On the whole, when one thinks of seventeenth-century sculpture in Rome, one has in mind the wonderful and famous works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, such as the Fountain of the Rivers or The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. The very idea of Roman baroque is commonly identified with the century’s great genius. And indeed, the influence of Bernini’s work on the sculpture and art in general of the period was, especially in Rome, decisive. However, this domination spread only during the second half of the seventeenth century, and less unequivocally than one might suppose.Other great sculptors, with personalities that were often very different form Bernini’s, contributed to making the extraordinary proliferation of Roman statuary extremely complex and varied at that time.

This book is aimed especially at students and museum visitors who would like to learn more about the topic and discusses the art in a straightforward and strictly chronological fashion. The narrative begins in the early decades of the seventeenth century with sculpture created by a motley and conspicuously cosmopolitan group of artists. Later, with the growing success of the great masters, commissions began to gravitate around Bernini, Alessandro Algardi, and François Duquesnoy. A new approach to Antiquity went hand in hand with a marked predilection for striking chromatic effects, borrowed from Venetian painting, and a desire to make a strong impact and achieve a particular tone, often with results of surprising originality.

Taking the most up-to-date and best founded historiographic observations on the subject we have tried to highlight the workshop relationships between the great masters and the ‘giovani,’ their pupils or occasional assistants, and in this way put into relief the experimental approach of some of these apprentices, such as Melchirro Caffà or Antonio Raggi, or the ability of certain others, for instance Ercole Ferrata, to fuse the most diverse influences. The book thus aims to show how marble and travertine were used throughout the century to create a whole army of statues that were positioned in the open and in churches, lending modern Rome its truly incomparable new face.

This book starts from the Lucio Fontana exhibition, curated by Enrico Crispolti, that was held from 1 October until 30 November 2009, at Tornabuoni Art Gallery, Paris. The same exhibition is presented again in Arezzo, as ‘Lucio Fontana – Hic et Nunc’, from 6 May until 24 June 2018 at the Municipal Gallery of Contemporary Art, for which this book acts as the catalog. The volume explores, through a selection of approximately seventy works, including sculptures and paintings, the Master’s artistic activity from the 1950s onwards. The critical essays by Enrico Crispolti enrich the text by providing some important insights into the life of Lucio Fontana, his visits to Paris and Milan, during which he continued to have an extensive range of exchanges with artists, architects and intellectuals of his time. Vintage photographs, direct quotations from the artist, and a thorough biography contextualize the art of Fontana in the specific cultural climate in which he lived and help to better understand the evolutionary spirit of this person who, until his death, was driven by a constant creative tension.

Text in English and Italian.

The Belvedere Fortress is the main location for this exhibition involving the whole city and including the Uffizi Gallery, Boboli Gardens, Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, Basilica of Santa Croce, Museo Novecento, and Museo Marino Marini. Each location exhibits the works of some of Italy’s most important contemporary artists. The 12 protagonists are: Giovanni Anselmo, Marco Bagnoli, Domenico Bianchi, Alighiero Boetti, Gino De Dominicis, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Nunzio, Mimmo Paladino, Giulio Paolini and Remo Salvadori. The catalogue narrates this widely varied exhibition with contributions by recognized international art critics. Comprehensive data sheets provide detailed descriptions of the works by each artist on show. Extensive iconographic material, including images from archives and photos of the works on show, each in their respective location, will complete the narrative of this important event.

Lightning was created in 1975, during a very controversial period in India’s history, to be the backdrop of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Emergency speech. Given the short time frame that M.F. Husain had to complete the work, it was titled Lightning, because it came about in a flash. The masterpiece was made up of twelve massive panels with ten wild, white horses charging through an open space. The significance of the painting is heightened not only by its sheer size or the brilliant rendering of its subject by the artist but also the time it was executed and the ideologies it stands for. The painting included depictions of family planning, farmers and their families, and a builder with an axe in hand. The work portrayed the political climate of the time in India post-separation. This book was conceived in honor of Husain, and various anecdotal stories and interviews on the painting form a part of this book. The selected authors invited to write on Lightning address the painting as well as its creator from various angles. It is an attempt to create a whole story around this masterpiece; every brush stroke and every inch of the canvas has a story, secretly tucked away in the midst of the powerfully rendered horses, that is left for the beholder to decipher. Published in association with TamarindArt, New York, and Asia Society Museum, New York. Contents: Foreword; Journey of Lightning, its Creator and the Progressive Movement; A Personal Commentary; Biography; The Advent of a Masterpiece; The Roar of Crores; East Meets East in Husain’s Horses; Like Thunder and Lightning; A Narrative of the Nation; Husain’s Journey; Troublesome Entanglements: Art and the Asian Nation; In Conversation with M.F. Husain; The Unveiling of Lightning in New York; M.F. Husain; Selected Exhibitions.

The first to describe in detail a community of potters working for the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, eastern India, Temple Potters of Puri explores the role of the temple servant and how it affects the potters’ understanding of their work and of themselves. As a pilgrimage center of national importance, supported by the patronage of successive regional dynasties and by fervent popular belief, the Jagannatha Temple requires earthenware in great quantities for the creation and distribution of the sacred food that is an integral feature of daily ritual and pilgrimage. Several hundred potters participate as temple servants in maintaining the temple’s ritual cycle by performing their divinely assigned task. This study observes the potters’ technical prowess, sustained by devotion, but also examines the tensions within their relationships to more powerful temple servants and authorities. The role of the potter as temple servant is at once glorious, as demonstrated by texts and personal interpretations of the potters’ divinely-appointed service, and pathetic, as shown in the brutality of caste-based hierarchy and cash-based exchange penetrating the modern temple’s daily operations. The accompanying DVD shows the potters at work and records their skills and products as well as the annual festival that celebrates their role as temple servants.

Since taking the helm of the National Galleries of Scotland in 1984, Sir Timothy Clifford has overseen the acquisition of some of the finest, and best-loved works in the national collection. This book chronicles the development of the collection under his directorship and casts light upon the wide range of acquisitions, including the fascinating stories behind their purchase. Lavishly illustrated, highlights of the book include The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child by Botticelli, The Three Graces by Canova (purchased jointly with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London), and the most recent major acquisition, Venus Anadyomene by Titian. Works from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s internationally renowned Surrealist collection are also featured, as well as paintings from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Since the practical invention of photography in the 1840s, Scotland has been at the centre of the history and development of the medium. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery – which houses the Scottish National Photography Collection – and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, hold outstanding collections of photographic art spanning three centuries. Included are figures such as D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Annan, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Capa, Bill Brandt, Annie Leibovitz and Andreas Gursky. This book offers a detailed guide to the collections as well as an accessible and informative introduction to photography. This revised edition includes recently commissioned photography and significant new acquisitions, with works by Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe.

With vivid memories of his first visit to the Scottish National Gallery in the 1970s and his initial encounter with Hugo van der Goes’ The Trinity Altarpiece, Rembrandt’s A Woman in Bed, Velázquez’s An Old Woman Cooking Eggs and Degas’ Diego Martelli, Robert Storr discusses the shifting balance of museum collections from historically ‘certified’ classics to art whose status and significance remains in active contention and from singular ‘treasures’ to ensembles that speak to the larger scope of an artist’s endeavor. Also available: Unfinished Paintings: Narratives of the Non-Finito Watson Gordon Lecture 2014 ISBN 9781906270919 ‘The Hardest Kind of Archetype’: Reflections on Roy Lichtenstein The Watson Gordon Lecture 2010 ISBN 9781906270384 Picasso’s ‘Toys for Adults’ Cubism as Surrealism: The Watson Gordon Lecture 2008 ISBN 9781906270261 Sound, Silence, and Modernity in Dutch Pictures of Manners The Watson Gordon Lecture 2007 ISBN 9781906270254 Roger Fry’s Journey From the Primitives to the Post-Impressionists: Watson Gordon Lecture 2006 ISBN 9781906270117

Joan Eardley (1921-1963) is one of Scotland’s most admired artists. During a career that lasted barely fifteen years, she concentrated on two very distinct themes: children in the Townhead area of central Glasgow, and the fishing village of Catterline, just south of Aberdeen, with its leaden skies and wild sea. The contrast between this urban and rural subject matter is self-evident, but the two are not, at heart, so very different. Townhead and Catterline were home to tight-knit communities, living under extreme pressure: Townhead suffered from overcrowding and poverty, and Catterline from depopulation brought about by the declining fishing industry. Eardley was inspired by the humanity she found in both places. These two intertwining strands are the focus of this book, which looks in detail at Eardley’s working processes. Her method can be traced from rough sketches and photographs through to pastel drawings and large oil paintings. Identifying many of Eardley’s subjects and drawing on unpublished letters, archival records and interviews, the authors provide a new and remarkably detailed account of Eardley’s life and art.

The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) is one of the most celebrated paintings of the nineteenth century. It was acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland in 2017. In this new book, the first to focus in detail on this iconic picture, Christopher Baker explores its complex and fascinating history. He places Landseer’s work in the context of the artist’s meteoric career, considers the circumstances of its high-profile commission and its extraordinary subsequent reputation. When so much Victorian art fell out of fashion, Landseer’s Monarch took on a new role as marketing image, bringing it global recognition. It also inspired the work of many other artists, ranging from Sir Bernard Partridge and Ronald Searle to Sir Peter Blake and Peter Saville. Today the picture has an intriguing status, being seen by some as a splendid celebration of Scotland’s natural wonders and by others as an archaic trophy. This publication will make a significant contribution to the debates that it continues to stimulate.

This is the first study of a fascinating, international phenomenon in the art of the past century. Naked portraiture is an original hybrid of the traditional genres of the nude and portrait, and has been created by an astonishing range of major artists, in many different media and in a variety of major artistic centres. Martin Hammer’s ground-breaking book compares work by painters such as Egon Schiele, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Pierre Bonnard, Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud, Tracey Emin and Jenny Saville. The analysis encompasses a rich tradition of naked portraiture using photographic media, produced by figures such as Alfred Stieglitz, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Boris Mikhailov, Nan Goldin, Gary Schneider and Melanie Manchot. The subjects are men and woman, old and young, black and white, healthy and disabled. They might be lovers, close relatives or friends, with their nakedness suggesting the intimacy and tenderness existing between artist and subject. Conversely, the artist might not know them beyond the circumstance of making the pictures. Many of the images represent the artists themselves, with nudity carrying connotations of self-exploration, vulnerability, playfulness or fantasy. Martin Hammer’s innovative study seeks to explain naked portraiture as a symptom of wider currents in modern culture, a visual parallel to various other manifestations of an impulse to reveal what is hidden, profound, or authentic, beneath the surface facade. The book also opens up for consideration the wider issue of how and why the genre of portraiture has been radically extended and reinvented, in so many different ways, within the art of the last hundred years.

This absorbing introduction to the story of Rembrandt s rampant fame and influence in Britain is filled with beautiful images. The story of ‘Rembrandt mania’ began in 18th-century Britain with passionate, and often eccentric, collectors acquiring artworks by any and every means. As the craze for Rembrandt ebbed and flowed, each new wave of enthusiasm brought him ever-greater fame and influence, and collectors became increasingly ingenious. This master’s impact not only on collectors and the public but also on British artists over the last four centuries is explored, with lavish paintings, drawings and prints from artists such as Henry Raeburn, Joshua Reynolds and James Abbott McNeill Whistler shown alongside some of Rembrandt’s most famous masterpieces.

The ‘Two Roberts’: Robert Colquhoun (1914-1962) and Robert MacBryde (1913-1966), were two of the most important and celebrated Scottish artists of the twentieth century. Colquhoun studied at Glasgow School of Art where he met Robert MacBryde. The two became lovers. They were part of a celebrated Soho group that included Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Their post-cubist work – much influenced by Picasso – became enormously successful. In the 1950s they established worldwide reputations. Colquhoun’s drinking and temperament caught up with him and he died almost penniless in 1962. MacBryde was killed in a car accident four years later. This catalogue with over 90 illustrations accompanies the only show to ever exhibit both artists together. The authors refer to previously unpublished letters and explore the ‘Two Roberts’ individual art practice as well as works the two executed together.

This volume highlights the treasures of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, and houses a world-class collection of art objects. It is categorized primarily into three sections: Art, Archaeology and Natural History. The Museum has some fine and rare collections featuring ancient Indus Valley artifacts that date back to 3000 BC as well as relics from the Maurya and Gupta period (320 BC AD 800). The Indian Miniature Painting Gallery houses art treasures from almost every significant school of miniature painting.

In 1917 Pablo Picasso traveled to Rome and Naples with Jean Cocteau and Igor Stravinskij. During this trip, for the first time, he could admire directly Hellenistic and Roman sculpture, that of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, but also the Roman frescoes of Pompei. The first exhibition dedicated to Picasso’s sculpture to be held in Rome, and its accompanying catalogue, are conceived as a journey through the centuries that chronologically follows the interpretation of forms and different themes – stories and myths, bodies and figures, objects and fragments – in sculpture. The exhibition of masterpieces of the great Spanish master is accompanied by previously unpublished images of his sculpture studios (by Edward Quinn) that narrate the context in which these works were born. The catalogue includes essays that explore the visual and conceptual dialogue between the works of Picasso and works of the past, illustrating and examining over fifty works, some of which have never been exhibited before.

“Ms. Ruttenberg’s latest efforts make her a force to contend with as a narrator and symbolist, a form maker and colorist.” – Roberta Smith, New York Times The Nature of the Beast is a comprehensive retrospective of artist Kathy Ruttenberg’s work in the past six years including ceramics, drawings, and watercolors. With text by curator and art historian Charles Stuckey, the book also features a tour of her eccentric estate and studio in upstate New York where pigs, rabbits, chickens, and goats roam free. Her most recent show at Stux Gallery in Manhattan for the Fall of 2014 culminate in a conversation between Ruttenberg and Sir John Richardson which is also featured.

Titled After Morandi, the book presents a real encounter, a dialogue, from which sprang this grouping of photographs that interpret rather than describe Morandi’s artistic legacy. In notes at the end of the book, Green tells us the project was intended as a conversation with the work of Morandi and that, while some of the photographs present a direct response to that, Green hopes that most of them connect more tangentially through materials, objects, and geography.

Gary Green’s pensive photographs of a stream near his home in Waterville, Maine were taken between 2017 and 2019. They are imbued with a formal beauty that is revealed in the act of gazing at reflections of the natural world in water. Each frame in this contemplative body of work explores texture, compositional balance, and the contrast between light and shadow. “These photographs… began as meditations on nature: quiet observations of the water and what was reflected, refracted, and shadowed upon its surface. The title is a stanza from Wallace Stevens’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. The poem invokes, among other themes, the idea that as nature we are all connected: the flora and fauna, the air above and the ground below. ‘A man and a woman are one’, he wrote, ‘A man and a woman and a blackbird are one’.” – Gary Green.