The 1920s in Germany witnessed a revolution in visual communication, typography, and graphic design that still influences us today. In 1929, Hungarian avant-garde artist and Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy was invited to design a room dedicated to the future of typography at the Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin as part of a larger exhibition called New Typography (“Neue Typographie”).
The exhibition was organised by the Ring of New Advertising Designers (“ring neue werbegestalter”), a group started by Kurt Schwitters in 1927 which consisted of 12 avant-garde designers and artists who explored a common vision of modernity in advertising and graphic design. In five years, the Ring put on over 20 shows in Germany, and invited guest artists to exhibit with them.
Moholy-Nagy’s room in the New Typography show was called “Where is Typography Headed?”. He created 78 freestanding panels with work by himself, other artists, and contemporary printed matter, which addressed the current trends and future direction of typography. The panels are reproduced together in this book for the first time, along with an Abcdarium of terms and concepts by a roster of noted typography and design historians.
More than four centuries ago, the small Republic of the United Netherlands embarked on an economic boom. Contacts were established with the four corners of the world. Many of these centuries-old relationships have left traces in museums and archives, in the open fields or in the city, in stories and in pictures. Footsteps and Fingerprints, the Legacy of a Shared History presents an image of the legacy the contacts between Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Russia, Sri Lanka, Surinam and South Africa have produced over the last 400 years. Various ‘top pieces’ and other remarkable items designated Mutual Cultural Heritage are described: from Vingboons’ View of Table Bay, Henkes Schnapps in Ghana to the Dutch Church in St Pertersburg.
Paul Gauguin’s Vision of the Sermon (1888), one of the iconic works of the late nineteenth century, continues to provoke profound reassessment and interpretation by art historians, and it is central to this third volume of Van Gogh Studies: Dario Gamboni discusses the painting as a self-reflexive work dealing in visual terms with issues of perception, cognition and representation; Juliet Simpson addresses the art critic Aurier’s contribution to the promotion of Gauguin as the exemplary symbolist artist; while Rodolphe Rapetti examines Emile Bernard’s artistic response to Vision of the Sermon in the context of Rosicrucianism; the Belgian art world’s critical reaction to this and other works by the artist is meticulously described and analysed in Elise Eckermann’s essay; while June Hargrove presents a challenging vision of Gauguin’s portraits of his ‘alter ego’ Meijer de Haan. Other contributions include Sandra Kister’s examination of the way the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen functioned as a role model for the Museé Rodin in Paris; Richard Thomson’s discussion of the diverse ways in which French artists working in the early Third Republic responded to contemporary concepts of ‘la psychologie nouvelle’; and, finally, a fresh view of nineteenth-century illustrations, including caricatures, offered by Patricia Mainardi. Contents:
-The Vision of a vision: Perception, hallucination, and potential images in Gauguin’s Vision of the sermon
-The décor of dreams: Gauguin, Aurier and the symbolists’ vision -From Gauguin to Péladan: Emile Bernard and the first salon of the Rose+Croix -Gauguin’s critical reception in Belgium in 1889 and 1891 -Gauguin’s maverick sage: Meijer de Haan -Museé Rodin: Thorvaldsen as a role model -Seeing Visions, Painting Visions: On psychology and representation under the early Third Republic -Paths forgotten, calls unheard: Illustration, caricature, comics in the 19th century Also Available:
Current Issues in 19th Century Art: Van Gogh Studies, Volume 1 ISBN: 9789040083501 Van Gogh: A Literary Mind: Van Gogh Studies, Volume 2 ISBN: 9789040085628
Despite its trademark transparency, the Corum Golden Bridge is a wristwatch full of mystery. This new book describes the iconic linear timepiece’s fascinating history including the innovative mechanical invention conceived by a nonconformist autodidact and the difficult technical breakthroughs by two like-minded personalities needed to achieve the dream wristwatch. This story, chock-full of narrative substance, begins in Switzerland of the late 1970s, at a time when electronic timekeeping was threatening to overtake the magical mastery of mechanical ticks and tocks. The Golden Bridge, spanning the gap between mechanics and art, is an integral part of this era as luxury watchmaking teetered on the brink of extinction. The Golden Bridge additionally helped usher in the era of the independent watchmaker, as its very creation was rooted in shedding light on the work of the watchmaker in a way that no other timepiece before or after it ever would.
“It’s very easy to please others, but very hard to please yourself.” Such is the byword of Vincent Calabrese, one of the best-known creative watchmakers in the world today. Throughout his life he has never stopped trying to surpass himself. His famous creations (including those relating to the tourbillon and the karussel) have made a decisive contribution to the revitalisation of the Swiss watch industry, and his watches demonstrate his unparalleled boldness as well as his aesthetic sensitivity. But in these pages the reader will above all meet with a rare personality. Born into a poor family in Naples, Vincent has earned a prominent place in the watchmaking world. It is not just to his innovations, whose secrets he reveals in this book, that he owes his position. Vincent’s legacy comes every bit as much from his fierce determination, his philosophical and ethical standards, and his legendary broadsides, directed as much at the profession itself as at the industry as a whole.
A great American novelist, illustrated by a great American artist – now available in a collectable two-volume set.
In 1936, the Heritage Press, a publisher of fine editions, commissioned Norman Rockwell to illustrate Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer; four years later, they asked him to illustrate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well. For each book, Rockwell created eight full-colour paintings and numerous pen-and-ink drawings, the product of extensive on-the-ground research in Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. Famously, Rockwell even tried to buy some Hannibal residents’ old clothes, to dress his models in.
For years, the Rockwell editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have been unavailable in stores. Now, Abbeville Press is proud to reissue them as a handsome new clothbound set. The colour plates are reproduced from new photography of Rockwell’s original paintings, the typesetting has been done anew to a high standard, and new introductions – illustrated with Rockwell’s rarely seen preliminary sketches – examine this unique encounter between two legendary chroniclers of America.
Also available: Treasure Island and Kidnapped boxed set ISBN 9780789214089
An abundantly illustrated journey through one of the world’s most diverse and fascinating regions.
Although India’s northeastern administrative region makes up only eight percent of India’s land area, it is home to some 140 indigenous tribes, each with its own unique culture. The terrain, predominantly hilly, ranges from snow-capped peaks to tropical rainforests. Now, for the first time, noted authors and filmmakers Dipti Bhalla Verma and Shiv Kunal Verma provide a comprehensive introduction to this little-known yet captivating part of the world.
Verma and Verma conduct us from the towering Kanchenjunga massif in Sikkim to the tea plantations of Assam, to the astonishing biodiversity of Arunachal Pradesh, to the martial tribes and Baptist churches of Nagaland, to the birthplace of polo in Manipur, to the living root bridges of Meghalaya, to the farms nestled among the hills of Tripura and Mizoram. They take us into the lives of the many peoples of these eight states, who maintain their traditional customs and beliefs even in the face of growing ecological threats.
Featuring more than 300 colour photographs and several detailed maps, Life and Culture in Northeast India will be an essential volume for anyone interested in the peoples and places of Planet Earth.
A head-to-head comparison of the two greatest soccer stars of their generation – and perhaps of all time.
One, diminutive and reserved; the other, tall and theatrical. One with six Ballons d’Or, and the other with five. There’s no doubt about it – Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are the best. But which one is better? This lively book compares every aspect of the legendary rivals’ careers, to let the reader decide. It compares their stats, including their ten years of matchups in El Clásico, their club trophies, and their individual awards and milestones. It analyses their style of play, and how it has evolved throughout their careers. And, it looks at how their rivalry continues off the field, in terms of endorsement deals, social media followings, and philanthropic endeavors. Packed with colour photos of the champions in action, Messi and Ronaldo will spark discussion among both players’ partisans.
“These photos are stunning, bittersweet visions of a past shared by all of us.“ – Tom Hanks.
“Brian Hamill is best known as a still photographer and a photojournalist. But I’ve always regarded him – first and foremost – as a master portraitist. And this book bears that out – capturing as it does, the many-faceted phenomenon that was John and Yoko – artists, lovers, cultural comrades and – most elusively – business partners. Behind his camera, Hamill is something of a phenomenon himself.” – Richard Price
Renowned celebrity photojournalist Brian Hamill delivers his own insider view of this Beatles icon, through intense, intimate photographic portraits and insightful text. Whether Lennon is dominating the stage, posing on the roof of the Dakota building, or relaxing with Yoko Ono, Hamill’s photography takes this quasi-mythical figure from the world of Rock ‘n’ Roll and shows him as the man he really was.
“Brian looked at the John Lennon who had become an icon and saw instead a familiar face. He saw a working-class hero like those that built the City of New York. And so when John Lennon came to live in New York, Brian captured him as a New Yorker, in the joyous images that you will find in this book.” – Pete Hamill
“Lennon, one of the most famous men in human history, wanted to live as one among many. Of course, he hit it off with Hamill. The guy that flew so high needed some oxygen. Hamill is fresh air. His folio of Lennon images shows Lennon focused, present, but edgy, never relaxed.” – Alec Baldwin
“Erudite, while still being fun to read.” — Professor Tim Neild, physiologist and medical educator
“A triumph of Social History in the Georgian period.” — Dr Nigel Cooke FRCP, physician and ceramic historian
This is the first biography and reference book dedicated to Samuel Percy, a modeller who produced an impressive oeuvre of wax portraits and tableaux in the mid-to-late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Based in part on the author’s own substantial collection of Percy waxes, this book follows Percy from his beginnings in Dublin, at the Dublin Society Drawing Schools, working with the famed statuary John Van Nost; to England, where he journeyed from town to town, putting advertisements in regional newspapers. These revealing advertisements have been gathered here for the first time, in order to track his travels. Whether taking the likeness of Princess Charlotte of Wales, or falling victim to a highway robber in Birmingham, these fragments of Percy’s history paint a fascinating picture of his life as a wandering artisan. As well as a chronological narrative of Percy’s life, this book commits an entire chapter to an area of his work that has never been studied before: his miniature tableaux. These portray various subjects, both religious and secular, from Christ on the Cross to playing children. They are catalogued in an appendix, and almost thirty are illustrated. Based entirely on original research, Mr. Percy: Portrait Modeller in Coloured Wax features over a hundred illustrations, celebrating both Percy’s accomplishments and the works of other modellers for comparison.
It is interdisciplinary teams with complex compositions that develop and realise exhibitions. Groenlandbasel directs a network of specialists and with Spaces and Stories enables an insight into the cooperation and the dedicated efforts of a wide range of involved parties. Exhibition thinkers and exhibition makers express themselves alongside each other in essays, shorter highlights and interviews.
The texts are accompanied by a diverse selection of projects by Groenlandbasel: museum developments, special and permanent exhibitions, architecture, as well as indoor and outdoor installations.
With text contributions from: Dominic Huber, Director Rimini Protokoll, Zurich; Nina Gorgus, Curator Historical Museum Frankfurt; Ramon De Marco, Sound Designer Idee und Klang, Basel; Daniel Tyradellis, freelance curator, Berlin; Beat Hächler, Director Alpine Museum of Switzerland, Bern; Sibylle Lichtensteiger, Director Stapferhaus Lenzburg.
Text in English and German.
Men in stately black, women with huge ruffs, children with golden rattles, old women with wizened faces, and self-satisfied artists… These are the main players in just about every portrait ever painted in the Southern Netherlands. From the15th to the 17th centuries, the tract of land that we today call Flanders was the economic, cultural, intellectual and financial heart of Europe. And money flows – with everyone who could afford it investing in a portrait.
Today, these cherished status symbols of the past have largely lost their original significance. But beyond their functional and emotional aspects, these portraits turn their subjects into gateways to the past. This book takes masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation and outlines the broad context in which they came into being, peeling back levels of meaning like the layers of an onion. Whether captured in an impressive Rubens or Van Dyck, or an intimate portrait by a forgotten artist, the persons portrayed were once flesh and blood, each with their own peculiarities, hidden agendas and ambitions. Some portraits are very personal and hyper-individual. Others are a little dusty, the ladies and gentleman being children of their time. In most cases, however, their dreams and aspirations are surprisingly timeless and soberingly recognisable.
The Bold and the Beautiful
is an appointment with history: a meeting through portraiture with men and women from bygone centuries. But for those willing to look closely, the border between the present and the past is paper-thin.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Blind Date. Portretten met blikken en blozen, Autumn 2020, in Snijders&Rockoxhuis Antwerp, curated by Dr. Katharina Van Cauteren & Hildegard Van de Velde with a scenography by Walter Van Beirendonck.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude rank among the most popular artist couples of our time. They were unrivalled in breaking the art world’s tight boundaries and arousing the enthusiasm of a broad public, across all social strata, for their spectacular shrouding’s of buildings and landscapes.
The PalaisPopulaire presents the Jochheim Collection
and traces the history of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s breathtaking large-scale projects; complemented by their rarely seen early works. Of course, the wrapping of the Reichstag takes centre stage, which enabled all of Berlin to shine in a most unique way 25 years ago.
Text in English and German.
Raphael arrived in Rome in 1508 and remained there until his death in 1520, working as painter and architect for popes Julius II and Leo X and for the most prestigious patrons. Here the artist changed his painting style several times, looking at the works of Michelangelo, Sebastiano del Piombo and the vast repertoire of ancient painting and sculpture. In the Eternal City Raphael practised architecture for the first time, designing buildings that reflected the models of Antiquity such as the Pantheon, the descriptions deriving from written sources such as Vitruvius’ treaty on architecture, and the examples of modern architects like Donato Bramante.
This guide supplies essential and up to date information on all the civil or religious buildings designed or built by Raphael in Rome, and the frescoes and paintings, housed in churches or museums, whether executed in the city or arrived there at a later stage.
November 19, 1479: a dynastic alliance, two noble scions, a regal wedding, short-lived and with an unhappy ending. These pages reconstruct the story of the magnificent bas relief in the Acton Collection (Villa La Pietra, Florence), commissioned to celebrate the marriage between Antonio Basso Della Rovere, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, and Caterina Marzano d’Aragona, the niece of King Ferdinand I of Naples. The heraldic symbols of the three coats of arms leave no doubt about the identities of the characters and events surrounding its creation, and lead us to the original location of the work, born as the overdoor to the main portal of the Basso Della Rovere Palace in piazza della Maddalena in Savona. Through close examination of the Della Rovere in Rome, this study highlights some previously unknown facts about the family’s origins and returns to Savona and its role as a political, cultural, and artistic protagonist in late 15th-century Italy.
This is a book about ideal landscapes and Feng-Shui. Using evolutionary and anthropological approaches, Peking University professor Kongjian Yu – who holds a doctorate degree in Design from Harvard – explores the origin, structure, and meanings of Feng-Shui in juxtaposition to the ideal landscape models in Chinese culture. Using illustrative site observations and literature, Yu argues that Feng-Shui landscapes share similar structures with other Chinese ideal landscapes – the implications of which are deconstructed into terms of geography, anthropology, ecology, and philosophy.
As a landscape architect and urbanist, Professor Yu respects the role of Feng-Shui in the making of places, yet still is in opposition to its superstitious nature. Well illustrated and poetically written, this book is a must-read for those who are interested in Feng-Shui, as well as those who care about their daily living environment – especially those who practice architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism.
Yoga and the City photographically documents a variety of people who are committed to yoga philosophy and yoga lifestyles in big cities – people, who live in the middle of hustle and bustle, but manage to maintain their harmony and happiness. It doesn’t matter what is surrounding them, what really matters is how they look at everything around them. Possibly, when people see this photography, they will decide to try yoga or meditation. Yoga and the City combines art, spirituality, and sport. It is a reflection of strength and power – strength to overcome adversities and to find balance while living in a fast paced environment. Yoga is a way to find alignment, to become closer to your spiritual core.
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.
1941. War is raging in Europe and now sweeps through Southeast Asia.
In Bangkok, Kate Fallon, an American nurse, who came to Thailand to leave her past of poverty and a broken heart behind, and Lawrence Gallet, a wealthy English journalist, are trapped in the chaos of conflict, believing their love can overcome their differences before being torn apart.
Lawrence flees to China to escape the advancing Japanese army, while the net closes slowly around Kate, who has remained behind, increasingly threatened and forced to hide her identity.
A sweeping saga moving from a Thailand uneasily poised between Japan and the west to the ravaged battlegrounds of Burma and India, from the charity ward of the Bangkok hospital to bombed airfields, from the Thai domestic resistance movement to the deadly jungles of the Arakan, Bangkok in Times of Love and War is the story of life and death, passion, loyalty and loss, and of a man and a woman caught up in the upheaval of history.
The concept of Layered Morphologies is a theoretical and methodological approach that investigates the coevolutionary nature of architecture and settlements, to propose an organic and integrated approach to their reading, protection and design enhancement. Transcending some usual spatial ontologies and operating across interdisciplinary fields, it promotes a renewed notion of built heritage as historicised architecture, and landscape as a structure of structures, where any act of modification should start from recognising pre-existing signs, typo-morphological structures, and writing of the ground and formal orders. Advancing critical-theoretical propositions while verifying their operational value in the case study of Fenghuang (Shaanxi) – a famous historic and cultural town in China – the methodology reveals a new reading and the potential underlying of Chinese settlements forms. Architectural and urban-rural design projects are not the colonisation of a void (a tabula rasa) but rather an understanding and interpretation of an existing text with its erasures and absences (tabula plena), which also presents the principles for future writings.
In the autumn of 2020, Christo will wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in silvery fabric for 16 days, returning to his signature style – after realising The Floating Piers in Italy, the London Mastaba, and a quarter of a century after he and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag building in Berlin. As a prelude, a major exhibition at PalaisPopulaire in the German capital will celebrate this 25-year anniversary in the spring of 2020. At the same time, the Pompidou Center will pay tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude by staging The Pont Neuf Wrapped Documentary exhibition as well as a comprehensive show highlighting their early years in Paris.
To accompany these events, Matthias Koddenberg, art historian and long-time friend of both Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude, who was the other half of the artistic duo until her death in 2009, has edited an elaborate collection of interviews. The book is composed of many conversations held between Koddenberg and Christo in the artist’s New York studio over the last few years.
With rare frankness, Christo describes how he fled from Bulgaria and made his way into the Western world. He talks about his time in Vienna and Geneva, his vibrant life in Paris that was full of hardship, and the fateful moment when he met Jeanne-Claude.
This publication provides an exceptional inside view, uniting texts and numerous archival images and photographs, many of which have never been published before, or depict early works by Christo that have only recently been rediscovered.
Absolutely Augmented Reality
takes as its subject the intersection of technology, fine art and the idea of authorship through a series of richly saturated, theatrical and symbolic images that use costume, character and allegory to create a sense of exploration and melancholic intrigue. In this dream world of strange and alluring portraiture, the viewer is delighted by a host of archetypal images, hybrid creatures, surreal motifs, canonical postures, as well as inversions of iconic art historic references.
Appealing to fine art, design, and photography consumers alike, this new book features some 100 colour images from and Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song’s previously unpublished art project. Alongside the photographs it offers a statement by the two artists and a brief introductory text by art historian Rosa J.H. Berland, as well as critical essays by art critic Anthony Haden-Guest and Lilly Wei, and an interview with Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song conducted by Iona Whittaker, and Arnau Salvadoe.