This book accompanies a major exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum on the early work of internationally acclaimed German artist Anselm Kiefer. It focuses on his paintings, drawings, photographs and artist books created between 1969 and 1982, in the private collections of the Hall Art Foundation. Anselm Kiefer: Early Works is the first institutional show and publication in the UK dedicated to Kiefer’s early practice. The book introduces themes, subjects and styles that have become signature to Kiefer’s work, while providing a more intimate and complementary context for his large-scale installations that he is best known for today. The early works are accompanied by three recent paintings from the artist’s own collections and White Cube, chosen by the artist himself.

Art historians, artists, curators and experts of Kiefer’s art from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Britain and the US have contributed 46 original texts on individual works, organized in a chronological structure. An illustrated chronology at the end of the book compiled by Stephanie Biron from the Hall Art Foundation provides an overview of the artist’s early practice and life, to contextualize the works.

The book begins with Kiefer’s iconic Occupations and Heroische Sinnbilder series, created in 1969 and 1970, which Kiefer views as his first serious works. Kiefer was among the first generation of German post-war artists to directly confront the country’s troubled past and identity. Full of complex references to German socio-political history but also to culture, literature and his personal life, Kiefer’s early works carry a unique iconography, linking classic ideas of great art with a distinctive understanding of concrete artistic materiality. The landscapes in his watercolors are historically charged; hand-written words on paintings are closely linked with poetry well known to most German viewers; motifs and symbols point at Nazi ideologies and a collective feeling of guilt.

One sole truth about Edvard Munch’s art does not exist. The answers depend on the questions we pose. Twenty-two Munch experts have written 150 texts about well-known and lesser-known works from Munchmuseet’s collection. Through these multiple ways of seeing, Munch’s lifework emerges as infinite. And this book, as an exercise in the art of seeing. The book invites the reader to explore the world of Edvard Munch — his ideas, processes, and the profoundly human topics that occupied him and that still affect us today. Through a wide selection from the museum’s collection, you can experience the richness of Munch’s artistic career and his unrelenting drive to experiment and innovate.

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.  

Enter the splendid world of Mughal India and explore its rich aesthetic and cultural legacy through fresh insights offered by 13 eminent scholars. Recent scholarship in this field has offered deeper analysis into established norms, explored pan-Indian connections and drawn comparisons with contemporaneous regions of the early modern world. Further studies along these lines were encouraged in a seminar held by the K.R. Cama Oriental Institute, Mumbai, and the formidable scholarship presented by contributors forms the content of this volume.

The articles in this book explore varied subjects under the Mughal umbrella, challenge long-held ideas and draw comparisons between the artistic expressions and material culture of the powerful Islamicate triumvirate of the early modern period – the Safavids in Iran, the European-based Ottomans and the Mughals in the Indian subcontinent.

Themes as diverse as portraits of royal women, sub-imperial patronage of temples, word-image relationship, the lapidary arts and the Imperial Library of the Mughals, a reconsideration of Mughal garden typologies, murals painted on architectural surfaces, the textile culture of the city of Burhanpur, changes in visual language and content of painting, and Imperial objets d’art have been discussed, challenged and analyzed. The final three articles are groundbreaking comparisons across Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal spheres. This beautifully illustrated book is sure to appeal to connoisseurs, collectors and scholars alike.

In the 1950s, a large number of internationally renowned artists created pictures made of ceramic. In 1956, in close collaboration with the artist and ceramicist Richard Bampi, Julius Bissier developed a ceramic work for the University of Freiburg. The abstract composition on a wall in the city center measures over 19.5 meters long by 2.6 meters high (64 × 8.5 feet). Its restoration and relaunch is occasion to examine more closely the story of its genesis. The distinctiveness of the artwork becomes clear against a backdrop of the cultural politics oriented on France in Freiburg after 1945. Unexpected parallels in contemporaneous ceramic murals by Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, and Victor Vasarely are revealed and make the Freiburg ceramic picture a unique work in the post-war art of Germany.

Text in German.

This publication compares the works of two major Belgian artists – René Magritte and Jean-Michel Folon- their common grounds and their language in painting. Magritte depicts the mystery that emanates from the everyday life, while Folon opts for dreaminess and stylization. Folon replaces Magritte’s pigeon with a refined bird, drawn in a single stroke; he prefers a rectangular parallelepiped to the surrealist’s well-described house. When he was 18, in 1953, Folon recalls discovering Le Domaine enchanté, the series of murals Magritte had just painted for the Knokke casino. It was a revelation. Although the two artists never met and 36 years separated them, Folon has acknowledged to be indebted to the master of Belgian surrealism -whom he considers “one of the fathers of his generation”- throughout his career. Magritte, by opening up the paths of mystery in painting, laid the foundations for Folon’s art, which would never cease to explore the paths of poetry.

If you really want to get to know Washington, DC, you have to go out and get walking. Beyond the bounty of the National Mall and well-known historic sites, DC is a vibrant city full of unusual places, stories, and experiences that both avid and casual urban explorers will want to seek out.

DC insiders and adventurers Paige Muller and Andrea Seiger take you on 22 self-guided walks that blend the city’s rich history and vibrant culture, with some dishy tidbits thrown in for good measure. You’ll discover lesser-known facts behind popular icons and uncover wonderful spots, often hiding in plain sight.

There is a secret royal connection that lurks in an upper Northwest neighborhood, and a historic building that stands in for the White House in multiple Hollywood movies. See if you can spot the hidden graffiti on a well-known memorial. Discover what inspired Kate Winslet’s famous pose on the Titanic’s bow. And find out all about the Civil War officer whose missing leg is allegedly entombed in a wall.

After Tour Paris 13, a spectacular new project has come into being in Paris. The elevated section of metro line 6 now passes through an “open-air museum” all along the Boulevard Vincent Auriol: Boulevard Paris 13 with its immense murals, executed by the greatest international artists, and which can be viewed as if in a gallery of a gigantic museum.
You can enjoy or repeat this unparalleled experience through a richly illustrated book that relates the genesis and making of the project!

Text in English and French.

The exhibition An Ancient and Honorable Citizen of Florence – The Bargello and Dante, sponsored by the Comitato Nazionale per le Celebrazioni del 700° Anniversario della morte di Dante Alighieri, is the result of the inter-institutional partnership between the Musei del Bargello and the Università di Firenze, and sees the collaboration between the Departments of Literature and Philosophy (DILEF) and of History, Archeology, Geography, Art and Entertainment (SAGAS) of the University of Florence. The Bargello is Dante’s place par excellence in Florence: here you can find the oldest portrait of Dante, painted by Giotto and his work in 1337, a period during which the Divina Commedia was being spread throughout the city. The catalog – rich with essays and extracts by numerous specialists – illustrates the complex link between Dante, his work and Florence, analyzing the dense network of relationships between painters, illuminators, copyists and commentators, engaged in an unprecedented editorial and artistic enterprise. The volume is enriched with illustrations of the works on display and illuminated manuscripts, as well as a precious final photographic atlas of the murals in the Podestà chapel, which houses the poet’s portrait. Dante was very often a frequenter of the different rooms as a prior of the Bargello and in these same rooms he received both his sentence of exile, and his sentence to death (March 10, 1302). The reconstruction of the delicate relationship between the Poet and Florence assumes an importance that goes far beyond city borders, indelibly investing the history of Dante’s fortune and the way in which we still look at him and his work today.

Vanessa Baird is confrontational, morbidly funny, even infamous, with her sharp, oblique observations of herself and her times. Go Down with Me, the book accompanying MUNCH’s exhibition of the same name, is richly illustrated with works from her whole career. This includes the installation You Must Never Go Down to the End of Town if You Don’t Go Down with Me, created especially for MUNCH, which reflects on the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.

Also included are thought-provoking essays by Kari Brandtzæg, Jon Refsdal Moe, Trude Schjelderup Iversen and Vegard Vinge, demonstrating Baird’s ceaseless productivity and unique ability to hit where it hurts the most.

The work of the English artist Hamish Fulton (b. in London in 1946) uncontestedly occupies a unique position among the artistic stances taken in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Fulton is a “walking artist”, one whose central theme is nature and nature as humans experience it. For the past thirty years he has been taking long walks on all five continents. He captures the emotional and physical experiences resulting from this activity in photographs, drawings, murals and texts. They range from basic information on the duration, location and conditions of these walks to Haiku-like, poetically meditative excerpts from his diaries. His work contains aspects of both Land art and Conceptual art. Fulton has taken hundreds of walks and lives by the motto “No Walk – No Art”. On his most recent perambulations, his diary has increasingly replaced his camera; hence words and drawings have pride of place in the present book on the trip he took to Tibet in 2007. For Fulton is not concerned with providing travel documentation that is as objective as possible. On the contrary, he wants to capture the feeling of walking and express it in his – by now increasingly abstract – works.

Arrivals and Departures is the first and only collection of works by Logan Hicks, one of the most acclaimed street and stencil artists in the world. His stunning murals plastered on the surfaces of New York City have been sown in to the public consciousness and this book further immortalizes his work. Representing five years of his extraordinary installations, travels, thoughts, and ideas, the book allows an immersive insight into his unique iconography and the stories that inspired it.

Cross the Streets emerged from a decade-long study on Urban Art, during which me and the team at Drago, my publishing house, documented art, published catalogs, promoted Italian and international artists and organized exhibitions worldwide. We kept our focus on the idea that the streets are a metaphor for real life, and exist at the heart of the younger generation’s movements, of innovation, trends and revolutions. This is the core of our research, which we carried out with perseverance and faith. We believe that creativity is art, in all its forms, especially those still untamed by the system and the strict market laws. “Dreams, failures, and mistakes push us to change the world; they nurture the creative energy, which in turn gives birth to something new, never seen before, and – we hope – strong. After all, someone did say that Rome wasn’t built in a day and that all roads lead to Rome!” – Paulo von Vacano

Creative inspiration has always been driven by instinct. Fleeting moments of inspiration are preserved as etchings on everything from caves to catacombs, from Pasquino to propaganda murals. They serve as warnings, denouncements and exorcisms of fear, representing our interaction with the world into which we are born. Text in English and Italian.

WK-Gear is not just a book. It is a catalog of captured motion, drawing the viewer into a journey where images of objects refuse to remain still. Drago’s third publication with WK provides an even greater insight into the extraordinary works of the artist as he introduces color to his street art murals and paintings. Now more than ever, his unique designs depict figures frozen in a flight of movement and blend seamlessly into the dynamic urban environments in which they are found.

“The power of the object. It s the theme that weaves its way thought the expansive creative works of WK Interact. A simple tool. A still piece of clothing. A stamp. An old dilapidated building. Even a black and white photo, found discarded on a Lower East Side street. While many might see these things as still, lifeless and without meaning, for WK they represent history, evoke intrigue and provide endless amounts of inspiration for what would later become known as his most important creations.” – Jaclyn Marinese

“WK took the city’s energy and encapsulated it in pulsating monochrome” – Juxtapoz Magazine.

“Bué has been drawing forever. He finds his satisfaction from putting smiles on people’s faces, or giving them a heart-warming feeling.” Tristan Manco Clearly influenced by comics and cartoons, Bué has created a specific idiom that he translates to the street. His colorful characters brighten streets around the world. Bué is internationally acclaimed as one of Belgium’s pioneers of Street Art. These days, Street Art is recognized by a broad audience and Bué’s style and techniques are remarkable and distinctive. His characters interact with the local public as he travels around the world. This book presents a selection of the best works, murals and other creations. Text in English and Spanish.

KS Radhakrishnan is a leading contemporary sculptor of national and international acclaim whose sculptures are exclusively executed in the medium of bronze. His intervention in the revival of figurative tradition in Indian sculptural parlance with an emphasis on the body has been acknowledged as a significant art historical milestone. Trained under the supervision of two important modernists Ramkinkar Baij and Sarbari Roy Choudhury, Radhakrishnan has developed an inimitable style which emphasise fluid, dynamic, extra-ordinary body types using two characters Musui and Maiya. His works have been displayed in “Triennalle India” (1990),” Hippodrome d’Longchamp,” Paris (1996); “Espace Michel Simon-Noisy Le Grand,” France (1996), “Beijing Biennale” (2012).

R Sivakumar’s informative essay on the sculptural journey of KS Radhakrishnan is an art historical gem for serious lovers of art. Mapping with Figures is a highly focused study of the artist’s works from the past fifteen years which offers an insightful account of the significance of KS Radhakrishnan in contemporary Indian art. It restores a sense of history, complemented by a fascinating background check on the formations of Radhakrishnan as an artist.

Contents: 1. Publisher’s Note; 2. Foreword by Director, NGMA, Bengaluru; 3. Mapping the world with Human Figure by R Sivakumar; 4. Biographical Profile.

This work is the first full-length narration of the extraordinary life, immense literary output, manifold philosophical perspectives of Kumarajiva and his development of a new translation methodology. All his works, both extant and lost, are detailed. The author discusses at length Kumarajiva’s texts that became the foundation of sects and philosophical systems in East Asia.

Around a hundred illustrations of murals and scrolls vividly portray the ambience of Kucha, Kumarajiva’s homeland. The book also includes a write-up by President Daisaku Ikeda, whose devotion to the unparalleled monk-translator adds to the deep understanding of the mind and message of Kumarajiva. President Ikeda discusses Kumarajiva’s new systematization of terminology to bring greater clarity to Buddhist thought and practice.

From multi-colored patchwork identities from collaged faces, via dot-by-dot murals or wildly patterned paper impressions of monuments to fragmented smartphones as gravure plates – the two find new, specific forms of expression in each of their series of works. The love of paper cannot be overlooked and the first book itself is long overdue. Just in time for Various & Gould’s anniversary exhibition in Berlin’s Urban Spree Gallery, this monograph presents the breadth of their work, deepened by essays by selected authors.

Text in English and German.

Edited by Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Brüggen Israëls, The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti surveys the 149 works assembled by the Berensons for their home in Florence from the late 1890s through the first decades of the twentieth century at the time that they were making their mark on the world as connoisseurs. The catalogue presents a privileged window on the Berensons’ intellectual interests through the objects they owned. The entries, written by an international team of art historians, take full advantage of the extensive correspondence from the Berensons’ friends, family, and colleagues at I Tatti as well as the couple’s diaries and notations on the backs of their vast gathering of photographs. All the entries are lavishly illustrated with full scholarly and technical accountings of the objects. There are also 17 illustrated reconstructions of the original contexts of panel paintings. The catalogue includes essays on the progress of the Berensons’ collecting, their love for Siena, the Sienese forger Icilio Federico Joni, the critic Roger Fry, and René Piot’s murals at I Tatti, as well as a listing of 94 pictures that were once at I Tatti including donations made to museums in Europe and America.

Contents:
Preface Lino Pertile; Acknowledgments – Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Israëls; Note to the Use of the Catalogue; Abbreviations; Glossary of People in the Berenson Circle Mentioned in the Text; Section I: Introductory Essays and Entries 0 to 111; Essay I: “Bernard and Mary Collect: Pictures Come to I Tatti” – Carl Brandon Strehlke; Essay II: “The Berensons and Siena” (working title) – Machtelt Israëls; Essay III: “Passions Intertwined: Art and Photography at I Tatti” – Giovanni Pagliarulo; Entries: Paintings from the 14th to 18th century – Plates 0 to 111; Section II: Fakes; Essay IV: The Berensons and the Sienese Forger Federico Ioni – Gianni Mazzoni; Entries: Fakes – Plates 112 to 116; Section III: Roger Fry; Essay V: “Roger Fry and Bernard Berenson” – Caroline Elam; Entry: Fry – Plate 117; Section IV: René Piot; Essay VI: “A Failure: René Piot and the Berensons” – Claudio Pizzorusso; Entries: Piot – Plates 118 to 131; Section V: The Berensons, Family and Friends; Entries: Portraits – Plates 132 to 138; Entries: Miscellanea – Plates 139 to 148; Appendix: Paintings Formerly Owned by the Berensons – Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Israëls; Bibliography; Photo Credits; Index.

This lavishly illustrated volume opens a window into the world of one of the most extravagant and wide-ranging stylemakers of the last century, a pioneer of the cosmetics industry who was also celebrated for the daring and prescience of her art collecting, her decorating, and her personal couture. Four hundred vintage images and a meticulously researched text, including 16 essays by renowned experts in the fields of art and interior design, illuminate and trace the public and private lives of Helena Rubinstein. Rubinstein’s bold and influential flair for decor – sleekly modern at times, and at other times a wildly eclectic sampling from different eras – was showcased globally in her beauty salons and in her glamorous residences in New York, Paris, and the South of France. An astute patron, she invested in artworks by the luminaries of Parisian bohemia just as they began their ascent. Her vast collection included tapestries by Picasso and Rouault, paintings by Dégas, Dufy, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, and Monet, as well as murals by Dalí. Her striking instinct for fashion (she wore Worth and Poiret at first, and Balenciaga and St. Laurent 60 years later) and her famous overscaled jewellery kept her in the public eye, decade after decade. Rubinstein’s vibrant character, reflected in her personal style and in the interiors of her homes and salons, is captured here in works by photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Brassaï, André Kertész, Dora Maar, and Man Ray – many of which have never before been published. When the flamboyant and decisive Helena Rubinstein died in 1965, at the age of 94, her huge collections were dispersed. But in these pages her world comes alive again: Over the Top is a unique record of the passionate life and style of this self-made mogul and the century she helped define.

Pieter Vermeersch (Belgium, 1973) is well-known for his gradual wall paintings that create powerful visual experiences. Vermeersch combines painting with architecture and works on a variety of surfaces such as canvas, marble and photographs. Beyond the traditional borders of the canvas, his investigations result in large-scale spatial interventions that manipulate the space. Time, color and space are the building blocks of his oeuvre: these concepts lie at the foundation of his gradual murals and architectural interventions.

Variations presents a complete survey of Vermeersch’s work and includes a broad selection of painted works (on canvas, stone, photographs and walls), installations and sketches. Each signature of the book is dedicated to a particular work or aspect of Vermeersch’s oeuvre. There are seven different cover versions of the book, each printed in a different color variation defined by the artist. Beautifully designed by the Dutch design studio Mevis & van Deursen, edited by Moritz Küng and with texts by François Piron, Kersten Geers and Dieter Roelstraete.

“The richness of the illustrations in this larger format enables us to better appreciate the intricacy of her illuminated manuscripts, the tonal subtleties of Traquair’s tooled leather book bindings and the processional scale of her muraled interiors.” — Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History
A fully updated and expanded edition of the definitive study of Phoebe Anna Traquair.

This is a compelling account of the life and career of Phoebe Anna Traquair, a leading figure in Britain’s Arts and Crafts movement. The new edition features new research about her artistic practice, materials and technique as well as her intellectual life, including her correspondence with John Ruskin. Her total commitment to the place of art in her daily life is revealed alongside new details on her family and social life.

Traquair was remarkable for her openness to all types of art, and worked in a range of media including embroidery, enamels, illuminated manuscripts and murals. This new edition features 120 illustrations including new discoveries, as well as some of her most famous and best-loved works.
Beautifully illustrated and featuring the artist’s own words, this book is at once a fascinating biography and an artistic study of one of Scotland’s first professional women artists.

This volume collects a selection of works of art produced in the western United States belonging to the collection of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art housed in the Denver Art Museum. This collection is one of the richest and most substantial in the world on this subject, thanks to its outstanding bronze sculptures, early modern works, and contributions from the artistic communities of Tao and Santa Fe. The central theme of the book is the period stretching from the beginning of the 19th century to the mid-20th century.

More than 200 pages of portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, and depictions of a still-intact wilderness make evident the diversity of the collection. The narrative proceeds chronologically, presenting early luminaries such as Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, and Charles M. Russell; Robert Henri and the artists of the TAO community; and prominent modernist painters, including Maynard Dixon, Marsden Hartley, and Raymond Jonson. Numerous illustrations and expert interpretations chronicle the artistic, cultural, and identarian climate in the western United States during this period. A prologue by historian Dan Flores and an epilogue by art historian Erika Doss describe the vaster context in which to view this rich history of American art.