Als Reprasentanten ihrer Herkunft und ihrer Verwendungsgeschichten gewinnen auch unbearbeitete Steine in politischen, nationalen ebenso wie in religioesen und asthetischen Kontexten Bedeutung. Oft wurden sie - wie die chinesischen Gartensteine aus dem Tai-See - unter schwierigen Bedingungen abgebaut, geborgen und uber weite Strecken transportiert. Aus sinologischer und kunsthistorischer Perspektive untersuchen die hier versammelten Beitrage den Transfer sowie die materialsemantischen Verheissungen von Steinen in unterschiedlichen Kulturen. Im Zentrum steht China mit seiner besonderen Geschichte der Wertschatzung von "Bruder Stein"; die kulturellen Praktiken und Reprasentationsformen in westlichen Landern und in Japan bilden dazu einen Vergleichsrahmen.

Featuring works by Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein and Robert Longo, Proof offers insight into the singularity of vision through which artists can reflect the social, cultural and political complexities of their times. Spanning eras and continents, each of these artists witnessed the turbulent transition from one century to another, experiencing the seismic impacts of revolution, civil rights movements and war. While Goya served church and king, Eisenstein the state, and Longo emerged during the rise of the contemporary art market--the dominant benefactors of each period--they all rose to prominence through developing nuanced practices that challenged expectations. With commissioned essays by journalist, activist and author Chris Hedges, artist Vadim Zakharov and Garage Chief Curator Kate Fowle, plus an interview with Longo, this book is published to accompany the exhibition of the same name.

Passage is a site-specific, two-channel video installation, which expands Nujoom Alghanem's experimentation with contemporary Arabic poetry through the language of film. Taking her quintessential 2009 poem, The Passerby Collects the Moonlight, as a point of departure, this installation explores the universal experience of displacement. This Brechtian conflation of reality and fiction, culminating in a scene that depicts Falak arriving at the pavilion in Venice, prompts the viewers to consider the parallelism between the film's three protagonists: the director, the actress and the fictional character. These three women of a similar age share the experience of similar dualities: the hidden and the revealed, fragility and power, belonging and displacement. The experience of passage and duality also permeates the design of the exhibition space, where visitors can enter and exit from either side of the pavilion. A large screen, diagonally positioned at the centre, divides the space into two symmetrical halves. The viewers are invited to engage both with Nujoom and Amal's real process of creating the film and with the cinematographic portrayal of the fictional character of Falak.

A richly illustrated commemoration of African Americans' roles in World War I highlighting how the wartime experience reshaped their lives and their communities after they returned home. This stunning book presents artifacts, medals, and photographs alongside powerful essays that together highlight the efforts of African Americans during World War I. As in many previous wars, black soldiers served the United States during the war, but they were assigned to segregated units and often relegated to labor and support duties rather than direct combat. Indeed this was the central paradox of the war: these men and women fought abroad to secure rights they did not yet have at home in the States. Black veterans' work during the conflict--and the respect they received from French allies but not their own US military--empowered them to return home and continue the fight for those rights. The book also presents the work of black citizens on the home front. Together their efforts laid the groundwork for later advances in the civil rights movement. We Return Fighting reminds readers not only of the central role of African American soldiers in the war that first made their country a world power. It also reveals the way the conflict shaped African American identity and lent fuel to their longstanding efforts to demand full civil rights and to stake their place in the country's cultural and political landscape.

Francis La Flesche (1857-1932) lived between two worlds: as an Umonhon (Omaha), he fought for their rights, and as a scholar he researched his own culture. He is regarded as the first indigenous ethnologist of North America and stands representatively for the many indigenous protagonists without whom ethnological collections would never have come into being. We are no longer familiar with most of these individuals, since the focus until today has been on European and North American collectors. Francis La Flesche is an exception: his work provides insights into indigenous agency and their resistance to racism and colonialism as well as their active participation in the trade with objects. The book presents La Flesche's records of the objects, the collection of which he contributed to what is today the Ethnological Museum in Berlin in 1894-an impressive testimony to his successful efforts to preserve the culture of the Omaha for future generations.

Protecting, healing, or punishing-people of various eras and origins have attributed such powers to the sculptures that are being presented together here for the first time: be it the sculpture of the Mangaaka from what is today the Republic of Congo, the protective goddess Mahamayuri from China, or the Maria on the globe from Southern Germany. Forty-five objects created between the fourth and the nineteenth century from two museums in Berlin provide a vivid testimony to the ever-present need for protection and orientation when dealing with individual or social crises. They represent the existence of an invisible world of gods, spirits, or ancestors, and create a connection between this world and a "different reality." As a result of how they are presented in museums, their context of use is, however, often lost-a situation that is reflected on by the authors of this book.

The term 'jar' refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar - regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as they may seem, such containers, storage vessels and urns are, as this book demonstrates, highly significant cultural and historical artefacts that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and otherworldly realms. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focuses on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents and meanings through time and throughout space. Transformative Jars brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars with backgrounds in curating, art history and anthropology to offer perspectives that go beyond archaeological approaches with detailed analyses of a broad range of objects. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption.

In this highly original study, Jeremy Braddock focuses on collective forms of modernist expression--the art collection, the anthology, and the archive--and their importance in the development of institutional and artistic culture in the United States.

Using extensive archival research, Braddock's study synthetically examines the overlooked practices of major American art collectors and literary editors: Albert Barnes, Alain Locke, Duncan Phillips, Alfred Kreymborg, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, Katherine Dreier, and Carl Van Vechten. He reveals the way collections were devised as both models for modernism's future institutionalization and culturally productive objects and aesthetic forms in themselves. Rather than anchoring his study in the familiar figures of the individual poet, artist, and work, Braddock gives us an entirely new account of how modernism was made, one centered on the figure of the collector and the practice of collecting.

"Collecting as Modernist Practice" demonstrates that modernism's cultural identity was secured not so much through the selection of a canon of significant works as by the development of new practices that shaped the social meaning of art. Braddock has us revisit the contested terrain of modernist culture prior to the dominance of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the university curriculum so that we might consider modernisms that could have been. Offering the most systematic review to date of the Barnes Foundation, an intellectual genealogy and analysis of "The New Negro" anthology, and studies of a wide range of hitherto ignored anthologies and archives, Braddock convincingly shows how artistic and literary collections helped define the modernist movement in the United States.

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

The grid often hides in plain sight, from notepads and spreadsheets to halftone photographic reproductions. It dominates the organisation, perception, and representation of the modern world, especially in print. Deeply embedded in a Western worldview, the grid visualises control, mastery, and order. As an invisible framing device, it has become so pervasive that we habitually ignore it. Yet when artists call our attention to the grid, its layered meanings come fully into view. On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print surveys photographs, prints, artist's books, and printed sculptures from the dynamic permanent collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. From 19th-century scientific and portrait photography to avant-garde and conceptual photography; from mid- 20th-century Minimalist, Pop Art, and Op Art printmaking to experimental bookmaking and photography in the 21st century, this richly illustrated volume explores how artists have embraced, rejected, and reclaimed the grid. By altering and challenging perception, they offer new ways of seeing the world. With contributions by Jared Bark, Jessica D. Brier, Lukas Felzmann, Stephen Frailey, John P. Murphy, Werner Pfeiffer, Alison Rossiter, Stephanie Syjuco, Rhiannon Skye Tafoya, Massimo Tarrida.

This transatlantic study analyses a missing chapter in the history of art collecting, the first art market bubble in the United States. In the decades following the Civil War, French art monopolized art collections across the United States. During this "Gilded Age picture rush," the commercial art system-art dealers, galleries, auction houses, exhibitions, museums, art journals, press coverage, art histories, and collection catalogues-established a strong foothold it has not relinquished to this day. In addition, a pervasive concern for improving aesthetics and providing the best contemporary art to educate the masses led to the formation not only of private art collections, but also of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the publication of art histories. Richly informed by collectors' and art dealers' diaries, letters, stock books, journals, and hitherto neglected art histories, The New York Market for French Art in the Gilded Age, 1867-1893 offers a fresh perspective on this trailblazing era.

A resplendent celebration of the spectacular fashion designs of Guo Pei, China's first and preeminent couturier Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy is a journey into the imaginative world of Guo Pei, China's first couturier and one of the world's most innovative fashion designers. Guo Pei has astonished fashion audiences from Beijing to Paris for over 20 years and made headlines in the U.S. as the designer of Rihanna's trailing yellow gown at the 2015 Met Gala. Known for dazzling designs which make the implausible possible, Guo Pei takes inspiration from sources as varied as China's imperial heritage, European architecture, and the botanical world; she has been sought for commissions by celebrities, royalty, and the Olympics. With more than 200 color illustrations highlighting 60 of her exquisite creations, this sumptuous volume showcases the garments' consummate craftsmanship, lavish embroidery, and unconventional dressmaking techniques, all of which are hallmarks of Guo Pei's work. In addition to its visual splendor, the book features a Q&A with the designer, a facsimile sketchbook, and a chronology tracing her career from its start at the Beijing Industrial School of Design to celebrated couturier. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Exhibition Schedule: Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (April 16-September 5, 2022)

A beautifully designed volume exploring the object collection of the influential American artist Richard Tuttle For Richard Tuttle (b. 1941), the object, as well as the work, is intended for communication. Where others find in history answers to the questions objects pose, Tuttle instead finds the questions that drive his art-asking us to think about what objects mean, and how. Richard Tuttle: What Is the Object? is the first publication to explore the influential American artist's object collection and the cards on which he has recorded his thoughts about these items over the past five decades. This volume, designed by the Belgian book artist Luc Derycke as a "book as object," carries forth the challenging question of the meaning of objects. It includes an interview with Tuttle, an analysis of objects in poetic nonfiction by Renee Gladman, and an essay about Tuttle's art as the pursuit of a kind of philosophical exploration by Peter N. Miller, as well as poems by Tuttle and a short, surrealist tale about the artist's objects. Tuttle's objects and index cards are beautifully photographed throughout by Bruce M. White in this lavishly illustrated volume. Distributed for Bard Graduate Center Exhibition Schedule: Bard Graduate Center, New York (March 25-July 10, 2022)

The first in-depth examination of Matisse's work in the 1930s, a key decade of creative innovation and renewal for this celebrated artist In 1930, as Henri Matisse (1869-1954) embarked on The Dance, a monumental mural commissioned by the American collector Albert C. Barnes, he began experimenting in ways that would permanently change the nature of his work. The use of pre-painted cut papers to lay out his compositions led to a new style of flat tones and bold shapes. He also increasingly used serial imagery to make visible his creative process, aiming to capture the flux of his own perceptions and emotions in the work of art. This volume highlights and explains pivotal transformations in Matisse's work in the 1930s across a range of media, including mural and easel painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, and the illustrated book. The transatlantic contributors also look at the relationship between Matisse and the Parisian art journal Cahiers d'art, which played an outsized role in publicizing Matisse's work during this period, and consider his exhibitions, his ongoing involvement with decorative painting, his studio as a creative laboratory, and the role of his model and muse Lydia Delectorskaya in his studio practice. Published in association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Musees d'Orsay et de l'Orangerie Exhibition Schedule: Philadelphia Museum of Art (October 20, 2022-January 29, 2023) Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris (February 28-May 29, 2023) Musee Matisse, Nice (June 23-September 24, 2023)

Featuring a wide array of iconic rock posters, period photographs, music memorabilia and light shows, "out-of-this-world" clothing, and avant-garde films, this catalogue celebrates San Francisco's rebellious and colorful counterculture that blossomed in the years surrounding the 1967 Summer of Love. This book explores, through essays and a succession of thematic plates, the visual and material cultures of a generation searching for personal fulfillment and social change. Presenting key cultural artifacts of the time, Summer of Love introduces and explores the events and experiences that today define this dynamic era. With essays by Victoria Binder, Dennis McNally, and Joel Selvin. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Exhibition dates: de Young, San Francisco: April 8-August 20, 2017

Published to accompany a major new exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre, this book examines the spectacular and controversial vision of art practice that raged across the Western world from the end of the 19th century: Art Nouveau. The role of nature is a key focus of the exhibition. The common theme of translating plants into patterns will be explored as a defining feature of the modern style. Art and objects will represent Art Nouveau from different countries, where it appeared characterised as flowing, tensile line, and dramatic movement, or by organic imagery combined with an informal geometry. Artists and designers include Rene Lalique, Edgar Degas, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, William Morris; Alphonse Mucha and Gabriel Dante Rossetti.