Marc Held entered history in 1965 with his famous Culbuto armchair, followed in 1966 by his furniture manufactured by Prisunic. Over a period of fifty years, he created some 150 furniture pieces, notably participating in 1983 in the interior design of the apartments in the Élysée Palace. Beginning in the 1970s, he also designed singular works of architecture, for individuals and for corporate clients such as IBM. At the end of the 1980s he chose to focus entirely on this passion of his when he settled on the Greek island of Skopelos. Interested in vernacular architecture, he dedicated a widely acknowledged book on Greece, Maisons de Skopelos, précis d’architecture vernaculaire published by Éditions Skopelos.net, in 1994, to it. It was also on Skopelos where over a period of thirty years he built eight exceptional villas: Lemonia, Maistros, Nina, Loukas, The Temple, Mourtia, Myrto and Kapsari. Each house is an architectural manifesto in its own right. These eight villas, in spectacular sites beside the sea, built with local materials and in accordance with the construction techniques of the island – all the artisans were from there – with the magical landscapes in which they are integrated, are eight lessons on the notion of genius loci, which so inspired Marc Held’s architecture. Photographed by Deidi von Schaewen – with spectacular shots taken via drone-mounted cameras – his eight beautiful villas are also presented with his drawings and plans developed during their conception phases. Text in English and French.

111 Places for Kids in Chicago That You Must Not Miss is not your typical kid-centred guide to Chicago: Step off the beaten tourist path, lace up your gym shoes and get ready to set off on 111 adventures across Chicagoland. Feed a giraffe; kiss a beluga; find a ghost; descend into an energy portal; see (and smell!) a corpse flower in bloom. Learn how soap is made; meet a million dollars and more. If you’re looking for out-of-the-box family adventures, this is the guide for you.

Around 1900, a small group of influential patrons, critics, writers, and artists turned Weimar into a utopian centre of modern art and thought. Several artists and writers sought to create a ‘New Weimar’ and position Friedrich Nietzsche at its head, as the radical prophet of modernity.

In 1902, two years after the philosopher’s death, Max Klinger was commissioned to carve Nietzsche’s portrait where his cult was organised. Starting from a heavily reworked death mask, Klinger executed the famous marble herm that still today adorns the reception room of the Nietzsche Archive. Only three monumental bronze versions were cast, one of which is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. With this sculpture in focus, accompanied by a series of paintings, drawings, plaster casts, and small bronzes, Radical Modernism will show how Klinger and his patrons invented the ‘official’ Nietzsche, transforming a highly expressionist portrait into an idealised classical cult image. The exhibition and this catalogue will also include a comprehensive series of early editions of Nietzsche’s most influential books and will bring together work by the other protagonists of the ‘New Weimar’, in order to shed light on this extraordinary artistic and cultural constellation of modernism for the first time in North America.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa – 18 April – 25 August 2019.

Many of Gauguin’s portraits of Breton and Polynesian sitters, as well as his self-portraits, include inanimate objects. Intriguing as these are, the works in Paul Gauguin’s portrait gallery have never really been the subject of a thorough study. This book, first published in English in 2005, fills a gap in the scholarly literature on Gauguin, one of the leading figures in post-Impressionist art, with an in-depth, well-illustrated examination of his portraits. An array of experts on Gauguin’s art reflect on the symbolic attributes his models were endowed with, and the meaning behind the evocative settings he chose for them. The authors explore the many aspects of the artist’s portraits, often in light of the remarks he made about his models, and focus on their importance in relation to his larger oeuvre. This book, which is intended as a standard text in this field, includes essays written by experts in Gauguin’s work, all established scholars and researchers.

Text in French.

Accompanying a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, this catalogue presents a broad selection of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century French and Danish art from the celebrated Ordrupgaard museum near Copenhagen. Assembled for the most part between 1892 and 1931 by the Danish insurance magnate Wilhelm Hansen (1868-1936), the Ordrupgaard collection offers a spectacular overview of French painting from Eugène Delacroix through to Paul Cézanne, as well as magnificent examples from the Danish Golden Age.

Fully illustrated and including an essay by Dr. Paul Lang, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Canada, the catalogue provides the opportunity to experience the highlights of the Ordrupgaard collection. It includes remarkable groupings of works that reflect various stages in the careers of painters such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Paul Gauguin, C.W. Eckersberg, and Vilhelm Hammershøi. While French Impressionist and Danish works are a focus, other-often contradictory-art movements of nineteenth-century France, including the Barbizon school and Realism, are also well represented.

Text in English and French.

This book is the first important monograph dedicated to the work of Pablo Reinoso, a Franco-Argentinian artist and designer, a curious and largely self-taught jack of all trades. Technically a sculptor, but actually an artist through and through, Pablo Reinoso has been exploring multifarious artistic avenues from an early age. Part-French, through his mother, he left his native Argentina in 1978 and settled in Paris, where he worked on his art. He produces his works in series – Articulations (1970-80), Water Landscapes (1981-86), The Discovery of America (1986-89), Breathing Sculptures (1995-2002) – which he chops up and rummages through as he explores new worlds and different materials, translating the permanent work in progress which is his way of thinking. An increasing maturity is evident in Ashes to Ashes (2002), a work in which he twists and splits wooden boards in an attempt to rid them of their function. Continuing in the same vein, but having in the meantime held important positions as an artistic director and designer in large companies, Reinoso began a new series in 2004 highlighting an icon of industrial design, the Thonet chair. He then turned his attention to the seemingly anonymous public benches found in all cultures throughout the world – objects that for this very reason are timeless and beyond fashion. The results are his so-called Spaghetti Benches (begun in 2006), which have multiplied and found their place in the most unlikely corners. In his very latest series, Scribbling Benches (started in 2009), Reinoso no longer takes an anonymous bench, nor an iconic chair, as his point of departure, but a steel girder. The work plays on the unexpectedness of a solid, heavy object, a key structural component in architecture, that is made to twist like a piece of wire and turn into a bench suggesting airy, transparent, contemplative spaces.

“The literature of Juan Villoro… is opening up the path of the new Spanish novel of the millennium.” – Roberto Bolaño From the semiotics of pet iguanas to the disillusionment of mariachi singers, Villoro reveals the deep dissatisfactions and absurdities of life in Mexico and its carnivalesque capital. We encounter a border trucker making a movie about illegal migrants, a cuckolded football superstar, and a gluten-free American journalist seeking the authentic Mexican experience. A master of the post-modern narrative, and his stories are a semiotic theme park where both Free Willy and Baudrillard find their place. Villoro gives us contemporary Mexico through a complex interplay of culture and character psychology in the most surprising, fresh and humorous ways.

Phase 3 of digitalisation has started. A phase of artificial intelligence has revolutionised the buying behavior of customers: collecting information, the buying process and customer service have changed dramatically. This book explains the impact of the ‘internet of things’, virtual assistants, bots and client data. But first of all this is a book about customers. In a world of automatisation the most important question remains: how can I be customer-oriented? “Steven is a much asked for keynote speaker for our events, always a highlight. He has a unique and authentic style: with a combination of academic depth and well-built cases he spices up his presentations with a tremendous amount of humor.” – Anthony Belpaire, Google Website: stevenvanbelleghem.com Youtube: StevenVanBelleghem/videos Twitter: @StevenVBe

Generational thinking is not a science, but a reliable framework for successful marketing, communications, and product strategy. This book describes how marketing is evolving for the demographic group Generation Y, born between 2010 – the year when the iPad and Instagram were launched – and 2025. This book examines the impact of technology and digitisation on the brains and development of this generation, the world’s future consumers. With examples and insight, it shows how young entrepreneurs and influencers use new media to promote their interests and associated brand preferences to their peers and to the world.

The drastic decisions you make, to do the things that you are good at, is the best way to self-realisation and authenticity. It also forms the gateway to contributing to society. By developing both your skills and talent, you automatically become more precious and beneficial to your surrounding environment. Doing the things that you are good at is almost like a life insurance, it guarantees that as you get older you are more likely to enjoy your work and generally, your life. Within the pages of Go with Your Talent Luk Dewulf investigates several different theories, including: how a person’s background could be the key to his ‘manual’; how to focus on talent, and how to deal with your weaknesses or those things that do not hold an interest for you. He describes how a certain job and a continuous use of your skills, can lead a person in two different directions: success or burn-out. This book contains practical tools that a person can utilise to their benefit and is based on insights from positive psychology. Contents: Acknowledgments and thanks; Foreword; Introduction; Sustainability and the use of your talent; Knowing what you are good at: talent in action; Go with your talent!; The ‘manual’ hypothesis; When it is difficult to see talent in yourself – and in others; You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink: going with your talent at school and work; Epilogue: the beauty of ‘ordinary’ talent.

150 years ago, Belgium and Japan signed their first treaty. They have been important economic partners for each other ever since. As a result, the reciprocal exchange of artistic influence between these countries flourished: Belgian artists were inspired by ‘Japanisme’, while Japanese writers read the works of Maurice Maeterlinck and Emiile Verhaeren. After the devastating violence of World War II, these two countries’ cooperation finally resulted in a solid alliance. This book invites its readers to focus on the cross-cultural exchanges that make the Belgian-Japanese relationship a fertile space for diplomacy, trade, and creativity.

In today’s economy, everything has changed. In order to survive, managers and organisational leaders will have to address the need to connect to the largest possible audience without losing touch with the individual. But how does this work? How can managers look ahead? How can they imagine how their company will be doing in thirty years from now, and do so in an environment where predictions have become all but impossible, and then at the same time successfully imprint their vision into a strategy for the next three months from now? What makes today’s customers tick? Why does everything have to be easy, fast, fun and simple? Why is data the new gold, and why is AI a blessing? The answer is plain. To keep evolving, leaders should be inspired by the outside world. They should have the guts to read the signals all around them. They should meet the needs of their customers and, above all, they should focus on every possibility. In short, they should never stop experimenting.

The digital revolution has made customers more demanding than ever. Speed, transparency and hyper-personalisation are the new norm. More and more brand manufacturers are now selling in their own stores and webshops are selling directly to consumers in increasing quantities. In the meantime, new technologies are heralding the next phase of seismic change. In this book, Gino Van Ossel introduces the concept of optichannel, which will guide retailers, brand manufacturers and service companies through and beyond the current wave of digital hysteria. Using recognisable examples, he offers a realistic view of the retail landscape of the future and sets out a practical framework for a successful strategy that combines profit, competitiveness and customer focus.

“Vandekeybus brought into focus a whole new genre of modern dance… Combat rolls, breakneck sprints and savagely wrestled duets became the defining vocabulary of a new generation.” The Guardian
In 2016, Wim Vandekeybus’ company Ultima Vez celebrates its 30th birthday. Never before has his oeuvre been recorded in a book. Until now. This extraordinary book is a visual trip through the most powerful images from his repertoire, a quest for the ideas and themes that inspire him. It also contains unpublished texts, notes and scripts from his shows and films. A number of compagnons de route, such as David Byrne, Mauro Pawlowski, and Peter Verhelst, offer a personal textual contribution. Text in English, French, and Dutch.

“Although the street art is generally conveyed in a very natural matter, even his dead animal paintings seem at peace.” – Streetartbio.com “Detached from the artist’s identity, his detailed, illustrative animal paintings have brought him back to the world. With local species of animals as his main focus, ROA inevitably starts a dialogue about human interaction with nature and the environment, whether it is painting on the walls of a museum or in an abandoned rural factory.” – Hi Fructose – The New Contemporary Magazine “One of the most influential acts of street art around the world.” – The Huffington Post Fascinated by nature, the anonymous muralist and street artist ROA is inspired by the beauty of its non-human inhabitants. With great attention to detail, ROA draws over-sized black and white creatures of endemic or endangered species on buildings around the world, from Moscow to Mexico City, and from Los Angeles to London. His subjects are frequently survivors; scavengers, rodents, and unusual animals that thrive in their particular milieu.

Two-hundred capitals; one street each; seven years of travelling and collecting photos, stories, facts and figures about each capital. This is not just another photography book. It reveals everything that a street means to society: education, wisdom, youth, experience, happiness, stories, food, and so much more. This is the raw material of life, drawn directly from the experiences of the Dutch photographer Jeroen Swolfs. Seeing the street as a unifying theme, he travelled in search of that one street in each place – sometimes by a harbour or a railway station – that comprised the country as a whole. Each stunning image conveys culture, colours, rituals, even the history of the city and country where he found them. Swolfs sees the street as a universal meeting place, a platform of crowds, a centre of news and gossip, a place of work, and a playground for children. Indeed, Swolfs’s streets are a matrix for community; his photographs are published at a time when the unique insularity of local communities everywhere has never been more under threat.

Benjamin West’s The Death of a Stag, a tour de force of pictorial theatre and his own unique Scottish masterpiece, has been the focus of high drama for over two centuries. Painted for the Clan Mackenzie in 1786, the gigantic canvas, measuring twelve by seventeen feet, is still the largest in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. The painting almost left these shores for America, but after a successful campaign, it was purchased in 1987. In 2004, the work was conserved in situ in the National Gallery of Scotland and this book tells the story of the picture, both in terms of its history and the conservation process.

Joan Eardley (1921-1963) is one of Scotland’s most admired artists. During a career that lasted barely fifteen years, she concentrated on two very distinct themes: children in the Townhead area of central Glasgow, and the fishing village of Catterline, just south of Aberdeen, with its leaden skies and wild sea. The contrast between this urban and rural subject matter is self-evident, but the two are not, at heart, so very different. Townhead and Catterline were home to tight-knit communities, living under extreme pressure: Townhead suffered from overcrowding and poverty, and Catterline from depopulation brought about by the declining fishing industry. Eardley was inspired by the humanity she found in both places. These two intertwining strands are the focus of this book, which looks in detail at Eardley’s working processes. Her method can be traced from rough sketches and photographs through to pastel drawings and large oil paintings. Identifying many of Eardley’s subjects and drawing on unpublished letters, archival records and interviews, the authors provide a new and remarkably detailed account of Eardley’s life and art.

The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) is one of the most celebrated paintings of the nineteenth century. It was acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland in 2017. In this new book, the first to focus in detail on this iconic picture, Christopher Baker explores its complex and fascinating history. He places Landseer’s work in the context of the artist’s meteoric career, considers the circumstances of its high-profile commission and its extraordinary subsequent reputation. When so much Victorian art fell out of fashion, Landseer’s Monarch took on a new role as marketing image, bringing it global recognition. It also inspired the work of many other artists, ranging from Sir Bernard Partridge and Ronald Searle to Sir Peter Blake and Peter Saville. Today the picture has an intriguing status, being seen by some as a splendid celebration of Scotland’s natural wonders and by others as an archaic trophy. This publication will make a significant contribution to the debates that it continues to stimulate.

Assembly of the Exalted presents some 50 pieces from the remarkable collection of Alice S. Kandell. The works, dating from the late 13th century to the early 20th, include great masterpieces and emblematic examples of Tibetan Buddhist art. They are all presented here as the constituents of a Tibetan Buddhist shrine. Shrines, both modest and grand, are the primary sites of Tibetan Buddhist practice, whether it be reciting scriptures, performing rituals, saying prayers, or engaging in meditation. The introductory essays thus focus on the Tibetan Buddhist shrine, describing its evolution over the history of Buddhism, its special role in Tibet, and how the pieces in the Kandell Collection came to be assembled and displayed in shrines at institutions across America. Illustrated with vivid photography, forty short essays, each centered on a single work or set of objects, describe the pieces in terms of their importance for the practice of Buddhism, highlighting the many essential functions of Tibetan Buddhist art within the space of a shrine.

Many think slavery ended with the demise of the trans-Atlantic trade, but sadly, that’s far from true. An estimated thirty-six million live without dignity or rights and although slavery is illegal in every country, it continues to persist in all – as a crime against humanity. Lisa Kristine’s indelible images seek to unify humanity and inform the viewer of the tangible humanness of individuals enslaved today. Lisa was invited to the Vatican as a witness to the signing of the Declaration to Eradicate Modern Day Slavery by 2020. When Pope Francis gathered twenty-five of the world’s distinguished faith leaders the message was clear – slavery is not a political issue – it is a crime against humanity, against all people. Lisa’s journey sheds light on the need for a global shift from dependence on slave labour, to fair trade labour systems available and active in many parts of the world today. It is not simply a story about slavery, but liberation. In order to create change, we must first visualise what is required to free those enslaved today. Bound to Freedom focuses on inspiring us to engage in the reality of slavery – to make us aware of the depth of its reach and insist we begin to look for solutions across faiths, communities, and the world. The call is for a renewed commitment to cooperate and to empower those enslaved to be seen.

HOK Tall Buildings is a visually engaging, accessible reference guide highlighting some of the world’s most innovative tall buildings. Written by global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm HOK, the book features creative conceptual designs, projects under construction and built high-rises worldwide. Throughout the book, central themes guiding the design of these tall buildings begin to emerge. These include a focus on creating high-performance, sustainable, iconic, efficient and mixed-use structures that increase the density of urban environments. The global teams at HOK excel at designing intelligent, high-performance tall buildings that become symbols of their time and place. HOK Tall Buildings chronicles the firm’s best recent designs for high-rises around the world, including: in Saudi Arabia, an iconic centrepiece that anchors a new office district; in Azerbaijan, a flame-inspired trio of towers that transforms Baku’s skyline; in South Korea, an iconic residential gateway to the neighbourhoods of Incheon’s dynamic northern district. Each high-rise profiled in the book is designed to blend human need with environmental stewardship, value creation, sense of place, and science and art. Gain insight into the minds and approaches of HOK’s global design teams as you peruse floor plans, sketches, renderings and photographs of dozens of dynamic tall buildings. Learn how an integrated design process enables teams to solve profound functional and technical challenges while igniting the imagination. Discover how designers of tall buildings can balance internal functions with the external demands of site, climate, and culture to create memorable, sustainable structures that enrich people’s lives.

This first-person account of a legendary necropolis will delight Francophiles, tourists and armchair travelers, while enriching the experience of taphophiles (cemetery lovers) and aficionados of art and architecture, mystery and romance. Carolyn Campbell’s evocative images are complemented by those of renowned landscape photographer Joe Cornish. City of Immortals celebrates the novelty and eccentricity of Père-Lachaise Cemetery through the engrossing story of the history of the site established by Napoleonic decree along with portraits of the last moments of the cultural icons buried within its walls. In addition to several ‘conversations’ with some of the high-profile residents, three guided tours are provided along with an illustrated pull-out map featuring the grave sites of eighty-four architects, artists, writers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers and actors, including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison of the Doors. Frédéric Chopin, Georges Bizet, Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Isadora Duncan, Eugène Delacroix, Gertrude Stein, Amedeo Modigliani, Sarah Bernhardt, Simone Signoret, Colette and Marcel Proust.