In the ambitious dream of a futurist reconstruction of the universe pursued by the movement founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, which ranged from the arts to the most diverse aspects of life, the renewal of postal communication methods also found its place, with proposals that covered the entire sector, from postcards to letterheads and envelopes, from stamps to interpersonal correspondence. Futurism, in fact, has not limited itself to using the post office network to spread its ideas in every part of the world, but also created a new postal style, conceiving many solutions of modern graphics and even post-postal correspondence via computer and cell phone, made up of synthesis, laconicity, conventional symbolism and abbreviations. The book explores this little-known chapter of Futurism through the material of the Echaurren Salaris Collection, the richest in the world with regard to magazines, posters, books and futurist documents, as well as an indispensable reference for the knowledge of this movement. Text in English and Italian.

A groundbreaking study of a remarkable artist, described by the New York Times as 'a figure ahead of her time'. The significance of Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970) as one of the most important figures in the history of Scandinavian art has only recently been recognized internationally. Beloved and renowned for her original contributions to modernist tapestry, Ryggen made radical political statements against Fascism and Nazism before and during the Second World War. Using primary sources, Ryggen expert Marit Paasche brings us a much fuller knowledge of the artist, weaving her life and work into a story that illuminates not only the artist herself, but also 20th-century art history in general. Hannah Ryggen's visually spellbinding tapestries, made on a homemade handloom in her small farm on the remote Norwegian coast, depict a wealth of subjects: Mussolini's Abyssinian campaign, her husband's internment in a Nazi camp in occupied Norway, the post-war growth of nuclear power, and media coverage of the Vietnam War. At once hard-hitting and humorous, her works combine personal candour, social and political engagement and visual majesty. Paasche explores both the artist's bold subject matter and particular balance of abstraction and figuration within the context of her life and beliefs. Including a comprehensive selection of works, this book provides an enthralling account of a remarkable, and unjustly overlooked, artist.

"Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970" is the first comprehensive study of the lives and artistic production of artists of Asian ancestry active in the United States before 1970. The publication features original essays by ten leading scholars, biographies of more than 150 artists, and over 400 reproductions of artwork, ephemera, and images of the artists.
Aside from a few artists such as Dong Kingman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, and Yun Gee, artists of Asian ancestry have received inadequate historical attention, even though many of them received wide critical acclaim during their productive years. This pioneering work recovers the extraordinarily impressive artistic production of numerous Asian Americans, and offers richly informed interpretations of a long-neglected art history. To unravel the complexity of Asian American art expression and its vital place in American art, the texts consider aesthetics, the social structures of art production and criticism, and national and international historical contexts.
Without a doubt, "Asian American Art" will profoundly influence our understanding of the history of art in America and the Asian American experience for years to come.

This is a guide to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation of Villa Favorita in Lugano. The Foundation's collection includes masterpieces of 19th- and 20th-century American painting and European and Soviet Avantgardes. Works range from the Hudson River School (Bierstadt, Church, Cole) to the major American Expressionists (Hawthorne, Hassam, Wadsworth, Thomson), to the periods of Cubism (Leger), German Expressionism (Nolde, Schmidt-Rortluff, Schiele), the Russian avant-garde (Larionov, Malevich), the Dada and Surrealist movements (Man Ray, Ernst), up to Action Painting (Pollock) and Hyper-realism (Estes). This brief guidebook displays the new installation of the Foundation and features a section devoted to the sculpture and old master paintings belonging to this collection, as well as an essay on the history of the Villa Favorita and its gardens on the shores of Lake Lugano.

Iconic Designs is a beautifully designed and illustrated guide to fifty classic 'things' - designs that we find in the city, in our homes and offices, on page and screen, and in our everyday lives. In her introduction, Grace Lees-Maffei explores what makes a design 'iconic', and fifty essays by leading design and cultural critics tell the story of each iconic 'thing', its innovative and unique qualities, and its journey to classic status. Subjects range from the late 19th century to the present day, and include the Sydney Opera House, the Post-It Note, Coco Chanel's classic suit, the Sony Walkman (TM), Hello Kitty (TM), the typeface Helvetica, the Ford Model T, Harry Beck's diagrammatic map of the London Underground and the Apple iMac G3. This handsome volume provides a treasure trove of 'stories' that will shed new light on the iconic designs that we use without thinking, aspire to possess, love or hate (or love to hate) and which form part of the fabric of our everyday lives.

Philip de Laszlo (1869-1937) was born into a humble Hungarian family in Budapest and rose to become the preeminent portrait artist working in Britain between 1907 and 1937. He painted nearly 3,000 portraits, including those of numerous kings and queens, four American presidents, and countless members of the European nobility. "Has any one painter ever before painted so many interesting and historical personages?" asked his contemporaries. There has been no biography of him since 1939, and this new account of both his life and his work draws on previously untapped material from the family archive of over 15,000 documents, to which the author has had unrivaled access. It establishes the intrinsic importance of his art and re-positions him in his rightful place alongside his great contemporaries John Singer Sargent, Sir John Lavery, and Giovanni Boldini.

Charlie James (1867-1937) was a premier carver and painter from the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation of British Columbia. Also known by his ceremonial name Yakuglas, he was hawker a prolific artist and activist during a period of severe oppression for First Nations people in Canada. Yakuglas' Legacy examines the life of Charlie James. During the early part of his career James created works primarily for ritual use within Kwakwaka'wakw society. However, in the 1920s, his art found a broader audience as he produced more miniatures and paintings. Through a balanced reading of the historical period and James' artistic production, Ronald W. Hawker argues that James' shift to contemporary art forms allowed the artist to make a critical statement about the vitality of Kwakwaka'wakw culture. Yakuglas' Legacy, aided by the inclusion of 123 colour illustrations, is at once a beautiful and poignant book about the impact of the Canadian project on Aboriginal people and their artistic response.

Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns each made a tremendous impact on modern art in the 20th century. As pioneers of revolutionary movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop art, they are key figures in the postwar transitions that brought American art to the forefront of the international scene. These latest volumes in the MoMA Artist Series, which explores important artists and favourite works in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, guide readers through a dozen of each artist's most memorable achievements. A short and lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of modern art and the artist's own life. These books provide a unique overview of the individuals who shaped the development of American art since mid-century and are excellent resources for readers interested in the stories behind the masterpieces of the modern canon.

Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies has inspired artists for almost a century. An early explorer who recognized the beauty of this alpine landscape was Jimmy Simpson, a legendary guide and outfitter who also collected art and painted in watercolours. He welcomed artists such as Carl Rungius, Belmore Browne and Peter and Catharine Whyte to his camp beside Bow Lake, which eventually became the storied Num-Ti-Jah Lodge. A.C. Leighton and his wife, Barbara, along with Walter J. Phillips were among the early artists at Bow Lake. This artistic tradition has been carried on with the current artist-in-residence program at Num-Ti-Jah, attracting many contemporary artists to paint the spectacular landscape. This volume includes an introduction describing the history of exploration and the early artistic activity generated by Jimmy Simpson, followed by brief biographies of 18 contemporary artists whose works are also included in the 47 colour plates, all documented and described, of which only 6 have ever been published before.

The Making of George Wyllie has been co-written by his elder daughter, Louise Wyllie, and arts journalist Jan Patience. Containing never-beforeseen images and fresh insight into his influences and early life, this book seeks to answer questions about the forces which shaped Wyllie's unique worldview.The voyage begins with Wyllie's Glasgow childhood - a period 'disadvantaged by happiness' - and moves on to time spent serving in the Pacific with the Royal Navy during WWII, where he witnessed first-hand the devastation caused by the world's first atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. After the war, like Robert Burns and Adam Smith before him, Wyllie became an Excisemen. He made 'time for art' in his forties, going on to create memorable public art works such as the life-sized Straw Locomotive, which hung from the Finnieston Crane in Glasgow, and the giant seaworthy Paper Boat, with the letters QM (Question Mark) on her side.By the time of his death at the age of ninety in 2012, this idiosyncratic self-taught artist had laid out his vision of himself as the artist-shaman, arrow in hand, making a last Cosmic Voyage.

In August 1946, Marcel Duchamp spent five weeks in Switzerland, and stayed at the Hotel Bellevue (today, Le Baron Tavernier) near Chexbres, on Lake Geneva. It was here that he discovered the Forestay waterfall, which was to become the starting point for (and ultimately the landscape of) his enigmatic and final masterpiece, "Etant donnes: 1 la chute d'eau, 2 le gaz d'eclairage" ("Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas"). Now, for the first time, the full significance of the choice of this waterfall is explored. Among the contributors to this volume are Caroline Bachmann, Stefan Banz, Etienne Barilier, Lars Blunck, Ecke Bonk, Paul B. Franklin, Antje von Graevenitz, Dalia Judovitz, Michael Luthy, Bernard Marcade, Herbert Molderings, Adeena Mey, Stanislaus von Moos, Francis M. Naumann, Mark Nelson, Molly Nesbit, Dominique Radrizzani, Roman Signer, Michael R. Taylor, Hans Maria de Wolf and Philip Ursprung.

The Caribbean has been traditionally associated with externally devised mappings and categories, thus appearing as a passive entity to be consumed and categorized. Challenging these forces and representations, Carlos Garrido Castellano argues that something more must be added to the discussion in order to address contemporary Caribbean visual creativity. Beyond Representation in Contemporary Caribbean Art arises from several years of field research and curatorial activity in museums, universities, and cultural institutions of Jamaica, Trinidad, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the United States. This book explores the ways in which Caribbean individuals and communities have recurred to art and visual creativity to create and sustain public spaces of discussion and social interaction. The book analyzes contemporary Caribbean art in relation to broader discussions of citizenship, cultural agency, critical geography, migration, and social justice. Covering a broad range of artistic projects, including curatorial practice, socially engaged art, institutional politics, public art, and performance, this book is about the imaginative ways in which Caribbean subjects and communities rearrange the sociocultural framework(s) they inhabit and share.

Claude Cahun is the most important artist you've never heard of - until now. Writer, photographer, lesbian; revolutionary activist, surrealist, resistance fighter - Cahun witnessed the birth of the Paris avant-garde, lived through two World Wars and, as 'Der Soldat ohne Namen', risked death by inciting mutiny on Nazi-occupied Jersey. And yet, she's until recently been merely a peripheral figure in these world-shaping events, relegated by academics to the footnotes in the history of art, sexual politics and revolutionary movements of the last century. Now more so than ever, Cahun demands a significant presence in the history of surrealism and the avant-garde - even, in the literary canon of early twentieth-century literature. Indeed her one major book, Disavowals, is a masterpiece of anti-memoir writing. Much has been made of her as a photographer, but Claude Cahun 'the writer' was one of the most radical and prescient leftists of the century. At a time when her star is rising like never before Claude Cahun: The Soldier With No Name represents the first explicit attempt in English to posit Cahun as an important figure in her own right, and to popularise one of the most prescient and influential artists of her generation.

A landmark compendium - the first authoritative publication to cover in its entirety one of the most significant holdings of Matisse in the world. Here is a vibrant celebration - slipcased and beautifully produced - of the Barnes's extraordinary Matisse collection. Composed of fifty-nine works from every stage of the artist's career, it is among the most important in the world. At its heart are Matisse's most historically significant paintings, Le Bonheur de vivre, also called The Joy of Life, and The Dance, the monumental mural that Albert C. Barnes commissioned to fill the lunettes of the Foundation's main gallery, transforming both the space and the artist's career. An essay by Yve-Alain Bois addresses the evolution of The Dance and its role in Matisse's career; Karen Butler looks at what Barnes thought of Matisse; and Claudine Grammont's considers how and why he collected his work. The artworks themselves, sumptuously reproduced, are the subjects of interpretive analyses that tell the stories of their acquisition and address their critical reception. The book includes major contributions by Barbara Buckley and Jennifer Mass on the artist’s technique and a report on the latest findings on the pigments used in Le Bonheur de vivre.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1899, and reborn in Paris in 1928, Eileen Agar was an artist whose work throughout her long career synthesized elements of the two main art movements of the twentieth century: Cubism and Surrealism. This monograph, the first full account of Agar's complete works, including paintings, collages, photographs and objects, comes at a time when there is a major revival of interest in Surrealism in the UK and worldwide. Drawing on personal conversations with the artist as well as original research, Michel Remy examines the life and work of the artist through-out her long career, from her passage through Cubism and abstraction to Surrealism, as well as her dedicated participation in Surreal-ist activities in England and abroad. Each period is illustrated with many striking images, including rare photographs, and supported by penetrating interpretations. The powerful myth-making drive that underlies Agar's output is revealed, as well the tenderness, humour, poetry, love of nature and the world, subversion of the laws of reality, and celebration of femininity that suffuses each of her works.This is a timely, fresh and cogent account of a fascinating woman artist whose quality of work, independence of mind and freedom of imagination refute the assertion that women have not played a major role in the story of Surrealism. The book will appeal to anyone interested in art history and Surrealism.

For those of advanced tastes, the Modern Movement was a welcome corrective to the debased aesthetics of the commercial world. The products of light industry were as untutored in the 1920s and 30s as massed housing and both took scant interest in the idealist thinking that sought to harness architecture and design to social progress. Robert Best, one of Britain’s leading industrialists in this period, shared the goal of better mass education but was troubled by Modernism’s promoters, for reasons that they found hard to understand. If the few knew better than the many, and had an obligation to elevate them whether they liked it or not, where did this leave the democratic principles that our liberal society prided itself on? Best felt that the campaign to popularise Functionalist design took propaganda into territory that had uncomfortable political overtones. In this extraordinary memoir, written in the early 1950s but never previously published, Best explored his concern about the sense of noblesse oblige that lay behind such bodies as the Council of Industrial Design, set up in 1944 ostensibly to raise the saleability and quality of British manufacturing but also, in his view, to brainwash the public into denying what it liked in favour of more cultivated but untested alternatives.

The tender roots of Modern Art can be seen in the wild sea paintings of Turner, as early as the mid 19th Century, but it took the Impressionists and the Pre-Raphaelites to break the elite classical mode, until the final blows were dealt in the early 1900s by Kandinsky, Klee and Picasso. Modern Art was a reaction to the gathering pace of industrialisation of the late Victorian world, and the desire for art that looked forwards not behind to classical myth and legend. But once the beast of modernism had been unleashed it fragmented into many different forms, each of which are explored in this striking, heavily illustrated new book.

In a series of newly commissioned essays by both established and emerging scholars, Globalization and Contemporary Art probes the effects of internationalist culture and politics on art across a variety of media. Globalization and Contemporary Art is the first anthology to consider the role and impact of art and artist in an increasingly borderless world. * First major anthology of essays concerned with the impact of globalization on contemporary art * Extensive bibliography and a full index designed to enable the reader to broaden knowledge of art and its relationship to globalization * Unique analysis of the contemporary art market and its operation in a globalized economy

'It is right that, after more than one hundred years, she should have her say' John Carey, Sunday Times

Twelve days before her twenty-fourth birthday, on the foggy morning of Saturday 12 January 1901, Ida Nettleship married Augustus John in a private ceremony at St Pancras Registry Office. The union went against the wishes of Ida's parents, who aspired to an altogether more conventional match for their eldest daughter. But Ida was in love with Augustus, a man of exceptional magnetism also studying at the Slade, and who would become one of the most famous artists of his time.

Ida's letters - to friends, to family and to Augustus - reveal a young woman of passion, intensity and wit. They tell of the scandal she brought on the Nettleship family and its consquences; of hurt and betrayal as the marriage evolved into a three-way affair when Augustus fell in love with another woman, Dorelia; of Ida's remarkable acceptance of Dorelia, their pregnancies and shared domesticity; of self-doubt, happiness and despair; and of finding the strength and courage to compromise and navigate her unorthodox marriage.

Ida is a naturally gifted writer, and it is with a candour, intimacy and social intelligence extraordinary for a woman of her period that her correspondence opens up her world. Ida John died aged just thirty of puerperal fever following the birth of her fifth son, but in these vivid, funny and sometimes devastatingly sad letters she is startlingly alive on the page.

Pierre Guariche (1926-1995) was a leading interior architect, furniture, and lighting designer in postwar France. He created a prolific body of work during what is known as the Thirty Glorious Years (1945-1975), a period of economic prosperity and high growth in France. He was an early adopter of industrial materials and production techniques that emerged during the 1950s, and is known for his remarkable lighting fixtures and simple, elegant furniture designs that could be manufactured on a large scale. He worked with innovative companies like Airborne, Steiner, and Pierre Disderot; he co-founded a design collective (Atelier de Recherche Plastique- ARP); and was the artistic director for the Meurop furniture company in Belgium. In advance of Charlotte Perriand in Les Arcs and Marcel Breuer in Flaine, he worked with the architect Michel Bezançon on the creation of La Plagne, the first comprehensive winter sports resort in France. Making use of unpublished archives, this book looks back on a rich itinerary of over 200 interior architecture and design projects, almost as many pieces of furniture, and a series of remarkable lighting fixtures (reissued today by Sammode) which shed light on the modernity and timeless elegance of this remarkable creator. Text in English and French.

Lemke's book proffers a bold new account of the origins of modernism. By focusing upon cubism, primitivist-modernism, jazz, and Josephine Baker's performance, Lemke demonstrates that black art exerted a crucial if masked presence in both Euro-American high art and popular culture. American and European modernism each owes much of its symbolic capital to its black cultural other.