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.

This delightfully illustrated volume introduces children and their families to the arts of the Indian subcontinent, spanning nearly two thousand years of artwork. Young readers will explore ancient lore, royal palaces, sacred sites, lush nature, and more, through more than sixty works from the rich collection of the San Diego Museum of Art. Interactive features provide opportunities for further investigation of the themes, history, and artistic techniques discussed in the book. Peacocks and Palaces: Exploring the Art of India is the second instalment in the “Art Unframed” series from the San Diego Museum of Art, which guides children and families toward a deeper understanding of important traditions in the history of art through works in the Museum’s permanent collection.

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.

“STRAAT Museum allows a wide audience to discover and understand the DNA of graffiti and street art, through an in-depth and unique contextualization perfectly fulfilled in Quote from the streets, its opening exhibition which is reproduced in this catalogue.” – Christian Omodeo

This catalogue for the new international graffiti and street art museum in Amsterdam, STRAAT, features work created on-site by the greatest artists of today’s street art scene. STRAAT – Quote from the Streets tells the story of street art as a full-fledged art movement and explores the evolution of ‘art in the street’, in addition to the development of the new museum. The catalogue is above all a feast for the eyes, with many full-page images of the best street art talent from around the world.

The Alice and Louis Koch Collection of finger rings was originally collated by a jeweller from Frankfurt am Main, once described as the German ‘Cartier and Fabergé’. By 1909 the collection comprised 1,722 rings from Antiquity to 1900. Rene Lalique, a contemporary of the time, was included, undoubtedly as a moderniser of the ring form. In the past twenty-five years the fourth generation of the family continued where Louis Koch and his wife Alice left off and expanded the collection to include rings from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This publication will present the complete collection of contemporary rings, now kept in the Swiss National Museum, Zurich. Nearly 600 rings by artist jewellers from around the world document how these miniature works of art have become modern sculptures showcasing new materials and techniques, daring designs and current themes.

Text in English and German.

The Ashmolean’s collection of European stringed instruments is not large but it is very famous. Several of the instruments in the Ashmolean are among the rarest and most beautiful of their kind and most are, in some way, exceptional. The collection was founded on a group of instruments which was given to the museum by the firm of W.E. Hill & Sons in 1939 and has since been increased by two bequests and by an important group of bows and instruments given by Albert Cooper in 1999. The firm of W.E. Hill & Sons was founded in 1880 and by the early 20th century the firm had achieved an unrivalled reputation in making, restoring, and selling stringed instruments.In the course of handling and repairing instruments, the Hills became increasingly aware of the damage that was being inflicted on early viols and violins by constant playing and repeated restoration. This concern gave rise to the idea of donating a select group of rare instruments to a museum where they would be preserved from further harm, and the first instruments were handed over in 1939. The present handbook discusses and illustrates every stringed instrument in the collection and is chiefly intended for the many visitors to the Hill Collection and for the wider public who might wish for more information about the instruments and some background history.

The colonisation of the world by European powers led to the production of a wealth of images of the colonised cultures and peoples. Images of North American Indians play an important role in our visual culture. This publication illuminates how they are represented, as well as their political and historico-cultural background, based on the so-called ‘Indian Museum’ of the Dresden sculptor Ferdinand Pettrich (1798-1872).

In the 1830s, Pettrich travelled to Washington and portrayed representatives of Indian tribes in 33 reliefs, statues, busts and bozzetti made of terracotta-coloured plaster. These tribes were negotiating treaties with the US government about the future usage of the land. Pettrich’s oeuvre is an early example of the recurring motif of North American Indians in European and Euro-American art. The classically-influenced forms of these representations, the influence of the simultaneously emerging ‘Indian painting’, as well as the lasting fascination of the subject of ‘Indians’ are presented here, along with the political context of the era the works were created in.

Text in English and German.

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.

The skilful works of Yasuhisa Kohyama are inspired by ancient Japanese Shigaraki, Jomon and Yayoi ceramics. Using special Shigaraki clay and the fire of an anagama wood kiln, in the fusion of traditional technique and a modern language of form he creates vessels and sculptures that are not only powerful and innovative but also timelessly beautiful. Characteristic for Kohyama’s asymmetric objects is their rough surface – a haptic quality rarely found in contemporary ceramics – as well as an exciting interplay of colour, which is created without glaze and solely by the movement of the ash and the position of the object within the kiln.

Contents:
Foreword – Jack Lenor Larsen
Tradition and Innovation in the Work of Yasuhisa Kohyama – Susan Jefferies
Kohyama-san and Japanese Ceramic History: Notes on “Suemono” – Michael R. Cunningham
Yasuhisa Kohyama: The Art of Ceramics – Yoshiaki Inui
Catalog of works
Appendix

“Photography should not reproduce the visible; it should make the invisible visible.” – Franco Fontana

Italian photographer Franco Fontana (b.1933), a pioneer of colour photography, is best known for his boldly coloured abstract landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes.

This book features previously unpublished and experimental images from his archive alongside some of his best-known works. Over the 60 years of his career, Franco Fontana photographed that which cannot be seen, and was able to capture images abstracted from reality, independent of the subject portrayed. This meticulously compiled volume is dedicated to those who are approaching this artist’s practice for the first time, as well as to those who wish to go deeper into his work by exploring these previously invisible spaces which the sensitive eye of the photographer has glimpsed and translated into a unique and unprecedented image.

Text in French.

As some American artists began to eliminate people and remove extraneous details from their compositions, they often employed neat, orderly brushwork or close-up, unemotional photography. Artists as diverse as Patrick Henry Bruce, John Covert, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand and Arthur Dove navigated European and American avant-garde circles, picking and choosing new ideas and methods.

Inspiration ranged from cubism and machine parts to new technologies, and they found ways to bring order to the modern world through extreme simplification. For them, abstraction involved absence and presence – the evacuation of human beings but also the desire to depict something that would not otherwise be visible or to render visible unseen natural processes like the passage of time, sound waves, or weather patterns. Their artworks provide a new context for the precisionist works in the subsequent sections and point to modern ideas about what art could be. How does a crisp painting technique relate to an aesthetic of absence?

This publication brings together over 60 works on paper created from 2005 to the present day by London-based artist Neil Gall (born 1967, Aberdeen), whose works balance the profound with the absurd.

In works that buzz with art historical reference, Gall has consistently explored matters of perception and mimesis through the visual language of household detritus. He translates the visceral and psychological interactions between materials and their surfaces – corrugated cardboard and pressed tinfoil, ping-pong balls enshrouded in black tape – to an unsettling, surreal and sometimes erotic effect.

Essays by art historian Lexi Lee Sullivan and artist Alexander Ross are augmented by thoughtful insights from gallerist George Newall and an introduction from Gall’s dealers David Nolan and Aurel Scheibler.

In October 2015, metal detectorist James Mather discovered an important Viking hoard near Watlington in South Oxfordshire. The hoard dates from the end of the 870s, a key moment in the struggle between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings for control of southern England. The Watlington hoard is a significant new source of information on that struggle, throwing new light not only on the conflict between Anglo-Saxon and Viking, but also on the changing relationship between the two great Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. This was to lead to the formation of a single united kingdom of England only a few years later.

The hoard contains a mixture of Anglo-Saxon coins and Viking silver, and is in many ways a typical Viking hoard. However, its significance comes from the fact that it contains so many examples of previously rare coins belonging to Alfred the Great, king of Wessex (871-99) and his less well-known contemporary Ceolwulf II of Mercia (874-c.879). These coins provide a clearer understanding of the relationship between Alfred and Ceolwulf, and perhaps also of how the once great kingdom of Mercia came to be absorbed into the emerging kingdom of England by Alfred and his successors. A major fundraising campaign is being planned by the Ashmolean to secure this collection for the museum.

This book is an introduction to Italian Renaissance ceramics. These colourful and highly decorative wares form a distinctive and significant part of the artistic achievement of the period. The Fortnum collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is outstanding in its quality and range. In this selection the author illustrates fine and characteristic pieces by leading artists in the major centres of production, including Florence, Siena and Urbino. The techniques and processes of Renaissance Maiolica are briefly discussed and the subject matter of each painted piece is related to the wider artistic culture of the time. Maiolica serves as a scholarly presentation of the finest pieces from a major collection, while at the same time providing a valuable general introduction to this most vivid and culturally illuminating of the ‘minor arts’ of Renaissance Italy. It is an expanded and updated edition of the book first published in 1989, incorporating most recent additions to the Museum’s collections.

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.

History Today carried a feature in 2015, describing The Origin of Museums as “a cult book [that] spawned a new discipline in the history of collecting”. Indeed, the first publication of this book in 1985 undoubtedly marked a propitious moment in the development of interest, in what has since grown to be a dynamic subject-area in its own right. That an appetite for such matters was already there is confirmed by the fact that the first impression sold out within a few months, a second impression a year or two later, and the third in 1989. There was to be no further printing by the original publishers, Oxford University Press. However in 2001 a new edition appeared with a new publisher. Demand again proved buoyant, but within a few months the company failed; having operated on a print-on-demand basis, it left behind it no unsold stock. The Origins of Museums reverted to a scarce (though much sought-after) volume. With original copies now selling for hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, the Ashmolean is proud to make this important volume readily available again.

The Ashmolean Museum and the Albertina are collaborating on a two-part exhibition project that will examine anew the role and the significance of drawing in Raphael’s career.  The Ashmolean holds the greatest collection of Raphael drawings in the world, and the Albertina is the custodian of a major collection including some of the most beautiful and important of the artist’s sketches. Taken together, the two collections provide extraordinary resources that, amplified by carefully-selected international loans, will allow us to transform our understanding of the art of Raphael.  

The Oxford exhibition is based on new research by Dr Catherine Whistler of the Ashmolean Museum and Dr Ben Thomas from the University of Kent, in collaboration with Dr Achim Gnann of the Albertina.  It will take Raphael’s art of drawing as its focus, with the concept of eloquence as its underlying structure. Oratory runs as a linking thread in Raphael’s drawings, which stand out for the importance given to the study of gestures, facial expressions, and drapery.  Moreover, Raphael treated the expressive figure of the orator – poet, philosopher, muse, apostle, saint or sibyl – in fascinating and significant ways throughout his life.

This selection of drawings demonstrates how Raphael created a specific mode of visual invention and persuasive communication through drawing.  He used drawing both as conceptual art (including brainstorming sheets) and as a practice based on attentive observation (such as drawing from the posed model).  Yet Raphael’s drawings also reveal how the process of drawing in itself, with its gestural rhythms and spontaneity, can be a form of thought, generating new ideas. The Oxford exhibition will present drawings that span Raphael’s entire career, encompassing many of his major projects and exploring his visual language from inventive ideas to full compositions. The extraordinary range of drawings by Raphael in the Ashmolean and the Albertina, enhanced by appropriate loans, will enable this exhibition to cast new light on this familiar artist, transforming our understanding of Raphael’s art.   

This book preluded a major exhibition, which ran  from 1 June to 3 October 2017, with a range of events happening throughout this time.

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.

This lavishly illustrated monograph reassesses the life and career of neglected American émigré painter Alfred Cohen (1920-2001), now the subject of a major London exhibition marking his centenary. In Chicago, Paris and London, Cohen’s work moved between the European figurative tradition and emerging American abstract expressionism, exploring motifs including the French coast, the River Thames and figures from the commedia dell’arte, concluding later, in Kent and Norfolk, with intensely coloured, richly textured landscapes ablaze with light and colour.

Co-edited by Max Saunders (Trustee, Alfred Cohen Art Foundation) and Sarah MacDougall (Head of Collections and Research, Ben Uri), this first full overview of Cohen’s career and achievements combines an extended biographical account with analytical and interpretative approaches to his work, locating him among his historical and contemporary peers. Contributors include art historians and curators: Paul Greenhalgh (Director, Sainsbury Centre), David Peters Corbett (Courtauld Institute of Art), Rachel Dickson (Ben Uri), Claudia Milburn (Pallant House), Hope Wolf (independent curator), and critics and writers: Tom Overton (John Berger s editor and biographer), Devorah Baum, Jacky Klein and Philip Vann. The volume also includes evocative biographical photos and a timeline of major exhibitions.

Cohen’s work is included in public collections including the Arts Council, Ben Uri Collection, the British Council, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Jerwood Collection, Pallant House Gallery, the Castle Museum in Norwich, and the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia.

The New York jewellery firm of Marcus & Co. (1892–1942) created exceptional examples of Art Nouveau and Art Deco jewellery for an art-loving, wealthy elite. Innovative in their collaboration with contemporary artists, and in their captivating window displays and advertisements, the firm captured the imagination of Gilded Age families such as the Rockefellers. This volume chronicles their story, from the founder’s apprenticeship in Dresden to the firm’s grand premises on Fifth Avenue neighbouring Tiffany and Cartier. The triumphs and tragedies of three generations of Marcus jewellers, both artistic and entrepreneurial, are presented here together with exquisite jewellery and archival design drawings spanning 50 years.

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.