This study of the wooden Serpent figures/headdresses of the Baga people of Guinea is a collaboration by the author, as an art historian, with many contributions from diverse perspectives, including scientists preeminent in their fields, Robert J. Koestler, Roy Sieber, Dennis William Stevenson, Mark T. Wypyski, and Peter J. Zanzucchi.

The text begins with a thorough exploration of the ethnological and art historical evidence for the Serpent masquerade among the Baga of Guinea, bearing an immense wooden serpent figure on top of the head representing a python. Never witnessed or photographed by an outsider, it disappeared in the 1950s along with most ritual performance after an Islamic jihad instated strict prohibitions against indigenous religions. The ritual context is followed by an in-depth analysis of the Serpent masquerade figures now extant in collections in Europe, the Americas, and Africa, as well as other representations of the python in the ritual art of the region. The final sections present the arguments, as a debate, between interested persons in the arts, including art historians, dealers, appraisers, collectors, and curators, and the scientific examinations by specialists in botany, chemistry, physics, entomology, and conservation concerning one particular Serpent figure in question.

This pocket sized picture book is an artwork to itself telling the story of the famous trio and their art over the last 12 years. From the most human moments to their wacky adventures to the gigantic murals they have birthed – the Sool Boomb Book will transport you into the colorful world of this prolific Italian art crew.

Tornabuoni Art Paris opens 2023 with an exhibition dedicated to the relationship between art and poetry, examining the case of Giuseppe Ungaretti, on the 110th anniversary of his arrival in Paris, a defining moment in his literary career.

The catalog, with texts by Alexandra Zingone, literary critic and curator of the exhibition, tackles the analysis of the art of the ‘short century’ with a global view, taking into consideration the constant dialog between the various exponents of the cultural world.

Through passages from critical texts by Ungaretti as an interpreter of art, the volume follows the exhibition among the many works by contemporary artists, including Giacomo Balla, Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Piero Dorazio and others.

Throughout his multidisciplinary career, Ungaretti found himself indiscriminately analyzing various genres, including Futurism, Metaphysical, Informalism, Socialist Realism and Expressionism of the Roman School.

The exhibition develops around the poet’s pieces, in some cases in the form of original manuscripts and first editions.

Accompanying the volume is an extremely rich iconographic and archival apparatus accompanies the reader in discovering a virtuous example of the links that have always existed between literature and the visual arts.

The hidden art of London is for the ever-curious roamer of both the back streets and the familiar places you never quite see – churches, gardens, graveyards, pubs. What little garden finds the poet John Keats sitting in the corner of a bench? Which abandoned building tells the story of a great Roman Road?
There are always marvels hidden in plain view – the back corner of a museum containing great sculptures by Rodin or the naked, street-corner golden boy, who marks where the Great Fire of London finally petered out. A famous literary cat or a painting by Hogarth on the bend of a stairs in an ancient hospital.
This guidebook takes you exploring London beyond its most famous sights to find the art we have never quite noticed before: the hidden statues, paintings, and murals that have escaped from the official museums, and often live unnoticed lives in tucked away places.

For the past five years, the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire has been organizing Quand fleurir est un art (The Art of Flower Arranging), a captivating event where renowned flower artists and designers from around the world unleash their creativity in the majestic rooms of the castle, creating stunning arrangements ranging from the most daring to the most classic. The Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire’s previous (and last private) owners, the Prince and Princess de Broglie, were avid plant enthusiasts. They took pride in their impressive collections of orchids and exotic green plants, which earned them numerous awards in horticultural competitions during the Belle Époque. Today, the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire is committed to carrying on this rich legacy, inviting talented floral artists to showcase their artistry and expertize, creating a harmonious fusion of art and nature in the pursuit of beauty. This book offers a nice overview of some of the best creations that were on view during the event. Discover some of the amazing designs made by renowned floral designers such as Makoto Azuma (J), Clarisse Béraud (F), Timo Bolte (D), Rudy Casati (I), Tomas De Bruyne (B), Sébastien Dossin (B), Frédéric Dupré (F), Max Hurtaud (B), Pascal Mutel (F), Julian Paris (F), Gilles Pothier, Charline Pritscaloff (F) and the École nationale des Fleuristes de Paris (F).

Text in English and French.

James VI & I, the only child of Mary, Queen of Scots, has often been overshadowed by the dramatic lives of his mother and son, Charles I. This book seeks to redress the balance by centering the first monarch to reign over both Scotland and England and uncovering the artistic treasures created during his extraordinary reign.

The cultural riches of James’s court are showcased, revealing his diverse roles as ruler, scholar, politician, father and patron of the arts. His court’s passion for jewelry and fine clothes is illustrated in the vivid portraits and miniatures by John de Critz and Nicholas Hilliard – just two of many artists and craftspeople who thrived in its artistic and intellectual climate.

Five richly illustrated chapters demonstrate James’s impact on early modern Britain, while reconsidering the reputation of a king traditionally presented as preferring hunting and drinking to the duties of daily governance. Packed with exquisite art works and sumptuous objects, this book brings James’s court vividly to life.

The Art of Endurance is a coffee table book about the 2024 season of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), which is one of the most exciting competitions in motorsport. This book is based on the very rich production of images that will be developed and embellished over the eight races that are held around the globe on internationally renowned circuits, including the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans. The main goal is to capture the “spirit” that characterizes these endurance races. This beautiful publication will be a perfect promotional tool for the championship, whose considerable drawing power is due to the number of competitors and manufacturers who are taking part.

Darwishi Ur-atum Msamaki Minkabh Ishaq Eboni, the son of an Egyptian pharaoh, is only nine years old when he dies. He is mummified and laid to rest in a tomb, with the powerful Golden Scarab of Mukatagara hanging around his neck. Thousands of years later, during a transport of three precious sarcophaguses, there is a terrible storm. Lightning strikes, the lorry plunges from a flyover and the sarcophaguses are hurled through the air. During all this, a little white shape escapes the wreckage unnoticed…

Angus Gust is ten and has a perfectly normal life. Then one night a little mummy appears in his room! Life changes completely. Angus and Dummie (short for his real name) become best friends. One dreadful day, Dummie’s scarab goes missing. Without the scarab Dummie falls terribly ill. Angus must now do everything he can to find the scarab, so Dummie doesn’t have to face death again. Can Dummie be saved in time?

The Darnley jewel, a masterpiece of the goldsmith’s art on display at Edinburgh’s Holyrood Palace, has been deemed a love token, but has also been labelled an emblem of political ambition. Taking the shape of a heart, the jewel was produced at a moment (1565-75) when such objects worn by courtiers were a primary means of asserting status and proclaiming allegiances. With a deep medieval history – originally the fleshly power center of the human body, the seat of the soul, and place of memory and emotion – the heart has many aspects to offer. This book shows how the understanding of the heart changed during the Middle Ages, from spiritual locus of the body, to source of devotion to country, and finally, to the font of love and sentimentality.

Male nudes have always been an expression of strength, beauty, and desire. Today, the naked male body is often viewed as a symbol of homosexual desire and is subject to a similar objectification within the community as the heterosexual female body — despite the social narrative of diversity and body positivity.

This raises important questions: which bodies are worthy of representation, which poses stimulate desire — and whose desire is being aroused? We are exposed to a non-stop, endlessly repetitive production of images in everyday life. This has long since led to a standardization of the masculine body image, but only few people can identify with the ideal of a slim, muscular, and angular figure.

In his work the beauty & the boys, Martin de Crignis displays his own photographs of the bare male body in the context of historical nude depictions. He sets his own visual language against these archive photos: while it imitates the aesthetics of a reality format in which the portrayed persons seem to openly present themselves in a domestic setting, the staged poses contradict both the genre and the masculine body ideal.

With this special juxtaposition of images and their conflicting aesthetics, de Crignis subtly touches on issues of body cult, naturalness, and masculinity in his exceptional artist’s book.

In a series of color-saturated, dream-like, hallucinatory images taken at night, this second book in a trilogy by Kolkata-based photographer Arko Datto explores the shifting world of nature, society, and politics in Malaysia and Indonesia. Over the course of 4 years, he has captured both people and animals in confrontation with the changing urban environments they live in, with the subtext of the politics that made this change possible. In a place that used to be considered a tropical paradise, over- development and property speculation have forced residents out and have created deserts of empty real estate where neither locals nor animal life can thrive. SNAKEFIRE is dedicated to this paradise that has been lost to unmediated human greed and ponders the costs of untrammeled consumption. 

The Vatican Museums is one of the most important museum complexes in the world, housing incredible masterpieces from the Egyptian Age to the late Renaissance.

The Vatican Museums hold a treasure trove of art and history, as well as an inestimable patrimony of our culture and our civilisation. This volume focuses on the paintings to be found in the collection – including The Sistine Chapel.

Text in English and Italian.

“The subtle forms and modelled curves and planes in a skeleton were to George Stubbs what a symphony is to a musician.” — Oxford Companion to Art

“The most unique thing of its kind ever compiled. This heroic effort, an epic of the eighteenth century, is as great and unselfish a work as anything could be.” — Sir Alfred Munnings

George Stubbs was one of the most original artists Britain has produced, and it is easy to forget how much his success was based on rigorous scientific observation. In 1756 he rented a farmhouse where he erected scaffolding to hold the cadavers of horses as he dissected and drew. After 18 months, Stubbs produced the drawings for The Anatomy of the Horse, which he later etched. The result was sensational. Scientists from all over Europe sent their congratulations, amazed at the perfection of the work. The Anatomy remained a textbook for artists and scientists for over a century, and its strange, spare beauty continues to fascinate.

This edition is taken from the 1853 printing, the last to use Stubbs’ original plates. The full Stubbs’ commentary is included for the veterinarially minded. Extensive texts by Constance Anne Parker and Oliver Kase place Stubbs’ work in the context of his life and times, and of 18th-century medical science.

The collection of 18th- and early-19th-century French silverware brought together by Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian is the most important of its time and one of the most significant sections of the Gulbenkian Museum’s collection. Amassed between 1900 and 1950, these pieces constitute a unique group due to their diversity and quality. The collection comprises over 150 works, including several world-class masterpieces that represent the collector’s taste.

The catalogue is dedicated to a selection of silver works of different typologies, such as centerpieces, tureens, salt cellars, candelabras and candlesticks, made by renowned silversmiths such as François-Thomas Germain, Antoine-Sébastien Durant, Robert-Joseph Auguste and Martin-Guillaume Biennais. Despite this diversity, these works all share the characteristics that make this collection unique: quality and authenticity combined with original designs, technical expertise and distinguished provenances, with former owners including members of European aristocracy and the Russian imperial family. These works were mostly purchased in Paris, but there is also an important group of works from the Hermitage collection, acquired through negotiations made between Calouste Gulbenkian and the Soviet government between 1928 and 1930.

After an initial text about Calouste Gulbenkian’s passion for 18th-century French silverware, the most prominent pieces of the collection are presented in chronological order of acquisition and are accompanied by comprehensive descriptions and analyses, as well as detailed information on hallmarks, inscriptions, provenances and historical and bibliographical sources. An excellent photographic survey, carried out specifically for the purpose, illustrates the 43 catalogue entries.

At the end of the publication, the reader can find a list of secondary silverware, an index of names and the group of archive documents and bibliography consulted.

Images Credits: Panorama

This is the era of the Smart Ecosystems Economy, where the companies that thrive must be ready to cope with randomness and unexpected events. In this digital world, the traditional boundaries have disappeared, paving the way for new and smarter ecosystems to develop. Companies seeking to transform into future-proof organizations would do well to understand these ecosystems, and get a grasp on how they work.

This book serves as a guide to building smart, competitive ecosystems for both small and large organizations. A timely book that cracks the code of tomorrow’s business models.

In 1856, just months after Britain and Siam had finalized the historic Bowring trade treaty that would prevent the countries colonization, the violent death of a Siamese official at the new British consulate threatens to scuttle the deal and lead to war. The King and the Consul explores UK and Thai archives to reveal the twists, turns and tensions of this little-known episode that pitted Thailand’s renowned King Mongkut, Rama IV, against the first British Consul, Charles Hillier. The crisis was resolved without war, but not without cost for the participants who suffered unintended tragic outcomes. By examining the background to this tragedy, the book reveals how history has often overlooked the importance of an issue that lay behind it the right of foreigners to own land in the country, and issue that continues to be a thorn in the side of Thailand’s foreign relations to this day.

“The tragic deaths in 1856 of the first British consul to Siam and a Siamese official had an unusual impact on Thailand‘s property law and Britain’s diplomatic presence in the country. This intriguing book could only be written by someone with long residence in Bangkok, through knowledge of Thailand’s property law, and enthusiasm for history. Simon Landy gives us a slice of legal and diplomatic history with close attention to its human dimensions. An unusual and lovely read” – Chris Baker

This is the era of the Smart Ecosystems Economy, where the companies that thrive must be ready to cope with randomness and unexpected events. In this digital world, the traditional boundaries have disappeared, paving the way for new and smarter ecosystems to develop. Companies seeking to transform into future-proof organizations would do well to understand these ecosystems, and get a grasp on how they work.

This book serves as a guide to building smart, competitive ecosystems for both small and large organizations. A timely book that cracks the code of tomorrow’s business models.

The National Holocaust Museum tells the story of the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews of the Netherlands. Before the Second World War, Jews and non-Jews lived side by side. They had the same rights. But during the war, the Nazis and their collaborators killed around six million Jews in Europe. That was the Holocaust or Shoah. This is the first and only museum to relate the history of the persecution of the Jews of the entire Netherlands. Including the day-to-day life of Jews on the eve of the Second World War, the liberation as Jews experienced it, and how the Holocaust has been treated in our national culture of remembrance: all this is examined in the museum and this book.

Text in English and Dutch.

During the German occupation, a Jewish Dutch couple had to sell a painting to go into hiding. Their daughters were placed in a children’s home, but were rounded up in early 1944 and deported to Auschwitz, where they died. The parents survived the war and did not discover their children’s fate until 1946. The search for the painting also remained fruitless for a long time, until Origins Unknown Agency discovered that it had ended up in a German museum. The museum had previously tried unsuccessfully to trace its provenance. Thanks to the Origins Unknown Agency, the heirs of the original owner were found. The German museum and the heirs agreed that the painting, an 1882 work by Camille Pissarro, would remain at the museum. As part of the compensation, the painting will be kept on display from November 2024 to February 2025 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The global porcelain scene is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, which was founded by Brian Haughton and his wife, Anna, in London in 1982. That was just the beginning: further fairs and accompanying symposia on design, jewelry, and antiques in New York and Dubai were to follow, becoming important venues of exchange, not just for trade but for the academic world too.
To mark this anniversary, more than 40 renowned scholars were asked to write about selected European ceramics that had been traded in Brian Haughton’s gallery and that he had been particularly passionate about.
This publication is a wonderful kaleidoscope of unique ceramics from the 18th and 19th centuries, released as a homage to Brian Haughton, The Man with the Butterfly Tie.

There are many reasons to plan a visit to The Hague. It is the international city of peace and justice, the only large Dutch city by the sea, one of the greenest cities of the Netherlands, and it boasts a long and rich history.
For this book, Tal Maes listed her 500 favorite places and tips, presenting them in original and interesting lists such as 5 historic houses of famous Dutchmen, 5 fun boat trips, the 5 best spots for Dutch “maatjes” herring, 5 museums around the Binnenhof, the 5 best lifestyle and concept stores, and much more. This guide encourages you to look further than the usual hotspots. Walk to the far end of the beach to find peace and quiet, try a beer from a hidden monastery, discover cutting-edge art in a former power plant. Of the highlights included, lesser-known aspects are revealed.