Maria Lai (Ulassai, September 27, 1919 – Cardedu, April 16, 2013) is without doubt one of the leading figures in the history of contemporary Italian art. Not only on account of the content of her works, but also thanks to the diversity of her artistic approach, ranging as it does across many media – public art, embroidery, weaving, sculpture, drawing, and writing: all are grist for her poetics. The book is published to coincide with the exhibition at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, which is presenting to the general public over one hundred works by the Sardinian artist, from the early 1960s to her very last works, and explores the various themes dear to the artist with the contributions of experts in their fields: the locations, the creation, and publication of art books, her public art events and her relationship with the written word and her own writing. Her entire oeuvre is distinguished by its powerful visual impact, revealing a ‘way of doing art’ that is nothing other than an instrument of thought. The book’s structure reflects the exhibition’s own sections, arranged by theme, whose titles are paradigmatic of Lai’s oeuvre as a whole: Essere è tessere. Cucire e ricucire; L’arte è il gioco degli adulti. Giocare e raccontare; Disseminare e condividere; Il viaggiatore astrale. Immaginare l’altrove; L’arte ci prende per mano. Incontrare e partecipare.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the MAXXI Museum, Rome, 19 June 2019-12 January 2020.

Text in English and Italian.

Written by Antony Penrose, son of American feminist icon Lee Miller and British artist Roland Penrose this delightful narrative introduces the fascinating lives of Lee Miller; War Correspondent and Surrealist photographer and her husband Roland Penrose; Surrealist artist and co-founder of the ICA, whilst taking a tour of their extraordinary home in the Sussex countryside. Farleys’s exterior has no hint of visual excitements to be discovered. Bright walls & corridors filled with remarkable & eclectic art. The book gives a glimpse into amazing lives of Lee Miller & Roland Penrose. This special anniversary edition, 75 years at Farleys, has new photography and never seen before insights to the house.

Albert Dros has a passion for landscape photography. Although he travels the world in search of the most beautiful images, the Netherlands is still his favourite subject. After all these years, Albert has created extremely atmospheric, colourful and almost romantic photographs of the Netherlands. His dream images in this book show everything that makes the Netherlands the Netherlands: from tulips to windmills, from purple moors to vast river landscapes and from picturesque towns to animals in meadows and in the wild. The Beauty of the Netherlands is the result of ten years of craftsmanship by an internationally renowned photographer who captures a Netherlands that few people will ever see with their own eyes.

This is the era of the Smart Ecosystems Economy, where the companies that thrive must be ready to cope with randomness and unexpected events. In this digital world, the traditional boundaries have disappeared, paving the way for new and smarter ecosystems to develop. Companies seeking to transform into future-proof organisations would do well to understand these ecosystems, and get a grasp on how they work.

This book serves as a guide to building smart, competitive ecosystems for both small and large organisations. A timely book that cracks the code of tomorrow’s business models.

“Seldom does a collection of art history essays leave readers yearning for a second volume…”—Barbara Wisch, Renaissance Quarterly
Roman church interiors throughout the Early Modern age were endowed with rich historical and visual significance. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in anticipation of and following the Council of Trent, and in response to the expansion of the Roman Curia, the chapel became a singular arena in which wealthy and powerful Roman families, as well as middle-class citizens, had the opportunity to demonstrate their status and role in Roman society. In most cases the chapels were conceived not as isolated spaces, but as part of a more complex system, which involved the nave and the other chapels within the church, in a dialogue among the arts and the patrons of those other spaces. This volume explores this historical and artistic phenomenon through a number of examples involving the patronage of prominent Roman families such as the Chigis, Spadas, Caetanis, Cybos and important artists and architects such as Federico Zuccari, Giacomo della Porta, Carlo Maderno, Alessandro Algardi, Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Maratta.

How do our minds work when we design? How do we organise and assimilate information, create and evaluate options, and make decisions? These questions have fascinated and absorbed architect and sculptor Richard Bertman (FAIA) since his graduate school days. Now, after a 40-year career, Bertman has used the design of a vacation house as an experiment to explore these questions. The result, documented in The Design Process and the Art of the Single Family Home, is a fascinating and revealing insight into the creative process. With detailed notes and sketches, Bertman charts each stage of the design process, questioning and examining why certain decisions are made, how problems are solved, and generally exploring the processes involved in creative thinking.

There are many reasons to plan a visit to The Hague. It is the international city of peace and justice, the only large Dutch city by the sea, one of the greenest cities of the Netherlands, and it boasts a long and rich history.
For this book, Tal Maes listed her 500 favourite places and tips, presenting them in original and interesting lists such as 5 historic houses of famous Dutchmen, 5 fun boat trips, the 5 best spots for Dutch “maatjes” herring, 5 museums around the Binnenhof, the 5 best lifestyle and concept stores, and much more. This guide encourages you to look further than the usual hotspots. Walk to the far end of the beach to find peace and quiet, try a beer from a hidden monastery, discover cutting-edge art in a former power plant. Of the highlights included, lesser-known aspects are revealed.

The bench: a functional object that rarely features at the forefront of our minds, even when we are sitting on one in a garden. And yet (as this book will reveal) benches have surprising significance, regarding the specific places where they operate, and in a more general sense. The bench is more than a convenient sitting point. It is the domain where aesthetics, garden history, architecture, spatiality and subjectivity interfere. The bench acts as a powerful visual machine and regulates the reception of surrounding landscapes to its visitors. By transmitting verbal messages (through inscriptions), citing other benches and being part of a complex walk circuit, by providing rest and inviting its users to discover new aspects of the site, the bench is a highly polysemic element of a garden, which orients and disorients the visitor simultaneously.

This lavishly illustrated book records the high profile restoration of Rembrandt van Rijn’s 17th century masterpiece, The Night Watch, one of the world’s most famous paintings. Many questions about the creation of this work have been answered by extensive technical studies done in conjunction with the restoration. The popular Dutch TV program The Secret of the Master has documented the restoration of The Night Watch in four episodes, assisted in this by various external specialists. This book, by the producer of that series, reveals the many secrets of this fascinating and important work.

architekturbild, the European Architectural Photography Prize, has been awarded on a two-yearly basis since 1995. The theme for 2021 is “The Urban in the Periphery”.

Migration between conurbations and rural areas, their respective attractiveness and independence, but also dependence and interdependence with one another: What would be more predestined to trace the subtle or even obvious effects of the urban-rural movement than architectural photography?

Text in English and German.

The research in the field of vision conducted from 1919 by the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, founded by Vittorio Benussi at the University of Padua, had a remarkable and innovative impact. This research went beyond the academic and disciplinary sphere and, starting in the 1960s, helped to stimulate a ground-breaking cultural and artistic scene, launching the city of Padua and its artists internationally.

This volume explores the relationship between the works, milieux and exhibitions of the Gruppo N – Alberto Biasi, Ennio L. Chiggio, Toni Costa, Edoardo Landi, Manfredo Massironi – active in Padua from 1960 to 1964, and the studies of Vittorio Benussi and the first scholars of his School: Cesare Musatti, Fabio Metelli and Gaetano Kanizsa, who was born in Trieste but graduated in Padua. Marina Apollonio’s art and research occupy a special place in this dialogue between science and art.

Texts by: Rossana Actis-Grosso, Elisa Baldini, Guido Bartorelli, Paolo Bernardis, Marco Bertamini, Giovanni Bianchi, Ivana Bianchi, Andrea Bobbio, Nicola Bruno, Elisa Caldarola, Marnie Campagnaro, Barbara Luciana Cenere, Alberto Cibin, Elena Clara, Osvaldo da Pos, Andrea Dissegna, Carlo Fantoni, Giovanni Galfano, Walter Gerbino, Enrico Giora , Massimo Grassi, Laura Messina-Argenton, Giulia Parovel Tamara Prest, Marta Previti, Lucia Regolin, Sergio Roncato e Baingio Pinna, Federica Stevanin, Giorgio Vallortigara, Ian Verstegen, Giuseppe Virelli, Daniele Zavagno.

Text in Italian with English translations in the appendix.

The Ashcan School and The Eight are now recognised as America’s first modern art movement: rejecting their academic training and the practices of the National Academy of Design, they forged a new art that represented America’s shifting values. By focusing on urban streets scenes, the lives of immigrants, popular entertainments, and the working poor, this loosely affiliated group of artists became synonymous with ordinary, everyday subjects — in the words of one critic, “pictures of ashcans.” Yet this is only part of their story: they also experimented with complex colour theory and embraced scientific studies about movement and perception, while also creating scenes of bourgeois leisure and society portraits in attempts to reconcile their high-art practices with their populist reputations.

This catalogue features nearly 130 works across media, including paintings, drawings, pastels, and prints — rarely seen objects and popular favourites. Collectively these works emphasise the Ashcan School’s and The Eight’s valuable contributions to the formation of American modernism at the beginning of the 20th century.

During the German occupation, a Jewish Dutch couple had to sell a painting to go into hiding. Their daughters were placed in a children’s home, but were rounded up in early 1944 and deported to Auschwitz, where they died. The parents survived the war and did not discover their children’s fate until 1946. The search for the painting also remained fruitless for a long time, until Origins Unknown Agency discovered that it had ended up in a German museum. The museum had previously tried unsuccessfully to trace its provenance. Thanks to the Origins Unknown Agency, the heirs of the original owner were found. The German museum and the heirs agreed that the painting, an 1882 work by Camille Pissarro, would remain at the museum. As part of the compensation, the painting will be kept on display from November 2024 to February 2025 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The Bari people, who settled on the banks of the White Nile, remained closed off from the outside world until the dawn of the 19th century. The earliest contact dates back to the “scientific” expedition commissioned in 1840 by Ismail Pascha, followed by repeated forays by explorers in search of the sources of the Nile during the closing decades of the Ottoman period in Egypt, interspersed with the often competing efforts of slave hunters.

This book places the collection of Bari statues known today in the historical context of the Egyptian Sudan, from the earliest contacts with explorers Joseph Pons d’Arnaud and Wilhelm Werne in 1841 to the final stages of the pre-colonial era described by Wilhelm Junker. Many museums founded during the 19th century embarked on a frantic scramble to collect ethnographic objects, relying in particular on explorers, but also on traders and adventurers. This book catalogues the roughly 63 Bari statues that are known today and offers a comprehensive overview of historical sources and current knowledge of the Egyptian Sudan that provide the context for these works, their use and stylistic diversity.

Text in English and French.

“Mesmerizing and unputdownable – a virtuoso translation of what must surely be one of the best Thai novels to make it into English.” – Lawrence Osborne, author of Hunters in the Dark and Only to Sleep

”At its core, this novel from Veeraporn Nitiprapha has a simple dynamic: the tension between two sisters, and the young man whose life interweaves with each of theirs. What makes this novel unique is its attention to the granular, whether it’s the music that several of its characters obsess over or its author’s tendency to fill in the history or future of a specific character at a moment’s notice.” – Words Without Borders, February 2019

Watchlist On the day Chareeya is born, her mother discovers her father has been having an affair with a traditional Thai dancer. From that moment, Chareeya’s life is fated to carry the weight of her parents disappointment. With her sister, Chalika, she grows up in an insular world, until joined by the laconic orphan, Pran, and together they navigate the labyrinth of their own making, each trying to escape their fate.

The need for a pillow, a headrest or a neck rest is one of the most widely spread among humans, as is the need for a seat. They may not be an exclusively African invention, but the oldest known carved headrests nonetheless come from Africa, for the most part from the Egypt of the Pharaohs. Their use is attested in prehistoric times in the Neolithic Sahara and several centuries ago in West, Central and Southern Africa. It continued until the early 20th-century in the savannah and the forested regions along the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, in the Congo and Zambesi basins and until nowadays in the Horn of Africa, in the regions of the Omo Valley and the Jade Sea. In this work, the author sets out to tell its history spanning several millenia. He takes the opportunity to invite himself to the controversy regarding the links and relations between Ancient Egypt and Black Africa, a controversy that has been livening up the world of Egyptologists and historians of Africa for more than a century.

Furthermore he sets about breaking down a few generally accepted ideas regarding the actual use of these magnificent objects. The author illustrates his words with an exceptional election of items chosen from the finest public and private collections.

Text in English and French.

The Darnley jewel, a masterpiece of the goldsmith’s art on display at Edinburgh’s Holyrood Palace, has been deemed a love token, but has also been labelled an emblem of political ambition. Taking the shape of a heart, the jewel was produced at a moment (1565-75) when such objects worn by courtiers were a primary means of asserting status and proclaiming allegiances. With a deep medieval history – originally the fleshly power centre of the human body, the seat of the soul, and place of memory and emotion – the heart has many aspects to offer. This book shows how the understanding of the heart changed during the Middle Ages, from spiritual locus of the body, to source of devotion to country, and finally, to the font of love and sentimentality.

Male nudes have always been an expression of strength, beauty, and desire. Today, the naked male body is often viewed as a symbol of homosexual desire and is subject to a similar objectification within the community as the heterosexual female body — despite the social narrative of diversity and body positivity.

This raises important questions: which bodies are worthy of representation, which poses stimulate desire — and whose desire is being aroused? We are exposed to a non-stop, endlessly repetitive production of images in everyday life. This has long since led to a standardisation of the masculine body image, but only few people can identify with the ideal of a slim, muscular, and angular figure.

In his work the beauty & the boys, Martin de Crignis displays his own photographs of the bare male body in the context of historical nude depictions. He sets his own visual language against these archive photos: while it imitates the aesthetics of a reality format in which the portrayed persons seem to openly present themselves in a domestic setting, the staged poses contradict both the genre and the masculine body ideal.

With this special juxtaposition of images and their conflicting aesthetics, de Crignis subtly touches on issues of body cult, naturalness, and masculinity in his exceptional artist’s book.

The London Press Exchange (LPE), founded in 1892, grew out of an agency set up by two young reporters in London to supply news items to provincial papers. It was to grow to become the biggest and most profitable advertising agency in Britain. Yet it never was to attract the publicity as did lesser fry as Crawford’s or Colman, Prentis, Varley. It’s policy was actually declared to be one of reticence, which is not what advertising is all about. Yet some of the characters it conceived were to become household familiars as Mr.Therm for the gas industry and ‘the little man’ for Double Diamond. And in carrying out the first major readership survey in Britain, under the aegis of Mark Abrams, LPE kick-started market research here, The Market Research Society being founded in its offices. This tribute is to establish LPE as ‘leader of the field’.

In 1856, just months after Britain and Siam had finalised the historic Bowring trade treaty that would prevent the countries colonisation, the violent death of a Siamese official at the new British consulate threatens to scuttle the deal and lead to war. The King and the Consul explores UK and Thai archives to reveal the twists, turns and tensions of this little-known episode that pitted Thailand’s renowned King Mongkut, Rama IV, against the first British Consul, Charles Hillier. The crisis was resolved without war, but not without cost for the participants who suffered unintended tragic outcomes. By examining the background to this tragedy, the book reveals how history has often overlooked the importance of an issue that lay behind it the right of foreigners to own land in the country, and issue that continues to be a thorn in the side of Thailand’s foreign relations to this day.

“The tragic deaths in 1856 of the first British consul to Siam and a Siamese official had an unusual impact on Thailand‘s property law and Britain’s diplomatic presence in the country. This intriguing book could only be written by someone with long residence in Bangkok, through knowledge of Thailand’s property law, and enthusiasm for history. Simon Landy gives us a slice of legal and diplomatic history with close attention to its human dimensions. An unusual and lovely read” – Chris Baker

The Shape of the Land: Topography & Landscape Architecture — the first book to centre on this subject — presents the contributions of 13 well-known practitioners and academics who discuss the forms and ramifications of reconfiguring terrain. The essays range in content from pre-industrial precedents in the work of Humphry Repton to new digital topographic modelling systems without the use of contour lines, the treatment of waste products to the land art of the American Southwest.

Practicing landscape architects focusing on the modelling of topography in the works considering both utility and aesthetics. In all, the book reviews the history, reasons, and results of at least three centuries of topographic interventions, while suggesting pathways into the future — as new technology and new necessities increase the functional demands placed upon landscape architects, while at the same time potentially offering new forms of artistic expression.