When he discovered that his home country, the Netherlands, was the second largest food exporter in the world after the US, photographer Kadir van Lohuizen was interested to learn more. He wanted to discover the world behind our food production. Where is our food produced? And how is it distributed across our world? Like a fly on the wall, Van Lohuizen follows the entire process, in the Netherlands, in Kenya, the US, the United Arab Emirates and China. The scale and efficiency of most food companies raises as much respect as questions: What are the effects of these production and consumption chains on the planet? And how future-proof is this? Food for thought, indeed. In this book, which was also partly conceived as a food atlas, Van Lohuizen bundles his images, but together with experts he also takes a closer look at the facts and figures behind the global food industry and shows unique infographics.
Discover the fascinating world of taxidermy in Packshots, the second book by Darwin, Sinke & Van Tongeren. This breathtaking work introduces you to animals like never before, captured in masterful compositions that blur the line between nature and art, between life and death. The stunning images, showcasing the animals in all their beauty and strength, are complemented by exclusive interviews and in-depth insights into the authors’ craft. Packshots is a work of art in itself, bringing the beauty of the wild to life in a truly unique way.
Since the nineties, Walter Van Beirendonck has been fascinated with masks. They change your identity, invoke a certain atmosphere and have an instant impact. Many artists, among whom are André Breton, Pablo Picasso and even Brueghel, have been influenced by them. Power Mask – The Power of Masks elaborates on the many different aspects of masks: the link between Western art and African masks, the supernatural aspect, rituals about masks, masks in fashion or as a fetish… Walter Van Beirendonck is “a truly engaged visionary and a passionate designer, artist and teacher.” – Jurgi Persoons, fashion designer. “Walter Van Beirendonck succeeded where I have failed; he turned me into a muscle-man instantly. He is a true artist and there’s not many of them around.” – Bono, lead singer of U2 “Come along and take a ride into the crazy helter-skelter, inside-out, upside-down world of Walter Van Beirendonck. Colours and shapes reach psychedelic dimensions to charm and astound you.” – Stephen Jones, milliner. This book accompanies an expo in the Wereldmuseum (World Museum) Rotterdam, from 1 September 2017 until 7 January 2018. Facebook @waltervanbeirendonckfanpage, @wereldmuseum Twitter @wereldmuseum Instagram @waltervanbeirendonck, @wereldmuseum www.waltervanbeirendonck.com, www.wereldmuseum.nl
This beautifully illustrated book explores the artistic roots of Flemish identity during the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. Through art, essays, poems, and reflections by artists, academics and collectors, it revives the cultural context of the Flemish Belle Eqoque. Featured here are works by Emile Claus, Valerius De Saedeleer, George Minne and Gustave Van de Woestyne, James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Léon Spilliaert, Constant Permeke, Gust De Smedt, Frits Van den Berghe and Edgard Tytgat.
Since its inception, T.O.P. office has boosted architecture as an uncompromising social tool to persistently question the terrestrial scale and the delicate balance with mankind. Whichever way you turn it, Earth – the orb – is the undeniable alpha and omega for any future stance, action or intervention. An insight Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office have never failed to underscore – or challenge.
Armed with an unsparing but humorous logic, a firm belief in the freedom of the individual, and a persistent commitment to ecology, T.O.P. office continues to hold up a mirror to society. Always unsolicited. Simply because they have to.
For this publication, editors Peter Swinnen and Anne Judong were given unlimited access to the archives of T.O.P. office. The title is also the filter through which to examine the living archive. Which projects – whether conceived in the 1970s or 2000s – retain the intelligent promise of a future plan? And how can they enlighten designers, architects, urban planners, ecologists, cultural workers, administrations and policymakers of today and tomorrow? A future plan in itself.
Dick van Gameren, a partner with the renowned Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo, has been engaging in housing design for the past 25 years as part of his work as designing architect as well as his research and teaching at TU Delft’s Global Housing Study Center. In this book, he presents some 40 of his own projects in this field through concise texts and photographs with explanatory captions as well as through plans and drawings. They’re grouped to illustrate seven specific aspects of housing design: Streets and Squares, Courtyards and Patios, Gardens, Halls, the Fireplace, Walls, and Roofs. Together they constitute a multi-faceted catalogue of housing typologies.
In four supplementing essays, van Gameren explores evolutions in residential architecture in the Netherlands. He places his own concepts in context of these developments and expands on what he considers the key factors of good housing design. A particular focus he puts on affordable housing, a pressing issue in so many countries and metropolitan areas around the world.
Dutch Dwellings is an inspiring read for anyone involved in housing design today.
In 1889, Saint Rémy de Provence was a small provincial town, already prosperous thanks to the arrival of the train and the cultivation of teasel thistle and its seeds. It was a rural village, home to a local bourgeoisie and already enjoying a certain prosperity and attractiveness. Unknowingly, this population would coexist with a painter who had arrived there for health reasons. For a year, one of the most important pages in the history of art would be written, without the population being truly aware of it.
The “mad artist” would, however, make Saint-Rémy-de-Provence famous, and his works would later be exhibited around the world. How would the city gradually become aware of this unintentional legacy? How would it promote it, draw inspiration from it to develop artistic, cultural, economic, and tourism projects?
This is one of the first books to focus exclusively on Van Gogh’s very prolific period in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. One of the chosen angles, unprecedented in the literature devoted to the artist, is to recount the ties that the commune and its residents may have had with him, during his lifetime or posthumously. The book includes testimonies from Saint-Rémy families whose members met or worked with the painter, owned works, or were closely linked to his work after his death.
“Haunting photographs” – The Wall Street Journal. “Henk van Rensbergen is a hero for urban explorers around the world” – Flanders Today. “As an airline pilot, Belgian-born Henk Van Rensbergen was used to travelling the world. But he found a great way to supersize that passion: hunting for the most wonderful, secret, haunting abandoned places” – CNN. While his crew is resting at the pool, pilot and photographer Henk van Rensbergen explores deserted city palaces, overgrown factories or desolate areas of nature, finding beauty in the decay. This engaging book of photographs, a revised edition with new material, lets us wander through abandoned places, including Abkhazia, a break-away region bordering Georgia and Russia and the newest must-visit for every urban explorer.
In this ode to the charms of Paris and Parisian style, Belgian photographer Henk van Cauwenbergh captures the essence of the city’s most iconic venues and its perennially chic denizens. He seeks out the culinary hotspots of Paris and turns his camera on the places to see and be seen. Inspired by the microcosm of Saint-Germain, his Paris is imbued with the spirit of the places where people gather: the casual efficiency of waiters at Les Deux Magots and the Café de Flore, the boisterous atmosphere of Brasserie Lipp. Long influenced by urban and innate style of Serge Gainsbourg, Charles Aznavour, Catherine Deneuve, and Jeanne Moreau, van Cauwenbergh’s Paris is one of seduction and nonchalance, of beautiful women, and the heady emotions of first love.
‘SONG’, a legendary fashion, art, and interiors concept store in Vienna was founded in the 1990s by Myung-il Song. As an early outpost of edgy design and emerging artists, it quickly became the city’s most popular platform for avant-garde fashion. This book presents a retrospective of the ‘SONG’ fashion archives, with clothing by Dirk Van Saene, Martin Margiela, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Bernhard Willhelm, Stephen Jones, Kei Ninomiya, Paul Harnden Shoemakers, and Balenciaga. These unique and timeless pieces in Myung-il Song’s personal collection have been re-photographed and are published here together for the first time
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has been collecting Surrealist art since 1965. In something over half a century, what began with a single purchase has now grown into a world-class core collection with works by Dalí, Magritte, Man Ray, De Chirico, Ernst and many others. Surrealism, which started as a literary movement, is not a school, but rather a collective attitude or lifestyle in which automatism, chance and the subconscious are key. The museum’s collection includes paintings, sculptures, objects, drawings, prints and photographs – as well as a large number of Surrealist publications, magazines, manifestos and pamphlets. This dream collection has now been brought together in a catalogue raisonné for the first time.
The catalogue raisonné contains three introductory essays. Sandra Kisters, the current Head of the Collection and Research Department, provides an outline of the Surrealist movement. Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Saskia van Kampen-Prein, explains the acquisition history and establishment of the museum’s Surrealist art collection. Surrealism expert Laurens Vancrevel examines the museum’s unique, often neglected collection of Surrealist publications. The essays are followed by the catalogue, consisting of 108 short texts about the artworks. Most of the texts were written by Marijke Peyser, who was awarded her doctorate in 2008 with her dissertation on the Zodiaque, a circle of patrons around Salvador Dalí. The Duchamp texts are by Bert Jansen, who obtained his doctorate with his thesis on Marcel Duchamp in 2015.
Did you know that Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was the first public art institution in the Netherlands to acquire a painting by Vincent Van Gogh for its collection? And that 20,562 litres of water are needed for Olafur Eliasson’s installation Notion motion? Or that Gerard Reve once sent an admiring letter to the museum about Geertgen tot Sint Jans’s small panel The Glorification of the Virgin? These and many more fascinating facts can be found in a lavishly illustrated publication featuring more than 150 highlights from the collection.
For over 170 years, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has been building up a very varied collection of art and design from the Middle Ages to the present day. Best of Boijmans presents the collection as a unity in diversity. Detached from time, place and medium, surprising connections are made between the different areas of the collection. A sculpture of a human figure by the contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan bears an unexpected resemblance to a drawing of John the Baptist by Raphael; a 19th‐century landscape by Barend Cornelis Koekkoek sits extraordinarily comfortably alongside a work by the Rotterdam artist Daan van Golden. This handy little book takes you on a thematic, visual journey through the collection.
The Belgian architectural firm Van Damme – Vandeputte was founded 5 years ago but their portfolio is impressive, featuring a wide range of architectural projects: new residential constructions tailored to the client’s needs, sustainable and high-quality renovations, interior design with special detailing, offices and corporate sites built with, among other things, great attention to the integration into the surroundings, and restorations of (protected) heritage sites. In this coffee-table book, compiled and designed with the greatest care, the architects present a selection of projects and shed light on the process and philosophy behind their oeuvre. The book is like an extension of their work and exemplifies the firm’s passion and dedication, captured in the amazing photos by Thomas De Bruyne (Cafeine). He specialises in architecture and interior design photography and works for renowned clients and firms in Belgium and abroad.
“This is the very best of Antwerp and the best from here in Oxford.” — The Oxford Times Weekend
“This entertaining exhibition of the 16th- and 17th-century drawings from the Low Countries has energy to spare.” — The Telegraph
This catalogue will accompany the Bruegel to Rubens exhibition held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford between 23 March and 23 June 2024.
Through a selection of over 100 world-class drawings created by Flemish artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an insightful and comprehensive overview will be given into how these drawn sheets were used as part of artistic practice, within or beyond the artist’s studio. By revealing the drawings’ function, rather than on their attribution or iconography, these sheets will become more fully understood through the eyes of contemporary readers. Identifying how and why these sheets were created will render these artworks more accessible to a wider audience. The three main essays will each deal with one of the principal functions of drawings at the time: studies (copies and sketches), designs for other artworks (paintings, prints, tapestries, metalwork, stained glass, sculpture and architecture), and finally the independent drawings. Each essay will discuss the relevant works within their functional context and compared with other related objects. Introductory chapters will focus on what precisely can be considered a drawing, including its materials, media and techniques, in addition to an attempt to explain the notion of Flanders and Flemish art. Emphasis will be placed throughout the catalogue on how Flemish artists collaborated in creating the most astonishing artworks of their time, unveiling their networks and friendships, as well as their travels across Europe, revealing their international importance.
The exhibition is a partnership with the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp and will bring together for the first time the most stunning drawings from both the Ashmolean and the Plantin-Moretus collections, in addition to further loans from renowned Antwerp and Oxford institutions like the Rubenshuis and Christ Church Picture Gallery. Many of the sheets coming from Antwerp are registered on the Flemish Government’s Masterpieces List and will not be shown again for the next five to ten years to protect them from fading. Prominent artists featured in this catalogue include Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacques Jordaens, among many others. Highlights will include a sketchbook in which a young Rubens has copied Holbein’s Dance of Death woodcuts, intricate pen and ink drawings by Pieter Bruegel, meticulously drawn miniatures by Joris Hoefnagel, portrait studies by Anthony van Dyck, and a rare survival of a friendship album containing numerous drawings and poems dedicated to its owner. Two recently discovered sheets by Rubens will also be included, a design for a book-illustration on optics and an anatomical study of three legs.
Introducing Karel Fonteyne, one of Belgium’s foremost contemporary and fashion photographers. Since 1968 the artist has created an extensive oeuvre that has its place in the history of photography. His timeless visual storytelling relates to nature, darkness and loneliness, the inner world, and esotericism, while touching uncovered dimensions. For more than 15 years Fonteyne was active as a fashion photographer, breaking boundaries by introducing his narrative approach as a contemporary artist in the traditional fashion world. He had early collaborations with Martin Margiela, Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck and Dirk Bikkembergs, and internationally he collaborated with Vogue, Interview, Bazaar, Marie-Claire and Brutus Magazine in Japan.
Text in English and French.
‘What if Vincent van Gogh suddenly realises that he is… himself a sunflower? Or thinks he is?
This book recounts the story of this well-known Dutch artist who, standing in the midst of his overwhelming sensory world, becomes aware just how thin the line between reality and dream world is. Did he live and work on a narrow borderline between truth and fantasy? Did he enter a different, perhaps higher frequency? How did all the images and observations come into him so intensely, and then spill out again onto his canvases? And how did the artist, but also beloved son, brother,… and therefore perhaps sunflower, relate to the world and his immediate environment?
In this richly illustrated, poetic book, author Paul de Moor creates, in words and images, an immersive experience for children aged 10 and over into the world of Van Gogh. As a celebrated children’s author, De Moor has already introduced children and young people to the artistic universes of Roger Raveel, Francis Alÿs, Michaël Borremans, Luc Tuymans and Raoul De Keyser. And now also Van Gogh.
Ages 10 plus.
“Van Hulle is not an interior designer but an interior artist. He understands the art of transforming the soul of the occupants into the soul of a house.” – Elle Deco
Grand Interiors is an immersive ‘grand tour’ of Geoffroy Van Hulle’s grandiose interiors. The Belgian decorator gives us a look inside exuberant private homes, from Knokke to New York. In his unpretentious interiors, he sprinkles generously with colours, patterns and exoticism. ‘Nowhere in my interiors is the distance to a bookcase, fireplace or bar cabinet more than five steps,’ he says. With the bravura of his teachers Cecil Beaton and David Hicks, he designs dazzling sets for everyday theatre.
Please welcome on stage, mister Geoffroy Van Hulle and his Grand Interiors!
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) is undoubtedly one of the most significant and influential architects ever. To the present day, his designs and realised buildings, as well as his thinking and writings, continue to initiate many controversial debates on the achievements and failures of modern architecture. Yet not only architects and urban designers have been inspired or appalled by Mies. This new book demonstrates that his influence reaches far beyond the boundaries of professional architecture. Almost Nothing collects work by 100 painters, sculptors, photographers, film directors, designers, cartoonists, and architects who comment on the buildings, designs, and statements by, or images of, the legendary architect. The works also form a 100-fold re-interpretation of Mies van der Rohe’s life and oeuvre. New York-based architect and writer Christian Bjone in his accompanying text provides rich background information on the individual artists and the depicted art works. The book’s title refers to a statement by Mies himself on one of his celebrated masterpieces, Crown Hall on IIT campus in Chicago, which ingeniously combines simplicity with complexity.
Melle Smets and Joost van Onna took only twelve weeks to assemble Turtle 1, a car built entirely from recycled parts. Made in Africa, Turtle 1 is entirely suited to the local context, sufficiently sturdy to resist the climate and the road conditions, and easy to operate.This book is part of an extensive documentation of the project; this documentation spans several years and has used exhibitions, films and apps to tell the story of this great idea. The automobile industry is monopolised by multinational companies who care only for profit, and constantly seek to outbid each other by developing ever more sophisticated technology. The majority of people outside of the Western world have little access to this market. However, Turtle 1: Building a Car in Africa proves how people’s ingenuity can tackle any challenge. Dutch artist Melle Smets and sociologist Joost van Onna went to Suame Magazine in Ghana, one of the largest industrial areas in sub-Saharan Africa where some 200,000 people dismantle and repair cars and sell used spare parts. Their aim was not only to develop a totally new type of car but, more importantly, to boost autonomy and self-reliance in an attempt to be free from global economic interests. Within two years, the vehicle attracted much attention from the public and the media both in Africa and the Netherlands, prompting Smets and van Onna to create the conditions for producing the car on a small, local scale. The production, however, never took off as their Ghanaian partners had other intentions in spite of all success. While Smets and van Onna promoted their recycling model, the Africans had tragically begun to work on a luxury version of the car. A homage to a project that was never fully realised, this book is a succinct demonstration of humanity’s ability to overcome odds. Exhibition runs until 28 August 2016, Project Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Making cheese is an art, tasting cheese is a delight. Respect for craft, raw materials and animals are how quality raw milk cheeses obtain their full bodied flavours, rich in depth and complexity. For this book, cheese refiner Van Tricht and cheesemaker De Snijder went looking for the best raw milk cheeses. The result is a selection of sustainable top products that are entirely handmade and prepared the traditional way. Here, the authors talk about the people and the stories behind 20 international raw milk cheeses, while demonstrating their love for both the profession and the product.
“The new book features a ton of never-before-seen photos that expose the sheer variety, wonder, and beauty of these organisms that inhabit all the waters around us.” — Deeper Blue
Planktonium is a photo project and a short film by Dutch photographer/cinematographer Jan van Ijken about the unseen world of living microscopic plankton. It is a voyage into a secret universe inhabited by alien-like creatures. These stunningly beautiful, extremely diverse, and numerous organisms are unknown to most of us because they are invisible to the naked eye. However, they are wandering beneath the surface in waters all around us and are of vital importance for all life on earth. Phytoplankton (small plant-like cells) produce half of all the oxygen on earth by photosynthesis, like plants and trees do on land. Zooplankton form the base of the food chain of aquatic life. Plankton also play an important part in the global carbon cycle. They are currently threatened by climate change, global warming and the acidification of the oceans. Jan van Ijken photographed the plankton through microscopes, revealing the beauty and delicate structures of these minute organisms in the finest detail.
“A breathtaking and emotive journey across our planet.” – Outdoor Photography
“van Oosten provides plenty of technical details and anecdotes about how he took his pictures, as well as explanations about the subjects they face.” – Nigel Atherton, Amateur Photographer
An elephant, a waterfall, a tree. For award-winning nature photographer Marsel van Oosten, simplicity is the ultimate form of expression. Through singular subjects and pared-down motifs, he captures the beauty, diversity, and vulnerability of the natural world. This visually stunning volume begins with photographs from Africa before moving through all the continents. The alternations between landscapes and close-ups, colour and black-and white photographs, create a stunning, emotive journey across the planet we call home.
Text in English and German.
How do you portray sin, evil and foolishness in humans? Religious and political tensions and even the weather – we are talking about the depths of the Little Ice Age – contributed to a boom in representations of the Seven Deadly Sins in the Low Countries and immediate surroundings in the long sixteenth century. In this publication, four accessibly written essays highlight different sides of the pictorial tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, with the renowned print series of the same name designed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder at its centre. A fifth, literary essay describes the feverish visions of one of the victims of a true 16th-century series of murders permeated by the deadly sins.
The work Ratio consists of 117 images featuring the same number of naked men and women photographed from behind. Bram Van Stappen made the series as part of the exhibition Back, organised in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2021. Over six weeks, the photographer set up a field studio and invited visitors to undress and take a place in front of the camera, yet face the opposite direction. Set in a generic surrounding and central composition, evenly lit and tightly cropped, the resultant black-and-white images display a form of (anti)portraiture that seems above all to be a study in paradox.
Leafing through the book, we are confronted with an accumulation of nude backs in different shapes and sizes: male and female, young and old, inked and blank, slender and plump, (a)symmetric, straight, or with hunched shoulders. The head, neck, pelvis, and lower extremities are cut from the image with surgical precision, leaving only the back of the torso, arms, and sometimes part of the hands in view. What remains are pieces of an unidentified body frame, covered by a layer of skin.