In 1542 Pope Paolo III Farnese, with the approval of Michelangelo, commissioned to Perino del Vaga (1501–1547) a tapestry basement for the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel (Vatican).
The Spalliera was never completed, but its model, painted on canvas, was later acquired by cardinal Bernardino Spada to be placed in his roman palace (now Galleria Spada), where it was used in radically different fashion as a frieze, completed with parts by other artists.
The book is the first in-depth study of this work and of its significance in Perino’s artistic career, marked by an intense dialog with Michelangelo’s art. It also explores the importance attributed by Michelangelo to decoration, apparently antithetical to the heroic dimension for which he is celebrated
The reception of the Spalliera by different artists is studied through a group of drawings deriving from it and lasting until the baroque age, as attested by Rubens.
The global porcelain scene is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, which was founded by Brian Haughton and his wife, Anna, in London in 1982. That was just the beginning: further fairs and accompanying symposia on design, jewelry, and antiques in New York and Dubai were to follow, becoming important venues of exchange, not just for trade but for the academic world too.
To mark this anniversary, more than 40 renowned scholars were asked to write about selected European ceramics that had been traded in Brian Haughton’s gallery and that he had been particularly passionate about.
This publication is a wonderful kaleidoscope of unique ceramics from the 18th and 19th centuries, released as a homage to Brian Haughton, The Man with the Butterfly Tie.
In her vibrant paintings, Shirley Villavicencio Pizango (1988, Peru) uses memories, family stories, and personal encounters to create poetic portraits of friends, family, and strangers. Her figures appear in settings steeped in symbolism: lush Amazonian flora, ceramic motifs, and geometric patterns reminiscent of Inca culture. At the same time, she draws inspiration from the European painting tradition, in which colour and form acquire emotional power. Villavicencio Pizango doesn’t shy away from broader social themes either, such as gender, diversity and identity in a Western context. Publication in collaboration with Gallery Sofie Van de Velde.
The Yorkshire Dales is a truly special corner of Britain, offering a glorious mix of beautiful countryside, charming villages and prosperous market towns. It’s a place to climb high peaks or venture deep underground, and to enjoy local arts and crafts, good food and locally made drinks. This book explores a quirkier side of the Dales and includes 11 carefully chosen walks to help you discover it on foot. Find out where a queen lost a valuable item of clothing, visit the world’s smallest art gallery, take on the Three Peaks Challenge, meet a jolly gang of scarecrows and learn how to forecast the weather the Yorkshire way. Along the way you can explore fictional villages and their real-life inspirations, meet a god trapped forever in stone, follow in Robin Hood’s footsteps (and perhaps glimpse his bare bottom), party like it’s 1959 in an authentic American diner and search for Yorkshire’s own Atlantis beneath a lake. Written by an author with deep local knowledge, this guide reveals the many hidden splendors of the Yorkshire Dales.
A real mirror of 20th century creation, Chess Design presents an exceptional documentation on chess games made by artists, designers, architects, and craftsmen: chessboards themselves, but also artist’s drawings, execution plans and photographs of archives.
By presenting nearly 300 of these chessboards chronologically, the author offers a new perspective on the history of art and its evolution. Art Nouveau, Secession, Surrealism, Fluxus, Pop Art, most of the great movements that are born and follow one another in the Fine Arts find an echo with these chessboards and the 16 pieces that animate them. These chess games also reflect the evolution of techniques and materials used during this period: wood, glass, ceramics will give way, from the 1950s, to steel, plastic and composite materials.
At the border between the plastic arts and the decorative arts, these chessboards are made by big names in the art scene, design or architecture – Alexandre Rodchenko, Jean-Michel Frank, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, or, more recently, Yoko Ono, Robert Filliou, Yayo Kusama, Victor Vasarely, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry or Damien Hirst – as by anonymous people. The synthesis offered by the author constitutes a valuable and innovative historian’s work, supported by iconography that is both rich and mostly unpublished.
Text in English and French.
In line with the works on decorators of the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, this book plunges us into the world of ’80s and ’90s. These have witnessed unprecedented experiments in the world of design and architecture. Composed of a rich introduction which gives a synoptic vision and 38 monographs that describe its many faces, this book makes an exceptionally creative period, and reveals through an abundant iconography, often unpublished, its formidable aesthetic richness.
A new generation of designers stands out, among them Shiro Kuramata, Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Bob Wilson, Elizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti. All regenerate creation by refusing the elitism of their predecessors and by favoring the use of new materials. Some turn to recovery, such as the Creative Salvage group, and offer inventive and provocative furniture thanks to welding and assembly. Others, gathered in Italy around Ettore Sottsass and Memphis, combine unexpected colors and patterns to the playful use of plastic laminate. Sliding until the end of the ’90s, the achievements presented in this book mark the desire for a dialog between artistic references with a new relationship to the industrial aspect, at the dawn of the 21st century and its technological innovations.
Text in English and French.
Jean Fautrier (1989-1964) was a major 20th century artist. Trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and influenced by J.M.W. Turner, he was quickly noticed by the collector Jeanne Castel in 1923. At first, his style was figurative and played on contrasts of light. He expertly harnessed the essence of reality in order to transfigure it, redefining the genres of landscape painting, still lifes and nudes (especially in his series of dark works) during the inter-war period. A few years later, his approach underwent a radical shift and became much more abstract. He launched the “Informalist” art movement, playing with pictorial materials and combining different substances to create visions of an extraordinary material quality. Close to the great intellectual figures of his time, including Jean Paulhan, Paul Éluard, Francis Ponge, René Char and André Malraux, Fautrier never ceased producing remarkably powerful and politically resonant works, as is attested by his major series Otages (1943-1945), Objets (1947-1948) and Partisans (1956). In 1960, he was awarded the first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale. Boasting an exceptionally exhaustive iconography, this first ever comprehensive annotated catalog of Jean Fautrier’s paintings includes the technique, origin, exhibitions and bibliography for each work. It is supplemented with a detailed biography, technical analyses and authoritative scientific texts, as well as transcriptions of interviews and radio broadcasts from Fautrier’s time.
Text in English and French.
Nestor Perkal has been multiplying his activities as an artist since the 1970s. He is indeed simultaneously a designer of furniture, objects and lightings, an interior architect, a scenographer, a curator and an art director. This book is the first monograph made about his work and aims to chart the different steps of his extraordinary career.
In 1978, Nestor Perkal left his native land, Argentina, to settle in France. He first thrived in Paris as an independent designer, creating original furniture. At the same time, he opened a gallery and was the first to represent Memphis. His creations were displayed at the exhibition Life with colours of the Cartier Foundation in 1985. Then, he moved to Limoges where he lead the Craft, a research center about the art of ceramic making.
An artistic community gathered around him. He worked with many creators, designers, artists, but also manufacturers, sponsors and collectors. Having grown as an artist through time, Nestor Perkal played and is still playing a crucial part in promoting and producing the work of contemporary designers, architects and artists.
Text in French.
The Medici family ruled unofficially and later as dukes the city of Florence and Tuscany, from the end of 14th to the end of the 18th century. Under their patronage the Renaissance was born.
The members of this powerful family were able to build their public image in a sophisticated cultural environment where famous artists such as Raphael, Pontormo, Bronzino, Vasari, as well as poets, men of letters, scientists, humanists, were active. Portraits played an important role in this public relations strategy. The portrait types were quite different: from State portraits to family portraits, from those depicting the young heirs of the family name to those of the women that either ruled or played important roles in the dynastic allegiances.
In this guide the marvellous works, held in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Pitti, are presented in chronological order making possible to trace the main stages in the history and genealogy of the Medici family.
In this publication, Dana Widawski reveals a fascinating panorama of ceramic work. With subtle humor and provocative depth, she transcends the boundaries between art and craft in her tiled tableaux and assemblages. In surprising, playful, yet precise ways, she dares to expose both our present-day kitsch and also that found in art itself, right up to its tipping point.
“Dana Widawski’s figures … provoke a simultaneous attraction and disgust: too delicate, too cute, too pretty, too frivolous, too direct—all industrial white sugar. Something happens, you become gripped, emotionally, personally. You are made aware of your own feelings and associations” (Esther Niebel).
Text in English and German.
“And now David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me is out in the world — perhaps the closest you’ll get to being on tour with Bowie in that era without a time machine and a backstage pass.” — InsideHook
“His photographic memoir reveals untold stories and nearly 150 candid photos.” — The Guardian
“Intimate and full of references so specific you can almost smell the pub carpets and stage make-up” — HuckMag
“Go on tour with David Bowie in an all-new photographic memoir” — Yahoo! Entertainment
David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me is Geoff MacCormack’s remarkable photographic memoir, charting his lifelong friendship with David Bowie. Images bring MacCormack’s stories to life, showing the places he and Bowie inhabited, the people they met and the adventures they shared. Beginning at Burnt Ash Primary school in the mid-1950s, the years go by in a whirlwind of discovering and making music. The book contains nearly 150 photos taken by MacCormack throughout the years, some never seen before: from touring the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane shows and sailing to New York on a world tour, to Bowie’s first major film The Man Who Fell to Earth and the recording of Station to Station and his Thin White Duke persona.
David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me is an incredible story, told with wit and candour. A must for all Bowie fans, it sheds a rare insight into a friendship where two men shared their love for music from the moment they met to their final goodbyes.
“…the panorama of a self-forgotten milieu.” — Monopol
“Toffs behaving badly: 1980s high society in photos.” — The Times
“The pictorial equivalents of Evelyn Waugh’s sentences.” — The New Yorker
“Modest though he is, Dafydd’s photographs will endure for having perfectly captured a society on the brink of decline. Unmissable listening.” — Country & Townhouse podcast
“Wonderfully ironic, every point in the picture ignites and knows how to entertain very well.” — Lovely Books
“Dafydd catches those moments of genuine exhilaration, wealth and youth.” — The Hollywood Reporter
“I wondered if the party guests I’d photographed were just re-enacting a nostalgic fantasy, an imaginary version of England that already no longer existed.” – Dafydd Jones
Throughout the 1980s, award-winning photographer Dafydd Jones was granted access to some of England’s most exclusive upper-class events. Now, the author of Oxford: The Last Hurrah presents this irreverent and intimate portrait of birthday parties and charity balls, Eton picnics and private school celebrations.
With the crack of a hunting rifle and a spray of champagne, these photos give an almost cinematic account of high-society England at its most riotous and its most vulnerable. Against the backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain, globalization, the Falklands War, rising stocks and dwindling inherited fortunes, Jones reveals the inner lives of the established elite as they party long into the night-time of their fading world.
Praise for Oxford: The Last Hurrah
‘Sublime vintage photographs…’ – Hermione Eyre, The Telegraph
‘In The Last Hurrah…we see familiar faces from British high society poised on the brink of adulthood.’ – Eve Watling, Independent
For over 142,000 years, beads have played an important role around the world as the oldest form of personal adornment. Joyce J. Scott has revolutionized and transformed the potential of the ubiquitous bead as a relevant, contemporary art form. For over 51 years, wielding beads as a vision, she has devoted her aesthetic practice to waking up the world, expanding beadwork’s boundaries, with powerful in-your-face social commentary. While addressing society’s ills, her visual and performance conversations on cultural stereotypes and racial injustices, elucidate her vibrant brilliant works of art.
The publication Messages features Joyce J. Scott’s dynamic images with scholarly essays from experts in their field, as well as museum curator’s comments. Each individual provides deeper insights into the influences and extraordinary work of Joyce J. Scott, astutely capturing the essence and spirit of this icon of contemporary art.
With contributions by Jacqueline Copeland, Henry John Drewal, Valerie Hector, and Joyce J. Scott, and a foreword by Libby Cooper & Joanne Cooper.
Over the course of a long and very successful career spanning the first half of the 20th century, Lucy Kemp-Welch established herself as one of the leading equestrian painters at work in the UK and one of the country’s best-known women artists. David Boyd Haycock’s new, extensively illustrated biography of Kemp-Welch brings this remarkable artist and her work back into sharp focus.
Born in 1869, Kemp-Welch first came to the art establishment’s attention in 1897 when her immense painting, Colt Hunting in the New Forest, caused a sensation at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition; the work was bought for the Nation by the Chantry Bequest in the year of exhibition. In 1915, she illustrated Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, and was commissioned to paint images for the Government during the First World War. Later, the mural Women’s Work in the Great War, was placed in the Royal Exchange in London, where it remains to this day.
Respected art writer and curator Boyd-Haycock shines new light on Kemp-Welch’s life, writing from a 21st-century perspective and reflecting on her as a female painter in a male-dominated environment. Alongside Kemp-Welch’s paintings, the book will feature exclusive period photographs of the artist herself, shown at work and in her studio.
The book will coincide with the first Ashmolean NOW exhibition in Gallery 8, opening in July 2023. The Ashmolean NOW Program features exciting works by prominent early to mid-career artists based in the UK, seeking to attract new audiences interested in contemporary art. Artists who have established international reputations and emerging artists whose international status is anticipated with a strong degree of confidence are approached pro-actively. In addition to exhibiting their existing works, all artists are invited to create at least one new work as a response to the museum and/or its collections. This first exhibition presents two linked solo shows: paintings/drawings by Flora Yukhnovich, and paintings/drawings by Daniel Crews-Chubb. The double-sided style of the book will mirror the exhibition concept, while presenting itself as a unique, well designed object that has a life beyond the exhibition.
Kettle’s Yard is widely recognized as a highly influential master class in curating; a flawless arrangement of art and objects that is still radical in its philosophy of seeking to fuse art with life. For many it is a place that has that rare power of changing how we see the world and our place within it. With a foreword by Jim Ede and an interesting floor plan guide, this book is a notable keepsake for all who love Kettle’s Yard, and a fantastic introduction for those yet to discover it.
Kettle’s Yard is the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery. The permanent collection displayed in the Kettle’s Yard House boasts works from 20th Century artists such as Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, Constantin Brancusi, Joan Miro, Barbara Hepworth and many more. Contemporary exhibitions are shown in the purpose-built galleries adjacent to the House.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet, painter, aesthete, founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was one of the most influential British artists to have lived. His extraordinary and obsessive vision was fuelled by the tortured love he felt for three muses: the tragic Lizzy Siddal, into whose coffin Rossetti cast the only manuscript of his poems (only to have her exhumed and the volume retrieved years later); the earthy former sex worker Fanny Cornforth; and Jane Burden, the statuesque wife of his friend William Morris. During the whole of his life Rossetti returned to the three faces, sometimes combining them, in his bid to encapsulate the nature of woman. The portraits he made range from rapid, vivid sketches to careful drawings and fully worked out allegorical paintings. Few artists have so relentlessly followed a particular vision; it is not surprising that Rossetti’s haunting and sensual paintings were admired by the Symbolists and Picasso alike.
With two essays by the leading scholar of Rossetti, Christopher Newall, and Holburne curator Sylvie Broussine, richly illustrated with 75 images including ravishing details in full page and spreads, this is a magnificent but approachable introduction to the riches and strangeness of Rossetti’s art.
This beautifully illustrated book of avant-garde art furniture design highlights a generation of creators whose energy and vision made a break with the past. Profiled here are Mark Brazier-Jones, Franck Evennou, Elizabeth Garouste, Marco de Gueltzl, Hubert Le Gall, Thierry Peltrault, Laurence Picot, Andrea Salvetti, and Claude de Wulf. All have been represented since the 1980s by Elisabeth Delacarte, whose Galerie Avant-Scène in Paris continues its mission of promoting these and other extraordinary furniture and jewelry designers to this day.
Text in English and French.
“The Turner Prize winner leads a visual tour through his life in six artworks – from college days to knighthood.” — Telegraph
Grayson Perry is one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary artists and cultural figures. This book, which includes first sight of new and previously unpublished works, is published to accompany the largest-ever retrospective of Perry’s art. It offers a vibrant insight into his life and work, from his youth in rural Essex to sell-out stage shows at the Royal Albert Hall.
Grayson Perry vividly reflects on his art, life and career, remembering the sources of inspiration and influences along the way. Victoria Coren Mitchell’s thought-provoking contribution considers the role of humour in Perry’s art, highlighting the often-underestimated effort involved in being at once a serious artist and a lovable character. Patrick Elliott provides an illuminating biographical essay of the artist. The reader is also given a fascinating glimpse into the technique and process behind Perry’s prints, pots and tapestries.
Showcasing 75 exhibited works, the book covers the full range and breadth of his astonishing career.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films, in which long takes and unusual viewpoints are used, betray the desire of the stillness and the shadows of playing the lead role. The commitment of his photographs to a profound imagination can be seen as the clue to success of his films. The photographs, which are identical to film frames and standing by themselves appear as pure compositions, transform elegy to elegance. This trilingual book published by Dirimart and printed using the K-Bind technique, opens up completely flat, allowing imagery to flow undisturbed across a double-page spread. It begins with a vivid excerpt from the screenplay of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s movie Small Town (1997). With minimal accompanying text, the book’s multi-layered story is told through photographs alone. The book contains 100 panoramic photographs taken by Ceylan in various regions of rural Anatolia between 2003 and 2014.
Text in English, French and Turkish.
The debut monograph of Stacey Gillian Abe’s work is created to accompany her first London solo show at Unit London. Featuring works spanning her career to date, the book explores the key themes from Abe’s work and delves deep into her expressive and symbolic indigo portraits. Abe’s book includes insightful written contributions from Flavia Frigeri, art historian, lecturer and the Chanel Curator at the National Portrait Gallery and Serubiri Moses, renowned writer and curator, alongside a conversation between the artist and Catherine McKinley, curator and author of the critically acclaimed Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World and The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts. Abe’s work reflects her past and her memories, highlighting her personal experiences and her relationships to her community. The autobiographical dimension of her work confronts traditional depictions of the Black body, challenging the colonial lens. Abe creates imaginary spaces that induce a surreal mystical feel while probing unsettling past and present narratives of identity, gender, spirituality and cultural mysticism. Renowned for her indigo skin-tone paintings, the color has become crucial in reshaping narratives surrounding the black body. Through the color, she dives into the past to envision an alternative future for the Black race. To Abe, indigo represents a tribe of people that are not limited to social, economic, cultural, political or historic constraints: ‘it is about being unapologetic’.
Elizabeth Siddal is remembered as a Pre-Raphaelite supermodel and the muse and wife of Gabriel Rossetti. She is cast as a tragic heroine much like the Ophelia she modelled in the renowned Millais painting. But Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story overturns this myth. ‘Lizzie’ is presented as an aspirational and independent woman who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to let it be known.
With extraordinary stories, including previously undiscovered details of Siddal’s journeys across the UK and to the south of France, Jan Marsh reclaims Siddal’s narrative from the historical record. She brings new perspective to the post-natal, mental trauma Elizabeth suffered after a stillbirth. Furthermore, she casts new light on the renowned story of Siddal’s grave being exhumed for Rossetti’s poems.
Jan Marsh explores the finer, little known details of Siddal’s life, including her four months at art school in Sheffield, which Rossetti’s brother always denied. In addition to this, few will know how Siddal was often regarded as difficult and ungrateful.
Historical record tends to forget or misremember women, but with Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story, Jan Marsh forces us to take a closer look and see a very different picture. Siddal was not passive and lacking in agency, she was a woman with a strong mind, flourishing career and an admirable talent.
“Wow! Just wow! … It’s a really stunning thing. A love letter that is itself a work of art about a work of art that is Grayson. Both playful and deadly serious … these photos are not simply about ‘serving looks’ but about restlessness and identity and transience…. Ansett’s work is mind-blowing … not cosy at all. Just brilliant photography.” – Suzanne Moore
“Great to see Grayson in his various guises. He must have more women’s clothes than the average woman!” — Martin Parr
“Some are artists, some are muses — Sir Grayson Perry is both, according to a new coffee table book.” — The Standard
“Muse documents Perry’s Bowie-like range of personae, from his alter-ego Claire, to Madonna and child, to a Dolly Parton-style American country girl.” — Yahoo News UK
Grayson Perry is an award-winning artist best known in the art world for his ceramic works. To the wider public, he is perhaps equally famous for his cross-dressing alter ego. This book reveals a unique relationship between Perry and renowned portrait photographer Richard Ansett through a previously unseen archive from photoshoots spanning over 10 years.
Ansett astutely captures the wit, style and irreverence of Perry’s many complex personas. Beyond the snazzy outfits and cheeky poses, these thematic portrait collections offer wry social commentaries on current and popular phenomena, including the EU referendum, American pop culture and the existential questions of life and death.
At once glossy, fabulous and cutting-edge, Muse: A Portrait of Grayson Perry offers a complex, fascinating and ultimately affectionate insight into our recently knighted national treasure with anecdotes and narration from Ansett himself, this is a masterpiece of rhetorical observations and quick-thinking camerawork. Perfect for art geeks, style freaks and Perry’s long-devoted following.
Knokke Le Zoute has been a real household name in the Low Countries for decades when it comes to stunning architecture, art, design and luxury. From sleek, modern houses to the famous white villas and renovated apartments chock-full of art. In this book, the art and design fanatics from Knokke offer us an exclusive look into their dream homes. Their interiors tell a unique story from years of searching for the perfect piece to accidental discoveries that bring an interior together. The diverse owners of the houses in the book (from gallery owners to photographers) each experience Knokke in their own way.
Text in English, French and Dutch.