In Let the Kids Play, Drago’s 36 Chambers series exalts the beauty and exuberance of youth as embodied by the renowned street artist, Pax Poloscia. The book is a reaction to the cynicism and monotony of the adult world and a celebration of youthful creativity.

Tossed into a melting pot of calligraphy and graffiti writing from around the world, ZenTwO and Native’s work leans towards the raw and finds expression in the uneven in an attempt to access, engage, and integrate vivid emotions in a destabilising aesthetic. Drago’s 36 Chambers joins an international and multi-cultural tour of street art with this fresh addition to the series.

Drago’s impressive library already includes the works of many internationally celebrated and influential photographers such as Boogie, Estevan Oriol, Ed Templeton and JR. The Street is Watching encapsulates the talent of these artists together with over 100 contributing photographers in a single and revolutionary anthology. These featured photographers include Larry Clark, Glen E. Friedman, Martha Cooper, Jamel Shabazz, Bruce Davidson, Jim Goldberg, Mary Ellen Mark, Bruce Gilden, Ryan McGinley, Hugh Holland, Jill Freedman, C.R. Stecyk, Dash Snow, Bruce LaBruce, Ivory Serra, Olivia Bee and many more. The book also features insightful contributions from the curator, Paulo Luca von Vacano; Miss Rosen, a New York-based photo editor and photography book specialist and Ethel Seno, a project manager and curatorial coordinator at MOCA, Los Angeles.

In The Thousands, an 18-year-old RJ Rushmore curates an extensive collection of some of the biggest names in Street Art including Faile, Banksy, KAWS, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Herakut, Jenny Holzer, Blek le Rat, Futura 2000 and Barry McGee. As the founder and editor-in-chief of Vandalog, Rushmore has achieved a reputation for “genuine reporting, insight and analysis” (Papermag). This quality and attention to detail shines through the compelling writing in his book. Many of the works featured have come from private collections and several pieces have been provided directly by the artists participating in the show and the book. Each artist or group of artists is explored in an immersive two-page spread with an insightful biography and intricate analysis of their work. This fascinating anthology is a must-have for Street Art followers and those simply interested in the movement.

In keeping with an editorial strategy that aims to bring to public attention all of the various groups of works belonging to the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection, a book devoted to its drawings and watercolors has been published. Featuring texts by Manuela Fidalgo, who worked as a curator at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum until her retirement, this edition is the product of several years of thorough research underpinned by technical and scientific rigor and the involvement of several international experts in the art of drawing.

This publication therefore plays an essential part in raising awareness of one of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum’s least-well known collections, which includes works produced in the main centers of European art (France, Holland, Flanders, England and Italy) between the 16th and early 20th centuries by great masters such as Dürer, Watteau, Boucher, Turner and Sargent, among others. This book also gives us a clearer picture of Calouste Gulbenkian’s artistic sensibility as a collector: despite claiming not to be attracted to drawing, the beauty and quality of the works brought together here were such that he could not resist purchasing them.

The 25th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a good reason to put the topic emphatically into the public focus. UNICEF Germany and GEO – with the support of the world’s best photographers and Edition Lammerhuber – do exactly that in this joint pro-bono project. In 40 photographic reports from 15 years, a selection of particularly striking pictures from the UNICEF Photo of the Year competition forms a fervent appeal to respect the rights of the child and to guarantee every girl and boy in the world a childhood in dignity. The volume is edited by Jürgen Heraeus, the Chairman of the German Committee of UNICEF, and Peter-Matthias Gaede, long-serving Editor-in-Chief of GEO. We the Children draws attention to the suffering and hardships, but also to the wishes and dreams of today’s children. We the Children is a book full of hope for a child-oriented world. Text in English and German.

New York City’s borough of the Bronx draws millions of people annually to visit the largest zoological park in the United States, or to catch a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. Beyond the animal cages (and batting cages) is a section of the city filled with art, food, music, and unusual sites that can only be found in one place: Da Bronx. The Bronx offers some of the most amazing experiences for visitors to New York City because it is so unexplored. You can take a canoe down a river, or take a course in pole dancing school. The Bronx has a rich history, which includes the American Revolution, that has given way to today’s rebels in street fashion. Sit down and feast on dishes from Ghana and Italy. Learn to roll cigars. Pay homage to the founders of rap music and hip hop culture. And explore quiet cemeteries’ stunning architecture. The borough is home the largest park in New York City, waterfront vistas that are unparalleled, and access to riverfronts and bays. Whether you are a first time visitor, longtime resident, or a native, you will find 111 hidden gems in the Bronx. The most unexplored borough of New York City is yours to discover with 111 Places in the Bronx That You Must Not Miss.

The fashion, history, and development of Jewish dress tells a story that spans the globe and crosses many cultures. In this colorful volume, Jewish communities – particularly those established for centuries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa – are revealed through their garments. Stunning photographs spin tales of family traditions and religious devotion, with a special section dedicated to jewelry worn by brides and grooms. Superb photographs of specific garments, with many close-up details, are juxtaposed with rare contextual photographs from The Israel Museum’s archives to create a tapestry of a people revealed through textiles, costume, and images. More than 350 revelatory illustrations tell us how these precious articles of dress were originally worn.

This popular work sheds lights on Taoism, China’s great indigenous religion during this vibrant and glorious period of Chinese history. Without these insights, we can have only limited understanding of an important aspect of China’s social, political, and of course, religious life.

In the seventh century the great T’ang nation was obliged to reconquer the southern most portion of what had been considered Chinese territory for many centuries. The region had in fact remained largely an unassimilated wilderness, whose heavily forested marshes – monsoon lands with fringes of the true tropics – corresponded roughly with modern North Vietnam, along with the Chinese provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong. The Vermilion Bird attempts to recover the actual character of the monsoon realms of T’ang: a scattering of palisaded garrisons, isolated monasteries, and commercial towns, all surrounded by dark, haunted woods. The soldiers, administrators, colonists, and political exiles who lived there were constantly threatened by hostile inhabitants, disease, wild animals, and supernatural powers. On the other hand there were new and beautiful flowering plants and luscious fruits for the delectation of the connoisseur, enchanting limestone grottoes ready to be explored, and every sort of ravishing image available for the exploitation of poets. Professor Schafer examines the thoughts, emotions, imaginations, and daily lives of the men.

A new title in the Design series and an excellent introduction to the life and work of this versatile Russian artist. Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (1891-1953) was a central figure in the Russian Constructivist art movement; a radical activist, a pioneer of photomontage, a theorist, and a teacher. He was an active force in the organization of the first museums of modern art that arose in Russia in the first years after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Attending art school in 1914 in Kazan was to be a defining influence: that year Russian Futurists performed in the town, and Rodchenko saw their leading figures in action. It transformed his vision and he was still working with Futurist artists and their ideas twenty-five years later. And it was at art school where Rodchenko first met the artist Varvara Stepanova, with whom he collaborated extensively, and who would become his life-long partner. Central in the re-examination of art and its place in society after the Revolution, and in the search for a new culture without the class implications of the past, Rodchenko’s radical approach proposed a new understanding of a constructed, rather than a tastefully composed, culture. This concise, comprehensive and informative work focuses largely on Rodchenko’s graphic work in the form of book jackets, posters and advertising. Also avaliable: Claud Lovat Fraser ISBN: 9781851496631 GPO ISBN: 9781851495962 Peter Blake ISBN: 9781851496181 FHK Henrion ISBN: 9781851496327 David Gentleman ISBN: 9781851495955 David Mellor ISBN: 9781851496037 E.McKnight Kauffer ISBN: 9781851495207 Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious ISBN: 9781851495009 El Lissitzky ISBN: 9781851496198 Festival of Britain 1951 ISBN: 9781851495337 Harold Curwen & Oliver Simon: Curwen Press ISBN: 9781851495719 Jan Le Witt and George Him ISBN: 9781851495665 Paul Nash and John Nash ISBN: 9781851495191 Abram Games ISBN: 9781851496778

The extraordinary life of Barbara Cartlidge (b. 1922 in Berlin) – influential gallerist, curator, jewelry artist and author – together with the history of her legendary Electrum Gallery, which she founded in 1971 with Ralph Turner in London, are documented for the first time in a single publication. Pioneers and colleagues as well as around seventy internationally renowned artists of the gallery all have their say and, in anecdotes and recollections, countless illustrations and hitherto unpublished images, tell of a strong and resolute woman and the significance of her gallery as a promoter and platform for the understanding of contemporary art jewelry. Particular attention is paid to the life of Barbara Cartlidge, who fled from Germany in 1938. For over fifty years she was a driving force in what she described as the ‘the brotherhood of jewelers who make modern and thought-provoking jewelry all over the world’.

There are many ways to perceive and interpret contemporary craft objects – for instance, as works of representational art in materials like ceramics, glass, textile, metal or wood, or as functional, handmade everyday objects. In this publication, the editors have invited different voices in craft theory to investigate the perception of contemporary craft as a particular discourse and aesthetic vocabulary. According to the editors, contemporary crafts can benefit from being discussed as representations of reality that do not rely on the concept of autonomy. As such, neither do they rely on the conventional dualism between aesthetic objects and everyday things. The authors investigate the possibility to perceive craft objects from perspectives that relate to the aesthetic tradition of materialism.

Sverre Bjertnæs is considered one of the leading contemporary Norwegian artists today. He himself often refers to his body of works as a fragmented ‘stream of images’ collected from art history, vernacular culture and his own life.

This authoritative monograph on the artist features his oeuvre from the 1990s to the present day, with more than 200 illustrations. The book presents the full range of Bjertnæs’s works, covering painting and drawing as well as sculpture and the tableaux installations he has developed in later years. Bjertnas embraces the conceptual approaches of photorealism as well as merging figurative and abstract painting, and experimenting with the use of new media.

Exhibition at the Haugar Vestfold Kunstmuseum, Tønsberg (NO), 29 April – 8 September 2019.

Text in Norwegian.

The Norwegian Torbjørn Kvasbø (b. 1953) is considered a leading figure in the field of contemporary ceramic art. He exhibits regularly in Asia, Europe and the US and achieved a unique status as an artist and pioneer, and also as a teacher with widespread influence having been actively engaged in restructuring the art schools where he taught. The art historian Jorunn Veiteberg analyzes in this publication Kvasbø’s works from 1977 to the present day. Most critics have described his objects as forms inspired by nature, by lava eruptions or landscapes. Veiteberg is critical of this and sees them more as bodily expressions. Kerstin Wickmann, design historian and former professor at Konstfack in Stockholm, discusses Kvasbø’s twelve years as teacher in Stockholm and his influence on his students and the educational system.

Torbjørn Kvasbø’s work is represented in numerous international museums and private collections, such as the National Museum, Stockholm/SE, Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen/DK, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo/NO, Auckland Institute and Museum/NZ, Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu Ceramics-Park Mino, Gifu/JP, World Ceramic Exposition/KOR, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia MO/US.

Text in English, Swedish & Norwegian.

Artists of The Spanish Golden Age such as Murillo, Zurbarán and Velázquez were the key to instigating a truly passionate appreciation of Spanish art among the great collectors at the end of the Modern Age, as well as the public institutions or other institutions that sprang from private initiative after the Industrial Revolution.

There are notable sets of works created by Spanish artists in the United Kingdom, from the Osonas to Joan Miró, such as the ones conserved in Apsley House, Pollok House and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The collections owned by public institutions also include a significant number of masterpieces of Spanish art, including the National Gallery of London and the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. Other public and private collections, such as the Wallace Collection, the Duke of Stafford Collection, the Fitzwilliam Museum and Bowes Museum, also contain masterpieces.

Trained at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris in the atelier of Georges Jeanclos, Elsa Sahal quickly focused on working with ceramics for their sensuality and fragility. Former resident at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, in 2013 (Helena, MT), at Alfred University, New York State College of Ceramics, in 2009-2010 (Alfred, NY) and at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres (2007-2008), Elsa Sahal has also taught at the Haute École d’Art et de Design in Geneva and at the École Supérieure d’Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg.

She experiments in particular with the idea of volume and balance in sculpture, while returning to an exploration of the themes of the body and femininity. Ambiguous, dense, sensual and colorful, her works oscillate between anthropomorphic landscape and the landscaped body, taking up Cézanne’s dream of uniting women’s curves with the shoulders of hills. Elsa Sahal conceives, kneads and then produces complex and disturbing forms sustained by dense colors and sublimated through enamel.

Winner of the MAIF prize for sculpture, in 2008, and the contemporary sculpture prize awarded by the Fondazione Francesco Messina, in 2007, Elsa Sahal has presented her work in one-woman shows and group exhibitions in numerous museums around the globe: at the Bonnefantenmuseum, ‘Ceramix, Ceramic art from Gauguin to Schütte’, in 2015 (Maastricht); at the MAD Museum, ‘Body and Soul, New International Ceramics’, in 2013 (New York); at the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, ‘Sculptures’, in 2008 (Paris); and at the Incheon Women Artists Biennale, in 2008 (Korea).

Text in English and French.

‘The Indian tribal art, a new field of exploration of contemporary art’ – Le Monde.
India’s cultural richness makes it an endlessly fascinating country. India is known for its profusion of sacred art reaching back several thousand years, but we are less aware of the fact that over 60 million Indians come from the several hundred miscellaneous tribes with which the country is studded. The Indian government has done more than any other to preserve and give visibility to its tribal and popular art and since 1976 the Indian authorities have regularly accorded the great names in tribal art the same status as those in the modern art that has followed independence. These are India’s ‘other Masters’, as the title of an exhibition held in New Delhi in 1998 put it. At the instigation of the great modern painter and guru Jagdish Swaminathan, the year 1982 saw the inauguration in the very heart of India of the Bharat Bhavan, the first museum to give an equal standing to contemporary artists from both dominant and minority cultures. The groundbreaking historical figures among these other masters, such as Jangarh Singh Shyam and Jivya Soma Mashe, who were present in the historic exhibition Magicians of the Earth (Centre Pompidou, 1989), are enjoying a burgeoning international reputation. Their works are now on display in the great private collections, from the Devi Art Foundation to the Fondation Cartier, and the international press, ranging from the New York Times to Le Monde and including The Hindu, have celebrated these artists’ imaginative range. India astonishes once again through its extraordinary capacity simultaneously to provide a stage for all the best examples of contemporary art generated by its diverse cultures, whether they be dominant, minority, global, local, urban or rural. Like contemporary art, India is itself multi-faceted. One word, manifold cultures.

Before any sound critical framework could be evolved around the phenomenal artist Jangarh Singh Shyam as the originator of an extraordinary individualistic idiom of painting, ruthless market forces regrettably came to dominate his art and Jangarh himself became their first casualty. While trying to finish a large commission at a museum in Japan under adverse circumstances, Jangarh committed suicide in 2001. He was 40.

A whole range of conditions, events and mediations associated with Jangarh’s life and his art practice has since remained underexplored. This book is a first attempt to construct an equitable account of the formation of his prodigious artistic body of work that founded his legacy and grew into a movement. As a prime critical analysis of Jangarh Singh Shyam’s oeuvre, this book also serves as a model framework for the study of a contemporary individual folk and tribal artist.

The book probes the efficacy of extra-cultural interventions into an individual artist’s operative and relatively well-grounded indigenous cultural tradition, and asks how the latter interacts with the new, while intentionally reinventing itself.

This volume is published in association with the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore.

When Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) painted Vision After the Sermon in the summer of 1888 he was a mature artist who had travelled, exhibited and worked in a variety of media. Today the painting is considered a masterpiece, helping to assure Gauguin’s fame the world over. Few paintings have given rise to more art historical analysis and critique, more speculation, admiration or recrimination. Accompanying the innovative painting-in-focus exhibition, ‘Gauguin’s Vision’, this book illuminates one of the most intriguing and famous images in the history of western art. This re-examination of the painting, Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel brings together works by Gauguin, his mentors such as Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas, and younger contemporaries including Emile Bernard, Paul Sérusier, Maurice Denis and Henri van de Velde. It explores the biographical, pictorial and cultural circumstances that enabled Gauguin to make such a radical statement in paint in 1888. This beautifully illustrated book is a fascinating introduction to rhis iconic image.

In the last twenty-five years contemporary art in Scotland has grown from a tiny and tightly knit community to a globally recognized center of artistic innovation and experiment. This book provides the first comprehensive and fully illustrated guide to the art of the period. Featuring the work of more than eighty contemporary artists who first made their careers in Scotland including Turner Prize winners Douglas Gordon, Simon Starling and Martin Boyce. An accessible introduction for new audiences and a handy reference guide to the art of this period.

In the last twenty-five years contemporary art in Scotland has grown from a tiny and tightly knit scene to a globally recognized center of artistic innovation and experiment. Generation Reader provides the first collection of key documents from the period including essays, interviews, critical writing and artists’ own texts. This publication will fill a significant gap in the scholarship of the period and provide a resource for the future, an illustrated guide to the ideas, events and debates that shaped a generation. The selected archive texts from the period will sit alongside some newly-commissioned writing which includes essays by the novelist Louise Welch and by Nicola White, Dr Sarah Lowndes, Francis McKee, Professor Andrew Patrizio and Julianna Engberg. GENERATION is a landmark series of exhibitions tracing the remarkable development of contemporary art in Scotland over the last twenty-five years. It is an ambitious and extensive program of works of art by more than 100 artists at over 60 galleries, exhibition spaces and venues the length and breadth of Scotland between March and November 2014.