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.

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.

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.

This is the exceptionally rich story of Rembrandt’s fame and influence in Britain. No other nation has witnessed such a passionate – and sometimes eccentric – enthusiam for Rembrandt’s works. His imagery has become ubiquitous, making him one of the most recognised artists in history. In this book, some of the world’s leading experts reveal how the taste for Rembrandt’s paintings, drawings and prints evolved, growing into a mania that gripped collectors and art lovers across the country. This reached a fever pitch in the late 1700s, before the dawn of a new century ushered in a re-evaluation of Rembrandt’s reputation and opportunities for the wider public to see his masterpieces for themselves.

The story of Rembrandt’s profound and inspirational impact on the British imagination is illustrated by over 130 sumptuous works by the master himself, as well as by some of Britain’s best-loved artists, including William Hogarth, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Eduardo Paolozzi and John Bellany.

Foreword; Introduction; 1 Rembrandt’s Fame in Britain, 1630 1900: An Overview- Christian Tico Seifert; 2 Rembrandt and Britain: The Modern Era – Patrick Elliott; 3 ‘The Finest Possible State’: Cataloguing and Collecting Rembrandt’s Prints, c.1700 1840 – Stephanie S. Dickey; 4 From Studio to Academy: Copying Rembrandt in Eighteenth-century Britain – Jonathan Yarker; 5 Regarding Rembrandt: Reynolds and Rembrandt – Donato Esposito; 6 Rembrandt: Paragon of the Etching Revival – Peter Black; 7 Rembrandt and Britain: A ‘Picture Flight’ in Three Stages, 1850 1930 – M.J. Ripps; Catalogue; Bibliography.

“…his stories are always interesting, lively and well written, giving an insight to the art world as he experienced it.” — Literary Review

“If you read one book on art this year, it must be this brilliant critique of art today seen through the lens of retired museum curator Julian Spalding.” — International Property & Travel

Julian Spalding’s career as a curator and creator of museums was amongst the most controversial and effective of his time. In this collection of essays and memoirs he revisits some of the important events and battles of the last forty years, when he spearheaded resistance to the cult of conceptual art being promoted from the center. Witty, illuminating, coruscating and blazingly intelligent, this book is a vital guide to the ways in which we consume art today, for good or ill. 

“In the beginning, there was tagging and writing on the walls.” From Style Writing to Art is the first anthology of Street Art ever published worldwide. Magda Danysz, the internationally renowned Street Art gallerist, guides the reader on this immersive journey into the heart of the most interesting artistic movement at the turn of the century. This book grapples with Style Writing, Graffiti, and Street Art. It focuses on the fascinating emergence of the movement amongst the graffiti pioneers of the 1960s, their first appearance in galleries in the 1980s, right up to the cutting-edge works made by the Street Artists of today. Spanning over four decades, the book is divided into three sections with each containing detailed accounts of the surfacing of different styles and techniques. Each period is complete with extensive biographies and analysis covering 50 legendary artists including Seen, JR, Miss Van, JonOne, Shepard Fairey, Quik, Blade, Doze Green, and Keith Haring. “Let me repeat myself,” Danysz writes, “if only for the sceptic eye, for the blind and lost or for the latecomers who ve simply just missed the boat: I believe this type of urban art to be the most important artistic movement at the turn of the century.”

Goldscheider, a Viennese factory (est. 1885), soon sped to the top of European ceramics makers. Figures and vessels of faience and terracotta as well as bronze and alabaster, all of top quality in respect of form and workmanship, were created in the Historicist, Jugendstil and Art Deco period styles. A crucial factor to their success was the collaboration with distinguished sculptors and ceramicists of the day, which included Demetre Chiparus, Walter Bosse and Josef Lorenzl, all of whom were responsible for a great many of the Goldscheider designs. This success story was quashed by the National Socialist aryanization in 1938: the Goldscheider family was forced to emigrate, the firm was sold and the new proprietor was unable to sustain the high aesthetic quality standard. The Goldscheider brothers did manage to open new ceramics businesses while in exile in the US and England, and Walter Goldscheider even returned to Vienna after the Second World War to resume his post as managing director of his old firm; however, in the 1950s the great ceramics tradition of this venerable Viennese business ended when it was sold to the German Carstens company. Over 600 color photographs show Goldscheider examples, demonstrating why this firm earned such a highly regarded reputation in the world of ceramics. Text in English and German.

This publication is a first, documenting the development of modern design in mass-produced jewelry from the post-war years to the present. An autonomous trend in jewelry – albeit related to modern art, architecture and design – it has become established mainly in the German-speaking countries. Nowadays jewelry designed in Germany in medium-sized factories and studios represents a major countertrend to conventional luxury jewelry. Since the 1990s, interest in this kind of jewelry has been growing outside Germany as well, in the US, in Europe and Asia. The author begins with a brief retrospective of the origins of modern jewelry: Art Nouveau, Art Déco, Bauhaus and New Objectivity. The revival of goldsmithing from the mid-1960s provided the formal and intellectual foundation for what is now happening in modern mass-produced jewelry design. A large illustrated section gives an historical overview of those developments as shown by the most important classic modern jewelry design and leading current exponents with their exceptional designer pieces.