This stunning book showcases the bold and original work of Royal Designer Tony Meeuwissen. The artist also writes about his life at the drawing board and the inspiration and ideas behind his imagery. From the foreword by Peter Marren: Welcome to this gallery of the work of a most individual and lovable artist. Many will have seen Tony Meeuwissen's work without knowing the artist, for it has appeared in so many decorative forms from books to playing cards, from magazine and sheet music covers to postage stamps. His work was described by the designer Mike Dempsey as 'inventive, intensely detailed and full of wit and beauty'. Penguin Books art director David Pelham praised him as an artist with the eye of an illustrator and the mind of a designer, one able to solve visual problems with 'remarkable originality, skill and panache.' To my eye Tony's work is always affi rmative even in its darker moments. It is playful but not saccharine, clever but not conceited. It always wears a wry smile. Tony learned his craft in the market place of commercial art. He learned how to handle a wide range of media to develop graphic ideas while also discovering the beauty of typefaces. In the process he evolved his very distinctive artistic language, his own way of seeing the world: colourful, eye-catching, beautifully executed, his work is a product of his unique vision. He loves drawing animals, birds, insects and natural phenomena, but usually with a characteristic twist: shape-changing fantastical animals, a nuthatch hatching from a nut, a praying mantis in bishop's vestments saying grace over a butterfl y. On the memorable Christmas stamps he designed for the Royal Mail in 1983, the Three Kings are represented by chimney pots and the continents of the world by melting snow slipping from an umbrella. His is a universe where nothing is quite what it seems, where proverbs morph into pictures and names turn out to have diff erent meanings. Words and rhymes increase this pleasurable sense of an alternate world with its own logic and rules. Tony Meeuwissen eschews computer-aided methods preferring his drawing board, his pencils and his paintbox. He has managed to inhabit the world of commercial art for more than half a century without ever becoming commercial himself. His work is always uncompromisingly his own: the product of a unique imagination coupled with the skills and standards of a perfectionist. Here for the fi rst time the full range of his work is presented. Like the door to the magical garden in Alice, turn the golden key and enter.
David Hockney is the best known and most widely admired painter in the world. This vibrant catalogue accompanies a major exhibition at the The Fitzwilliam Museum and the Heong Gallery in Cambridge, as well as the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. Throughout his long career, David Hockney has insistently explored diverse ways of depicting the visible world. He has scrutinised the methods of the old masters, and explored radical departures from their cherished assumptions The exhibition and accompanying book are the first to focus on this central theme in his art. «Western art» from the Renaissance until at least the late 19th century has been dominated by the depiction of nature. Was this to be accomplished by direct looking (called «eyeballing» by Hockney) or with the assistance of optical theory and devices, such as cameras? Hockney has experimented with the full range of existing strategies, overtly using perspective in some of his classic pictures and rigorously investigating optical aids for the imitation of nature, including the camera obscura and camera lucida. Yet he has come to reject the photograph as the definitive image of what we see. Along the way, he has identified a «camera culture'' in European painting from 1400, arguing very controversially that the supreme naturalism of painters like Jan van Eyck are the product of optical devices. His book, Secret Knowledge (2001), with its majestic panorama of paintings over the course of five centuries, claims that art historians have missed the central aspect of painters' practice. The «Hockney thesis» has been received more favourably outside the professional world of art history than in it. His own artistic practice has been in vigorous dialogue with his radical thesis, and he has progressively demonstrated new and dynamic ways of characterising the visual world without perspective and other conventional techniques. This quest results a series of joyous challenges to our ways of seeing in the major exhibition in Cambridge at the Fitzwilliam Museum and in the Heong Gallery (Downing College). It will look at the whole span of Hockney's varied career and at the nature of the optical devices he has tested. His vision will be explored in the setting of traditional masterpieces of naturalistic observation, and in the context of modern sciences and technologies of seeing. The first section of the book looks at his thrilling experiments in seeing and representing in broad historical and contemporary contexts. This is followed by discussions of pre-photographic devices for capturing the appearances of things by optical means. The third section includes essays on Hockney's experiments from the perspectives of neuroscience and computer vision. In short, it reveals in a new way the working of Hockney's unique eye.
This important publication accompanies a major exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, London, of paintings by Edvard Munch, one of the world's greatest modern artists. The exhibition and catalogue showcase 18 major works from the collection of KODE Art Museums in Bergen. The works span the most significant part of Munch's artistic development and have never before been shown as a group outside of Scandinavia
La Collection Courtauld. Le parti de l'impressionnisme accompagne l'exposition majeure du printemps 2019 à la Fondation Louis Vuitton à Paris qui mettra en lumière l'industriel et mécène anglais Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947), l'un des plus importants collectionneurs du XXe siècle. Le catalogue et l'exposition présenteront son extraordinaire collection d'art impressionniste, qui n'a pas été vue à Paris depuis plus de soixante ans.
Courtauld constitua l'une des plus importantes collections d'art impressionniste au monde. Au cours des années 1920, il rassembla un ensemble exceptionnel de tableaux de tous les plus importants peintres impressionnistes, du chef d'oeuvre de jeunesse de Renoir, La Loge, à la dernière grande toile de Manet, l'emblématique Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère. Sa collection comprenait également Nevermore, le grand nu tahitien de Gauguin, et l'un des plus célèbres tableaux de Van Gogh, Autoportrait à l'oreille bandée, dont ce sera la première présentation à Paris depuis l'exposition organisée en 1955 au musée de l'Orangerie.
Architecture and Anarchism documents and illustrates 60 projects, past and present, that key into a libertarian ethos and desire for diverse self-organised ways of building.
They are what this book calls an 'anarchist' architecture, that is, forms of design and building inspired by the core values of most forms of anarchism since its emergence as a distinct kind of socialist politics in the 19th century. These are autonomy, voluntary association, mutual aid, and self-organisation through direct democracy.
As the book shows, there are a vast range of architectural projects that can been seen to refl ect some or all of these values, whether they are acknowledged as specifi cally anarchist or otherwise.
Anarchist values are evident in projects that grow out of romantic notions of escape - from isolated cabins to intentional communities. Yet, in contrast, they also manifest in direct action - occupations or protests that produce micro-countercommunities.
Artists also produce anarchist architecture - intimations of much freer forms of building cut loose from the demands of moneyed clients; so do architects and planners who want to involve users in a process normally restricted to an elite few. Others also imagine new social realities through speculative proposals. Finally, building without authority is, for some, a necessity - the thousands of migrants denied their right to become citizens, even as they have to live somewhere; or the unhoused of otherwise affl uent cities forced to build improvised homes for themselves.
The result is to signifi cantly broaden existing ideas about what might constitute anarchism in architecture and also to argue strongly for its nurturing in the built environment. Understood in this way, anarchism off ers a powerful way of reconceptualising architecture as an emancipatory, inclusive, ecological and egalitarian practice.
Presenting for the first time the Alexis Gregory Gift to The Frick Collection, this exquisite publication provides illuminating insights into Gregory's magnificently eclectic collection, cataloging his fine and decorative works of art in detail. Twenty-eight works of art bequeathed to the Frick by Alexis Gregory range from Limoges enamels to Saint-Porchaire ware to pastels by the Venetian painter Rosalba Carriera. This remarkable gift has introduced new types of objects to the Frick: works in ivory and rhinoceros horn are the first of their kind to be held in the collection. Gregory's gift includes fifteen Limoges enamels, one of them produced in the workshop of Suzanne de Court, the only woman known to have led an enamel workshop in Limoges. Also part of the gift are a gilt-bronze sculpture, an ivory hilt, a pomander, ewers, saltcellars, and two clocks. Many of Gregory's objects came from such prestigious owners as the French royal collections and the Rothschilds. Included in the publication are commentaries on each gift. This lavishly illustrated publication accompanies an exhibition that will be on view at The Frick Collection February 16 through May 14, 2023.
This publication is a highly visual celebration of the massively popular, but now largely forgotten, Britain Can Make It exhibition. Organized by the Council of Industrial Design, it was held in empty ground-floor galleries of the Victoria & Albert Museum, from September to December 1946.
Ce somptueux catalogue accompagnera la première exposition sur le modèle et peintre français, Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), qui se tiendra dans un lieu américain important. Malgré la popularité et le succès que Valadon connut de son vivant, son travail a été négligé depuis sa mort. Suzanne Valadon : Model, Painter, Rebel reconsidère la vie et l'héritage de l'artiste révolutionnaire.
W.A. Ismay amassed over 3,600 pieces by more than 500 potters between 1955 and 2001.
Surrounded by his family of pots, he lived in a tiny terraced house in Wakefi eld, Yorkshire, and left his collection and its associated archive to the city of York upon his death. This eclectic collection contains objects created by many of the most signifi cant potters working in the UK, such as Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew, as well as examples of work by lesser-known makers. Once he discovered a potter, Ismay supported them throughout their career, carefully assembling groups of work that off er succinct visual overviews of development in style and skill.
What would become known as Ismay's Yorkshire Tea Ceremony encapsulates all the aspects of collecting handmade pottery which were important to him. Seeing himself as a temporary custodian of his collection, rather than the owner, he was keen to allow access and share it. Ismay enjoyed inviting people into his home, encouraging them to pick up items and experience them haptically. This social side of collecting generated close friendships which are revealed through the anecdotes, gossip, obsessions, opinions and touching gestures of support documented within Ismay's archive. The archive is a monumental and unique creation, which documents his extraordinary life and reveals intriguing glimpses into the development of his character, as well as the personal and societal changes that impacted his interests and activities.
New academic research into a little-studied collection and archive explores Ismay's journey as a collector. This book off ers fresh perspectives on a marginalized area of British modernism. Tracing the collection's journey from private to public ownership illuminates issues surrounding the acquisition by a museum of a large personal collection and archive, revealing the transformative eff ect it has had on both curatorial practice and the ambition of regional public institutions. The W.A. Ismay Collection off ers a well-documented example of the valuable contribution collectors can make to the British studio ceramics movement.
The publication of this research marks 20 years since the W.A. Ismay Collection moved from private to public ownership and to celebrate that anniversary, an exhibition of the collection will take place at York Art Gallery's Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA).
Fra Angelico transformed painting in Florence with his pioneering images.
Reuniting for the fi rst time his four ingenious reliquaries for Santa Maria Novella, this publication explores his celebrated talents as a storyteller and the artistic contributions that shaped a new ideal of painting.
Accompanying the exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, this catalogue explores one of the most important artists of the Renaissance. Fra Angelico (c. 1395-1455) transformed painting in Florence with pioneering images, rethinking popular compositions and investing traditional Christian subjects with new meaning.
His altarpieces and frescoes set new standards for quality and ingenuity, contributing to Angelico's unparalleled fame on the Italian peninsula. With the intellect of a Dominican theologian, the technical facility of Florence's fi nest craftsmen and the business acumen of its shrewdest merchants, he shaped the future of painting in Italy and beyond.
The exhibition reunites for the fi rst time Fra Angelico's four reliquaries for Santa Maria Novella (1424-34; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Museo di San Marco, Florence). Together they cover key episodes in the life of the Virgin Mary and capture in miniature some of his most important compositional innovations. Assembled at the Gardner with exceptional examples of Angelico's narrative paintings from collections in Europe and the United States, this exhibition explores his celebrated talents as a storyteller and the artistic contributions that shaped a new ideal of painting in Florence.
The Anglo-American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903) is a household name - a man who inspired and astonished the Victorian world. Less well known, though, is the influence of nature on Whistler's work. This innovative and compelling study reconsiders Whistler's work from the context of his military service and his relationship with 'nature at the margins', showing how Whistler's observation of nature and its moods underpinned his haunting visions of nineteenth-century life.
The 300 spectacular photographs in Call of the Blue are the culmination of a five-year project by photographer and ocean conservationist Philip Hamilton to witness and photograph marine life around the world. This groundbreaking and inspirational book showcases contributions from acclaimed scientists and notable ocean 'guardians' who share their lives, passions and exploits on, in or under the ocean and reveal what drove them to answer the call of the blue.
Ce magnifique catalogue regroupe pour la première fois de remarquables dessins modernes réalisés par des maîtres européens et américains et assemblés par feu Howard Karshan et sa femme, Linda, qui a récemment présenté les oeuvres à l'Institut Courtauld. Le catalogue, qui accompagne leur exposition à la Courtauld Gallery, inclut les dessins d'artistes renommés tels que Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Sam Francis, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter et Georg Baselitz.
Ce somptueux catalogue, accompagnant l'exposition à la galerie Philip Mould & Company, raconte l'histoire du grand attachement que Vanessa Bell et Duncan Grant portaient à leur maison de Charleston Farmhouse et présente le travail produit par les artistes entre les deux guerres mondiales. Cette magnifique collection d'oeuvres est merveilleusement présentée aux côtés d'essais éclairant et illustrés, d'un entretien et d'un catalogue complet.
This absorbing book tells the story of Empress Eugénie (1826-1920), the wife of Napoleon III and the last Empress-Consort of France. Today she is remembered for her physical beauty, for her influence as a taste maker and for her glittering contribution to the second imperial court - but she outlived the Second Empire by half a century and lived in exile in England.
George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) was one of the great artists of the 19th century, known at the time as 'England's Michelangelo'. As a young man he exhibited alongside Turner, and by the end of his long career he was influential upon Picasso. Sculptor, portraitist and creator of classic Symbolist imagery, Watts was seen also as more than an artist - a philanthropic visionary whose art charted the progress of humanity in the modern world. Covering all aspects of Watts's career, this book places him back at the centre of the visual culture of the 19th century.
Hans Memling was one of the most important, prolific and versatile painters active in 15th-century Bruges, and one of the leading artists of the Early Netherlandish School. Commissioned by Abbot Jan Crabbe, one of Memling's most signifcant and erudite patrons, the triptych of the Crucifixion - in particular its wings, with their complex and meticulously conceived background landscapes and the convincing realism of the portraits - ostentatiously demonstrate Memling's skills and ambitions. Completed around 1470, the triptych was dismembered in the 18th century. Two panels from the altarpiece are among the fi nest paintings owned by the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, where they are on permanent view in Pierpont Morgan's Study. The exhibition brings together the scattered elements of the famous triptych, reuniting the Morgan inner wings with the central panel now owned by the Musei Civici in Vicenza, Italy, and the outer wings from the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, Belgium. Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a Reunited Altarpiece accompanies the first museum exhibition to explore the reconstructed masterpiece in context. It has long been observed that the donor portraits are the most outstanding aspect of the Crabbe Triptych, especially the portrait of Anna Willemzoon in the left wing, an extraordinary image of old age, and representative of the merging of the sacred and secular realms that is often present in the work of Memling and his contemporaries. Memling was notable as a painter of portraits, and his work in this field revolutionized portrait painting across Europe. To present the artist's extraordinary ability to capture a likeness, a number of his independent portraits will be examined, including the Morgan's compelling Man with a Pink.
The Chester Beatty Library's 16th-century Ruzbihan Qur'an-produced in the city of Shiraz in southwest Iran-is one of the finest Islamic manuscripts known. In terms of both materials and workmanship, it is exquisite: lapis lazuli and gold, the two most expensive pigments available, are used on every page, while the rendering of the decoration is exceptionally fine. This is the most detailed and comprehensive study of any Islamic manuscript-and it is well worthy of such scrutiny.
Praised in a 16th-century account as one of the finest calligraphers of his time, Ruzbihan Muhammad al-Tab'i al-Shirazi would have produced numerous Qur'ans during the course of his career, but only five signed by him have survived. Much of the study of this, surely his finest manuscript, is focussed on understanding the processes and procedures involved in the production of the manuscript and thus on gaining an insight into the problems faced by Ruzbihan and the other artists and how they resolved them. Certain surprising and never-before-seen techniques of production and 'tricks-of-the trade' have been uncovered. A large portion of the information presented is the result of very close examination, under high magnification, of the manuscript's 445 folios (890 pages). Many of the reproductions included are of minute details of the decoration that are difficult, or even impossible, to see with the unaided eye.
The book follows the order in which work on the manuscript would have progressed, beginning with an examination of Ruzbihan's calligraphy, the various scripts he used to copy the text and the problems he faced, such as the spacing of the text and his errors and omissions. Additions, such as marginal notations, recitation marks and decorative devices indicating the divisions of the text, all of which guide the reciter in his reading of the Qur'an, are also considered.
Although the manuscript's renown has traditionally rested with the name of its calligrapher, it is equally the quality, extent, diversity and complexity of its superb decorative programme-the work of a team of highly skilled, yet anonymous artists and artisans-that sets the manuscript apart from most other 16th-century Persian Qur'ans.
Fittingly, therefore, the bulk of the study focuses on this aspect of the manuscript. Major aspects of the illumination, such as its lavish beginning, middle and end illuminations, are examined as well as more minor elements such as the 'rays' that emerge from the frontis- and finispiece; even the tiniest of details are revealed, such as what are, in the book, termed 'squiggles and eyes', hidden amongst the illuminations and a challenge to find for the even the most eagle-eyed viewer. However, while many of the secrets of the production of the manuscript were revealed, many mysteries remain. Chief among these is the startling change in aesthetic evident in the illuminations of the final ten openings of the manuscript. Why such as change was undertaken-and then halted-is not known. As was increasingly revealed as study of the manuscript progressed-and as the reader of the book will quickly come to realise-Chester Beatty's Ruzbihan Qur'an is an intriguing and very special manuscript.
Jacopo Tintoretto (1518/19-1594) was among the most distinctive artists of the Italian Renaissance. Yet, although his bold paintings are immediately recognizable, his drawings remain unfamiliar even to many scholars. Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice off ers a complete overview of Tintoretto as a draftsman. It begins with a look at drawings by Tintoretto's precedents and contemporaries, a discussion intended to illuminate Tintoretto's sources as well as his originality, and also to explore the historiographical and critical questions that have framed all previous discussion of Tintoretto's graphic work. Subsequent chapters explore Tintoretto's evolution as a draftsman and the role that drawings played in his artistic practice-both preparatory drawings for his paintings and the many studies after sculptures by Michelangelo and others-thus examining the use of drawings within the studio as well as teaching practices in the workshop. Later chapters focus on the changes to Tintoretto's style as he undertook ever larger commissions and accordingly began to manage a growing number of assistants, with special attention paid to Domenico Tintoretto, Palma Giovane, and other artists whose drawing style was infl uenced by their time working with the master.
The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice, opening at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, in 2018 and travelling to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in early 2019. All of the drawings in the exhibition are discussed and illustrated, and a checklist of the exhibition is also included in the volume, but the book is a far more widely ranging account of Tintoretto's drawings and a comprehensive account of his work as a draftsman.
Eliot Hodgkin (1905-1987) is best known as a painter of still life subjects beautifully executed in tempera. Less well known are his haunting views of bomb-sites in London after World War II. This revealing, fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the first survey exhibition on the artist since 1990.
