Mesoamerican Manuscripts: New Scientific Approaches and Interpretations brings together a wide range of modern approaches to the study of pre-colonial and early colonial Mesoamerican manuscripts. This includes innovative studies of materiality through the application of non-invasive spectroscopy and imaging techniques, as well as new insights into the meaning of these manuscripts and related visual art, stemming from a post-colonial indigenous perspective. This cross- and interdisciplinary work shows on the one hand the value of collaboration of specialists in different field, but also the multiple viewpoints that are possible when these types of complex cultural expressions are approached from varied cultural and scientific backgrounds. Contributors are: Omar Aguilar Sanchez, Paul van den Akker, Maria Isabel Alvarez Icaza Longoria, Frances F. Berdan, David Buti, Laura Cartechini, Davide Domenici, Laura Filloy Nadal, Alessia Frassani, Francesca Gabrieli, Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen, Rosemary A. Joyce, Jorge Gomez Tejada, Chiara Grazia, David Howell, Virginia M. Llado-Buisan, Leonardo Lopez Lujan, Raul Macuil Martinez, Manuel May Castillo, Costanza Miliani, Maria Olvido Moreno Guzman, Gabina Aurora Perez Jimenez, Araceli Rojas, Aldo Romani, Francesca Rosi, Antonio Sgamellotti, Ludo Snijders, and Tim Zaman. See inside the book.

From Drop Caps to Deluxes, Penguin Creative Director Paul Buckley presents a visual overview of the innovative covers that have put Penguin Classics at the forefront of the book design world Since the launch ofPenguin Classics in 1946, innovative cover designhas been one of its defining aspects. Today, Penguin Classics remains at the leading edge of the book-design world. In this curatedtour featuring illuminating commentary by artists and writers, including Malika Favre, Mike Mignola, James Franco, Jessica Hische, Jillian Tamaki and many more, Penguin creative director Paul Buckley showcases more than a decade of stunning cover designs and the stories behind them. For lovers of classic literature, book design, and all things Penguin, Classic Penguin has you covered. Paul Buckley is creative director for Penguin Classics and oversees a large staff of exceptionally talented designers and art directors working on the jackets and covers of sixteen imprints within the Penguin Random House publishing group. Over the past two decades, his iconic design and singular art direction have been showcased on thousands of covers and jackets, winning him many awards and frequent invitations to speak in the United States and abroad. In 2010, he edited and introduced Penguin 75. Matt Vee is a designer and illustrator who attended School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute. He has received two Gold Scholastic Art Awards and created logos for worldwide brands. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Slate, Print magazine, Paste magazine, and UnderConsideration s Brand New. Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and writer. In addition to the bestselling novels The Time Traveler s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, she is the author of three illustrated novels and the editor of Ghostly. Elda Rotor is vice president and publisher for Penguin Classics. She has created and edited several series, including Penguin Civic Classics, Penguin Threads, Couture Classics, Penguin Horror, and Penguin Drop Caps."

Mural Art - Studies in Paintings in Asia is a collection of 10 articles by the best scholars on murals in Afghanistan, China, Tibet, Burma, Thailand and Mongolia - from the 5th to the 18th century. Covering diverse issues including preservation and digital reconstruction of lost murals, this important new book provides information with challenging perspectives based on the latest findings and research. It also reveals murals never before published, recently rediscovered and endangered. This unique publication on murals in Asia counts as a precious testimony of a fragile and inspiring heritage.

With its concentration on geometrical forms, Islamic design offers a rich source of patterns. Many are taken Moorish Spain and the traditional sites of the Middle East and North Africa, but this book also includes patterns which have been used in mosques in Great Britain. This book provides a photographic exploration of the magnificent designs and analysis of the designs using clear drawings provides designers and artists with ideas and techniques for their own work.

On the southern end of the Grand Rue, a major thoroughfare that runs through the center of Port-au-Prince, waits the Haitian capital's automobile repair district. This veritable junkyard of steel and rubber, recycled parts, old tires, and scrap metal might seem an unlikely foundry for art. Yet, on the street's opposite end thrives the Grand Rue Galerie, a working studio of assembled art and sculptures wrought from the refuse. Established by artists Andre Eugene and Jean Herard Celeur in the late 1990s, the Grand Rue's urban environmental aesthetics-defined by motifs of machinic urbanism, Vodou bricolage, the postprimitivist altermodern, and performative politics--radically challenge ideas about consumption, waste, and environmental hazards, as well as consider innovative solutions to these problems in the midst of poverty, insufficient social welfare, lack of access to arts, education, and basic needs. In Riding with Death, Jana Evans Braziel explores the urban environmental aesthetics of the Grand Rue sculptors and the beautifully constructed sculptures they have designed from salvaged automobile parts, rubber tires, carved wood, and other recycled materials. Through first-person accounts and fieldwork, Braziel constructs an urban ecological framework for understanding these sculptures amid environmental degradation and grinding poverty. Above all, Braziel presents Haitian artists who live on the most challenged Caribbean island, yet who thrive as creators reinventing refuse as art and resisting the abjection of their circumstances.

This is the first book in English to examine Gutai, Japan's best-known modern art movement, a circle of postwar artists whose avant-garde paintings, performances, and installations foreshadowed many key developments in American and European experimental art. Working with previously unpublished photographs and archival resources, Ming Tiampo considers Gutai's pioneering transnational practice, spurred on by mid-century developments in mass media and travel that made the movement's field of reception and influence global in scope. Using these lines of transmission to claim a place for Gutai among modernist art practices while tracing the impact of Japan on art in Europe and America, Tiampo demonstrates the fundamental transnationality of modernism. Ultimately, Tiampo offers a new conceptual model for writing a global history of art, making Gutai an important and original contribution to modern art history.