, Swissair – Aerial Photography provides an illuminating look at the history of aerial photography in Switzerland. Text in English and German.
The complex oeuvre of the American artist Cy Twombly (1928-2011) comprises a time period of around six decades, during which it never lost any of its expressive power. Twombly was one of the most productive artists in the history of more recent art. Acclaimed as one of the most important painters of the second half of the 20th century, he fused the legacy of American Abstract Expressionism with European and Mediterranean culture. The book focuses to a degree never before seen on his major cycles: Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963), Fifty Days at Iliam (1978), and Coronation of Sesostris (2000). The artist’s development as a whole is traced based on nearly 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs. This thus provides unique insights into the overall intellectual and sensual richness of the oeuvre. From his early works at the beginning of the 1950s, which are characterised by the use of text, to his compositions of the 1960s, his reaction to the minimal art and conceptual art of the 1970s to his final paintings, the overview of the oeuvre underscores the significance of the series and cycles in which Cy Twombly invented history painting anew. With its polyphonic conception, the monograph offers numerous approaches with essays that shed light on the various aspects and phases of Twombly’s path as an artist. It comprises et al. the reflections and personal impressions of other artists as well as the memories of his assistant Nicola Del Roscio. These diverse testimonies make it possible to discover Cy Twombly not only as an artist, but also as an individual.
Pieter Brugel the Elder – Fall of the Rebel Angels argues that many of the hybrid falling angels are carefully composed of naturalia and artificialia, as they were collected in art and curiosity cabinets of the time. Bruegel’s much noted emulation of Hieronymus Bosch was thus only part of his wider interest in collecting, inspecting, and imitating the artistic and natural world around him. This prompts an examination of the world at the time that Bruegel painted the Fall of the Rebel Angels, locally, in the urban and courtly centres of Antwerp and Brussels on the eve of the Dutch revolt, and globally, as the discovery of the New World irreversibly transformed the European perception of art and nature. Painted as a tale of hubris and pride, Bruegel’s masterpiece becomes a meditation on the potential and danger of man’s pursuit of art, knowledge and politics, a universal theme that has lost nothing of its power today.
For ages silver ware has been the source of inspiraton for many an artist. The trade reached an unprecedented level thanks to religious silver ware. Unfortunately, orders dropped away in the course of the twentieth-century. More and more studios had to close their doors, and monumental silver were faded into the background. Gradually, even the training left much to be desired. Rob Thalen and his son Jaap want to again create ‘beauty’: silver objects, utensils, works of art that have long been lost. Monumental creations, demanding old craftmanship as well as the most advanced techniques. Based in Francorchamps, Belgium, their designs are valued all over the world. Text in English, Dutch, French and German.
Wedding floristry has always been one of the most important fields of interest for florists all over the world. Time and again floral designers manage to redefine wedding bouquets, churches and table decorations. Florever Wherever presents around 15 complete wedding stories from 15 different countries. All weddings are decorated by world famous, top-class florists, all of them being spokespersons for the floral wedding traditions of their country. This magnificent publication will show every aspect of this unforgettable day: the bridal bouquet, corsages, bridesmaids, car decoration, church/venue decoration, table arrangements and the wedding party. A book that will have you lost in sweet reveries, a romantic feast for the eyes or a source of inspiration and a fountain of ideas for couples dreaming of chiming wedding bells. Featured Florists:
Moniek Vanden Berghe (BE), Daniel Santamaría I Pueyo (ES), Markus Donati (D), Jouni Seppänen (FIN), Robert Koene (GR), Kristin Voreland (N), Damien Koh (SGP), Giordano Simonelli (I), Mark Pampling (AU) and David Beahm (US).
“The photography is stunning and the book gives a privileged insight into some of the most beautiful and stylish resorts. Highly Recommended! “Hot Brands Cool Places
There are few destinations more alluring than resorts. The combination of an evocative location, lavish rooms, exceptional service and architecture that’s designed to inspire, has long been irresistible to travellers. In the past decade, however, the global search for stylish getaways has become so intense that hospitality has now become the world’s fastest growing industry.
Few people understand the nature of resorts and the secrets of designing them more than the world-renowned architects and designers, Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo (WATG), whose mission over the last six decades has been ‘to design experiences that lift the spirit’. Having created hundreds of exclusive destinations for well-known companies such as the Four Seasons, Sheraton and Hyatt, ranging from luxurious island resorts to exotic desert getaways, sophisticated urban hideaways, and cool mountaintop retreats, WATG has become a respected name in the area of resorts and hotels. Some of their extraordinary projects include the Hotel Bora Bora in French Polynesia, The Palace of the Lost City in South Africa, The Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in California, and the Hyatt Regency in Kauai Resort & Spa in Hawaii.
This spectacular volume looks at these and other world-class destinations, and also takes you behind the foyers to explore the inspiration and ideas behind the designs, which often begin from a thought on a notepad. As well, it offers insightful interviews with those involved with the projects, explains how the vernacular architecture of the region can influence the end design, and even predicts what resorts may look like in the future.
“Quickly being recognised as the most comprehensive guide to Irish whiskey.” – Gary Quinn, The Irish Times
“A must read book for any fan of Irish whiskey. At a time when the category is making the mightiest of comebacks Fionnán O’Connor has written a gem of a book, digging deep in to the heart of his country’s whiskey history and telling its story with style and authority. Excellent.” – Dominic Roskrow, Founding Director, The Craft Distillers Alliance
Irish single pot still whiskey has a romantic mystique for many whiskey critics because of its tragic history as the lost sister of single malt scotch. Ireland’s history and politics resulted in the near-annihilation of the national drink and there’s an almost eerie beauty to the silent distilleries that still dot the Irish countryside. These distilleries inform the aesthetic of the title and, indeed, there is visual poetry in the barrels, pot stills and photogenic amber spirits that convey the Irish whiskey world. Although Irish whiskey is currently the fastest-growing global spirits category and Irish pure pot still has long been a favourite drink among whiskey critics and connoisseurs, the existing literature is still surprisingly sparse. This book illustrates the production, history, and appreciation of Irish pot still whiskey and will introduce casual drinkers to the richness of these whiskeys as well as being a collector’s item for established whiskey connoisseurs.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, the classically trained architects of John Malick and Associates draw from numerous historical styles, including English Arts and Crafts, Mediterranean, and Georgian Colonial. Each project reflects the spirit of a unique time and place, while also addressing current needs and budgets. The projects featured in this monograph abandon the modern idiom and return to a time when buildings reflected noble achievements, pastoral visions, and sacred resonances. They embrace construction methods that revive the lost art of craftsmanship. Time-tested materials and picturesque details such as post-and-beam construction reflect the care and craft that are the signatures of artistic attention. Authentic finishes and hardware infuse a sense of beauty and livability rarely achieved by modern architecture. Through lush photography and engaging text, the reader is able to experience the sophistication of a Palladian neoclassical villa, the warmth of a Yorkshire cottage, and the sun-washed simplicity of a Mediterranean village nestled in the hills.
An astonishing 25 photographers from around the world have contributed to this celebration. Their images are accompanied by personal essays and reflections about working with this astonishing artist. From memories of the earliest days at the Arts Lab in Beckenham to what it was like touring the world with Bowie, each contributor shares their experiences of working with – and knowing – this most extraordinary figure.
From portraits and album covers, performances and rehearsals, to rarely seen private moments and candid snapshots, this collection is at once powerful, sentimental and inspiring. The thoughts and reminiscences of the photographers, many sharing their memories for the first time, give us an insight into this artist unlike any other.
When David Bowie passed away on 10 January 2016, the world lost a musical hero. But his legacy lives on. While his sound and style evolved throughout his career – from Ziggy to the Thin White Duke – two facts never changed: he was an innovator; and photographers adored him. This book pays homage to this ultimate icon.
Men in stately black, women with huge ruffs, children with golden rattles, old women with wizened faces, and self-satisfied artists… These are the main players in just about every portrait ever painted in the Southern Netherlands. From the15th to the 17th centuries, the tract of land that we today call Flanders was the economic, cultural, intellectual and financial heart of Europe. And money flows – with everyone who could afford it investing in a portrait.
Today, these cherished status symbols of the past have largely lost their original significance. But beyond their functional and emotional aspects, these portraits turn their subjects into gateways to the past. This book takes masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation and outlines the broad context in which they came into being, peeling back levels of meaning like the layers of an onion. Whether captured in an impressive Rubens or Van Dyck, or an intimate portrait by a forgotten artist, the persons portrayed were once flesh and blood, each with their own peculiarities, hidden agendas and ambitions. Some portraits are very personal and hyper-individual. Others are a little dusty, the ladies and gentleman being children of their time. In most cases, however, their dreams and aspirations are surprisingly timeless and soberingly recognisable.
The Bold and the Beautiful
is an appointment with history: a meeting through portraiture with men and women from bygone centuries. But for those willing to look closely, the border between the present and the past is paper-thin.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Blind Date. Portretten met blikken en blozen, Autumn 2020, in Snijders&Rockoxhuis Antwerp, curated by Dr. Katharina Van Cauteren & Hildegard Van de Velde with a scenography by Walter Van Beirendonck.
Around 1505 Goossen Van der Weyden, Rogier’s grandson, painted a monumental altarpiece depicting the various phases of Saint Dymphna’s insane life.
This Irish princess, who fled her incestuous father in the sixth century, was beheaded in the Kempen village of Geel. On account of her tragic end and uncompromising chastity, the princess was venerated from that moment on as the patron saint of the mentally ill. From the late Middle Ages, pilgrims flocked to Geel in large numbers to catch a glimpse of Saint Dymphna. They paid homage to the local celebrity in the hope that she would alleviate their mental problems. To this day, Geel is known for its unique treatment of the mentally ill, who are cared for at home by locals.
Goossen Van der Weyden’s altarpiece came into being at the height of Dymphna’s popularity. The masterpiece was intended for the church of Tongerlo Abbey. Today this work is characterised by a remarkable iconography and an eventful history: a panel was lost and the triptych was even sawn into pieces. It ultimately came into the hands of a team of specialists from Belgium and abroad who subjected the altarpiece to a meticulous conservation over a period of three years, a colossal undertaking during which new techniques were used. This gave the conservators unprecedented insight into the mind, and workshop, of an early 16th century painter.
This richly illustrated book is the result of years of research and contains essays by Till-Holger Borchert (Musea Brugge), Stephan Kemperdick (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), Katharina Van Cauteren (The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp), Lucinda Timmermans (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Patrick Allegaert (Dr. Guislain Museum, Ghent) and many others.
This catalogue presents masterpieces of calligraphy, painting, sculpture, ceramics, lacquers, and textiles from two of America’s greatest Japanese art collections, which are featured in a landmark exhibition at the Asia Society in New York, from February to April, 2020. Impermanence is a pervasive subject in Japanese philosophy and art, and recognising the role of ephemerality is key to appreciating much of Japan’s artistic production. The dazzling range of art and objects in this beautifully photographed exhibition catalogue show the broad, yet nuanced, ways that the notion of the ephemeral manifests itself in the arts of Japan throughout history. Insightful contributions from noted scholars explore the aesthetics of impermanence in religion, literature, artefacts, the tea ceremony, and popular culture in objects dating from the late Jomon period (ca. 1000-300 B.C.E.) to the 20th century.
Contents:
The Art of the Ephemeral;
Works in the Exhibition:
I. Retrieving Lost Worlds; II. Buddhism: Perpetual Impermanence; III. Tea: Choreographed Ephemerality; IV. Transforming Impermanence into Art.
Published to accompany an exhibition at the Asia Society Museum, New York, between 11 February and 26 April 2020.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Zurich’s youth was rebellious. An entire generation of students was in search for the ‘new’. In 1981, photographic artist Simone Kappeler left her native Switzerland, setting off on a road trip across America. She took with her a Hasselblad, a 35 mm camera, as well as a Polaroid. Over the course of the journey, she would add a multitude of cheap cameras to this collection that enabled snapshot-like images – taken unselfconsciously whenever a motif sprang at her. The images reflect a direct and unrestrained manner, they tell of immediate sensual experience and the longing for freedom and independence.
Thirty-five years later, Kappeler has revisited the vast collection that resulted from her undertaking. The selection of some 230 images and their composition reveal a consistent artistic perspective and a signature style. And even today, her 1981 view of America has lost none of its magic.
Text in English and German.
Textile is a vector of identity – something more important than ever in times of war and crisis in particular. It is connected to the body it covers like a second skin. It both conceals and reveals, and contains a history and iconography whose roots often lie deep in a culture’s customs and traditions.
As part of its extramural programme, and in collaboration with award-winning photographer Mashid Mohadjerin and journalist Samira Bendadi, Antwerp Fashion Museum (MoMu) have created a new exhibition and accompanying publication on the importance of fabric and clothing to issues of public concern today, such as migration, resistance, tradition, spirituality and decolonisation.
The focus is on nine stories of people whom curators Bendadi and Mohadjerin – in whose own personal stories migration features prominently – met during their travels to Paris, Antwerp, Lebanon, Africa, Morocco and Iran. Sometimes the stories are warm and moving; at other times they are tough and heart-wrenching. In them, textile embodies the ideas and emotions coupled with forced or voluntary departure, the yearning for what has been lost, letting go and holding on.
This storytelling and photography exhibition will run from 15 November 2019 until 16 February 2020 at Texture Kortrijk, and will travel on to Kunsthal Extra City Antwerp in spring 2020.
Text in English and Dutch.
Supported by a wealth of photographs of archaeological objects, this book delves into a fascinating world of ancestral spirits, revealed by the surprising richness and variety of these pre-Columbian pieces fashioned out of various materials. These works, on exhibition in the Museo Casa del Alabado, in Quito (Ecuador), outline the pre-Columbian view of the world centred on a flow of energy aimed at preserving life. These pieces evoke this primordial energy emerging from mother earth, the source of the good deeds performed by spirits and the ancestral guardian of the permanent renewal of the world of daily life, where spirits constantly draw on the balance of the forces ensuring their survival. Pre-Columbian art has the extraordinary capacity to express the power of reciprocal opposites which together provide a meaning to the existence of animate and inanimate beings.
Hard materials, such as stones and shells, served to embody powerful spirits, such as carts, macaws, or primordial ancestors. Ceramics were suitable for the depiction of ordinary plants and animals. The extraordinary growth of metalworking skills led to the creation of ornamental pieces designed for the elite (chest decorations, nose jewellery, earrings, and crowns) whose purpose was to reflect the power of the sun.
Each picture in the book is accompanied by notes explaining the function the article would have served, while acknowledging that these pieces have lost none of their expressiveness in the modern world.
Text in English and Spanish.
This is the catalogue of the first-ever travelling exhibition about the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people – mostly Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Roma, and others – lost their lives. More than 280 objects and images from the exhibition are illustrated herein. Drawn from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and other collections around the world, they range from the intimate (such as victims’ family snapshots and personal belongings) to the immense (an actual surviving barrack from the Auschwitz III–Monowitz satellite camp); all are eloquent in their testimony. An authoritative yet accessible text weaves the stories behind these artefacts into an encompassing history of Auschwitz – from a Polish town at the crossroads of Europe, to the dark centre of the Holocaust, to a powerful site of remembrance. Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away. is an essential volume for everyone who is interested in history and its lessons.