This book accompanies a major exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum on the early work of internationally acclaimed German artist Anselm Kiefer. It focuses on his paintings, drawings, photographs and artist books created between 1969 and 1982, in the private collections of the Hall Art Foundation. Anselm Kiefer: Early Works is the first institutional show and publication in the UK dedicated to Kiefer’s early practice. The book introduces themes, subjects and styles that have become signature to Kiefer’s work, while providing a more intimate and complementary context for his large-scale installations that he is best known for today. The early works are accompanied by three recent paintings from the artist’s own collections and White Cube, chosen by the artist himself.
Art historians, artists, curators and experts of Kiefer’s art from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Britain and the US have contributed 46 original texts on individual works, organized in a chronological structure. An illustrated chronology at the end of the book compiled by Stephanie Biron from the Hall Art Foundation provides an overview of the artist’s early practice and life, to contextualize the works.
The book begins with Kiefer’s iconic Occupations and Heroische Sinnbilder series, created in 1969 and 1970, which Kiefer views as his first serious works. Kiefer was among the first generation of German post-war artists to directly confront the country’s troubled past and identity. Full of complex references to German socio-political history but also to culture, literature and his personal life, Kiefer’s early works carry a unique iconography, linking classic ideas of great art with a distinctive understanding of concrete artistic materiality. The landscapes in his watercolors are historically charged; hand-written words on paintings are closely linked with poetry well known to most German viewers; motifs and symbols point at Nazi ideologies and a collective feeling of guilt.
This book is a comprehensive and in-depth study devoted to Lowbrow Art and Pop Surrealism, two artistic movements that originated in the United States and have profoundly transformed the contemporary art scene. Since the late 1960s, American artist Robert Williams has developed a radical and nonconformist style of painting, drawing inspiration from underground comics, hot rod culture, tattoo art, psychedelic posters, and carnival arts—all fields long ignored or disparaged by the fine arts world. Richly documented and generously illustrated, this book traces the history of this countercultural movement through four major periods, from 1850 to the present day, exploring its profound influences and its gradual global reach. It spotlights the movement’s pioneering figures through portraits and exclusive interviews with Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, Todd Schorr, Mark Ryden, and gallery owner Merry Karnowsky—true witnesses and participants in this artistic revolution. The book also addresses the emergence of Pop Surrealism in the 1990s—a new label that both broadened and challenged the boundaries of Lowbrow Art—before the movement went global in the 2000s, thanks in large part to Juxtapoz magazine, which by 2009 had become the most widely circulated art magazine in the United States.
J.M.W. Turner 1775-1851 was perhaps the most prolific and innovative of all British artists. His outstanding watercolors in the Scottish National Gallery are one of the most popular features of its collection. Bequeathed to the Gallery in 1899 by the distinguished collector Henry Vaughan, they have been exhibited, as he requested, every January for over 100 years. Renowned for their excellent state of preservation, they provide a remarkable overview of many of the most important aspects of Turner’s career.
This richly illustrated book provides a commentary on the watercolors, addressing questions of technique and function, as well as considering some of the numerous contacts Turner had with other artists, collectors and dealers. The introduction concentrates on Henry Vaughan, one of the greatest enthusiasts for British art in the late nineteenth century, whose diverse collections have not previously been fully appreciated.
This publication appears on the occasion of Luc Tuymans’ retrospective exhibition in Hungary. With innumerable analyses by art historians, we thought the most fitting and exciting accompaniment to this display would be a collection of writers’ reflections on Tuymans’ work. Since one of the things to make this retrospective display special is its being the artist’s debut in Central-Europe, Hungary and Poland, we made a point of inviting authors from the region to comment on his art. We gave complete liberty to our authors to decide what to reflect on: a picture, Tuymans’ activity as a painter, or some other aspect of his personality.
The Belgian artist Sergio De Beukelaer has been working on a self-confident and uncompromising oeuvre of paintings for over twenty years. Leaf through his archive of sketches, designs and preliminary drawings made between the years 1997-2023. (cat.)(draw.) follows our first book published with Sergio called (cat.) and presents the prequel to the final result. Discover how an artist plots his designs, and handles his archive of drawings. This book gives a greater insight in the heart of the matter behind Sergio De Beukelaer’s artworks. Sergio’s drawings expose him indiscriminately, hence why he has waited until 2023 to reveal them. “What mathematics is to an engineer, drawings are to an artist. It is the seedbed from which an idea springs. When I am in a gallery or a museum, I want to gain insight and be nurtured. To paraphrase Umberto Eco, a work of art “is a machine for generating interpretations”. Sergio De Beukelaer is represented by PLUS-ONE Gallery.
Text in English and Dutch.
Chocolate Cosmos, String of Pearls is a new publication featuring highly intricate botanical collage works by New York-based artist Jane Hammond. Alongside a new essay by Hammond herself, the book includes a foreword by John Berggruen and an extended essay by Jenny Uglow. These texts focus on Hammond’s practice in connection with environmental and sociological subjects such as evolution and visual cognition, exploring the gathering and making processes inherent within her complex collages. The book forms part of the ‘Hurtwood Artist & Gallery Series’, offering an in-depth insight into the practice and thinking of some of the most engaging artists working nationally and internationally today.
Invisible Lines, Immortal Beams, by Edinburgh-based artist Barry McGlashan, documents the past two years of his practice, including the celebrated solo exhibition of the same name at Frestonian Gallery from the spring of 2025. Thresholds, metaphorical and literal, are an omnipresent motif in Barry McGlashan’s evocative paintings. The featured works bring viewers to the edge of lakes, to rivers and roads, and lead to the foot of mountains. Other times the viewer is inside, looking out through windows to the landscape and sky beyond. Transcending time and geography, reality and folklore, McGlashan’s dream-like and otherworldly paintings are as haunting as they are enchanting.
This publication also features works presented by the artist and gallery at Art SG in Singapore in early 2025, as well as documentation of The Distant Ideal, McGlashan’s first presentation at Frestonian in March 2024.
Passe-partout presents an insightful overview of the practice of Belgian conceptual artist D.D. Trans, known for his subtle transformations of everyday objects into poetic visual statements. Through minimal interventions and precise compositions, D.D. Trans challenges notions of function, context, and meaning, revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary. The book accompanies the exhibition of the same name at Mulier Mulier Gallery in Brussels, offering a detailed look at his most recent body of work, where mirrors, frames, cutlery, and domestic items become quietly subversive sculptural gestures. A prodigy of minimal surrealism in a Belgian way.
This publication captures the refined humor and formal precision that define D.D. Trans’s artistic language. Combining photographic documentation of installations with essays that situate his work within broader dialogs of conceptual art, surrealism, and Belgian visual culture, Passe-partout invites readers to reconsider the boundaries between art and life. Both contemplative and playful, this book serves as a vital reference for collectors, curators, and anyone intrigued by the aesthetics of transformation.
Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends is the first book to document the extraordinary activity at the LYC Museum & Art Gallery in Banks, Cumbria between 1972 and 1983. The LYC was the singleminded effort of the artist Li Yuan-chia, who moved to the rural North of England by way of London, Bologna, Taipei and Guangxi, China. At the LYC, Li organized exhibitions, published books, exhibited archelogical artifacts, arranged workshops and welcomed an array of visitors from local and international artists and art workers to nearby residents and travelers, many of whom became friends. In this book, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at Kettle’s Yard, the curators Hammad Nasar, Amy Tobin and Sarah Victoria Turner, establish Li’s work at the LYC as a form of worldmaking, connecting his cosmic conceptual art practice, to his interest in participation and friendship as well as his engagement with nature and the landscape. Nasar, Tobin and Turner’s account is accompanied by nine short texts – by Elizabeth Fisher, Ysanne Holt, Annie Jael Kwan, Lesley Ma, Gustavo Grandal Montero, Luke Roberts, Nick Sawyer & Harriet Aspin, Nicola Simpson and Diana Yeh – that trace the diverse threads and ramifications of Li’s practice historically and in the present. Richly illustrated, Making New Worlds offers a provocative new way of thinking the history of British art in the 20th century.
‘Beauty is the beacon of God,’ said Botticelli. ‘No, it’s not. Love is,’ snapped his sister.
Beauty: Botticelli in Florence imagines what Botticelli was feeling and thinking as he painted. The people he loved and despised, his private struggle between spirituality and sensuality, the tempestuous times he lived through – all come to life in his images…
The novel is a speculation based on the few facts known about Botticelli, informed by his paintings. There are many surprises. The Birth of Venus was a tapestry design. And his famed self-portrait didn’t depict him (as widely believed) but Pierfrancesco de Medici, who sued his powerful cousin Lorenzo for robbing him, abolished Florence’s homophobic witch-hunts, funded Vespucci’s journey to the New World and commissioned Botticelli’s most famous works. There was boiling tension between him and Botticelli.
This is the first in a sequence of illustrated ‘painting novels’ that make sights as telling as words.
Hiroshige. Nature and the City is the most extensive overview of the career of the famed Japanese print artist, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) in the English language to date. It is based on the largest collection of Hiroshige in private hands outside Japan, the Alan Medaugh collection. The catalogue consists of 500 entries, with an emphasis on urban and rural landscapes, fan prints and prints of birds and flowers. Grouped chronologically by subject, it presents Hiroshige’s interpretation of the urban scenes from his hometown Edo (present-day Tokyo), the great series documenting travel along the famous highways of Japan, and the idylls of nature as represented in his bird-and flower prints. Hiroshige often incorporated poetry in his works and for the first time all textual content is transcribed and translated. Additionally, the catalog pays due attention to the differences between variant editions of his prints. Thus, it provides essential comparative material for every scholar, dealer, and collector.
“In the beginning, there was tagging and writing on the walls.” From Style Writing to Art is the first anthology of Street Art ever published worldwide. Magda Danysz, the internationally renowned Street Art gallerist, guides the reader on this immersive journey into the heart of the most interesting artistic movement at the turn of the century. This book grapples with Style Writing, Graffiti, and Street Art. It focuses on the fascinating emergence of the movement amongst the graffiti pioneers of the 1960s, their first appearance in galleries in the 1980s, right up to the cutting-edge works made by the Street Artists of today. Spanning over four decades, the book is divided into three sections with each containing detailed accounts of the surfacing of different styles and techniques. Each period is complete with extensive biographies and analysis covering 50 legendary artists including Seen, JR, Miss Van, JonOne, Shepard Fairey, Quik, Blade, Doze Green, and Keith Haring. “Let me repeat myself,” Danysz writes, “if only for the sceptic eye, for the blind and lost or for the latecomers who ve simply just missed the boat: I believe this type of urban art to be the most important artistic movement at the turn of the century.”
This beautifully designed book is a celebration of one of the world’s most creative, dynamic and fascinating cities: Tokyo. It spans 400 years, with highlights including Kano school paintings; the iconic woodblock prints of Hiroshige; Tokyo Pop Art posters; the photography of Moriyama Daido and Ninagawa Mika; manga; film; and contemporary art by Murakami Takashi and Aida Makoto. Visually bold and richly detailed, this publication looks at a city which has undergone constant destruction and renewal and it tells the stories of the people who have made Tokyo so famous with their insatiable appetite for the new and innovative – from the samurai to avantgarde artists today. Co-edited by Japanese art specialists and curators Lena Fritsch and Clare Pollard from Oxford University, this accessible volume features 28 texts by international experts of Japanese culture, as well as original statements by influential artists.
Mallorca: The Definitive Poster Art Collection celebrates the outstanding natural beauty and rich heritage of the beautiful island of Mallorca through the definitive collection of poster art brought to us by fine-art print specialists Stick No Bills Global. In its pioneering role as a glamorous, sun-lit, Mediterranean destination, Mallorca came to inspire an inordinate number of wonderful, hand-etched and hand-illustrated typographic, lithographic and fine-art print artworks, designed to promote ‘La Isla De La Calma’ over the years.
From its white-sand beaches and hidden coves to its natural landmarks, gothic architecture, year-round festivals, legendary nightclubs and international sports events, Mallorca’s vibrant multicultural history comes to life through 100 stunning poster artworks, each presented here under license in all its vintage glory.
This book offers a beautiful exploration of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s works in lithography. It explores the new artistic approach to the poster at the end of the 19th century, which bridged visual and popular culture and turned the relationship between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art on its head. Technical innovations in lithography pioneered by Lautrec and other artists produced larger sizes, more varied colors and new effects and launched the role of the poster as a powerful tool for communication and marketing in fin de siècle Paris. Lautrec’s embrace of celebrity helped to define the famous hotspots (theaters, cabarets and café-concerts) of fin de siècle Paris and made their stars recognizable figures across the whole city.
Works by contemporaries such as Pierre Bonnard, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen and Jules Chéret also feature, and Lautrec’s influence on British, and particularly Scottish, artists of the period will be explored. These include Walter Richard Sickert, Arthur Melville, John Duncan Fergusson and William Nicholson.
For a large part of his life, Jackie Kurltjunyintja Giles Tjapaltjarri (ca 1935-2010) led a nomadic existence, traveling across large tracts of and later spending time in small communities in Australia’s vast Western Desert region.
Jackie Giles was renowned as a man of great erudition and a powerful healer, Maparnjarra in his native Ngaanyatjarra language. The powers of these traditional healers include the gift of seeing into the bodies and even the spirits of others. In the 1990s, Jackie Giles started painting with acrylic on canvas. Mr Giles, as he was often called, combined an intimate knowledge of his land with his own oneiric visions to build what became a significant personal oeuvre. These paintings celebrate the Tjukurpa (Dreaming), which pervades the land and is a cornerstone of its identity.
Built around labyrinthine patterns and monumental shapes, these dynamic, rhythmical compositions allude to the esoteric, sacred subject matter of the Dreaming. The intense, striking works that make up this awe-inspiring oeuvre manage to link two dimensions: Ngaanyatjarra cosmology and the rapidly changing modern world.
Text in English and French.
This book brings together works from one of the most important private collections of modern and contemporary art, the D. Daskalopoulos Collection with key pieces from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Providing a new context for both collections, it specifically focuses on the theme of the body, investigating the many and varied approaches that artists have taken across several decades when dealing with this most fundamental of subjects. Highlighting the work of artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys, Robert Gober, Matthew Barney, Marina Abramovic and Sarah Lucas, the publication documents the confrontations and dialogues staged between the two collections, and provides a rich insight into one of the most compelling and provocative themes in twentieth- and twenty-first century visual art.
Visions in Silk presents the first comprehensive exploration of exquisite Japanese fine art textiles from the Meiji era (1868-1912), showcasing the unparalleled treasures from the Khalili Collection of Japanese Art.
This beautifully illustrated volume reveals how Japanese artists and craftsmen ingeniously adapted centuries-old textile traditions to create innovative art textiles that captivated international audiences, won exhibition awards, and served as prestigious diplomatic gifts.
Featuring over 300 spectacular examples, the book examines dazzling works of embroidery, yuzen resist-dyed silk and cut velvet, tapestry, and oshi-e raised silk, ranging from elegant panels, hangings and screens to grand exhibition showpieces. Each represents the pinnacle of artistic collaboration and hitherto unsurpassed technical mastery.
Written by leading international experts, this landmark publication provides unprecedented insight into these remarkable yet understudied treasures. Visions in Silk will enchant anyone interested in Japanese art, textile design, Japonisme, and the cultural transformations that occurred during the Meiji era, when Japan opened to the outside world.
The National Galleries of Scotland comprises three galleries: the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Scottish National Gallery. Together these galleries house one of the finest collections of art to be found anywhere in the world, ranging from the thirteenth century to the present day. Many of the greatest names in Western art are represented by major works, from Titian, Rembrandt and Vermeer through to Picasso, Hockney and Warhol. This lavishly illustrated book contains one hundred of the National Galleries of Scotland s greatest and best-loved treasures. The selection made by the Director-General Sir John Leighton is intended to evoke the special character of the collection at the National Galleries with its distinctive interplay between Scottish and international art as well as the many conversations that it establishes between the art of the past and the present.
Raqib Shaw is one of the most extraordinary and sought-after artists working in the world today. Born in Calcutta in 1974 and raised in Kashmir, he came to London to study in 1998 and has lived there ever since. Inspired by a broad range of influences, including the old masters, Indian miniatures, Persian carpets and the Pre-Raphaelites, his paintings are infused with memories and longing for his homeland in Kashmir. His technique constitutes a completely unique kind of enamel painting. Spending months on preparatory drawings, tracings and photographic studies, he then transfers the composition onto prepared wooden panels, establishing an intricate design with acrylic liner, which leaves a slightly raised line. He adds the enamel paint using needle-fine syringes and a porcupine quill, with which he manoeuvres the paint. The finished works are intricate, magical and breathtaking in their color and complexity. This book accompanies an exhibition of eight paintings by Raqib Shaw at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, alongside two paintings which have long obsessed him and have influenced specific works: Sir Joseph Noel Paton’s The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, 1849 (National Gallery of Scotland) and Lucas Cranach’s An Allegory of Melancholy, 1528 (private collection). The book includes the first full-length biographical study of the artist.
The art of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) is synonymous with the female nude, with the term ‘Rubenesque’ first coined in the 19th century to describe a voluptuous female body. Yet remarkably, there has never been a focused study of Rubens’ depictions of women, making this book, and the exhibition that it will accompany, a first.
Bringing together a diverse range of paintings and drawings from throughout the artist’s career and from a range of international lenders, the exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery (October 2023 – January 2024) will challenge the popular assumption that Rubens only painted one type of woman. Instead, it will present a more nuanced view of the varied and essential role that women played in the artist’s life and work, uniting and contributing to recent scholarly developments in subjects such as the identities of Rubens’ sitters, 17th century artistic theory and practice, and Rubens’ treatment of the human body.
Rubens evidently enjoyed painting the female figure, especially in its sensual and unclothed form. But his women are never mere bodies trapped by the male gaze, on the contrary; they are proud and complex heroines, full of character and gravitas. No other male artist has created such potent images of female power, assurance, determination, commitment, and beauty. Providing a catalogue for the works in the exhibition and featuring three introductory essays that contextualize Rubens’ work, this publication will both contribute to the existing corpus of scholarly literature on Rubens and introduce his masterpieces to new audiences, discussing them in the context of current debates around sexuality, power and feminism.
In 2024, Dulwich Picture Gallery will present Soulscapes, a major exhibition of landscape art that will expand and redefine the genre. Published to coincide with this revelatory exhibition, this book features over 30 contemporary artworks, spanning painting, photography, film, tapestry and collage from leading artists including Hurvin Anderson, Phoebe Boswell, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kimathi Donkor, Isaac Julien, Marcia Michael, Mónica de Miranda and Alberta Whittle, as well as some of the most important emerging voices working today. Soulscapes explores our connection with the world around us through the eyes of artists from the African Diaspora and considers the power of landscape art through the themes of belonging, memory, joy and transformation.
Each copy of Soulscapes includes a special edition print by Kimathi Donkor depicting the painting On Episode Seven, 2000, and is only available with this book. The print measures 177 x 221mm., including a 13mm. border, is housed inside the rear cover of the book, and is visible through a bespoke die-cut window.
This star I give to you is the first publication on the work of London-based artist Freya Douglas-Morris, presenting a body of paintings exploring the poetry, beauty and magic of landscapes and the natural world.
The book documents the artist’s first solo exhibition of the same name at Alexander Berggruen, New York, in 2023, and showcases the eight large oil paintings on canvas and five oil paintings on copper that were on display. This star I give to you includes a conversation between the artist and British publisher Matt Price, a foreword by New York-based writer and Associate Director at Alexander Berggruen, Kirsten Cave, along with studio notes by the artist on each of the reproduced works.
A graduate of the University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art, London, Douglas-Morris has exhibited internationally in China, Taiwan, The Bahamas, Austria, Italy, France and America.
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.