In small, stunningly rendered self-portraits, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted herself cracked open, hemorrhaging during a miscarriage, anesthetized on a hospital gurney, and weeping beside her own extracted heart. Her works are so incendiary in emotion and subject matter that one art critic suggested the walls of an exhibition be covered with asbestos.

In this beautiful book, art historian Hayden Herrera brings together numerous paintings and sketches by the amazing Mexican artist, documenting each with explanatory text that probes the influences in Kahlo's life and their meaning for her work. Included among the illustrations are more than eighty full-color paintings, as well as dozens of black-and-white pictures and line illustrations. Among the famous and little-known works included in Frida Kahlo: The Paintings are The Two Fridas, Self-Portrait as a Tehuana, Without Hope, The Dream, The Little Deer, Diego and I, Henry Ford Hospital, My Birth, and My Nurse and I. Here, too, are documentary photographs of Frida Kahlo and her world that help to illuminate the various stages of her life.

Great works of art cannot be fully understood in a single encounter: to revisit and reconsider art again and again throughout one's life is to be richly rewarded with an ever-deepening appreciation and insight. Similar benefits come from analysing a work of painting, sculpture or installation in detail. Modern Art in Detail: 75 Masterpieces spotlights the finer points that even connoisseurs may miss, casting light upon minutiae that a quick glance will almost certainly fail to reveal. These include subtle internal details, and the technical tricks employed by the artist to achieve particular effects. The book also looks at the themes and external and personal factors influencing the creation of an artwork - everything from global political events, to groundbreaking movements such as Cubism, Futurism and Primitivism, and even scientific and mathematical theories, which are often of great relevance. The book examines 75 works of modern art, from Vincent van Gogh's The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise (1890), to Paula Rego's Visions (2015) , deftly charting the shift from the supremacy of artistic technique to the more recent dominance of the idea (or concept) behind the artwork itself.

Title first published in 2003. In this detailed study of the landscapes and rural scenes of Britain and France made by artists like George Clausen, Philip Wilson Steer, Augustus John, Laura Knight, J. D. Fergusson and Spencer Gore, Ysanne Holt investigates the imaginary geographies behind the pictures and reconsiders the relationship between national identity, 'Englishness' and the native landscape. Combining close investigation of important works with a broader enquiry into the appeal of the Mediterranean for an age preoccupied with cultural degeneracy and bodily health, Ysanne Holt draws fascinating conclusions about the impact of modernism on the British tradition of landscape painting.

Futurism and early cinema shared a fascination with dynamic movement and speed, presenting both as harbingers of an emerging new way of life and new aesthetic criteria. And the Futurists quickly latched on to cinema as a device with great potential to manipulate our perceptions in order to create a new world. In the edited collection Futurist Cinema, Rossella Catanese explores that conjunction, bringing in avant-garde artists and their manifestos to show how painters and other artists turned to cinema as a model for overcoming the inherently static nature of painting in order to rethink it for a new era.

This title was first published 2003. In the twentieth century, Britain was rich in artistic achievement, especially in sculpture. Just some of those working in this field were Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Caro, Richard Long, Mona Hatoum and Anish Kapoor. The work of these and other known and less well-known artists has an astonishing variety and expressive power, a range and strength that has placed Britain at the hub of the artistic world. Alan Windsor has compiled a concise biographical dictionary of sculpture in Britain in book form. Richly informative and easy-to-use, this guide is an art-lover's and expert's essential reference. Written by scholars, the entries are cross-referenced and each concise biographical outline provides the relevant facts about the artist's life, a brief characterization of the artist's work, and, where appropriate, major bibliographical references.

Step into the world of Frida Kahlo: behind the portraits and the surrealist art discover the fascinating woman who has transfixed the world. Fridamania has made Frida Kahlo's image ubiquitous: she has been reborn as a Halloween costume, Barbie doll, children's book character, textile print, phone cover and the inspiration for everything from cocktails to fashion shoots. But it is more difficult to get a clear vision of this bold and brilliant, foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, hard-smoking, husband-stealing, occasionally bisexual, often bed-bound, wheelchair-using, needy, forthright and passionate woman. Hettie Judah sets out to correct that with this superb biography of one of the most charismatic artists of the last hundred years. Follow Frida's life through tumultuous love and life-altering accidents, towards recognition in the art world from the likes of Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp, to becoming the first Mexican artist held at the Louvre. Judah delves into Kahlo's experiences and how these came together to inspire the art that has been described as an uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. From an early battle with Polio, to a debilitating bus accident at 18, through love and heart ache, the life of Frida Kahlo was one of pain but a pain that bore great beauty. Hettie Judah is a contributing writer for publications including the Guardian, Vogue, The New York Times, Frieze and Art Quarterly. Lives of the Artists is a new series by Laurence King. Concise, highly readable biographies of some of the world's greatest artists written by authoritative and respected names from the world of art. Learn about the artist behind the masterpieces. Currently available: Andy Warhol and Artemisia Gentileschi

Vertigo seeks to document the surge of multimedia art driven by the advent of new technologies, including works produced by great names in art such as Balla, Warhol, Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Nam June Paik, and Laurie Anderson.

This title was first published in 2000: John Petts (1914-1991) is one of the outstanding wood-engravers of the twentieth century. His stunning prints featuring Welsh mountains and the people who live amongst them reflect his deep concern for the history of the land and are distinguished by his profound understanding of the physical and psychological properties of light. Extensively illustrated, John Petts and the Caseg Press spans the entire career of this reclusive artist and offers the first account of the private press he founded in Snowdonia in 1937. In 1935, John Petts and Brenda Chamberlain abandoned their studentships at the Royal Academy Schools, London for a rundown farmhouse in the rugged terrain of Snowdonia. They started the Caseg Press in 1937 in the hope that it might finance their freedom to work. At first dedicated to saleable ephemera such as Christmas cards and bookplates, the press later became involved in the broader Welsh cultural scene, providing illustrations for the Welsh Review, a monthly literary periodical. In 1941, with the writer Alun Lewis, the Caseg press produced a series of broadsheets designed to express continuity and identification with the life of rural Wales in the face of social change precipitated by the second world war. John Petts and the Caseg Press is the first monograph on this artist. It covers both his work for the Caseg Press and for other publishers such as the Golden Cockerel Press. The volume offers a unique insight into an important chapter in the history of private presses in Britain and the development of neo-romanticism in art and literature during the inter-war period.

Memoir of a provocative Parisian art dealer at the heart of the 20th-century art world, available in English for the first time. Berthe Weill, a formidable Parisian dealer, was born into a Jewish family of very modest means. One of the first female gallerists in the business, she first opened the Galerie B. Weill in the heart of Paris's art gallery district in 1901, holding innumerable exhibitions over nearly forty years. Written out of art history for decades, Weill has only recently regained the recognition she deserves. Under five feet tall and bespectacled, Weill was beloved by the artists she supported, and she rejected the exploitative business practices common among art dealers. Despite being a self-proclaimed "terrible businesswoman," Weill kept her gallery open for four decades, defying the rising tide of antisemitism before Germany's occupation of France. By the time of her death in 1951, Weill had promoted more than three hundred artists-including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, and Suzanne Valadon-many of whom were women and nearly all young and unknown when she first exhibited them. Pow! Right in the Eye! makes Weill's provocative 1933 memoir finally available to English readers, offering rare insights into the Parisian avant-garde and a lively inside account of the development of the modern art market.

The before-and-after trope in photography has long paired images to represent change: whether affirmatively, as in the results of makeovers, social reforms or medical interventions, or negatively, in the destruction of the environment by the impacts of war or natural disasters. This interdisciplinary, multi-authored volume examines the central but almost unspoken position of before-and-after photography found in a wide range of contexts from the 19th century through to the present. Packed with case studies that explore the conceptual implications of these images, the book's rich language of evidence, documentation and persuasion present both historical material and the work of practicing photographers who have deployed - and challenged - the conventions of the before-and-after pairing. Touching on issues including sexuality, race, environmental change and criminality, Before-and-After Photography examines major topics of current debate in the critique of photography in an accessible way to allow students and scholars to explore the rich conceptual issues around photography's relationship with time andimagination.

The image of the Caribbean figure has been reconfigured by photography from the mid-19th century onwards. Initial images associated with the slave and indentured worker from the locations and legacies associated with plantation economies have been usurped by visual representations emerging from struggles for social, political and cultural autonomy. Contemporary visual artists engaging with the Caribbean as a 21st century globalised space have focused on visually re-imagining historical material and events as memories, histories and dreamscapes. Creole in the Archive uses photographic analysis to explore portraits, postcards and social documentation of the colonial worker between 1850 and 1960 and contemporary, often digital, visual art by post-independent, postcolonial Caribbean artists. Drawing on Derridean ideas of the archive, the book reconceptualises the Caribbean visual archive as contiguous and relational. It argues that using a creolising archive practice, the conjuncture of contemporary artworks, historical imagery and associated locations can develop insightful new multimodal representations of Caribbean subjectivities.

Kolkata, urbanism, architecture, urban planning, history

Modern art, filled with complex themes and subtle characteristics, is a wonder to view, but can be intimidating and baffling to the casual observer. In this accessible, practical guide, Jon Thompson analyses more than 200 works of modern art, describing each artist's use of media and symbolism to help the reader unlock the painting's meaning. The book also offers biographical information on all the featured artists.

A comprehensive monograph on the pioneering artist Anthony Caro. Regarded as the greatest British artist of his generation and represented in museum collections all over the world, Anthony Caro revolutionized sculpture in the 1960s, by taking the radical step of removing the plinth and placing his work directly on the ground not only changed our relationship with the artwork, but the direction of sculpture itself. This beautifully designed book includes a comprehensive survey of Caro's work over a period of more than half a century - ranging from his time as Henry Moore's assistant in the early 1950s right up until his death in 2013. More than fifty of his masterworks are each examined in detail through never before published archival installation images and comments by the artist from the time of production or exhibition. Furthermore, a collection of specially commissioned new documentary photographs by Toby Glanville capture the processes behind the sculptor's work, from conception to production to installation and exhibition in major exhibitions and installations. A collection of short texts by leading contemporary artists, including Antony Gormley, Liz Larner, Joel Shapiro, Simon Starling, Frank Stella, Rebecca Warren and Richard Wentworth demonstrate the influence of Caro's work, and a series of key essays by renowned critics and art historians, such as Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, provide an unparalleled overview of his career and complete this intimate celebration of the artist.

Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities illuminates the importance of the Societe des Femmes Artists Modernes, more commonly known as FAM, and returns this group to its proper place in the history of modern art. In particular, this volume explores how FAM and its most famous members"Suzanne Valadon, Marie Laurencin, and Tamara de Lempicka"brought a new approach to the most prominent themes of female embodiment: the self-portrait, motherhood, and the female nude. These women reimagined art's conventions and changed the direction of both art history and the politics of their contemporary art world. FAM has been excluded from histories of modern art despite its prominence during the interwar years. Paula Birnbaum's study redresses this omission, contextualizing the group's legacy in light of the conservative politics of 1930s France. The group's artistic response to the reactionary views and images of women at the time is shown to be a key element in the narrative of modernist formalism. Although many FAM works are missing"one reason for the lack of attention paid to their efforts"Birnbaum's extensive research, through archives, press clippings, and first-hand interviews with artists' families, reclaims FAM as an important chapter in the history of art from the interwar years.

Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain critically analyses the role that visual culture played in the early development of Mass-Observation, the innovative British anthropological research group founded in 1937. The group's production and use of painting, collage, photography, and other media illustrates not only the broad scope of Mass-Observation's efforts to document everyday life, but also, more specifically, the centrality of visual elements to its efforts at understanding national identity in the 1930s. Although much interest has previously focused on Mass-Observation's use of written reports and opinion surveys, as well as diaries that were kept by hundreds of volunteer observers, this book is the first full-length study of the group's engagement with visual culture. Exploring the paintings of Graham Bell and William Coldstream; the photographs of Humphrey Spender; the paintings, collages, and photographs of Julian Trevelyan; and Humphrey Spender's photographs and widely recognized 'Mass-Observation film', Spare Time, among other sources, Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain positions these works as key sources of information with regard to illuminating the complex character of British identity during the Depression era.

This collection of essays considers artistic works that deal with the body without a visual representation. It explores a range of ways to represent this absence of the figure: from abject elements such as bodily fluids and waste to surrogate forms including reliquaries, manuscripts, and cloth. The collection focuses on two eras, medieval and modern, when images referencing the absent body have been far more prolific in the history of art. In medieval times, works of art became direct references to the absent corporal essence of a divine being, like Christ, or were used as devotional aids. By contrast, in the modern era artists often reject depictions of the physical body in order to distance themselves from the history of the idealized human form. Through these essays, it becomes apparent, even when the body is not visible in a work of art, it is often still present tangentially. Though the essays in this volume bridge two historical periods, they have coherent thematic links dealing with abjection, embodiment, and phenomenology. Whether figurative or abstract, sacred or secular, medieval or modern, the body maintains a presence in these works even when it is not at first apparent.

An important resource for scholars of contemporary art and architecture, this volume considers contemporary art that takes architecture as its subject. Concentrated on works made since 1990, Contemporary Art About Architecture: A Strange Utility is the first to take up this topic in a sustained and explicit manner and the first to advance the idea that contemporary art functions as a form of architectural history, theory, and analysis. Over the course of fourteen essays by both emerging and established scholars, this volume examines a diverse group of artists in conjunction with the vernacular, canonical, and fantastical structures engaged by their work. Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Matthew Barney, Monika Sosnowska, Pipo Nguyen-duy, and Paul Pfeiffer are among those considered, as are the compelling questions of architecture's relationship to photography, the evolving legacy of Mies van der Rohe, the notion of an architectural unconscious, and the provocative concepts of the unbuilt and the unbuildable. Through a rigorous investigation of these issues, Contemporary Art About Architecture calls attention to the fact that art is now a vital form of architectural discourse. Indeed, this phenomenon is both pervasive and, in its individual incarnations, compelling - a reason to think again about the entangled histories of architecture and art.

Subtle and wide-ranging in its account, this study explores the impact of Australian art in Britain in the two decades following the end of World War II and preceding the 'Swinging Sixties'. In a transitional period of decolonization in Britain, Australian painting was briefly seized upon as a dynamic and reinvigorating force in contemporary art, and a group of Australian artists settled in London where they held centre stage with group and solo exhibitions in the capital's most prestigious galleries. The book traces the key influences of Sir Kenneth Clark, Bernard Smith and Bryan Robertson in their various (and varying) roles as patrons, ideologues, and entrepreneurs for Australian art, as well as the self-definition and interaction of the artists themselves. Simon Pierse interweaves multiple issues of the period into a cohesive historical narrative, including the mechanics of the British art world, the limited and frustrating cultural scene of 1950s Australia, and the conservative influence of Australian government bodies. Publishing for the first time archival material, letters, and photographs previously unavailable to scholars either in Britain or Australia, this book demonstrates how the work of expatriate Australian artists living in London constructed a distinct vision of Australian identity for a foreign market.

The first comprehensive assessment of Degas's legacy to be published in over two decades, Perspectives on Degas unites a team of international scholars to analyze Degas's work, artistic practice, and unique methods of pictorial problem-solving. Established scholars and curators show how recent trends in art historical thinking can stimulate innovative interpretations of Degas's paintings, prints, sculptures, and drawings and reveal new ideas about his place in the art historical narrative of the nineteenth-century avant-garde. Questions posed by contributors include: what interpretive approaches are open to a new generation of art historians in the wake of a vast body of existing scholarship on nineteenth-century art? In what ways can feminist analyses of Degas's works continue to yield new results? Which of Degas's works have received less attention in critical literature to date and what does study of them reveal? As the centenary of Degas's death approaches, this book offers a timely re-evaluation of the critical literature that has developed in response to Degas's work and identifies ways in which the further study of this artist's multi-facetted output can deepen our understanding of the wider scientific, literary, and artistic ideas that circulated in France during the latter decades of the nineteenth century.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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.