Based on documentation originating in the environmental sciences, history of science, philosophy and art, Architecture of Nature explores the materiality and the effects of the forces at play in the history of the earth through the architect’s modes of seeing and techniques of representation. This book presents research work developed for the past eight years in the Advanced Research graduate studio ‘Architecture of Nature/ Nature of Architecture’, created and directed by Diana Agrest at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union. Architecture of Nature departs from the traditional approach to nature as a referent for architecture and reframes it as its object of study. The complex processes of generation and transformations of extreme natural phenomena such as glaciers, volcanoes, permafrost, and clouds are explored through unique drawings and models, confronting a scale of space and time that expands and transcends the established boundaries of the architectural discipline.
On 5 February 1916, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, together with Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, and Jean Arp, inaugurated the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. The evening marked the birth of Dada as an artistic movement, and Cabaret Voltaire with its legendary performances became a place of historic significance. It was soon to be followed by the short-lived, while no less significant, Gallery Dada in Zürich, where the Dadaists staged four exhibitions over the course of half a year. Dada’s further evolution was significantly shaped by these two spaces, each with its own particular atmosphere, constituting the differing poles of the Dada movement. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Spring 2016 to celebrate the Dada centenary, this new book for the first time tells the full story of Dada’s genesis. It sheds light on the early years of 1916 17 in Zürich in historical context and, from today’s point of view, and also explores the intellectual and social background that informed Dada, considering aspects such as the Great War, psychoanalysis, or the art scene of the time. Genesis Dada illustrates how Dada turned into a worldwide phenomenon with which artists and intellectuals such as Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau, or Man Ray were associated, and which has lost nothing of its momentum and topicality over time. Also available: Dadglobe ISBN 9783858817754
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.
A visual history of fashion that fits in the palm of your hand.
Drawing from the extensive Textile and Fashion Arts Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this miniature history of European and American fashion features some 275 garments, accessories, and related works of art from the 17th century to the present. Dress historian Allison Taylor introduces each new era with a concise overview of the period’s fashionable styles and silhouettes, as well as the underlying historical and cultural influences. This chic Tiny Folio is the perfect gift for fashionistas and fashion historians alike.
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.
Michael Gericke is one of the most influential graphic designers in the world today. This much anticipated monograph covers four decades of work by the acclaimed graphic designer and Pentagram partner. Lavishly illustrated throughout at close to 500 pages, the book is driven by a celebration of places, telling stories, and making images and symbols – predominantly through Gericke’s work with projects for buildings, civic moments, exhibitions and visual identities, including for posters, magazines, New York’s AIA chapter (America’s largest) and the Center for Architecture that, through graphics and images, continues to portray the spirit of architecture and design in New York City today. Prefaced by the prize-winning architect Moshe Safdie, with commentary by Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic and educator Paul Goldberger, this encyclopaedic compilation is a must for all collectors and aficionados of contemporary design, branding, and visual identity.
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.
For hundreds of years, artists have been inspired by the imaginative potential of fantasy. Unlike science fiction, which is based on fact, fantasy presents an impossible reality – a universe where dragons breathe fire, angels battle demons, and magicians weave spells. Published to coincide with a major exhibition organised by the Norman Rockwell Museum, this handsome volume reveals how artists have brought to life mythology, fables, and fairy tales, as well as modern epics like The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.
The main text of Enchanted, by exhibition curator Jesse Kowalski, traces the emergence of the themes of fantasy in the world’s civilisations, and the development of fantasy illustration from the Old Masters to the Victorian fairy painters, to Golden Age illustrators like Howard Pyle and Arthur Rackham, to classic cover artists like Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo, to emerging talents like Anna Dittmann and Victo Ngai. Additional essays by distinguished contributors address particular aspects of fantasy illustration, such as the relationship between science and fantasy in the19th century, and the illustrators of Robert E. Howard.
Enchanted
features more than 180 colour illustrations, including numerous stunning full-page reproductions. This handsome volume is a must-have reference for artists and illustrators, and a delight for all lovers of fantasy.
Jewelry Stories highlights the Museum of Arts and Design’s unique, world-class collection of studio and contemporary art jewellery from the US, Europe, Australia, and Asia, a medium that comprises one-third of its permanent collection. Artists working in this field create jewellery rooted in sculptural experimentation and the concept of art as a wearable medium. The pieces featured represent the history of art jewellery as told from a largely US perspective. Jewellery artists are inspired by such subjects as found objects and materials, as well as by politics and pressing social issues, allowing for the development of unique, personal narratives in each piece. Each of the jewellery stories is written by an expert on the artist or subject, thus the book also celebrates the contributions they have made to the field.
Published to accompany an exhibition at Museum of Arts and Design, New York (US), on permanent display.
Karl Fritsch (b. 1963), master of extravagant rings, returns with a publication that lures us deep into his world. Ruby Gold is a “no-frills” pared-back book, without pagination, without essays. Instead it comprises 81 rings from the past 20 years featuring embedded gemstones and such memorable slogans as “Fuck Off” and “Nudelsuppe” (Noodle Soup).
The jewellery artist’s unmatched mastery of material and expression is apparent in every single ring, and every piece possesses tremendous energy as a result of the delicate yet archaic handling of the precious metals: Karl Fritsch carves in silver, shapes in gold, sets rubies and zirconias as a child would decorate a cake – with self-confidence and with no regard for waste.
In between the detailed illustrations, Fritsch brings the rings and fingers into ironic dialogues with each other: “Ring: I am art. / Finger: Oh come on…” And: “Ring: I am a ring. / Finger: You are unwearable.”
Published to accompany an exhibition at Galerie Zink, Waldkirchen, Germany, 12 September – 20 December 2020.
Text in English and German.
John Ruskin assembled 1470 diverse works of art for use in the Drawing School he founded at Oxford in 1871. They included drawings by himself and other artists, prints and photographs. This book focuses on highlights of works produced by Ruskin himself. Drawings by John Ruskin are uniquely interesting. Unlike those of a professional artist they were not made in preparation for finished paintings or as works in their own right. Every one – and they number several thousand, depending on what can be considered a separate drawing – is a record of something seen, initially as a memorandum of that observation but with the potential to illustrate his writings or for educational purposes, notably to form part of the teaching collection of the Drawing School he established after election as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University. In addition, because of the range of interests of arguably the only true polymath of his time, every drawing touches on some interesting aspect of art and architecture, landscape and travel, botany and natural history, often connected with his writings and lectures. Ruskin’s life is one of the best documented of any in the 19th century, through letters, diaries and the many autobiographical revelations in his published writings: this allows the opportunity to give almost any drawing a level of context impossible for any other artist. When there is so much background information, a single drawing reveals much about its creator, and becomes a window into the great sprawling edifice of his life and work.
Diamonds tell stories that are captivating and timeless. On the one hand, they are just stones, pieces of pure carbon with optical properties that make them glitter and sparkle like stars. On the other, they are mystical entities hypnotically drawing the viewer into a time machine as it were, wherein a cinematic montage of their journey unfolds. Diamonds Across Time presents a sweeping overview of diamonds across time and space, featuring ten essays by world-renowned scholars in love the stone. Here, these authors present new discoveries; explore extraordinary collections; investigate histories, science, and trade; the nature of diamonds; legendary gems, jewellery collections, and great designers. Above all, they tell the human stories that underpin the adoration of diamonds.
Diamonds Across Time is a richly illustrated publication with high-quality images of gems and jewels, archival documents, rare drawings, and fabulous photographs. The volume places diamonds in the context of the time in which they were discovered, and on the political, social, and cultural stage on which their histories were etched. In a rapidly changing world, diamonds are eternal. They were created by nature and grew in the womb of the earth. They tell stories, and they record history. With this book, diamonds will finally have their own storytellers.
The Romanov Diamonds: History of Splendour – Stefano Papi; The Londonderry Jewels, 1819-1959 – Diana Scarisbrick; Dress to Impress in Southeast Asia – René Brus; Powerful Women, Important Diamonds – Ruth Peltason; One in Ten Thousand: The Unique World of Coloured Diamonds – John M. King.
“When you land on this book, if you do not yet have an appreciation of butterflies or Chan’s workmanship, after reading, it will leave you in awe of both.”—Beth Bernstein, Forbes
“When I was a young boy, butterflies were flying colours – I knew not their name. Then butterflies became the Butterfly Lovers: a tragedy, a love story, a symbol of eternal love. As I grew older, I found them to embody the words of a great philosopher: life is but a dream; only we need to decide whether we want it to be the dream of a man, or the dream of a butterfly. I could not decide, and so I became The Butterfly Man.” – Wallace Chan
Father of The Wallace Cut – an illusionary three-dimensional gemstone carving technique – and The Wallace Chan Porcelain – a ground-breaking material five times stronger than steel – Wallace Chan is a guiding light in the world of jewellery design. Always innovating, always testing boundaries with his materials and technique, Chan’s creations are as stunning as they are intricate. Compiled by jewellery experts, this book explores the cultural and personal significance of Wallace Chan’s most famous emblem: the butterfly.
Winged Beauty: The Butterfly Jewellery Art of Wallace Chan features approximately 30 of his finest pieces. Enter a butterfly house of colourful gems, with brooches and necklaces so delicate they might have flown down and alighted on the page.
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture’s, 2006-2021 monograph showcases the spectacular work of the firm from the first 15 years of its practice through drawings, renderings, model photography, photography of built work, competition entries, exhibition materials, master plans, interiors, and special research projects and publications.
The projects featured in the monograph cover a wide variety of AS+GG’s high-performance, energy-efficient, aesthetically striking architecture on an international scale in a wide range of typologies and scales, from low- and mid-rise residential, commercial, and cultural buildings to mixed-use supertall towers. Projects explored include supertall towers, large-scale mixed-use complexes, corporate offices, exhibition facilities, cultural facilities and museums, civic and public spaces, hotels and residential complexes, institutional projects, and high-tech laboratory facilities.
Drawing from the unique design experience at Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG) as architects of the next world’s tallest tower and several others under construction, Supertall | Megatall: How High Can We Go? highlights the design, sustainability, innovative technology, programming, and contextualism that defines supertall and megatall towers. The book is a mixture of under construction and design-only projects divided into several chapters that are organized according to their special characteristics: Innovative Systems, Harnessing Energies, Designing an Icon, Extending Ecologies, and Achieving Megatall. Each project, completed between 2007–2020 at AS+GG, is discovered through context, program, form, research and development, and performance, highlighting the stories, challenges, and lessons learned.
Aenne Biermann (1898–1933) was one of the leading figures of photography in the 1920s and 1930s. Today, she is considered one of the most important avant-garde photographers of the 20th century. In just a few years of practice, the self-taught artist became a well-known representative of German photography, participating in almost all the important exhibitions of her time. She captured plants, objects, people, and everyday situations in pictures that have to this day lost none of their allure and poignancy. By means of clear structures, precise compositions of light and contrast, as well as narrow framing, she drew a special kind of poetry out of the motifs of her personal environment and developed her own, distinctly modern pictorial style.
This is the first substantial new book in English on this exceptional artist since the 1930s, published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in fall 2021. The large-format volume features some 100 of Aenne Biermann’s photographs in colour and duotone reproduction, several of them published here for the first time ever. This impressive selection is complemented by essays on Biremann’s photography in art-historical context and on selected aspects of her oeuvre.
Text in English and Hebrew.
An exhibition featuring the work of Aenne Biermann is taking place at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art from 5 August 2021.
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.
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.
Lesley Dill is an American artist working at the intersection of language and fine art in printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance, exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of the writings of Emily Dickinson, Salvador Espriu, Tom Sleigh, Franz Kafka, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others, into works of paper, wire, horsehair, foil, bronze and music — works that awaken the viewer to the physical intimacy and power of language itself.
Lesley Dill – Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me features a uniquely inspired group of sculptures and two-dimensional works more than a decade in the making. It is testimony of Dill’s ongoing investigation into the significant voices and personas of America’s past. For the artist, the American voice grew from early America’s obsessions with divinity and deviltry, on fears of the wilderness out there and wilderness inside us.
The plates, in colour throughout, are supplemented with essays by Lesley Dill, Brooklyn-based writer Nancy Princenthal, Figge Art Museum’s curator Andrew Wallace, and researcher and tribal historian Juaquin Hamilton-Youngbird. The book also features a literary text by writer by Tom Sleigh and a poem by author and poet Ray Young Bear.
The volume Nicolas Party | L’Heure Mauve collects a vast visual epic in which Party plays a variety of roles, sometimes impersonating the artist, others the scenographer, the conservator, or the sculptor. His work, and the title of the show, are inspired by L’Heure Mauve, a piece created in 1921 by the Canadian painter Ozlas Leduc that highlights the different interpretations given to the relationship between man and nature throughout the history of art. The result is a constantly changing natural environment: it can be a place full of danger and catastrophe, a territory to be conquered, an expanse disseminated with ancient ruins, or even silences where there are no traces of human presence. Nature finally becomes the theatre for the Anthropocene, its connection with humanity by now inextricable, and the passing of time and the finiteness of existence make way for a feeling of melancholy.
Our artist interrogates the world’s image, and he does so by dialoguing very concretely with the spaces and the works belonging to the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The present volume reflects this personal evolution by employing a unique graphic framework and a packaging that is as precious as its contents.
Text in English and French.
In the wake of its 30th anniversary, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint‐Etienne Métropole wishes to publish a large‐scale retrospective catalogue, intended to offer a fresh look at its collection. This substantial work is in line with the two previous catalogues, published on the occasion of the 10th and 20th anniversaries of MAMC +. Aimed at a large audience, it aims to become the institution’s new reference work. It will also be sent to the museum’s many partners and collaborators (artists, curators, curators, art critics and historians, journalists, institutional and political leaders). The MAMC + wishes to approach the collection through its strong axes, constituting markers of the museum’s identity, such as American art or post‐war German art. But it also intends to make visible groups that are less well known: the Symbolist collection, the collection of primitive art by Victor Brauner, the photographic collection of Raul Hausmann or the collection of contemporary drawings, will thus be the subject of substantial developments. The book will also be punctuated by short focuses intended to deepen certain aspects of the collection.
Text in English and French.
For more than four decades, jewellery artist and educator Laurie Hall has been making stories the subject of her work. Her playful, often whimsical jewellery made with found objects is about the places she lives, the landscapes that fill her imagination, her family history, and her ideas of what it is to be an American. As a jeweller, Hall never plays it safe, preferring to fly by the seat of her pants and push her skills and technical knowledge. Her work is part of numerous private and public collections including The Museum of Art and Design in NYC, The Tacoma Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is a product of the jewellery histories that make the Pacific Northwest unique within the larger story of American contemporary jewellery. Featuring 58 images of Hall’s jewellery spanning the period from 1974 to 2019, this book explores why she is an important maker whose practice deserves to be more widely known.
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.