Rome is not only enriched by the works that have led it to be known as the “eternal city”, or with those monuments that still preserve the stories of a strong people, such as the Colosseum, the Roman Forum or Castel Sant’Angelo. It is not only the symbolic center of Christianity thanks to St. Peter’s Basilica, or the central and figurative hub of the Italian Republic because of the Palazzo del Quirinale. The history, art, and culture of Rome tell the story of a process of restoration and innovation that sees the participation of some timeless places and the birth of other contemporary community services that join those already known to the public. During 1930s, the social and cultural revolution and call for functionality and practicality are represented by impressive modern public and residential works, as well as by major operations from architectural protagonists in the urban change of the capital. Works such as the university city of Sapienza and its institutes, or the EUR district tell the story of the formal transition between modernity and contemporaneity.
Step into the haunting chronicle of a small explorer in a strange world. As Melbourne endured an unprecedented lockdown, Australian photographer Andrew Rovenko captured his daughter, Mia, dressed in a homemade astronaut suit and helmet, navigating their familiar yet alien neighborhood. This profoundly personal pandemic project quickly grew into a globally recognized photography series and now also a book, in which the story of the little astronaut reveals the surreal beauty found around us, as we still learn to look at the world differently, even years later.
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.
Born in the cradle of upper-middle-class privilege in a Mumbai Parsi household and educated at one of India’s finest schools, Kobad Ghandy’s life and career could have scaled heights in the bustling world of corporate finance. Only it did not. Instead, he chose to become an activist working for the oppressed of the country.
Shocked by the racism he witnessed in the UK as a student and learning of the horrors of colonial rule in India, he determined to serve those struck the harshest by the cruel inequalities of his country. Fractured Freedom takes you through the journey of an honest man and his partner, Anuradha’s, to a difficult destiny. Here is the story of two people who dedicated their lives in the service of the marginalized, and who believed that true revolution required direct action for a more human and just society. Part memoir, part prison diary, Ghandy bares it all looking back at their lives, love, loss and politics, so intrinsically tied together. Having languished in Indian prisons for over a decade, he tells of his long incarceration, of his fellow prisoners, and of the Kafkaesque experiences with the Indian legal system. This is the candid and unfiltered account of how an unjust system breaks the brave and bold-hearted. A story of life in extremes – the height of privilege and the depth of despair, a story of our times, of a path many would shy away from.
Elizabeth Siddal is remembered as a Pre-Raphaelite supermodel and the muse and wife of Gabriel Rossetti. She is cast as a tragic heroine much like the Ophelia she modelled in the renowned Millais painting. But Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story overturns this myth. ‘Lizzie’ is presented as an aspirational and independent woman who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to let it be known.
With extraordinary stories, including previously undiscovered details of Siddal’s journeys across the UK and to the south of France, Jan Marsh reclaims Siddal’s narrative from the historical record. She brings new perspective to the post-natal, mental trauma Elizabeth suffered after a stillbirth. Furthermore, she casts new light on the renowned story of Siddal’s grave being exhumed for Rossetti’s poems.
Jan Marsh explores the finer, little known details of Siddal’s life, including her four months at art school in Sheffield, which Rossetti’s brother always denied. In addition to this, few will know how Siddal was often regarded as difficult and ungrateful.
Historical record tends to forget or misremember women, but with Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story, Jan Marsh forces us to take a closer look and see a very different picture. Siddal was not passive and lacking in agency, she was a woman with a strong mind, flourishing career and an admirable talent.
Following on from In Detail and In Residence, In House features more of the kinds of homes we all wish we could own. Showcasing the work of US architectural firm, McInturff Architects, with photography by Julia Heine, this volume highlights the innovation and craftsmanship that has won the firm commissions from all over North America. The firm has an orientation towards contemporary design that involves considerable client interaction in order to ensure a highly-crafted finished product. This richly illustrated volume features extraordinary residential designs, brilliant ideas and inspirational spaces across the continent. In House is another fitting tribute to innovative architecture and thinking.
“An important document that should be included in any library of design and architecture.” – Daniella Ohad
“A masterful blend of émigré biography and architecture and design history, proving that the twentieth century fostered more than one modernism.” – Donald Albrecht
Christopher Long, author of seminal monographs on Adolf Loos, Kem Weber, and Paul T. Frankel, turns his attention to the little-known architect and designer Jock Peters, a largely forgotten figure of early Los Angeles modernism.
This visually rich study is also an intimate portrait of an architect who, like too many, struggled to establish a career during the early decades of the 20th century, years ravished by World War I and the Great Depression. Among Peters’s early works in Germany are designs for the Levantehaus and Karstadt department stores, an innovative design dated 1916 for a magnificent glass pavilion, and his work for Peter Behrens after the war, but the architect’s most accomplished and compelling work came after 1922 when he settled in Southern California. Most notable are the strikingly lavish and elegant commercial interiors Peters designed for the iconic Bullock’s Wilshire store in Los Angeles and the tragically forgotten Hollander department store in New York City; both projects brought him international recognition.
The breathtaking scope of his short-lived career includes modern film sets for Famous Players-Lasky, later Paramount Pictures, while working under the legendary art director Hans Dreier; a dynamic sales office for the trendsetting Maddux Air Lines, which later became TWA; and modern residences, including the still extant homes he built for cinematographer Alfred Gilks, who would later win an Academy Award for An American in Paris, and art gallerist and developer William Lingenbrink for whom Peters also designed stores and a vibrantly colorful sidewalk for the Silver Strand beach development north of Los Angeles. Lingenbrink, a major supporter of the burgeoning modernism, also commissioned Jock Peters, alongside Schindler, to design houses for Park Moderne, the legendary avant-garde modernist retreat for artists in Calabasas. Peters also designed the retreat’s Streamline Moderne pump house, clubhouse, and zigzag fountain, which still stands.
This important study on early modernism includes never before published material from the architect’s personal archive, still in family hands. These remarkable and inspiring images-more than 250 historic photographs, etchings, watercolors, and drawings-alongside Long’s insightful narrative, demonstrate how Peters, despite his early death, managed to leave his mark on the modernist landscape in Southern California at a time when the new style was just emerging.
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.
With her project Like we could almost live forever, Carlotta Guerra (*1976) invites us on a visual and emotional journey. The photographs, taken in Italy and North America, draw on her family heritage and create a tapestry of personal memories, experiences, impressions, and emotions. Aware that our limited time in life makes our encounters precious and unique, Guerra collects photographic moments, which she arranges like tiny pieces of a vast puzzle into a narrative full of expressive and associative power. This collection encourages us to explore the magic and the sorrows of life, from the simplest to the most significant moments of everyday existence.
The ethnographic literature of the 20th century focused mainly on the sculptural traditions of the numerous ethnic groups that populated Southern Nigeria while the more northern areas remained largely terra incognita. In 2013 Jan Strybol published a study on the sculpture of Northern Nigeria. He pointed out that in many parts of this region there are people who still had, at least until recently, their own sculptural tradition. In this study the author restricted himself to what is referred to as the Middle Belt and especially to the part between the Bauchi Plateau, the Gongola River and the Katsina Ala River. In 1974 Roy Sieber pointed out that, with a few exceptions, the people who were members of the Niger-Congo language family laid the foundations for the great African sculptural traditions south of the Sahara. However, the largest group of iconophile peoples in the Central Middle Belt of Nigeria is to be found in the Chadic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.
In this book of objects from private collections the author shows the great variety of the sculptures of the Middle Belt. This study mainly deals with wooden figures but also contains four wooden masks and three bronzes.
Text in English and French.
Jewelry’s Shining Stars: The Next Generation brings together 45 new women designers who have liberated the way we view and buy jewelry. This compilation of talented women, who hail from around the globe, use techniques such as enameling, engraving, and creating nuanced textural details in wax models, to bend the rules and break with tradition. While some work with their own hands, whether schooled or self-taught, challenging themselves at the bench, others work alongside artisans to reinvigorate the old school into relevant yet enduring pieces.
The book’s stunning photographs offer a glimpse into each designer’s different aesthetic and are accompanied by the jeweler’s own words, revealing what drives their approach and giving us an insight behind these innovators. With reverence for quality, style, and technique, these 45 talented jewelers are creating today’s collectibles and shaping jewelry’s future.
Through various thematic perspectives and a range of media, this book will shed new light on the history of Surrealism. With the idea of the unconscious as a turning point, The Savage Eye traces the roots of Surrealism in Symbolism and shows how the two art movements both reflect each other and overlap. Some of the most significant artists in modern art meet here in the murky depths of the human mind, where logic and morality give way to dreams, disturbing impulses, and unbridled desire. In this illuminating book you will become familiar with two radical art movements that both explored the psyche with the aim of establishing a new concept of humanity. Through artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Paul Gauguin, Dora Maar, René Magritte, Lee Miller, Joan Miró, Odilon Redon, and Auguste Rodin we will take you on a journey through the limitless world of the unconscious.
Utrecht, The Netherlands. 13 February 2034. A self-driving car is hacked and its safety features deactivated, causing a deadly accident. NATO, supervising global internet security, realizes the whole world is in danger when soon afterwards two more attacks occur. Europol inspector Lara Hartman and communications specialist Frank Willems are at the forefront of a desperate manhunt for the criminals behind these acts of cyber terrorism. Everything seems to be pointing to a dangerous computer virus. But time is running out, and they must find an antivirus that can prevent evil from striking again…
“The well-judged employment of classical detail in a new home has an additional significance that cannot be underestimated. It is an expression of an informed personal choice and an evocation of the delight in the human senses. This is true of all the houses featured in this book.” Jeremy Musson
“The architects and craftsmen that Phillip has featured in this wonderful book all have a love for classical detail. The art is alive and well, as can be attested to in these pages.” David Easton
In The Art of Classical Details, Phillip James Dodd takes a close-up look at some of the finest examples of contemporary classical architecture. The book consists of two chapters: The Essays and The Projects. Starting with a foreword by renowned decorator David Easton, The Essays are written by some of today’s most sought after architects, scholars and craftsmen. Accompanied by sumptuous full page photographs and renderings that illustrate a use of fine materials, intricate detailing, and superb artisanship, these insightful texts are essential reading for anyone with an interest in the theory, practice and craft of classical design. The Projects presents an illustrated look at 25 of today’s finest classically-designed homes. Employing the theories prescribed in the writings of the first chapter, this portfolio of contemporary buildings exhibits the work of some of the most recognizable and celebrated architects in Great Britain and the United States. The work featured in within this book demonstrates the timeless beauty of classicism, and delights in the role that superbly crafted details play in creating art.
This book explores Larry Fink’s recent works, with a selection of pictures taken over the past five years, examining the series of subjects – near and far – that he investigated. Divided into four sections – ‘In Politics,’ ‘Countryside Stories,’ ‘In Town,’ ‘At Home’ – The Polarities offers the chance to follow Fink from Washington, New York, and Panama City to rural Pennsylvania. The portrait of American society that Fink sketches out starting in the 1950s continues. The Polarities narrates modern America, the radical changes between the Obama years and the arrival of Trump, the society of the spectacle – in which ‘the show must go on’ – and the continuing divide between metropolitan and rural areas. Here, Fink’s images recall those of the Farm Security Administration, the great project designed to study American territory between 1935 and 1943.
“Design writers Thijs Demeulemeester and Bert Voet’s book Carchitecture explores the historical parallels between trends in architectural styles and car design.” — Financial Times
“It’s a match made in heaven. Architecture and car design are passions many hold dear, and coauthors Thijs Demeulemeester and Bert Voet are fueling their own verve once again with a follow-up to their aptly named best seller – Carchitecture – and a visual journey across America and through the annals of lasting style.” — Aspire Magazine
“No matter if you’re a fan of pole barns and VW buses, mid-century modern homes and the then-rare European imports, or a classic craftsman and big, finned American land yachts, Carcitechture USA: American Homes With Horsepower will entrance you with homes both spectacular and sublime, and the cars that are the perfect companion parked in the garage.” — Forbes
A book like a road trip along iconic American homes and the unique cars that perfectly match them. Carchitecture goes America. Through four chapters – Iconic Houses, Cars & Stars, Californication and American Cars – and five essays, the reader discovers the wonderful interplay of architecture and car design. Eyecandy for architecture and car lovers alike.
“Most photographers have a style and a favourite subject, but few are as synonymous with their chosen field as Anouk Krantz, who is known for her spectacular – and immensely popular – black & white studies of cowboy culture.” — Black & White Photography Magazine
“Incredible photos capture modern-day cowboys throughout the USA and South America and reveal ‘humanity at its best’.” — Daily Mail
“…fascinating and expansive photo project on the many manifestations of cowboy culture, encompassing the North American cowboy that’s forever enshrined in popular culture, the Central American ‘vaquero’ and the South American ‘gaucho.’” — Amateur Photographer Magazine
“…a stunning photographic journey uncovering a hidden world of modern cowboy culture.” — Cultural Union
In Anouk Masson Krantz’s most expansive work to date, she travels tens of thousands of miles across the Americas, broadening her focus from the United States to both American continents. In her exquisite, large-scale photographs – all new for this book – Anouk captures sweeping landscapes and paints an intimate portrait of the enduring cross-boundary legacies of the North American cowboy, Central American vaquero, and South American gaucho. Her time spent at ranches and rodeos across The Americas has culminated in a magnificent book honouring a way of life many around the world dream of but rarely have experienced first-hand. Frontier builds upon Anouk’s renowned body of work with her bestselling Wild Horses of Cumberland Island (2017); West: The American Cowboy (2019); American Cowboys (2021); and Ranchland (2022). Her stunning black and white, large-scale photographs capture a culture deeply rooted in principled, timeless values, sacrifice, strength, and self-reliance. From stunning panoramas to the intimate everyday lives of working cowboys and their families, Frontier is a must-have addition to her impressive body of work.
Bernie Taupin, Oscar winner, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and long-time song-writing collaborator with Elton John, has contributed an exceptional foreword.
“There’s an honesty and integrity in these images that parlays all the elements of what it means to exist outside the boundaries of conformity and confinement. The rebel spirit, the rugged individualism, and the absolute unapologetic rhythm of history. This is stunning work—a true testament to the men and women who are the anvil on which America’s backbone was forged.” —Bernie Taupin
Morning Bus is a poignant photographic meditation on childhood, vulnerability, and the haunting weight of America’s mass shooting epidemic. Inspired by the tragic events at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, Greg Miller captures children waiting for the morning school bus in his Connecticut community. These everyday moments—ordinary yet profound—become symbols of trust, innocence, and the silent anxiety carried by parents across the nation. Through intimate portraits, Miller reflects on the unsettling reality that each goodbye at the bus stop is tinged with uncertainty. His images, taken over a decade, underscore the cyclical nature of violence and the quiet resilience of childhood. Morning Bus is more than a photographic series; it is a deeply personal exploration of love, loss, and the fragile line between safety and tragedy in contemporary America.
In 1751, John Holker (1719-1786), an English textile manufacturer exiled in France, undertook an industrial espionage mission to England to collect samples of English textiles on behalf of the French king, Louis XV. On his return, the samples were assembled in a manuscript volume, which is now preserved at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. Each sample in this album is accompanied by a handwritten technical description specifying the quality of the fabric, its price, its dimensions and the manufacturing processes. This album is famous for preserving the oldest identifiable samples of jean fabric.
Completely bilingual, the book includes a facsimile reproduction of the album, accompanied by a transcription of its handwritten text and a dozen essays. The essays, written by academics, curators and specialists from France, Britain and North America, explore the album from various angles: the globalization of commerce, the slave trade, industrial espionage, economic rivalry between France and England, the taste for cotton and its role in the history of fashion, etc. The book demonstrates the importance of centuries-old links between France and the United Kingdom and is an indispensable work of reference for the history of textiles.
Text in English and French.
The essays in this lavishly illustrated volume offer a multi-faceted portrait of American financier J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) as a collector of art. A riveting exploration of Morgan’s acquisitions from antiquities to medieval manuscripts to Old Master paintings and European decorative arts, Morgan—The Collector introduces the reader to how and why he amassed his vast collection. The lively essays also serve as a tribute to Linda Roth, curator at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, who dedicated much of her forty-year career to researching Morgan and the over 1,500 works from his collection now in the museum. This much-needed publication focuses on Morgan as a collector and is directed at both a scholarly and more general audience that is interested in the history of collecting, America in the Gilded Age, Pierpont Morgan, and European art.
The Story So Far is the first comprehensive overview of Helen Britton’s work published to celebrate the Australian Design Centre’s Living Treasure: Masters of Australian Craft award. The book covers over 40 years of Britton’s multidisciplinary practice and presents her extraordinary, often colorful and playful works. They evoke childhood memories while also addressing darker aspects of life, leaving the viewer to ultimately find their own meaning within them.
Alongside large-format images of her works and the photographic essay “My Godmother’s House” are contributions by Lisa Cahill, Julie Ewington, Barbara Paris Gifford, Katie Scott, and Toni Greenbaum, the artist’s own texts, and excerpts from the collected writings of Ted Snell and Robert Cook.
Once brewed throughout Asia, sake has come to be inextricably linked with Japanese culture, tradition and society. In Sake and the Wines of Japan, Anthony Rose argues that, after decades in the doldrums, sake is well on its way to becoming the next big thing. Neither a wine nor a spirit, sake’s purity, centuries-old brewing methods and umami taste have gained it fans among the sort of younger drinkers who sparked the revolution in craft beers and artisan spirits. A return to quality, plus the modern outlook of today’s generation of sake makers is opening up sake, particularly premium sake, to the world. Exports have increased and sake breweries, some artisan, some offshoots of big Japanese names, have sprung up in destinations as far flung as Oregon and Australia, not forgetting England.
To demonstrate how deeply woven into Japanese society this drink is, Rose first takes us through the history of sake production, from offerings to the gods made from rice chewed by priestesses, to the heyday of sake, when master craftsmen – tōjis – were instrumental in a brewery’s success or failure, to sake’s new wave, epitomized by Berlin techno DJ Richie Hawtin, founder of ENTER.Sake. Rose then details sake types, demystifies polishing ratios, explores the issues around ageing sake and discusses how best to enjoy sake. The four basic ingredients – rice, kōji (rice mould), yeast and water – are introduced ahead of a thorough explanation of the brewing process. Rose profiles a personal selection of sake producers and ends the sake section with a chapter on sake producers outside Japan.
Japan’s wine industry is small and young but improving rapidly; here some of the best exponents are profiled alongside a history of wine production in Japan and details of grape varieties used. Sake and the wines of Japan ends with a guide to Japan, making it an essential tool for all those seeking a way into this enigmatic and enticing culture.
Pushtimarg, a Vaishnava sect founded by Vallabhacharya in the 15th century, lays great stress on worship of the deity Shrinathji through the joys of life and living and devotion through kirtan (devotional poem-songs), bhog (offerings of sumptuous food and beverages), shringara (offerings of adornment, through dressing and ornamentation), and decoration and painting. The paintings constitute the Nathdwara school, so named because the image of Shrinathji is enshrined in a temple in Nathdwara, Rajasthan.
Shringara of Shrinathji catalogs a set of previously unpublished miniature paintings of the Pushtimarg tradition from the collection of late Shri Gokal Lal Mehta. These 60 splendid artworks were executed by Sukhdev Gaur, the mukhia (chief artist) of the temple, during the dynamic stewardship of Tilkayat Govardhanlalji (1862–1934 AD). Documenting the high degree of skill in draughtsmanship, portraiture and in composition, expositions by artist Amit Ambalal accompany the exceptional, high-quality photographic reproductions of these beautiful paintings in this captivating volume.
Throughout its century of existence, every moment of Le Mans has been captured in countless photographs. From black & white to color, these particularly vivid images bring to life a whole world: that of the cars, naturally, but also of the many human players – drivers, engineers, mechanics – and the public, always numerous and varied.
The authors summarize the moments and actions of the key characters, identifying five major periods:
1923-1929: The time of the pioneers
1930-1967: Reconstruction and globalization
1968-1981: In search of the right solution
1982-1999: The 21st century in sight
2000-2022: A Modern Race
Text in English and French.