'A woman can carry a bag, but it is the shoe that carries the woman' - Christian Louboutin Among designers of luxury shoes, there is one whose designs are instantly recognizable: Christian Louboutin. His iconic red soles can be seen everywhere from the red carpet, the silver screen and the catwalk to city streets around the world. From his early life in Paris to the founding of his first store in 1992, and from the red carpet to his global domination of the luxury shoe market, Little Book of Christian Louboutin charts the rise of the world's most celebrated shoe designer. Images of his designs past and present are accompanied by captivating text, describing the rise and rise of the king of shoe design.

The artist Mark Hearld finds his inspiration in the flora and fauna of the British countryside: a blue-eyed jay perched on an oak branch; two hares enjoying the spoils of an allotment; a mute swan standing at the frozen water's edge; and a sleek red fox prowling the fields. Hearld admires such twentieth-century artists as Edward Bawden, John Piper, Eric Ravilious and Enid Marx, and, like them, he chooses to work in a range of media - paint, print, collage, textiles and ceramics. Work Book is the first collection of Hearld's beguiling art. The works are grouped into nature-related themes introduced by Hearld, who narrates the story behind some of his creations and discusses his influences. He explains his particular love of collage, which he favours for its graphic quality and potential for strong composition. Art historian Simon Martin contributes an essay on Hearld's place in the English popular-art tradition, and also meets Hearld in his museum-like home to explore the artist's passion for collecting objects, his working methods and his startling ability to view the wonders of the natural world as if through a child's eyes.

*A National Bestseller* From the internationally bestselling artist Kerby Rosanes, an extraordinary coloring book celebrating some of the incredible animals and landscapes that are disappearing around the globe Fragile World is a coloring book to savor, exploring fifty-six endangered, vulnerable, and threatened animals and landscapes-from the Tapanuli orangutan to the hawksbill turtle, from Philippine bat caves to the Baltic Sea. The illustrations are intricate, detailed, and unforgettable, both magisterial and whimsical. And the result is a stunning tribute to Mother Nature. Fragile World is a coloring experience that is at once vintage Kerby and unlike any other.

The elegant Matisse retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 1992 was the first king-sized retrospective of Matisse's work anywhere in the world for more than twenty years. Appropriately labelled "the most beautiful show in the world," this giant new look at Matisse and his pursuit of pleasure was a consummate success. Henri Matisse: A Bio-Bibliography provides the scholar, student, artist, and layperson with an extended primary and secondary bibliography with which to study and enjoy this great artist. These works cover his life, career, oeuvre, and influence on other artists. Though many of the entries are annotated, this is not meant to be a critical guide; rather, it is a way to get to know a great artist through the literature surrounding him and his art.

No single living artist has created as many myths, rumors and legends as Banksy. In his home town of Bristol almost everyone seems to have a Banksy story. Many of the tales in this book are from Bristol and some are from further afield. What they share is that they are all told with the wide-eyed wonder which Banksy inspires. Compiled between 2009 and 2011, some of these stories are quite old and have been told so many times they have become the stuff of legend, while others are more questionable and best described as myths.

Some are laugh out loud bollocks and some are simply gossip. You be the judge. These stories illustrate the incredible audacity, originality and sheer bloody mindedness of Banksy, who obviously will be best remembered for his art and exposing the hypocrisy and idiocy of our modern lives. The myths will be viewed as a distraction to some or part of the appeal for others. One thing is certain, the art and the myths are both larger than life.

Theatre Studios explores the history of the studio model in England, first established by Konstantin Stanislavsky, Jacques Copeau and others in the early twentieth century, and later developed in the UK primarily by Michel Saint-Denis, George Devine, Michael Chekhov and Joan Littlewood, whose studios are the focus of this study. Cornford offers in-depth accounts of the radical, collective work of these leading theatre companies of the mid-twentieth century, considering the models of ensemble theatre-making that they developed and their remnants in the newly publicly-funded UK theatre establishment of the 1960s. In the process, this book develops an approach to understanding the politics of artistic practices rooted in the work of John Dewey, Antonio Gramsci and the standpoint feminists. It concludes by considering the legacy of the studio movement for twenty-first-century theatre, partly by tracking its echoes in the work of Secret Theatre at the Lyric, Hammersmith (2013-2015). Students and makers of theatre alike will find in this book a provocative and illuminating analysis of the politics of performance-making and a history of the theatre as a site for developing counterhegemonic, radically democratic, anti-individualist forms of cultural production.

World-renowned visionary artist John Harris' unique concept paintings capture the Universe on a massive scale, featuring everything from epic landscapes and towering cities to out-of-this-world science fiction vistas.
This collection focuses on his wide variety of futuristic art, as well as his striking covers for a variety of esteemed SF authors, including Arthur C Clarke, John Scalzi, Ben Bova, Hal Clement, Jack McDevitt, Frederik Pohl, Orson Scott Card's Enders books and many more.

This book identifies and examines three years of Beyonce's career as a pop mega star using critical race, feminist, and performance studies methodologies. This book explores how the careful choreography of Beyonce's image, voice, and public persona, coupled with her intelligent use of audio and visual mediums, makes her one of the most influential entertainers of the 21st century. Keleta-Mae proposes that 2013 to 2016 was a pivotal period in Beyonce's career and looks at three artistic projects that she created during that time: her self-titled debut visual album Beyonce, her video and live performance of 'Formation', and her second visual album Lemonade. By examining the progression of Beyonce's career during this period, and the impact it had politically, culturally, and socially, the author demonstrates how Beyonce brought 21st Century feminism into the mainstream through layered explorations of female blackness. Ideal for scholars and students of performance in the social and political spheres, and of course fans of Beyonce herself, this book examines the mega superstar's transition into a creator of art that engages with Black culture and Black life with increased thoughtfulness.

A racy account of the London contemporary art scene by celebrated art critic Matthew Collings, giving a snapshot of the new Bohemia of the 90s interwoven with episodes from the author's own life in London. From Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst, specially-commissioned photographs by documentary film-maker Ian MacMillan brings London's artists, dealers and critics face to face with the reader.

Surrealist women's writing: A critical exploration is the first sustained critical inquiry into the writing of women associated with surrealism. Featuring original essays by leading scholars of surrealism, the volume demonstrates the extent and the historical, linguistic, and culturally contextual breadth of this writing. It also highlights how the specifically surrealist poetics and politics of these writers' work intersect with and contribute to contemporary debates on, for example, gender, sexuality, subjectivity, otherness, anthropocentrism, and the environment. Drawing on a variety of innovative theoretical approaches, the essays in the volume focus on the writing of numerous women surrealists, many of whom have hitherto mainly been known for their visual rather than their literary production. These include Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Kay Sage, Colette Peignot, Suzanne Cesaire, Unica Zurn, Ithell Colquhoun, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and Rikki Ducornet. -- .

The latest addition to the 'Lives of the Artists' series: highly readable short biographies of the world's greatest artists David Hockney is the most famous living British artist. And he is arguably one of the more famous American artists as well. Emerging from the north of England in the 1960s, he made quite a splash in Swinging London as a portaitist, and went on to make a even bigger splash in Los Angeles when he moved there in the 1970s. His figurative paintings of the 1970s and 1980s captured the zeitgeist of West Coast living, while he also explored new avenues by constructing mosaics out of polaroids. By the beginning of the millennium, he returned to his Yorkshire roots, embarking on a new period of painting. This came to an end with the death by misadventure in his home of a young studio assistant in 2013. He went 'home' to LA and has in the intervening years begun a new period of contemplative portraiture.

Late in his life, confined to a chair or bed, Matisse transformed a simple technique into a medium for the creation of a major art. I have attained a form filtered to its essentials. Cutting dynamic shapes from painted paper, Matisse created his images. While producing pieces for Jazz, the artist used a large brush to write notes to himself on construction paper. The simple visual appearance of the words pleased Matisse, and he suggested using his reflective handwritten thoughts in juxtaposition with the images. The original edition of Jazz was an artist s book, printed in a limited quantity. This selection from the original is an exquisite suite of color plates and text that, like the music it was named for, was invented in a spirit of improvisation and spontaneity. These magnificent cut-outs of pure color celebrate the radiance and emotional intensity of the artist s oeuvre. "

Address book companion to the exciting and luxurious Flame Tree Notebooks. Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed, then foil stamped. And they're powerfully practical: a pocket at the back for receipts and scraps, two bookmarks and a solid magnetic side flap. These are perfect for personal use and make a dazzling gift. Produced in partnership with the National Gallery, this stunning address book features Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers. Vincent van Gogh painted a series of pictures depicting sunflowers, having first been inspired by the yellow flowers in Paris when he saw them growing in the gardens of Montmartre. Sunflowers were symbolic of life and hope to the artist, and could also be associated with his concept of the sun - glowing, yellow and hopeful.

Art and Science in Word and Image investigates the theme of 'riddles of form', exploring how discovery and innovation have functioned inter-dependently between art, literature and the sciences. Using the impact of evolutionary biologist D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form on Modernist practices as springboard into the theme, contributors consider engagements with mysteries of natural form in painting, photography, fiction, etc., as well as theories about cosmic forces, and other fields of knowledge and enquiry. Hence the collection also deals with topics including cultural inscriptions of gardens and landscapes, deconstructions of received history through word and image artworks and texts, experiments in poetic materiality, graphic re-mediations of classic fiction, and textual transactions with animation and photography. Contributors are: Dina Aleshina, Marcia Arbex, Donna T. Canada Smith, Calum Colvin, Francis Edeline, Philippe Enrico, Etienne Fevrier, Madeline B. Gangnes, Eric T. Haskell, Christina Ionescu, Tim Isherwood, Matthew Jarron, Philippe Kaenel, Judy Kendall, Catherine Lanone, Kristen Nassif, Solange Ribeiro de Oliveira, Eric Robertson, Frances Robertson, Cathy Roche-Liger, David Skilton, Melanie Stengele, Barry Sullivan, Alice Tarbuck, Frederik Van Dam.

Awarded an Honourable Mention by the Association for Israeli Studies. Exploring the politics of the image in the context of Israeli militarized visual culture, Civic Aesthetics examines both the omnipresence of militarism in Israeli culture and society and the way in which this omnipresence is articulated, enhanced, and contested within local contemporary visual art. Looking at a range of contemporary artworks through the lens of "civilian militarism", Roei employs the theory of various fields, including memory studies, gender studies, landscape theory, and aesthetics, to explore the potential of visual art to communicate military excesses to its viewers. This study builds on the specific sociological concerns of the chosen cases to discuss the complexities of visuality, the visible and non-visible, arguing for art's capacity to expose the scopic regimes that construct their visibility. Images and artworks are often read either out of context, on purely aesthetic or art-historical ground, or as cultural artefacts whose aesthetics play a minor role in their significance. This book breaks with both traditions as it approaches all art, both high and popular art, as part of the surrounding visual culture in which it is created and presented. This approach allows a new theory of the image to come forth, where the relation between the political and the aesthetic is one of exchange, rather than exclusion.

A documentary film by internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (born 1957), "Fairytale" chronicles the making of an installation-cum-performance of the same name. In 2007, Ai Weiwei invited 1001 Chinese citizens of varying ages and backgrounds to travel to Kassel, Germany, for one week each, all expenses paid. This 152-minute film describes the many challenges facing the artist and his volunteers in coordinating the work

After Egon Schiele (1890-1918) freed himself from the shadow of his mentor and role model Gustav Klimt, he had just ten years to inscribe his signature style into the annals of modernity before the Spanish flu claimed his life. Being a child prodigy quite aware of his own genius and a passionate provocateur, this didn't prove to be too big a challenge. His haggard, overstretched figures, extreme depiction of sexuality and self-portraits, in which he staged himself with emaciated facial expressions bordering between brilliance and madness, had none of the decorative quality of Klimt's hymns of love, sexuality and yearning devotion. Instead, Schiele's work spoke of a brutal honesty, one that would upset and irreversibly change Viennese society. Although his works were later defamed as "degenerate" and for a time were almost forgotten altogether, they influenced generations of artists-from Gunter Brus and Francis Bacon to Tracey Emin. Today, his then misunderstood oeuvre continues to fetch exorbitant prices on the international art market. This monograph, first published in an XL edition, is now available in a slightly abridged, more compact edition to celebrate TASCHEN's 40th anniversary and features the paintings and drawings that retrace the fertile last decade of Schiele's life. These works are accompanied by essays introducing his life and oeuvre, situating the Austrian master in the context of European Expressionism and charting his extraordinary legacy. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

* This collection builds a broad basis for a possible and necessary paradigmatic shift in the field of theater and performance historiography. * Would be recommended reading in for any undergraduate or master's level students studying theatre history, drama and dance. * The closest competitors do not explore the term 'entangled histories'. Therefore this collection breaks new ground by looking at this concept as a new paradigm in the field.

Ben Vautier, Niki De Saint Phalle, Francois Morellet, Louise Bourgeois, Alexandre Hollan, Claude Viallat, Sophie Calle, Bernard Pages, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Annette Messager, Gerard Titus-Carmel: eleven major French artists of the last forty years or so, examined in the light of their uniqueness and their rootedness, the specificities of their differing and at times overlapping plastic practices and the swirling and often highly hybridised conceptions entertained in regard to such practices. Thus does analysis range from discussion of the feisty, Fluxus-inspired, free-spirited funkiness of Ben Vautier s work to the various modes of transcendence of trauma and haunting fear generated by the exceptional gestures of Niki de Saint Phalle and Louise Bourgeois, to the alyrical formalism yet imbued with irony and ludicity of Francois Morellet, through to the serene intensities of Alexandre Hollan s "vies silencieuses," the infinite a-signatures of Claude Viallat s adventure in the sheer joy of a "poiein" of self-reflexive coloration, the powerfully elegant and muscular disarticulations of Bernard Pages sculpture, the great sweep through art s history implied by Jean-Pierre Pincemin s chameleon-like gestures, the vast swirling programme of socio-psychological analysis the arts of Annette Messager and Sophie Calle offer in their radically distinctive manners, the obsessively serialised oeuvre of Gerard Titus-Carmel allowing a burrowing deep into the opaque logic of a real though dubious presence to the world .