Stucco decorations have traditionally been studied considering their formal and artistic qualities. Although much research and numerous publications have explored the works of stucco artists and their cultural context, little attention has been paid to their professional role in relation to the other actors involved in the decorative process (architects, painters, sculptors, patrons), the technical skills of these artists, and how their know-how contributed to the great professional success they enjoyed. From the 16th to the 18th century, many of the stucco decorations in churches and palaces throughout Europe were made by masters from the border area between what is now Canton Ticino and Lombardy. This collection of essays aims to examine how these artists worked from Spain to Poland, from Denmark to Italy, via the Netherlands, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Austria, adapting to the realities of the different contexts. The authors examine these issues with an interdisciplinary approach, considering art history and social history, the history of artistic techniques, and the science of materials. 

Text in English and Italian.

The book offers an unprecedented look at cigarette holders through a selection of approximately 125 pieces from the collection of Carolyn Hsu-Balcer. Its introductory essay is both a social history of that world-changing leaf, tobacco, and a design history of its accoutrements. It examines the history of smoking from its pre-Columbian roots in the Americas through to the present-day worldwide e-cigarette craze, taking the reader on a journey from tobacco smoking as a sacred ritual, through the controversies of its worldwide spread, and the machine-rolled cigarette’s role in the world wars and as a tool for European and American women’s equality.

Following the illustrated essay is a luxurious catalogue of newly commissioned photography that makes these diminutive objects pop off the pages with brilliant color and form. The collection includes cigarette holders in their simplest incarnations – the disposable promotional holders given away at trendy New York nightclubs – to their most exquisite – the work of Fabergé, Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels and other renowned jewelers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Contents:
Foreword by Carolyn Hsu-Balcer; Introduction; Chapter 1: Tobacco’s Journey from the New World to the Old: Medicine and Pleasure; Chapter 2: The Rise of Cigarette Culture: The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries; Chapter 3: Smoking, Sociability, and a New Modern Era: From the First World War to the Second; Chapter 4: The Cigarette Holder’s Peak and Fall: A New Culture of Smoking; Catalog; Appendix: Materials Used in Cigarette Holders; Acknowledgments; Photo Credits.

A miniature painting holds wondrous powers, beyond its defined space. A single image can summon up a world of adventures, enclosed chambers, gardens, rivers, lakes, forests, flowers, and an infinite variety of trees in bloom. In Indian art, miniatures were conceived as sets of narrative illustrations based on classic texts, such as the Ramayana, Bhagavata Purana, Ragamala, etc. Miniature painting continues to hold its appeal well into the 21st century. Contemporary artists of importance have imbibed influences from the miniature traditions, in technique, theme and coloration. This book explores a relationship between Indian contemporary painting and inspiration from medieval miniatures.

The author studies the art of five significant Indian modern and contemporary artists—Abanindranath Tagore, Manjit Bawa, Waswo X. Waswo with Rakesh Vijayvargiya, and Nilima Sheikh—who have resourced and reinvented iconic traditions with different perspectives and using different techniques. Accompanied with splendid illustrations, the essays bring attention to the Indian art of today with the magical transformation of older concepts and techniques in miniature painting into contemporary practice. 

Flowers occupy a special role in Indian culture, history, myth and tradition. From the most elevated space of the sacred to adornment in everyday life, there is a flower for every season, every reason and a special one for the numerous gods and goddesses of Indian religion. Flowers—as offerings during ritual worship to intricate carvings on temple walls, embedded in modern paintings by contemporary artists to colourful carpets for welcoming gods and guests, from fragrant garlands that adorn Indian brides and grooms to aromatic essential oils and perfumes, used as a play of seduction in the Kamasutra—they refresh our spirits and elevate our souls. Flower Shower explores this integral role that flowers play in our world. Discussing a range of topics from botany to aesthetics and history to poetry, the author takes you through an immersive journey, laden with the beauty and perfumes of the exotic, nutritional and decorative role of flowers within Indian tradition and aesthetics. Deeply insightful and featuring a vast compendium of images, this book traverses the range and depth of Indian culture and transports you on a journey which is part memory, part research, part aesthetics and part lived experience. Come! Immerse yourself in a Flower Shower.

This book, part of the Design Art of Villa series, collects high quality luxury villas and presents almost forty stunning interiors. All of the projects included are the latest works of the world’s best architects and designers. Using hundreds of sublime photographs, and engaging texts, Design Art of Villa IV illustrates how a luxury villa is designed and completed, and will provide inspiration to a great number of design enthusiasts.

Assembly of the Exalted presents some 50 pieces from the remarkable collection of Alice S. Kandell. The works, dating from the late 13th century to the early 20th, include great masterpieces and emblematic examples of Tibetan Buddhist art. They are all presented here as the constituents of a Tibetan Buddhist shrine. Shrines, both modest and grand, are the primary sites of Tibetan Buddhist practice, whether it be reciting scriptures, performing rituals, saying prayers, or engaging in meditation. The introductory essays thus focus on the Tibetan Buddhist shrine, describing its evolution over the history of Buddhism, its special role in Tibet, and how the pieces in the Kandell Collection came to be assembled and displayed in shrines at institutions across America. Illustrated with vivid photography, forty short essays, each centered on a single work or set of objects, describe the pieces in terms of their importance for the practice of Buddhism, highlighting the many essential functions of Tibetan Buddhist art within the space of a shrine.

Geared towards young readers and families, Myths, Angels, and Masquerades explores themes including religious art, landscapes, still-life painting, and portraiture. It accesses these topics through forty-seven works of art, chosen from the collection of The San Diego Museum of Art. Interactive features provide opportunities for further investigation, while “Your Turn” activities invite you to try your own hand at creating art inspired by the work of past masters.

Afro Libio Basaldella (Udine, 1912-Zurich, 1976) was perhaps the most renowned member of the Friuli Avant-garde Movement, which influenced his approach towards a more Expressionist sense of painting that had always been based on traditional Venetian Colorism. In the 1940s, Afro joined the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, and following a visit to the United States, he joined the Gruppo degli Otto, with whom he exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1952. Although in certain aspects his style seemed similar to American Action Painting, his harmonious tonal modulation and later research into abstract shapes and forms produced intellectually sophisticated results. This is the catalog of the first French retrospective of the artist, held at the Tornabuoni Art Gallery in Paris, showing works ranging from the 1930s to the 1970.

Contents:
Preface by Philip Rylands;
Afro, his work by Philip Rylands;
Afro and the New York art scene by Barbara Drudi;
Letters and writings selected by Barbara Drudi;
Critical anthology selected by Philip Rylands;
The exposition of 1949 at the MoMA by Davide Colombo;
The Garden of Hope by Anne Monfort.

Spanning a wide spectrum of creative constructs emerging from varied ideations and genres, Rini Dhumal’s art is rooted in India’s culture and myth, coupled with her international exposure and imaginative spirit. A flexibility of approach adds an organic energy and innate beauty to Rini’s art. With its focus on the inner feminine psyche, it explores the potential and challenges offered by different media, from two or three-dimensional work in clay or bronze, relief or graphic art. In a fine assimilation of abstraction, myth, landscape and conceptualization, her art is threaded with the face, form and figuration of the ‘goddess’ in various incarnations of Rini’s own design. Her work also makes imaginative use of traditional Indian iconography – birds, animals and floral motifs all reminiscent of religious art, but re-purposed to create a new vocabulary of form and meaning.

Rini’s enduring art and aesthetics, with their distinct feel and flow, speak for a unique assimilation of the personal and universal. This book is an attempt to understand and appreciate the dramatis persona, review her creative journey and take the reader through the various stages of her life and work until the present, with its focus on an exceptionally impressive and extensively varied repertoire.

Contents: Foreword; Creative Constructs; Immersed in Tradition; Catalogue; Ceramics; Rugs-Tapestry-Glass; Paintings and Drawings; Bronze; Artist Biography

There are many ways to perceive and interpret contemporary craft objects – for instance, as works of representational art in materials like ceramics, glass, textile, metal or wood, or as functional, handmade everyday objects. In this publication, the editors have invited different voices in craft theory to investigate the perception of contemporary craft as a particular discourse and aesthetic vocabulary. According to the editors, contemporary crafts can benefit from being discussed as representations of reality that do not rely on the concept of autonomy. As such, neither do they rely on the conventional dualism between aesthetic objects and everyday things. The authors investigate the possibility to perceive craft objects from perspectives that relate to the aesthetic tradition of materialism.

The catalogue presents Christ Carrying the Cross, recently rediscovered by Carlo Falciani in a private collection, which was born out of the intense friendship between the painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) with Bindo Altoviti (1491-1557), important banker and refined art collector and patron. The artwork was painted in 1553, just before Vasari’s return to Florence to take service as court painter of the Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. The painting shows the extremely high quality reached by Vasari’s production in Rome – where he was working for Pope Julius III and where the Florentine banker Bindo Altoviti had a palace and conducted business – and, at the same time, it shows the experimentations of his manner, characterized by the re-elaboration of modern and contemporary models, in this case works of Michelangelo, Francesco Salviati and Sebastiano del Piombo.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini, Palazzo Corsini, Rome from 24 January-30 June 2019.

Text in English and Italian.

“…it’s the colorful photographs (over 500!) of one-of-a-kind Hopi and Moroccan-inspired mosaic pieces featured in her memoir, out in October, that truly command attention, from ammonite fossils and ivory animal renderings to stunning lapis, coral, and turquoise designs.” — Natural Diamonds

North African-born Eveli Sabatie had a long-time fascination with Native American culture and history. As a young woman, she left her home in Paris in 1968 to move to San Francisco, hoping to learn more. A chance encounter with a Hopi traditionalist led to an invitation to Arizona, where she apprenticed with a master Native American jewelry-maker. For her, this was the beginning of a new world.

Art can never be fully divided from the artist’s voice, nor the natural world. When Eveli encountered red jasper while roaming the Arizona mountains, she knew she had to incorporate her local geology into her work. Yet raw materials are just one of many ways in which the world around Eveli shapes her art. This book is a direct and personal exploration of Eveli’s work, following her arc of growth, challenges and internal workings.

Eveli’s jewelry is entirely created by her, from gathering material to fabricating the body of the piece, doing the lapidary work and finally adding stone settings and finishings. She works in a rustic, ancient environment, often choosing to use rudimentary and home-made tools over commercial techniques. This book explores her creative process through five sections: THE JOURNEY, a biographical overview of her time at the Hopi reservation in Northern Arizona, where she apprenticed under Charles Loloma; CLOUDS AND RAIN, exploring the influence of the Hopi and the desert on her work; BEING HOME, which talks in greater detail about Eveli’s relationship with the environment; BEING HUMAN, a philosophical study of humanity through jewelry; and BRANCHING OUT, which features Eveli’s other artworks, which are sought after by collectors from around the world.

This is a profound reflection on the earth, through the medium of jewelry.

A new kind of figurative art appeared during the 1960s in Europe and the United States. While in New York Pop Art offered a fresh perspective on an America in the throes of frenzied change, in Paris French painters and others from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Iceland also began exploiting images that had their origins in advertising, cinema and the popular press. Grouped under the umbrella term Narrative Figuration, they soon became the uncompromising critics of what was dubbed the consumer society. They were for the most part politically committed artists and many of them were actively involved in the political agitation that led up to the events of May 1968 in France. Once standard bearers, the Narrative Figuration artists have now been rediscovered by museums, which, like the Centre Pompidou, are dedicating increasing numbers of exhibitions to their work. Thanks to the acquisition of major works, the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art in Geneva now provides what is without doubt one of the most exhaustive selections of works by Adami, Aillaud, Arroyo, Erró, Fromanger, Jacquet, Klasen, Monory, Rancillac, Schlosser, Stämpfli, Télémaque and Voss, to name a few. Edited by Jean-Paul Ameline, who curated the Figuration narrative, Paris, 1960-1972 exhibition, held at the Grand Palais in 2008, this catalogue includes all its key works, with commentary and analysis by curators and art historians specializing in a movement that left an indelible mark on 1960s Europe.

Artistic production and the preservation of cultural property have always been subject to the ebb and flow of international influences. Major factors have included the supply of materials, the migration of artists, designers and craftspeople, as well as evolving conservation theory and practice within the spheres of the fine and applied arts. The cross-disciplinary papers in this volume, presented at a conference in Cambridge, reflect on the role of migration embodied in works of art and material culture as documented in visual and written sources.

Vinyl records and record stores are currently experiencing a revival, and with it the artistically designed covers of the past decades are also coming back into consciousness and presenting us with real music and design history in an inspiring way.

Now the world’s first tear-off calendar with 365 vinyl covers from well-known and unknown musicians of all genres is being published for the eighth time. These include real classics, but also unknown and bizarre ones. In addition to the daily music inspiration and the graphic feast for the eyes, the names of the respective cover photographers, illustrators and art directors can also be found on each page.

A must-have for all record lovers and graphic design nerds!

And the hit: with the printed SPOTIFY codes, many albums can be played anywhere and immediately.

Tibet – The ‘Land of Snows’ – is ensconced in the blue silence of icy peaks, the ochre silence of rocks, where once it was honey-combed with monasteries rich with their realizations of esoteric universes. A Tibetan inscription calls Tibet ‘divine territory… a land that is a mine of wisdom’. The rich artistic heritage of Tibet reveals the depths of meditations of great Masters, translated into the majestic abundance of iconic symbols that take the form of three-dimensional images or two dimensional thankas.

Tibetan Art is a comprehensive introduction to the complex iconography of thankas, providing a glimpse of the richness of this art and of the land where it flourished. It takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery: Buddhist deities do not exist outside us but represent aspects of innate human potential. With no distinct, independent existence or objective reality, these deities are but symbols of abstract qualities.

Every month, the art association HMKV presents the latest videos by international artists in its series “HMKV Video of the Month” which has been ongoing since March 2014. The idea for the series came from the desire to show the newest artistic productions in rapid succession, changing works at a faster pace than in the exhibitions of the HMKV.

For the first time, this publication unites all 78 works that have been exhibited since 2014. The videos address a variety of different topics and stories, ranging from labor conditions, structural changes, speculative technologies, or posthuman machines to technology (and its history) as well as artificial intelligence. A wide array of works is devoted to the old ‘new’ right-wingers and the alt-right. The book not only shows stills of all videos, but each work is also accompanied by an introductory text to provide a comprehensive overview.

Text in English and German.

The Wellby Bequest, received by the Ashmolean Museum in 2013, consists of some 500 precious and exotic objects, mainly from Continental Europe, from the late medieval to the rococo, and is the most remarkable accession of this kind of material to any museum in the UK since the bequest of Ferdinand de Rothschild to the British Museum in 1898 (the Waddesdon Bequest). The collection was assembled by three generations of the Wellby family with an intention that it should reflect the great princely treasure chambers (Kunstkammer) preserved in Dresden, Vienna, Innsbruck, and elsewhere. Many of these objects have never been previously published. This beautiful and accessible book introduces over sixty of the prime pieces from this astonishing addition to the Ashmolean, presenting material of the type incomparably superior to anything in other UK museums outside London. Both authors are specialists in European decorative arts of the Renaissance and later periods.

Published to coincide with the opening of the new Wellby Bequest Gallery in the Ashmolean Museum September 2015

Contents: Preface and Acknowledgements; Introduction to the Michael Wellby Bequest (by Timothy Wilson); Introductory essay on the Kunstkammer tradition (by Matthew Winterbottom); 50 catalogue entries on highlights of the Wellby Collection; Glossary, Bibliography; Index

The Viennese gallery Slavik has been exhibiting international contemporary jewelry art of the highest quality for 20 years. The rotating bronze disc above the entrance beckons the visitor to enter into a unique universe and into a singular architectonic design concept. As a meeting place for artists, collectors and museum professionals from all over the world, it is the goal of the gallery owner Renate Slavik to provide a deeper understanding of the fascinating nature of contemporary jewelry art. Since 1990 the former antique dealer has supported unique, handcrafted jewelry with her enthusiasm and vision. “Art on the body” made of paper, synthetic material, tin as well as traditional “ingredients” like gold, pearls and diamonds are displayed in her changing exhibitions. In the gallery artistic impetus has been provided by Annelies Planteydt and Gijs Bakker from Holland; from international masters of studio jewelry such as Giampaolo Babetto or from the Padua School of Francesco Pavan. The gallery’s repertoire includes avant-garde jewelry by Annamaria Zanella, Jacqueline Ryan, Stefano Marchetti and Giovanni Corvaja as well as the geometrical creations of David Watkins or the golden bracelet discs by Okinari Kurokawa. The Catalan Massana School of Joaquim Capdevila and Ramon Puig Cuyas with their colorful, narrative style; Helfried Kodré’s brooches and ring sculptures as a three-dimensional, spatially-extended implementation of geometry; Michael Becker’s clear, architectonic language of form; or the works with moving surfaces by Yasuki Hiramatsu represent different expressions of contemporary jewelry work. The doors stand wide open to the up-and-coming generation of craftsmen – one of the gallery owner’s favorite tasks is to scout out young talent such as Miriam Hiller or Isabell Schaupp. Features 60 artists including Gijs Bakker, Anna Heindl, Miriam Hiller, Helfried Kodré, Elisabeth J. Defner, Michael Becker, Anneliese Planteydt, Francesco Pavan, David Watkins, Stefano Marchetti, Daniel Kruger, Annamaria Zanella, Giovanni Corvaja, Jacqueline Ryan, Renzo Pasquale. Text in English & German.

Do fashion and art go together? Fashion and art are both physical and psychological instruments that define our identity in this world. They bring moments of enchantment and passion. Discover the romantic clash between art and fashion in the form of a love story between two young people and get to know the true nature of two worlds that seem completely different from each other. This book is a mix of fiction and non-fiction. The love story between an artist and a fashionista teaches us that both fashion and art can be an élan vital for men and women. Do you remember your first encounter with art and fashion? Was it collecting art or consuming fashion? Fashion is action. Art is a reflection of this action. The authors of this book bring together experts from both disciplines, including 20 top designers and artists.

The essays in this lavishly illustrated volume offer a multi-faceted portrait of American financier J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) as a collector of art. A riveting exploration of Morgan’s acquisitions from antiquities to medieval manuscripts to Old Master paintings and European decorative arts, Morgan—The Collector introduces the reader to how and why he amassed his vast collection. The lively essays also serve as a tribute to Linda Roth, curator at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, who dedicated much of her forty-year career to researching Morgan and the over 1,500 works from his collection now in the museum. This much-needed publication focuses on Morgan as a collector and is directed at both a scholarly and more general audience that is interested in the history of collecting, America in the Gilded Age, Pierpont Morgan, and European art.