Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 offers a fresh perspective on the art of Venice and the Veneto. The volume brings together the contributions of scholars and curators specialist on a wide variety of artists and art forms including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture. Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 takes disegno as its central theme, that in its plurality of meaning allows for a consideration of the conceptual role of design and the act of drawing. The relationship between disegno and Renaissance Venetian art has historically been a problematic one, with emphasis instead being placed on the Venetian predilection for colore. This volume is reflective of an ongoing challenge to this perspective and draws attention to the importance of Venetian disegno and the study of drawings for understanding various art forms. The book commences with a critical study of what constitutes disegno in Venetian art. It does so through questioning the historiography of Venetian artistic scholarship and the restrictive framework and preconceptions that have emerged before setting out the merits of a broader, more inclusive approach. Disegno is applied in its multifaceted nature to address the physical act of drawing, the tangible drawn object and the role of design in artistic practice. The term ‘Venetian’ is taken to encompass both Venice and its mainland territories not least because of the mobility of artists across and beyond the region. Contributions are divided into five thematic sections. The first, entitled ‘Peripheries’, frames the art of Venice within a wider discourse on the movement of ideas across and beyond the Veneto in locations including Padua, Verona and Rome. A section on Media considers the origins and innovations that took place in the use of materials such as blue paper, oil and coloured chalks. In another, the theories that have developed on Venetian notions of disegno are brought under scrutiny, addressing topics such as the long upheld perspective that Venetian artists did not draw, the role of sculpture in Tintoretto’s drawing practice and the interrelation between the written and drawn line in Palma Giovane’s draftsmanship. The section on Invention reflects on the technical innovations that were facilitated through the uptake of printmaking and the intellectual freedom granted by humanist patrons. Finally, Function gets to the heart of the practical purpose of disegno. Contributions focus on the workshops of the Bellini family and Titian to consider the diverse ways they used drawing within their artistic practices with an emphasis on technical analysis. These sections are all preceded by introductions that provide an overview on each theme while the volume is bookended by two reflections on the state of research into Venetian disegno and the potential for further progress. Sumptuously illustrated with over 100 images with a comprehensive bibliography, Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 represents a significant contribution to scholarship on the art of Venice, Renaissance workshops and drawing studies.

Reading Siva is an illustrated bibliography on the Hindu god Siva in the arts, crafts, coins, seals and inscriptions from South and Southeast Asia. It results from a century of ABIA bibliographic work and covers over 1500 academic publications since 1672. This scholarly and multi-disciplinary volume offers keyword-indexed annotations. The detailed indices on authors, geographic terms and subjects enable an easy search through the data. Links with the entries to resource repositories (such as JSTOR, Persee, Project MUSE, Academia.edu, ResearchGate and the Internet Archive) and links added to the sumptuous illustrations immediately take you to these resource sites.

'Mr Roscoe's Garden is a key outcome of The Fragrant Liverpool project. Conceived by Jyll Bradley, this is a unique international art project exploring the stories, rites and exchanges that occur when a flower is cut and placed in the human hand. The project centres on the fascinating story of the Liverpool's Botanic Collection and the people involved in its intriguing history. Established by William Roscoe in 1802, and moved to more extensive sites in both 1846 when it became a public facility and in 1964, the complete Botanic Collection has not been on display since 1984 when it closed to the public in a political storm that mirrored the cataclysmic 1980s decline of Liverpool itself. The collection thus has both a glorious and tragic past. Jyll Bradley draws together the compelling tales of the Botanic Collection's history in this creatively ambitious and beautifully illustrated book, evoking the people that made the collection and the distant lands that supplied the plants. By the early nineteenth century the Liverpool Botanic Collection was one of the greatest botanic gardens of its day, filled with strange and rare plants arriving on ships through the City's port from an ever-widening imperial world. By the mid-twentieth the Collection included the greatest orchid collection ever amassed in municipal Britain, as it still does today. While the indignity of the closure lives on, so do, by miracle, the living plants and the dried plants (in Liverpool's magnificent Herbarium); the books; the paintings and all the other riches that have, at one time, or another, co-existed in the Liverpool Botanic Gardens. The glory days are still in the past, but the plant collections have continued to be nurtured and grown and Liverpool's current revival has signalled a new future for the Collection. Painstakingly designed by Jyll Bradley, Mr Roscoe's Garden is a work of art in itself. Its publication also coincides with the re-emergence of the collection as goes to the Chelsea Flower Show for the first time in 30 years and the Gardens open once again to the public.

This fabulous new colouring book features 90 original designs from popular Paris-based tattoo artist and illustrator Sunny Buick, all ready and waiting to be coloured in any way you like. Inside, you'll find everything from candy castles and sugar skulls to religious icons and classic tattoo symbols, and from circus animals and Day of the Dead decorations to ice creams and lollipops, and everything in between.

Ceramicists searching for new ways to fire their creations now have a wealth of options. Authors James Watkins and Paul Wandless, along with a group of distinguished artisans, demonstrate in detail how to build low-cost, low-tech, yet high-quality kilns and varied firing techniques. The plans range from an easy, affordable and versatile Raku Kiln to a unique wood-fuelled Downdraft Stovepipe Barrel kiln. These clever devices make it possible to produce rich surface effects from alternative reduction firing techniques. In addition to showing the basic procedures for using each kiln, easy-to-follow directions for many fast-fire methods unfold in color photographs: you'll see how to achieve terra sigillata surfaces with direct chemical application and how to do traditional crackle-glaze raku and smoke finishes.

The ERC-funded research project BuddhistRoad aims to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities in the dynamics of cultural encounter and religious transfer in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia. Buddhism was one major factor in this exchange: for the first time the multi-layered relationships between the trans-regional Buddhist traditions (Chinese, Indian, Tibetan) and those based on local Buddhist cultures (Khotanese, Uyghur, Tangut) will be explored in a systematic way. The second volume Buddhism in Central Asia II-Practice and Rituals, Visual and Materials Transfer based on the mid-project conference held on September 16th-18th, 2019, at CERES, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum (Germany) focuses on two of the six thematic topics addressed by the project, namely on "practices and rituals", exploring material culture in religious context such as mandalas and talismans, as well as "visual and material transfer", including shared iconographies and the spread of 'Khotanese' themes.

Jao Tsung-i was China's last great traditional man of letters, polymath, and pioneer of comparative humanistic inquiry during Hong Kong's global heyday. Dunhuang is China's traditional northwest frontier and overland conduit of exchange with the Old World. In this volume, Jao proposes an entirely new school of Chinese landscape painting, reconsiders Dunhuang's oldest manuscripts as its newest research field, and explores topics ranging from comparative religion to medieval multimedia.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A burst of springtime joy' Daily Telegraph 'A springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light' The Times 'Lavishly illustrated' Guardian David Hockney reflects upon life and art as he experiences lockdown in rural Normandy On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquility for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney's new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live.