Artisans of Israel is a very special book on crafts. Author Lynn Holstein is in search of a national identity in the artisanry of the still young country – and she finds it in the unifying pursuit for innovation. Forty artists, including Jews, Muslims and Christians, tell their stories and show in five different trades how emancipation can be promoted through creativity. Working with one’s hands stands unfailingly at the centre of this reflection. From the hybrid of cultural and religious backgrounds emerges a unique compilation that brings together the fields of metalwork and jewellery, ceramics, textiles, paper and wood. This compilation portrays a sensitive and inspiring portrait of Israel and its inhabitants. This book accompanies an exhibition at The Open Museum, Tefen (IL), in January 2018.
Text in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Abstract and mysterious, the sculptures of Lisa Seebach (b. 1981) are reminiscent of industrial objects like gas cylinders or oil drums, which she transforms into autonomous actors in a poetically enigmatic staging filled with associative meta-narratives. In the labyrinth of postapocalyptic science fiction, dark utopias, and posthuman aesthetics, they point to potential threats in the face of dystopian escalation and explore ways of escaping them.
Earthy Liquids and Heavy Metal [Hypersleep] is Lisa Seebach’s largest solo museum exhibition to date and shows numerous works from the last 10 years alongside works specially conceived for the exhibition space at Lechner Museum in Ingolstadt. The publication of the same name brings together numerous images of the installation and accompanying texts.
Text in English and German.
In the 19th century, photography and colonial ethnography were tools of British governance on the subcontinent. Colonial officers were asked to submit photographs on various subjects across India. Images of people, place and space was seen as useful surveillance documentation to observe, understand and control native communities. Eugene Clutterbuck Impey (1830-1904) arrived in India in 1851 and lived there until his retirement in 1878. He served as political agent at different posts across the country. The Eastern Art archives include over 250 negatives and photographs of Impey’s images of people, architectural sites, and landscapes.
The term ‘craftsmanship’ is associated with individuality, uniqueness, decorative potential, artistic quality, attention to material and to process. But what does craftsmanship mean today? This exhibition catalogue of nearly 600 pages explores the meaning of craftsmanship in the context of the outstanding collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt, Germany) in a monumental survey of 700 items dating from 1945 to the present. Scale reproductions of plates, furniture, cutlery, jewellery and vases highlight their surprising variety of form. In their essays, the ten authors take diverse approaches to the broad terrain of craftsmanship: from the relationship between East Asia and Western ceramics, via the handicrafts of the Romantic period, to the adventure that is arts and crafts today. The title plays on the perceived parallel between the ability of the cactus to survive and thrive in adverse conditions, and the future of the hand-made object in an industrial world.
Text in German.
Gisbert Stach’s (b. 1963) monograph Jewellery and Experiment presents a multifaceted opus from twenty-five years of gold- and silversmithing. In his oeuvre the primarily conceptual artist combines jewellery with video, photography and performance. One focus of his work deals with processes of transformation and experiment – pieces disappear through chemical dissolution, and form is determined by agencies of growth in nature. Stach works with means of alienation and irritation. Ground amber serves as pigment, which he works into jewellery pieces in the form of fish fingers, sliced bread or schnitzel. A further characteristic of his work is the performative act, for example when brooches are pelted with knives.
Gisbert Stach is represented in numerous museums and collections, including Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum, Munich (DE); Fondazione Cominelli, Brescia (IT); Museo de Arte Moderno, Tarragona (ES); Museum of Arts & Crafts, Itami (JP); Gallery of Art, Legnica (PL); Museum of Bohemian Paradise, Turnov (CZ); Amber Museum, Gdansk (PL).
Published to accompany exhibitions at Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart (DE), 9-11 November 2018, and Bayerischer Kunstgewerbeverein (BKV), Munich (DE) 28 February-24 March 2019.
Text in English and German.
The tale of the shepherd girl Radha and the Hindu god Krishna is probably the most famous love story in India. Written by Jayadeva at the end of the twelfth century, the Gitagovinda narrates the highs and lows of Radha and Krishna’s relationship. As a vivid metaphor for the human yearning for god, the work is today closely associated in India with the religiosity of Krishna. In the eighteenth century, in the former princely residence of Guler, the artist family of Nainsuhk and Manaku created the outstanding picture series of the second Guler Gitagovinda of 1775/80, which recounts the love story with an unparalleled elegance. This book retells the story using selected pieces from this series (printed in original size) and whisks the reader off into the atmospheric world of Indian miniature painting and poetry. This book accompanies an exhibition at Museum Rietberg, Zurich, 24 October 2019 – 16 February 2020.
Text in English and German.
This catalogue assembles sumptuous photographs of the world’s leading collection of Cham sculpture, along with the most recent insights of Vietnamese and international scholars. The Champa culture thrived in magnificent temples, sculpture, dance and music along the central and southern coast of today’s Vietnam from the 5th to the 18th century. A focused exploration here uncovers this brilliant yet almost lost culture to newcomers and experts alike. The Danang Museum has been recently expanded and refurbished to house what is generally considered the world’s greatest collection of Cham Art.
The essays in this lavishly illustrated volume offer a multi-faceted portrait of American financier J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) as a collector of art. A riveting exploration of Morgan’s acquisitions from antiquities to medieval manuscripts to Old Master paintings and European decorative arts, Morgan—The Collector introduces the reader to how and why he amassed his vast collection. The lively essays also serve as a tribute to Linda Roth, curator at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, who dedicated much of her forty-year career to researching Morgan and the over 1,500 works from his collection now in the museum. This much-needed publication focuses on Morgan as a collector and is directed at both a scholarly and more general audience that is interested in the history of collecting, America in the Gilded Age, Pierpont Morgan, and European art.
The bilingual book comes in two volumes – one in English with 295 images and the other in Chinese. A well-researched and lavishly illustrated book, that offers a wealth of new facts, images and insights into the subject in a broad context.
This book has detail research into saddle rugs from China and related areas like Inner-Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. The research includes images of saddle rugs published in books, magazines and on the internet. The literature research the author conducted has not been exhaustive. The author has used major manuals, museum-collection and exhibition catalogues, auction catalogues, magazines and other publications.
Simply a must for anyone who loves textiles, horses or the history of China’s military, sports or culture.
Text in English and Chinese.
Chemical Alterations presents a photographic series by Doug Fogelson (b. 1970) that reflects the range of impacts caused by climate change around the planet. Using a process that combines traditional landscape photography with a chemical bath of toxic cleaning products to alter the original analogue film, Fogelson illustrates what are often invisible changes to the environment. Such changes culminate as disastrous events like fire, flood, drought, increasingly powerful storms, and overall global warming. Images of natural spaces that include mountains, deserts, volcanoes, jungles, oceans, rivers, and forests become represented in a state of flux. Through the processing of the film, traces such as bubbles, crystals, fingerprints, and dust are integrated into the images, probing the borderline of abstraction.
The Chemical Alterations series has been in-progress over a decade and exhibited through various iterations internationally at both galleries and museums including: The Royal Geographic Society, United Kingdom, Museum Belvedere, Netherlands, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Alpenium Produzentengalerie, Luzern, SFO Museum, San Francisco, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Sasha Wolf Projects, NYC, Klompching Gallery, NYC, The Arts Club of Chicago and others. It has been covered by The Brooklyn Rain, Humble Arts Foundation, Ain’t Bad, The OD Review, Great Lakes Writers Corps, and others.
This 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, organised 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 contextualise 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 watercolours 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.
Berlin-based artist Annika Kahrs presents the most comprehensive selection of her works to date at Hamburger Bahnhof, exploring the intersection of art and music. Kahrs investigates the cultural and social functions of music: in an abandoned church in Lyon, at the parade of a cross-generational orchestra in an Italian village or in Berlin department stores. The exhibition features more than 10 video works, sound installations, and performances from the past 15 years, displayed in selected locations throughout Hamburger Bahnhof and in public space. A performance series on the occasion of the exhibition and celebrating the museum’s 30th anniversary will take place at Musikinstrumenten-Museum, at Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité [Medical History Museum of the Charité Hospital] and at Heilige-Geist-Kirche [Church of the Holy Spirit] in February 2026.
This is the 15th in a series of publications accompanying solo exhibitions of contemporary artists at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. In addition to exhibition views and images of artworks, it comprises a curatorial introduction by Ingrid Buschmann, an extensive interview by Philipp Lange with Annika Kahrs as well as a text by Susanne Pfeffer.
Text in English and German.
In 2008 and 2013 the GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts in Leipzig presented two representative inventory publications under the title Vessel / Sculpture. German and International Ceramics since 1946, which attracted great interest from across the globe and were regarded as standard reference works. This third volume continues the series, against a backdrop of a renewed and extensive increase of modern studio ceramics in the museum’s collection. As in the previous publications, the objects in the book enter into aesthetic dialogues, thus facilitating interesting perspectives in the development of artistic ceramics up to the present day. In doing so it becomes clear how ceramic objects are developing from a servient-functional gesture into ever consistent autonomous artworks yet without necessarily losing the vessel theme. Its multitude of current artists’ biographies and illustrations of makers’ marks make this a highly recommendable reference work.
Contents: Contributions from selected artists: Felicity Aylieff, Thomas Bohle, Werner Bünck, Carmen Dionyse, Allesandro Gallo, Louise Hindsgavl, Beate Kuhn, Sonngard Marcks, Ken Mihara, Sarah Pschorn, Elke Sada, Carolein Smit, Julian Stair, Robert Sturm and Henk Wolvers.
Published to accompany an exhibition at GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts Leipzig (DE), 10 November 2018 – 13 October 2019.
Text in English and German
The Ashmolean is fortunate in having the finest collection of Indian art in Britain outside London, one which includes many works of great beauty and expressive power. For this we are indebted above all to the generosity, knowledge and taste of our benefactors and donors from the 17th century to the present. This book offers a short account of how the collection developed and a selection of some of its more outstanding or interesting works of art. While it is written mainly for the general reader and museum visitor, it includes many fine objects or pictures, some of them unpublished, that should interest specialist scholars and students.
Since 1987, the Ashmolean has made many significant new acquisitions of Indian art and these are highlighted in this collection. As the book’s title implies, it also ventures beyond the bounds of the Indian subcontinent by including works from Afghanistan and Central Asian Silk Road sites as well as many from Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asia. From the early centuries AD, Indian trading links with these diverse regions of Asia led to a widespread cultural diffusion and regional adoptions of Buddhism and Hinduism along with their related arts. Local reinterpretations of such Indic subjects, themes and styles then grew into flourishing and enduring artistic traditions which are also part of the story of this book.
The selection of works ends around 1900. By the 16th century and the early modern period in India, growing European interventions and Western artistic influences under Mughal rule saw a significant shift in sensibility and the practice of more secular and naturalistic forms of court art such as portraiture. By the late 19th century, fundamental cultural changes under British rule and the advent of new technologies brought about a gradual decline in many of India’s traditional arts.
Supported by a wealth of photographs of archaeological objects, this book delves into a fascinating world of ancestral spirits, revealed by the surprising richness and variety of these pre-Columbian pieces fashioned out of various materials. These works, on exhibition in the Museo Casa del Alabado, in Quito (Ecuador), outline the pre-Columbian view of the world centred on a flow of energy aimed at preserving life. These pieces evoke this primordial energy emerging from mother earth, the source of the good deeds performed by spirits and the ancestral guardian of the permanent renewal of the world of daily life, where spirits constantly draw on the balance of the forces ensuring their survival. Pre-Columbian art has the extraordinary capacity to express the power of reciprocal opposites which together provide a meaning to the existence of animate and inanimate beings.
Hard materials, such as stones and shells, served to embody powerful spirits, such as carts, macaws, or primordial ancestors. Ceramics were suitable for the depiction of ordinary plants and animals. The extraordinary growth of metalworking skills led to the creation of ornamental pieces designed for the elite (chest decorations, nose jewellery, earrings, and crowns) whose purpose was to reflect the power of the sun.
Each picture in the book is accompanied by notes explaining the function the article would have served, while acknowledging that these pieces have lost none of their expressiveness in the modern world.
Text in English and Spanish.
The largest surviving portion of the first major collection of Classical antiquities in Britain – the sculptures and inscriptions collected in the early 17th century by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel for his London house and garden – is in the Antiquities Department of the Ashmolean Museum. This handbook tracks their eventful history before they came to rest in Oxford.
The career of architect Sergei Tchoban, born 1962 and educated in St. Petersburg, follows multiple yet closely linked trajectories in his native Russia and in Germany. He is a founding partner with the Moscow-based firm SPEECH as well as with Tchoban Voss Architekten, with offices in Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden. His designs reflect a deep interest in local and historical contexts of a project rather than an aim to create singular iconic structures. His design process is deeply rooted in sketching and drawing by hand. In 2009 he established the Tchoban Foundation and in 2013 opened the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin as a home to his vast collection comprising ancient and modern masterpieces from around the world.
In four conversations with Kristin Feireiss, Tchoban offers very personal insights into his design process, his understanding of architecture, and his engagement as a collector and museum founder. An essay by the British writer and broadcaster Deyan Sudjic as well as some 130 illustrations round out this beautiful volume.
Howard Carter’s excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 was one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. The name of Egypt’s ‘boy king’ is now synonymous with the glories of this ancient civilisation, and the spectacular contents of his tomb continue to capture the public’s imagination. This book tells the story of the search for Tutankhamun’s tomb and its discovery using Howard Carter’s original excavation records that were deposited in the archives of the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford. The meticulous recording process and conservation work on the thousands of objects took Carter and his team an astonishing 10 years and for its time the entire enterprise was a model of archaeological investigation.
Against this backdrop of painstaking scholarship, the book also explores the phenomenon of ‘Tut-mania’, when the world was gripped by all things Tutankhamun, from jewellery and clothing to dance music and curses. In the final section, the authors re-evaluate what the tomb’s contents can tell us about the king and his time, and explore various projects that have in recent years sought to ensure the preservation of Tutankhamun’s tomb and its contents for future generations. For all of these projects, the Howard Carter archive in the Griffith Institute remains an invaluable resource.
The new French art movement known as ‘impressionism’ blew through Europe like ‘a breath of fresh air’. This publication focuses on artists from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, including important representatives of the movement such as Anna Ancher, Lovis Corinth, Isaac Israels, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Peder Severin Krøyer, Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt. A selection of highlights from the collections of three museums showcases the individual varieties of ‘Northern Impressionism’. The catalogue accompanies the touring exhibition of the same name, a cooperation between the Museum Singer Laren, the Museum Kunst der Westküste, Alkersum/Föhr, and the Landesmuseum Hannover.
Text in English and Dutch.
In Edo Japan, woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e (“pictures of the Floating World”) captured the entertainment culture of the urban elite and eventually many other subjects as well. These beautiful prints were the result of a meticulous craft process, in which an artist’s initial drawing was translated by expert carvers into multiple printing blocks for different colours. In this attractive volume, Sarah E. Thompson, curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, provides a highly readable overview of the cultural and artistic history of ukiyo-e, showcasing 120 exceptional prints from the museum’s world-class collection, by masters including Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. She explores each of the principal genres in turn: beauty and fashion, the kabuki theatre, landscape, nature, history and literature, and fantasy. Pictures of the Floating World features a traditional Japanese stab binding and is housed in a durable slipcase together with three remarkable prints, suitable for framing. It will be a must-have for all art lovers.
Architecture and automobiles have been intrinsically linked since the dawn of the internal combustion engine – from the assembly plant to the showroom and on to that ubiquitous fixture of the artificial landscape, the service station. The streamlined forms of automobiles have often inspired architects and some have even ventured into designing their own cars. Features Foster and Partners, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, ONL, Renzo Piano, Populous, Zaha Hadid, UNStudio and Massimiliano Fuksas. Projects presented include the BMW Museum in Munich, the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, the Audi museum in Ingolstadt by 24-H, Manuel Gautrand’s Citroen museum on the Champs Elyssee in Paris, and the Regio Emilia bridge by Santiago Calatrava in Italy.
Bouke de Vries, based in London, gets the viewer thinking with his extraordinary artworks of broken porcelain and discarded shards. He creates extraordinary works of art from broken porcelain and pottery and discarded shards. With these he makes the viewer think about what beauty and perfection are. This combination of craftsmanship and creativity makes his art both visually impressive and conceptually stimulating. De Vries’ museum work is included in many leading international collections and he is represented by leading international galleries. This book presents an overview of the highlights of his career, in which he plays with the theme of decay and recovery. In his still lifes, relics and large installations, Bouke de Vries respects the history of objects, but adds humour and depth. The observant viewer experiences how the life of an object through the ages changes its owner, context and meaning. Several international art critics wrote a contribution for this book.
Text in English and Dutch.
This catalogue documents an exhibition at the Baur Foundation that brings together work by the French painter Pierre Soulages (b.1919) and the Japanese master bamboo artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV (b. 1973). Soulages, still working at 102 years old, has painted almost exclusively in black since 1979 and is known as the “master of luminous blacks”. Tanabe Chikuunsai IV is a renowned bamboo artist, known for his twisting organic sculptures and room-sized installations made from tiger or black bamboo. The aim of this exhibition is to explore how their work resonates, despite different approaches, in the dark and light effects of their materials.
Text in French and English.
Published to accompany an exhibition at the Baur Foundation in Switzerland, a museum of Far Eastern Art, from November 2021–March 2022.