Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), one of the great visionaries of European art, spent all his life in Northern Germany, apart from four years studying in Copenhagen, and his output appears to consist almost entirely of German landscapes. But far from being parochial, he was, in the words of the French sculptor David d’Angers, the artist who ‘discovered the tragic in landscape’. His paintings assemble minutely observed elements of nature into compositions that celebrate the riches and the melancholy of a cosmos fully imbued with the divine, while never losing an almost hallucinatory engagement with reality. For all their clarity, they are the quintessence of Romanticism.
Almost too familiar today, to Friedrich’s contemporaries these extraordinary paintings were astonishing and challenging. This volume records the reactions of some of the most prominent figures of German Romanticism: Kleist, Brentano and Arnim (in a witty series of dialogues between gallery visitors alternately bewitched and bewildered by Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea), the painter and physiologist Carus, the psychologist Schubert, the Russian poet and translator Zhukovsky. A piece by Goethe and his colleague Heinrich Meyer records the somewhat baffled admiration of the earlier generation; and Friedrich’s own Commandments of Art breathes the almost overwhelming passion with which he approached his vocation. An introduction by the leading scholar Johannes Grave situates Friedrich’s art and its reception in the context of the Romantic movement both in Germany and in Europe as a whole.
Since 1999, the Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst e.V. (Society for Goldsmithing) has been fostering international networking within the jewelry and utensils scene through the Friedrich Becker Prize. The award commemorates the renowned goldsmith and designer of kinetic objects Friedrich Becker (1922–1997). Endowed by his wife, Hildegard Becker (1928–2018), this prestigious accolade now celebrates its tenth triennial with the publication of this catalog, which features a special homage to its eponym alongside a comprehensive chronicle of its history.
This anniversary publication is, of course, also devoted to this year’s competition. Forty-eight works in total are presented, each showcasing craftsmanship, precision, and sophistication combined with powerful creative expression. Jury: Paul Derrez, Melanie Isverding, Christianne Weber-Stöber.
Text in English and German.
The art of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), mysterious and spiritual as it was, depended on an intense engagement with nature. On the long hikes that he took through his native north Germany, and further south in the Bohemian mountains, he drew landscapes, buildings, people and, most intently of all perhaps, trees. Half of Friedrich’s surviving drawings come from the sketchbooks that he compiled on his journeys and referred to during the whole of his career. A handful of these sketchbooks survive intact. The one known as The Oslo Sketchbook of 1807 was used for just two months, from April to June of that year. Its 23 pages of drawings record, with almost hallucinatory simplicity and clarity, trees that Friedrich would use in his paintings for years to come.
It is often said that you can’t take the same walk twice in New York. Its history may be short compared to that of European cities, but it is also a history marked by lightning-fast change. This pictorial journey into the history of New York City starts from the small town that began as New Amsterdam in the 17th century, tracing the unbridled expansion of the 18th century and waves of mass immigration of the 19th and 20th centuries. The authors, both experienced NYC tour guides, explore iconic districts like Times Square, Harlem, Wall Street, Central Park, Ellis Island and the Bronx, bringing the past and people to life through engaging stories and images. An inspired selection of archival photos, prints, vintage maps, stereographs, and ephemera make this publication, with its elegant, silver-edged finish, a fascinating visual homage to the vibrant city that is New York today.
111 LGBTQ+ Places in New York City That You Must Not Miss celebrates a city that has been a thriving epicenter of LGBTQ+ culture, art, activism and community for decades. For queer New Yorkers and visitors alike, New York offers joy, connection and belonging — and this guide reveals the places where that legacy comes alive. From iconic landmarks to hidden sites and everyday spaces, the book uncovers the stories that made queer New York what it is today. Readers can explore the corners of Central Park where queer life once flourished, visit the world’s only queer art museum and discover the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. Each entry contributes to the city’s powerful historic legacy. Whether for lifelong New Yorkers or curious travelers, this compelling guide offers a new way to experience the city: through the people who fought, created, loved and lived boldly. These 111 places reveal why New York remains a catalyst for liberation.
New York, New York – a crazy quilt of evolving neighborhoods, trends, and tastes, and home to natives and newcomers of every nationality, ethnicity, and outlook. New York City’s history and grand ambitions live in every street, park, and hidden alleyway. This unusual guidebook invites the adventurous and curious to explore a wildly diverse selection of little-known places, including: a trapeze school, a giant Buddha in a former porno theater, a Coney Island sideshow, Louis Armstrong’s home, a Central Park croquet court, a Gatsby-era speakeasy, and a secret balcony where slaves worshiped 200 years ago. Play chess with the masters on a Midtown office-tower wall; have a pint at a legendary prizefighter’s hangout in Soho; whisper messages across a crowded train station. Unexpected and quirky, most of these destinations are so under-the-radar they will astound even longtime New Yorkers who thought they knew it all!
Revised and updated edition.
Author, photographer and interior designer Blue Carreon, known for The Gardens of the Hamptons and Equestrian Life in the Hamptons, takes readers on an all-access tour of New York’s hidden gardens. Blue has compiled a wide variety of beautiful residential gardens, of various sizes and styles, and shares the backstories from owners and designers to inspire and excite readers.
This breathtaking and unique collection features vivid, full-color photography of gardens both large and small, such as townhouse gardens, penthouse terraces, and charming balconies, alongside the personal stories behind each one. From meadow plantings on rooftop gardens to contemporary skyscraper terraces, from penthouses with swimming pools to townhouses with French garden flair, Secret Gardens of New York City offers a rare opportunity to peer behind the facades of numerous residences and explore the stunning urban oases hiding within breadth and width of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
This beautiful and picturesque title is perfect for garden enthusiasts, people with an interest in real estate, and avid fans of New York. It’s a fitting companion to Blue’s best-selling The Gardens of the Hamptons; together they take readers on a dazzling tour of New York’s town and country gardens.
“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.
New York City has 700,000 street trees. These trees are asked to work harder than others, doing more with less. They provide shade, absorb stormwater, create microclimates, and dampen loud urban sounds. Like still lifes, they symbolize larger ideas and profound histories. The New York City Street Tree Tarot deck can be used like any other tarot deck. However, users are encouraged to interpret the cards in their own way as they read the accompanying texts and guide words. This allows them to develop new patterns and ways of interacting with the iconography.
Undone explores 52 unrealised projects by Ayşe Erkmen, offering a rare glimpse into the conceptual force of works that remained unbuilt. Often conceived for competitions or public contexts, these projects—halted by spatial, political, or logistical constraints—reveal Erkmen’s artistic depth through sketches, renderings, and notes. Rather than viewing these ideas as failures, the book highlights their significance as powerful, stand-alone conceptual works. With texts by Friedrich Meschede and Cem İleri, Undone reflects on the meaning of realisation in contemporary art, challenging the notion that only completed works define an artist’s legacy. Erkmen emerges not only as an installation artist but as a thinker who engages deeply with space, form, and society. Celebrating intention and imagination, Undone presents unrealised art as fertile ground for rethinking public space and possibility.
Undone explores 52 unrealized projects by Ayşe Erkmen, offering a rare glimpse into the conceptual force of works that remained unbuilt. Often conceived for competitions or public contexts, these projects—halted by spatial, political, or logistical constraints—reveal Erkmen’s artistic depth through sketches, renderings, and notes. Rather than viewing these ideas as failures, the book highlights their significance as powerful, stand-alone conceptual works. With texts by Friedrich Meschede and Cem İleri, Undone reflects on the meaning of realization in contemporary art, challenging the notion that only completed works define an artist’s legacy. Erkmen emerges not only as an installation artist but as a thinker who engages deeply with space, form, and society. Celebrating intention and imagination, Undone presents unrealized art as fertile ground for rethinking public space and possibility.
Twentieth-century Japanese printmaking—especially the refined art of shin hanga (new prints)—has long remained underappreciated. This expanded and revised edition of Shin Hanga. New Prints of Japan (1900–1960) sets out to change that.
Building on the success of the original 2022 publication, this richly illustrated volume offers an even deeper exploration of the shin hanga movement, with an expanded section on its most celebrated artist, Kawase Hasui. New entries, additional prints, and enhanced scholarship highlight Hasui’s poetic vision and his central role in shaping the aesthetics of modern Japanese woodblock prints.
Shin hanga works are the result of a unique collaborative process between artist, publisher, block cutter, and printer—reviving traditional techniques to create modern expressions of beauty. Their subtle visual language, exquisite craftsmanship, and emotional resonance distinguish them from both their ukiyo-e predecessors and the emerging avant-garde.
This updated edition features an expanded selection of prints, drawn from two major private collections, the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, and rare works from the Watanabe family archive—the publisher who launched the shin hanga movement and helped define its legacy.
In Signs of New York, architect and photographer Emma Verhagen invites you on a visual journey through the streets of the Big Apple. With a keen eye for detail, she captures the most fascinating signs, typefaces, and graphic gems found in the public realm. From iconic restaurant logos and vintage advertising murals to the distinctive signage of the subway: every photograph is paired with the exact location where it was captured. This collection is presented in a beautifully crafted, tactile hardcover. Featuring elegant foil stamping and printed on premium uncoated paper, it serves as the perfect souvenir for any New York visitor, as well as a must-have for enthusiasts of typography, graphic design, and urban nostalgia.
More than any other civilization, China is renowned for its long tradition of ceramic production, from its terracotta and stoneware works in ancient times to the imperial porcelain manufactured at Jingdezhen from the end of the fourteenth century. These works have been admired and collected over centuries for their outstanding quality and refinement. Now two hundred masterpieces from prominent private collections around the world have been brought together for the first time in a new book. The Baur Collections in Geneva, formed between 1928 and 1951, and the Zhuyuetang Collection (the Bamboo and Moon Pavilion in Hong Kong), which has been building since the late 1980s, reveal the elegance and variety of imperial monochrome porcelain wares produced during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, which followed on from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) periods. These restrained pieces – both profane and sacred – exemplify the values of simplicity and modesty espoused by classical Chinese texts. With chapters devoted to the historical, cultural and technical contexts in which these pieces were made, this book will be a key reference on Chinese monochrome ceramics for all lovers of the subject, as well as students, researchers and connoisseurs.
Text in English and French with Chinese summaries.
From Brooklyn brownstones to Bauhaus blocks, Art Deco icons to towering skyscrapers – New York’s ever-evolving skyline spans all architectural styles, tracing the history of this modern metropolis. From famous icons like the Flatiron Building to hidden architectural gems, the guide features more than 50 must-see buildings spanning all architectural styles. Whether you’re a seasoned New Yorker or a curious visitor, this is your boldly opinionated guide to the most arresting buildings in The Big Apple.
China, nearly half a century after economic transformation and development, is changing not just itself, but the world around it. The BRI (Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure and economic development program initiated by the Chinese government) promises investments in countries along the ancient overland trading routes between China and the West, with maritime arcs around Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian peninsula, down the eastern coast of Africa and through the Mediterranean. In this book are selected many distinctive, wonderful shots taken in about 21 countries participating in the BRI, covering 50 regions and a distance of over 267,000 kilometers the author visited from early 2023 to late 2025 as photographer. Through words and pictures, he takes the reader on a tour along the new Belt and Road, showing it as it is actually unfolding in the real world across Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa. This book serves as a good observation and thinking of the reality of China today.
This small, beautiful book showcases the best and most arresting modern photography of the dog. Bringing together bold projects by established and emerging photographers from around the world, the book moves beyond sentimentality to present images that are intimate, cinematic and quietly powerful. Playful, poignant and sometimes unexpected, these photographs reveal the many ways dogs exist alongside us — as companions, characters, confidants and constants. This is a fresh, modern portrait of our closest of animal friends.
The 1920s in Germany witnessed a revolution in visual communication, typography, and graphic design that still influences us today. In 1929, Hungarian avant-garde artist and Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy was invited to design a room dedicated to the future of typography at the Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin as part of a larger exhibition called New Typography (“Neue Typographie”).
The exhibition was organized by the Ring of New Advertising Designers (“ring neue werbegestalter”), a group started by Kurt Schwitters in 1927 which consisted of 12 avant-garde designers and artists who explored a common vision of modernity in advertising and graphic design. In five years, the Ring put on over 20 shows in Germany, and invited guest artists to exhibit with them.
Moholy-Nagy’s room in the New Typography show was called “Where is Typography Headed?”. He created 78 freestanding panels with work by himself, other artists, and contemporary printed matter, which addressed the current trends and future direction of typography. The panels are reproduced together in this book for the first time, along with an Abcdarium of terms and concepts by a roster of noted typography and design historians.
The Ralph Hänig Collection is without doubt one of the most significant collections of 18th-century Meissen porcelain today, commissioned by the kings of Poland and Electors of Saxony August II and August III, either for their own use or as diplomatic gifts to other royal houses in Europe. A large part also comprises personal orders by noblemen who sought to grace themselves with this new status symbol—among them Elector Clemens August of Cologne and the Prussian king Friedrich II.
This new catalog of the collection, which also includes Böttger stoneware and Böttger porcelain featuring painted coats-of-arms, presents all significant styles of decoration from Meissen’s early period as well as heraldic marks. It thus offers the reader the opportunity to gain vivid insight into a key episode of Saxon-Polish history.
Text in English and German.
The photographer Richard Koek is a visual storyteller with a gift for being in the right place at the right time. For this book, he turns his gaze to the people and streetscapes of New York, capturing the diversity and energy of the city that inspires so many to come here to realize their dreams. These are photos of real New Yorkers, night and day, at work and at play, in their neighborhoods, at their jobs, and on the street. The city itself, from glass fronted buildings to sidewalk food stands, reflects the tenacity and spirit of the people who call the Big Apple home.
“Richard has a unique eye for the still astonishing diversity of New Yorkers, natives or transplants. A transplant himself, there’s no denying the power of Richard’s personal vision of the city he has made his home. His evident talent and the works’ singularity speak for themselves.” – Julia Gruen, Executive Director, Keith Haring Foundation, New York
Ring Redux presents more than a hundred avant-garde rings by renowned international artists who explore this age-old jewelry form with great vitality and relevance to society today. In the essay “Riffs on Rings“, Ursula Ilse-Neuman provides valuable insights into the astonishing variations on one of the most intimate and enduring forms of body adornment, revealing the profound and subtle differences in how these artists evoke the ring’s potential to express ideas that extend beyond its ornamental role. The skill and audacity infused in these intimate sculptural forms is captured in stunning new color photographs. In the “Artists’ Voices” section, the jewelers provide valuable perspectives on the conception and execution of their works. The collection of rings presented here has been acquired over five decades by Susan Grant Lewin and will be exhibited at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia.
The topicality of Hanns Hoffmann-Lederer’s (1899–1970) design doctrine, with its claim to a comprehensive aesthetic education, lies in the fact that it represents an important counterbalance to today’s euphoria for digitalization. For a long time the young Bauhaus Master and design pedagogue opposed the publication of his concept for a fundamental artistic education, one which united and expanded the content of many different trends within the Bauhaus teachings. For him the risk that his exercises could be misunderstood as prescriptive was too great. Yet greater still was the drive of his enthusiastic students, who compiled exemplar images, edited teaching notes, and in 1958 conceived the first draft for a potential publication. Here Justus Theinert and Rainer K. Wick trace the moving life and the distinct pedagogical attributes of this fascinating personality.
Text in German.
The America’s Cup has been the world’s most prestigious yacht race for over 170 years. This beautifully illustrated and fully updated new edition tells the story of the cup from its inception through to the most recent race, held in 2024.
Named in 1851 in honor of the first winner (New York pilot, ‘America’), the Cup was dominated by American yachts for well over a century. At last, in 1983, Australia II wrestled the trophy away from the USA, albeit briefly. At Barcelona in 2024, the Cup produced one of the best contests yet, with the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron winning the race for a fifth time, and a British yacht, Britannia, competing in the finals for the first time in 60 years.
With a painting of each race since 1851, by marine artist Tim Thompson, and detailed descriptions of the boats involved, The Story of the America’s Cup 1851-2024 is an elegant, insightful celebration of a storied contest.
The collection of British silver at the Ashmolean Museum has all, with one notable exception (a tankard of 1574 given in 1790), been acquired since shortly after World War II. In relation to other major museum collections, therefore, it is young. Yet amounting to over 550 objects, many of which are of spectacular quality and rarity, it is one of the most important collections of its kind in the world, equaled only for the ‘golden age’ of English silver by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The collection has never been fully catalogued and this will be the first time a complete catalogue has been published.