John Constable (1776–1837) is England’s best-loved landscape painter, and the familiarity of his images can disguise how revolutionary he really was. His passionate concentration on the truth of the natural world influenced not just other painters but the whole course of romanticism, and the spontaneity and energy of his vision and technique remain as fresh today as ever.
It was a long journey for this sensitive, not very sociable man, a journey whose fascinating twists and turns we can trace through his many vivid letters, where Constable shared his developing ideas and practice with a small group of friends and patrons. To read his letters today is to gain unparalleled insight into a pioneering creative mind. For the first time, these letters have now been selected and arranged into chronological order to create a coherent narrative. The editor is the leading expert on Constable, Anne Lyles, and she has also written an extensive introduction.
Brighton has transformed itself several times since the Middle Ages: once a small fishing village, it became the most fashionable seaside resort in the 18th century, a thriving tourist destination in the railway age and a liberal, multicultural university city in the 20th century. 200 years ago the party-loving King George IV built himself the playground of all royal playgrounds here: an oriental fantasy of a palace with onion-shaped domes and an exotic faux-Chinese interior, the Royal Pavilion.
Today Brighton, together with its surroundings, is culturally one of the most exciting places in Britain, boasting an impressive coast, lined with chalk cliffs and the rolling South Downs as a backdrop. Just 10 kilometres east of Brighton is the picturesque county town of Lewes, with a stunning array of historic buildings, including an 11th-century Norman castle. The people of Lewes are known for their revolutionary spirit, and host the biggest bonfire celebration in the country every year on 5 November.
From 1829 until his death, Constable devoted an increasing amount of time, energy and his own money to the production of prints after his work. Intended as the epitome of his naturalistic art, English Landscape brought together 22 images from the whole span of his career, reimagined with all the drama and delicacy possible with mezzotint.
In David Lucas, Constable found a collaborator capable of responding to his work with an unprecedented range of tonal expression, and an endlessly patient colleague who could cope with Constable’s extreme anxiety and mood swings.
The result, though not a commercial success at the time, is widely acknowledged as one of the summits of English landscape art, and of the art of the mezzotint.
This edition includes Constable’s introduction, his most sustained explanation of his aims as a painter and the revolution he effected in landscape art. Also reprinted are the detailed descriptions he wrote for five of the plates, in which he explains his aims and methods, and the significance to him of the landscapes and skyscapes he depicted.
This book challenges the conventional idea of what constitutes the physical form of the contemporary city. Observing the absence of extended urban fabrics – the missing urbanism – in the new global cities developed today, it argues that these cities are merely statistical accumulations of density that lack the positive attributes of a genuine urban condition. Cities as urban places cannot be made by individual buildings alone but rather depend on the intertwined combination of an architecture that is bound to the creation of public spaces and streets, and engaged in the structure of urban blocks to form a complex field pattern of interactive solids and voids. Broad in scope, the book explores the nature of the fundamental relationship between architecture and urbanism as one of spatial formation. As an independently designed entity, the city forms the ordering framework in which architecture is partially subordinated to the mutual sustainability of the overall urban fabric. If a new urban architecture is to be an integral constituent of public place making, it must be composed using a radically different paradigm of positive, figurally constructed ‘space’ rather than the indefinite background of ‘anti-space’ as exemplified in the chapter on Mies van der Rohe’s architectural quest for the ineffable modern void. These two different spatial models are explored in depth in the eponymous article, ‘Space and Anti Space,’ first published in the Harvard Architectural Review in 1980, which forms the core of the book and postulates that the underlying attitudes toward spatial formation, at both domestic and urban scales, determine our ability to shape place and human experience. In a series of essays, articles and urban projects extensively illustrated by plans, analytic diagrams, and dramatic images, this book makes a visual and verbal argument for the steps that need to be taken to re-urbanise the city in order to achieve an urbanity consisting of multiple discrete places that depend on the essential concept of contained geometrical space. These spatial ideas are illustrated in this book in three proposals: for Rome, in ‘Roma Interrotta,’ 1979; Paris, the ‘Consultation Internationale pour L’Aménagement du Quartier des Halles,’ 1980; and New York in the ‘World Trade Center Site Innovative Design Study,’ 2002.
Every month, the art association HMKV presents the latest videos by international artists in its series “HMKV Video of the Month” which has been ongoing since March 2014. The idea for the series came from the desire to show the newest artistic productions in rapid succession, changing works at a faster pace than in the exhibitions of the HMKV.
For the first time, this publication unites all 78 works that have been exhibited since 2014. The videos address a variety of different topics and stories, ranging from labour conditions, structural changes, speculative technologies, or posthuman machines to technology (and its history) as well as artificial intelligence. A wide array of works is devoted to the old ‘new’ right-wingers and the alt-right. The book not only shows stills of all videos, but each work is also accompanied by an introductory text to provide a comprehensive overview.
Text in English and German.
Get ready to go on a series of exciting maze adventures with fire-breathing dragons, beautiful princesses, and knights in shining armour. Can you find your way to the end of each puzzle – and count all the characters on the page, too? Are you ready for a challenge? Do you have a keen eye? Find out! Every richly designed maze on these colourful pages features dozens of princesses, dragons, and knights, all trying to distract you from reaching the end. Sharp solvers must find the right path, but they’ll also have to count the characters and the objects they see along the way – royal crowns, skulls, owls, ghosts, cauldrons, a wizard’s books – and add them up. Keep your concentration, and then check the solutions at the back of the book to see if you’ve got it right. Ages: 6 plus
A collection of essays published from the 1970s to the present on architectural theory and architectural history. Either consciously or unconsciously, architecture comes to embody the most stable and persistent values of a culture, and through this institutions become symbolised by their buildings; their values become associated with architectural forms. These forms represent the architect’s judgements of the natural world and the built environment.
This volume is dedicated to Ico and Luisa Parisi, leading figures in Italian design of the late 20th century. The essays collected in these pages trace a path that intertwines biography and design research, highlighting the complementary nature of their work. At the heart of their work lies the experience of La Ruota, a space opened in Como in 1948 and active until 1995: serving as a shop, studio, and exhibition space all in one, it was a unique and irreplaceable meeting place for artists, friends, and gallery owners.
The catalogue, preceded by an extensive photographic section, traces the production of glassware, ceramics, and other objects designed by Ico—sometimes with Luisa’s contribution—as documented in the archives. From Murano glass of the 1950s to ceramics of the 1960s, through to his later works, a trajectory emerges that progressively shifts from design toward the art object, while maintaining a constant reference to function and the domestic context.
The volume is completed by a bibliography.
Text in English and Italian.
“Rife with main character energy, authenticity and playfulness, here’s where to book on your next American road trip …” — The Gloss
“a love letter to America’s charming motels” — Evening Standard
“dreamily escapist” — Elle Decoration
“The design of the book itself echoes the period without slipping into kitsch – it feels sleek, collectible, and, like its subject matter, built to last.” — Amateur Photographer
“a perfect primer for this year’s summer holiday destinations” — Loupe Magazine
A nostalgic road trip through America’s most charming motels—revived and reimagined. Vintage Motels showcases 40 historic motels across the USA, each transformed into an inviting boutique hotel while honouring its past. Through rich storytelling and stunning photography, this beautifully designed hardcover book captures the spirit of these mid-century roadside gems. Each motel is featured across 4 to 6 pages, with a detailed narrative (500 words) and a mix of archival and contemporary images. Perfect for design lovers, travellers, and history enthusiasts, Vintage Motels is an inspiring tribute to the golden age of American road travel.
Mixing Roman and medieval roots, Chichester sits at the heart of a storied landscape where South Down hills dotted with idyllic hamlets ripple back from a shoreline mixing wild dune-backed beaches with old-school seaside resorts. Reminders of smuggling and war add spice.
But a thrilling thread of modernity runs through this slice of West Sussex too. Chichester’s modernist Festival Theatre provided the foundation for London’s National Theatre, while masterpieces of contemporary architecture that draw admirers from around the world include Sea Lane House in East Preston and The White Tower in Bognor Regis.
Evocative ancient memorials abound. Chichester is blessed with the only English cathedral visible from the sea, while England’s largest castle rises above the ravishing – and cosmopolitan – riverside town of Arundel. Ancient yew trees mark the burial spots of Viking warriors in an idyllic Downland spot. And it’s a land vibrant with creative imprints: poets, painters, composers, from Blake and Keats to Joyce and Chagall.
This guidebook takes you exploring through Chichester and its surroundings to find incomparable natural beauty, hidden secrets, astonishing history, art of all kinds, and much more.
Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo has been at the heart of the Royal Academy Collections since it was bequeathed to the institution by Sir George Beaumont, John Constable’s patron, in 1830. The only Michelangelo marble in Britain, the tondo offers a fascinating insight into the master’s technical and experimental skills, given its tantalising lack of finish. Joshua Reynolds, the Academy’s first President, considered that Michelangelo represented everything that an artist should aspire to, combining ‘technical’ brilliance with sublime ‘poetical’ imagination, and the tondo shows this in scintillating relief. Expertly researched and written by the renowned Renaissance art historian Alison Cole, this book explores the life of the tondo, from Michelangelo’s rivalry with Leonardo to the marble’s arrival at the Royal Academy and its subsequent impact on its teaching. In a fresh and exciting look at the tondo’s role in revealing Michelangelo’s technical experimentation, Cole explores the importance of the ‘non finito’. Lavishly illustrated and including brand new photos of the tondo, this is an intriguing and enriching exploration of a lesser-known side of the great Renaissance master’s work.
The talented printmaker and Royal Academician Chris Orr turns his humorous gaze on some of the most famous – and fabulous – artists of the past. With over 30 new works, accompanied by Orr’s captions, artists from Edward Hopper to Pablo Picasso find themselves in weird and wonderful situations. Edvard Munch holidays at the seaside, John Constable RA is disturbed at his easel by frolicking nudists and an unfortunate incident occurs in Barbara Hepworth’s studio… No one can escape Orr’s imagination: Walter Sickert is distracted from a spread-eagled model by a fly in his soup, Dame Laura Knight RA is caught shoplifting, and Frida Kahlo enjoys a fry-up. Each image is packed with detail to pore over, and the book concludes with notes from the artist, ‘Notes from the Cages’, accompanied by preparatory drawings for the finished work. This new collection, published to coincide with an exhibition of Orr’s works at the Royal Academy, is a delightful fantasy, which affectionately pokes fun at well-loved artists.
Over the past decade, Frank Bowling has enjoyed belated attention and celebration, including a major Tate Britain retrospective in 2019. This comprehensive monograph, published in 2011, is now available in an updated and expanded edition.
Born in British Guiana in 1934, Bowling arrived in England in his late teens, going on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and Derek Boshier. By the early 1960s he was recognised as an original force in the vibrant London art scene, with a style that brilliantly combined figurative, symbolic and abstract elements.
Dividing his time between New York and London since the late 1960s, he has developed a unique and virtuosic abstract style that combines aspects of American painterly abstraction with a treatment of light and space that consciously recollects the great English landscape painters Gainsborough, Turner and Constable. In a compelling text the art writer, critic and curator Mel Gooding hails Bowling as one of the finest British artists of his generation.
Distilling a lifetime’s study of English art, Duncan Robinson here looks at the six leading artists of the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries through the lens of their relationship with writing. Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Blake, Constable, Turner all engaged in different ways with literature and the word. From Hogarth, who developed a new kind of narrative from his experience of the theatre, to Turner who wrote increasingly elaborate and enigmatic epic poetry to explain his painting, passing by Blake’s naive Songs of Innocence and Experience and his hallucinatory deranged mythological visions, the originality and fascination of these great artists are brought into a new, sharper focus by Robinson’s approach. Written with his characteristic geniality and profound, but lightly worn scholarship, and richly illustrated with familiar and many unfamiliar images, this will be an unmissable book for all interested in this seminal period in English art.
With an introduction by Brian Allen, former Director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
“Good evening. I’m from Essex, in case you couldn’t tell.” Thus spoke the inimitable punk poet of the flat lands, Ian Dury, in 1977. Few other parts of England have so distinctive an identity, sent up by a hundred comedians since the 1990 birth of Essex Man, epitomised by the rise of the ‘Mockney’ radio celeb, and incarcerated through their hideous offspring in TV’s The Only Way is Essex. It’s not just an accent, it’s a way of life, a culture shaped by the Diaspora from London generation after generation, the lure of the sea and powerful Thames estuary, the encroaching of the waters from innumerable creeks and inlets, the dream seaside resort of Southend, the longing for the most succulent of seafood indulgences, the delicious countryside of copses and boughs painted by Constable, but also the threat of invasion by hostile forces repelled by Britain’s most formidable forts. It’s Essex. You can tell.
The Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course is a complete reprint of a famous, late nineteenth-century drawing course. It contains a set of almost two hundred masterful lithographs of subjects for copying by drawing students before they attempt drawing from life or nature. Consequently it is a book that will interest artists, art students, art historians, and lovers and collectors of drawings. It also introduces us to the work and life of a hitherto neglected master: Charles Bargue.
The Drawing Course consists of three sections. The first comprises of plates drawn after casts, usually of antique examples. Different parts of the body are studied in order of difficulty, until full figures are presented. The second section pays homage to the western school of painting, with lithographs after exemplary drawings by Renaissance and modern masters. The third part contains almost 60 académies, or drawings after nude male models, all original inventions by Bargue, the lithographer. With great care, the student is introduced to continually more difficult problems in the close observing and recording of nature.
Charles Bargue started his career as a lithographer of drawings by hack artists for a popular market in comic, sentimental and soft-porn subjects. By working with Gérôme, and in preparing the plates for the course, Bargue was transformed into a spectacular painter of single figures and intimate scenes; a master of precious details that always remain observation and never became self-conscious virtuosity, and colour schemes that unified his composition in exquisite tonal harmonies. The last part of the book is a biography of Bargue, along with a preliminary catalogue of his paintings, accompanied by reproductions of all that have been found and of many of those lost.
This is the first major book on English blue and white porcelain since the early 1970s. Not only is it the latest and most up-to-date work, but it includes types not previously studied and extends the range of wares into the early years of the nineteenth-century. It is a unique, comprehensive study. The number of instructive illustrations exceeds seven hundred, including helpful comparison photographs and details of identifying features – footrims, handle forms, manufacturing characteristics and marks. Apart from introductory chapters on collecting blue and white and on the introduction and development of this popular mode of decoration, this unique coverage comprises details of over twenty distinct makes, including the relatively newly researched eighteenth century factories at Isleworth, Limehouse and Vauxhall. The inclusion of the several post-1790 factories covers new ground. The section on fakes and reproductions will also prove instructive and helpful. Guidance is given on the popularity of the various types in the market and on past and more recent prices paid for specimens in the London auction rooms. Particular attention has been directed at the three large sales of the late Dr. Bernard Watney’s world renowned collection, held by Messrs. Phillips in 1999 and 2000. General estimates of market values are also offered.
“a well-written, well-referenced and well-illustrated book. It provides a valuable addition to the literature and our understanding of a previously little-researched facet of the industrial midlands” British Art Journal
“Cataloguers now have an impressive volume of new information to draw on when describing anything from a simple tea tray to those suites of papier mâché furniture which remain as impressive today as when they dazzled visitors at the great international exhibitions of the 19th century” Antiques Trade Gazette.
As one of the few decorative arts about which little has been written, japanning is today fraught with misunderstandings. And yet, in its heyday, the japanning industry attracted important commissions from prestigious designers such as Robert Adam, and orders from fashionable society across Europe and beyond. This book is a long overdue history of the industry which centred on three towns in the English midlands: Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Bilston. It is as much about the workers, their skills, and the factories and workshops in which they laboured, as it is about the goods they made. It tells of matters of taste and criticism, and of how an industry which continued to rely so heavily upon hand labour in the machine age reached its natural end in the 1880s with a few factories lingering into the late 1930s. Richly illustrated, it includes photographs of mostly marked, or well-documented, examples of japanned tin and papier mâché against which readers may compare – and perhaps identify – unmarked specimens. Japanned Papier Mâché and Tinware draws predominantly upon contemporary sources: printed, manuscript and typescript documents, and, for the period leading up to the closure of the last factories in the 1930s, the author was able to draw on verbal accounts of eyewitnesses. With a chapter on japanners in London, other European centres, and in the United States, together with a directory of japan artists and decorators, this closely researched and comprehensive book is the reference work for collectors, dealers and enthusiasts alike. Contents: From Imitation to Innovation; Enter the Dragon!; The Lion of the District; Japanning & Decorating; Not a Bed of Roses!; Clever Accidents?; Decline of the Midlands Japanning Industry; The Birmingham Japanners; The Wolverhampton Japanners; The Bilston Japanners; Japanners in London and Oxford; Products; Other Western Japanning Centres; Appendices.
“…a great resource for the art and textile enthusiast…” Classic Stitches, 2010. The most gifted textile designer of her generation, Shirley Craven won a string of awards during the 1960’s. This book celebrates her remarkable achievements at Hull Traders and documents her arresting hand screen-printed furnishing fabrics in full. Big bold abstracts were her speciality, striking in colour and breathtakingly original in style. A visionary small company with high ideals, Hull Traders made its mark initially with designs by artists Eduardo Paolozzi, Nigel Henderson and Ivon Hitchens. Under Craven’s direction Hull Traders issued a string of ground-breaking textiles during the 1960’s by forty artist-designers, recorded here in their entirety for the first time. Contributors included Althea McNish, John Drummond, Peter McCulloch, Doreen Dyall, Roger Limbrick, Cliff Holden, Richard Allen and Dorothy Carr. In 1966 Hull Traders branched out into furniture with the launch of Bernard Holdaway’s revolutionary tomotom range made of painted cardboard tubes – an icon of the Swinging Sixties, based entirely on circular forms, sold all over the world. Drawing on pioneering new research by leading post-war design historian Lesley Jackson, this book traces the fascinating, hitherto untold story of Hull Traders and its unique creative alliance with Shirley Craven and Bernard Holdaway. Featuring stunning new photography and rare archive photographs, it captures the explosion of creativity during the 1960’s and provides a visual feast of inspirational post-war pattern and form.
The extraordinary life of Barbara Cartlidge (b. 1922 in Berlin) – influential gallerist, curator, jewellery artist and author – together with the history of her legendary Electrum Gallery, which she founded in 1971 with Ralph Turner in London, are documented for the first time in a single publication. Pioneers and colleagues as well as around seventy internationally renowned artists of the gallery all have their say and, in anecdotes and recollections, countless illustrations and hitherto unpublished images, tell of a strong and resolute woman and the significance of her gallery as a promoter and platform for the understanding of contemporary art jewellery. Particular attention is paid to the life of Barbara Cartlidge, who fled from Germany in 1938. For over fifty years she was a driving force in what she described as the ‘the brotherhood of jewellers who make modern and thought-provoking jewellery all over the world’.