The essays in this lavishly illustrated volume offer a multi-faceted portrait of American financier J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) as a collector of art. A riveting exploration of Morgan’s acquisitions from antiquities to medieval manuscripts to Old Master paintings and European decorative arts, Morgan—The Collector introduces the reader to how and why he amassed his vast collection. The lively essays also serve as a tribute to Linda Roth, curator at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, who dedicated much of her forty-year career to researching Morgan and the over 1,500 works from his collection now in the museum. This much-needed publication focuses on Morgan as a collector and is directed at both a scholarly and more general audience that is interested in the history of collecting, America in the Gilded Age, Pierpont Morgan, and European art.
“…sumptuous large illustrations of the selected Works, with a beautifully printed tonality”
“lt is exciting to think about how this important collection can continue to grow while this publication is already a beautiful tribute to Scottish art.” — Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, Volume 29, 2024-2025, p.128
The National Galleries of Scotland is home to the most important collection of Scottish art in the world. This beautifully illustrated book introduces the collection through 100 works, specially chosen by the curatorial team who care for them.
The selection ranges chronologically from a 16th-century portrait of a Scottish king to 21st-century instalations and prints. Some of the most famous painters in Scotland’s history feature alongside some of the finest artists working in Scotland today. Many of the most distinctive movements in Scotland’s artistic heritage are represented, including the Celtic Revival, Arts and Crafts, the Glasgow Boys and the Scottish Colourists.
Each of the 100 works is reproduced alongside a text by one of 23 three expert contributors. The introduction gives an overview of the collection and Scottish art history more broadly. It is perfect for those who already love Scottish art, and those who are yet to discover its riches.
“Futuristic, shrill, strange? Beyond these clichés, photographer Richard Koek captures everyday life in Tokyo – his pictures tell of life in the metropolis.” — Stern Germany
A unique book by photographer Richard Koek about one of the world’s largest cities, Tokyo. The visitor of this megapolis in Japan will see a lot of neon and plastic, but also traditional kimonos and cherry blossoms. Fashion and advertising are at least as important as etiquette and tidiness. In Tokyo Tokyo Koek reveals the true face of a city where tradition and innovation go hand in hand. Surely the stereotypes are a subject of his photographs, but Koek always gives them his own twist. His colorful images are raw, realistic and extremely striking. Koek knows how to capture the magic of everyday life by putting the ordinary on a pedestal. The beauty of the image and the story behind it always go hand in hand in his works. This is how he shows a different side of the city.
Dutch landscape painter of the late 18th century, Barend Hendrik Thier has been almost completely forgotten. A recent discovery, the attribution of twelve still intact sketchbooks, has brought him back into the limelight, making him – by far – the 18th century Dutch artist for whom we have the greatest number of sketchbook. This fortunate discovery reveals a completely new side to his work, a more intimate and spontaneous approach to nature than his finished drawings for the market, and this sketchbook formerly in the Rothschild collection is perhaps the finest testimony to his art as a landscape painter, distinguished by his ability to capture and render the variations of light in the Dutch countryside. The 70 pages of the carnet in portrait format are also used horizontally, in double pages, to depict mainly the surroundings of Leiden, but there are also sketches of birds and natural landscapes.
Text in French.
Pierre Chareau, aménagements et architecture is an unprecedented synthesis of almost 80 interior architecture projects (1908-1938), both private and public, and his architectural projects (1925-1950).
It reveals the evolution of Pierre Chareau’s approach to interior design, from his beginnings as a decorator integrating his furniture into existing spaces, to the advent, over the course of his projects, of a resolutely architectural approach to space, in which furniture comes to life and becomes architecture in its own right. Listing all of these projects, it provides a detailed, illustrated analysis of twenty-five of them, most of which were commissioned by three families: the Dalsaces, the Bernheims and the Dreyfus.
This second volume reveals the designer’s long-term commitment to architecture. It looks back at his involvement in the CIAM, the Société des architectes modernes and the Rassemblement des architectes, as well as his collaboration with the magazine L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui. It offers a critical analysis of Pierre Chareau’s work as an architect, deciphering the 13 projects he worked on in France from 1923 to 1938, and in the United States from 1945 to 1950, from Djemil Anik’s cottage to Robert Motherwell’s studio in East Hampton. Finally, this book offers an in-depth analysis of the Glass House. By drawing up a portrait of Jean Dalsace and his wife Annie, it helps us to understand the central role played by those who commissioned the project. It looks back at the architectural and societal context of the time, explaining the importance of light and hygiene in the Maison de verre. The building site and its vicissitudes are described, followed by a description of the main principles behind the design of the house, and an analysis of its volumes and spaces.
Text in French.
This book reveals the collection presented at Ajuda Royal Palace in Lisbon (Royal Treasure Museum), that has been recently renovated, and where is displayed this unique collection with particular significance for a country with a nine-century history. Over the time, from the 17th century until the 20th century, the Braganza Royal Family has collected precious jewels and works of art intensively, often through relations with other important European families, but also through royal gifts. Finally displayed in a monumental permanent exhibition, each object in this collection witnesses the history of a leading country, as well as the story of the people who have worn or conserved these highlights of decorative art.
The book begins by the North Sea. It is a late summer’s afternoon, and a bright sun has dispersed the greyness of the day. Two Englishmen are enjoying a swim off the Essex coast when all at once both have the feeling that they are back at the French seaside. They find themselves starting to tell each other of their youthful experiences of living in France. The adventures they narrate follow one after another like waves rolling onto the shore.
Clive, coming from London, had found himself spending a year deep in the French countryside within sight of the western Pyrenees; John, hailing from Devon, had ended up living for a while in the City of Light within sight of the Folies Bergère. Outsiders though they were, they momentarily became part of French society, their adventures fuelled by the culinary delights of their adopted land.
They tell their tales with humor and relish as they recall their initiation into the French way of life of decades ago – and how it shaped their own.
“I try to create a parallel world where my own aesthetics are there, but with traditional garments.” — Mous Lamrabat in The Guardian
“If there was a trifecta of Mous’s personal passions and pillars to his practice, it would be the power of women, the senselessness of racism, and the beauty of Africa.” — Vogue Arabia
Mousganistan is the first book of the acclaimed Moroccan-born, Belgium-raised artist Mous Lamrabat, encompassing a body of work that has been more than five years in the making. Mousganistan is a celebration of love and freedom, an in-between territory in which opposites collide and create beauty and abundance, new connections and dialogues in a visually thought-provoking and at times confronting way. Encompassing his iconic fashion imagery and personal work, Mousganistan is a journey into the artist’s diasporic life, a joyous and yet intensely sharp portrait of the contact space between cultures, symbols, religions, capitalism and survival. By challenging our expectations of what cultures are, and how they should be portrayed, his images create a space for love, compassion and understanding – allowing us to imagine a possible, different world.
Published on the occasion of the monographic exhibition at the Corner of the MAXXI, this catalog is illustrated with the earlier paintings and never-before-seen large works created especially for the museum, a dialogue between nine sets of twins and one work in which it is possible to recognize an expressive direction filtered through the lens of abstraction. In addition to the essay by the curator, the volume includes an interview with the artist, a critical text by Aurelio Picca and a bio-bibliography. In short, the volume provides a complete portrait of Marco Tamburro: from the references to classical cinema, to the theater and to contemporary photography, to his personal history and paintings, which combine aspects of his own life with imaginary events. His main source of inspiration is the city of Rome, consumed and crisscrossed by an infinity of trajectories, overlaid by buildings and skyscrapers.
Text in English and Italian.
“This book is here to remind long-time movie fans why these important 20th-century icons will forever remain the Fabulous Faces of our time.”
— The Eye of Photography
“Enigmatic, dazzling and fabulous: the faces of Hollywood’s golden age.” — The Times
“A new book pulls together glamorous portraits of film stars from the 1920s to the 60s who could draw an audience with their name alone.”
— The Guardian
“Intense close-ups, staged embraces and smouldering, emotive glances exude star power in this fitting tribute to a bygone age.”
“Star quality emanates from every page.”— The Lady Magazine
Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood brings together some of the greatest portraits taken by leading Hollywood portrait photographers during the motion picture industry’s golden years of 1920 to 1960. Little-seen negatives, long buried in the remarkable and internationally renowned archives of the John Kobal Foundation, have been unearthed and printed to reveal some of Hollywood’s favorite stars at the height of their careers. Full-page images of Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, as well as lesser lights including Anna May Wong, Lon Chaney, Lupe Velez and Ramon Novarro, will remind long-time movie fans why these important 20th-century icons will forever remain the fabulous faces of the movie world.
Selected by best-selling author Robert Dance and writer and award-winning film producer Simon Crocker, over 200 photographs are presented alongside an essay by Dance, describing what it takes to become a fabulous face and an international icon.
This rare text is the first ever biography of Shakespeare, written by one of the liveliest dramatists and poets of the early 18th century.
This landmark in our understanding of the man and his work is introduced by one of the most original biographers of our own time and richly illustrated with contemporary images.
Nicholas Rowe’s Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear was published in 1709 as the preface to his pioneering edition of the plays. Rowe, together with Thomas Betterton, the greatest actor of the period, carried out archival research and interviewed widely to collect as much information about Shakespeare as possible. This is as close as we will ever get to the people who knew and worked with Shakespeare.
Rowe’s edition of the plays was also the first to be illustrated. This edition has 25 pages of these fascinating early images, mostly based on contemporary performance: a unique and charming picture of Shakespeare in performance.
The book begins by the North Sea. It is a late summer’s afternoon, and a bright sun has dispersed the greyness of the day. Two Englishmen are enjoying a swim off the Essex coast when all at once both have the feeling that they are back at the French seaside. They find themselves starting to tell each other of their youthful experiences of living in France. The adventures they narrate follow one after another like waves rolling onto the shore.
Clive, coming from London, had found himself spending a year deep in the French countryside within sight of the western Pyrenees; John, hailing from Devon, had ended up living for a while in the City of Light within sight of the Folies Bergère. Outsiders though they were, they momentarily became part of French society, their adventures fuelled by the culinary delights of their adopted land.
They tell their tales with humor and relish as they recall their initiation into the French way of life of decades ago – and how it shaped their own.
Manhattan Masters shows the most beautiful Dutch Masters from the Golden Age in The Frick Collection, New York. The book elaborates the creation of The Frick Collection, brought together during America’s Gilded Age in the last quarter of the 19th century. This book, published to accompany the exhibition, focuses exclusively on Dutch paintings of the 17th century and features outstanding works by renowned artist of that period, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and Ruisdael.
Burst! Abstract Painting After 1945 looks at the close, but previously unexplored relationship between Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel. Through texts and close to 100 illustrations, the book describes a vital creative exchange across the Atlantic that would entirely redefine painting. Big, expansive, paint-splattered surfaces; spontaneous actions captured on canvas; new ideas of freedom. A story of post-war recovery and Transatlantic dialogue. On both sides of the ocean, society was reacting to the horrors of the Second World War, the Holocaust and the coming of the atom bomb. The book shows how artists searched for new ways to deal with these shattering events. With works by Jean Dubuffet, Natalia Dumitresco, Helen Frankenthaler, Asger Jorn, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Georges Mathieu, Hedda Sterne and Clyfford Still, and more.
One sole truth about Edvard Munch’s art does not exist. The answers depend on the questions we pose. Twenty-two Munch experts have written 150 texts about well-known and lesser-known works from Munchmuseet’s collection. Through these multiple ways of seeing, Munch’s lifework emerges as infinite. And this book, as an exercise in the art of seeing. The book invites the reader to explore the world of Edvard Munch — his ideas, processes, and the profoundly human topics that occupied him and that still affect us today. Through a wide selection from the museum’s collection, you can experience the richness of Munch’s artistic career and his unrelenting drive to experiment and innovate.
“I have an old camera with which I have taken countless photographs of myself. It often produces astonishing effects”, Edvard Munch states in a 1930 interview. “Someday when I am old and have nothing better to do than work on an autobiography, all my photographic self-portraits will see the light of day again.” The autobiography was never realized, but the self-portraits have found their way to the pages of The Experimental Self. The Photography of Edvard Munch, which demonstrates the fundamentally experimental nature of the artist’s photographic practice. As a photographer, Munch embraced the freedom provided by the amateur position, and the unpredictable aspects of analogue photographic technology. By playfully approaching his own image in picture after picture, Munch extends his explorations of selfhood in other media through photography. The resulting photographs provide unique access to Munch’s radical artistic vision, which this book studies through eminent essays by Patricia G. Berman, Tom Gunning and MaryClaire Pappas.
Filmmaker and artist Chantal Akerman was one of the most fearless filmmakers of her generation. Her work blurs the boundaries of time and space, of film and art. It can be seen in cinemas and museums worldwide. She may be largely unknown to the general public, but she is revered by cinephiles, visual artists and filmmakers. The impact of her oeuvre on world cinema became abundantly clear when Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was named best film of all time by British magazine Sight and Sound. In 2024, Bozar-Centre for Fine Arts, Jeu de Paume and CINEMATEK will pay tribute to Akerman by organizing the first major exhibition on the Brussels artist. This book accompanying the exhibition features people who were closest to Akerman and can offer unique insights: the people who worked with her or were inspired by her.
Exhibitions:
Bozar-Centre for Fine Arts – March 14 to July 21 2024
Jeu de Paume – September 28, 2024, to January 19, 2025
CINEMATEK – March 15 to July 21 2024
Although the Belgian artist Constant Permeke (1886–1952) is considered to be an expressionist, he explored numerous different styles. In a quintessentially modernist fashion, he sought ways of upending or exploding academicism, and of repeatedly reinventing painting. Right from the start of his career, Permeke achieved wide international recognition with his recurring subjects such as domestic scenes and people going about their everyday activities. He participated in numerous major exhibitions at home and abroad, alongside great names in art history such as Georges Braque, Amadeo Modigliani, Ossip Zadkine and Pablo Picasso.
With text contributions by Anneleen Cassiman, Jan Ceuleers, Inne Gheeraert, Franz W. Kaiser, Felipe Sevilhano Martinez, Daniël Rovers, Inneke Schwickert, Lise Vandewal, Wendy Van Hoorde and David Van Reybrouck.
This publication coincides with the festive reopening of the Permeke Museum at the artist’s former home in Jabbeke on 29 March 2024. Constant Permeke is a new reference work that brings together around 100 works of art and offers an in-depth look at the artist’s life and work.
This book explores the figure of Ghitta Carell (1899–1972), a Hungarian-born photographer who was naturalized Italian. Ghitta was born into a Jewish family of humble origins; at a very young age she moved to Italy, where she quickly became a very sought-after portrait photographer. Intellectuals, actors, generals, and political leaders posed in her studio in Rome, as well as famous women and members of royalty and the middle class.
Her black-and-white pictures were taken with a view camera: Ghitta crafted her photographs with mastery and delicacy, and thus created luminous and soft images, intervening through subtraction by removing the most superficial layers. This is how she achieved a kind of unmasking, thanks to which she restored not only the face but first and foremost the soul of those photographed. Ghitta Carell died in Haifa, Israel, leaving behind more than 50,000 plates now mostly dispersed.
Text in English and Hebrew.
Masquerade, Make-up & Ensor transposes Ensor’s ideas around the masquerade, (false) coquetry, seduction, deception, the artificial and the ephemeral to today. MoMu (Fashion Museum Antwerp) celebrates the painters of fashion: the craftsmanship and inexhaustible creativity of make-up and hair artists in a book where light, color, art, fashion and make-up meet. Make-up and beauty have today become a trillion-dollar industry that confronts man with his physical mortality, imagined imperfections and existential fears. But make-up, like paint, is also a form of personal expression, artistic experimentation, joy and freedom. Masquerade, Make-up & Ensor explores how closely make-up is intertwined with many aspects of our humanity.
Seattle has fueled the hopes, dreams, and imaginations of countless individuals throughout its history. Their energy, ideas, and inventions have influenced the city’s skyline, the evolution of air travel, the music and art worlds, and even the very coffee we drink. They are the reason Seattle is gifted with so many unusual, offbeat, and truly compeling places for explorers to discover and enjoy, from a coin-operated attraction filled with enormous shoes, the world’s greenest commercial building, and urban old growth forests, to a haunted staircase and museums dedicated to pinball, dialysis machines, and rubber chickens.
111 Places in Seattle That You Must Not Miss invites and inspires locals and visitors alike to seek out the Emerald City’s hidden treasures, overlooked gems, and charming curiosities.
Shadows of Boulder Hill presents a group of 50 powerful paintings in oil on linen by artist Tang Shuo (b. 1987 in Guangxi, China) that delve into his childhood experiences in rural southern China. This, Tang’s first book, documents the concurrent exhibitions of these works at Fabienne Levy’s galleries in Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2023.
Shadows of Boulder Hill marks a significant point in Tang’s career; in 2023 he incorporated narrative threads into his paintings for the first time, depicting young lovers, recluses, and wanderers lost in imagined and remembered landscapes of lush vegetation and wildflowers. A selection of the fascinating true stories from Boulder Hill that inform Tang’s practice, personal and collective, are detailed in the gallery notes.
Shadows of Boulder Hill includes a foreword by gallerist Fabienne Levy and an essay by multidisciplinary scholar Dr Matthew Holman. Here, Tang appears as an artist who has found his voice as he eloquently explores scenes of family, friendship, suffering, solitude, and survival.
Volker Hermes: Hidden Portraits gathers the essential works by one of the most beguiling artists of the present era, in a very modern reinterpretation of historical privilege.
Using only elements of the original paintings, Volker Hermes masterfully alters photos of historical portraits to mask the faces of their subjects. With each figure concealed under their own ceremonial attire, these one-time elites quickly lose their individuality in a plume of decorations and accessories.
In this official collection, Hermes delivers his wry commentary on wealth, fame and social status with taut imagery, intense focus and a suitably shrewd sense of humor. His immaculately reproduced artworks are accompanied by the thoughts of German art historian Till-Holger Borchert and Professor Francesca Raimondi of Berlin’s Institute for Philosophy, as well as the artist himself.
A must-have revision of classical portraiture from a celebrated digital creator.
“Hermes’s meticulously described collages pay homage to their sources while gently ribbing the social pretensions and ambitions of the courtly classes.” – Christopher Alessandrini, metmuseum.org
The very first retrospective book showcasing the renowned high jewelry Maison Chaumet features a collection of iconic editorials and campaigns captured by major photographers such as Guy Bourdin, Peter Lindberg, Mario Testino, Mario Sorrenti, Richard Burbridge, and Paolo Roversi. Additionally, it presents previously unreleased autochromes from the early 20th century, offering a captivating glimpse into the Maison’s historical archives.
A photographic reference title authored by Carol Woolton, a leading authority on high jewelry at British Vogue, Sylvie Lécallier, director of the photographic collection at Palais Galliera Musée de la Mode in Paris, and Flora Triebel, a curator specialist in 19th-century photography at Bibliothèque Nationale de France, delves into the close ties Chaumet has woven with photography since its inception, revealing its innovative collaborations over the years. From the 1930s to the present day, the book offers a portrait of high jewelry and women, making it an essential read for photography and high jewelry enthusiasts worldwide.