Daniel Kruger (b. 1951), widely known as a jewelly artist, presents an overview of his ceramic works, featuring 230 pieces created over twenty years. Classic examples – tulip and lidded vases, delftware and dinner services – are familiar references, which Kruger decorates with images of footballers, homoerotic nudes, or casts of twigs or bones. Worlds collide, revealing our preconceptions regarding conventions that provide a manipulated view of reality. There is less interest in the spectacular; Kruger’s choice of images however, leads to unexpected, provocative combinations of form with decoration. In a continual process of artistic acquisition, new interpretation and appropriation, Kruger explores the interstice between historical archetypes and kitsch within European ceramic history.

Text in English and German.

The Alice and Louis Koch Collection of finger rings was originally collated by a jeweler from Frankfurt am Main, once described as the German ‘Cartier and Fabergé’. By 1909 the collection comprised 1,722 rings from Antiquity to 1900. Rene Lalique, a contemporary of the time, was included, undoubtedly as a modernizer of the ring form. In the past twenty-five years the fourth generation of the family continued where Louis Koch and his wife Alice left off and expanded the collection to include rings from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This publication will present the complete collection of contemporary rings, now kept in the Swiss National Museum, Zurich. Nearly 600 rings by artist jewelers from around the world document how these miniature works of art have become modern sculptures showcasing new materials and techniques, daring designs and current themes.

Text in English and German.

Ulla and Martin Kaufmann have developed their aesthetic agenda together. The techniques used by gold and silversmiths are the focal point of their work and represent the basic thematic focus of their tableware, jewelry and cutlery. It rests on their exploratory approach to materials and the diverse possibilities it provides for expression. Ulla and Martin Kaufmann have been working in their own studio in Hildesheim for nearly forty years. The two artists have thus acquired unique skills over years of experience especially the knowledge of the properties of silver and gold, their materials of choice. This profound knowledge is an essential part of the indissoluble union of design and execution. The connotations are always dual: the form of objects stems from practical considerations; is, therefore, close to ideas of functional design. At the same time, individual expression born of the artists’ mastery of their craft and their exacting aesthetic standards surrounds these pieces with the aura of works of art. This book reveals the secrets and beauty of the stunning pieces made by Ulla and Martin Kaufmann. In showcasing these objects, it establishes their aesthetic permanence as timelessly practical works. Text in English & German.

The largest surviving portion of the first major collection of Classical antiquities in Britain – the sculptures and inscriptions collected in the early 17th century by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel for his London house and garden – is in the Antiquities Department of the Ashmolean Museum. This handbook tracks their eventful history.

Arrivals and Departures is the first and only collection of works by Logan Hicks, one of the most acclaimed street and stencil artists in the world. His stunning murals plastered on the surfaces of New York City have been sown in to the public consciousness and this book further immortalizes his work. Representing five years of his extraordinary installations, travels, thoughts, and ideas, the book allows an immersive insight into his unique iconography and the stories that inspired it.

For ten years, New York’s Alleged Gallery provided a breeding ground and played the role of willing accomplice to some of the most vibrant American art to come along in decades. By exhibiting the then emerging talents of Mark Gonzales, Chris Johanson, Rita Ackermann, Susan Cianciolo, Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, Thomas Campbell and Terry Richardson, much of Alleged’s impact was due to a complete and utter disregard for the status quo. Using a potent blend of photographs, artworks and interviews with artists, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, collectors and other denizens of the era, Aaron Rose’s Young, Sleek and Full of Hell documents the glorious trials and tribulations of running an independent gallery in the final hours of the 20th century.

The full list of the artists interviewed by Brendan Fowler in the book is as follows: Thomas Campbell, David Aron, Liz Goldwyn, Joey Garfield, Leo Fitzpatrick, Spike Jonze, Audrey ‘Rose’ Bernstein, Kid America, Amy Gunther, Mike Mills, Jason Lee, Arik ‘Moonhawk’ Roper, Carlo McCormick, Shelter Serra, Kim Hastreiter, Andre Razo, Chris Pastras, Lila Lee, Athena Razo, Joshua Wildman, Brian Degraw, Chris Habib, Julia Gandelsonas, Bill Powers, Sasha Hirschfeld, Susan Cianciolo, Shayla Hason, Ari Marcopoulos, Cynthia Connolly, Adam Glickman, Michele Lockwood, Terry Richardson, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Tobin Yelland, Craig R. Stacyk II, Jess Holzworth, Marcellus Hall, Ashley Macomber, Tatiana von Furstenberg, Stefano Giovannini, Adam Wallacavage, Rita Ackermann, Erin Krause, Chan Marshall, Stephen Powers, David Hershkovits; Thurstone Moore, Chris Johanson, Janice Gaffney, Ed Templeton, Hugh Gallagher, Harmony Korine, Andy Jenkins, Ryan McGinley, Cheryl Dunn, Simone Shubuck, Shepard Fairey, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Lee Ranaldo, Seth Hodes, Bruce Labruce, Brendan Fowler, Dakota Goldhor, Beata Hendricks, Ivory Serra, Susanna Howe, Mai-Thu Perret, Christian Strike, Chloe Sevigny, Oliver Zaham and Clare Crespo.

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.

“It is a rare species, but it exists,” as ’60s art critic Pascal Renous pointed out on the subject of artistic couples. The designer-decorator duo of Janine Abraham and Dirk-Jan Rol met at Jacques Dumond’s studio in 1955. The couple shared the same love of precision, line and plain colors. Their earliest joint creations were first exhibited at the Salon des artistes décorateurs, in Paris. Their furniture, made of wicker, wood and aluminum, twice won prizes at the Salon des artistes décorateurs (a sideboard in 1956 and an armchair in 1958), garnering notice from the public and professionals alike. Jean Royère did not hesitate to use their emblematic Soleil armchair (gold medal at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair) in the decoration of the palace of the shah of Iran, in Teheran. Their light and functional designs are available today, re-edited by Yota Design. Abraham & Rol were also interior designers for both individual and large corporate clients, such as Yves Rocher and Saint-Gobain, with the same precision and sense of composition that define their furniture pieces. The couple also expressed their creativity through architecture, their mastery of this discipline enabling them to design some twenty houses from the 1960s through the 2000s in the Île-de-France region. Their homes are genuine inhabited sculptures, of which certain have become truly emblematic. Text in English and French.

The 1960s and 1970s marked a sharp turning point in the history of decoration and furniture. Until that point, the world was confined to national and elitist forms of expression. At the beginning of the 1960s, the sector took its inspiration from Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Italian and French decoration. Genres were combined in a frenzied desire to live in symbiosis with one’s time. The progress of technology strengthened the conviction that the individual had unlimited freedom and aroused the desire to inhabit in a new manner. Forms became rounder, furniture was in sync with a warm, playful, and anticonformist universe. Colors and decorative motifs took on the brilliance and fantasies of Pop Art and psychedelia. The living environment was transformed into a waking dream in which luxurious furniture in original materials and surprising objects were mixed, associated, for the first time, with early furniture. The end of the 1970s marked the advent of a period in which beauty and classic elegance gave way to a host of expressions that were unclassifiable and rejected any hierarchy. The postmodern period had arrived. Composed of a long introduction that provides a synoptic view and 32 monographs that describe its many faces, this book invites the reader to discover an exceptionally creative period and revels in an abundant iconography.

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.

The seventy-plus carved objects from the Democratic Republic of the Congo presented in this book have something remarkable in common: They are permeated with the powers of magic and sorcery, and are believed to be inhabited by the spirits of nature and the ghosts of ancestors.

Selected with great care by Patric Didier Claes, a Belgian expert in African art, the works are from the Kingdom of Luba, at the source of the Congo, and the Kingdoms of Kongo and Teke. Each sculpture is identified, indexed, meticulously described, placed in context, and pinpointed as an example of the particular carving style of a specific workshop.

Text in English and French.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in particular Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, and later the Surrealists, then others right up till the present day, Western artists have drawn on the arts of Africa for inspiration. How can this constant impact ever be measured? The same is true for the arts in Africa. Every sculpture carries within it the heritage of a people, culture, and artistic tradition in the originality of its forms. West Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa each has its own set of characteristics, within which the variety of the sculptures – always similar yet also always different – demonstrates the creativity of the ethnic group that created it. This book presents a remarkable collection amassed by a knowledgeable and impassioned art lover that combines sensitivity with quality – a quality of forms meticulously selected among different African cultures. It includes masks and reliquaries carved in Gabon, effigies and statuettes from Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa, and astonishing objects from West Africa, from Mali to Cameroon, the Koro and Mossi peoples, the Ejagham and Ekoi in Nigeria, and the Gouro in the Ivory Coast. An extraordinary collection of artistic forms that well merits its place in the universal patrimony of art.

Contents: Introduction; Le Gabon; Le royaume Kongo; Les Teke | Les Bembe | Les Zombo; Les Songye; Les Luba | Les Hemba | Les Bembe/Boyo; Les Chowke | Les Pende | Les Zande/Mangbetu; L’Afrique de l’Ouest: Les Guro | Les Senufo | Les Mossi | Les Koro | Les Fon | Les Bamileke | Les Oku | Les Mendakwe; Conclusion; English text.

Text in English and French

Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) was one of the most innovative furniture and interior designers of the twentieth century, long renowned for the tubular-steel chairs she created with le Corbusier. Her career spanned nearly seventy-five years and included work in her native France as well as in Africa, South America, Asia, and Europe, and today her designs are highly collectable. Recently, several hundred photographic negatives were uncovered in her archives, revealing for the first time the scope of her work as a photographer. In the late 1920s, French interior and furniture designer Charlotte Perriand was at the cusp of her career, just beginning her work as an architect, designer, town planner, and political militant. Starting in 1927, she turned to photography, which was to play a pivotal role in her development as a designer through the pioneering years of the modern movement. Her photographic venture ended in Japan in 1941, when the hope of a better world was shattered by World War II. For Charlotte Perriand, photography was a machine for thinking, taking notes, and stirring emotions, but it was also an instrument of political engagement. Today, her photographs are a revelation, offering unseen glimpses into her creative process and intellectual development. Her photographs express the important themes and questions explored by modern artists of the day, and are part of the vast stream of avant-garde movements in which painters, architects, and photographers – and sometimes all three combined – worked together in a common spirit.

Along with 150 full-color glossy illustrations of the terracotta, earthenware, stone, silver, and copper objects, a Pre-Columbian art lover and prestigious curator journey into a fine art collection, describing the rich cultural context and artistic merits of each work. On his part, the acclaimed author, explorer, and filmmaker Hugh Thomson gives a detailed, exciting narrative – based upon extensive research – of the role art played in the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés and of Peru by Francisco Pizarro. It is rare that a collector takes such a personal, descriptive part in publishing his treasure trove, but in this lavishly illustrated book, Stuart Handler describes why he gathered Pre-Columbian art, what attracted him to the individual pieces, and what artistic attributes make these objects outstanding works. Contents: The Collection and Patrimony by Stewart Handler; Introduction: Beginning the Journey, by Stewart Handler; Traveling with Cortés, by Hugh Thomson; Traveling with Pizarro, by Hugh Thomson; The Stuart Handler Collection; Index.

Alexander Voitskehovsky’s paintings and drawings have long been a feature of St Petersburg’s artistic landscape, loved for their idiosyncratic humor and other-worldly quality. Here they are gathered in a single publication for the first time, with accompanying exhibitions in UK and Russia.

“It is wonderful, an instant classic and certainly the most comprehensive and useful single volume on the subject ever written.” – Donald J. La Rocca, Curator, Arms and Armor, The Metropolitan Museum of Art “For those looking for an informed introduction to the topic this book is a treasure trove.” – Natasha Bennett, Curator of Oriental Collections, Royal Armouries, Leeds, UK Arms & Armour Of India, Nepal & Sri Lanka is a very visually-driven and broad-based introduction to the unique world of arms and armor of the Indian region, encompassing India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, areas with strong martial traditions. It provides an overview of types of arms and armor, with extensive geographical and historical context with many illustrated maps, their decoration and methods of adornment, as well as the iconographic and religious symbology. A unique and valuable feature of the book is an illustrated glossary. It is specifically designed to suit the needs of anyone wanting to familiarize themselves with this topic and the region. It can serve as a reference for the novice collector, and as an image resource for experts. This would include anyone interested in arms and armor in general, antique dealers, museums, general art market, educators, and of course, collectors. There has been increased interest in both collecting and scholarship regarding Indic arms and armor. Nearly every major auction on Indian and Islamic material tends to include arms and armor. Contents: Introduction; Terra Indica; Warfare In The Early Centuries; History: The Essentials; Steel, Trade And Distant Influences; Arms; Armour; Tribal Arms And Armour; Nepal; Sri Lanka; Decoration; Symbolism; Extraordinary Exemplars; Illustrated Glossary; Resources; Tips On Collecting; Museums/Collections; Further Reading; Index.

Darwishi Ur-atum Msamaki Minkabh Ishaq Eboni, the son of an Egyptian pharaoh, is only nine years old when he dies. He is mummified and laid to rest in a tomb, with the powerful Golden Scarab of Mukatagara hanging around his neck. Thousands of years later, during a transport of three precious sarcophaguses, there is a terrible storm. Lightning strikes, the lorry plunges from a flyover and the sarcophaguses are hurled through the air. During all this, a little white shape escapes the wreckage unnoticed…

Angus Gust is ten and has a perfectly normal life. Then one night a little mummy appears in his room! Life changes completely. Angus and Dummie (short for his real name) become best friends. One dreadful day, Dummie’s scarab goes missing. Without the scarab Dummie falls terribly ill. Angus must now do everything he can to find the scarab, so Dummie doesn’t have to face death again. Can Dummie be saved in time?

In this second book in the Dummie the Mummy series, Dummie, Angus and Nick travel to Egypt. It’s Dummie’s great wish to return to his country to visit the grave of his father, Pharaoh Akhnetut. Unfortunately, Egypt has completely changed in four thousand years and Akhnetut’s grave seems untraceable. To make matters even worse, Nick falls ill and Angus and Dummie set off without him. Then something terrible happens – Dummie has to give everything he’s got to save his best friend. Yet he is also determined to find his father’s grave. Fortunately, he remembers more and more about his life long ago and this proves to be very handy!

Geared towards young readers and families, Myths, Angels, and Masquerades explores themes including religious art, landscapes, still-life painting, and portraiture. It accesses these topics through forty-seven works of art, chosen from the collection of The San Diego Museum of Art. Interactive features provide opportunities for further investigation, while “Your Turn” activities invite you to try your own hand at creating art inspired by the work of past masters.

Beauty and drama come together in a true and compelling story set in the colorful, turbulent world of late-15th-century Florence. The talented son of a successful banker and the beautiful daughter of an influential patrician: their marriage seemed made in heaven, but they were both to meet untimely and tragic ends. This book tells the story of two forgotten protagonists of the Florentine Renaissance: Lorenzo Tornabuoni (1468-97) and his wife, Giovanna degli Albizzi (1468-88). Unpublished documents from family archives allow us to glimpse their daily lives, while poems and works of art offer insight into their notions of love, marriage, birth, death and hopes of eternal life. The contradictions of Italian Renaissance culture clearly emerge, such as the tendency to combine a highly principled intellectual life and aesthetic refinement with self-glorification and political ruthlessness. The author shows how life and art were completely interwoven in this period, and explains the significance of works of art by the likes of Botticelli and Ghirlandaio and their place in the lives of Lorenzo and Giovanna. Contents:
Preface; 1. Two Households; 2. The Wedding; 3. Wisdom and Beauty; 4. Lorenzo’s Beautiful Chamber; 5. The Vicissitudes of Fortune; 6. Hope of Eternal Life; 7. Years of Turmoil; 8. The Final Act; Epilogue; Acknowledgements; Notes; Sources and Bibliography.

The career of Y.G. Srimati – classical singer, musician, dancer and painter – represents a continuum in which each of these skills and experiences merged, influencing and pollinating each other.

Born in Mysore in 1926, Srimati was part of the generation much influenced by the rediscovery of a classical Sanskrit legacy devoted to the visual arts. Soon swept up in the nationalist movement for an independent India, she was deeply moved by the time she spent with Mahatma Gandhi. For the young Srimati, the explicit referencing of the past and of religious subjects came together in an unparalleled way, driven by the conscious striving for an indigenous agenda. This experience gave form and meaning to her art, and largely defined her style.

As John Guy demonstrates in this sumptuous volume, as a painter of the mid and late twentieth century, Y.G. Srimati embodied a traditionalist position, steadfast in her vision of an Indian style, one which resonated with those who knew India best.