Reawakening Our Ancestors' Lines
For thousands of years, Inuit women practised the traditional art of tattooing. Created with bone needles and caribou sinew soaked in seal oil or soot, these tattoos were an important tradition for many women, symbols stitched in their skin that connected them to their families and communities. But with the rise of missionaries and residential schools in the North, the tradition of tattooing was almost lost. In 2005, when Angela Hovak Johnston heard that the last Inuk woman tattooed in the traditional way had died, she set out to tattoo herself and learn how to tattoo others. What was at first a personal quest became a project to bring the art of traditional tattooing back to Inuit women across Nunavut, starting in the community of Kugluktuk. Collected in this beautiful book are moving photos and stories from more than two dozen women who participated in Johnston's project. Together, these women are reawakening their ancestors' lines and sharing this knowledge with future generations.
Drawing Hands and Feet
This practical and inspiring book explains how to draw realistic hands and feet. With a focus on the importance of practice and observation, it looks first at fundamental anatomy and external structures before explaining how to simplify form and develop your own artistic style. With over 300 images, this book is a detailed and impressive guide for all artists keen to master these key subjects.
Patrimonialization on the Ruins of Empire
After the failed Siege of Vienna of 1683, the Ottoman Empire gradually withdrew from Europe. Even so, monumental reminders of its former presence survived across the continent. The contributors to this volume show that the various successor states adopted substantially different approaches towards their Ottoman architectural inheritance. Even within the same countries, different policies appear to have been pursued in different periods, in keeping with differing circumstances. Case studies inquire from diverse vantage points how this heritage has been coped with discursively and materially. Importantly, readers will find that it is almost impossible to disentangle these two levels of action.
Restless Infections
Restless Infections is a collection of critical essays exploring artistic interventions in urban spaces, focusing on place-making and the politics of space in South Africa. The writers examine seminal artworks by South African artists, addressing diverse forms of expression such as site-specific performances, immersive installations, film, photography, and online performances. The book is divided into three sections: The Restless City, Public Art for Multiple Publics, and Land, Home, Belonging. It introduces new perspectives on public sphere performance, such as Khanyisile Mbongwa's re-imagining of township alleyways for public encounters and Mbongeni Mtshali's study of everyday performances that challenge colonial and neo-colonial spatial organization. The title, Restless Infections, is derived from the popular Infecting the City public art festival, symbolizing the persistent state of restlessness in a city still grappling with the legacies of colonialism, inequality, and racial segregation. This restlessness is tied to a desire for economic and political stability, expressed through transient art forms like Santu Mofokeng's billboard photography. The book shifts the focus of public art discourse in South Africa from static forms like monuments and statues to dynamic, temporary interventions that question the concept of publicness. These interventions engage with protest, public intimacy, audience interaction, and the disrupted topography of apartheid cities. As the first scholarly volume to read public spheres through a multi- and interdisciplinary lens, Restless Infections argues that the diverse artistic modes explored are essential to understanding the complexities of publicness in South Africa.
Watercolour and Beyond
Discover a world of innovation beyond pure watercolor with over 60 innovative approaches and exercises from the master of watercolor landscapes, David Bellamy. 'In this book I aim to illustrate ways in which to make your watercolors glow with excitement, offer you new methods of working, and at the same time make the whole experience great fun!' David Bellamy 'Quite simply, David Bellamy's best book and something of a personal manifesto informed by a lifetime of experience... It's a heck of an achievement.' Henry Malt - artbookreview.wordpress.com David Bellamy is a successful and long-standing authority on the landscape in watercolor. Throughout this book he shares his extensive knowledge and experience and encourages confident artists to explore the boundaries of watercolor and forge new creative paths for themselves through experimentation. Alongside over 100 inspiring examples of David's work there are more than 60 innovative approaches and exercises, with tips, visual examples and step-by-step technique, throughout the following sections: Starting traditional (with pure watercolor): learn how to strengthen your compositions, gain experience using just one color, work with a limited palette, then tackle the striking results you can achieve with harmonious colors.Innovating through practice: through short step-by-step techniques and plenty of finished, fully detailed examples, learn how to combine watercolor with gouache and use additives, inks, collage, pastels, stamping, gesso, watercolor ground, different surfaces, and found materials to create atmospheric, innovative results, for example for suggesting distant rain or creating dramatic sunlight effects.Interpreting and altering your subjects: discover how to change the light or colors in a finished painting, introduce features that are not present or emphasise those that are, exaggerate perspective, or turn part of the composition into abstraction. Discover also how to alter, rescue and improve a painting where you may have a problem, or decide to change a passage on a whim.Taking It further: The final section is devoted to projects which you might like to consider: personal projects that may relate to your family, your holidays, volunteer work, or perhaps involving the local community or a special cause.Watercolour and Beyond is an innovative, practical book, aimed at equipping landscape artists of all abilities with exciting new ideas and techniques.
Art and Mysticism in Silesia in the Baroque Period
This volume deals with original mystical initiatives and related artistic realizations, which were created in the circle of the outstanding Silesian poet and theologian, Johannes Scheffler, known as Angelus Silesius, abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Krzeszow, Bernhard Rosa and the most outstanding Silesian artist, Michael Willmann. Although the 17th century Silesian mysticism is now very popular worldwide, we know very little about the relationship between mysticism and art in former Silesia. This issue has never been the subject of a comprehensive study. It is not surprising, therefore, that the research so far overlooked the unusual and unique joint initiative mentioned above by two outstanding Silesian mystics and the best Silesian artist of the Baroque era. Its aim was to combine elements of mystical experience with various forms of mass piety of a counter-Reformation nature. Importantly, all forms of mass mystical piety were closely linked to the use of devotional works of art, which were designed primarily by Michael Willmann. They became the most popular images in the religious culture of Silesia until the end of the 18th century. Just as the literary and philosophical achievements of Silesian mystics led by Angelus Silesius, so also works of art serving mystical piety, which were created by Willmann, we can safely consider as a kind of event and an important contribution of Silesia to the culture of European Baroque.
Picturing the (Un)Dead in Beirut
Martyr posters are more than obituary images - they can act as visual politics. Focusing on Rabih Mrou矇's play How Nancy Wished That Everything Was an April Fool's Joke (2007), Agnes Rameder analyses how contemporary artists question and appropriate Lebanese martyr posters. By linking the posters from the Wars in Lebanon (1975-1990) to contemporary posters, she shows that these images continue to the present day, that martyrs are still created and that deaths, such as those who were killed in the explosion on 4 August 2020, are still visually remembered. This study does not focus on how such pictures are perceived by a Western audience but delves into the use and abuse of martyr posters that were intended to be shown to the Lebanese.
At the Movies, Film Reviewing, and Screenwriting
This book examines film reviewing and screenwriting as key sites of cultural mediation, providing new insights on the relationship between criticism and reviewing, as well as the way reviewers handle concepts of story, dialogue, and narrative. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu on the cultural field, and his theory of taste, the book provides an assessment of the place of film reviewing in contemporary screen culture. The book analyses a case study comprised of ten years of television scripts of the Australian film reviewing programme, At the Movies (2004-2014). Hosted by two of Australia's most eminent film critics, Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, for over two decades, this study of At the Movies provides a unique window into film reviewing, movie consumption, and wider cultural attitudes in this period of Australian cultural history. It examines the programme's cultural significance, and the contribution of Margaret and David to screen culture. This book makes a significant contribution to an under-studied area of media studies (the review), screenwriting research through the analysis of broadcast scripts, and cultural studies through the study of an important television programme.
Buddhist Bells and Dragons
Buddhist Bells and Dragons: Under and Over Water, In and Out of Japan recovers the essential but unrecognized roles of Buddhist temple bells in the history of art, religious studies, and the history of interregional and international relations with Japan. Specifically attending to the agency of bronze bells made as early as the seventh century, the chapters address how bells function as significant commodities of material and emotional exchange. Abundant Japanese stories and illustrations of Buddhist bells being transported across the sea or sunk in bodies of water are shared to illuminate why the relationship between dragons, bells, and water is so pervasive in Japanese culture. Utilizing object biography, the book analyzes stories of the lives of key bells from multiple perspectives that extend long past any human lifetime. The most famous is the eighth-century bell from Miidera temple, known for its mythical resurfacing from the Dragon King's undersea palace and its legendary relationship to Benkei, a real twelfth-century warrior conflated into the thirteenth-century historical event of the Miidera bell's theft and return. Important bells from Korea, China, and Ryukyu (Okinawa) that had contact with Japan are also treated to offer fresh explanations of the pivotal roles bells held in the wider history of international maritime exchange, in both trade and plunder, that reach far beyond a single nation's narrative. As the first of its kind, this book will open minds to the significance of the art, history, emotion, and religious devotion surrounding bells in Japan as they align with dragons and water. Buddhist Bells and Dragons expands the notions of East Asian religious art by demonstrating the vital history of bells for an audience of scholars and students of not only Buddhist studies, but also art history, religious studies, East Asian studies, and international political history. The final chapter, on the seizure and return of Japanese Buddhist bells during and after the Asia-Pacific War (1937-1945), brings the subject to the near present. All told, the vibrant culture behind Japan's bronze temple bells, long hidden in plain sight, is revealed.
Meditative Drawing
Immerse yourself in the calming practice of meditative drawing while learning to draw mandalas and other nature-inspired designs. Drawing and coloring mandalas and free-flowing, nature-inspired art has become increasingly popular as a form of art therapy, stress relief, and self-expression. With Meditative Drawing as your guide, you can join the artists of all ages and backgrounds who have embraced mindful drawing for its meditative and calming qualities. This accessible and inspiring book shows you how to enjoy the benefits of a mindfulness-based art practice, while creating stunning artwork. You will find: Detailed step-by-step instruction on drawing mandalas and other meditative designsTraceable motifs that allow you to practice motifs and expand on themQR codes that link to online videos and downloadable templatesBonus designs you can color and finish yourselfThe projects and techniques begin with simple motifs that gently build toward more complex designs, which go beyond mandalas to include other free-flowing artwork. Author Lizzie Snow (@fortyonehundred) is well known for her stunning mandalas and mandala-inspired artwork and has taught thousands of students to create their own incredible artwork. Whether you're interested in drawing beautiful nature-based designs or enjoying a relaxing activity to boost your mental health, Meditative Drawing is the ideal companion for your journey.
Tales From My Higher And Lower Self
Dear reader, I hope these poems find more than just circumstantial appeal, if so, we are both luck.
Issam Kourbaj
Issam Kourbaj has been a constant creative witness to the continuing conflict in his home country of Syria, his art increasingly addressing the endemic pain and suffering that accompanies displacement and forced migration everywhere. Issam Kourbaj was born and grew up in Syria before settling in Cambridge in 1990. Following the uprising in Syria in 2011, Kourbaj has been a constant creative witness to the continuing conflict in his home country, his art increasingly addressing the endemic pain and suffering that accompanies displacement and forced migration everywhere. Published to accompany two substantial solo exhibitions at Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge and The Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge, Issam Kourbaj explores the life and work of an artist characterized by collaboration and endless curiosity. Kourbaj's art is expressive and alive, suggesting even in the darkest hours the potential for change and renewal. "How can we grasp the remarkable artistic breadth of Issam Kourbaj? Here is an art so full of invention and purpose that its images and ideas reverberate well beyond the walls of any gallery. Kourbaj's achievement is to make us look, pause and imagine. Engaging with his acute and powerful work makes us consider our responsibility for the conditions of others on our shared planet" - Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle's Yard
Richard Pousette-Dart Beginnings
Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-92), working in New York in the 1940s, created beautiful, layered paintings as well as experimenting with drawing, photography and sculpture. This publication, produced to coincide with the 2018 exhibition Richard Pousette-Dart: Beginnings reflects new research into the life and work of Richard Pousette-Dart and his significant contribution to American art in the 20th Century. Playing a key role in the genesis of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School, which transformed American art in the post-war years, Pousette-Dart's contemporaries included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Willem de Kooning. Jim Ede, creator of Kettle's Yard, first met Pousette-Dart in New York in 1940. Research exploring their transatlantic correspondence over subsequent decades was a catalyst for the first solo exhibition of the work of Pousette-Dart in the UK, held at Kettle's Yard in 2018. The majority of works on display were borrowed from US museums and collections, and had not previously been seen in this country.
Toshimasa Kikuchi
The work of the Japanese sculptor Toshimasa Kikuchi (born in 1979) is somehow bewilderingly obvious. Trained in the restoration of Buddhist statues, mastering to perfection the techniques of classical Japanese statuary, he carves pure forms in wood - geometric, hydrodynamic or figurative. His scientific repertory is timeless (mathematics, engineering, natural history), but his preferred materials and techniques are firmly grounded in tradition (Japanese hinoki cypress, urushi lacquer, kinpaku gold leaf). The installation he presents for his Carte Blanche at the Guimet Museum, Paris, brings together a series of slender sculptures in lacquered wood of mathematical objects, in the tradition of the celebrated photographs that Man Ray took of them. These abstract forms, hanging from the ceiling like mobiles or laid on the floor like devotional objects, take shape through a virtuosity and craftsmanship seldom found in contemporary art. The book is lavishly illustrated by the Japanese photographer Tadayuki Minamoto, who has been able to capture the magnificence of the mathematical abstraction of the works of Kikuchi; by photographs and paintings by Man Ray; and with fascinating mathematical objects from the Institut Henri Poincar矇, Paris, photographed by the French photographer Bertrand Michau. It is essential reading for lovers of surrealism and of the early years of 20th-century abstraction as well as for all who are intrigued by the close relationship between art and mathematics. Text in English and French.
Early Gothic Manuscripts (2)
In England the art of illumination flourished widely in the second half of the 13th century - a time in which the connections with the continent, particularly France, where strong. Artists moved away from the monastic scriptorium to professional workshops in urban centres, and the rise of the Universities resulted in the production of new types of illustrated text. As with cross-fertilization of ideas from Paris to London, Oxford, and Cambridge, so with the styles and techniques of illumination. The magnificent examples catalogued here include the Lambeth, Metz, Douce and Trinity Apocalypses; their relationships are examined and detailed iconography is described. Many of the Bibles and - notably - the Amesbury, Oscott and Rutland Psalters are some of the greatest works of the period, and among surviving religious manuscripts the earliest examples of Books of Hours reveal the increasing range of devotional interests of lay people. Astrological, legal, medical, topographical and historical works are also included, and the volume ends with the remarkable Hereford Mad which summarizes many of the ideas of Earth and Heaven prevailing at the time. The Introduction sets the manuscripts in a historical framework, describes the influences at work, defines the types of books and their decoration, and discusses evidence for dating and localization. This is a survey of early Gothic manuscripts illuminated in the British Isles, setting them in a historical framework, describing the influences at work, defining the types of books and their decoration, and discussing evidence for dating and localization.
A New and Noble School
In 1851 John Ruskin came to the defence of the young artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by writing two letters to The Times, refuting widespread criticism of their paintings. Soon afterwards he published a pamphlet entitled Pre-Raphaelitism, beginning almost a decade of public support for the work of William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and their associates. Already established as one of the leading writers on art, he took a personal risk in defending the Pre- Raphaelite cause, but saw a parallel in the hostile reaction to the paintings of his artistic idol J. M. W. Turner. In Millais especially, Ruskin hoped to nurture a worthy successor in landscape painting, arguing that the Pre-Raphaelites' attention to truth and detail offered the opportunity to establish a "new and noble school" of British art. This is the first compilation of all of Ruskin's published writings relating to the Pre-Raphaelites, beginning with the celebrated passage in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843) exhorting young artists to "go to nature in all .... rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing," later claimed by Hunt to have been an inspiration. As well as Pre- Raphaelitism (1851), rarely reprinted since, and the fourth of the 1853 Edinburgh lectures, it includes all the comments on paintings in the annual Academy Notes (1855-9) which pertain to Pre-Raphaelitism, underlining Ruskin's significant contribution to the movement's popular success and the widespread acceptance of its principles. From the period after 1860, when Ruskin was concentrating more on social issues, come the the little-known articles published in the Nineteenth Century magazine under the title The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism (1878), and a number of lectures, including the last of his Slade Lectures, The Art of England (1883), delivered just a few years before his mental faculties failed. Edited with a commentary and preface by Stephen Wildman, Director of the Ruskin Library and Research Centre, University of Lancaster, and with an introduction by Robert Hewison, one of Ruskin's successors as Slade Professor of Art at the University of Oxford.
Agnes Martin
The work of Agnes Martin has frequently been associated with East Asian philosophies. Particularly highlighting the oeuvre of this US artist, Mona Schieren presents comprehensive research on the influence of Asianist aesthetics in post-1945 American art. More than just historical analysis, her study opens an entirely new perspective on Martin's appropriation of Asianisms by focusing on transcultural translation and redefining Martin's work beyond Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. This offers new viewpoints on the aesthetic, philosophical, and visual relationships in American postwar art and takes a nuanced approach that moves beyond generalized notions of "Zen" in the US art world. Schieren's exploration of the intentional and specific uses of Asianist aesthetics profoundly contributes to insights in international art histories and cultural translations.
Jacqueline Poncelet
The first trade monograph on London- and South Wales-based mixed-media artist Jacqueline Poncelet (b. 1947, Li癡ge, Belgium), surveying 50 years of the artist's practice exploring material, shape, form, and pattern in urban and rural contexts. This, the first monograph on acclaimed London- and South Wales-based artist Jacqueline Poncelet (b. 1947, Li癡ge, Belgium), surveys 50 years of the artist's practice. Working across diverse media, Poncelet transforms patterns from urban and rural contexts, exploring how fashions play out in the ways humans dress, decorate living spaces, and shape architecture. Having trained in ceramics, Poncelet moved into sculpture, painting, and textiles before turning to public commissions. The publication presents works from different eras, including small-scale ceramics from the 1970s, large, brightly colored paintings and textiles from the 1990s, as well as woven textiles, watercolors, and wallpapers made in the 2020s. The publication, which includes documentation of In the Making, an exhibition by Poncelet at MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, in 2024, features a foreword by Laura Sillars; an essay by Elinor Morgan; texts by Salena Barry, Claire Doherty, and Penelope Curtis; and an interview by Hettie Judah.
Raghav Babbar
Indian Summer presents a group of skilful and expressive figurative paintings in oil on canvas and linen by India-born, London-based artist Raghav Babbar (b. 1997), first shown at Nahmad Projects in 2023. Indian Summer presents a group of skillful and expressive figurative paintings in oil on canvas and linen by artist Raghav Babbar (b. 1997) that include intimate portraits as well as large-scale group compositions. Babbar's sitters span friends from his childhood in Rohtak, a city north-west of Delhi, pan-sellers, dancers from the south of India, family members, as well as himself. Indian Summer is the first publication on Babbar, which features reproductions of over forty works created from 2020-23 and views of his 2023 exhibitions at Nahmad Projects, London, and Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice. Lock Kresler, Senior Director at Helly Nahmad Gallery, London, introduces the book, explaining his first encounters with Babbar and his practice. An essay by art historian, broadcaster, and commentator Dr Cleo Roberts-Komireddi examines how Babbar uses his materials, treats his subjects, and delves into his sources of inspiration, classic Hindi and Tamil cinema and the School of London artists. Babbar celebrates the individual as he showcases the diversity of his country in his textural, rich, and joyful portraits that teem with life.
Kandinsky's Universe
Spanning six decades, three continents, and multiple mediums, this exhibition catalog explores one of the most significant and influential artistic movements of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, painting underwent a profound transformation. Artists no longer wanted to depict the visible; they aspired to a new visual language that reduced artistic expression to an interplay of colors, lines, and shapes; reflected the modern world; and transcended national boundaries. A central figure of this art movement was Wassily Kandinsky, who laid the theoretical foundations with his work Point and Line to Plane. This lushly illustrated and highly researched volume showcases how Geometric Abstraction found radical expression in all its variations in Europe, the USA and beyond. It features more than one hundred works by over seventy artists, including Josef Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Barbara Hepworth, El Lissitzky, Agnes Martin, Piet Mondrian, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, and Victor Vasarely. Essays by leading scholars illuminate the ways these artists were inspired by the advanced technologies and theories of their time, including concepts of the fourth dimension and the space- time continuum. The authors explore the movement through a transnational lens--from Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain, to France, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and the United States; and emphasize the long-neglected role of women in the movement's advancement. Through its insightful essays and stunning visuals, this volume offers a definitive exploration of how geometric abstraction revolutionized modern art and continues to inspire artists across the globe.
Women in the Fine Arts, From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D.
