Granny Takes a Trip
Granny Takes A Trip was more than just a shop and a fashion brand; it was the original rock and roll clothes boutique, the template for all that followed. What started as an odd retail venture/art installation in a depressed part of London known as World's End became an international byword for glam decadence in Manhattan and Hollywood, combining flamboyant style and all manner of countercultural activity to attract everyone from Pattie Boyd, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg to Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, the Beatles, and Lou Reed. Unfolding over a decade-and-a-half, this tumultuous story invokes a cast of often unique, sometimes entitled, unusually talented and troubled individuals on a collective mission to shake up austere, repressed, class-ridden Britain and white bread America. Some achieved this at great personal cost as darkness, addiction and tragedy stalked those behind the extraordinary shop facades. Much mythologised but never told, this cautionary tale has now found its definitive chronicler in celebrated cultural historian Paul Gorman who has had access to first-hand accounts from all the principal figures, as well as notes for a memoir and a much-treasured scrapbook by Freddie Hornik, the tailoring entrepreneur who survived the death marches of central Europe after WW2 to acquire Granny Takes A Trip in the late 60s and transform into an unparalleled pop cultural force. Beautifully illustrated with archival images of the shop, principal players and the clothes themselves, this book concludes with a never-seen-before 48-page tour through the Rolling Stones' wild wardrobe of sartorial delights tailored and sold in the original shop.
Delcy Morelos
An overdue examination of the Colombian artist's decade-long, soil-based practice, evincing her contributions to the lineage of land art Published with Dia Art Foundation.For more than a decade, Colombian artist Delcy Morelos (born 1967) has worked primarily with earth, creating immersive environments of geometrically abstract forms. Drawing on Indigenous cosmologies, Morelos' work explores the sustaining power of mud in its many forms--as a source of life and sustenance.This bilingual monograph approaches Morelos' two soil-based installations--Cielo terrenal (2023) and El abrazo (2023)--to explore the artist's role in the history of land art. The texts consider the natural materials used in her Dia commission and their sensory, spatial and phenomenological impact. The volume also features a selection of stories sourced from Indigenous Colombian communities--Bar獺, Matap穩, Tanimuca, M+n+ca, Uitoto N+pode and Yucuna Kamejey獺--that underscore Morelos' acute understanding of the sacred relationship between land and its inhabitants.
The Met Gala
Iconic fashion moments from the world's most exclusive event Since 1948, The Met Gala has attracted an A-list crowd to the steps of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on the first Monday in May each year.It's the biggest event on the fashion calendar, where celebrities vie to flaunt looks that will resonate for years to come, and earn themselves a place in fashion history as a certified icon of style.From Cher and Sarah Jessica Parker to Rihanna and Zendaya, this unofficial book features more than 80 stunning photographs of stars showcasing their most striking outfits and is the perfect way to relive decades of sartorial elegance.
Zdenek Beran: Elevation
Beran's years-long installation project, reminiscent of a haunted hospital, marks a watershed moment in Czech conceptualismThis publication emerged from the reconstruction of Zdenek Beran's (1937-2014) installation entitled Rehabilitation Department of Dr. Dr. (1970-71). The book is structured around an imaginary "optical grid," uniting each phase of the years-long project and offering both semantic and emotional interpretations.
Angela Glajcar: Catalogue Raisonn矇
Glajcar's ephemeral, tiered-paper "terforations" are immortalized in her first catalogue raisonn矇German sculptor Angela Glajcar (born 1970) works with fragile materials--torn strips of paper, delicate fabrics and plastics--which she layers and curves to create forms that seem to glow from within. The first catalogue raisonn矇 of her work includes more than 1,600 objects, reliefs and spatial installations.
Unmyth
Presents the first comprehensive study of the impactful artwork of Mithu Sen, a major Indian contemporary artist and poet, in all its multiplicity and complexity. This artist monograph presents the first comprehensive study of the artwork of Mithu Sen, a major contemporary artist and poet based in New Delhi, India. Her work spans over two decades of making and hundreds of exhibitions, projects, performances and word art, unveiling an unparalleled history of experiments with materials and concepts. The book's title, Unmyth, speaks to Sen's impactful work in all its multiplicity and complexity. Sen's art imagines for us new worlds--including to escape to and from. Some elements are familiar, others are alien. As with myths, they are lulling and disturbing at the same time. These worlds are built around the key concepts in Sen's work: mything, unmything and postmything; radical hospitality; untaboo sexuality; lingual anarchy; critiquing institutions and countering capitalism; unmonolith identity; byproducts and contract. These and other concepts are engaged with systematically in wide-ranging essays, written by eminent scholars, curators, and critics who have followed Sen's work for many years. The artist herself contributes conceptual captions, dispersed citations, and the experimental Fictional Interview.
Chris Marker: Immemory
The legendary French filmmaker's labyrinthine memoir, first published by Exact Change in 2002 as a CD-ROM, now reconfigured into book form after a laborious process initiated by the artist before his death in 2012Filmmaker, photographer and writer Chris Marker never adhered to the conventions of a particular art form. Each of his films, from La Jet矇e to Sans Soleil, pushes the boundaries of its medium, merging at times with the essay, political manifesto, personal letter, art installation and even, finally, a computer game.For Immemory, first published in 1998 (French) and 2002 (English), Marker used a CD-ROM to create a multi-layered, mixed-media memoir. The reader investigates ""zones"" of travel, war, cinema and poetry, navigating through image and text as if physically exploring Marker's memory itself. The result is a veritable 21st-century Remembrance of Things Past, an exploration of the state of memory in our era. With it, Marker both invented a literary form and perfected it, just before the digital format he chose for the experiment was quickly rendered obsolete.Immemory: Gutenberg Version reinvents this unique work for the printed page, a project the author dreamed up, titled, and began working on with Exact Change before his death. Now finally realized, it brings this seminal work into the present and future through a time-tested, durable format of the past: the book.Chris Marker (1921-2012) served in the French Resistance, and then the US Air Force, during World War II and worked as a journalist while honing his film career. He received international acclaim with La Jet矇e in 1962, and became a critical voice in film theory and production as well as a widely admired "cult" artist, a filmmaker's filmmaker.
Verne Dawson: To Hear a Story to Its End
Through his chimerical landscapes, Dawson collapses prehistoric, ancient and modern human history into folkloric tableauxEngaging ancient knowledge systems as well as the long history of direct painting, Alabama-born artist Verne Dawson (born 1955) depicts imagined futures and forgotten pasts. In billowing, gestural marks that often evanesce into abstraction, and working from both observation and memory, the artist contends with subjects including the cyclicality of time, fairy tales and folklore, Ice Age symbolism, astronomy and the emergence and destruction of the natural world, ultimately revealing their interconnectedness. Dawson's paintings, Jennifer Krasinski writes, "call upon viewers to practice a quality of depth perception to see what other wisdoms are stowed inside of symbolic orders and archetypes, popular objects and classic genres--and to better apprehend all that is known of this world and those that spin alongside it." The selected paintings in this richly illustrated volume span from 1985 to 2024.
Claire Chesnier
Chesnier distills the essence of color into pure sensory perception through her shimmering arrays of ink on wet paperFrench artist Claire Chesnier's (born 1986) first monograph presents the artist's tonal paintings and works on paper, characterized by a soft, fading gradient and a color palette reminiscent of sunrise and sunset. This book was published in conjunction with The Pill
Lubaina Himid: Make Do and Mend
Himid invites readers into her process through an intimate view of two new bodies of work that engage themes of power and memoryPublished with The Contemporary Austin and The FLAG Art Foundation, New York. Best known for her paintings that excavate the legacy of colonialism and expand the possibilities of Black representation, Lubaina Himid (born 1954) played a pivotal role in the British Black Arts Movement in the 1980s and became the first Black woman to win the Turner Prize in 2017. Published on the occasion of Himid's most recent solo exhibition for The Contemporary Austin's 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, Make Do and Mend provides readers with a rare behind-the-scenes look into Himid's process for two new bodies of work: a suite of 10 Strategy Paintings depicting Black men and women seated around tables invested in problem-solving the dynamics of power, and 64 sculptural plank paintings, entitled Aunties, that formally evoke East African funerary objects and Postminimalism, as they pay tribute to the relationships between women.
Photographing Ambiguity
Photographing Ambiguity examines photography as a metaphor for technological culture, arguing that a relational exploration of the medium can shed light on the dominant ideological tendencies of our time. The book advocates for photographic practices that emphasize ambiguity, suggesting that this approach fosters more conscientious, ecological, and creative relationships within the technological ecosystem of contemporary life. Ted Hiebert critiques the notion that images should primarily serve to verify or document the external world. He contends that these quantifiable perspectives, while rooted in historical trends towards technology and data, have become so pervasive that they represent a dominant ideological bias in the twenty-first century. In response to this data-driven consciousness, the book presents a series of exercises designed to cultivate an embodied experience with digital living - not in opposition to the flood of images but within it. Ultimately, Photographing Ambiguity encourages readers to understand photographs not as benchmarks of reality but as ambiguous constructions of our present and future imaginaries.
Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits
With vibrant colors and imaginative backgrounds, Van Gogh's affectionate renderings of an entire family underscore his love of portraitureVincent van Gogh once wrote, "What I'm most passionate about...is the portrait, the modern portrait." This passion flourished between 1888 and '89 when, during his stay in Arles, in the South of France, the artist created a number of portraits of a neighboring family that had agreed to sit for him. The family included the local postman Joseph Roulin; his wife, Augustine; and their three children, Armand, Camille and Marcelle. Over the course of his year in Arles, the artist created an astonishing 26 painted portraits of the family members, both in groups and individually, as well as multiple drawings.Van Gogh's tender relationship with the postman and his family and his groundbreaking portrayals of them are at the heart of this book, the first dedicated to the Roulin portraits. Drawing on letters from the artist, archival material, contemporary criticism and technical studies, The Roulin Family Portraits features insightful essays on Van Gogh's practice, his beliefs about portraiture, his personal relationship with the Roulins and his admiration for his contemporaries as well as 17th-century Dutch portraitists.Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) began his painting career in his late twenties, influenced first by his work as a missionary in a mining region of Belgium, and later by his exposure to Impressionism while living in Paris. His bright signature style emerged after relocating to the South of France, where he produced more than 2,000 artworks in just over a decade.
Anselm Kiefer
- First show in Oxford for Anselm Kiefer- Prime focus on early works- Features three new works not previously published- Extensive chronology of Anselm Kiefer- Contributions from a range of expert authorsThis 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.
Laure Pigeon
Discover an example of striking and spiritual graphic art that takes its cue from messages from the hereafter to produce unique creations. Text in English and French. Laure Pigeon (1882-1965) is one of the leading figures in Art Brut (Outsider Art), along with Alo簿se Corbaz and Adolf W繹lfli. The Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne probably possesses her entire oeuvre, amounting to over 400 works, including writings, notebooks, small-scale drawings and an extensive series of large compositions in blue ink. These are all part of the corpus of works acquired by Jean Dubuffet, the historic collection around which the museum was founded. In 1978, the Collection de l'Art Brut held the first and only monographic exhibition dedicated to this artist. A new exhibition in 2025 has now been devoted to her exclusively. It offers a representative selection of her striking graphic work, spanning a period of 30 years. Like Madge Gill, Jeanne Tripier, Augustin Lesage and Rapha禱l Lonn矇, Laure Pigeon too was a member of the spiritualist fraternity - men and women who feel "selected" to receive messages from the hereafter and claim the deceased are responsible for their creations. The spiritualist's hand is therefore guided and merely executes what the spirits dictate. The catalog, in French and English, includes essays by several authors and a large number of color illustrations.
Slavko Kopac
Slavko Kopac: Surrealist, Art Brut advocate, and key figure in Informal Art. This volume explores his multifaceted work across various media, highlighting his essential role in defining and promoting these movements. Text in English, French and Italian. Slavko Kopac. Hidden Treasure. Informal Art, Surrealism, Art Brut accompanies the exhibition Slavko Kopac. Hidden Treasure (Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, Florence, September-November 2025). With an introduction by Bernard Blist癡ne, honorary director of the Centre Pompidou and advocate of the acquisition of twelve of Kopac's works into the museum's collection, the book explores a multifaceted artist, deeply connected to Surrealism, Informal Art, and Art Brut. A key collaborator of Jean Dubuffet and the first curator of the "Collection de l'Art Brut", he played a fundamental part in its promotion and configuration. His magical, totemic universe captivated the Surrealists and led to a collaboration with Andr矇 Breton. At the same time, critic Michel Tapi矇 included him in Un Art Autre (1952), recognizing his originality within the Informal Art movement. He used painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, collage, and art books to explore materiality, intertwining reality and fantasy. The volume features contributions by leading international scholars and an extensive iconographic repertoire, including previously unpublished works and archive documents. Text in English, French and Italian.
Ken
One of the world's most lovable sidekicks returns in an essential volume for collectors, pop culture enthusiasts, and anyone fascinated by the enduring charm of Barbie's iconic counterpart. This is the very first book dedicated entirely to Ken, tracing his evolution from his debut in 1961 to Ryan Gosling's unforgettable portrayal in the 2023 blockbuster movie. This official and comprehensive book offers exclusive behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the designers and creatives who shaped Ken's history. Featuring never-before-seen images straight from the Mattel archives, this lavish coffee table book is ready for displaying, gifting, and repeated viewing. Kenneth Carson is so much more than just a boyfriend. Across his countless careers, stylish ensembles, global escapades, and of course, his thrilling adventures with Barbie, Ken has touched the lives of doll lovers both young and old.
Calder-Isms
A dazzling collection of quotations from the modern American artist whose mobiles are beloved worldwide Calder-isms is a collection of fascinating, irreverent, and often profound quotations from the influential modern American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976), who is most famous for his invention of what his friend Marcel Duchamp dubbed the "mobile." Often suspended from ceilings, these sculptures feature abstract elements, frequently painted in bold colors, that move and balance in changing harmony. Calder's art was dynamic, unconventional, and filled with vitality--qualities also displayed by his words, which combine the wisdom of a philosopher with the ingenuity of a true original. Taken from interviews, writings, and other sources, the quotations in Calder-isms offer memorable insights into Calder's life, mind, and, above all, art."Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an intensely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.""That visit to Mondrian gave me the shock that converted me. It was like the baby being slapped to make his lungs start working.""[A mobile] has no utility and no meaning. It is simply beautiful. It has a great emotional effect if you understand it. Of course if it meant anything it would be easier to understand, but it would not be worthwhile.""A title is just like the license plate on the back of a car. You use it to say which one you're talking about.""People think monuments should come out of the ground, never out of the ceiling, but mobiles can be monumental too.""Bad taste always boomerangs."
La Manjai
"LA MANJAI" transports the reader on a journey of traditional Haitian Creole cuisine to a place of gastronomic seduction from the authors' perspective of the cuisine. The authors are professional chefs of Haitian origin who have added their "je ne se quoi" to traditional recipes to showcase the cuisine's exotic flavors. The magical appeal of Haitian Creole cuisine is in its unpretentious nature. The flavors are bold and robust. The cuisine demonstrates a primary influence of African culinary aesthetic with a derivative of Taino, Spanish, Middle Eastern and a touch of French sophistication. This eclectic cuisine originates from a blend of several culinary styles. Haitian Creole cuisine carries a uniqueness and an appeal that is intriguing to all that have sampled it. Peppers and herbs are often used as flavor enhancers. Haitian Creole food is seasoned in a liberal fashion to captivate the palate. The authors have taken some of their favorite recipes and added "YON TI EPIS" (pun intended) to them as to harmonize the cuisine through their Chef lens.
Get the Picture
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2024 BY NPR, TIME, AND THE ECONOMIST"Get the Picture is one of the funniest books I've read . . . Brilliant." --The Washington Post "A gripping and often hilarious investigation into the art world. . . . Bosker goes full Tom Wolfe." --TIME "Funny, whip-smart, and gorgeously written, Get the Picture will forever transform the way you see. . . . I loved every word." --Suleika Jaouad, New York Times bestselling author of Between Two Kingdoms The New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork takes readers on another fascinating, hilarious, and revelatory journey--this time burrowing deep inside the secretive world of art and artists An award-winning journalist obsessed with obsession, Bianca Bosker's existence was upended when she wandered into the art world--and couldn't look away. Intrigued by artists who hyperventilate around their favorite colors and art fiends who max out credit cards to show hunks of metal they think can change the world, Bosker grew fixated on understanding why art matters and how she--or any of us--could engage with it more deeply. In Get the Picture, Bosker throws herself into the nerve center of art and the people who live for it: gallerists, collectors, curators, and, of course, artists themselves--the kind who work multiple jobs to afford their studios while scrabbling to get eyes on their art. As she stretches canvases until her fingers blister, talks her way into A-list parties full of billionaire collectors, has her face sat on by a nearly-naked performance artist, and forces herself to stare at a single sculpture for hours on end while working as a museum security guard, she discovers not only the inner workings of the art-canonization machine but also a more expansive way of living. Probing everything from cave paintings to Instagram, and from the science of sight to the importance of beauty as it examines art's role in our culture, our economy, and our hearts, Get the Picture is a rollicking adventure that will change the way you see forever.
Fairey-Isms
A revealing collection of quotations from the world-renowned artist and political activist behind the iconic Obama "Hope" poster and the "Obey Giant" street-art campaign Shepard Fairey is one of today's most important and influential street artists, activists, and graphic designers. His instantly recognizable designs--"Andr矇 the Giant has a Posse," "Obey Giant," the Obama "Hope" poster, and the "We the People" posters for the 2017 Women's March--have become an indelible part of visual culture, appearing in countless media, including stickers, stencils, prints, T-shirts, album covers, murals, and fine art. Fairey-isms is a compelling collection of quotations from this fascinating artist. Gathered from interviews, articles, and other sources, these quotations offer rich insights about his life and work, including his thoughts on art, creativity, politics, and propaganda and his reflections on his influences--from skateboarding, The Clash, and Public Enemy to Russian Constructivism and artists such as Futura, Barbara Kruger, and Andy Warhol."I use the word 'Obey' in much of my art as a form of reverse psychology. Though most people wish they were independent, many obediently follow the path of least resistance and are uncomfortable with confronting the word 'Obey.'""Any message that's worth delivering can be amplified with art.""I called my work propaganda out of an understanding that there's an irony, because every piece of visual communication has an agenda. Any of it could be called propaganda.""Repetition works."
The Graphic Design Sourcebook
The Graphic Design Sourcebook delves into the vast array of graphic design that surrounds us wherever we go, and has done so ever since printing was invented. Yet everyday graphics have mostly been ignored as an art form. From Victorian song sheets to French perfume labels, early matchboxes to decorative greetings cards, appealing cigarette packets to enticing holiday brochures, colourful advertisements to racy night club tickets, these miniature masterpieces deserve artistic recognition. With over a thousand images, The Graphic Design Sourcebook is both an inspiring source book and a treasure trove of ideas; a true cornucopia of communication.
Lucy Williams - Radiant City
A major monograph documenting a decade of figurative and geometric work by London-based contemporary artist Lucy Williams. Radiant City is a major monograph documenting a decade of figurative and geometric work by London-based British contemporary artist Lucy Williams (b. 1972, Oxford). Her mixed-media bas-relief collages depict modernist architecture and interiors, from tower blocks and municipal buildings to private residences in Palm Springs. All made painstakingly by hand, this is a contemporary art practice that, with the precision of an architect or a draughts person, references craft traditions, using materials including paper, Plexiglas, wood veneer, fabric, piano wire and thread. Space, form, pattern, design and geometry meet with color and light to form mesmerizing, detailed scenes such as tiled swimming pools with mosaic walls, the imposing facades of Brutalist buildings, and domestic interiors containing bookcases replete with books, vases and ornaments. In addition to figurative works, the publication also features the artist's Threaded Collages, abstract geometric pieces inspired by Bauhaus tapestries and constructivism. Williams creates repeated triangular and diamond forms, using colorful painted papers along with silk and cotton threads. Featuring a variety of text contributions, this, Williams's second trade monograph, has been designed by Kristin Metho, edited by Matt Price, and produced by Hurtwood. It is published by Hurtwood with generous support from Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco.
Stuff: A New York Life of Cultural Chaos
A joyful romp through the singular and eclectic material world of a true New York characterPublished with Amazing Unlimited. Kim Hastreiter, cofounder of the beloved Paper magazine, has spent the last 50 years amassing a vast and iconoclastic collection of stuff. This volume, aptly titled STUFF, chronicles an extraordinary slice of history and the people who defined it, using Hastreiter's singular edit of art, fashion, design, photography, books and ephemera as a lens. In these pages you'll meet Hastreiter's amazing friends: at an all-night party in the basement of an East Village church with Keith Haring; a private art sale with Jeffrey Deitch in Phyllis Diller's kitchen; or impromptu cocktails at Trader Vic's with Salvador Dal穩 and Joey Arias.STUFF is more than a memoir; it's a loopy, joyous, chaotic ride through the last half century of cultural chaos in the greatest city on earth. Whether you are an OG or a kid, a culture vulture, artist, design buff, fashion nerd, skater, collector, chef, cinephile, New Yorker, uptowner, downtowner, out-of-towner or something else entirely, STUFF will make you feel like you're sitting with Kim in her garden high above Washington Square Park, her booming voice imploring you to pursue your life with compulsive enthusiasm. The book features an exclusive cover design by the elusive yet legendary artist Jim Joe, best known for designing the iconic album cover for Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late.Kim Hastreiter is a New Jersey native and consummate New Yorker. She is a cultural anthropologist and the original multi-hyphenate. An editor, publisher, curator and big idea person, she is best known for cofounding the legendary Paper magazine together with David Hershkovits, which they sold in 2017.
Amoako Boafo: Proper Love
Boafo's sculptural, collage-like paintings present a contemporary image of Black self-empowerment and self-perceptionThis volume accompanies the first museum exhibition in Europe for the Ghanian painter Amoako Boafo (born 1984), who is widely considered to be one of the most important voices from a new generation of Black artists. After graduating from art college in Accra, Boafo began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 2013, where he developed his signature style characterized by his unusual finger-painting technique. Applied to the human body, this creates a sculptural effect that contrasts with the flatness of the rest of the painting. The people portrayed by Boafo--friends, acquaintances and public figures--embody the idea of Black identity that draws on its own culture, to be understood as an act of resistance against the racist labels of a predominantly white society. This form of Black subjectivity is expressed in the appearance of the sitters, who confront the viewer as self-confident individuals and often seek direct eye contact. The artist's intensive engagement with Black history is subtly reflected in his paintings that include motifs inspired by literary works by key pioneers of the Black Freedom Movement.
Comfort and Contemporary Culture
To be comfortable stands as an aspiration of the times; to be comfortable defines what it means to live 'the good life'. We talk about such things as maintaining a comfortable home, a comfortable lifestyle and a comfortable retirement. We seek out comforts in the relationships we sustain, the leisure practices we enact and the possessions we accumulate. We look for promises of comfort in the words of a close friend and our next pair of shoes. Furnished in the home, optionally outfitted in cars, scrutinised in holiday brochures and brushed up against in the clothes we wear, comfort is there, marking distinctions and framing decisions about what it means to live well. But by consuming comfort in the ways that we do, we do ourselves harm and limit our only planet of its capacity to provide for the requirements of life. This is a world that grows ever more uncomfortable because of comfort and when linked to consumption and excess, indulgence and apathy, it occurs that comfort carries effects that have existential consequence.Utilising analyses of popular culture and ethnographic accounts of everyday life, Comfort and Contemporary Culture works through case study accounts of comfort's enactment to pose questions around what it means to live, now. Comfort and Contemporary Culture poses alternative renderings of the idea of comfort to return the concept to its earliest roots in notions of confortāre. The revisioning of what we take as comfort requires urgent attention, with the ecological, social and intrapersonal implications of comfort's current excesses demonstrative of this need. This book will be relevant reading for students and scholars of cultural studies and sociology, cultural anthropology, social geography and studies of community.
Franz West
Emerging from the 1960s generation of Viennese Aktionists, who used their own bodies in their art, Franz West (b.1947) is an internationally renowned Austrian artist who incorporates the bodies of his spectators into his work. Often inviting visitors to participate in or even wear his sculptures, West encourages us to explore our involvement in contemporary art and its presentations. The resulting works are not always aesthetically pleasing. His oddly-hued plaster forms called Passt羹cke (Adaptives)- ordinary objects wrapped in gauze and dipped in plaster - are sculptures to be worn by the viewer that contort the body into bizarre positions. His public works include his contribution to Documenta IX in 1992, in which he set out row after row of metal-framed couches, draped with rugs and fabrics, for public use in an open square behind the Fridericianum: a new kind of public art for weary museum visitors. Drawing inspiration from the history of art (reclining icons such as Manet's Olympia), psychoanalysis (Freud's sofa in West's native Vienna) and a socially interactive type of art, these works are at once both introvertedly personal and extrovertedly public. Austrian critic and curator Robert Fleck surveys West's work and discusses the influence of such thinkers as Freud and Wittgenstein. The founding editor of Europe's most influential contemporary art journal, Parkett, Bice Curiger interviews West in one of the artist's furniture installations. In the Focus, Assistant Director of Art and Public Programs at Washington D.C.'s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Neal Benezra concentrates on West's Etude de couleur (1991), an important signpost for West's oeuvre of the past decade. West has chosen a text by Kathryn Norberg on the history of prostitutes, historical figures who, like artists, occupy an ambiguous public position in society. West's writings include a sculpture/text published here for the first time.
Vivian Browne
A long overdue volume which re-establishes Vivian Browne as an important and dynamic American artist with an expressive hand and expansive world view.Vivian Browne's (1929-1993) varied career spanned more than three decades, from her early portraits and landscapes in the late 1950s and early '60s, her Little Men series of 1966-69, through her final San Joaquin and King's Canyon paintings of the very early 1990s, completed just before her death in 1993. This highly active career was framed by Browne's lasting political engagement and activism, that included being an initial director of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), born out of a response to the Metropolitan Museum's failure to include a single Black Harlem-based artist in its 1969 exhibition, Harlem on My Mind, and her active memberships of Where We At (WWA), the Women's Caucus for Art (WCA), and the feminist art collective Heresies, from the early 1970s through her death in 1993.This volume presents about 62 paintings, prints, and works on paper across several major bodies of work, alongside ephemera highlighting Browne's enduring activism and teaching work. Drawing upon previously unknown works and archives that have recently become available, this is a significant contribution to the history of twentieth century American art. It accompanies a major exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH, and at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, in 2025.
Giovanni Anselmo: Beyond the Horizon
Inspired by his awe of the universe, Anselmo's latent sculptures illustrate the visible and invisible natural forces at play in our worldOne of the original members of Arte Povera, Giovanni Anselmo (1934-2023) devoted his career to representing earth's forces, such as gravity or magnetism, demonstrated through minimalist arrangements of natural and manmade materials. Beyond the Horizon is the last exhibition the artist worked on before his death. This book was published in conjunction with Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Emma Reyes
Reyes' lush and colorful paintings, featuring human beings in harmony with nature, disavow an anthropocentric, Eurocentric worldviewA self-taught artist, Emma Reyes (1913-2003) made an impression on such luminaries as Lola ?lvarez Bravo, Gabriel Garc穩a M獺rquez, Frida Kahlo, Andr矇 Lhote, Enrico Prampolini and Diego Rivera during her nomadic life. This first publication on her artwork is an introductory overview to the unique practice she developed from the mid-1940s to the early 2000s in Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Colombia and France. Her work can be associated with the aesthetics of 20th-century Magic Realism, adopting a formal vocabulary that combined elements of post-Cubist and pre-Columbian art. She drew on memories of her journeys across South America in the early 1940s to depict individuals set among lush vegetation. Featuring her signature spidery lines and colorful compositions, the human being and surrounding jungle are one, telling an ancestral story of kinship. Far from calling for a return to the wild, she aimed to reject the anthropocentric worldview and return humanity to its rightful place in dialogue with its environment.
Salvo: Arriving on Time
A visual itinerary through Salvo's obsessive themes: the passing of time, art history, urban life, color and lightSalvatore Mangione, known as Salvo (1947-2015), is one of the most singular voices of Italian contemporary art, with his paintings still achieving critical and commercial success even a decade after his death. He began as a conceptual artist active in the Arte Povera circle. In 1973, he returned to painting for good--an unconventional, old-fashioned choice for the time. The brightly colored geometric forms that comprise his landscapes and still lifes evoke both the post-Impressionist experimentation of C矇zanne and the metaphysical scenes of Giorgio de Chirico. His ceaseless research into light, color and depicting the passage of time gives birth to a mesmerizing vision merging realism with mysticism. Conceived to open up a critical reading of Salvo's work to an international audience, this comprehensive publication, published with Pinacoteca Agnelli, includes new contributions by an international array of artists, curators and writers.
Art Masters: Claude Monet
This lavishly illustrated full-color hardback explores the life and work of French impressionist painter Claude Monet, alongside a selection of his best work. Claude Monet's tranquil water-lily paintings and rural landscape scenes are among some of the most treasured artworks of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hailed as the 'Prince of Impressionism' for his pioneering role in the French artistic movement, Monet is widely recognized for his free brushstroke and experimentation with color and natural light. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ann Sumner explores the life of this prodigious painter and the subjects that obsessed him: the cliffs of the Normandy coastline, the palazzos of Venice, the railway stations of Paris, the great edifice of Rouen Cathedral, and his beloved garden at Giverny. Showcasing a selection of his best-loved and lesser-known paintings alongside fascinating biographic detail, this guide serves as a perfect introduction to Monet and the evolution of his iconic style. ABOUT THE SERIES The Art Masters series brings together beautiful hardback monographs of some of the most significant artists in history, looking at their lives, techniques and inspirations, as well as presenting a lavish selection of their best work.
J.M.W. Turner
An essential introduction to the life and work of J.M.W. Turner, whose pioneering explorations into oil and watercolors transformed landscape painting and continue to offer revelatory and definitive interpretations of his time J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) is arguably Britain's greatest painter. An extraordinary and prolific artist of incredible range, his pioneering explorations in oils and watercolors, his innovative use of color and the proliferation of his work through print media enabled him to forge a stellar reputation in his own time. Yet his dramatic landscapes, marine paintings, and revelatory scenes of industry, war, and contemporary life are as captivating to audiences today as they were then. This book is an essential introduction to the life and work of this influential artist. Tracing Turner's journey from his modest beginnings and formative years, through his tours and engagement with the British and Continental landscape, alongside pioneering historical, biblical, and classical narrative paintings, it highlights his breathtaking technical skill and deep engagement with his own times. Showcasing an impressive selection of iconic and significant works from across his career, it reveals the enduring power of Turner's work and the true extent of his artistic genius.
Paul Mogensen: Copperopolis
Documenting Mogensen's first major work made in New York and an early example of his mathematical progression processIn 1966, Paul Mogensen (born 1941) arrived in New York from Los Angeles and created one of his major works: the 16-part painting Copperopolis. This focused study traces the history of the painting--both its creation and exhibition at the legendary Bykert Gallery--and Mogensen's complicated relationship with Minimalism.
Monira Al Qadiri: Refined Vision
From Texas to the Persian Gulf, Al Qadiri's installations underscore the wealth and infrastructures of regions dependent on oilBerlin-based artist Monira Al Qadiri's (born 1983) work examines "petro-cultures," where society is defined by its dependence on oil. For Refined Vision, Al Qadiri's film and installations were inspired by the infrastructure of the Texas Gulf Coast and the Persian Gulf region.
Michel Majerus: Progressive Aesthetics
Pop-like paintings that prophesize the influence of capitalism and cultural imperialism on American artCreated at the threshold of the 21st century, the paintings of Michel Majerus (1967-2002) reveal his passion for technology, youth culture and the power of institutions. This monograph provides a novel look at the artist's brief but dynamic career.
Inner Light
This exquisitely produced two-volume monograph is the definitive celebration of a visual artist whose pioneering use of light and technology has transformed contemporary portraiture and installation art. A deluxe edition presented in a beautifully designed slipcase. The first volume features his most well-known portraits, including Lightness of Being--the serene and now-iconic image of Queen Elizabeth II with her eyes closed--alongside luminous portraits of Kate Moss, Grace Jones, the Dalai Lama, and Sir Elton John. Levine's ability to blend cutting-edge technology with a meditative, ethereal quality redefines traditional portraiture, capturing not only the physical likeness of his subjects but also their inner presence. The second volume gives the story of Levine's life and how he made the transition from designer to artist. Starting from his childhood and studying at Chelsea College of Art, the book highlights his large-scale installations and sculptural work, his dynamic public art projects--including light shows for Massive Attack and striking installations at the Eden Project--as well as his commercial work for the likes of Nissan and Swarovski. It also examines his 2020-21 site-specific work at Houghton Hall, where his innovative use of light transformed the historic space and landscaped grounds. Elegantly designed and printed with premium finishes--including spot UV, foil stamping, and fold-out pages--this slipcased edition is a stunning tribute to one of the most groundbreaking portrait artists of our time and an essential volume for collectors and art aficionados.
