On the occasion of the centenary of the Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, which marked the heyday of Art Deco, this catalog celebrates a major style and its success. During this event, which established Art Deco, numerous decorators, manufacturers, magazines, department stores, artists, and even foreign nations competed fiercely to take over Parisian buildings, while others erected temporary structures to showcase their latest creations. Protean and elusive, this movement brings together a range of modern forms, patterns, materials and techniques used by designers such as Jean Puiforcat, Maurice Marinot, Suzanne and René Lalique, Pierre Chareau, Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, André Groult and others. Through eight essays, twelve focus sections and image portfolios, this catalog covers the many incarnations of Art Deco, from its beginnings in the 1910s to its contemporary reinterpretations, including its golden age at the 1925 Exhibition. It draws on a rich iconography that showcases Art Deco masterpieces from the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and others, through magnificent full-page reproductions and previously unpublished details.

Text in French.

Brussels is well known for its wide variety of buildings in the Art Deco style, which were built in the aftermath of the Great War in the 1920s and 1930s. In this book, the authors have created seven walking (or biking) itineraries that explore Art Deco and modernist architecture in neighborhoods throughout the city. Several key architects are profiled, and the historical context of the period is discussed, offering readers new insights into the living heritage that lines the streets of Brussels.

Also available: Brussels Art Nouveau ISBN 9782390250456.

Bombay Art Deco Architecture presents a treasury of Art Deco buildings comprising residential, commercial and civic architecture. These monuments were created during the mid ’30s and ’40s, a glamorous and optimistic era that predated the official end of the British Raj. The architects, a small list of first-generation Indian architects and builders, were mostly educated in English schools and trained in western architectural traditionst. Impatient with the British reluctance to shed the Gothic and Indo-Saracenic architectural styles that had dominated Imperial Bombay’s urban landscape, these visionaries were determined to imbue the city with a new modern style. That style shares its provenance with the Art Deco architecture of Miami Beach, termed ‘Tropical Deco’ by author Laura Cerwinske in her seminal 1981 book. Built in the same era, the Art Deco architecture of the two cities exhibits similar scale, geometry, tropical vocabulary, and love of romance.

Art Deco Statuettes features over 1000 of the most fascinating and striking examples of interwar statuettes.

Capturing the very essence of Art Deco, the statuettes created in Paris, Berlin and Italy during the 1920s and ’30s epitomize the era and its fashions. These small, decorative sculptures are extensive in number and of widespread provenance, with many artists dedicated to their creation. Their influences and inspirations included the Ballet Russes, Egyptomania, Music Hall theater and more, leaving the world a unique cultural legacy.

First published in 2016 as Statuettes of the Art Deco Period, this vastly extended edition includes newly documented pieces and several obscure, long-lost artists, as well as a selection of period catalog pages, giving a sense of the allure and commercialization of these artworks at the time of their creation. For the first time, the secrets of these lost statuettes, once hidden in plain sight, are revealed for all to enjoy. Perfect for collectors and enthusiasts.

This grand opus assembles the people and the pieces at the heart of the Art Deco movement at each stage of its enduring appeal. The Art Deco Style is richly illustrated with the work of legendary designers and decorators Eileen Gray, Paul Iribe, Antoine Bourdelle, Armand-Albert Rateau and Jean Dunand, among others.   

Ever since its early 20th-century origins, Art Deco has fascinated and amused socialites, collectors and designers. Referred to at the time as moderne, the style largely took shape around a clientele of French fashion industry luminaries and wealthy international collectors. Art historians christened it during a second wave in the ’60s, while a third generation of afficionados entered the auction houses of the ’80s and ’90s, ready to invest in the most exquisite examples. Curated by art consultant and author Alastair Duncan, this detailed historical account is the gold-standard visual guide to the decorative arts.   

Swiss Art Brut 1945–2026 is being published to coincide with an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Collection de l’Art Brut (Swiss). It brings together a wide range of works from the Lausanne museum’s collection that were created by Swiss artists or artists who worked in Switzerland. With Switzerland as the common thread, this publication and the accompanying exhibition highlight the close and lasting ties between the originator of the concept of art brut Jean Dubuffet and this country. Indeed, it was this close bond that led him to donate his collection of outsider art to the City of Lausanne in order to ensure its preservation and the public’s access to it.

The book includes a foreword by writer Metin Arditi and a presentation by Sarah Lombardi, director of the museum and curator of the exhibition, followed by Jean Dubuffet’s own handwritten notes recounting his trip to Switzerland in search of extra-cultural works in the summer of 1945. This previously unpublished document is reproduced here in facsimile. Other authors provide further analyses of the works: Michel Thévoz, the museum’s first director; Lucienne Peiry, who succeeded him until 2011; Andreas Steck, president of the Aloïse Corbaz Association; and Astrid Berglund and Eleanor Philippoz, respectively curator and outreach coordinator at the Collection de l’Art Brut.

This is the exceptionally rich story of Rembrandt’s fame and influence in Britain. No other nation has witnessed such a passionate – and sometimes eccentric – enthusiam for Rembrandt’s works. His imagery has become ubiquitous, making him one of the most recognised artists in history. In this book, some of the world’s leading experts reveal how the taste for Rembrandt’s paintings, drawings and prints evolved, growing into a mania that gripped collectors and art lovers across the country. This reached a fever pitch in the late 1700s, before the dawn of a new century ushered in a re-evaluation of Rembrandt’s reputation and opportunities for the wider public to see his masterpieces for themselves.

The story of Rembrandt’s profound and inspirational impact on the British imagination is illustrated by over 130 sumptuous works by the master himself, as well as by some of Britain’s best-loved artists, including William Hogarth, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Eduardo Paolozzi and John Bellany.

Foreword; Introduction; 1 Rembrandt’s Fame in Britain, 1630 1900: An Overview- Christian Tico Seifert; 2 Rembrandt and Britain: The Modern Era – Patrick Elliott; 3 ‘The Finest Possible State’: Cataloguing and Collecting Rembrandt’s Prints, c.1700 1840 – Stephanie S. Dickey; 4 From Studio to Academy: Copying Rembrandt in Eighteenth-century Britain – Jonathan Yarker; 5 Regarding Rembrandt: Reynolds and Rembrandt – Donato Esposito; 6 Rembrandt: Paragon of the Etching Revival – Peter Black; 7 Rembrandt and Britain: A ‘Picture Flight’ in Three Stages, 1850 1930 – M.J. Ripps; Catalogue; Bibliography.

With the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925, Art Deco seduced the world. From New York to Paris, the press celebrated this event which permanently imposes this universal style.

Crossing the Atlantic aboard sumptuous liners such as Île-de-France and Normandy, main French decorators such as Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, Jean Dunand and Pierre Chareau exhibited in department stores, from New York to Philadelphia.

From Mexico to Canada, this enthusiasm is driven by North American architects trained at the School National Museum of Fine Arts in Paris from the beginning of the 20th century, then at the Art Training Center in Meudon and at the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts, two art schools founded after the First World War world which strengthened the links between the two continents. 

This book reveals a reciprocal emulation which is illustrated in the architecture and ornamentation of skyscrapers as well as in cinema, fashion, press, sport… 

Thirty-seven texts and 350 illustrations make it possible to discover the unique links that unite France and America, from the Statue of Liberty by Bartholdi to the Streamline which succeeds Art Deco. 

Text in French.

This catalog presents masterpieces of calligraphy, painting, sculpture, ceramics, lacquers, and textiles from two of America’s greatest Japanese art collections, which are featured in a landmark exhibition at the Asia Society in New York. Impermanence is a pervasive subject in Japanese philosophy and art, and recognizing the role of ephemerality is key to appreciating much of Japan’s artistic production. The dazzling range of art and objects in this beautifully photographed exhibition catalog show the broad, yet nuanced, ways that the notion of the ephemeral manifests itself in the arts of Japan throughout history. Insightful contributions from noted scholars explore the aesthetics of impermanence in religion, literature, artifacts, the tea ceremony, and popular culture in objects dating from the late Jomon period (ca. 1000-300 B.C.E.) to the 20th century.

Contents:
The Art of the Ephemeral;
Works in the Exhibition:
I. Retrieving Lost Worlds; II. Buddhism: Perpetual Impermanence; III. Tea: Choreographed Ephemerality; IV. Transforming Impermanence into Art.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Asia Society Museum, New York, between 11 February and 26 April 2020.

This book addresses a phenomenon that pervades the field of art history: the fact that English has become a widely adopted language. Art history employs language in a very particular way, one of its most basic aims being the verbal reconstruction of the visual past. The book seeks to shed light on the particular issues that English’s rise to prominence poses for art history by investigating the history of the discipline itself: specifically, the extent to which the European tradition of art historical writing has always been shaped by the presence of dominant languages on the continent.

What artistic, intellectual, and historical dynamics drove the pattern of linguistic ascendance and diffusion in the art historical writing of past centuries? How have the immediate, practical ends of writing in a common language had unintended, long-term consequences for the discipline? Were art historical concepts transformed or left behind with the onset of a new lingua franca, or did they often remain intact beneath a shifting veneer of new words?

Includes 10 essays in English, four in Italian, and one in German. 

Text in English, German and Italian.

Published on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the 200th anniversary of the deciphering of the Rosetta stone, this book responds to the ever-growing enthusiasm and curiosity for Egyptomania.

This concept refers to a collective imagination which was nurtured throughout the 19th and 20th centuries by archeological digs and exploratory trips. These key discoveries were crucial for creation and particularly for the Art Deco artists who found their inspiration in Egyptian lines and patterns.

Art Déco & Egyptomanie explores the origins and functioning of this cultural and artistic movement shaped by many fields: architecture, cinema, sculpture, popular art, theater and fashion.

Art Déco & Egyptomanie comes with an explicit and previously unseen iconography.

Text in French.

For more than 40 years, Benita VanWinkle has traveled the country photographing hometown movie theaters and drive-ins built before 1965 as part of her ongoing documentary project Please Remain Standing—a visual appeal to preserve these historic treasures. VanWinkle has recorded the astonishing range of these iconic structures, from repurposed Quonset huts to grand movie palaces. Her photographs depict magnificent Art Deco detailing and Mayan-style ornamentation, neon-lit theater marquees as well as the whimsical road signs that still entice moviegoers to once ubiquitous drive-ins. An impressive 512 full-page photographs, selected from the thousands VanWinkle has made to date, document 395 present and former movie theaters and drive-ins and conjure a time when Americans embraced the communal experience of going out to the movies—a few hours in which shared laughter and tears unite strangers. The book honors this beloved national pastime and highlights the continuing importance of movie theaters in preserving a town’s sense of community.

Italian and American Art focuses on the period between 1930 and 1980 in particular. By comparing artworks and examining exhibition and gallery policies, political meddling, and figures linking Italy to the United States, a common thread emerges which held two worlds that were literally an ocean apart but in constant touch as they explored each other’s movements contributing to art, from Futurism, Concrete art, and Abstract Expressionism, to Nuclear art, Pop art and Spatialism.

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 catalog accompanies the exhibition Art & Fashion in the Calouste Gulbenkian museum, and highlights the inseparable relationship between art and fashion: art finds a constant source of inspiration in fashion, while fashion finds permanence and memory in art. Both disciplines engage in a dialog around beauty, both ephemeral and eternal, as an invisible thread between past and present.

The extraordinary Gulbenkian Collection, with pieces from Ancient Egypt to the 20th century, allows for a unique encounter between masterpieces of painting and decorative arts and iconic haute couture creations. It is not a question of comparison, but of establishing visual and symbolic conversations: contemporary silhouettes alongside Renaissance folds, exquisite embroidery juxtaposed with modernist flashes, ancient iconography reinterpreted.

The book captures that moment when the museum is transformed into a living space where art and fashion face each other, reminding us that beauty knows no boundaries, only the passage of time.

This book is a unique and comprehensive illustrated dictionary of French Art Nouveau Ceramics.

A census conducted in 1901 indicated the existence of some 209 producers of pottery in France, employing a total of around 5,800 full-time labourers. This great activity stimulated a parallel development in the arts, including the search for new expressions in art pottery, giving birth to l’art nouveau, a great and eclectic synthesis of a number of other art styles. Largely through British arts and crafts, and the work of artists like the Manxman Archibald Knox, it reached far back into the prehistory of Celtic art. To this were added later medieval elements, through the gothic revival championed by William Morris.

The need for renewal, breaking away from the neo-Classical and academia, which was the realm of the upper-class culture, was largely theorised by John Ruskin, who searched elsewhere for inspiration. Thus did British art nouveau also partake of Chinese and Japanese styles, though never in so forceful a manner as did the French aesthetic. France, on the one side, looked back to the swirling and frivolous eighteenth century Rococo, primarily through the influence of the Goncourt brothers, Edmond and Jules, influential aesthetes of the mid-nineteenth century.

The book focuses especially on artists working stoneware or grès, faience, and terracotta. It aims to provide a general survey of the many artists working in these areas, and includes brief accounts of the ceramics work of sculptors and painters whose wider output is already well known.

Burst! Abstract Painting After 1945 looks at the close, but previously unexplored relationship between Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel. Through texts and close to 100 illustrations, the book describes a vital creative exchange across the Atlantic that would entirely redefine painting. Big, expansive, paint-splattered surfaces; spontaneous actions captured on canvas; new ideas of freedom. A story of post-war recovery and Transatlantic dialogue. On both sides of the ocean, society was reacting to the horrors of the Second World War, the Holocaust and the coming of the atom bomb. The book shows how artists searched for new ways to deal with these shattering events. With works by Jean Dubuffet, Natalia Dumitresco, Helen Frankenthaler, Asger Jorn, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Georges Mathieu, Hedda Sterne and Clyfford Still, and more.

This A3-format title brings together a selection of 50 exhibition posters designed by Werner Jeker (Les Ateliers du Nord, Lausanne) presented at the Collection de l’Art Brut between 1976 and 2026. This renowned Lausanne-based German-Swiss graphic artist has worked with the museum since it opened and is also responsible for the layout of this publication. The Collection de l’Art Brut would like to take advantage of this project to show its appreciation of this fruitful collaboration spanning five decades.

Text in English and French.

“Seldom does a collection of art history essays leave readers yearning for a second volume…”—Barbara Wisch, Renaissance Quarterly

Roman church interiors throughout the Early Modern age were endowed with rich historical and visual significance. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in anticipation of and following the Council of Trent, and in response to the expansion of the Roman Curia, the chapel became a singular arena in which wealthy and powerful Roman families, as well as middle-class citizens, had the opportunity to demonstrate their status and role in Roman society. In most cases the chapels were conceived not as isolated spaces, but as part of a more complex system, which involved the nave and the other chapels within the church, in a dialogue among the arts and the patrons of those other spaces. This volume explores this historical and artistic phenomenon through a number of examples involving the patronage of prominent Roman families such as the Chigis, Spadas, Caetanis, Cybos and important artists and architects such as Federico Zuccari, Giacomo della Porta, Carlo Maderno, Alessandro Algardi, Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Maratta.

The Ashmolean is fortunate in having the finest collection of Indian art in Britain outside London, one which includes many works of great beauty and expressive power. For this we are indebted above all to the generosity, knowledge and taste of our benefactors and donors from the 17th century to the present. This book offers a short account of how the collection developed and a selection of some of its more outstanding or interesting works of art. While it is written mainly for the general reader and museum visitor, it includes many fine objects or pictures, some of them unpublished, that should interest specialist scholars and students.

Since 1987, the Ashmolean has made many significant new acquisitions of Indian art and these are highlighted in this collection. As the book’s title implies, it also ventures beyond the bounds of the Indian subcontinent by including works from Afghanistan and Central Asian Silk Road sites as well as many from Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asia. From the early centuries AD, Indian trading links with these diverse regions of Asia led to a widespread cultural diffusion and regional adoptions of Buddhism and Hinduism along with their related arts. Local reinterpretations of such Indic subjects, themes and styles then grew into flourishing and enduring artistic traditions which are also part of the story of this book.

The selection of works ends around 1900. By the 16th century and the early modern period in India, growing European interventions and Western artistic influences under Mughal rule saw a significant shift in sensibility and the practice of more secular and naturalistic forms of court art such as portraiture. By the late 19th century, fundamental cultural changes under British rule and the advent of new technologies brought about a gradual decline in many of India’s traditional arts.