The beauty and evolution of an intriguing art form.The Montreal Botanical Garden's collections of bonsai and penjing are among the best in North America, including more than 350 trees, some dating from the 17th century. For the first time, these stylized horticultural creations have been brought together in a single volume, illuminating the evolution of the aesthetic tradition of this Asian art form.Featuring beautifully rendered photographs of many of the miniature trees in the collection, Bonsai | Penjing: The Collections of the Montreal Botanical Garden offers an up-close view of these extraordinary specimens. Miniaturized reflections of their natural environment, these works of horticultural art translate the world views of bonsai and penjing masters from different philosophical traditions. In a few instances, they integrate contemporary North American vision of the ancient Asian traditions.Author Danielle Ouellet interviewed many of the artists who created these works, in some instances travelling to Asia to meet with some of the contemporary masters of this art form. As a result, she brings to life an historical portrait of Bonsai and Penjing, their underlying aesthetic principles, and an understanding of how to view and interpret the captivating living culptures of these traditions.

This seventh volume in the beautiful Strokes of Genius series celebrates creative drawing with more than 140 diverse pieces by today's best artists in charcoal, pencil, pastel, colored pencil, scratchboard, pen+ink and more. * Drawing is an essential skill that all artists use no matter what their primary medium * 100+ of the best artists showcased from 1000s of entrant * Oversized book has coffee-table appeal and is great for collectors * Inspiring captions let readers uncover the secret processes of contemporary masters.

The Cleveland Museum of Art's medieval table fountain, c. 1320-40, is the only version of its kind to have survived in its complete form from the Middle Ages. A superb example of French Gothic goldsmithing, it is an exquisite metalwork structure and a unique example of courtly taste and princely fashion, which was designed not for any religious purpose but purely as an indulgence. Its uncertain provenance has added to its charm. This focus volume reassesses this extraordinary piece in the context of other similar luxury objects, analysing specifically the fountain's history, functionality, materials, and style.

The volume is dedicated to the work of New York-based Croatian artists TARWUK, presented, for the first time in Italy, at the Maramotti Collection in Reggio Emilia. A constant depiction of the human form - exploring the multiple ways it can exist and the flowing, expressive quality of the body - represents the formal result of TARWUK's deep, probing research into identity and the marks that memories and subconscious tensions leave on our bodies, shaping them physically. The artists, who were born in socialist Yugoslavia and grew up in the Balkans during the Croatian War of independence (1991-5), see their anatomically dissected sculptures as symbolising loss and conflict. However, they are also organisms with the potential for regeneration and rebirth: traces of beauty and the opportunity for transcendence can be glimpsed amidst the waste technological materials and signs of devastation. Drawing is another essential part of TARWUK's practice: TARWUK's drawings, which are fully fledged forms of expression, not preparatory works, have a dreamy and immediate quality, with echoes of late 19th-century and early 19th-century symbolism and the Vienna Secession, a period the artists see as a sort of equilibrium, a moment of balance between opposing tensions - death and beauty, decadence and decoration - that competed for dominance. The volume includes a text by Mario Diacono and a conversation between Bob Nickas and TARWUK. Text in English and Italian.

A master of colour and an ambitious cosmopolite: Hans Purrmann (1880-1966) was an authoritative figure who forged links in European Modernism both as an artist and a personality, as a stylist and a figure of social integration. The balance between a record of what he saw and the visual reflexion of painting as a form of expression hovers lightly in his pictures. As a young man Purrmann encountered the latest movements of the art of his time in Munich and Berlin, but after moving to Paris he established contact with the avant-garde in the circle of artists at the Cafe du Dome. He became a student and friend of Henri Matisse, with whom he ran an art school. Political events and the world wars turned Purrmann into an artist who travelled through Europe and who knew how to find his subjects based on the beauties of the world in every location. The book offers a representative cross-section through hisopulently colourful work. Text in English and Danish.

Works by nearly 100 of today's most prominent artists-including Willie Cole, Mark Dion, Mona Hatoum, Peter Saul, Yinka Shonibare, and Laurie Simmons-raise questions about the many issues that firearms trigger, leaving answers up to the reader. This invigorating survey of contemporary art and guns offers insight into the mixed associations of firearms in our culture. Situating these artworks within the contexts of fire domestication, weapon history, social movements, and art history, the book touches on subjects of power, equality, and access, and the current debates surrounding gun use. What emerges is the inherently dualistic nature of firearms, which are both protective and destructive, empowering and enfeebling, supporting peace and war, life and death. While this central ambivalence can't be captured in statistical data or media sound bites, it thrives within these complex visual works. This collection reveals a striking diversity of viewpoints on guns, highlighting their inescapable duplicity and the compelling role they have come to play within our lives and imaginations.

A New York Times best art book of 2022 An A to Z exploration of the Enlightenment's quest for understanding and change, as revealed in the era's prints and drawings Are volcanoes punishment from God? What do a fly and a mulberry have in common? What utopias await in unexplored corners of the earth and beyond? During the Enlightenment, questions like these were brought to life through an astonishing array of prints and drawings, helping shape public opinion and stir political change. Dare to Know overturns common assumptions about the age, using the era's proliferation of works on paper to tell a more nuanced story. Echoing the structure and sweep of Diderot's Encyclopedie, the book contains 26 thematic essays, organized A to Z, providing an unprecedented perspective on more than 50 artists, including Henry Fuseli, Jean-Honore Fragonard, Francisco Goya, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, William Hogarth, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Giambattista Tiepolo. With a multidisciplinary approach, the book probes developments in the natural sciences, technology, economics, and more-all through the lens of the graphic arts. Distributed for the Harvard Art Museums Exhibition Schedule: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (September 16, 2022-January 15, 2023)

This book collects the best artwork from the first five years of "Bad Dads," an annual exhibition of art inspired by the films of Wes Anderson. Curated by Spoke Art Gallery in San Francisco, "Bad Dads" has continued to grow and progress and has featured work from more than four hundred artists. From paintings to sculptures to limited-edition screen prints, the artworks vary greatly in style, but share the imagery and beloved characters from the mind of one of Hollywood's most noteworthy and imaginative filmmakers. The book features an original cover by graphic artist Max Dalton, a foreword by writer and director Wes Anderson himself, and an introduction by TV and movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz, author of the bestselling Wes Anderson Collection books.

A revealing investigation into Picasso's career-long fascination with the written word Throughout his life, Pablo Picasso had close friendships with writers and an abiding interest in the written word. This groundbreaking book, which draws on the collections of Yale University, traces the relationship that Picasso had with literature and writing in his life and work. Beginning with the artist's early associations with such writers as Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Pierre Reverdy, the book continues until the postwar period, by which time Picasso had become a worldwide celebrity. Distinguished authorities in art and literature explore the theme of Picasso and language from historical, linguistic, and visual perspectives and contextualize Picasso's work within a rich literary framework. Presenting fascinating archival materials and written in an accessible style, Picasso and the Allure of Language is essential reading for anyone interested in this great artist and the history of modernism. Published in association with the Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Schedule: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (January 27 - May 24, 2009) Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham (August 20, 2009 - January 3, 2010)

After Glow documents the New Nordic Porcelain Forum, a project which focuses on the Nordic tradition of porcelain production. The focal point is the collaborative work of 13 ceramic artists from the Scandinavian regions, who gathered for a residency in Denmark in 2019 and in 2021 for a two-week stay in various workshops associated with porcelain production in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. This publication not only serves as an exhibition catalogue, it offers insights into the important industrial and design histories of northern Europe, as well as into today's use of porcelain as an artistic medium. In doing so, it is hoped that the production of Nordic contemporary ceramics will advance to a new collaborative practice in order to transform and therefore preserve this important cultural heritage.

Within the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the world's leading museum of art and design, there lies an extraordinary wealth of material relating to a single individual: the playwright William Shakespeare. This book presents a fascinating selection of one hundred objects - often surprising, always delightful - chosen by the museum's curators for the insight each affords into the world of Shakespeare and his plays. The objects are drawn from across the V&A's rich and varied collections. There are paintings, sculptures, pieces of jewellery, engravings and figurines. There are posters and playbills, costume designs, photographs, illustrations and film stills. Also included are original costumes worn by Henry Irving, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Rudolf Nureyev and Ian McKellen. Amongst the more unexpected objects are a bed (the Great Bed of Ware, which Shakespeare mentions in Twelfth Night), a sword (presented to Edmund Kean after his performance as Macbeth) and a real human skull (Yorick to Jonathan Pryce's Hamlet). Some of the greatest Shakespearean performances and productions of all time are memorialised, including Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet, Ellen Terry's Lady Macbeth, John Gielgud's Lear, Olivier's Richard III, Paul Robeson's Othello, many of Henry Irving's performances, David Garrick's celebratory Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 and Peter Brook's iconic 1970 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Each object is illustrated in full colour and is accompanied by a compact essay on its history, its provenance, and what it has to tell us about Shakespeare and his plays, particularly in performance. The result is a book that not only underlines Shakespeare's infinite variety, but also reveals his astonishing legacy in material things, a substantial pageant that has not faded.

This catalogue of the Wyvern sculpture collection, which is not open to the public, comprises outstanding European sculptures of the medieval period, as well as some Late Antique and Byzantine pieces and related works of the post-medieval era. Objects are made from wood, stone (including alabaster and marble) and terracotta. Also included are medieval works of art in metal, mostly consisting of crucifix figures (corpora), and other functional metalware such as aquamanilia (water vessels for the washing of hands) and candlesticks. This sumptuous publication will interest all those concerned with the material culture of the Middle Ages.

The offering of gifts is a practice nearly as ancient and widespread as human culture itself. At courts throughout the Islamic world, the exchange of lavish gifts and endowments intimately linked art with diplomacy and royal ambitions, religion, and personal relationships. This beautifully illustrated book explores the complex interplay between artistic production and gift-based patronage by discussing works of great aesthetic refinement that were either commissioned or repurposed as gifts. By tracing the unique histories of certain artworks, the author reveals how the exchange of luxury objects was central to the circulation, emulation, and assimilation of artistic forms both within and beyond the Islamic world. The catalogue features seventy illustrations of artworks from the 8th to the 20th century. These include some of the most beautiful and least-known objects from the Islamic world, such as jewelry, armor and weaponry, enormous and ornate carpets, and illustrated copies of the Qur'an. Distributed for the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Museum of Islamic Art, Doha(03/19/12-06/02/12)

A rich reconsideration of a short-lived but visionary voice in twentieth-century American painting and his enduring relevance Bob Thompson (1937-1966) came to critical acclaim in the late 1950s for paintings of unparalleled figurative complexity and chromatic intensity. Thompson drew upon the Western art-historical canon to formulate a highly personal, expressive language. Tracing the African American artist's prolific, yet tragically brief, transatlantic career, this volume examines Thompson's outlier status and pays close attention to his sustained engagements with themes of community, visibility, and justice. As the contributors contextualize the artist's ambitions and his unique creative process, they reposition Thompson as a predecessor to contemporary artists such as Kerry James Marshall and Kehinde Wiley. Featuring an array of artwork, and never-before-published poems and archival materials, this study situates Thompson's extraordinary output within ongoing dialogues about the politics of representation. Published in association with Colby College Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME (July 20, 2021-January 9, 2022) Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago (February 10-May 15, 2022) High Museum of Art, Atlanta (June 18-September 11, 2022) Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (October 9, 2022-January 8, 2023)

A rich vein of the artist's mature work, depicting the foundations of landscape and place From the mid-1860s until shortly before his death, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) created 27 canvases that take rock formations as their principal subjects. This is the first publication to focus exclusively on these extraordinary works. It illustrates all of Cezanne's mature paintings of rock formations, including scenes of the terrain of the forest of Fontainebleau, the Mediterranean coastal village of L'Estaque, and the area around Aix-en-Provence, alongside examples of his watercolors of these subjects. An introductory essay by John Elderfield assesses these paintings in terms of their character, development, and relationship to Cezanne's other works; their critical interpretations; and their geological and corporeal associations. Faya Causey's essay examines the Provencal context of Cezanne's rock and quarry paintings, as well as the status of geology in France during the second half of the 19th century. The catalogue section, introduced by Anna Swinbourne, chronicles the sites, presenting details of where specifically the paintings were made and of the features that they represent, together with technical aspects of particular works. Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Princeton University Art Museum

A landmark survey of Sol LeWitt's printmaking practice The conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) is best known for his programmatic wall drawings and modular structures, but alongside these works he generated more than 350 print projects, comprising thousands of lithographs, silkscreens, etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, and linocuts. This generously illustrated volume is the first to take a comprehensive look at LeWitt's significant yet underexplored printmaking practice. Drawing together new archival research, interviews, and careful material and visual analyses, David S. Areford brilliantly situates LeWitt's prints within the broader context of his serial-, system-, and rule-based approach to artmaking. The specific processes of print media, Areford argues, were perfectly suited for LeWitt's particular brand of conceptual art, in which the "idea becomes the machine that makes the art." With over 400 illustrations, many never before published, this study offers a more complete picture of LeWitt's oeuvre-and the essential place printmaking holds in it. The result will deepen the understanding not only of the variety of LeWitt's output but of the genealogy of his distinct geometric and linear formal language.

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the Glasgow Style introduced Art Nouveau in Britain and helped transform an industrial city into Scotland's premier cultural capital. The predominant force behind the Glasgow Style was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, an architect and designer who personified the movement's intellectual freedom, sensuality, and spirit of collaboration. This lively and informative book showcases the work of Mackintosh and contextualizes it in relation to a larger circle of designers and craftspeople with which he shared sources, stylistic features, and patrons. Filled with color illustrations, archival materials, and essays, this volume explores every aspect of the Glasgow Style-from beautifully appointed homes and restaurants to everyday works of needlepoint, cups and saucers, stained glass windows, magazine illustrations, and textiles. It traces the birth of the Glasgow Style to The Glasgow School of Art, where Mackintosh met fellow students, including his future wife, who would form an influential circle nicknamed the "Immortals." And it reveals how the rise of the Glasgow Style went hand-in-hand with the founding of the city's Technical Arts School, where students trained in both industrial and artistic crafts, which helped establish a talented and creative workforce. Far-reaching and influential, the Glasgow Style improved nearly every facet of daily life. This book celebrates the immense achievements of Mackintosh and his fellow designers and highlights their impact in the United States and beyond.

Expertly crafted from thousands of tiny and intricately arranged pieces, micromosaics appear at first glance to be miniature paintings. Closer inspection reveals the extraordinary skill of the virtuoso makers, who were able to create exquisite images brimming with drama and atmosphere. Focusing on 30 highlights from the V&A's superlative Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection, which includes some of the finest examples of micromosaics made, this new book explores the technical aspects of micromosaic construction, its roots in antiquity, their incredible popularity in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and their evolution through the nineteenth century until the technique virtually vanished in the early 1900s

Central to the stories of many of the world's great art galleries are the acquisitions and bequests that shaped their collections. So it is with M+ - a new museum of visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong - and the M+ Sigg Collection. Acquired by the museum in 2012 from the Swiss businessman, diplomat and art collector Uli Sigg, the collection consists of 1,510 works of contemporary Chinese art, dating from the 1970s to the present and ranging across all media. Most significantly, perhaps, it offers a unique window on the remarkable flowering of experimental artistic practices in China during this time - a period of unprecedented social and economic change in the country that saw artists devise new, sometimes radical, approaches to artmaking, formulating new connections between art and society, and developing ground-breaking conceptual methodologies. Published to coincide with the presentation of the M+ Sigg Collection at the opening of the M+ building, Chinese Art Since 1970 features more than 600 works by more than 300 artists represented by the collection, among them Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei and Geng Jianyi. After introductory essays by Pi Li and Uli Sigg, an illustrated chronology spanning the years 1972 to 2020 highlights important social events, exhibitions and artistic movements to establish a context for the discussion of the featured artists and their work that follows. Punctuating this discussion are contributions from renowned art historians, curators and critics from across the globe on specific works and practices, together with in-depth explanations of key concepts and events, from Cynical Realism to the seminal exhibition China/Avant-Garde. Through the medium of the world's pre-eminent collection of contemporary Chinese art, Chinese Art Since 1970 offers an unparalleled introduction to one of the most culturally dynamic periods in modern Chinese history. With over 700 illustrations

With vivid memories of his first visit to the Scottish National Gallery in the 1970s and his initial encounter with Hugo van der Goes' The Trinity Altarpiece, Rembrandt's A Woman in Bed, Velazquez's An Old Woman Cooking Eggs and Degas' Diego Martelli, Robert Storr discusses the shifting balance of museum collections from historically 'certified' classics to art whose status and significance remains in active contention and from singular 'treasures' to ensembles that speak to the larger scope of an artist's endeavour. Also Available: Unfinished Paintings: Narratives of the Non-Finito Watson Gordon Lecture 2014 (ISBN 9781906270919), 'The Hardest Kind of Archetype': Reflections on Roy Lichtenstein The Watson Gordon Lecture 2010 (ISBN 9781906270384), Picasso's 'Toys for Adults' Cubism as Surrealism: The Watson Gordon Lecture 2008 (ISBN 9781906270261), Sound, Silence, and Modernity in Dutch Pictures of Manners The Watson Gordon Lecture 2007 (ISBN 9781906270254), Roger Fry's Journey From the Primitives to the Post-Impressionists: Watson Gordon Lecture 2006 (ISBN 9781906270117).

The collection of pictures at Wilton has been celebrated since the seventeenth century; and its historic arrangement is uniquely well documented in a series of catalogues of which the first, issued in 1731, was the earliest such publication about any private collection in England. Of successive owners of the house, three made significant contributions: William, 4th Earl of Pembroke, who commissioned van Dyck's monumental portrait of his family that dominates the Double Cube Room he had created; his grandson, Thomas, 8th Earl of Pembroke who assembled what was in some respects a pioneering collection of old master pictures for the house; and his grandson, Henry, 10th Earl of Pembroke, patron of Reynolds and Wilson, among others. Such masterpieces as Lucas van Leyden's Card Players, Cesare da Sesto's Leda - long attributed to Leonardo - and Ribera's Democritus are matched by remarkable portrait drawings by Raphael and Holbein. These are complemented by a substantial deposit of family portraits and other pictures that attest to the tastes and interests of successive generations of the Herbert family.

A unique blend of graphic design, bold art or photography and cunning psychology, election posters are an unsung art form, stretching back to the dawn of the twentieth century. Exploiting the Conservative Party Archive held at the Bodleian Library which contains over 700 posters, this book charts the evolution of the Conservatives' election posters. Divided into chapters along political periods, the book highlights the changing fashions in and attitudes to advertising, political ideology, slogans, combativeness and above all, propriety. Each chapter includes a brief introduction discussing the major themes of the period as well as captions explaining specific issues related to the individual posters. Lavishly illustrated, 'Dole Queues to Demons' gives a fascinating insight into the issues and strategies of the Conservative Party throughout the twentieth century, and up to the present day. A foreword by advertising guru Maurice Saatchi discusses the posters from a communication and design perspective. This book will fascinate anyone interested in social and political history and modern communications. Published at a time when the advent of new media threatens to herald the end of traditional forms of mass communication, this book takes a timely retrospective look at this enduring feature of the British electoral landscape.