As art critic of The Spectator, Andrew Lambirth’s reviews and articles have been entertaining and informing readers of the magazine since 1996. As he himself has written : “The coverage that this magazine, a weekly, gives to the arts is far wider than many daily newspapers. I wish more arts editors would take the initiative to cover a greater range of exhibitions than just the obvious.”
With Jacques-Louis Daguerre, William Talbot Fox, Etienne Jules-Marey and William Blake as his predecessors, Adam Fuss creates photograms and daguerreotypes that evoke a general poetic and spiritual vision akin to urbanites of the 1800s, people who have lost contact with nature and God. While technically seeking to refine the beginnings of photography, Fuss attempts, in the 100 new works presented here, to record life and death. Colorful spirals created by pendulums lead into great depths; snakes create geometric waves in water; loving pairs of rabbits appear in silhouette; a hunched woman cries; sunflowers sprout withered leaves and broken stems; otherwise placid water bears the concentric marks of water drops; the shadows of silvery children’s clothing hover in mid-air; light reflects on birds in flight–and all, for Fuss, mark the simultaneous presence and absence of the corporeal under the title My Ghost.
A mesmerizing, continent-spanning survey of the most dynamic scenes in contemporary African photography, and an introduction to the creative figures who are making it happen.
Africa State of Mind gathers together the work of an emergent generation of photographers from across Africa, including both the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. It is both a summation of new photographic practice from the last decade and an exploration of how contemporary photographers from the continent are exploring ideas of ‘Africanness’ to reveal Africa to be a psychological space as much as a physical territory – a state of mind as much as a geographical place.
Dispensing with the western colonial view of Africa in purely geographic or topographic terms, Ekow Eshun presents Africa State of Mind in four thematic parts: Hybrid Cities; Inner Landscapes; Zones of Freedom; and Myth and Memory. Each theme, introduced by a text by Eshun, presents selections of work by a new wave of African photographers who are looking both outward and inward: capturing life among the sprawling cities and multitudinous conurbations of the continent, turning the legacy of the continent’s history into the source of resonant new myths and dreamscapes and exploring questions of gender, sexuality and identity. Each of the photographers seeks to capture the experience of what it means, and how it feels, to live in Africa today.
The definitive monograph on Alex Prager, one of the truly original image makers of our time.
Alex Prager is a photographer and filmmaker whose elaborate sets and complex staging draw on a rich cultural heritage of cinematic style, informed by street photography, to produce work that is unerringly memorable. At once temporal and timeless, bright but shadowed, Prager’s images exist within a hyperreal world, deeply rooted in the eerie undertones of Los Angeles, where the line between reality and fiction is blurred.
Prager’s critically acclaimed work is introduced here, spanning a decade of photographic work and five films. This collection of carefully curated photographs is complemented by an in-depth interview by Nathalie Herschdorfer, director of the Musee des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland, and discursive essays by Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Mansfield, executive director of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine, and Clare Grafik, senior curator at The Photographers’ Gallery, London.
A beautiful collaboration between Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch and illustrator Pamela Tait: a unique visual reinterpretation of Murdoch’s favourite Belle and Sebastian songs.
From the imagined lives of the passengers riding Glasgow buses in the early 1990s to questions raised about the status quo and musings on the meaning of religion, Stuart Murdoch, frontman of Scottish indie pop band Belle and Sebastian, has written some of the most captivating lyrics of the past two decades. Belle and Sebastian recorded their first critically acclaimed album Tigermilk in three days, played a sold-out show at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic, and famously forgot their drummer, dressed in his pyjamas, outside a Walmart. Their songs have animated many film soundtracks, developing a cult following that has helped to define the sound of indie music as we know it today.
The first book in the ‘Illustrated Lyrics’ series combines the words selected from over twenty-four years of Belle and Sebastian songs with specially commissioned illustrations from Scottish artist Pamela Tait, whose intricate and whimsical character illustrations Stuart Murdoch stumbled upon and fell in love with when he rediscovered old fan mail Pamela had sent to him over a decade ago. Set with expressive typography, this is an exceptional publication that will seduce even the most devoted fans to ‘see’ these wonderful songs afresh.
The definitive, full-career retrospective of the life and work of Chris Killip (1946-2020), one of the UK’s most important and influential post-war documentary photographers.
‘I didn’t set out to be the photographer of the English de-Industrial Revolution. It happened all around me during the time I was photographing’ Chris Killip, 2019
Grounded in sustained immersion and participation in the communities he photographed, Chris Killip’s keenly observed work chronicled ordinary people’s lives in stark, yet sympathetic, detail. His photographs are recognized as some of the most important visual records of 1980s Britain; as editor of this book Ken Grant reflects, they tell the story of those who ‘had history “done to them”, who felt its malicious disregard and yet, like the photographer with whom they shared so much of their lives, refused to yield or look away.’
Published to coincide with the first full retrospective of Killip’s life and work at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, this book, designed by Niall Sweeney & Nigel Truswell at Pony Ltd, presents photographs from each of his major series alongside lesser-known works. It includes a foreword by Brett Rogers, in-depth essays by Ken Grant tracing Killip’s life and career, and texts by Gregory Halpern, Amanda Maddox and Lynsey Hanley.
Across almost 50 years, Winston Churchill produced more than 500 paintings. His subjects included his family homes at Blenheim and Chartwell, evocative coastal scenes on the French Riviera, and many sun-drenched depictions of Marrakesh in Morocco, as well as still life pictures and an extraordinarily revealing self-portrait, painted during a particularly troubled time in his life. In war and peace, Churchill came to enjoy painting as his primary means of relaxation from the strain of public affairs.
In his introduction to Churchill: The Statesman as Artist, David Cannadine provides the most important account yet of Churchill’s life in art, which was not just a private hobby, but also, from 1945 onwards, an essential element of his public fame. The first part of this book brings together for the first time all of Churchill’s writings and speeches on art, not only ‘Painting as a Pastime’, but his addresses to the Royal Academy, his reviews of two of the Academy’s summer exhibitions, and an important speech he delivered about art and freedom in 1937.
The second part of the book provides previously uncollected critical accounts of his work by some of Churchill’s contemporaries: Augustus John’s hitherto unpublished introduction to the Royal Academy exhibition of Churchill’s paintings in 1959, and essays and reviews by Churchill’s acquaintances Sir John Rothenstein, Professor Thomas Bodkin and the art critic Eric Newton. The book is lavishly illustrated with reproductions of many of Churchill’s paintings, some of them appearing for the first time. Here is Churchill the artist more fully revealed than ever before.
Exquisite yet too fragile to exhibit, one of the world’s greatest collections of autochromes – a pioneering colour photography process – is presented to a wide audience for the first time.
Offering unprecedented access to the V&A’s collection of autochromes – one of the greatest collections of early colour photography in the world – Colour Mania presents this pioneering photographic process in its full, vibrant, wondrous and painterly beauty and provides a breath-taking view of the early 20th century in colour.
Autochromes are so fragile and light sensitive that they cannot be displayed in public – this book presents the only chance to see the V&A’s internationally significant collection. Invented by the Lumiere brothers – also pioneers of cinema – the autochrome was the first widely available colour photography process. Upon its commercial release in 1907, it was eagerly embraced by Pictorialist photographers and advocated by its leading member Alfred Stieglitz, who predicted ‘soon the world will be color-mad’.
Photographed with great care for this book, the V&A’s abundant collection of autochromes is brought to the public for the very first time. Organized thematically and with in-depth sections focusing on the photographers who engaged with the process, Colour Mania is built upon the latest scholarship and research by Catlin Langford and includes insights into how these extraordinary photographs are being preserved for future generations.
An opportunity to travel in time and understand a tour de force in photographic technology, Colour Mania will delight anyone who desires to experience the past in colour.
The first ever book about Cuban record sleeve design, compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker, Cuba: Music and Revolution , when Cuba’s Special Period, brought about by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of Russia’s financial support for the Cuban government, led to the demise of vinyl-record manufacturing in Cuba. The artwork here reflects both the cultural and musical depth of Cuba as well as the political influence of revolutionary communism.
Over the past century, Cuban music has produced a seemingly endless variety of styles―rumba, mambo, son, salsa―at a dizzyingly fast rate. Since the 1940s a steady stream of Cuban musicians has also made the migration to the US, sparking changes in North American musical forms: bandleader Machito set New York’s jazz and Latin scene on fire, and master drummer Chano Pozo’s entry into Dizzy Gillespie’s group led to the birth of Latin jazz, to name just two.
After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the new government closed American-owned nightclubs and consolidated the island’s recording industry under a state-run monopoly. Out of this new socialist agenda came new musical styles, including the Nueva Trova movement of left-wing songwriters. The 1980s saw more experimentation in modernist jazz, salsa and Afro-Cuban folkloric music.
Generously illustrated with hundreds of colour images, Cuba: Music and Revolution presents the history of Cuban record cover art, including many examples previously unseen outside the island itself.
A celebration of the creativity of graffiti artists from all over the world. Ever controversial, graffiti or street art has become a significant art form and continues to evolve and transform urban landscapes in cities around the globe. Compiled by an insider on the New York graffiti scene, KET, this is a collection of the work of some of the world’s top graffiti artists. Showcases work from artists such as Banksy (London), Can2 (Munich), T-Kid (New York), Os Gemeos (Sao Paolo) and many more. Graffiti Planet is a perfect companion to this dynamic and vibrant art form.
A new collection from the award-winning Magnum photographer.
A master of colour-saturated images, Harry Gruyaert has roamed the world searching for the perfect light for more than forty years. His very intuitive and physical sense of place immerses the spectator in a world that borrows simultaneously from the cinematic universe and from that of the painter. Dissolving the boundaries between the exterior and interior, Between Worlds offers just such a sensory immersion.
No matter the setting, the country or the era, Gruyaert deploys a luminous alchemy suspended in time. Where are we? It doesn’t matter: in Gruyaert’s world, the pleasure of getting lost reigns.
A penetrating analysis of the work of one of the most influential painters in the history of modern art by one of the world’s most respected art historians.
For more than a century the art of Paul Cezanne was held to hold the key to modernity. His painting was a touchstone for Samuel Beckett as much as Henri Matisse. Rilke revered him deeply, as did Picasso. If we lost touch with his sense of life, they thought, we lost an essential element in our self-understanding.
If These Apples Should Fall: Cezanne and the Present looks back on Cezanne from a moment – our own – when such judgments may seem to need justifying. What was it, the book asks, that held Cezanne’s viewers spellbound?
At the heart of Cezanne lies a sense of disquiet: a homelessness haunting the vividness, an anxiety underlying the appeal of colour. T. J. Clark addresses this strangeness head-on, examining the art of Pissarro, Matisse and others in relation to it. Above all, he speaks to the uncanniness and beauty of Cezanne’s achievement.
As the first major documentation of John Beard’s work, this definitive monograph provides a visual chronology of Beard’s work from 1978-2011. Featuring a highly original design presentation and exacting production standards, this beautifully created book contains essays by Stephen Bann and Anthony Bond, two of the art world’s leading cognoscenti. Their sympathetic and comprehensive appraisal of Beard’s art will be of great interest to art students and academics, curators and all thosewho are interested in the visual arts.
Designed by multi-award winning designer John Warwicker, a founding member of the influential design-group ‘tomato’, the book also contains a 180-page plate section of Beard’s work. A thing of beauty in its own right, this book will be highly sought after by admirers of Beard’s distinctive work and by design-conscious book buyers and art collectors the world over.
A glamorous tribute to Karl Lagerfeld’s highly influential creations for Chanel captured behind the scenes by US Vogue photographer Robert Fairer in beautiful, never-before-seen images.
Casting a new light on one of the best-loved chapters in fashion history, Karl Lagerfeld Unseen: The Chanel Years illuminates key Chanel collections and creations from behind the scenes.
From discreet client fittings in rue Cambon’s immaculate black-and-beige salons to previously unseen backstage moments that show models, hairdressers, stylists, make-up artists and Karl Lagerfeld himself at work, Robert Fairer’s stunning and high-energy photographs capture the elegance, glamour and spirit that defined Karl Lagerfeld’s shows for Chanel.
Texts by Karl Lagerfeld’s collaborators and friends provide a fresh perspective on his creative process and reveal the stories behind the now iconic designs. A treasure trove of inspiration, this publication will be a must-have reference for fashion and photography lovers alike, and for dedicated Chanel fans the world over.
This is a photographic history book of the 1980s and 1990s from the Yorkshire Evening Post, chronicling life in Leeds throughout these twenty years.
An intimate, one-of-a-kind photographic journey that documents Liam Wong’s nocturnal wanderings through the world’s most captivating cities.
In this singular photographic publication, Liam Wong weaves together a series of cinematic images that reveal the people and places, the slivers of life, that inhabit the mysterious space of night-time cities. Through his previous work as a videogame designer, Wong learned that ‘real life is just as potent, bizarre and interesting as things we can imagine’. From Hong Kong and Seoul to London and Edinburgh, After Dark reveals shadowy cityscapes through the eyes of the insomniac artist.
For centuries, artists have found both solace and fruitfulness in solitude. Through sleepless and solitary nights, After Dark explores the phenomenon of loneliness in city life, capturing urban interstices between dusk and dawn: the eerie emptiness of London’s Piccadilly Circus at 4:00 a.m., Seoul’s late-night taxi drivers moving along hushed roads and birds sharing the warmth of a neon sign in Hong Kong’s TSM District – mysterious silhouettes representing lives lived in shadow, portrayed as intricate cinematic visions, all before the sun rises.
Building on the success of his first monograph, TO:KY:OO , Wong widens his lens to capture the night in the world’s most exciting cities. From workers leaving their night shifts to empty streets illuminated by neon signs, Wong charts the hours of darkness as populated scenes become deserted ones. The book’s photography – framed to specific film ratios – is imbued with a cinematic intensity underscored by Wong’s interest in film, while its themes are amplified through specially commissioned Chinese characters that pay homage to the works of celebrated Chinese director Wong Kar Wai.
An anthology of writing and art works that simply respond to the work “listen” – through poems, paintings, photos, stories, songs, gardens and much more – all about listening and the importance of silence.
The artwork and writing in this anthology explore different perspectives on what it means to listen: from listening to music and the environment with one ear to listening to people with the other.
Reproductions of the young Lucian Freud’s letters alongside insightful context and commentary reveal the foundations of the artist’s personality and creative practice.
The young Lucian Freud was described by his friend Stephen Spender as ‘totally alive, like something not entirely human, a leprechaun, a changeling child, or, if there is a male opposite, a witch.’ All that magnetism and brilliance is displayed in the letters assembled here. Ranging from schoolboy messages to his parents, through letters and carefully-chosen, often embellished postcards to friends, lovers and confidants, to correspondence with patrons and associates. They are peppered with wit, affection and irreverence.
Alongside rarely seen photographs and Freud’s extraordinary works, each chapter charts Freud’s evolving art alongside intimate accounts of his life. We trace Freud’s early friendships with Stephen Spender, John Craxton, his wild days at art school in East Anglia, and a stint as a merchant seaman. Among the highlights are Freud’s accounts of his first trip to Paris in 1946 and encounters with Picasso, Alexander Calder and Giacometti (who, he thought, looked like Harpo Marx). Equally revealing are letters to and from his first love, Lorna Wishart and second wife, Caroline Blackwood. Among his friends and confidantes were Sonia Orwell and Ann Fleming: remarkable, hitherto unknown letters to both of whom are included. To Ann Fleming he wrote a richly-comic, six-page description of a high society fancy dress ball which took place at Biarritz in 1953. He also went to stay with Ann and her husband Ian in their house in Jamaica, Goldeneye. From there, he sent a stream of letters, plus a telegram to his colleagues at the Slade School of Fine Art (where he was supposed to be teaching): “PLEASE SEND TEN SHEETS GREY GREEN INGRES PAPER”. The volume ends in early 1954 with his inclusion at the age of 31, as one of the artists representing Britain at the Venice Biennale – the high point of his early career.
Co-authored by David Dawson and Martin Gayford, this is the first published collection of Freud’s correspondence, many brought to light for the first time. Reproduced in facsimile alongside reproductions of Freud’s artwork, the letters are linked by a narrative that weaves them into the story of his life and relationships through his formative first three decades. Collectively, they provide a powerful insight into his early life and art.
These publications are compiled similarly to a traveler’s scrapbook and they are essential reminders to all who have been traveling or only encourage the desire to travel may it be either the historical, architectural and religious aspects, or travel to discover the world. The photographs and illustrations convey the reality of everyday life without any pretension but have been put together as a travelogue which each and everyone one of us could have compiled. Local authenticity, the visitor’s point of view, colors and more colors, curious tourists, experienced travelers. And above all passionately original photographers, creators of ambience, visual artists!
Oda Jaune was born Michaela Danowska in Sofia, Bulgaria. From 1998 to 2003, she studied in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Jörg Immendorff, who she later married. She currently lives and works in Paris. Her art focuses on the biomorphic, the collaged, the abnormal, which ensure that her work continually evades the viewers grasp. Her work plays with the themes of ambivalence, attraction and withdrawal. Internal organs and emotional states blend together in imaginative, unreal, and occasionally gruesome ways, resulting in disturbing yet poetic works. Deformities, masks, and phallic-like growths distort the subject being portrayed and elude the viewers search for clarification.
Her high-profile and controversial marriage thrust Oda into the public eye. This book strips back her celebrity and allows her unique talent to speak for itself. In 2012, she won the Pierre Cardin Prize in the Best Painter category. She is represented by Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris.
‘One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation’ OLIVIA LAING
What can freedom really mean? In this invigorating, essential book, Maggie Nelson explores how we might think, experience or talk about the concept in ways that are responsive to our divided world. Drawing on pop culture, theory and the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, she follows freedom – with all its complexities – through four realms: art, sex, drugs and climate. On Freedom offers a bold new perspective on the challenging times in which we live.
‘Tremendously energising’ Guardian
‘This provocative meditation…shows Nelson at her most original and brilliant’ New York Times
‘Nelson is such a friend to her reader, such brilliant company… Exhilarating’ Literary Review
* A New York Times Notable Book *
* A Guardian and TLS ‘Books of 2021’ Pick *
“Paris Escapades” is a beautiful book of Paris collages by Sir Peter Blake. Blake demonstrates his unerring sense of felicitous and unexpected juxtapositions, a gift for visual story-telling and an eye no less acute for having a permanent twinkle. As with the Venice images that preceded them, Blake features many familiar monuments in his Paris pictures but submerges them in extraordinary events that turn them into the stuff of dreams. There is enough air of reality in some pictures, such as the Seine freezing over, to entrap the unwary spectator. But as elephants are hoisted above Notre Dame cathedral and crowds gather for a charabanc outing or for a mass kiss-in that even festival-going hippies would have found a bit extreme, the beauty and allure of Paris becomes populated by the overactive mind of one of the great imaginative artists of our time.
Each of the 28 images in” Paris Escapades” is accompanied by the artist’s wry commentaries, and the book is preceded by an interview with Marco Livingstone in which Blake discusses his lifelong involvement with collage. Hugely entertaining as a visual voyage of discovery, “Paris Escapades” ends up a window into the methods and thought processes of a much loved artist.
An accessible introduction to the life and work of this trailblazing pioneer of early modernism, published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Royal Academy, London.
Paula Modersohn-Becker is today hailed as one of the great pioneers of modernism. When she died in 1907 at the age of just 31, she had completed more than 700 paintings and 1,000 drawings and prints. Despite selling only a few paintings during her lifetime, her distinct style, daring subject matter and perseverance in overcoming barriers to women left a significant artistic mark on the brief epoch between the old and the new, and paved the way for the German avant-garde.
Uwe M. Schneede, one of the foremost experts on Modersohn-Becker’s work, shows how the artist translated her life’s experiences into her own, very distinctive, pictorial language. He focuses in particular on her time in Paris, where she absorbed the luminous palette and expressive brushwork of the French avantgarde, and which so strongly impacted her ambitions and artistic trajectory. Schneede’s lively narrative is supported by some 120 illustrations, and peppered throughout with quotations from Modersohn’s letters and diaries.
The first book dedicated to Picasso’s self-portraits, many held in private collections and published here for the first time.
Much has been said and written about Picasso’s life and art, but until now his self-portraits have never been studied and presented in a single book, perhaps because the artist always left many doubts about his work. However, there is no doubt that Picasso represented himself ceaselessly, whether in a dashed-off pencil sketch, as a flourish at the bottom of a letter, or on a giant canvas.
At the suggestion of Picasso’s widow Jacqueline, the distinguished art historian Pascal Bonafoux began researching Picasso’s self-portraits more than forty years ago. This meticulously researched book presents the fruits of his decades-long project. From the first attributed painting in 1894 as a thirteen-year-old boy, until Picasso’s final self-portrait in 1972, a year before his death, Bonafoux charts the evolution of the artist’s life and art. Here is Picasso as a student; as a young bohemian; an impetuous artist in Paris; as harlequin; as lover, husband and father; and finally, as an old man confronting his mortality. The book comprises about 170 drawings, paintings and photographs, some from private collections and previously unpublished, bringing together for the first time the attributed self-portraits of this genius of 20th-century art.
A timely re-examination of European engagements with indigenous art and the presence of indigenous art in the contemporary art world.
The arts of Africa, Oceania and native America famously inspired twentieth-century modernist artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Ernst. The politics of such stimulus, however, have long been highly contentious: was this a cross-cultural discovery to be celebrated, or just one more example of Western colonial appropriation?
This revelatory book explores cross-cultural art through the lens of settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand, where Europeans made new nations, displacing and outnumbering but never eclipsing native peoples. In this dynamic of dispossession and resistance, visual art has loomed large. Settler artists and designers drew upon Indigenous motifs and styles in their search for distinctive identities. Yet powerful Indigenous art traditions have asserted the presence of First Nations peoples and their claims to place, history and sovereignty. Cultural exchange has been a two-way process, and an unpredictable one: contemporary Indigenous art draws on global contemporary practice, but moves beyond a bland affirmation of hybrid identities to insist on the enduring values and attachment to place of Indigenous peoples.
Print and Production Finishes for CD and DVD Packaging delves into the physical packaging for CDs and DVDs, exploring formats, bindings, casings, materials, textures and finishes. From movie to music packaging, the book explores the creative inspiration behind the package, including artwork, typography, materials, printing techniques and formats. It also goes into detail about practical considerations and restrictions, such as record company stipulations and the inclusion of essential materials and budgets.
With informative text and specially commissioned full-colour photos, Print and Production Finishes for Packaging shows, at a glance, the different effects that can be created, and the key print and production techniques used to achieve them. Work across all budgets and production/print runs is featured, revealing the skills and techniques that grab the target audience’s attention and sell. For print and production finishing ideas on everything from boxes, cartons, bottles, tubes, cans, packs, tubs, jars, multi-packs, clamshells, blister packs, CDs or DVDs, gift packs, and a variety of other more unusual or innovative formats, Print and Production Finishes for Packaging is an indispensable ideas sourcebook and practical guide to finishes, surface graphics, detailing, and materials that help make packaging stand out from the crowd including foil blocking, pigment blocking, thermography, varnishing, laminating, embossing, debossing, die-cutting and laser-cutting; specialist inks, including metallics and fluorescents; different papers stocks and other materials; lenticular printing, and so on. By analysing the best in the business, this book gives readers a thorough understanding of materials, and of the print and production finishes that can be applied to any job.
The acclaimed biography detailing the lives of the British inter-war artists and designers centred on Ravilious – an enthralling narrative of creative achievement, joy and tragedy.
In recent years Eric Ravilious has become recognized as one of the most important British artists of the 20th century, whose watercolours and wood engravings capture an essential sense of place and the spirit of mid-century England. What is less appreciated is that he did not work in isolation, but within a much wider network of artists, friends and lovers influenced by Paul Nash’s teaching at the Royal College of Art – Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, Enid Marx, Tirzah Garwood, Percy Horton, Peggy Angus and Helen Binyon among them. The Ravilious group bridged the gap between fine art and design, and the gentle, locally rooted but spritely character of their work came to be seen as the epitome of contemporary British values.
Eighty years after Ravilious’s untimely death, Andy Friend tells the story of this group of artists from their student days through to the Second World War. Ravilious & Co. explores how they influenced each other and how a shared experience animated their work, revealing the significance in this pattern of friendship of women artists, whose place within the history of British art has often been neglected. Generously illustrated and drawing on extensive research, and a wealth of newly discovered material, Ravilious & Co. is an enthralling narrative of creative achievement, joy and tragedy.
The first monograph on Richard Smith, a key figure in the development of British art.Richard Smith (1931-2016) was one of the most original painters of his generation, and one of the most underrated. As Barbara Rose said of Smith’s major Tate Gallery retrospective in 1975, he was ‘at once in and out of touch with the currents of the mainstream … au courant and aloof at the same time.’ That he latterly slipped under the radar to some extent is partly explained by his detachment from the mainstream as well as by his frequent switching of studios between England and the USA, although this helped charge his creative batteries. He is the only artist of his stature who has not been represented by a monograph, which the dazzling presentation of images in Richard Smith: Artworks now fulfils. It has been produced with the generous collaboration of the Richard Smith Foundation. Richard Smith: Artworks traces Smith’s entire career, from the breakthrough lyrical abstraction of the early Pop-inflected paintings, through the radical shaped canvases and three-dimensional works that he produced in the 1960s, to the ‘Kite’ works beginning in 1972 and, eventually, his return to the flat canvas. As a Senior Curator at Tate, Dr Chris Stephens knew Smith well, and he contributes a wide-ranging introduction to Smith’s art and life. Prof David Alan Mellor investigates and explains the Anglo-American cultural contexts that drove Smith’s art, while Alex Massouras’s two themed essays, ‘Young and British’ and ‘From Motion Pictures to Flight’, explore Smith’s originality from fresh perspectives. The book is completed with an Afterword by its editor, Martin Harrison.
In this innovative book of poetry from the editor of “Heart to Heart”, forty poems from around the world speak about specific works of art. Included on every spread is the poem in its original language, an English translation and the piece of art that the poem is about. Readers will look at art and poetry in a new way in this multi-cultural selection! It includes a biography (brief) of each author, translator and artist.
This is a fascinating and nostalgic collection of pictures taken by a Brighton seaside photographer from the late 1940s to the present day. They capture the spirit of the daytripper eras of the 1950s and 1960s; show the stars of the stage and screen who appeared at the Palace Pier Theatre, the Hippodrome and the Theatre Royal, as well as musicians, pop stars, tv personalities and politicians. there are photos recalling colourful, annual special events, such as the London to Brighton Veteran Run and others illustrating the changing face of the city.
When we look at the landscape, what do we see? Do we experience the view over a valley or dappled sunlight on a path in the same way as those who were there before us? We have altered the countryside in innumerable ways over the last thousand years, and never more so than in the last hundred. How are these changes reflected in – and affected by – art and literature?
Spirit of Place offers a panoramic view of the British landscape as seen through the eyes of writers and artists from Bede and the Gawain-poet to Gainsborough, Austen, W. G. Sebald and Barbara Hepworth. Shaped by these distinctive voices and evocative imagery, Susan Owens describes how the British landscape has been framed, reimagined and reshaped by each generation. Each account or work of art, whether illuminated in a manuscript, jotted down in a journal or constructed from sticks and stones, holds up a mirror to its maker and their world.
With 80 illustrations
