Long-awaited second part of the fictional autobiography of the renowned artist Rinus Van de Velde

Rinus Van de Velde (b. 1983) is one of the most intriguing contemporary artists. He gained recognition for his monumental charcoal drawings, but his oeuvre now encompasses a wide range of media, including installations, film, ceramics, sculptures, pencil drawings and oil pastels.

Using all these diverse forms, Van de Velde continues to work on his fictional autobiography in which he blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination.

A Fictional Autobiography II, featuring a text contribution by the American author A.M. Homes, provides an impressive and sparkling overview of his recent work.

Text in English, Dutch Flemish, French

The beach house exerts an irresistible emotional pull on us. The idea of a house on a faraway shore, or a remote cliffside redoubt, represents freedom, escape, luxury, and the romance of a simpler, more sensual way of life. From the Maldives to Malibu, Beach House takes readers on a stunning photographic journey through the world’s most beautiful and stylish coastal homes, told through interviews with leading architects and interior designers. Explore the barefoot luxury of African cabanas and Balearic chic; discover Olson Kundig’s contemporary architecture in the Pacific Northwest, and Tropical Modernism in Brazil and Costa Rica.

Featured properties include Su Casa – the remarkable Mission Revival beachfront residence in Puerto Rico restored by Champalimaud Design; and the iconic Casa Piscina del Cielo in Mexico by Zozaya Arquitectos. Experience a wild cliffside casale on the remote Italian island of Alicudi, a super-stylish Mykonos villa by Hubert Zandberg, and an Indian Ocean hideaway by superyacht designers Winch. With over 250 beautiful color images in a large-format cloth-bound edition, Beach House is the essential global survey of the world’s most seductive and stylish seaside residences.

San Diego: it’s a coastal paradise with year-round perfect weather, palm trees swaying in the breeze, and a laid-back vibe that will instantly put a smile on your face. It’s not only sunshine and perfect waves, though. This SoCal spot is rich in history. It is a mecca of delicious food and drink. And its proximity to Mexico makes for a breathtaking border culture that is seen, felt, and tasted everywhere you go. 

From exploring haunted mansions to channeling your inner bookworm at a queer-owned feminist bookshop, going on a guided mezcal adventure to shopping for doll house construction materials, or fraternizing with friendly ungulates to wading in mineral-rich hot springs, there’s no shortage of fun to be had in San Diego County. 

So, whether you’re a San Diego native, a visitor, or just considering a sunny vacation, this book will give you 111 ideas for a really good time. Go on, what are you waiting for? 

Step away from the traditional highlights of the city of innovators, great benefactors, artists, presidents and hucksters to discover innumerable interesting and unknown sites, artifacts and other treats in Washington, DC. Visit places hiding in plain sight, that may go unnoticed or simply be unknown to long-time residents and visitors alike. Play a round of miniature golf among the cherry trees. Buy original art works out of a vintage cigarette machine. Catch a show at one of the refurbished theaters where Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington used to gig. Commune with the Godfather of Go-Go music in his memorial park. Get away from the tourists and peace out by walking a labyrinth alongside the Potomac River. Try a salad made of indigenous root vegetables at a Native American café.

Verstrengeld (“entwined”) by Dutch photographer Floor Martens is a poetic visual meditation on the interconnectedness of humans, nature, and time, addressing the ‘zeitgeist’ of a younger generation. Through a deeply personal lens, Martens explores the transformation and decay that define all living matter, tracing parallels between the human body and the natural world. Her photographs — depicting (often naked) bodies, trees, flowers, and skies — capture the delicate balance between fragility and endurance, intimacy and distance, life and loss. Employing analogue techniques alongside written text, sound, and sculptural gestures, Martens creates an immersive, sensorial experience that transcends the photographic image. Each composition suggests a metaphysical dialogue, where the veins of a leaf mirror the lines of a hand, and the cycles of growth and decay reveal beauty in impermanence. Verstrengeld reflects Martens’ commitment to slowing down perception, allowing the ordinary to emerge as extraordinary. This tril-ingual publication is both a visual elegy and a philosophical inquiry — an invitation to contemplate our entanglement with the living world.

Text in English, Dutch and French.

Perched on the green promontory of Lavedo, Villa del Balbianello overlooks Lake Como, embodying a rare harmony between history and landscape. It developed from a medieval hermitage to Cardinal Durini’s 18th-century salon; from the setting for the Risorgimento passions of the Porro Lambertenghi and Arconati Visconti families to the cosmopolitan vision of Guido Monzino – executive, explorer and collector. Each era has left a recognizable mark, still noticeable in the rooms, amidst historic furnishings, travel maps and art collections from diverse cultures around the world. The garden, tended with meticulous care, offers paths through belvederes and terraces that open onto sweeping views, in the shade of expertly pruned plane trees, capable of enchanting travelers, writers and filmmakers (it was the set for scenes of Star Wars and Casino Royale). In retracing the history of the villa and its protagonists, this guide aims to serve as an essential resource to help visitors appreciate the cultural value of one of the most iconic sites on Lake Como.

The cabin or retreat has a long tradition as one of architecture’s simplest forms: a humble shelter offering protection from the elements. Over time, the cozy cabin has become a desirable destination in itself — a place to escape the demands of everyday life, find solitude, and reconnect with nature.

You can escape to a cozy, quiet place with this collection of 25 breathtaking cabins from unique locations around the world. Designed by leading architects and set amid awe-inspiring, often remote surroundings, these bijou homes invite you to slow down, switch off, and immerse yourself in nature.

From cabins perched proudly on the edge of a snowy mountain or sitting atop a rocky island to hideaways submerged in a tall forest of pine trees or tucked among the vines of a sprawling European vineyard, each home has been designed for its setting. Their stories reveal how the architects have responded to the site and climate, and, created warm, enticing interiors to provide refuge and calm to their occupants from the elements outside. Captured through vivid photography, Cozy Cabins celebrates the longstanding appeal of the cabin, offering shelter, simplicity, relaxation, and genuine escape.

Caravaggio’s astonishingly naturalistic and provocative Cupid Victorious hung in the palace of a famous family at the heart of seventeenth-century Rome. Helen Langdon explores how the artist, famed for his originality, created a balance between a suggestion of his own world – a world of lively and rowdy street life – and a complex and ambiguous response to both ancient and Renaissance art and literature. Langdon also looks at the challenge the painting threw out to contemporary painters, whose world was characterized by extreme and bitter rivalries; often they reject his irony, sometimes embellish the painting’s sexuality, and at other times convey an opposing sense of the harmony of the arts.

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’ was 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.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the history of French glass making. Glass makers can be compared to alchemists in the way that they transform sand and ashes into precious objects of great beauty. This book explores the value given to glassware throughout French history, focusing on the Ancient Régime from the 15th to 18th Centuries, when royally appointed glassmakers were considered more important than their artistic counterparts within the court; painters, musicians and actors. In the middle of the 19th Century, glassware was subjected to mass industrial production and as a result the benchmark of quality that had previously been set was no longer adhered to. However, it was out of frustration with this situation that Emile Gallé, a glassmaker who employed many experimental techniques, started his own workshop to produce incredibly high quality original glassware, a move that revolutionised glass making and placed it once again at the forefront of contemporary artistry. Le Verre argues that glass never left this pedestal, and that today, more than ever, ‘the world is living in the age of glass.’ Text in French.

The Vessantara Jataka is the tale of Buddha’s last life, before he was reborn as the historical Buddha 2,500 years ago. In this earlier existence as Prince Vessantara he demonstrated evidence of the highest virtue that constitutes an enlightened man: generosity. Vessantara gave away everything dear to him – in the climactic scene of the story, even his wife and children. In North-East Thailand the Vessantara tale is celebrated annually as Bun Phra Wet. Pha Phra Wet – ‘Vessantara cloths’ – form the visual framework for this festival; they are hand-painted scrolls, which can reach lengths of up to one hundred meters.

Devotion presents, for the very first time, a selection of six full-length Vessantara scrolls and explores a contemporary multimedia celebration of an ancient Buddhist text.

The skilful works of Yasuhisa Kohyama are inspired by ancient Japanese Shigaraki, Jomon and Yayoi ceramics. Using special Shigaraki clay and the fire of an anagama wood kiln, in the fusion of traditional technique and a modern language of form he creates vessels and sculptures that are not only powerful and innovative but also timelessly beautiful. Characteristic for Kohyama’s asymmetric objects is their rough surface – a haptic quality rarely found in contemporary ceramics – as well as an exciting interplay of color, which is created without glaze and solely by the movement of the ash and the position of the object within the kiln.

Contents:
Foreword – Jack Lenor Larsen
Tradition and Innovation in the Work of Yasuhisa Kohyama – Susan Jefferies
Kohyama-san and Japanese Ceramic History: Notes on “Suemono” – Michael R. Cunningham
Yasuhisa Kohyama: The Art of Ceramics – Yoshiaki Inui
Catalog of works
Appendix

In 1778 Pierre Henri De Valenciennes, a young landscape painter from Toulouse, found himself in Rome with many other foreign artists intent on studying not only the ancient monuments and the works of the modern masters, but also to encounter Italy’s light and landscape. Contrary to most of his companions, Valenciennes rarely copied ancient or modern works of art, but instead he chose to sketch views of Rome, ‘a mix of antique and of modern, an assemblage of irregularity and symmetry’. The 96 pages of the sketchbook, reproduced in their actual size and accompanied by a commentary, guide us through Rome, from the river port of Ripa Grande to the basilica of St. John Lateran, from the Ponte Salario bridge to the Vatican, from Piazza Barberini to the Villa Borghese and along the banks of the river Tiber. An advocate of en plein air painting, Valenciennes’ sketches use two or three tints of the same colour to trace the landscape of an ideal Rome, and to achieve this goal he did not hesitate to modify or move the surrounding architecture.

Contents: Preface by Xavier Salmon, Director of the Prints and Drawings Department of the Louvre; Introduction; Travel to Italy and meeting with artists; Valenciennes’ Italian Sketchbooks; Description of the organisation of Sketchbook RF 12966; Material Description; Provenance; List of Exhibitions, Bibliography.

Text in French.

Raphael arrived in Rome in 1508 and remained there until his death in 1520, working as painter and architect for popes Julius II and Leo X and for the most prestigious patrons. Here the artist changed his painting style several times, looking at the works of Michelangelo, Sebastiano del Piombo and the vast repertoire of ancient painting and sculpture. In the Eternal City Raphael practised architecture for the first time, designing buildings that reflected the models of Antiquity such as the Pantheon, the descriptions deriving from written sources such as Vitruvius’ treaty on architecture, and the examples of modern architects like Donato Bramante.

This guide supplies essential and up to date information on all the civil or religious buildings designed or built by Raphael in Rome, and the frescoes and paintings, housed in churches or museums, whether executed in the city or arrived there at a later stage.

For this new edition of the monograph that Gerald M. Ackerman devoted to the life and work of Jean-Léon Gérôme – now a reference book that includes two parts, a critical biography and a catalogue of paintings, prints and sculptures – the author has revised and, if necessary, modified the text whilst updating the catalogue. The study of the artist’s life is based on three ancient monographs, memories of students and friends, a large number of public and private archives, as well as reading the press of his time. The catalogue is the result of more than twenty-five years of research. Some ninety works unknown at the time of the first edition were thus added to those which had already been recorded thanks to ancient sources, contracts with the State, sales catalogues, catalogues of museums and a correspondence with the collectors, as well as ninety others then held for lost. As for the previously known works, the numerous changes of ownership and localization since then have been indicated. The number of illustrations in the catalogue has been considerably increased; many dates have been corrected. The colored plates included in the text illustrate in abundance the works hitherto unknown and, much more numerous than in the first edition, show the great diversity of the master’s work, thus offering us a new image of Gérôme, a new light on his talent, his interests and his masterful inventiveness.

Text in French.

This volume is a continuation of the first instalment of the editorial project Canova | In Four Tempos, ISBN 9788874399215, born in co-edition with the Pallavicino Foundation in Genoa with the goal of collecting in a refined publication the photographic research of Luigi Spina focused on the plaster models by Antonio Canova almost entirely preserved at the plaster cast gallery in Possagno.  

This project accompanying the four-year Canovian celebrations (2019–2022) is structured in four publications, each focused on a specific nucleus of plaster models. Its aim is to give new dignity to Antonio Canova’s creative process while highlighting the fundamental role of the bronze nails (repères) that made the metamorphoses from plaster model to marble sculpture possible. 

The first volume is devoted to the dialogue of Myth and Faith, illustrated by Spina with photographs of Cupid and Psyche, Paolina Borghese Bonaparte, Venus and Mars, the Lying Magdalen, Peace, and the Lamentation of Christ, while this, the second volume, revolves mainly around Myth. The sculptures on which the visual narrative focuses are: Dancer with Finger on Chin, Dedalus and Icarus, Theseus Defeats the Centaur, Naiad, Pius VII Praying, Venus and Adonis, and Sleeping Nymph. 

This book offers a review of Matteo Pugliese’s art over the past 20 years. The figures the Milanese sculptor creates are distinguished by their great power, revealing an inner torment that can no longer be disguised. The men depicted in his sculptures are all trying to break free of the wall that holds them, to throw off their limitations and assert their value as individuals in the hopes of escaping from dull uniformity and social and family expectations. These are people who are attempting to achieve a painful rebirth by struggling against materialized restraint — a wall — that seeks to prevent them expressing themselves, growing and therefore existing. The artist chooses to portray the moment of greatest effort, of supreme tension, the instant when a man regains control of his life and struggles against what is holding him trapped so as to restore a sense of purpose in his life. The carefully studied poses of his figures recall ancient models, in the same way as the material from which they are fashioned is also ancient. Luigi Spina’s lens knowingly lingers on these figures’ troubled birth and enables the reader, admirer, and art historian to acquire an intimate understanding of the sculpture and even to feel a part of the travails and manifest vulnerability that grip all of humanity.

Text in English and Italian.

The volume Nicolas Party | L’Heure Mauve collects a vast visual epic in which Party plays a variety of roles, sometimes impersonating the artist, others the scenographer, the conservator, or the sculptor. His work, and the title of the show, are inspired by L’Heure Mauve, a piece created in 1921 by the Canadian painter Ozlas Leduc that highlights the different interpretations given to the relationship between man and nature throughout the history of art. The result is a constantly changing natural environment: it can be a place full of danger and catastrophe, a territory to be conquered, an expanse disseminated with ancient ruins, or even silences where there are no traces of human presence. Nature finally becomes the theater for the Anthropocene, its connection with humanity by now inextricable, and the passing of time and the finiteness of existence make way for a feeling of melancholy.

Our artist interrogates the world’s image, and he does so by dialoguing very concretely with the spaces and the works belonging to the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The present volume reflects this personal evolution by employing a unique graphic framework and a packaging that is as precious as its contents.

Text in English and French.  

This stunning 2-volume set introduces the Geneva-based Fondation Gandur’s collection of classical antiquities gathered over the past 40 years by founder Jean Claude Gandur. These two volumes are complementary: The first volume investigates the subject of ancient religion by observing images of idols, goddesses, gods, and devotees, and through them related rituals and religious practices; while the second focuses on especially exquisite objects, luxurious trifles known since ancient times as deliciæ. These two volumes interact with each other, forming a whole that offers a sparkling view of Greek-Roman antiquity, from Italy to the Roman Orient of the Later Empire, through archaic Cyprus, classical Greece, and Hellenistic Egypt.

The charming painter of Endymion’s Sleep, Atala’s Funeral and Chateaubriand’s Portrait was also a poet. Thanks to his classical education, Girodet (1767-1824) was the author of free translations of ancient Greek and Latin poets.
In 1808 he tried the to imitate and at the same time illustrate the Odes of Anacreon, whose edition was published posthumously. The Musée du Louvre holds the precious manuscript of this intense and complex work, in which the poetic research and graphic invention — compositions or vignettes — intertwine with the text. Only a facsimile could restore this organic whole in its integrity.
This book reconstructs the history of the manuscript, the various stages of the project and the posthumous versions, and analyzes the artist’s aesthetic sources.
Girodet’s handwriting is sometimes difficult to decode, but the complete transcription allows the reader to appreciate all the refinements and to rediscover the charm of Anacreontic poetry.

Text in French.

Zhu Pei’s Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum recalls a time of glory of the once “Millenium Porcelain Capital” city, Jingdezhen, and extends these memories to the present. Inspired by the perception of Jingdezhen’s specific regional culture (porcelain) and the survival wisdom of the locals, the museum is a symbol of the past and future. The contemporary architecture magnificently resonates the ages: the building form is reminiscent of ancient traditional brick kilns, and its landscape — with mirror pools, bamboo groves, kiln ruins, and courtyards — recreates an impression of Jingdezhen’s vibrant porcelain past. As an “Architecture of Nature,” that evokes both contemporaneity and ancient vibes, the museum subverts typical perceptions of modern-day museums. Colored photos, drawings, essays, and interviews provide detailed insights on the conception of the museum — from design concept to environmental strategies, to construction techniques and construction materials — as well as the architect’s personal perspectives on the overall concept and intention of the museum. The pages also feature commentaries on the museum by well-known architects, including Fan Di’an, Kenneth Frampton, Steven Holl, Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas, Thomas Krens, Mohsen Mostafavi, Wang Mingxian.

The Galleria Borghese brings together an extraordinary collection of ancient and modern sculpture within a beautifully decorated villa. This volume, dedicated to modern sculpture (Late Renaissance to Baroque to Neoclassical), marks the start of a new general catalogue of the collection.
The introduction narrates the history of the collection, from its creation by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 17th century to its sale to the Italian Republic at the end of the 19th century. The entries are full of chronological details, new attributions, information on restorations and account for the different historical settings thanks to an accurate study of the inventory records of the villa. They include world-famous masterpieces by Algardi, Bernini and Canova among others. The sale to Napoleon of many of its Antique works of art (now in the Louvre) was key to the Borghese’s commission works of ancient inspiration, the analysis of which animates the pages of another section, based on the concepts of copy and remake. The catalogue closes with a section on restoration, that gives an account of the fundamental role of 16- to 18th-century sculptors in the maintenance and transformation of the archaeological collection in relation to the villa’s display requirements.

Text in Italian.

On Easter, 2014, Britain’s best-loved vicar, the Rev. Richard Coles, led a pilgrimage to all the major historic sites of the Holy Land: from Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee in the North, via Jericho and the Jordan River, to Bethlehem and, finally, Jerusalem. All of the pilgrims in his care were practising Christians, except one: the writer Kevin Jackson, a diffident and sympathetic atheist intrigued by the chance to take part in this modern-day version of an ancient act of piety, and to learn some more about his old friend, the media clergyman.

Coles to Jerusalem is Kevin Jackson’s light-hearted diary of that pilgrimage, and a close-up portrait of Richard Coles both as priest and as man. As the journey proceeds, Coles reminisces at length about his past life as a rock star and radical gay agitator, his new life as a spiritual leader and a popular broadcaster on BBC radio and television, and the strange, unpredictable path that led him from self-destructive debauchery to faith and vocation.

With a lively supporting cast of fellow pilgrims, Coles to Jerusalem ranges among the magnificence of ancient monuments and the banalities of the guided tour, the grim political background of contemporary Israel and the comedy of a group of idiosyncratic English folk abroad, the intensity of worship and the lightness of banter. It will be irresistible to all admirers of Richard Coles, who has contributed a foreword; and a revelation to those who have never encountered his wisdom and warmth.