The Dialogues by Portuguese painter and writer Francisco de Holanda give unprecedented insight into the opinions, preoccupations and character of Michelangelo, already in his lifetime the most celebrated and influential artist in Europe. These Dialogues record his participation in the discussions about art hosted by Vittoria Colonna, his closest friend. Michelangelo’s opinions and ambitions during the period when he was painting The Last Judgement come vividly to life, as does the world in which he moved. No other text brings us so close to Michelangelo the artist, poet and thinker. The Dialogues are presented here in the classic translation by Charles Holroyd, painter, engraver, art historian and director of the National Gallery. The introduction by David Hemsoll situates the Dialogues in the context of Michelangelo’s career and the artistic world in Rome. Sixteen pages of illustrations include some of Michelangelo’s finest drawings, and views of the Rome he knew.
In the pre-digital age, before email and cell phones, letters carried an importance that few who were not part of those times will understand. The words on the pages of a love letter carry the nuances and emotions of love and desire, passion and anger in a deeply confidential way.
The urgency and the intimacy of the writers can be clearly felt in this collection of letters between Lee Miller, Photographer, and Roland Penrose, Surrealist Artist, as they conduct their long-distance romance. It begins with their meeting in Paris in 1937 and runs to 1939 when Lee Miller left her Egyptian husband Aziz Eloui Bey in Cairo and joined Roland Penrose in London at the start of World War 2.
In this real-life romantic drama, the period and their connections give us a supporting cast that includes Dora Maar and Picasso, Nusch and Paul Eluard, Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst, Ady Fidelin and Man Ray.
The nearly 300 pages of love letters in this book show that as the relationship grew it produced and supported some of the world’s best loved art and photography. The letters have never been published before and have only been read by a handful of people since they were first written.
Special facsimile copy of the typeset version of the Surrealist photo book The Road is Wider than Long by Roland Penrose.
Written as a Surrealist love poem, the inspiration for the book is drawn from a journey that Roland Penrose made together with renowned photographer and war correspondent Lee Miller through the Balkans in 1938. This book is made as a replica of the first copy that Roland printed in 1939 using different fonts and then embellished with imaginative color illustrations for Lee Miller.
The debut monograph of Stacey Gillian Abe’s work is created to accompany her first London solo show at Unit London. Featuring works spanning her career to date, the book explores the key themes from Abe’s work and delves deep into her expressive and symbolic indigo portraits. Abe’s book includes insightful written contributions from Flavia Frigeri, art historian, lecturer and the Chanel Curator at the National Portrait Gallery and Serubiri Moses, renowned writer and curator, alongside a conversation between the artist and Catherine McKinley, curator and author of the critically acclaimed Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World and The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts. Abe’s work reflects her past and her memories, highlighting her personal experiences and her relationships to her community. The autobiographical dimension of her work confronts traditional depictions of the Black body, challenging the colonial lens. Abe creates imaginary spaces that induce a surreal mystical feel while probing unsettling past and present narratives of identity, gender, spirituality and cultural mysticism. Renowned for her indigo skin-tone paintings, the color has become crucial in reshaping narratives surrounding the black body. Through the color, she dives into the past to envision an alternative future for the Black race. To Abe, indigo represents a tribe of people that are not limited to social, economic, cultural, political or historic constraints: ‘it is about being unapologetic’.
A beautiful, tactile facsimile of the handwritten version of Roland Penrose’s The Road is Wider than Long Surrealist photobook.
In 1938, as Europe prepared for war, Roland Penrose and Lee Miller made a journey together through the Balkans. On his return to England Roland produced a handmade photobook containing a Surrealist love poem drawn from his memories and pictures from their travels. The following year he would create and print a typeset version based on this book which has today an important place in the history of Surrealist photobooks.
“Penrose” wrote Andre Breton “est Surrealiste dans l’amitie” and ‘The Friendly Surrealist’ is an apt description for the man who more than any other nurtured friendships and connections which introduced European Surrealism to the British art world. Roland Penrose embraced the fantasies and rebellions of the Surrealist movement through his friendships with artists such as Picasso, Man Ray, Miro, Ernst and Tàpies. His own works, which often reveal the true emotions behind his relationships with his wives, Valentine Boue and Lee Miller, constitute an important contribution to British Surrealist art.
“Turning the pages of this encyclopedia of golden parties, a nostalgia emanates from the clichés and plunges us into the evening of the stars at the Oscars…” — Harper’s Bazaar France
“With his new collection of photographs, Dafydd Jones offers a sensational dive into the excitement of the awards season in the 1990s.” — Vanity Fair France
“… a rare collection of candid moments that reveal the deepest aspects of the personalities of the world’s most famous people.” — Vogue Greece
“These images, taken before the turn of the century, give us a snapshot into the rise of America’s future movers and shakers, when mobile phones were in their infancy, Facebook had yet to be created, and the hit TV series Succession hadn’t even occurred to a twenty-something Jesse Armstrong.” — The Independent
“If you’re interested in celebrity culture, black & white, and of course any of the other work of Dafydd Jones, this comes highly recommended.” — Amateur Photography
Hollywood: Confidential is the latest collection of beautifully timed photos from bestselling society photographer Dafydd Jones. Formerly of Tatler and Vanity Fair, Jones is a serial capturer of intimate moments during high-society functions. As famous Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter puts it, when it comes to party photographers, ‘Dafydd Jones is the sniper’s sniper – the best of the best.’
On numerous occasions in the 1990s and 2000s, Jones turned his lens to the faces of Hollywood with all his usual impudence, as they mingled and danced at private events in the Hollywood Hills, Oscar-night parties and awards ceremonies. The result is a rare thing – photographs that convey the underlying personalities of the world’s most public personas.
Following on from England: The Last Hurrah and New York: High Life / Low Life, this is an essential portrait of celebrity culture from behind the scenes, featuring the likes of Anna Nicole Smith, Tom Cruise, Prince, Winona Ryder, Tony Curtis, Oprah, Nicholas Cage and more.
Praise for Dafydd Jones:
“Dafydd catches those moments of genuine exhilaration, wealth and youth.” – The Hollywood Reporter
“Mr. Jones goes about his business with cheery zest and a wicked eye.” – New York Times
“Some carefully tended public images are punctured with such rapier precision that one can hear the hiss as they deflate.” – Mitchell Owens, The World of Interiors
“Sublime vintage photographs…”– Hermione Eyre, the Telegraph
“Modest though he is, Dafydd’s photographs will endure for having perfectly captured a society on the brink of decline.” – Country & Townhouse podcast
“The New York book is an evocative historical document, brimming with nostalgia and menace.” – Hannah Marriott, The Guardian
“The best party photographers, and their numbers are few, are like snipers… Dafydd Jones is the sniper’s sniper – the best of the best.” Graydon Carter, foreword from New York: High Life / Low Life
“Dafydd’s brilliant evocation of a time and a class only seem more potent today, when we know that so many of the moneyed twits in his ’80s portfolio ended up running the country, as they always have” – Tina Brown, The New Yorker
1937 could be named ‘the summer of love‘ for Lee Miller, Roland Penrose, who had recently met for the first time & their friends, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, Picasso, Dora Maar, Man Ray, Ady Fidelin and more. This facsimile of Lee and Roland’s photograph albums shows their summer holiday together as portrayed in the 2024 feature film LEE and demonstrates the freedom and friendship of these artists as World War Two looms on the horizon.
“The Turner Prize winner leads a visual tour through his life in six artworks – from college days to knighthood.” — Telegraph
Grayson Perry is one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary artists and cultural figures. This book, which includes first sight of new and previously unpublished works, is published to accompany the largest-ever retrospective of Perry’s art. It offers a vibrant insight into his life and work, from his youth in rural Essex to sell-out stage shows at the Royal Albert Hall.
Grayson Perry vividly reflects on his art, life and career, remembering the sources of inspiration and influences along the way. Victoria Coren Mitchell’s thought-provoking contribution considers the role of humour in Perry’s art, highlighting the often-underestimated effort involved in being at once a serious artist and a lovable character. Patrick Elliott provides an illuminating biographical essay of the artist. The reader is also given a fascinating glimpse into the technique and process behind Perry’s prints, pots and tapestries.
Showcasing 75 exhibited works, the book covers the full range and breadth of his astonishing career.
This beautifully illustrated book of avant-garde art furniture design highlights a generation of creators whose energy and vision made a break with the past. Profiled here are Mark Brazier-Jones, Franck Evennou, Elizabeth Garouste, Marco de Gueltzl, Hubert Le Gall, Thierry Peltrault, Laurence Picot, Andrea Salvetti, and Claude de Wulf. All have been represented since the 1980s by Elisabeth Delacarte, whose Galerie Avant-Scène in Paris continues its mission of promoting these and other extraordinary furniture and jewelry designers to this day.
Text in English and French.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet, painter, aesthete, founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was one of the most influential British artists to have lived. His extraordinary and obsessive vision was fuelled by the tortured love he felt for three muses: the tragic Lizzy Siddal, into whose coffin Rossetti cast the only manuscript of his poems (only to have her exhumed and the volume retrieved years later); the earthy former sex worker Fanny Cornforth; and Jane Burden, the statuesque wife of his friend William Morris. During the whole of his life Rossetti returned to the three faces, sometimes combining them, in his bid to encapsulate the nature of woman. The portraits he made range from rapid, vivid sketches to careful drawings and fully worked out allegorical paintings. Few artists have so relentlessly followed a particular vision; it is not surprising that Rossetti’s haunting and sensual paintings were admired by the Symbolists and Picasso alike.
With two essays by the leading scholar of Rossetti, Christopher Newall, and Holburne curator Sylvie Broussine, richly illustrated with 75 images including ravishing details in full page and spreads, this is a magnificent but approachable introduction to the riches and strangeness of Rossetti’s art.
Kettle’s Yard is widely recognized as a highly influential master class in curating; a flawless arrangement of art and objects that is still radical in its philosophy of seeking to fuse art with life. For many it is a place that has that rare power of changing how we see the world and our place within it. With a foreword by Jim Ede and an interesting floor plan guide, this book is a notable keepsake for all who love Kettle’s Yard, and a fantastic introduction for those yet to discover it.
Kettle’s Yard is the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery. The permanent collection displayed in the Kettle’s Yard House boasts works from 20th Century artists such as Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, Constantin Brancusi, Joan Miro, Barbara Hepworth and many more. Contemporary exhibitions are shown in the purpose-built galleries adjacent to the House.
LUCKY / Udachny by Hanne Van Assche documents a small mining town in the far East of Russia called Udachny – a remote region captured in the icy grip of winter throughout most of the year. Few people choose to live here, but those who do are proud citizens. Yakutia is known as the treasury of Russia. It is one of the world’s richest regions in natural resources. According to a Siberian legend, God once spilled a bag of earthly treasures over this part of the country. A thick layer of permafrost covers large reserves of coal, gas, gold and diamonds. Despite the barren climate most of the year, the heart of the people remains warm. The hospitality and optimism of the inhabitants soothes the harsh climate. It is they who turn the scenery of a frozen and isolated world, defined by extraordinary contrasts, into a vibrant and colorful community.
The book will coincide with the first Ashmolean NOW exhibition in Gallery 8, opening in July 2023. The Ashmolean NOW Program features exciting works by prominent early to mid-career artists based in the UK, seeking to attract new audiences interested in contemporary art. Artists who have established international reputations and emerging artists whose international status is anticipated with a strong degree of confidence are approached pro-actively. In addition to exhibiting their existing works, all artists are invited to create at least one new work as a response to the museum and/or its collections. This first exhibition presents two linked solo shows: paintings/drawings by Flora Yukhnovich, and paintings/drawings by Daniel Crews-Chubb. The double-sided style of the book will mirror the exhibition concept, while presenting itself as a unique, well designed object that has a life beyond the exhibition.
Painter Roland Penrose and photographer Lee Miller’s move to Farleys in Sussex, UK, was not to settle down but to create, entertain, and inspire. In this publication, their son Antony Penrose, recalls the 1950’s with a fascinating insight into his parents’ lives, as they transformed Farleys from a traditional farmhouse into a hub of art. Farleys with unexpected decoration and surreal living had a wealth of 20th century artists visiting the home. The book is designed to reflect the colors and designs from the color on the walls to the textiles of the furnishings.
‘To critics who said that the full-lipped so-called ‘Beardsley mouth’, which adorned many of his women, was ‘inexpressive and ugly’, the artist countered, ‘Well, let them criticise. It’s my mouth and not theirs. I like big mouths. People like the little mouth – the “Dolly Varden” mouth, if that describes it better. A big mouth is the sign of character and strength. Look at Ellen Terry with her great, strong mouth. In fact, I haven’t any patience with small-mouthed people.’ ‘The popular idea of a picture is something told in oil or writ in water to be hung on a room’s wall or in a picture gallery to perplex an artless public.’ ‘To my mind, there is nothing so depressing as a Gothic cathedral. I hate to have the sun shut out by the saints.’ ‘What a nice ample creature George Sand is: like a wonderful old cow with all her calves.’ And other witty, urbane insights on life, art, and culture, illustrated with selected drawings from his Grotesques series.
After the season of the great Renaissance painters, the prestige of the figurative arts grew as never before in history. During the 16th century, the artist went from being a common craftsman to holding a status equal to that of the greatest intellectuals of his time. The relationship between poetry and painting was consolidated in the 17th century, and became close, even competitive, when artists and men of letters confronted each other with the same themes. In this framework, the great poetry of Giovan Battista Marino (Naples, 1569-1625) plays a fundamental role. His compositions are rich in visual suggestions, derived as much from direct contact with the art collections he visited during his itinerant life as from the memory of the images of the great artists of the past. The Galeria (1620), one of his most famous books, projects onto the walls of an imaginary gallery the names of the artists and works of art that marked the poet’s courtly experience.
Over the course of a long and very successful career spanning the first half of the 20th century, Lucy Kemp-Welch established herself as one of the leading equestrian painters at work in the UK and one of the country’s best-known women artists. David Boyd Haycock’s new, extensively illustrated biography of Kemp-Welch brings this remarkable artist and her work back into sharp focus.
Born in 1869, Kemp-Welch first came to the art establishment’s attention in 1897 when her immense painting, Colt Hunting in the New Forest, caused a sensation at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition; the work was bought for the Nation by the Chantry Bequest in the year of exhibition. In 1915, she illustrated Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, and was commissioned to paint images for the Government during the First World War. Later, the mural Women’s Work in the Great War, was placed in the Royal Exchange in London, where it remains to this day.
Respected art writer and curator Boyd-Haycock shines new light on Kemp-Welch’s life, writing from a 21st-century perspective and reflecting on her as a female painter in a male-dominated environment. Alongside Kemp-Welch’s paintings, the book will feature exclusive period photographs of the artist herself, shown at work and in her studio.
For over 142,000 years, beads have played an important role around the world as the oldest form of personal adornment. Joyce J. Scott has revolutionized and transformed the potential of the ubiquitous bead as a relevant, contemporary art form. For over 51 years, wielding beads as a vision, she has devoted her aesthetic practice to waking up the world, expanding beadwork’s boundaries, with powerful in-your-face social commentary. While addressing society’s ills, her visual and performance conversations on cultural stereotypes and racial injustices, elucidate her vibrant brilliant works of art.
The publication Messages features Joyce J. Scott’s dynamic images with scholarly essays from experts in their field, as well as museum curator’s comments. Each individual provides deeper insights into the influences and extraordinary work of Joyce J. Scott, astutely capturing the essence and spirit of this icon of contemporary art.
With contributions by Jacqueline Copeland, Henry John Drewal, Valerie Hector, and Joyce J. Scott, and a foreword by Libby Cooper & Joanne Cooper.
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.
“…the panorama of a self-forgotten milieu.” — Monopol
“Toffs behaving badly: 1980s high society in photos.” — The Times
“The pictorial equivalents of Evelyn Waugh’s sentences.” — The New Yorker
“Modest though he is, Dafydd’s photographs will endure for having perfectly captured a society on the brink of decline. Unmissable listening.” — Country & Townhouse podcast
“Wonderfully ironic, every point in the picture ignites and knows how to entertain very well.” — Lovely Books
“Dafydd catches those moments of genuine exhilaration, wealth and youth.” — The Hollywood Reporter
“I wondered if the party guests I’d photographed were just re-enacting a nostalgic fantasy, an imaginary version of England that already no longer existed.” – Dafydd Jones
Throughout the 1980s, award-winning photographer Dafydd Jones was granted access to some of England’s most exclusive upper-class events. Now, the author of Oxford: The Last Hurrah presents this irreverent and intimate portrait of birthday parties and charity balls, Eton picnics and private school celebrations.
With the crack of a hunting rifle and a spray of champagne, these photos give an almost cinematic account of high-society England at its most riotous and its most vulnerable. Against the backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain, globalization, the Falklands War, rising stocks and dwindling inherited fortunes, Jones reveals the inner lives of the established elite as they party long into the night-time of their fading world.
Praise for Oxford: The Last Hurrah
‘Sublime vintage photographs…’ – Hermione Eyre, The Telegraph
‘In The Last Hurrah…we see familiar faces from British high society poised on the brink of adulthood.’ – Eve Watling, Independent
“And now David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me is out in the world — perhaps the closest you’ll get to being on tour with Bowie in that era without a time machine and a backstage pass.” — InsideHook
“His photographic memoir reveals untold stories and nearly 150 candid photos.” — The Guardian
“Intimate and full of references so specific you can almost smell the pub carpets and stage make-up” — HuckMag
“Go on tour with David Bowie in an all-new photographic memoir” — Yahoo! Entertainment
David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me is Geoff MacCormack’s remarkable photographic memoir, charting his lifelong friendship with David Bowie. Images bring MacCormack’s stories to life, showing the places he and Bowie inhabited, the people they met and the adventures they shared. Beginning at Burnt Ash Primary school in the mid-1950s, the years go by in a whirlwind of discovering and making music. The book contains nearly 150 photos taken by MacCormack throughout the years, some never seen before: from touring the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane shows and sailing to New York on a world tour, to Bowie’s first major film The Man Who Fell to Earth and the recording of Station to Station and his Thin White Duke persona.
David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me is an incredible story, told with wit and candour. A must for all Bowie fans, it sheds a rare insight into a friendship where two men shared their love for music from the moment they met to their final goodbyes.
Surrealist before she knew of the movement Lee Miller was ‘caustically brilliant, yet totally loyal, unpretentious, human and intolerant of sham. She was a consummate artist and a consummate clown; at once an upstate New York hick and cosmopolitan grande dame; a cold, soignée fashion model and a hoyden… She was a mechanical ‘tinker’, in the sense that her friend [the artist] Alexander Calder once called himself ‘just a tinker’. She was the nearest thing I knew to a mid-20th century renaissance woman’ described David E. Scherman, LIFE photographer and her very close friend.
Lee Miller was one of the most original photographic artists of the 20th century, her Surrealist eye informed everything she did. Her work presents the world in a way that encourages us to view it in a different manner.
UNO was made in collaboration with PLUS-ONE Gallery on the occasion of Kapser De Vos’ exhibition ‘Pushing And Pulling The Center To The Mirror’ at M HKA’s Inbox.
Kasper De Vos (°1988) gained attention with installations and sculptural interventions that referred to consumerism and its associated food culture in a way that was both humorous and sculptural. Often, his sculptures combine found objects or materials with modeled elements. His sculptures and installations seem to stem from a kind of tactile and visual pleasure, a play of formal and substantive associations and a mild form of humor that takes the form of an open, playful, imaginative dance with materials, techniques, things and thoughts. His work evokes stories without being illustrative or pedantic. It is a kind of thinking with shapes, which in turn makes us think and dream. Surprising, inventive, generous, plastic, virtuosic, open and oneiric.
In English and French.