NEW from ACC Art Books – Limited Edition: Sukita: EternityClick here to order

This catalog documents an exhibition at the Baur Foundation that brings together work by the French painter Pierre Soulages (b.1919) and the Japanese master bamboo artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV (b. 1973). Soulages, still working at 102 years old, has painted almost exclusively in black since 1979 and is known as the “master of luminous blacks”. Tanabe Chikuunsai IV is a renowned bamboo artist, known for his twisting organic sculptures and room-sized installations made from tiger or black bamboo. The aim of this exhibition is to explore how their work resonates, despite different approaches, in the dark and light effects of their materials. 

Text in French and English. 

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Baur Foundation in Switzerland, a museum of Far Eastern Art, from November 2021–March 2022.

Collage is one of the most popular and pervasive of all art-forms, yet this is the first historical survey book ever published on the subject. Featuring over 200 works, ranging from the 1500s to the present day, it offers an entirely new approach. Hitherto, collage has been presented as a twentieth-century phenomenon, linked in particular to Pablo Picasso and Cubism in the years just before the First World War. In Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, we trace its origins back to books and prints of the 1500s, through to the boom in popularity of scrapbooks and do-it-yourself collage during the Victorian period, and then through Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. Collage became the technique of choice in the 1960s and 1970s for anti-establishment protest, and in the present day is used by millions of us through digital devices. The definition of collage employed here is a broad one, encompassing cut-and-pasted paper, photography, patchwork, film and digital technology and ranging from work by professionals to unknown makers, amateurs and children.

Contents:

Collage Over the Centuries, an introductory essay by Patrick Elliott; Collage Before Modernism by Freya Gowrley; On Edge: Exploring Collage Tactics and Terminology by Yuval Etgar; catalogue of exhibition works; a Chronology of Collage.

The monograph on Maxime Old (1910-1991) chronologically retraces the career and work of this great decorator, through an in-depth study of his production notebooks, his archives and his participation in Salons. Maxime Old completed his training in the studio of Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann. Born at a pivotal time when the society will experience unprecedented upheavals, raised in the respect of a craftsmanship tradition of quality and know-how, Maxime Old represents a link between the great era of decorators and modern times. He embodies the survival of an interwar style which merges in the era of design. The Mobilier national and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs placed numerous orders for the French embassies in The Hague, Helsinki and Ottawa. In addition to a private clientele who remained loyal to him throughout his career, he was in charge of such important projects as the fitting out of the headquarters of the Société des forges et ateliers du Creusot, the Marhaba hotel in Casablanca, the Marignane airport terminal, or the liner France.

Text in French. 

Kim Buck is partial to using well-known jewelry motifs such as hearts, daisies, signet rings, and crosses as a point of departure, but the materials can be anything from precious metals to found objects and ready-mades. With surprising combinations, wordplay, and a touch of irony, he questions the conventions of the jewelry business as well as the way national and religious symbols are used and abused. Even Denmark’s national jewelry piece, the daisy brooch, is up for scrutiny. To a conceptual artist, raising questions and prompting reflection is of utmost importance. The questions raised by Kim Buck through his jewelry and objects touch upon values, ethics, and social status and reach far beyond the jewelry field itself, disrupting our cultural habits and understanding of the self.

Text in English, Danish and Chinese.

Not so much about the workplace being disrupted, but rather the rapid pace at which disruptions have come upon us has impacted how facility management and the workplace are perceived. This step-by-step approach will help companies create a sustainable and future-proof work environment, whether looking at this from the perspective of a Facility Manager, FM Service Provider, HR Manager, Chief Happiness Officer, or part of the management team. Everyone will be able to identify with the different international use cases and extract the necessary tips & tricks. And, of course, providing a simple step-by-step model for practical implementation.

Before any sound critical framework could be evolved around the phenomenal artist Jangarh Singh Shyam as the originator of an extraordinary individualistic idiom of painting, ruthless market forces regrettably came to dominate his art and Jangarh himself became their first casualty. While trying to finish a large commission at a museum in Japan under adverse circumstances, Jangarh committed suicide in 2001. He was 40.

A whole range of conditions, events and mediations associated with Jangarh’s life and his art practice has since remained underexplored. This book is a first attempt to construct an equitable account of the formation of his prodigious artistic body of work that founded his legacy and grew into a movement. As a prime critical analysis of Jangarh Singh Shyam’s oeuvre, this book also serves as a model framework for the study of a contemporary individual folk and tribal artist.

The book probes the efficacy of extra-cultural interventions into an individual artist’s operative and relatively well-grounded indigenous cultural tradition, and asks how the latter interacts with the new, while intentionally reinventing itself.

This volume is published in association with the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore.

Basil Spence (1907-1976) was one of Britain’s most celebrated architects. This book explores his extraordinary career from the 1930s to the 1970s, focusing particularly on the post-war period. Initially known for his work on national exhibitions such as the ‘Festival of Britain,’ Spence became a household name in 1951 when he won the competition to design a new cathedral for Coventry. He worked on an unusually wide range of projects from housing in Glasgow’s Gorbals to the University of Sussex and the British Embassy in Rome. Central to his work was a sensitivity toward materials and a commitment to working with artists. Spence’s work is discussed here in a series of essays introduced by a personal memoir specially written by the architect’s close family members.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is world-famous for his scenes of daily life, such as a kitchen maid pouring milk, a woman having a music lesson, or a lady writing a letter. However, when Vermeer began painting around the age of 21, he focused primarily on traditional subjects derived from the Bible and classical mythology. Not only do these early works differ greatly from his later paintings in terms of subject matter, they also differ in style. This publication deals with the young Vermeer’s training and artistic development. It also gives an account of the rediscovery of his early work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exhibition unites three paintings from the beginning of Vermeer’s artistic career: the Mauritshuis’ Diana and her nymphs of c. 1653-1654, is joined by Christ in the house of Martha and Mary (c. 1655) from the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, and The Procuress (1656) from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden. These three paintings afford an image of the artist seeking his own style. All three paintings have recently been restored. Within this context, the differences between Johannes Vermeer’s early and late work also emerge clearly. The Young Vermeer is organized in collaboration with the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden and the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Calum Colvin is one of Scotland’s most innovative and exciting contemporary photographers. In his work he creates a kaleidoscope of figures, symbols and ideas, which are blended into the most vibrant and stimulating images. With this project, Colvin has explored the mysterious world of Ossian. Ossian, a third century Celtic bard, was first discovered by James MacPherson, himself a poet but also a cultural entrepreneur and an adventurer. MacPherson published the ballads of Ossian in the years after 1760. These mournful elegies to the lost world of the Gael became a cause celebre in Enlightenment society. On the one hand, MacPherson was hailed as the discoverer and translator of a “Celtic Homer”, while on the other, he was accused by Samuel Johnson, of having perpetrated a cruel fraud on the public. While this dispute rumbled on, the poems of Ossian became feted throughout Europe and America and touched the art of poets, writers and composers such as Burns, Goethe, Longfellow and Mendelssohn. Colvin has taken these events as the basis for his surreal meditation on contemporary culture. Through the ideas and associations inspired by MacPherson’s Ossian, he has produced a discourse on national identity, “authenticity” and the human psyche. It is characteristic of Colvin that he has successfully explored these difficult themes while simultaneously creating accessible, provocative photographs.

“It reveals a unique look into the profession of photography.”—Gerd Ludwig Photography



Charles Moriarty, Stills department manager for Star Wars and photographer for Amy Winehouse, presents Photographers on the Art of Photography: a series of intimate conversations with some of the most highly regarded names in photography. From celebrity portraitists such as Terry O’Neill, to famed fashion photographers like Jerry Schatzberg and wildlife specialists Tim Flach and Sue Flood, this book offers a unique insight into all angles of the profession. Twenty celebrated photographers discuss how they got started, as well as their favored techniques, motivations, inspirations and greatest accomplishments. Discover each artist’s vision in their own words and reflect on what makes their talents unique.

Interviews from: Ed Caraeff (music); Terry O Neill (celebrity portraiture); Norman Seeff (music); Johnathan Daniel Pryce (fashion); Douglas Kirkland (Hollywood); Gerd Ludwig (National Geographic); Slava Mogutin (queer fine art); Jerry Schatzberg (fashion, film, music, portraiture); Tim Flach (wildlife); Richard Phibbs (fashion, commercial, portraiture); Eva Sereny (Hollywood, celebrity portraiture); Sue Flood (wildlife); Tom Stoddard (photojournalism).

A fascinating exploration into the landscape painting career of one of Scotland’s best-loved designers and architects: Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Known worldwide for his architecture and interior designs, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was also an extremely gifted painter. Towards the end of his life, he gave up his principal career as an architect and moved to the south of France where he devoted himself to painting in watercolor. Meticulously executed and brilliantly colored, these landscape watercolors are conceived with a sense of design and an eye for pattern in nature, which owes much to his brilliance as an architect and designer. This book charts Mackintosh’s time in France and explores his career as a landscape painter, placing his work in the context of the modern movement. The 44 paintings Mackintosh is known to have completed while in France are illustrated, and are supported by documentary photographs of the places he painted as well as extracts from his letters written to his wife and friends.

Known today for his atmospheric views of the river Oise, Charles François Daubigny was a pioneer of modern landscape painting and an important precursor of French Impressionism. Although commercially highly successful he was often criticized for his broad, sketch-like handling and unembellished view of nature, and was dubbed the leader of ‘the school of the impression’. As a result he drew the attention of the next generation of artists, among them Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, who were inspired by Daubigny’s frank naturalism, bold compositions and technical innovations. Theirs was an artistic dialogue which spanned thirty years, from the early 1860s to the end of Van Gogh’s short life.

This book will accompany the first major solo exhibition of Douglas Gordon’s work in Scotland since he presented his now celebrated work, 24 Hour Psycho at Tramway in Glasgow in 1993. Gordon is one of a number of Glasgow-trained artists who came to prominence in the 1990s. He has gone on to achieve huge international recognition, marked by major awards, including the Turner Prize in 1996, and by exhibitions in museums in Europe and America. Gordon works with film, video, photographs, objects and texts, examining issues such as memory and identity, good and evil, life and death. He makes great play with the doubling of images often in positive and negative or in mirrored form. This book will show all the important aspects of Gordon’s work, both past and present. In addition, it will be specially tailored to bring out the particularly Scottish nature of Gordon’s ideas and practice. The exhibition book will contain essays by the exhibition curator, Keith Hartley, senior curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Dr Holger Broeker, Kunstmuseum; Dr Jaroslav Andel of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Prague and an essay by the renowned Scottish author, Ian Rankin.

It is Cadell’s zest for life and the diversity of his subjects that makes him unique in the group of artists popularly known as the Scottish Colourists. Influenced by direct contact with the European avant-garde movements taking place at the turn of the century and with early knowledge of the work of Matisse and the Fauves, Cadell’s paintings are confident and rich with colour. Celebrated for his stylish portraits of Edinburgh New Town interiors and his vibrantly colored, daringly simple still lifes of the 1920s, exceptional in Bristish art of this period, he also captured the beauty of nature, especially in the evocative works portraying his beloved Iona. Contents: Birth of an Artist A Colourist Emerges Private Cadell Ainslie Place The Later Years and Cadell’s Legacy Cadell and Iona

Established following the 125th anniversary of the Chair of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh and named after the painter Sir John Watson Gordon, the Watson Gordon Lectures typify the long-standing positive collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and the National Galleries of Scotland: two partners in the Visual Arts Research Institute in Edinburgh. The fifth lecture was given by Hal Foster of Princeton University. Professor Foster is an acknowledged expert on modernist art and architecture, and has a particular fascination with Pop art. His wide-ranging lecture on Roy Lichtenstein is a gripping engagement with the multiple aspects of the artist’s work: the conjunctions of art and technology, the satirical playing with previous modernist styles, and the sinister background of the military-industrial complex. Also available in the series:
Roger Fry’s Journal: From the Primitives to the Post-Impressionists: Watson Gordon Lecture 2006 9781906270117 Sound, Silence, and Modernity in Dutch Pictures of Manners: Watson Gordon Lecture 2007 9781906270254 Picasso’s ‘Toys for Adults’: Cubism as Surrealism: Watson Gordon Lecture 2008 9781906270261

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.

Revealing an alternative story of modern Scottish art, A New Era examines the most experimental work of Scottish artists during the first half of the 20th century. It challenges the accepted view of the dominance of the Scottish Colourists and uncovers the hitherto little-known progressive Scottish art world. Through these works, we can see the commitment of Scottish artists to the progress of art through their engagement and interpretation of the great movements of European modern art, from Fauvism and Expressionism, to Cubism, Art Deco, abstraction and Surrealism, among others. Looking at the most advanced work of high-profile artists such as William Gillies and Stanley Cursiter, and lesser-known talents, like Tom Pow and Edwin G. Lucas, A New Era takes its name from the group established in Edinburgh in 1939 to show surreal and abstract work by its members.

Considered to be one of Scotland’s leading figurative painters, Moyna Flannigan is known for her wry and penetrating observations on society. Her portrait miniatures reflect the styles, manners and culture of contemporary life. In this book Keith Hartley examines Flannigan’s paintings and discusses the artistic and social influences on her work. The illustrations are accompanied by poetic prose by award-winning Scottish writer Dilys Rose, which sets up an imaginative dialog with the miniatures. ‘Dilys Rose is one of the most versatile writers in Scotland, as well as one of the best‘ – Douglas Dunn

Established following the 125th anniversary of the foundation of the Chair of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh and named after the painter Sir John Watson Gordon, the Watson Gordon Lectures typify the longstanding and positive collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and the National Galleries of Scotland: two partners in the Visual Arts Research Institute in Edinburgh. This lecture was given by Neil Cox of the University of Essex, one of Britain’s leading scholars of Cubism and Surrealism, and a particular authority on Picasso, approaching the Spaniard’s work from intriguing angles. He concentrates on a single work, Picasso’s Head of 1913, and in doing so demonstrates how scrupulous focus can open out challenging perspectives in the work of a great master. Also Available:
Roger Fry’s Journey ISBN: 9781906270117 Sound, Silence, and Modernity in Dutch Pictures of Manners ISBN: 9781906270254

This book reveals the wealth of British and European miniatures preserved in Scottish private collections, most of which are not normally on show to the public. Some of these intimate and private works are new discoveries, published here for the first time. These works are drawn from some of the notable private collections in Scotland, led by the most famous of all, that of the Duke of Buccleuch & Queensberry. The protagonists of the Stuart cause are well represented in portraits of Prince James and his sons Prince Charles Edward and Prince Henry Benedict, taken from the collection of one of the most significant Jacobite families, that of the Dukes of Perth. The book illustrates some of the most personal portraits of the leading figures among the great families of Scotland from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Twenty of the key works are illustrated in colour, with extended captions, and a complete catalogue of the collection is also included.

British realist art of the 1920s and 1930s is visually stunning – strong, seductive and demonstrating extraordinary technical skill. Despite this, it is often overshadowed by abstract art. This book presents the very first overview of British realist painting of the period, showcasing outstanding works from private and public collections across the UK. Of the forty artists featured in the show, many were major figures in the 1920s and 1930s but later passed out of fashion as abstraction and Pop Art became the dominant trends in the post-war years. In the last decade their work has re-emerged and interest in them has grown. Interwar realist art embraces a number of different styles, but is characterized by fine drawing, meticulous craftsmanship, a tendency towards classicism and an aversion to impressionism and visible brushwork. Artists such as Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, Meredith Frampton, James Cowie and Winifred Knights combine fastidious Old Master detail with 1920s modernity. Stanley Spencer spans various camps while Lucian Freud’s early work can be seen as a realist coda which continued into the 1940s and beyond. Featuring many Scottish and women artists, this book promises a fascinating insight into this captivating period of British art. Contents: Introductory essay: About British Realist Painting Main essay entitled “What sort of Truth?” British Realist Painting between the Wars Urban and Rural Society/War Domestic Leisure/Play/Spectacle Still Life Artists’ biographies Bibliography

The most important portraits to me are the ones of people who have enriched my own thinking or awareness. Areas of philosophy, religion, psychological perspectives, poetry, music, art history, women’s roles and the inner life are important issues for me – and all have been nurtured by these people whom I have met through portraiture.” – Victoria Crowe. Victoria Crowe is one of Britain’s most vital and original figurative painters. Here, Duncan Macmillan explores the exceptional skill of this remarkable artist’s portraits and Victoria Crowe, herself, contributes many insightful accounts of her own thoughts and perceptions as each work developed. This book also tells Crowe’s own story – both professional and personal – through her art. She has developed an approach to portraiture that seeks to do more than record the outward appearance of a person: she aims to represent something of the inner life. With 80 illustrations, the portraits include the artist’s family, composer Ronald Stevenson, pioneer medical scientist Dame Janet Vaughan, poet Kathleen Raine, actor Graham Crowden, psychiatrist Professor Sir Peter Higgs and many others.

Caravaggio’s astonishingly naturalistic and provocative Cupid Victorious hung in the palace of a famous family at the heart of seventeenth-century Rome. Helen Langdon explores how the artist, famed for his originality, created a balance between a suggestion of his own world – a world of lively and rowdy street life – and a complex and ambiguous response to both ancient and Renaissance art and literature. Langdon also looks at the challenge the painting threw out to contemporary painters, whose world was characterized by extreme and bitter rivalries; often they reject his irony, sometimes embellish the painting’s sexuality, and at other times convey an opposing sense of the harmony of the arts.

“Nicholson’s Scottish paintings encapsulate her concerns with light, radiance and harmony which she expressed through flowers and the lyricism of the natural landscape.”The Independent
Throughout her long and varied career, Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) was concerned with light, color and radiance. Best known for her sensitive and joyful flower paintings, she married Ben Nicholson in 1920 and their mutually influential artistic relationship lasted, despite separation, until Winifred’s death. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she made regular working trips to Scotland, often accompanied by the poet, Kathleen Raine. Frequently staying on the islands of Eigg and Canna and in Sandaig on the mainland, Winifred felt a deep affinity with the Scottish landscape and marvelled at the quality of light and the effects created by the ever-changing weather conditions. Her last painting expedition was to Eigg in 1980. Winifred Nicholson in Scotland is based on personal correspondence and the recollections of relatives, friends and painting companions. The book examines Winifred Nicholson’s love for Scotland and illustrates her Scottish paintings.