“…it should be noted that the outstanding quality of Wautier’s paintings is well served not only by the exhibition itself but also by the design of the catalogue, in particular the superb quality of its numerous colour illustrations and the many well-chosen details.” — Burlington Magazine

Michaelina Wautier (1604–1689) is a name unfamiliar even to connoisseurs of Old Master painting. This handsome book seeks to correct that, by exploring the surviving portraits, history paintings, genre scenes and still-lifes that can be identified as hers. Born at Mons, Wautier pursued a successful career in Brussels, which was then ruled by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, whose collection ended up at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. This handsome book, produced by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in collaboration with the Royal Academy, brings together all the latest scholarship on the artist, alongside several exciting new attributions.

Located in the heart of Brussels, the Art et Margins Museum, an outsider art museum, questions art and its borders. Its collection has been built up since the mid-1980s with self-taught artists, art workshops for psychiatric patients and for those with learning difficulties. Its temporary exhibitions, at the rate of three per year, bring together artists from both sides of the margin, questioning the boundaries of art and its very definition. The museum’s anniversary year is an opportunity to propose a book richly illustrated with visuals, specially produced by a team of professionals, and to take stock of its rich collections of works by outsider artists built up over time.

Text in English, French, and Dutch.

The appearance of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in the early 1980s and its subsequent rapid spread around the world has left deep marks in society. The illness itself and its effects on society have also caused manifold responses by artists and activists in many countries. United by AIDS, published in conjunction with an extensive group show on the topic of loss, remembrance, activism and art in response to HIV/AIDS at Zurich’s Migros Museum of Contemporary Art (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst), sheds light on the multi-faceted and complex interrelation between art and HIV/AIDS from the 1980s to the present. It examines the blurred boundaries between art production and HIV/AIDS activism and showcases artists who played – and still play – leading roles in this discourse. Alongside images of artworks and brief texts on the represented artists, the book features voices from the past and present. Essays by Douglas Crimp, Alexander García Düttmann, Raphael Gygax, Elsa Himmer, Ted Kerr, Elisabeth Lebovici ,and Nurja Ritter broaden the view of the international discourse on HIV/AIDS and society’s confrontation with the disease. Published to accompany an exhibition: ‘United by AIDS – An Exhibition about Loss, Remembrance, Activism and Art in Response to HIV/AIDS’ at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich from 31 August to 2 November 2019.

The red-figure vases from the National Museum “Domenico Ridola” in Matera and the Rizzon Collection – rich in precious Apulian and Lucanian pieces – offer a unique opportunity to grasp Magna Graecia antiquity from an unusual perspective through the photographs by Luigi Spina. Significant testimony to vase painting between the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, the museum’s artefacts largely date back to the discoveries of Domenico Ridola (1841-1932) and form part of elaborate funerary assemblages, possessing great aesthetic and historical value through which everyday life is reflected in myths.

In the book, black is the protagonist: it enhances the red figures and brings out the keen eye of photographer Luigi Spina. Anatomical details, drapery, and decorative motifs emerge in all their strength without the filter of museum cases, while touches of white enrich the vases’ bichrome palette.

Photographing a work of art means capturing its deep meaning to communicate it to the world. Far from the idea of a museum catalogue, the volume is rather a figurative atlas of antiquity.

Text in English and Italian.

Lee Mullican (1919-98) was best known for his inimitable West Coast-inspired explorations in abstraction, infused with mysticism and the transcendent. First exhibited as part of the pivotal exhibition of the Dynaton Group, which Mullican co-founded with fellow artists Gordon Onslow Ford and Wolfgang Paalen, his works are today widely collected and held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others. The first book in more than a decade to focus on this important figure in twentieth-century American art, Cosmic Theatre: The Art of Lee Mullican surveys a key theme running through the artist’s career, framing his unusual hybridisation of symbolic figuration, abstracted landscapes, and abstract space with his long-time fascination with the sky and the galaxy beyond. The book explores the development of the Mullican’s work in the context of his time and his biography, looking also at the implications of Jungian philosophy in relation to his admiration of pre-Columbian and Native American cultures. Michael Auping’s essay is complemented by fifty full-colour illustrations, featuring major rare paintings and drawings by Mullican from the 1940s to the 1970s.

In Kari Steihaug’s art, what is overseen plays a major role. The things that have been set aside, unfinished projects, objects that are worn or frayed are all solicitously brought into the light. This is also evident in the materials used by the textile artist: Steihaug’s works feature worn out woollen garments as well as unfinished knitwear. By embracing imperfection, her creations become a counterbalance to the galloping consumer culture of our time, allowing us to see with fresh eyes what surrounds us in everyday life.

This book brings together 25 years of her work. Contributions in poetry and prose introduce Steihaug’s work and trace the lines of a diverse and rich practice.

With contributions by Monica Aasprong, Ingvill Henmo, Anne Karin Jortveit, Aasne Linnestå, Halvor Nordby, Kjetil Røed, Cecilie Skeide, and Kari Steihaug.

This monograph presents a thorough overview of the work of the Danish artist Thomas Bang (b. 1938). Essays by four Danish art historians trace his years as a painter in the early 1960s, his subsequent development as a sculptor in the late 1960s, and his activity on the New York art scene through the 1980s. The primary emphasis of the book is on Bang’s three-dimensional work and the analysis of the range of issues on which his object- and installation-oriented work has been focused for several decades.
Thomas Bang has throughout his career focused on various issues of fragility and vulnerability as physical as well as psychological states. The emphasis of his sculpture is on creating a broad field of operations, where alterations of apparent initial intentions and meaning are gradually established in the development of the work.

King Stag is a play originally written in 1762 by Italian playwright and champion of Commedia dell’arte Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806). It is about love and conspiracy at the court of King Deramo. In search of a bride, Deramo falls victim to the intrigues of his adversary Tartaglia and is temporarily transformed into a stag.

In 1918, on the occasion of a major art exhibition staged in Zurich by the modernist association Swiss Werkbund, Swiss dramatist René Morax (1873–1963) and director Werner Wolff (1886–1972) produced a modern adaption of Gozzi’s fairy-tale play that turned it into an amusing parody of Sigmund Freud’s and Carl Gustav Jung’s psychoanalysis, which had caused much controversy in Zurich at the time. The production was conceived as a puppetry, for which avant-garde artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) designed the stage sets and created an ensemble of 17 radically abstracted marionettes that broke with every tradition of the genre.

This book offers the first English translation of Morax and Wolff’s adaption of King Stag. The text is supplemented with photographs of a restaging of the puppetry, produced especially for this volume, featuring Taeuber-Arp’s striking marionettes. Essays by distinguished scholars explore the genesis of the original 1918 production and place it in historical context, shed new light on the play and its model, the Commedia dell’arte, and highlight its significance for Switzerland’s avant-garde.

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.

This is the first time a Dutch museum has devoted an exhibition exclusively to the three-dimensional work of Joan Miró. Thanks to close cooperation with renowned museum partners and public collections, including the Fundació Joan Miró and the Fondation Maeght, 55 sculptures by the Catalan grandmaster of surrealism will be shown to the public. The selection includes some plaster models never before exhibited in a museum. The exhibition is accompanied by this richly illustrated publication, which, among other things, details the artist’s working methods and the symbolism of his sculpture.

Text in English and Dutch.

Beth Moon’s fourteen-year quest to photograph ancient trees has taken her across the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some of her subjects grow in isolation, on remote mountainsides, private estates, or nature preserves; others maintain a proud, though often precarious, existence in the midst of civilization. All, however, share a mysterious beauty perfected by age and the power to connect us to a sense of time and nature much greater than ourselves. It is this beauty, and this power, that Moon captures in her remarkable photographs.

This handsome volume presents nearly seventy of Moon’s finest tree portraits as full-page duotone plates. The pictured trees include the tangled, hollow-trunked yews – some more than a thousand years old – that grow in English churchyards; the baobabs of Madagascar, called ‘upside-down trees’ because of the curious disproportion of their giant trunks and modest branches; and the fantastical dragon’s-blood trees, red-sapped and umbrella-shaped, that grow only on the island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa.

Moon’s narrative captions describe the natural and cultural history of each individual tree, while Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at The New York Botanical Garden, provides a concise introduction to the biology and preservation of ancient trees. An essay by the critic Steven Brown defines Moon’s unique place in a tradition of tree photography extending from William Henry Fox Talbot to Sally Mann, and explores the challenges and potential of the tree as a subject for art.

Basel-born architect Max Alioth (1930–2010) was a prominent figure on the Swiss architecture and culture scene. Alioth was a co-founder of Basels’ Architecture Museum in 1984, which in 2006 became the Swiss Architecture Museum (S AM). Together with his wife Susanna Biedermann, he founded the École Supérieure des Arts Visuels (ÉSAV) in Marrakech, Morocco, for which he also designed the main campus building.

This first monograph on Max Alioth illuminates his achievements from various perspectives. Selected architectural designs from 1961–2007 are featured in detail through photographs, plans, and texts. These include single-family homes, a retirement home, multi-unit housing, Basel’s Museum of Antiquities, as well as the ÉSAV building in Marrakech. Moreover, the book introduces Alioth also as a visual artist through reproductions of sketches, drawings, and watercolours. Essays by architect Roger Diener, the S AM’s director Andreas Ruby, the director of ÉSAV Vincent Melilli, and art historian and publicist Ulrike Jehle-Schulte Strathaus round out this volume.

Text in English and German.

Embroideries from the Greek islands dazzle with their bright colours and charming motifs. This publication reveals little-known pieces from the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, newly photographed and published here for the first time. The embroideries include fragments of pillowcases, bed valances, tents and curtains, as well as items of dress. As with all collections of textiles, the story of the Ashmolean holdings is chiefly about their makers and their ingenuity. Once forming the bulk of bridal trousseaux, Greek embroidered textiles were produced and maintained by young and old women for themselves and the house using locally produced materials. A mark of their worth and a platform for self-expression, embroidered textiles also helped Greek women to negotiate their place in the community, signalling status and affiliation.

In her research-intensive practice, Rohini Devasher (b. 1978) explores the intersections between science, art, and philosophy. Astronomy, in which working with light plays a central role, is of particular importance to the Indian artist. “Borrowed” or reflected light allows phenomena to be captured and understood that otherwise remain in the dark—and, therefore, far removed from the realms of human perception. Devasher reveals the complexity of the processes of seeing and shows how thin the line is between knowledge and mystery. Rohini Devasher was named Deutsche Bank’s ‘Artist of the Year’ for 2024. This publication accompanies her first solo exhibition at a major institution in Germany—Borrowed Light at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin.

Text in English and German.

Swiss artist Martin Disler (1949–1996) was a self-taught painter, draughtsman, and sculptor, as well as a poet. Over the course of his career, his work evolves from clearly recognisable motifs towards the utter disintegration of figures. Especially his later paintings owe their power, as well as their size, to his particular way of working: In a highly physical process, the artist would alternate between applying and removing paint, moulding matter with brushes and knives as well as with his hands and nails until his body merged with the work. The materialisation of Disler’s physical thinking, a ‘theatre of survival’, places him in a fascinating dialogue with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the great expressionist’s work.

This new monograph, published in conjunction with an exhibition at Kirchner Museum Davos, focuses on the last decade of Disler’s career and relates his output from the period to Kirchner’s art, thus revealing similarities between the two artists. The essays explore the importance of the human body and its role in the artist’s creative process as well as aspects such as movement and dance, gesture, expression, abstraction and figuration.

A portrait of an eminent jewellery artist and her unique creations!

Inspired by the Arte Povera movement, the Italian jewellery artist Annamaria Zanella (b. 1966) uses base materials, which only gain meaning through their context. Corroded metal or found objects convey statements that can be both political and personal in nature. Zanella wants to bring the soul of the material to light through the work of her own hands.

The colour used is intended to evoke feelings and reactions. To this end Zanella studied the history of colours and their production, especially that of her unmistakable blue. She produced a blue pigment according to a recipe from the fourteenth century, invoking in its modern use pioneering artists such as Giotto, Wassily Kandinsky and Yves Klein.

Annamaria Zanella is represented in numerous museums, including Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (FR); Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (DE); Die Neue Sammlung The Design Museum, Munich (DE); Museum of Arts and Design, New York (US); Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim (DE); Museo degli Argenti, Florence (IT); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (GB); Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (IT); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (US); Swiss National Museum, Zurich (CH).

Text in English and Italian.

For ten years, Abbie Zabar – artist and bestselling author of The Potted Herb – had unique early-morning access to the Great Hall at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each week, from 1994 to 2004, she drew the magisterial bouquets that adorned the soaring neoclassical entrance to one of the world’s most visited art institutions.

Published for the first time, Abbie’s exquisite colour pencil drawings of these floral masterpieces are presented in a beautifully fashioned gift book. Each drawing showcases her signature flair, her understanding of botanical elements, and her subtle use of colour. Whether a Christmas arrangement with magnolia leaves, red berries and flyaway branches, or a summer fiesta of palm leaves, red hot pokers, and birds of paradise, in the hands of their secret chronicler, these floral arrangements are alive with all the beauty and joy of nature. A timeless treasure for patrons of the museum; anyone drawn to florals and botanical art; gardeners and long-time fans of Abbie’s work. The perfect gift for any occasion.

For centuries ceramics have been a central feature of Chinese art and culture. They were employed in everyday life and served as both ritualistic and funerary objects. Dr Heribert Meurer’s pre-eminent collection of 174 high-quality pieces dating from 1050 BCE to AD 1280 – which up until now has remained unpublished – offers an impressive panorama of the artefacts’ roles, as well as the vessel forms and techniques of early Chinese ceramic art, complemented by over 30 objects from the GRASSI Museum Leipzig, where the collection was endowed in 2017. The focal points of the collection are the ceramics of the Tang and Song dynasties. Examples of the popular Sancai (tricolour) lead glaze, Celadon porcelain from Yueyao, Yaozhou and Longquan and Changsha ware, so-called Jian black porcelain from Jianyang Prefecture and Quingbai ware from the southern kiln sites of the Song era illustrate the wealth, diversity, high quality and exceptional appeal of early Chinese ceramics.

Text in German.

India, Jewels that Enchanted the World presents for the first time the remarkable history and unique legacy of 500 years of Indian jewellery, from the 17th century to the present. The essays, all written by leading international scholars, explore the rich, distinctive, and unique heritage of Indian jewellery; the striking boldness of South Indian ornaments; the delicate refinement of the Mughal period; the dazzling jewels of the post-Mughal maharajas; the cross-cultural influences between Europe and India in the 19th and early 20th centuries; and the creations of leading contemporary designers whose jewels display the enduring beauty of Indian design and craftsmanship.

Published to accompany a major exhibition at the State Museums of the Moscow Kremlin organised jointly with the Indo-Russian Jewellery Foundation, this lavishly illustrated catalogue brings together royal, ceremonial, and personal Indian jewels to showcase the entire range and variety of the jeweller’s art in India.

Swiss artist Zimoun enjoys significant international renown for an oeuvre that he has been creating over a period of some 20 years. Zimoun uses kinetic principles of rotation and oscillation to set things in motion and generate sounds. He uses mundane, unspectacular materials and conventional industrial products. For his works, he develops small, minimalist apparatus that generate tonal and visual complexity when activated, despite their fundamental simplicity. These mechanical contraptions are often used hundreds of times in the installations, creating visual and acoustic spaces with fascinating power and poetry.

This book presents 65 of these location-specific installations that Zimoun realised between 2009 and 2021 in various art galleries and museums around the world. The full-page images are supplemented with brief texts by international authors, who outline a variety of perspectives on Zimoun’s work. Two concise essays consider and position his oeuvre in the wider international and art historical context. QR codes provided with all the images extend the book by enabling the direct playback of video documentations available online on smartphones or tablets, thus offering the reader the additional dimension of sound and movement — the essential elements of Zimoun’s art.

This book grants unexpected, beautiful and provoking insights into the diversity of the collection of treasures held in Leipzig’s GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts. Focusing on the joy of contemplating the works, its hope is to awaken the desire for a personal encounter with them. The sequence of illustrations highlights exciting connections, diversions and views between the objects. Chronological records or even the stringent arrangement of the collections and materials play no role here, allowing surprisingly novel, latent qualities that are frequently otherwise hidden, to be revealed.

In this publication the works meet face to face and present a wonderful survey of the diverse forms of applied art and design.

Did you know that Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was the first public art institution in the Netherlands to acquire a painting by Vincent Van Gogh for its collection? And that 20,562 litres of water are needed for Olafur Eliasson’s installation Notion motion? Or that Gerard Reve once sent an admiring letter to the museum about Geertgen tot Sint Jans’s small panel The Glorification of the Virgin? These and many more fascinating facts can be found in a lavishly illustrated publication featuring more than 150 highlights from the collection.

For over 170 years, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has been building up a very varied collection of art and design from the Middle Ages to the present day. Best of Boijmans presents the collection as a unity in diversity. Detached from time, place and medium, surprising connections are made between the different areas of the collection. A sculpture of a human figure by the contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan bears an unexpected resemblance to a drawing of John the Baptist by Raphael; a 19th‐century landscape by Barend Cornelis Koekkoek sits extraordinarily comfortably alongside a work by the Rotterdam artist Daan van Golden. This handy little book takes you on a thematic, visual journey through the collection.