Stucco decorations have traditionally been studied considering their formal and artistic qualities. Although much research and numerous publications have explored the works of stucco artists and their cultural context, little attention has been paid to their professional role in relation to the other actors involved in the decorative process (architects, painters, sculptors, patrons), the technical skills of these artists, and how their know-how contributed to the great professional success they enjoyed. From the 16th to the 18th century, many of the stucco decorations in churches and palaces throughout Europe were made by masters from the border area between what is now Canton Ticino and Lombardy. This collection of essays aims to examine how these artists worked from Spain to Poland, from Denmark to Italy, via the Netherlands, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Austria, adapting to the realities of the different contexts. The authors examine these issues with an interdisciplinary approach, considering art history and social history, the history of artistic techniques, and the science of materials.
Text in English and Italian.
1,199 sites of cultural, historical, and scientific significance to humanity have been labelled UNESCO World Heritage Sites with the agreement to maintain and honour. UNESCO – World Heritage Journeys in 40 Destinations compiles stunning photographs, practical information, and travel suggestions for 40 of the most exquisite UNESCO sites on earth. Deep-dive boxes provide insights on, for example, the best time of year to visit, means of transport to reach more remote sites, and advice for getting the most out of your adventure. There will be no shortage of information in this comprehensive compendium, which can be a keepsake post-travel and a guide for the adventures yet to be had!
Over the course of a year, Brian Rose set out to photograph all the neighbourhoods at the ends of the subway lines in New York City. He had multiple reasons for engaging in such a project, but the strongest was the desire to portray New York as a highly diverse, multi-centred metropolis. Having spent a major part of his career photographing the city through often challenging times – the dichotomy of destruction and creativity of the 1980s, the mortal wounding of 9/11, and the suspended animation of the Covid-19 pandemic – Rose was perhaps uniquely equipped to document the city at this moment of political uncertainty under the increased strain of new arrivals, many of whom are refugees from around the world. For a new generation of New Yorkers, the trains roll on ceaselessly, and despite the title, Last Stop is not so much about endings as it is about reinvention.
The work of photographer Gérard Uféras (b. 1954, Paris) covers a compelling and charming array of subjects, from glimpses of life behind the scenes at the opera and ballet, to marrying couples and their families on their wedding day, to the spontaneous energy and interaction of crowds at carnivals and sporting events. With the discreet but unerring eye of the seasoned photojournalist (he began a long association with Libération newspaper in the 1980s), Gérard Uféras captures people from all walks of life in moments of contemplation, creation and camaraderie, resulting in a body of work that offers a rich and nuanced picture of humanity.
Published to coincide with a retrospective of his work in 2025, this book presents the photographer’s own choice of some of his finest work from a long and distinguished career. What emerges most strongly from this collection is Gérard Uféras’s great passion for favourite themes such as music, theatre and dance, but, perhaps more resoundingly still, his profound empathy and respect for his human subjects.
The work of photographer Gérard Uféras (b. 1954, Paris) covers a compelling and charming array of subjects, from glimpses of life behind the scenes at the opera and ballet, to marrying couples and their families on their wedding day, to the spontaneous energy and interaction of crowds at carnivals and sporting events. With the discreet but unerring eye of the seasoned photojournalist (he began a long association with Libération newspaper in the 1980s), Gérard Uféras captures people from all walks of life in moments of contemplation, creation and camaraderie, resulting in a body of work that offers a rich and nuanced picture of humanity.
Published to coincide with a retrospective of his work in 2025, this book presents the photographer’s own choice of some of his finest work from a long and distinguished career. What emerges most strongly from this collection is Gérard Uféras’s great passion for favourite themes such as music, theatre and dance, but, perhaps more resoundingly still, his profound empathy and respect for his human subjects.
Text in French.
“The book is intensely personal, focusing not only on views of a glorious city, but also on visual ironies produced by five decades of political upheavals.” — What We Reading
This book of over 200 photographs by Bernis and Peter von zur Muehlen covers the sweep of Prague’s history from World War II to the “Velvet Revolution.” The first chapter, illustrated by his mother’s black and white snapshots of the city, is an account of Peter’s life in Prague as a young boy during the months leading up to the end of World War II and of his family’s narrow escape days before the Red Army entered the city. The following chapters describe four visits by Bernis and Peter between 1985 and 1992, an epoch that saw Czechoslovakia’s transformation from Communist dictatorship to the restoration of democracy. The images reveal not only a glorious city, but also the many less prominent sites that give Prague its unique charm. Haunting images of the Old Jewish Cemetery remind the reader of the turbulent history of the Jews, nearly exterminated by the Nazis. One chapter traces the evolution of the Lennon Wall, a famous symbol of Prague’s long struggle for freedom. Lively accounts of the photographers’ travel experiences document a city slowly coming to terms with its own history. An afterword by Ori Z. Soltes, noted lecturer and author of twenty books, illuminates the city’s Judaeo-Christian history.
Lieven Lefere (°1978, Roeselare) is an artist who plays with the complex relationship between the photographic image and reality. Lefere works extremely meticulously, in a particularly slow process. He carefully manipulates all the parameters that make a photo what it is. The process often starts months before the photo is taken. He starts from an extensive research, with a multitude of reference points. Sometimes he builds sets and scenes himself from that research or from his memories. He constructs his images with scale and framing, models the space, makes models, chooses the incidence of light. The sets disappear or become a spatial part of the work.
“In Los Angeles, everyone is a star.” – Denzel Washington
For more than a century, seekers of sun and celebrity from around the world have flocked to this sprawling metropolis on the Pacific, which Dorothy Parker once described as “72 suburbs in search of a city.” But beyond the red-carpet reputation and Tinseltown trappings is a west coast wonderland teeming with unexpected cultural experiences, iconic architecture, gorgeous open spaces, quirky museums, hidden vistas, unconventional art, and obscure stories about the starlets, moguls, personalities, and players who have made Los Angeles their playground. This unusual guidebook explores 111 of the city’s most interesting and unknown places and experiences: wander a serpentine path in a spiritual quest of your own making; channel your inner cowboy at a tried and true honky tonk bar; pay homage to the Dude at the bungalow where the big Lebowski lived; turn your car tires into musical instruments on the country’s only ‘musical’ road; sleep with the ghosts of Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin; view a constellation of stars more vivid than anything Hollywood has to offer. From the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, Angelenos and visitors will fall in love with the real Los Angeles. Adventures beckon. Surprises await. Just imagine how much more scintillating your dinner-party storytelling will be.
If Richmond VA represented the historic heart of the Confederacy, then Monument Avenue was meant to memorialise its soul. The avenue was conceived in the 1870s, when the city elected to build a memorial to General Robert E Lee. It was not until 1890, however, that the massive monument was unveiled. Over the succeeding decades, Lee was joined by statues commemorating other leading Confederate military and political figures – JEB Stuart, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Matthew Fontaine Maury.
Almost from the moment they were erected, the Confederate monuments, as symbols of white supremacy, were the focus of controversy and protest. The climax came in the summer of 2020 when Black Lives Matter protesters, outraged by the death of George Floyd, converged on the avenue to vent their fury. On July 10th, Jefferson Davis was dragged from his pedestal. Two days later, Brian Rose packed up his cameras in New York and drove back to his home state to document the last days of the grand boulevard of the Lost Cause. En route, he reflected on his own history and the roles played by his forebears in the Antebellum South.This new edition of a classic book captures a pivotal moment in modern American history.
Tan Ping came to Berlin in 1989 to study at the University of the Arts (UDK) and shortly afterwards witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. China‘s opening to the Western World since 1985 has created new opportunities for a variety of bilateral relationships.
Tan Ping consistently developed an abstract formal language that was significantly influenced by the Western art of Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Minimal and Conceptual Art. He uniquely combines these influences with his Chinese cultural roots, which stem from calligraphy and ink painting.
As early as 1993, he created a conceptual approach with his ‘Time’ installation, in which he intertwined space, movement and time. Since then, he has continuously explored these factors and at the same time questioned his own self. Thirty years after completing his studies in Germany, this book offers a compendium of his research and artistic processes.
Text in English and German.
In 2024, the University of Liechtenstein in Vaduz opened its Ebaholz campus extension. Design and realisation of the building’s interior was entrusted to students from the Craft & Structure Studio at Liechtenstein School of Architecture. Their key task was to create new working environments and to offer space for social interaction. The building’s structural conditions were the only limits to the design process. Students had to deal with materials and tectonic aspects of designing wall systems, furniture, and lighting, as well as all the issues of space and atmosphere for creative teamwork. Supported by experts of scenography, acoustics, and colour design, they experimented with spatial concepts, atmospheres, materials, and colours. The entire planning was done on a 1:1 scale and eventually realised in collaboration with craftspeople from local construction firms.
This book highlights these didactics of design-build used at the Craft & Structure Studio under the direction of Urs Meister and Carmen Rist-Stadelmann and places it in the international framework of architectural education. Illustrated with plans, photos, and visualisations, it offers an insight into the close exchange between the students and the professionals from construction firms.
Text in English and German.
“…a delectable tour of 46 clubs that span 300 years of architecture and design.” — Airmail
“… a lavishly illustrated and wittily written study of one of the capital’s most distinctive – and most secretive – institutions.” — House & Garden UK
“Jones treats them not really as clubs, but as examples of interior decoration, which he writes about interestingly and with an observant eye.” — Charles Saumarez Smith
London has more members’ clubs than any other city. There are clubs for everyone: from actors, plutocrats, aristocrats and bishops to sailors, soldiers, fishermen and spies, as well as journalists, jockeys, architects and æsthetes.
Andrew Jones opens the door to 46 of the most beautiful, interesting and unusual of these clubs, presenting 300 years of architecture and design. The London Club features the oldest clubs in London as well as the most recent, with perfectly preserved interiors, original furniture and extraordinary
collections. From bohemian to bling, shabby to chic, classical and brutal, this is a celebration of variety and beauty, with newly commissioned photographs by Laura Hodgson.
“From the grandest to the simplest taking in the quirkiest en route, this book is an irresistible journey through London’s clubland.” – From the Foreword by Nina Campbell OBE
‘The sea never makes a fuss. You don’t have to explain yourself or be polite. What does she care what you think of her or what you make of her. When you come or where you enter her. I capture, interpret, sublimate, abstract. I show everything, I show nothing.’
— Stephan Vanfleteren
In Transcripts of a Sea, the internationally renowned photographer Stephan Vanfleteren (b. 1969) shares the enchantment that has driven him to the sea over the past five years. He analyses the sea, in all her various shapes and ever-changing light, with an obsession bordering on the dangerous, and with a fluid longing. Stormy, mirror-like, misty, thunderous, the surface deceptively calm or like a wildly-thumping washing-machine drum: the photographer does not observe it from the beach or from a boat but opts for a wet confrontation by literally immersing himself in the sea.
136 extraordinary images with texts by Stephan Vanfleteren, Johan De Smet and Manfred Sellink.
Fedele Maura Friede (b. 1997) is the 8th winner of the prestigious Horst-Janssen Graphic Art Prize awarded by the Claus Hüppe Foundation, which supports outstanding work in the field of graphic art. In the accompanying exhibition at Hamburger Kunsthalle entitled ‘der saum löst sich’ (the hem comes undone) Friede explores, through map-like lines and folds in paper, the relationship between space and landscape from microcosmos to sweeping panoramas. Her works hint at a hidden narrative without being too literal or following a set story. To achieve this, she makes use of various forms of expression that combine drawing in a broader sense with writing, allowing them to enter into a dialogue. The quality of her images lies in their inherent disorientation: Her drawings are constructed and legible from all angles of the sheet of paper. With their map-like lines and folds, Friede’s works elude a rigid structure so that the perspective constantly shifts. The lines create a social space in which varied types of perception can unfold.
The accompanying artist book Standortbestimmung combines texts and artworks by Friede, which are poetically examined in a contribution by the writer Tatjana von der Beek. In her words: “The thin wallpaper is cracked and sharp beneath my palms. If I were to suddenly drag my hands across the wall, it would lacerate my skin.”
Text in English and German.
Swedish artist Jockum Nordström (b. 1963) is one of Scandinavia’s most celebrated contemporary voices, renowned for the evocative, dreamlike worlds he brings to life through his art. This book spans more than three decades, from 1992 to 2025, tracing both early pieces and recent works, several of which have never been shown to the public before. Alongside captivating drawings, Nordström also creates sculptures, collages and maquettes – a testament to his versatility and to the richly imaginative universe he continues to shape.
With accompanying essays by Femke Vandenbosch and Carl Fredrik Hårleman. Graphic design by Kim Beirnaert.
The American design firm Simplehuman invites a multitude of global voices to celebrate 25 years of excellence and innovation in the functional home goods sector. Narrating the secret lives of their iconic homewares – from touch-free trash cans to shaving mirrors, shower caddies and laundry hampers, this playful compendium revels in the human stories that unfold from behind the brand’s polished facade. Featuring a deep-dive into design and production processes from Los Angeles to Taipei, alongside sensitive portraits of Simplehuman’s friends and design world family, this 200-page tome showcases the intricacies of industrial design alongside the deeply human side of our day-to-day domestic realities.
Five Houses on the Wild Side is a visual feast showcasing the wildly imaginative, rules-free, cozy and sumptuous interiors Elena Agostinis has created for her family’s homes in New York, Montana, and Mexico.
Bold and courageous choices of colours and patterns, elements from the wildlife and fauna of her South African childhood, mixed and matched with the best of local artisanry, textiles purchased from souks and markets all around the world, giant papier-mâché’ animal garden sculptures, and wall art that spans from the elevated to the quirky and amusing, are Elena’s traits that will inspire readers to free-styling their own homes.
Elena’s irresistible style, originality, and use of wild colours has not only been restricted to her family homes, but inspired a quiet town in Upstate New York, Tannersville, to repaint its own Main Street store fronts, contributing to the town being selected in 2021 for the $10-million-dollars New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative award.
Elena shares the inspiration from her childhood, travels, heritage, and family needs, encouraging readers to find their free spirit and apply it to their own interiors.
We associate food and drink with rituals, rules and traditions – they create community, but they can also be exclusive. How, where and with whom we eat says a lot about social structures.
For the ongoing project A Painting for a Family Dinner by Alina and Jeff Bliumis, the artist couple were invited to dinner by 62 families to date – in return they received a painting. A group photograph was taken afterwards. The resulting ‘family portraits’ tell a story of hospitality, exchange and artistic interaction, and invite us to take a fresh look at eating as a unifying practice.
Text in English and German.
Continuing the publication program that aims to disseminate the Collection through albums that present specific sections in a systematic manner, this volume focuses on Egyptian Art. The section was first studied by Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, when the pieces that would be included in the Museum’s permanent exhibition were selected, and first published in 1991 by the curator of the section, Maria Helena Assam. 15 years on, new texts have been written by Egyptologist Luís Manuel de Araújo, a professor at the Arts Faculty of the University of Lisbon.
Calouste Gulbenkian mostly assembled his collection of Egyptian art between 1922 and 1929. Relatively small but very diverse, it includes pieces of exceptional quality from the various periods when art in pharaonic Egypt was at its height. The catalogue not only covers the pieces on display at the Museum, but also those kept in the storeroom.
Christian Krohg was a key figure in the Norwegian art community of the 1880s and 1890s, and was strongly influenced by the ideology of realism. In his view, art should have meaning for a broad segment of the population, not merely serve as wall decorations for the bourgeoisie. Three types of motifs were recurrent themes for Krohg during this period: the working-class hero, scenes from family life and “the fallen woman”. Many people responded to his literary and visual representations of the poverty-stricken girl Albertine. He depicted members of the working class with great sympathy in paintings such as Errand Boy Drinking Coffee and Woman Cutting Bread. The Gaihede family, fishermen from Skagen in Denmark, are portrayed in many everyday situations, as are members of Krohg’s own family. The catalogue sheds light on the subject matter of the exhibition, Krohg’s period of study in Berlin and its impact on him, his relationship with Georg Brandes, the novel Albertine and Krohg’s own use of photography as a model for his work and a medium.
Text in English and Norwegian.
Hotspot Leipzig and the subsequent Neue Leipziger Schule represent a highly influential movement within contemporary figurative art. Originating at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, this artistic tradition places strong emphasis on craftsmanship and realism. Artists such as Werner Tübke, Bernhard Heisig, and Wolfgang Mattheuer laid the foundation with their technically refined and socially engaged works. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Neue Leipziger Schule emerged, with artists like Neo Rauch, Rosa Loy, and Matthias Weischer blending realism with dreamlike and surreal elements.
Since 2009, the Drents Museum has devoted considerable attention to these movements. Exhibitions such as Realism from Leipzig and solo presentations by Rosa Loy, Kristina Schuldt, Mirjam Völker and Tilo Baumgärtel reflect the museum’s long-standing commitment to these artists. The museum has also built an extensive collection of works from both the original and the new Leipzig schools, including recent acquisitions like Baboom by Tilo Baumgärtel. The book includes essays by leading authors and a comprehensive selection of works.
Text in English and Dutch.
Life Beat Soft Melt presents a new series of works by Erwin Wurm, introducing here, alongside his iconic One Minute Sculptures, a wall painting installation, which extends his sculptural concept.
A cheerful colourism, language, emotions, time and space, sculpture and happenings merge here into an elemental experience. Known for transforming the traditional medium of sculpture into something more fluid, participatory, and playfully subversive, Wurm expands his sculptural language beyond objects to include space, painting, and drawing. His art concept invites viewers not only to observe the works but also to become part of them.
Text in English and German.
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 fifteen 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.