Since 2006 Young-Jae Lee (b. 1951), the head of the ceramic workshop Margaretenhöhe Essen, has been creating her Spinatschalen (Spinach Bowls) – round-bodied vessels on simple standing rings, whose diverse glazes bring out the aesthetic appeal of these impressive dishes. Behind the purist form of Lee’s bowls lies a long history stretching back to Korean vessels of the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) by way of Japanese tea bowls. This publication reveals much more than just the genesis of the Spinatschalen; it unlocks a piece of ceramic history. Negotiating the complex historical and cultural relationships between Japan and Korea against which the tea bowls evolved, it uses examples from Museum Folkwang to also illustrate the German reception of East Asian ceramic vessels at the dawn of the 20th century.

Text in German.

Markus Raetz is one of the most renowned contemporary artists in Switzerland. Initially educated and working as a primary school teacher, he became an artist in his early twenties. Since the 1970s, his work, including solo exhibitions, has been on the international stage. Raetz works with a variety of materials and media. The phenomenon of perception is his main focus, rather than how something is represented. Prints form a major part of his work. Markus Raetz.The Prints 1951-2013 covers his complete body of work in this genre.; the Catalogue Raisonné is complemented by a separate volume, with essays on his work and artistic development. Exhibitions: Museum of Fine Arts Bern, early 2014 (date TBC). Markus Raetz is represented with works also in the permanent collections of museums such as: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (Main); San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla CA; Tate Gallery, London; MoMA, New York; Musée national d art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Schaulager, Münchenstein near Basel; Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Text in English, German and French.

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.

In 2022, Princeton University inaugurated Yeh College and New College West and introduced a new addition to its extensive collection of site-responsive campus art installations. The Home We Share is a series of three colourful, joyous and playful space settings, nestled into the landscape surrounding these new residential colleges, and offers spaces for gathering, relaxation, and play to generations of students who call this place home. Designed by R&R Studios — a multidisciplinary Miami-based firm weaving together visual arts, exhibition design, architecture, and urban design — they offer a unique artistic impulse for social interaction among the students, teachers and other people visiting Princeton University.

This book features The Home We Share through some 100 conceptual diagrams, hand drawings, architectural plans, construction photos, and a photographic documentation of the realised installations on the Princeton campus. The images are framed by an essay by distinguished architecture historian Michelangelo Sabatini, an interview with R&R Studio’s founders Robert Behar and Rosario Marquardt by curator Mitra Abbaspour, and a foreword by James Christen Steward, director of Princeton University Art Museum.

The Bradley Collection comprises the core of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s holdings of modern art. With nearly 400 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, it features works by groundbreaking artists across the 20th century, including Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Helen Frankenthaler, Barbara Hepworth, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Gabriele Münter, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko.

This book tells the story of how Peg Bradley built the collection—and then how she gave it away, transforming her hometown museum and community. The first comprehensive catalogue of the collection, it brings together new research and insights by international scholars to shed light on works that have been long admired but little studied. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with highlighted works and an illustrated checklist, allowing readers to visualise every work in the collection. In addition to focusing on this extraordinary gift, the essays will appeal to anyone interested in the larger arc of modern art. 

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

A giftable miniature book celebrating the achievements of women artists throughout history.

This colourful little volume presents more than 250 works from the renowned collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the first museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women in the arts. Now in its third edition, the Women Artists Tiny Folio has been revised and updated from cover to cover to include works by a diverse array of creators from around the world, and from the 16th century to the present. From Lavinia Fontana to Frida Kahlo to Amy Sherald, and from Louise Bourgeois to Niki de Saint Phalle to Faith Ringgold, here are women artists to inspire every reader.

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?

The founder and patron Reinhard Ernst planned a home for his unique collection; the city of Wiesbaden provided a site in the heart of the city and the Japanese star architect Fumihiko Maki delivered the plans. The result is the Museum Reinhard Ernst for abstract art, an architectural gem, but also a building open to the public and a magnet for the international art public alike. 

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.

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.

“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.

From her early depictions of individual objects to her later works featuring complex interiors, American artist Lynn Shaler’s works are distinctive, characterised by a colourful aquatint technique combined with carefully etched lines. Over a forty-year career, she has created more than two hundred aquatint etchings and has been included in major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Lynn Shaler: Fine Prints, 1972-2017 is the first catalogue to spotlight this important American artist’s entire body of work. Many of the etchings have been inspired by locations in Paris, where Shaler has lived for three decades. The book reproduces nearly all of her works, alongside accompanying essays which examine recurring themes and motifs in Shaler’s work, such as architectural details or intimate interior views opening onto an exterior scene.

This book aims to tell the story of social history through Money. Money and Art have shared a long history. Both words are metaphors derived from Latin terms used over 2,000 years ago. The word Money derives its modern meaning as the general term for all means of payment from its use as the word for coins in the pre-modern period. Particularly since the introduction of paper money, the word was applied to coins because of the name of the place where coins were made in ancient Rome, the temple of Juno Moneta (Juno the Warner), from this name the word moneta came to mean mint in Latin, and later the product of a mint, i.e. coins. The word Art acquired its modern usage, meaning works of art, both singularly and collectively, from the Latin ars meaning a skill, and it has so been used in English to describe any form of skill, but gradually from the nineteenth century, the word came to signify the product rather than the skill, particularly in relation to painting, graphic works and sculpture. This eclectic collection of stories brings together a multitude of perspectives through collections from the Ashmolean and around the world — from Art Nouveau bank notes and global portrayals of prosperity to activist Money Art. Deep dives into compelling stories reveal humour, hidden surprises and a tension between the power of money and the playfulness of art.

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.

This beautifully designed book is a celebration of one of the world’s most creative, dynamic and fascinating cities: Tokyo. It spans 400 years, with highlights including Kano school paintings; the iconic woodblock prints of Hiroshige; Tokyo Pop Art posters; the photography of Moriyama Daido and Ninagawa Mika; manga; film; and contemporary art by Murakami Takashi and Aida Makoto. Visually bold and richly detailed, this publication looks at a city which has undergone constant destruction and renewal and it tells the stories of the people who have made Tokyo so famous with their insatiable appetite for the new and innovative – from the samurai to avantgarde artists today. Co-edited by Japanese art specialists and curators Lena Fritsch and Clare Pollard from Oxford University, this accessible volume features 28 texts by international experts of Japanese culture, as well as original statements by influential artists.

In keeping with an editorial strategy that aims to bring to public attention all of the various groups of works belonging to the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection, a book devoted to its drawings and watercolours has been published. Featuring texts by Manuela Fidalgo, who worked as a curator at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum until her retirement, this edition is the product of several years of thorough research underpinned by technical and scientific rigour and the involvement of several international experts in the art of drawing.

This publication therefore plays an essential part in raising awareness of one of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum’s least-well known collections, which includes works produced in the main centres of European art (France, Holland, Flanders, England and Italy) between the 16th and early 20th centuries by great masters such as Dürer, Watteau, Boucher, Turner and Sargent, among others. This book also gives us a clearer picture of Calouste Gulbenkian’s artistic sensibility as a collector: despite claiming not to be attracted to drawing, the beauty and quality of the works brought together here were such that he could not resist purchasing them.

The first monograph on American artist Morton Kaish, whose light-filled paintings bridge the traditional and the experimental.

Morton Kaish (b. 1927) has long been known as a “painter’s painter.” His work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and numerous other leading institutions, and he has served as a teacher and mentor to generations of American artists. His work, which bridges the abstract and the representational, the traditional and the experimental, is marked by a ceaseless exploration of light and colour that has led one critic to liken him to “a latter-day Bonnard.” Throughout his eight-decade career, Kaish has worked in series, returning to the same theme again and again and always finding something new; his series range from The Irish Chair, depicting wildflowers heaped on a wooden chair, to America, showing weathered doorways bearing a palimpsest of patriotic imagery.

This oversize monograph presents exceptional reproductions of a generous selection of Kaish’s works, arranged by series and including his formally innovative prints and drawings as well as his paintings. A text by the noted critic David Ebony, an interview with the artist, and an illustrated chronology lend new insight into Kaish’s life and work. A foreword by Annette Blaugrund, former director of the National Academy of Design, explores how the artist’s studios—including the one he shared for some fifty years with his wife, the celebrated sculptor Luise Kaish—have influenced his work.

ECHTZEIT is made in collaboration with Dirk Braeckman (BE, °1958) and FOMU Antwerp in line with his impacting solo show with the Collections department of the photo museum. Echtzeit offers a unique glimpse into Dirk Braeckman’s most recent photographs, accompanied with the museum’s collection and texts written by Clément Chéroux, director of the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson and Tamara Berghmans, curator of the exhibition.

Braeckman has chosen from the FOMU collection functional photographs, made without artistic ambition. He recognised certain qualities and commonalities with his own work in these atypical images.

Re-photography and experimentation have always formed part of Braeckman’s artistic practice, though the trajectory to the final image is always different. For the FOMU exhibition, he worked for the first time with an existing collection of photos. Braeckman took photos of the chosen images and printed them. He then over-painted, smeared or cut holes in the prints. He photographed the results and processed them further in his analogue and digital darkroom.

The original meaning of the photographs has been altered through the removal of context, the change in format and the addition of titles. A functional document is transformed into a piece of art, a timeless visual poem that raises more questions than it answers.

‘Echtzeit’ refers to Braeckman’s bridging of the past and present.

Text in English, French and Dutch.

As one of the leading critical voices on art of the postwar years, polymath Lawrence Gowing (1918–1991) combined a passion for close visual involvement with formidable literary skills. Edited by art historian Sarah Whitfield, four decades of Gowing’s writing are brought together for the first time in this volume, covering subjects from the Old Masters to Francis Bacon and Howard Hodgkin.

Having first gained success as a painter, Gowing’s 1952 monograph on Vermeer brought him early recognition as a writer with the ability to combine aesthetic experience with a meticulous historical perspective.

Gowing’s foremost commitment was to the pioneering painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notably Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse. The exhibitions he curated at the Tate and Museum of Modern Art famously helped to mould and reshape public perceptions. Characterised by a desire to instruct and encourage, his writing reflects a highly successful career as a curator and teacher.

“This is the very best of Antwerp and the best from here in Oxford.” — The Oxford Times Weekend
“This entertaining exhibition of the 16th- and 17th-century drawings from the Low Countries has energy to spare.” —  The Telegraph
This catalogue will accompany the Bruegel to Rubens exhibition held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford between 23 March and 23 June 2024.

Through a selection of over 100 world-class drawings created by Flemish artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an insightful and comprehensive overview will be given into how these drawn sheets were used as part of artistic practice, within or beyond the artist’s studio. By revealing the drawings’ function, rather than on their attribution or iconography, these sheets will become more fully understood through the eyes of contemporary readers. Identifying how and why these sheets were created will render these artworks more accessible to a wider audience. The three main essays will each deal with one of the principal functions of drawings at the time: studies (copies and sketches), designs for other artworks (paintings, prints, tapestries, metalwork, stained glass, sculpture and architecture), and finally the independent drawings. Each essay will discuss the relevant works within their functional context and compared with other related objects. Introductory chapters will focus on what precisely can be considered a drawing, including its materials, media and techniques, in addition to an attempt to explain the notion of Flanders and Flemish art. Emphasis will be placed throughout the catalogue on how Flemish artists collaborated in creating the most astonishing artworks of their time, unveiling their networks and friendships, as well as their travels across Europe, revealing their international importance.

The exhibition is a partnership with the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp and will bring together for the first time the most stunning drawings from both the Ashmolean and the Plantin-Moretus collections, in addition to further loans from renowned Antwerp and Oxford institutions like the Rubenshuis and Christ Church Picture Gallery. Many of the sheets coming from Antwerp are registered on the Flemish Government’s Masterpieces List and will not be shown again for the next five to ten years to protect them from fading. Prominent artists featured in this catalogue include Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacques Jordaens, among many others. Highlights will include a sketchbook in which a young Rubens has copied Holbein’s Dance of Death woodcuts, intricate pen and ink drawings by Pieter Bruegel, meticulously drawn miniatures by Joris Hoefnagel, portrait studies by Anthony van Dyck, and a rare survival of a friendship album containing numerous drawings and poems dedicated to its owner. Two recently discovered sheets by Rubens will also be included, a design for a book-illustration on optics and an anatomical study of three legs.

The catalogue is dedicated to one of the most celebrated Orientalist artists, the renowned French painter and sculptor, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Born in 1824 in the small city of Vesoul in eastern France to a family of goldsmiths, Gérôme lived and worked through most of the long 19th century before his passing in 1904, becoming one of the best recognised and distinguished academic painters of the Second Empire (1852–1870).

The first section, curated by Emily Weeks, delves into the biography of the artist, as well as his painting techniques, and raises critical questions about the reception of Gérôme’s art in different periods and circles. The second section, curated by Giles Hudson, explores the pivotal role of photography in Gérôme’s work, examining how it both facilitated his artistic process and contributed to his widespread acclaim. The third section, curated by Sara Raza, brings into the contemporary realm, showcasing artworks that respond to Gérôme’s oeuvre in diverse and thought-provoking ways.

The book, published on the occasion of a major exhibition hosted at the Qatar Museums in Doha, saw the collaboration of two institutions, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and Lusail Museum. Through this curatorial collaboration, the two museums were able to unite artworks from their collections and international institutions such as the Islamic Arts Museum in Malaysia, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, and the Musée d’Orsay in France, as well as numerous private collectors.