Manhattan is commonly regarded as an iconic island-territory of the 20th century. Conventional representations reinforce its reading as an urban condition resulting from neoliberal capitalism. These forces have expanded the city grid and extruded its architectures as a laboratory of urban ideas. Yet, like many other coastal and insular conditions, 21st-century Manhattan faces adverse Anthropogenic climate change. Stronger storm surges and sea level rise now demand that the island re-calibrates its social and environmental positions. The city needs to consider once again its fluid archipelagic conditions inherited from glacial dynamics.
With a focus on iconic city representations, the book examines distinct logics that try to make capitalist progress compatible with its territorial conditions. Even though these logics of land, water and ground – here called geologics – are perhaps less dominant than the dense urban culture and, therefore, less predominant in the representation of the city, they are still important to explain why Manhattan evolved to its current condition. The book explores these geologics through relationships between three 19th-century plans of Manhattan and three late-20th-century architectural manifestos – Delirious New York (Rem Koolhaas), The Manhattan Transcripts (Bernard Tschumi), and Lower Manhattan (Lebbeus Woods).
Plans and manifestos are explored creatively through design experimentation that retrospectively re-positions these representations from the perspectives offered by the Anthropocene. With an intricate connection between image, text, and installation, the book is an open invitation to radically interconnected imagination.
Caravaggio’s Portrait of a Gentleman with a Ruff, which is a recent arrival in the Klesch Collection, has a short critical history. It also has a very limited history as regards the associated bibliography and media coverage, perhaps because the painting came to the fore prior to the social media explosion characteristic of recent years and, above all, at a time when today’s almost obsessive interest in Caravaggio was certainly not so developed. This interest has since expanded to incorporate all levels of communication, even the most widely popular. The Portrait first came to people’s attention in 1992 and despite the fact that the artist already exerted an appeal that few other painters could boast at the time, Caravaggio’s following was far removed from what it is today.
Text in English and Italian.
Concrete Homes is a stunning collection of inspiring brutalist interiors, carefully selected and photographed by visual creative Pieter Peulen. This book showcases remarkable homes that embrace the raw beauty of brutalist architecture, where concrete is softened by the warmth of wood and thoughtfully curated design objects. Each project is briefly introduced, but the true essence of these spaces is captured through Peulen’s striking photography. Concrete Homes is a visual journey into the refined side of brutalism, offering inspiration for design enthusiasts and architecture lovers alike.
Behind Closed Doors presents the unusual collection of contemporary art housed in the Lichtenstein Turm in Coburg, Germany. The Stahlberg Collection, which has been expanded steadily since the 1980s, comprises installations, paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, and works on paper by German and international artists. Kept largely behind closed doors—the same doors that kept Ulrich von Lichtenstein prisoner for 36 years, after his affair with the wife of Duke Johann Casimir was discovered in 1597—the Stahlberg Collection will now be opened to the public. This book presents 55 works of art selected and described by the art historian and curator Candice M. Hamelin. It provides profound insights into the hitherto unknown collection of Angelika and Fritz Stahlberg.
Artists: Valérie Belin, Isaac Julien, Alicja Kwade, Mohau Modisakeng, Muntean/Rosenblum, Erwin Olaf, Jaehun Park, Neo Rauch, Kehinde Wiley, Sylvie Zijlmans et. al.
Text in English and German.
Image credits
Bettina Rheims, Rose, c’est Paris, La jongleuse, Tour du Palais de justice, côté quai des Orfèvres, mars 2009, gelatin silver print, 122 x 88 cm, © Bettina Rheims, courtesy Fonds de Dotation de l’Institut pour la Photographie
Pieter Hugo, Abdulai Yahaya, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2010, from the series Permanent Error, C-print, 98 x 98 cm, © Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson Cape Town, Johannesburg, Amsterdam/ Yossi Milo, New York/ Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Sylvie Zijlmans, Dawn, 2006, Installation made of neon tubes, electric cables, bamboo sticks, 274 x 228 cm
Toni Schmale, Geknicktes Rohr, 2018, Bead-blasted aluminium, concrete, brass, steel, 160 x 120 cm
This volume presents anew the influential 20th-century architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose reputation has unfairly languished. Critics often see him as a chameleon who turned against the vibrant aesthetic culture of Berlin upon emigrating to Chicago and created instead the spare, tectonically obsessed, blank box stylism that looms over so many American downtowns. That prevailing interpretation ignores the aesthetic and conceptual coherence within his oeuvre.
Mies often spoke vaguely of a “great form” emerging within modernity. He spent his career seeking to express this condition in the spaces he designed. Through close analysis of over sixty of his buildings and projects, this study reveals that underlying essence. A formal dialectic of center/periphery threads throughout his production, which gives nascent form to the profound societal tensions he sensed. A peculiar interleafing of the centric and the peripheric dominates his shaping of space.
Rarely is Mies considered formally. Using nearly a hundred new analytical diagrams, this book unlocks fresh interrelations between his compositions and between his career’s phases. Unexpected parallels are struck with nineteenth-century Romantic artists like Caspar David Friedrich and with modernists like Piet Mondrian and Mark Rothko. The strands within Mies’s deep readings on philosophy are expanded by comparing him with regional thinkers. The outlines of the “great form” Mies sensed become clearer.
A new and integral Mies emerges, far different from previous interpretations and with enhanced relevance for our contemporary condition.
A Legacy of Positive Consequence showcases Trivers’ enduring commitment to creating architecture that shapes communities and leaves a lasting impact. Featuring a selection of significant projects, the book underscores the firm’s dedication to historic preservation, adaptive reuse, sustainability and innovative solutions to complex challenges. As Trivers’ first publication, it honours the firm’s history and milestones while looking ahead to a future shaped by the transformative power of design.
With the radical proposition of life on inclined planes—a theory known as the oblique function—the French architect Claude Parent sought to free architecture of orthogonal form, renew its social relevance, and inspire people’s interest in the built environment. Oblique Experiments: Claude Parent’s Architectural Installations (1969–1975) explores the significance of a series of temporary interventions that he designed in an attempt to convert his theory into practice. Referred to as practicables, these installations incorporated oblique geometries, involved interdisciplinary collaboration, and made themselves at home in existing buildings, often inside of French cultural centers known as maisons de la culture. Using rarely published archival materials as well as new drawings produced by the book’s author, Oblique Experiments brings overdue attention to this series of architectural experiments with enduring intellectual and creative appeal. Moreover, the book prompts the reader to imagine the radical potential of obliqueness in a range of contemporary practices—beyond the literal prospect of life on sloped floors. As such, Oblique Experiments builds upon Parent’s work in order to imagine new forms of experimentation in architecture, design, and art.
The Ashmolean Museum catalogue Italian Maiolica and Europe (2017) included a range of works from Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and Mexico, as well as Italy, to illustrate the rich history of European tin-glazed pottery. Since then, the Ashmolean has expanded its holdings of tin-glazed and related earthenwares to consolidate its position as one of the world’s most important and wide-ranging collections. Among the acquisitions described here is the only known piece of Italian maiolica made for a Tudor Englishman, a plate made for Humphrey Dethick, who caused a nationwide stir in 1602 by an apparent attempt to assassinate King James VI of Scotland. The bequest from Sidney Knafel of New York has transformed the Museum’s holdings of French faience; while important 16th-century maiolica comes from the collection of the late Airlie Holden-Hindley. Among the lustrewares included are fin-de-siècle pieces by Clément Massier and work by some of the world’s supreme contemporary masters of the technique.
A lone PSG sticker on a North-London Street sign; the towering Maradona mural that watches over Naples. Europe’s fan-made canvases tell football’s biggest stories. Timed perfectly for World-Cup fever, Tifo: The Art of Football Fan Stickers—Revised & Expanded presents 500 plus images from over 100 clubs, printed on premium matte-art stock and bound in a linen-wrapped hardback with foil stamping.
Stickerbomb founders Suridh Hassan and Ryo Sanada spent more than two years tracking down these graphics and the tales behind them: the unlikely bond between Boavista and Aberdeen, St Pauli’s anti-fascist iconography, Sevilla’s surprising love affair with Karl Marx, and how Parma became entangled in Europe’s biggest bankruptcy scandal. Insightful essays by award-winning journalist James Montague and Design Museum curator Eleanor Watson deepen the cultural and historical context.
Equal parts visual archive and behind-the-scenes anecdote Tifo is the ultimate gift for ground-hoppers, quiz-night champions and anyone who bleeds club colours.
A leading New York gallerist reflects on the artworks that have meant the most to him—and shows how collecting, and looking at, art can change your life.
In this book of linked, illustrated essays—a unique hybrid of memoir, art writing, and wisdom-seeking narrative—Steven Kasher looks closely at some 30 artworks in his personal collection. These are not necessarily the largest or most valuable pieces that have passed through his hands, but the ones that have lodged themselves in his mind: a photograph of Janis Joplin, a Philip Guston painting of a salami sandwich on seeded rye, a haunting self-portrait by the comics artist Leela Corman. What sufferings and joys are revealed through these images, he asks? What can they teach us about an expanded self? Can they show us how to love? Through his reflections on these works, Kasher also retraces his personal journey. It is a journey through the New York art world as an artist, an art dealer, a collector, a curator, a writer. The journey of a first-generation Jewish American who plants a Zen seed as a teenager and finds spiritual fruition decades later. A journey through the memory of the Holocaust and a firsthand experience of the Civil Rights Movement. But most of all it is a journey through the meanings we find in art—one that will inspire every art collector and art lover to go take another look at their favourite pictures.
Sebastian Dannenberg (b.1980) sees painting as a universal action that transforms observations and considerations and lends them material form. Backspace brings together groups of works from the last 15 years and showcases Dannenberg’s interventionistic approach: his paintings can be found on ceilings and floors, in passageways, corners, or in the form of wall brackets. Often, they provide architecture with contours, disrupt the perception of space and open up new perspectives on the supposedly familiar. Precision and wit converge in a practice that combines the formal rigour of minimalistic methods with the subjectivity of handwriting and personal expression. Backspace documents, among other things, Dannenberg’s participation in exhibitions at institutions such as the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the Kunsthalle Bremen, as well as various projects in public spaces. Three accompanying essays contextualize his extensive oeuvre and reveal a view of painting that constantly redefines its own boundaries.
Text in English and German.
100 – Munch’tan Sonra | After Munch accompanies Sarkis’ exhibition 85 Screams: After Munch held at Dirimart Dolapdere in 2023. Marking the artist’s 85th birthday, the book features photographic reproductions of 100 oil-on-paper works created between November 2014 and January 2015. Titled 100 Screams: After Munch, this powerful series draws inspiration from the iconic figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, an image that has haunted Sarkis since childhood and echoed throughout his oeuvre. Eschewing brushes, the artist applies white and red oil paints directly from the tube to paper, capturing the raw immediacy and velocity of a scream. Produced shortly after the works were made, the photographic reproduction by the artist emphasise their shifting presence over time and across geographies. Spanning the years from Sarkis’ birth in 1938 to the present and beyond, this autobiographical publication offers a visceral reflection on artistic memory, trauma, and transformation through one of modern art’s most enduring motifs.
Text in English and Turkish.
A revised edition of the standard monograph on renowned American sculptor Joel Perlman, updated to include the latest two decades of his life and work.
This abundantly illustrated volume celebrates the art of Joel Perlman (b. 1943), who has carried forward the great tradition of metal sculpture founded by Pablo Picasso and Julio González and fostered by David Smith and Anthony Caro. Author Philip F. Palmedo, a noted biographer of sculptors, traces the evolution of Perlman’s career, from his early days teaching at Bennington College alongside Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski, to his participation in SoHo’s vibrant 1970s art scene, to his success as an established artist, showing at the André Emmerich gallery and seeing his pieces acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, the Hirshhorn, and many others.
The revised edition of A Sculptor’s Journey has been expanded to included a generous selection of Perlman’s lyrical works of the last two decades. A text by Charles A. Riley II, curator and cultural historian, explores the themes and development of Perlman’s recent sculpture, which ranges in scale from the intimate to the monumental. This volume will be an essential addition to any library of American art.
It is a perilous time for the Roman Republic. Victory over her nemesis Hannibal in the Second Punic War and the subsequent conquest of Greece have led to widespread debauchery and mayhem on the Italian peninsula. Into the breach steps Spurius Postumius Albinus, Consul of Rome in 186 BC, who turns detective to investigate a series of crimes attributed to the cult of the wine god Bacchus that, he argues, threaten the very heart of the State.
Based on events recorded by the Roman historian Livy and confirmed by a surviving bronze plaque in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, Spurius is at once an ancient political whodunit and the first major treatment of a cataclysmic event in Roman history: according to Livy, some 3,500 Romans perished in the witch hunts resulting from Spurius’ investigation. In its finely balanced examination of freedom of belief and expression, and the manipulation of truth in times of national emergency, the novel has great relevance to today’s troubled world.
Kulturalis’s edition of David László Conhaim’s Spurius gives the novel a striking and luxurious new treatment. Renowned Argentinian-born illustrator Jorge González’s vivid images – including full-page and double-page illustrations within the text and an arresting slipcase design – brings the graphic events of the novel to life. Based in Madrid, González previously illustrated the edition of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies published by Los Libros del Zorro Rojo and The Folio Society’s edition of Carlos Ruíz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind. Working hand-in-glove with González through Maria Cardelli’s IllustrationZone is award-winning hand-lettering artist Ruth Rowland who has designed album covers for Elton John, Kate Bush and Cliff Richard.
A multimedia installation of films and videos presents the entire oeuvre of Douglas Gordon (Glasgow 1966), one of the most influential figures in video art.
In 1999, invited to exhibit at the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw, Douglas Gordon chose to present his entire body of video work created up to that point. The exhibition was titled Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now’ish…. To be seen on monitors, some with headphones, others run silently and all simultaneously, it was conceived as an exploration of the concept of the archive: a composite device in which heterogeneous works are connected in a visual and conceptual continuum.
This gave rise to the installation of the same name, which has since been reproduced in many exhibition contexts, renewed and expanded, with the addition of more recent works. Douglas Gordon’s works come to life through the reinterpretation and manipulation of heterogeneous visual materials, including famous and forgotten films, historical and scientific documentaries, television series, and amateur videos. Through these fragments of contemporary visual culture, the artist evokes a profound sense of alienation, moving between repetition, identity and that uncanny familiarity that Freud defined as disturbing.
Through strategies such as sampling, repetition, slowing down, division, mirroring and desynchronisation, the artist dismantles the viewer’s expectations and then recomposes them in a new, often ambiguous and destabilising dimension. Imagination, knowledge and common sense are thus shattered and relocated in a visual universe pervaded by subtle tensions and emotional resonances, capable of questioning and fascinating audiences everywhere.
Text in English and Italian.
This volume celebrates the brocade textiles, or songket, of Bali. Songket, consisting of supplementary weft-decorated textiles made from imported silk and gold and silver threads, was historically reserved for the ruling elite. Today, these luxurious textiles are favoured as ceremonial attire, especially for Balinese brides and grooms. Songket Bali distinguishes itself from similar textiles produced in other regions of Indonesia and Southeast Asia through the use of unique Balinese-style Hindu motifs. These adorn garments and textiles that are part of offerings to deities and ancestors.
Can AI do art? Since 2022, computer scientist Bernhard Egger and artist Hans Furer have been jointly conducting an experiment to test the limits of generative AI and its capacity for abstraction. Prompted by some 800 paintings that Furer had created since 1971, Egger’s AI model generated its own images, from which the artist selected five to transfer them again onto canvas as accurate copies of the digital templates. As a reply, he then painted a new version of one of his earlier works, thus entering a dialogue with the AI image.
The book Can AI Do Art? offers Furer and Egger’s field notes of their experiment, supplemented with contributions by specialists from the fields of digital art history, creative human–machine collaboration, and law, who shed light on the theoretical foundations of creative artificial intelligence, art-historical contexts, and questions of authorship and copyright. The juxtaposition of the copied AI image with Furer’s replies invites a reflection on the fundamentally different orientations of artificial and human intelligence and creativity.
Text in English and German.
Art Deco Statuettes features over 1000 of the most fascinating and striking examples of interwar statuettes.
Capturing the very essence of Art Deco, the statuettes created in Paris, Berlin and Italy during the 1920s and ’30s epitomise the era and its fashions. These small, decorative sculptures are extensive in number and of widespread provenance, with many artists dedicated to their creation. Their influences and inspirations included the Ballet Russes, Egyptomania, Music Hall theatre and more, leaving the world a unique cultural legacy.
First published in 2016 as Statuettes of the Art Deco Period, this vastly extended edition includes newly documented pieces and several obscure, long-lost artists, as well as a selection of period catalogue pages, giving a sense of the allure and commercialisation of these artworks at the time of their creation. For the first time, the secrets of these lost statuettes, once hidden in plain sight, are revealed for all to enjoy. Perfect for collectors and enthusiasts.
The collection of Czech interwar modern art at the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen presents a wide spectrum of artistic trends from 1918 to 1938, from early pre-WWI Modernism, Expressionism and Poetism to avant-garde experiments and Surrealism. Great attention is also paid to social art and the so-called New Objectivity.
The collection, built up mainly in the 1960s and 1970s by the Gallery’s first director, Oldřich Kuba (and expanded ever since), includes works by personalities such as Josef Šíma, Jindřich Štyrský, Toyen, František Muzika, Jan Zrzavý, Václav Špála, Emil Filla, Josef Čapek, Bohumil Kubišta, František Tichý, Otakar Coubine, Antonín Procházka and others.
The forthcoming publication offers a wealth of visual material in the form of reproductions of all the works included, together with interpretative texts introducing their authors and explaining the origin and content of the works and their significance in a broader cultural and historical context.
Filip Van Dingenen likes to twist thinking and art into projects that become more than just exhibitions — they embody a way of life, an attitude that, much like film, searches for the unknown within the familiar. As Philippe Van Cauteren says: “Filip Van Dingenen is an alchemist.” An alchemist transforms one substance into another, seeking gold and cures for disease; in essence, they create connections in pursuit of knowledge and truth.
Filip’s raw materials are different kinds of accumulated extractions — layers of research, encounters, and experiences that cluster into long-term projects such as ‘Nfumu-Ngui’, ‘Ecole Mondiale’, ‘Algae Diplomacy’, and ‘Suskewiet Visions’. As this book, Protocols & Diplomacy, demonstrates, each project forms a generous constellation of events in which collaboration and co-creation are central. Yet, it is Filip Van Dingenen who carefully orchestrates the ceremony of exchange and interaction. His artistic practice focuses on weaving together small and large histories, anthropology and pedagogy, discourse and intuition, loyalty and globality. Van Dingenen seeks ways of thinking and acting that are co-existent rather than oppositional. Through art, he formulates questions, along with possible responses, that open up new spaces for reflection and connection.
Introduce babies to early concepts of opposites in this visually stimulating addition to the Baby Montessori board book series. These contrasts are easily recognisable thanks to high-contrast images printed in the first three colours babies can perceive: red, black, and white. From big and small to day and night, these chunky board books are the perfect introduction to opposites for developing minds!
Designed with expert guidance, these sturdy board books feature simple contrasting pairs that spark visual development and early sensory growth with every glance.
Age-Appropriate Format: The square, sturdy format is perfect for small hands, encouraging dexterity and focus.
Inspired by the Montessori Method: Stimulate developing minds through this series of three-colour, high-contrast images with simple opposite pairs and no text.
Stimulates Early Growth: Simple contrasts, bold colours, and immediate themes (like big/small and up/down) capture attention and encourage curiosity, early associations, and sensory growth, turning reading into a visual, multi-sensory experience.
Expertly Developed: Created in cooperation with cognitive development experts, focusing on visual clarity, safe materials, and effective communication for newborns.
Introduction to the World Around the Child: A first introduction to the concept of opposites.
Age: 0+
Introduce babies to dozens of basic shapes in this visually stimulating addition to the Baby Montessori board book series. These shapes are easily recognisable thanks to high-contrast images printed in the first three colours babies can perceive: red, black, and white. From circles and squares to triangles and stars, these chunky board books are the perfect introduction to shapes for developing minds!
Designed with expert guidance, these sturdy board books feature clear, simple geometric forms that spark visual development and early sensory growth with every glance.
Age-Appropriate Format: The square, sturdy format is perfect for small hands, encouraging dexterity and focus.
Inspired by the Montessori Method: Stimulate developing minds through this series of three-colour, high-contrast images with simple shapes and no text.
Stimulates Early Growth: Simple geometric forms, bold colours, and clear visual patterns capture attention and encourage curiosity, early associations, and sensory growth, turning reading into a visual, multisensory experience.
Expertly Developed: Created in cooperation with cognitive development experts, focusing on visual clarity, safe materials, and effective communication for newborns.
Introduction to the World Around the Child: A first introduction to basic shapes.
Age: 0+
Today’s housing markets, especially in cities, are marked by demand that vastly outstrips extremely limited supply and thus drives up rents; conflicting economic interests; and heated political debate about how to solve these problems. More than ever, cities must respond to the pressing demand for affordable housing, social diversity, and vibrant neighbourhoods. In Switzerland, housing cooperatives have become key players in this field. Sometimes as sole developers, but mostly in collaboration with public agencies and private foundations or private developers, they have become driving forces of urban renewal.
New Neighborhoods in Switzerland offers 24 exemplary recent projects in nine Swiss cities that demonstrate how the cooperative model offers diverse solutions to meet the globally high demand for affordable urban housing. . It also explores housing cooperatives’ expanded role in urban development and local politics. Heavily illustrated with images and plans, supplemented by interviews with and contributions by experts from the fields of architecture, urban design, and politics, this book is a source for the collaborative rethinking of the contemporary city.
Today’s housing markets, especially in cities, are marked by demand vastly outstripping extremely limited supply and thus driving up rents; conflicting economic interests; and heated political debate about how to solve these problems. More than ever, cities must respond to the pressing demand for affordable housing, social diversity, and vibrant neighbourhoods. In Switzerland, housing cooperatives have become key players in this field. Sometimes as sole developers, but mostly in collaboration with public agencies and private foundations or private developers, they have become driving forces of urban renewal.
Nouveaux quartiers en Suisse offers 24 exemplary recent projects in nine Swiss cities demonstrate how the cooperative model offers diverse solutions to meet the globally high demand for affordable urban housing. It also explores housing cooperatives’ expanded role in urban development and local politics. Heavily illustrated with images and plans, supplemented by interviews with and contributions by experts from the fields of architecture, urban design, and politics, this book is a source for the collaborative rethinking of the contemporary city.