At once artist, composer, poet, editor, photographer, curator, gallerist and collector, Edouard Leon Theodore Mesens (1903-1971) was a formidably prolific and visible presence in European Dada and Surrealism. A close friend to Tristan Tzara, Theo van Doesburg and Erik Satie, Mesens orchestrated Rene Magritte's international breakthrough and introduced the Surrealist movement to the United Kingdom, thus forging links between the Belgian, British and French branches of the movement. His collages and artworks, with their vacated spaces and odd geometries, recall the early work of de Chirico or the Dada collages of Raoul Hausmann. This superbly produced volume is the first substantial monograph on Mesens, who has long been a cult figure and object of intrigue (thanks in part to George Melly's account of his menage-a-trois with Mesens and his wife, in his autobiographical writings). Mesens' art and life provide a crucial piece of the Surrealist puzzle.

This superbly illustrated volume brings together the work of some the world's best manga illustrators, showcasing their exceptional talent across a diverse range of manga styles - such as Chibi, Kodomo, Shojo, Seinen, and more. The work of each artist is accompanied by a brief biography in which they reveal their inspirations, the challenges they face when creating work, and the processes and materials they use.

No art form is more associated with the Native Americans of the Southwest than pottery. For centuries, Pueblo people have made beautiful pottery, often painted with intricate designs, for everyday activities such as cooking, food storage and gathering water, and for ceremonial use. Vessels of these types have been found at ancient sites including Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. The tradition of pottery-making continues to thrive among Pueblo communities in the Southwest, and while pottery is still made for practical purposes, it is also commonly produced for the art market. Since the time of the Ancestral Puebloans, pottery has been made predominantly by women. The pots are created from natural clay using a coil method; they are hand-painted and then fired outdoors. Designs vary from one Pueblo to another, but many symbols and motifs are shared by the Pueblos. An impressive survey of more than 100 pieces of historic Pueblo pottery, Grounded in Clay is remarkable for the fact that its content has been selected by Pueblo community members. Rather than relying on Anglo-American art historical interpretations, this book foregrounds Native American voices and perspectives. More than 60 participants from 21 Pueblo communities in the Southwest - among them potters and other artists, as well as writers, curators and community leaders - chose one or two pieces from the collections of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Vilcek Collection in New York. They were then given the freedom to express their thoughts in whichever written form they wished, prose or poem. Their lively, varied contributions reveal the pottery to be not only a utilitarian art form but also a powerfully intangible element that sits at the heart of Pueblo cultures. With magnificent photography throughout, Grounded in Clay showcases the extraordinary history and beauty of Pueblo pottery while bringing to life the complex narratives and stories of this most essential of Native American arts.

Oftentimes exhibitions tack on access once the artwork has already been executed and ready to be installed in the museum or gallery. But what if the artists were to ponder access as an integral and critical part of their artwork? Can access be creative and experimental? And furthermore, can the curator also fold access into their practice, while working collaboratively with artists, considering it as a theoretical and practical generative force that seeks to make an exhibition more engaging for a wider diversity of audiences? This volume includes essays by a growing number of artists, curators, and scholars who ponder these ideas of ad-hoc, experimental and underground approaches within exhibition-making and artistic practices. It considers how, through these nascent exhibition models and art practices, enhanced experiences of access in the museum can be a shared responsibility amongst museum workers, curators, and artists, in tandem with the public, so that access becomes a zone of intellectual and creative "accommodation," rather than strictly a discourse on policy. The book provides innovative case studies which provide a template for how access might be implemented by individuals, artists, curators, museum administrators and educators given the growing need to offer as many modalities of access as possible within cultural institutions. This book shows that anyone can be a curator of access and demonstrates how to approach access in a way that goes beyond protocol and policy. It will thus be of interest to students and scholars engaged in the study of museums, art history and visual culture, disability, culture, and communication.

Ever since her student years at Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, Louisa Clement (b. 1987) has investigated the transformation of human communication, especially in digital space and social media. One of her primary interests is the increasingly widespread display of idealised self-portraits. For her most recent work, entitled Reprasentantinnen/ Representative, Clement has created copies of herself that are as fascinating as they are unsettling. In collaboration with a Chinese company specialising in the manufacture of sex dolls, she commissioned life-sized manikins to be made based on parameters of her body that were calculated with the help of body scans, microphotographs, and video recordings of movements. With movable parts and sexually functional, these dolls not only have the same face as their creator, but are programmed to imitate the artist's facial expressions and to communicate and interact with spectators and the surrounding world This publication documents Clement's work and explores various technical, psychological, economic, and ethical questions raised by it. The book also features a sound box that allows it to interact with its readers. Text in English and German.

Diamonds tell stories that are captivating and timeless. On the one hand, they are just stones, pieces of pure carbon with optical properties that make them glitter and sparkle like stars. On the other, they are mystical entities hypnotically drawing the viewer into a time machine as it were, wherein a cinematic montage of their journey unfolds. Diamonds Across Time presents a sweeping overview of diamonds across time and space, featuring ten essays by world-renowned scholars in love the stone. Here, these authors present new discoveries; explore extraordinary collections; investigate histories, science, and trade; the nature of diamonds; legendary gems, jewellery collections, and great designers. Above all, they tell the human stories that underpin the adoration of diamonds. Diamonds Across Time is a richly illustrated publication with high-quality images of gems and jewels, archival documents, rare drawings, and fabulous photographs. The volume places diamonds in the context of the time in which they were discovered, and on the political, social, and cultural stage on which their histories were etched. In a rapidly changing world, diamonds are eternal. They were created by nature and grew in the womb of the earth. They tell stories, and they record history. With this book, diamonds will finally have their own storytellers. The book was compiled and edited by the World Diamond Museum's chief curator and world-renowned jewellery expert Dr. Usha R Balakrishnan. She and nine other distinguished authors wrote ten monographs written in the order in appearance: Introduction; The Nizam Diamond: Bala Koh-i-Noor, in the Sacred Trust of the Nizam of Hyderabad - Usha R. Balakrishnan; Diamonds of the French Crown Jewels: Between East and West - Francois Farges; A Concise History of Diamonds from Borneo - Derek J. Content; Indian Diamonds and the Portuguese Duriing the Rise of the Mughal Empire - Hugo Miguel Crespo; Two Large Diamonds from India - Jack Ogden The Romanov Diamonds: History of Splendour - Stefano Papi; The Londonderry Jewels, 1819-1959 - Diana Scarisbrick; Dress to Impress in Southeast Asia - Rene Brus; Powerful Women, Important Diamonds - Ruth Peltason; One in Ten Thousand: The Unique World of Coloured Diamonds - John M. King.

A beautifully illustrated exploration of opulent tastes and the power of patronage in 18th-century Britain The central decades of the eighteenth century in Britain were crucial to the history of European taste and design. One of the period's most important campaigns of patronage and collecting was that of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland: Sir Hugh Smithson (1712-86) and Lady Elizabeth Seymour Percy (1716-76). This book examines four houses they refurbished in eclectic architectural styles-Stanwick Hall, Northumberland House, Syon House, and Alnwick Castle-alongside the innumerable objects they collected, their funerary monuments, and their persistent engagement in Georgian London's public sphere. Over the years, their commissions embraced or pioneered styles as varied as Palladianism, rococo, neoclassicism, and Gothic revival. Patrons of many artists and architects, they are revealed, particularly, as the greatest supporters of Robert Adam. In every instance, minute details contributed to large-scale projects expressing the Northumberlands' various aesthetic and cultural allegiances. Their development sheds light on the eclectic taste of Georgian Britain, the emergence of neoclassicism and historicism, and the cultures of the Grand Tour and the Enlightenment. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

The Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp is a house full of art. The museum today is internationally renowned as the home of the famous Dulle Griet ('Mad Meg') by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. For the locals living in Antwerp, the museum is above all a well-kept secret. At the same time, there is always amazement that so much beauty could be brought together in one place. Who built this collection? The museum is housed in an historic building that recalls two individuals, Henriette van den Bergh (1838-1920) and Fritz Mayer van den Bergh (1858-1901). The entire collection was assembled by Fritz, a man with a keen interest in the Medieval Renaissance periods. Following Fritz's early and unexpected death on 4 May 1901, it was his mother, Henriette van den Bergh, who had the museum built to house his art collection. By doing so, she preserved this exceptional collection and at the same time succeeded in keeping alive a memorial to her son. The museum opened its doors in 1904. This book offers an insight into the history of the museum and its founders. It is based on in-depth research carried out in the archive of Museum Mayer van den Bergh, which among other things contains the rich correspondence between Fritz and Henriette as well as an extensive photo collection. Over four chapters, the book explores the personalities behind the collection, their social background and networks, their interests and their modus operandi. More than anything else, this is the story of Henriette van den Bergh, the founder of the museum, who died 100 years ago. With her visionary projects, she proved herself not only to be a forceful personality, but also someone with a forward-looking organisational talent and an entrepreneur with an exceptional mission - and all in a period when the involvement of women in public life was anything but the norm.

Exhibiting the empire considers how a whole range of cultural products - from paintings, prints, photographs, panoramas and 'popular' texts to ephemera, newspapers and the press, theatre and music, exhibitions, institutions and architecture - were used to record, celebrate and question the development of the British Empire. It represents a significant and original contribution to our understanding of the relationship between culture and empire. Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, individual chapters bring fresh perspectives to the interpretation of media, material culture and display, and their interaction with history. Taken together, this collection suggests that the history of empire needs to be, in part at least, a history of display and of reception. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in British history, the history of empire, art history and the history of museums and collecting. -- .

The Louvre Museum houses many of the world's most celebrated and important art of all time -- from da Vinci's Mona Lisa to Vermeer's The Lacemaker -- making it also the most visited art museum in the world. The Louvre: All the Paintings allows you to experience every painting currently on display in the permanent collection in Paris, without ever having to step on a plane. Divided and organized into the four main painting collections of the museum -- the Italian School, the Northern School, the Spanish School, and the French School -- the paintings are then presented chronologically by the artists' date of birth. Four hundred of the most iconic and significant paintings are illuminated with 300-word discussions by art historians Anja Grebe and Vincent Pomarede on the key attributes of the work, what to look for when viewing, the artist's inspirations and techniques, biographical information on the artist, the artist's overall impact on history, and more. Immerse yourself in the wonder and dazzling display of the Louvre without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home. Learn more about each artist and painting, and tour the realms of sensational masterpieces with this new paperback edition.

A study of two exhibitions that took place five years apart in the same building in Brussels city-centre Full House explores two exhibitions that took place five years apart in the same building in Brussels and featured over 300 contemporary art works from the renowned collection of Frederic de Goldschmidt. The first show, Not Really Really, was organized in 2016 in a building that had only been vacated a few months before by a mental health clinic. The works were mostly sculptures made with everyday objects and played with the ambiguity of what the last occupants could have left and what the artists purposefully created. The building then underwent a long renovation, with photos included illustrating this process. The second show, Inaspettatamente (Unexpectedly), then engaged with themes such as order and disorder, time, classification, the artist's process or his/her position in world conflicts using the prism of the famous Arte Povera artist Alighiero Boetti. Curatorial texts and images of the works both in context and in studio allow the reader to discover and appreciate both exhibitions. Distributed for Mercatorfonds Exhibition Schedule: Cloud Seven , Quai du commerce 7 (November 11, 2021-January 30, 2022)

This is a 'must-have' celebration of the highlights from the British Museum's world-famous collections.The British Museum is the most magnificent treasure-house in the world. The wealth and range of its collections is unequalled by any other national museum. The Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures, Egyptian mummies, drawings by Botticelli and Michelangelo, Assyrian reliefs, the Lewis Chessmen and the Sutton Hoo treasure are all to be found here. Treasures of the British Museum reveals and delights the reader with the intriguing stories behind these treasures and many more.This timely new edition brings the story up to date, with chapters on important acquisitions made by the Museum in the last fifteen years, including the Warren Cup and the 'Queen of the Night'. A beautiful redesign incorporating full colour photograph throughout gives this classic volume a fresh new look.

Now available in paperback, this definitive book explores the multidisciplinary career of one of the most experimental and pioneering artists of the 20th century. Encompassing the entirety of Isamu Noguchi's work in sculpture, ceramics, photography, architecture, design, as well as the artist's playscapes, gardens and stage sets for modern dance and theatre performance, this survey explores Noguchi's creative process and lesser-known aspects of his practice, his engagement with a wide range of mediums and cultures, and his innovative achievements over six decades. Brimming with imagery and contributions from an international range of authors, this book helps readers grasp the diversity and patterns of Noguchi's work both in situ and in galleries. Archival photographs of the artist's studios offer glimpses into his experimental attitude towards sculpture. Themes of harmony and dissonance, which were central to his practice, are explored in a series of essays that consider the artist's dual heritage, the Japanese American experience, his worldwide travel and his many influences. It also pays tribute to Noguchi's fruitful collaborations with creatives from a range of industries, such as R. Buckminster Fuller, Martha Graham and Louis Kahn. Throughout the monograph Noguchi's own words provide a critical backdrop towards understanding an artist who embraced many schools of thought, and whose entire life and career set an example for partnership and cooperation across artistic, political and cultural boundaries.

With a Probability of Being Seen. Dorothee and Konrad Fischer: Archives of an Attitude focuses primarily on the personality of Konrad Fischer - as a painter, as an exhibition maker and as a gallery owner. The influence of this key figure in the development of contemporary art from the 1960s to the 1990s is presented in the exhibition in three ways: through his own works, through archived documents and through the works of his artists, which he collected together with his wife Dorothee. Numerous documents and photographs, shown in public for the first time, convey a richly faceted picture of Konrad Fischer's activities and a captivating panorama of this great period of contemporary art in the Rhineland. This collection, too, testifies to the consistent attitude that characterised Konrad Fischer, an attitude that cannot be readily explained or quantified in material terms.