The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, holds stunning examples of jewellery and metalwork from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This exceptional period of design covers the neo-Gothic and historicist designs of the mid- to late nineteenth century, the groundbreaking work of British Arts & Crafts designers, sinuous curves influenced by the European Art Nouveau movement and the structural modernity of the 1930s. The collection contains jewellery by some of the finest historicist designers, including the Castellani and Giuliano families and John Brogden, as well as a spectacular decanter by William Burges. There are important pieces of jewellery and silver by the most famous of Arts & Crafts designers, including C.R. Ashbee, Henry Wilson, Gilbert Marks and John Paul Cooper. Unique pieces designed by the artist Charles Ricketts hold a special place in the history of queer art in Britain, having been designed for his friends Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, a couple known collectively as Michael Field. Modernist silver is represented by leaders of the field Omar Ramsden and H.G. Murphy. This beautifully illustrated volume reproduces 70 of the Museum's most important pieces from this period, many previously unpublished, with comparative illustrations of some of the original designs. Importantly, the book is arranged chronologically by designer and includes biographies, a description of their work and how it changed over time, as well as commentary about the specific works in the Museum's collection. The resulting book therefore brings together for the first time the Fitzwilliam's exceptionally fine holdings of jewellery and metalwork from this highly popular and fruitful period of design.

For the first time, explore John Singer Sargent's fascination with Spain as seen in stunning landscapes, architectural views, figure studies, and scenes of everyday life American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) experienced Spain, including the picturesque island of Majorca, as a source of rejuvenation and inspiration. Sargent and Spain features scores of the artist's dazzling watercolors, oil paintings, and drawings, from landscapes and seascapes to architectural studies, scenes of everyday life, and sympathetic portraits of the Roma and other local people he encountered. Immersing himself in the country's rich culture, he studied Spanish masters old and new, lavishing particular attention on works by Diego Velazquez in the Prado. He rendered the distinctive architecture of the Alhambra as well as other palaces and churches, and he captured lively scenes of ports and villages. Intrigued by Spanish dance and music, Sargent created dynamic views of flamenco and the famous dancer La Carmencita. A map and an illustrated chronology document the artist's seven trips to and travels through Spain. This handsome book showcases, for the first time, Sargent's captivation with Spain and the remarkable works of art now associated with it. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery of Art, Washington (October 2, 2022-January 2, 2023) Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor (February 11-May 14, 2023)

Inspired by the fortunes and misfortunes of the Getty family, whose most extraordinary and troubled episode - the kidnap and ransom of grandson Paul Getty - is now a major motion picture, directed by Ridley Scott, from a screenplay written by David Scarpa and starring Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer and Mark Wahlberg.

The Royal Castle in Warsaw is one of the most important museums-residences in Poland. Its history and the provenance of its collections are extremely complex and symbolise the turbulent history of the country. The last king of Poland, Stanislaw August, created a great collection of works of art and commissioned the interior design in a classicist style. With the loss of independence by Poland, works of art and furnishings were transported to Russia, then later returned under the Treaty of Riga in 1921. Looted by the Germans during World War II, the Castle was blown up in 1944. The castle finished being rebuilt in 1984 and today is a museum of interiors and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The highlights of the Castle's collections include paintings by Rembrandt and Canaletto as well as valuable objects of decorative arts and historical memorabilia, showcased in this latest Director's Choice with the expertise of Director Wojciech Falkowski.

Dante (the seventh centenary of whose death is being marked in 2021), the author of one of the greatest works of European literature, has also inspired a wealth of images which, themselves, continue to shape our perceptions of the poet as visionary; of romantic love and political corruption; and of hell and salvation, whether understood in the context of this world or another. At the core of the Comedy and of its related visual images is the emblematic significance of the lives of individual persons. Dante may be considered the inventor of our modern ideas of fame and celebrity. He was the first person who, though of no particular distinction in the world - a mere poet - became a celebrity in his own lifetime. And in the Comedy, Dante made famous individuals about whom we should otherwise know nothing. For the first time, poetry turned obscurities into household names - the doomed adulterous lovers, Paolo and Francesca; Ciacco the glutton; the gentle personality of La Pia. The radical democracy of Dante's perspective had no precedent. Dante also questioned the significance and value of worldly fame. His reflection on the human desire for notoriety is paradigmatic for our own society of spectacle, in which (as Andy Warhol predicted) 'everyone will be world-famous for five minutes'. Dante himself was keenly aware of religious warnings about the futility of worldly vanity; yet he arrived at a personal conviction that the earthly fame of the poet could none the less be a force for good.

* * Winner of the 2017 Silver Medal for Fine Art (National Level) from the Independent Publisher Book Awards * * Featuring dozens of stunning Japanese woodblock prints, textiles, serving vessels and thoughtful essays, Seduction paints a vibrant and provocative picture of Japan's Uikoyo-e or 'floating world.' 'The Floating World' was catch phrase that defined the pleasure quarters of Edo-period Japan's (1615-1868) and conveyed a fantasy realm where men were led to believe they could drift aimlessly in the pursuit of pleasure. Brothels were a prominent feature, but other entertainments, such as theater, music, and wrestling were also offered. Pursuit of such pleasures prompted a revolution in fashion, literature, and the visual arts, as the pleasure district was marketed not just through the offer of sex but rather through the elaboration of the seductive image of a sophisticated demimonde that beckoned visitors. Seduction show how images of courtesans were constructed as objects of desire, and it considers how the artistic version aligned with or departed from the reality of women's lives. It traces the ways that art was used to transport viewers to a constructed realm of sensory delights to stimulate desires and gratify fantasies of carefree pleasure. Editor Laura W. Allen offers an overview of the seductive spell cast by the floating world and provides helpful entries on each of the featured objects. Essays by Melinda Takeuchi, Eric C. Rath, and Julia Meech introduce the floating world, consider the role of food in the pleasure quarter, and explore the feminine gaze in the Japanese print. A translation of the texts on the Hishikawa Moronobu scroll is included. The result is a fascinating study of the way that visual objects were used to convey insider knowledge about the latest fashions in clothing, hairstyles, accessories, and even games. Armed with such knowledge, a visitor to the pleasure quarters would be prepared for the pursuit of love and other objects of desire.

An illustrated exploration of the largely unpublished collection of eighteenth-century French drawings, albums, and sketchbooks at the Bibliotheque nationale de France Promenades on Paper explores the largely unmined collection of eighteenth-century drawings held in the Department of Prints and Photography of the Bibliotheque nationale de France. Among the 50 featured artists are some of France's most celebrated eighteenth-century practitioners, including Madeleine Basseporte (1701-1780), Francois Boucher (1703-1770), Gabriel de Saint Aubin (1724-1780), and Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806), alongside architects, designers, and printmakers. Scattered across the institution's vast reserves, these drawings have until now served primarily documentary purposes. In this book, leading international scholars introduce more than 80 drawings, albums, and sketchbooks-many published here for the first time-and reveal how artists used drawing to record, critique, and try to improve the world around them. Distributed for the Clark Art Institute Exhibition Schedule: Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (December 17, 2022-March 12, 2023) Musee des Beaux-Arts de Tours (May 12-August 28, 2023)

A revelatory and informative presentation of the anti-apartheid posters created by Medu Art Ensemble

A revelatory and informative presentation of the anti-apartheid posters created by Medu Art Ensemble

Formed in the late 1970s, Medu Art Ensemble forcefully articulated a call to end the apartheid system’s racial segregation and violent injustice through posters that combined revolutionary imagery with bold slogans. Advocating for decolonization and majority (nonwhite) rule in South Africa and neighboring countries, Medu members were persecuted by the South African Defense Force and operated in exile across the border in Botswana.

The People Shall Govern! features nearly all the surviving posters that Medu created between 1979 and 1985. These objects are exceedingly rare, as they were originally smuggled into South Africa and mounted in public places, where they were regularly confiscated or torn down on sight. Offering new insight into the conceptual framework of Medu’s working practice and featuring a beautiful silkscreened cover, this volume examines the continuing relevance and impact...

A handsome volume of the renowned photographer's work from 2005 to 2021 Best known for his large-scale photographs, carefully constructed "near documentaries" created in collaboration with the subjects, Jeff Wall (b. 1946) is one of the most influential photographers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Often displayed as backlit color transparencies, Wall's works have helped define the use of color and painterly sensibilities in contemporary art photography. This volume collects over fifteen years' worth of new work from Jeff Wall in a lavish presentation that includes multiple gatefolds to better convey the scale of Wall's work. As a collection of Wall's most recent work, this volume will include numerous pieces that are as-yet unfamiliar to many of his fans. Chevrier's essay deftly summarizes the varied directions of Wall's recent work and contextualizes them within the body of work that precedes this volume; de Duve's and Campany's wide-ranging conversations with the artist cover the role of performance and the effects of spontaneity and scale, respectively. Distributed for Gagosian

In December 2020, spirits were low. The first tentative visitors had only just made it back through the doors of the Ashmolean after months of isolation, only for another lockdown to come crashing into view. The galleries went dark for a second time in a year. There's something uncanny about standing in the Museum when it's empty of visitors. You can sense a million human stories all around you, clamouring to be told to... no-one. So, we had to change tack. If we couldn't get people into the building, we could get the stories out. I started calling around curators, asking for their most uplifting tales in the collections. From bedrooms and garden sheds and kitchen tables, the Ashmolean team started recording themselves, sharing stories of joy and resilience to help keep us all going through the dark winter months of quarantine. The result was a podcast, Museum Secrets, which you can find on the Ashmolean's website. This book contains the highlights. These are stories you won't find on the labels. These are stories of the human experiences hidden in the Museum's cases and frames. They are stories that cheered us up when we needed it most, and I hope will continue to do so.

While the female nude has long played a conspicuous role in western iconography, the male nude has not always enjoyed such attention, or acceptance. This ode to the male physique celebrates the evolving, at one time illicit, art form from anonymous 19th century erotica through to contemporary work from David Hockney and Duane Michaels. Through the classic, the playful, and the provocative, it explores the compositions, postures, and role-playing of this often under-explored genre. Esteemed masters such as Herbert List, George Platt Lynes or Robert Mapplethorpe are all there, alongside Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, famed for his homoerotic images of nude youths in classical postures in Sicily. Further highlights include illustrations from Physique Pictorial, the leading organ of the mid-50s gay scene and a pioneer in gay publishing. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

The Walters Art Museum is among America's most distinctive museums, forging connections between people and art from cultures around the world and spanning seven millennia. The museum features a stunning array of objects, from richly illuminated Qur'ans and images of the Buddha, to captivating narrative paintings and artfully crafted ceramics and metalworks. Official publication in March 2023 celebrates the reopening of the Museum's Arts of Asia and Islam collections in the renovated and reinstalled 4th floor of the Centre Street Building. Arts Across Asia and Islam will be the first volume in a series of titles which break away from the traditional academic approach. It is built around themes that transcend period, form, locale and medium, and forms part of the Museum's wider initiative to focus resources on developing new ways of interpreting its collections.

The first volume in two centuries on Alexandre Lenoir's Museum of French Monuments in Paris, this study presents a comprehensive picture of a seminal project of French Revolutionary cultural policy, one crucial to the development of the modern museum institution. The book offers a new critical perspective of the Museum's importance and continuing relevance to the history of material culture and collecting, through juxtaposition with its main opponent, the respected connoisseur and theorist Quatremere de Quincy. This innovative approach highlights the cultural and intellectual context of the debate, situating it in the dilemmas of emerging modernity, the idea of nationhood, and changing attitudes to art and its histories. Open only from 1795 to 1816, the Museum of French Monuments was at once popular and controversial. The salvaged sculptures and architectural fragments that formed its collection presented the first chronological panorama of French art, which drew the public; it also drew the ire of critics, who saw the Museum as an offense against the monuments' artistic integrity. Underlying this localized conflict were emerging ideas about the nature of art and its relationship to history, which still define our understanding of notions of heritage, monument, and the museum.

While legend has it that Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) sold only one work during his lifetime, it was not long after his death that sales of his paintings began to shatter auction house records. In this carefully researched book, leading Van Gogh scholars provide us with a glimpse into classified client files and illuminate the critical role that the Thannhauser Gallery occupied in cultivating and shaping an early clientele for the artist's works. Founded in Munich in 1909, the Thannhauser Gallery was Germany's preeminent promoter of the avant-garde in the decades before World War II. In other European cities and in New York, the business thrived, selling an impressive number of Van Gogh's oeuvre: roughly 110 works, including many masterpieces, now part of museum collections all over the world. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines a history of contact between modern Europe and East Asia through three collectors: Henri Cernuschi, Emile Guimet, and Edmond de Goncourt. Drawing on a wealth of material including European travelogues of the East and Asian reports of the West, Ting Chang explores the politics of mobility and cross-cultural encounter in the nineteenth century. This book takes a new approach to museum studies and institutional critique by highlighting what is missing from the existing scholarship -- the foreign labors, social relations, and somatic experiences of travel that are constitutive of museums yet left out of their histories. The author explores how global trade and monetary theory shaped Cernuschi's collection of archaic Chinese bronze. Exchange systems, both material and immaterial, determined Guimet's museum of religious objects and Goncourt's private collection of Asian art. Bronze, porcelain, and prints articulated the shifting relations and frameworks of understanding between France, Japan, and China in a time of profound transformation. Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris thus looks at what Asian art was imagined to do for Europe. This book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in art history, travel imagery, museum studies, cross-cultural encounters, and modern transnational histories.

In early 1930's era Italy, bounty hunters and high flyers of all sorts rule the skies. The most cunning and skilled of these pilots is Porco Rosso, a man cursed with the head of a pig after watching the spirits of the pilots killed in the last air battle he fought in rise to the heavens. He now makes a living taking jobs, such as rescuing those kidnapped by air pirates. Donald Curtis, Porco's rival in the air and in catching the affections of women, provides a constant challenge to the hero, culminating in a hilarious, action-packed finale.

This volume commemorates a new exhibition of Burmese artifacts at the Musee Guimet in Paris and showcases the vibrant art and manuscript traditions of Myanmar. The central pieces displayed in the exhibition were three richly illustrated manuscripts called parabaiks. These vivid paintings, which show lively festivals and the pageantry of daily religious and courtly life, are a window into the culture and customs of nineteenth-century Burma. Also in the exhibition were a number of other manuscripts, inscriptions, diagrams, and even an ornate wooden model of a traditional Burmese monastery. The accompanying essays-translated from the original French exhibition booklet-explore complexities of the Burmese language, manuscript production, and background of the exhibited items as well as explaining the festivities and other spirited scenes illustrated in the parabaiks.

Artists' Corner in St Paul's Cathedral is the final resting place for some of the greatest artists working in the United Kingdom, including Turner, Leighton and Millais. British painters of the 19th century are shoulder to shoulder with artists from America and Continental Europe who made Britain their home and helped to shape national taste. Artists' Corner reflects a golden age of artistic production, when the visual arts were central to British cultural pride and identity, when the funerals of the cultural figures were occasions of national mourning, and their achievements were marked with monuments and enduring plaques. All of the painters and sculptors memorialised in Artists' Corner are brought together in this guide, with references to some of their master works which chart a trajectory from history painting to the arrival of impressionism and abstraction in the 20th century.

A lavishly illustrated monograph that spans the entire career of Gerhard Richter, one of the most celebrated contemporary artists "Spans the contemporary German artist's six-decade career. . . . [A] stirring exhibition in [its] own right."-New York Times "[A] weighty catalogue... illuminat[es] some less-visited corners of Richter's oeuvre."-New York Review of Books Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post-Second World War Germany, in both broad and very personal terms. This handsomely designed book features approximately 100 of his key canvases, from photo paintings created in the early 1960s to portraits and later large-scale abstract series, as well as select works in glass. New essays by eminent scholars address a variety of themes: Sheena Wagstaff evaluates the conceptual import of the artist's technique; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh discusses the poignant Birkenau paintings (2014); Peter Geimer explores the artist's enduring interest in photographic imagery; Briony Fer looks at Richter's family pictures against traditional painting genres and conventions; Brinda Kumar investigates the artist's engagement with landscape as a site of memory; Andre Rottmann considers the impact of randomization and chance on Richter's abstract works; and Hal Foster examines the glass and mirror works. As this book demonstrates, Richter's rich and varied oeuvre is a testament to the continued relevance of painting in contemporary art. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Met Breuer, New York (March 4-July 5, 2020) Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (August 14, 2020-January 19, 2021)

In terms of antiquarian fame, the Farnese Sarcophagus - elaborately carved with satyrs and maenads gathering grapes - may be the most important work of art in the Gardner collection, and perhaps of its type in America. A large, rectangular coffin of Pentelic marble, the Farnese Sarcophagus was exported from Athens to the area of Rome in the late Severan period, between c. 222 and 235 AD. The carving of the satyrs and maenads was especially suited to the artistic tastes of Mannerist and Baroque Rome, providing one of the most elegant examples of Greek imperial optic elongation to have survived from ancient times. Life Death& Revelry will offer a multi-disciplinary, multi-era look at this important monument. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum, Boston, it will bring together archaeological analyses of the piece and its previous restorations, and numerous Renaissance prints and drawings depicting the sarcophagus during its time in Rome.