Step into the world of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and desire – later worshiped by the Romans as Venus. Today she is thought of as a symbol of passion and beauty, but her story is far older and more complex. This catalogue explores Aphrodite’s beginnings on the island of Cyprus, where she was worshiped as an all-powerful goddess over 3,000 years ago, and traces her journey through the Greek and into the Roman world, where she became Venus.
This book reveals how, over the centuries, Aphrodite evolved into an iconic figure symbolizing love and beauty as her myths and images flourished – inspiring art, literature, and imagination from the Renaissance to the present day. Illustrated with more than 200 extraordinary objects – from sculpture and bronzes to gems and terracottas from Cyprus, Greece, and Italy, dating back from around 1400 BCE to the 21st century – this catalogue uncovers the making of a goddess whose legacy still shapes our ideas of love and beauty today.
The Alice and Louis Koch Collection of finger rings was originally collated by a jeweler from Frankfurt am Main, once described as the German ‘Cartier and Fabergé’. By 1909 the collection comprised 1,722 rings from Antiquity to 1900. Rene Lalique, a contemporary of the time, was included, undoubtedly as a modernizer of the ring form. In the past twenty-five years the fourth generation of the family continued where Louis Koch and his wife Alice left off and expanded the collection to include rings from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
This publication will present the complete collection of contemporary rings, now kept in the Swiss National Museum, Zurich. Nearly 600 rings by artist jewelers from around the world document how these miniature works of art have become modern sculptures showcasing new materials and techniques, daring designs and current themes.
Text in English and German.
Tibetan Buddhist art is not only rich in figural icons but also extremely diverse in its symbols and ritual objects. This first systematic review is an abundantly illustrated reference book on Tibetan ritual art that aids our understanding of its different types and forms, its sacred meanings and ceremonial functions. Eighteen chapters, several hundred different implements are documented in detail, in many cases for the first time and often in their various styles and iconographic forms: altar utensils and amulets, masks and mirrors, magic daggers and mandalas, torma sculptures and prayer objects, vajras and votive tablets, sacrificial vessels and oracle crowns, stupas and spirit traps, ritual vases, textiles, furniture, and symbolic emblems. These are accompanied by many historical and modern text sources, as well as rare recorded oral material from high-ranking Tibetan masters. This long-awaited handbook is a must-have for all those with an interest in Buddhist art and religion.
This volume collects the papers presented at the international study conference Sculpting in the Renaissance: an art to (com)move / Sculpter à la Renaissance. Un art pour (é)mouvoir organized by the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the Castello Sforzesco in Milan to accompany the exhibition Le corps et l’âme. De Donatello à Michel-Ange. Scultures italiennes de la Renaissance (Officina Libraria, 2020), held between 2020 and 2021. With the involvement of some of the most important specialists in Renaissance sculpture, the aim was to investigate the interactions, influences and exchanges between the plastic arts and other Renaissance art forms capable of revealing feelings through expressions of the body, trough the works of Agostino di Duccio, Donatello, Michelangelo and other local sculptors. The aim is also to place within their social, devotional and intellectual context the different manifestations of feeling of which sculpture is one of the privileged media. Sacred art themes in particular were addressed, in an attempt to explain their formal evolution in relation to the socio-cultural transformations of the time, but also to local traditions and their dramatization.
Text in English, French and Italian.
The Swiss family-owned banking group CBH Compagnie Bancaire Helvétique SA has been putting together its own art collection for over fifteen years. Modern and contemporary African art is one of its major themes.
The works in this catalogue (paintings, sculptures, photographs) span about a century (1929-2025). All were created by artists who were born, or spent part of their lives, in sub-Saharan Africa. The growing success of the African artists of today undoubtedly stems from the artistic legacy of their ancestors, whose dazzling colors reflect a profoundly original worldview that addresses social and environmental themes. Missionaries and a few colonial administrators with an eye for art identified a number of interesting artists in the 1920s.
Although African art – in the Congo, Kenya, and South Africa in particular – developed throughout the 20th century, recognition only came in the 1960s. The creation of art schools in the continent’s major cities promoted cultural re-appropriation through new types of expression based on an encounter between traditional African forms and modern aesthetic sensibilities emerging in the new conurbations. Artistic movements burgeoning at the turn of the millennium confirmed and reinforced the vitality of this art. It was a period that saw dynamic figures come to the fore on the global art scene. Contemporary artists turned their attention to the “Black Atlantic” and the African-American communities it explored. Africa is now able to send its own message to the world. As a result, nearly 80 artists are represented in the “Au-delà des Apparences” (More than Meets the Eye) exhibition at the Musée Rath.
5000 Years of Indian Art demystifies the story of Indian art spread over the millennia. This visually stunning book offers a panoramic view of Indian art from pre-historic times to the contemporary period. The absorbing narrative links different predominant artistic genres (like prehistoric art, ancient Indian art of Vedic and Buddhist traditions, temple art, Mughal miniature painting, colonial art, modern Indian art, and contemporary art) that were prevalent in different eras, instead of following formally demarcated historical periods.
The illustrated tale encompasses the entire gamut from the earliest primitive markings on stones, caves, and frescoes to exquisite paintings, sculptures, modern photography, finely crafted artefacts, media-inspired work, popular installations, and other forms of contemporary art. The book displays around 200 select masterpieces of art from museums, galleries, and private collections around India and the world. The history of Indian art is as old as the civilization itself and every major period of history has given it newer modes of expression. This book successfully captures all the myriad influences that have enriched Indian art over the years.
Features works from the following museums: American Museum of Natural History, New York, Archaeological Museum, Sarnath, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford British Museum, London, Brooklyn Museum, New York, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Gujral Art Museum, New Delhi, Harvard Art Museum/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, Kabul Museum, Kabul, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, Indian Museum, Kolkata, Islamabad Museum, Islamabad, Lahore Museum, Lahore, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Mathura Museum, Mathura, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Musée Guimet, Paris, Museum für Indische Kunst, Berlin, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi, National Museum, New Delhi, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, Patna Museum, Bihar, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Sarnath Site Museum, Uttar Pradesh, Seattle Art Museum, Washington, Staaliche Museum of Berlin: 91, V & A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London Trustees of the British Museum, London .
Relationships between architects and clients – built upon expressed values, as well as their import into the final work of architecture – are typically not discussed in architectural education, rarely considered in architectural criticism or theory, and usually missing in most writing about architecture. This monograph seeks to highlight and address this deficiency. The book focuses on the process that the firm uses to help their clients to define values, and to intone them through architectural design. Exquisitely presented throughout, this volume presents a range of built and in-process works at a variety of scales, complexity, and locations, with various clients. Most of these projects have not been previously published. The projects will be documented and discussed within the context of the value proposition and design process that distinguish Pickard Chilton’s approach to architecture.
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.
A collaboration with the world’s most powerful NGOs, including UNESCO’s GEM Report, Mother Nature in the Bardo explores the impact between art, culture, and the environment. The book illuminates the innate connections between creativity and nature and inspires crucial conversations about humanity’s relationship with nature, sustainability and climate change. Bringing together historical and contemporary artworks from over 100 renowned international artists, galleries, institutions, estates and foundations, Mother Nature in the Bardo speaks to the most critical global dialogues of our time.
Ski & Art is a visual tribute to the world of skiing, where adrenaline, landscape and creativity come together. In this richly illustrated book, author Katie Bamber explores how ski culture inspires artists – from iconic alpine posters to illustrations that make the powder fly off the page. Ski & Art, the successor to Surf & Art and Skate & Art, tells the story of a lifestyle shaped by mountain communities, subcultures and a shared love of freedom and expression. Bamber selected the 22 ski artists who define the scene, interviewed them and showcases their finest work. This book is a must-have for anyone fascinated by the cross-over between sports and art, and by the unique magic of the mountains.
During World War II, art was plundered on an immense scale. From the occupied territories, the Nazis hauled art off to Germany to build ambitious collections. For the first time, that story is being told for Belgium. How could paintings by Memling, Van der Weyden, Brueghel, Jordaens, and Cranach simply leave the country? After ten years of research, Geert Sels pieces together the puzzle from evidence he found in archives all over Europe.
Through rigorous detective work, he maps out the routes along which the art was taken away. After the war, paintings from Belgium found their way to the Louvre, Tate Britain, the Getty Museum, and the Yale Art Gallery. The Netherlands, France, Germany, and even Russia turn out to still hold art that should have been returned to Belgium. That makes the Belgian story an international one. Other works did come back and now are on display in Belgian museums – but without any effort to trace their rightful owners. Why did that never happen? Unlike other countries, Belgium has remained painfully passive on the issue of Nazi-looted art. Art for das Reich presents an uncomfortable truth and serves as a stress test for government policy.
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.
In five complementary contributions, recognized authors draw a fascinating and complex picture of contemporary jewelry in the twenty-first century. Through a rich palette of themes, works, reports and concepts from current art practices, they illuminate the conditions and interconnections of education, making, presentation, marketing and networking in design and art using the example of the New Zealand Handshake project. This book will enrich and bring pleasure to all who are interested in the visual arts in their broadest sense! Handshake is a unique mentoring programme in the art world, in which established artists spread their knowledge to less experienced protégés. The knowledge accumulated in this exchange, of a relationship based on feedback, is realized in exhibitions and joint projects. Exhibition at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt (NZ), 5th August to 3rd December 2017. www.http://handshakeproject.com/ https://handshake3.com/”
As some American artists began to eliminate people and remove extraneous details from their compositions, they often employed neat, orderly brushwork or close-up, unemotional photography. Artists as diverse as Patrick Henry Bruce, John Covert, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand and Arthur Dove navigated European and American avant-garde circles, picking and choosing new ideas and methods. Inspiration ranged from cubism and machine parts to new technologies, and they found ways to bring order to the modern world through extreme simplification.
For them, abstraction involved absence and presence – the evacuation of human beings but also the desire to depict something that would not otherwise be visible or to render visible unseen natural processes like the passage of time, sound waves, or weather patterns. Their artworks provide a new context for the precisionist works in the subsequent sections and point to modern ideas about what art could be. How does a crisp painting technique relate to an aesthetic of absence?
In a former shipyard of 8,000 square meters at the ultra-hip NDSM Wharf in Amsterdam, you will find Europe’s largest street art museum: STRAAT. Yearly an impressive 200,000 visitors admire their collection of over 180 works by around 170 artists, many of which were specially created for this location. As STRAAT’s collection is constantly refreshed and expanded, it’s time for a second catalogue featuring only new works by about 80 artists. Divided into chapters by genre—muralism, art and activism, native/nature, abstract graffiti, and installations—and interspersed with essays by experts like Steven P. Harrington, Carlo McCormick, Charlotte Pyatt and Christian Omodeo, this book is a wonderful anthology of the key figures in the contemporary street art scene.
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.
José Bedia: Inner Circle Journey 1976 – 2026 is a rich exploration of the career and work of Cuban artist – José Bedia. From being a formative member of the “Volumen Uno” Cuban art renaissance, Bedia’s international outreach continually grew from the 1980’s onward, reaching worldwide acclaim – spanning from his participation in the monumental exhibit Magiciens de la Terre in 1989 to winning First Prize at the Beijing Biennale in 2010. His unique artistic craft focuses on organic elements, tribal symbology, and shamanism from diverse cultures. Bedia’s work and artistic creations are deeply informed by living and past ancestral communities everywhere and his personal interactions with them, while simultaneously using a “field work” approach of an ethnographer or anthropologist to create his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. Anchored by his 5-decade retrospective at the MARCO Museum of Monterrey, and also accompanied by text from various art scholars, this book will look at his trajectory focusing on his different styles and periods throughout the years, as well as images from his personal travels, and tribal collection, that directly impact his artistic output.
With The Art of Endurance 2025, Éditions Cercle d’Art is publishing a new, exceptional coffee table book dedicated to international motor racing and the FIA World Endurance Championship. This 2025 edition follows on from The Art of Endurance 2024 ISBN 9782702211458 and continues a collection for all enthusiasts of motor sports, competition cars, legendary circuits, and major endurance races.
Designed as a total immersion in a complete season, this official WEC book recounts, race by race, the eight major events on the world calendar, from the start to the checkered flag, including the strategies, drivers, cars, teams, and decisions that tip the balance of a championship.
Text in English and French.
Kettle’s Yard Art & Artists introduces readers to the key artists represented in the Kettle’s Yard collection. It focuses on works collected by Jim and Helen Ede between 1957 and 1973, which remain on permanent display in the Kettle’s Yard House.
Organized alphabetically by artist surname, each chapter features:
– An image of the artist’s work in situ at Kettle’s Yard
– Reproductions of significant artworks from the collection
– Biographical details covering early life, education, and major achievements
– Insights into the artist’s relationship with the Edes, Kettle’s Yard, and Cambridge
The text is enriched with excerpts from Jim Ede’s writings and archival material, including letters exchanged with the artists. Conceived as a companion to the Kettle’s Yard House Guidebook ISBN 9781904561613, this publication offers an accessible introduction to the art on display at in the Kettle’s Yard house and the stories behind the artists who created it.
This gorgeous book highlights seventy works from an important private collection built over more than four decades with discipline, curiosity, and passion. It is one of the finest private collections of African art from West and Central Africa, through South Africa and Madagascar. Conceived around four main themes – Governance and transmission, Protection and caring, Coming together (celebrating, partying, judging and praising), Serving and beautifying – this selection offers a capacious general introduction to the topic of African art and furthers our understanding of the artworks’ source cultures.
The beautiful photographs of the seventy works in the first part of the publication are followed by a whole chapter dedicated to some important avant-garde photography masterpieces showing the narrow relationship between this movement and nine fascinating African art works belonging to the collection. The objects are shown side by side with renown works from Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Lajos Kassák, Hannah Höch, Erwin Blumenfeld, Maurice Tabard, Karl Blossfeldt and Robert Doisneau.
Striking a balance between often published and lesser-known masterpieces from the collection, the present volume unveils to the public a selection of seven contemporary artist-photographers (Jean Marc Tingaud, Louis Tirilly, Nicolas Bruant, Roger Ballen, Groupe Street Collodion Art, Coco Fronsac, and Frédéric Vidal) who have been asked to represent, in a contemporary and personal style, for the first time, nine renowned works.
Text in English and French.
The Art & Times of Daniel Jocz presents the entrancing and challenging work of American jewelry artist and sculptor Daniel Jocz. There is a spontaneous quality to the work, yet it is always rich with meaning. His open spirit is fully embodied in the 2007 neckpiece series An American’s Riff on the Millstone Ruff. Inspired by the extravagant scale of 17th-century Dutch ruffs at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, he decided to update them with automobile paint.
Jeannine Falino takes an in-depth look at the twists and turns of Jocz’s long career, from his early geometric sculptures to the fashion-forward flocked Candy Wear collection, and from his ruminations on Marlene Dietrich in the form of necklaces featuring enamel smoked cigarettes to the wall reliefs he explores today. Wendy Steiner considers Jocz’s place in the avant-garde through the lens of fashion and culture, while Patricia Harris and David Lyon explore his involvement in the rollicking Boston jewelry scene of the late 20th century.
Chosen for the 59th Venice Biennale, to represent contemporary creation at the Lebanese pavilion Ayman Baalbaki is a Lebanese artist born in Beirut in 1975. He first trained at the Institute of Fine Arts of the university Lebanese school in Beirut, then at the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris. Five years after his arrival in France, he received the silver medal in painting at the Francophone Games and then participated in several exhibitions worldwide. Lebanon, France, Great Britain, Argentina, Egypt and Niger are all countries that welcome the works of the artist.
His productions of the last 10 years have been compiled through this unpublished work, published in French, English and Arabic. The authors endeavor to decipher his paintings and installations, crossed by societal issues specific to Lebanon: war, abortive revolt, political and financial bankruptcy, the tragedy of the port of Beirut or even pandemic. The artist paints anonymous portraits of his contemporaries, which have today become symbols of the Middle East. It represents the city, its buildings, erected, but also in ruins. His art is vibrant, dynamic and textured.
Text in English, French and Arabic.