In 1939 a group of artists, designers, architects, scientists and military experts met in Sydney, Australia, to discuss the impending war. Convinced that the need for regional innovations in the military science of concealment and deception was urgent, they nominated a zoologist to lead a campaign to camouflage Australia. Camouflage Australia tells a once secret and little known story of how the Australian government accepted the advice of zoologist William John Dakin and seconded the country's leading artists and designers, including Max Dupain and Frank Hinder, to deploy optical tricks and visual illusions for civilian and military protection. Their work was an array of ingenious constructions for the purpose of disguise and subterfuge. Drawing on previously unpublished photographs and documents, Camouflage Australia exposes the story of fraught collaborations between civilian and military personnel who disagreed over camouflage's value to wartime operations and the usefulness of artists to warfare. In this engrossing book, Ann Elias provides international context for the historical circumstances and events of the organisation of camouflage in World War II in Australia and the Pacific region. She elaborates on the parallel involvement of British and American artists in the field of concealment and deception, and reveals the widespread interest shown by western naturalists and scientists in the application to warfare of the behaviours and aesthetics of animals. Camouflage Australia, by redressing the near invisible contribution of Australian artists and designers to defence in World War II, makes a major contribution to the history of art and to the history of Australia. Importantly, by discussing how citizens dutifully transformed themselves into servants of the war enterprise as camouflage labourers, camouflage designers and camouflage field officers, the author provides a valuable historical perspective for the 21st century, when ethical conflicts and moral struggles dominate debates on war participation. And camouflage itself, even in an age of nuclear warfare, retains many of its historical methods and controversies.

Painter, draftsman and engraver, Pierre Lesieur (1922-2011) was one of the most influential French artists of the second half of the 20th century. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris - where he took lessons from Andre Lhote - and at the Academie de Montmartre, he had his first exhibition in 1952. Lesieur's paintings of the 1950s are characterised by the use of brightly coloured areas, in line with the work of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard. In the 1960s, this research bordered on abstraction, particularly in still lifes and representations of objects. From the 1970s onwards, through his paintings and drawings, Lesieur took a particular interest in interiors, as well as in portraits and female nudes. Early in his career, Pierre Lesieur was recognised as an important artist. After his first personal exhibition in 1952, his work was regularly shown at the Coard Gallery in Paris. From the 1990s, Lesieur's notoriety became international, resulting in further exhibitions in Japan and the United States. Some of his works are now housed in major museums such as the Center Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Hiroshima Museum. Text in English and French.

Ceramics and Modernity in Japan offers a set of critical perspectives on the creation, patronage, circulation, and preservation of ceramics during Japan's most dramatic period of modernization, the 1860s to 1960s. As in other parts of the world, ceramics in modern Japan developed along the three ontological trajectories of art, craft, and design. Yet, it is widely believed that no other modern nation was engaged with ceramics as much as Japan-a "potter's paradise"-in terms of creation, exhibition, and discourse. This book explores how Japanese ceramics came to achieve such a status and why they were such significant forms of cultural production. Its medium-specific focus encourages examination of issues regarding materials and practices unique to ceramics, including their distinct role throughout Japanese cultural history. Going beyond descriptive historical treatments of ceramics as the products of individuals or particular styles, the closely intertwined chapters also probe the relationship between ceramics and modernity, including the ways in which ceramics in Japan were related to their counterparts in Asia and Europe. Featuring contributions by leading international specialists, this book will be useful to students and scholars of art history, design, and Japanese studies.

Many of the greatest avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century were Ukrainians or came from Ukraine. Whether living in Paris, St. Petersburg or Kyiv, they made major contributions to painting, sculpture, theatre, and film-making. Because their connection to Ukraine has seldom been explored, English-language readers are often unaware that figures such as Archipenko, Burliuk, Malevich, and Exter were inspired both by their country of origin and their links to compatriots. This book traces the avant-garde development from its pre-war years in Paris to the end of the 1920s in Kyiv. It includes chapters on the political dilemmas faced by this generation, the contribution of Jewish artists, and the work of several emblematic figures: Mykhailo Boichuk, David Burliuk, Kazimir Malevich, Vadym Meller, Ivan Kavaleridze, and Dziga Vertov.

With motion and machines as its most treasured tropes, Futurism was founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, along with painters Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, and Gino Severini. With affiliate painters, sculptors, designers, architects, and writers, the group sought to subsume the dusty establishment into a new age of sleek, strong, purified modernity. Futurism's place in art history is as ambivalent as it is important. The movement pioneered revolutionary methods to convey movement, light, and speed, but sparks controversy in its glorification of war and fascist politics. Their frenzied, almost furious, canvases, are as remarkable for their macho aggression as they are for their radical experimentation with brushstrokes, texture, and color in the quest to record an object moving through space. With key examples from the Futurists' prolific output and leading practitioners, this book introduces the movement that spat vitriol at all -isms of the past and, in so doing, created an -ism of their own. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

First published in 2006, this volume provides the first in-depth analysis of the place of visual representations within the process of decolonisation during the period 1945 to 1970. The chapters trace the way in which different visual genres - art, film, advertising, photography, news reports and ephemera - represented and contributed to the political and social struggles over Empire and decolonisation during the mid-Twentieth century. The book examines both the direct visual representation of imperial retreat after 1945 as well as the reworkings of imperial and 'racial' ideologies within the context of a transformed imperialism. While the book engages with the dominant archive of artists, exhibitions, newsreels and films, it also explores the private images of the family album as well as examining the visual culture of anti-colonial resistance.

A distinguished list of contributors explores a variety of perspectives on the artistic culture of France and surrounding countries during the period 1870 to 1914. Aspects of dance, cinema, theater, poetry, prose, painting, social and political science, history, and medicine are covered in interdisciplinary essays that are both useful to researchers and accessible to students.

The first part of the book, which concentrates on France, assembles essays on the prose, poetry, and painting of Symbolism and Decadence, in particular Mallarme and Moreau; on avant-garde dance and performance; on women's writing; and on early cinema from Lumiere, Villiers, and Verne.

The second part explores the relations between France and several cultures. These cross-cultural investigations range from studies of the Anglo-Celtic "Rhymers' Club" to the Italian Crepusculari and include discussions of Belgian Symbolism and the Franco-Anglo-American Axis. The essays consistently point beyond the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth as they explore the multiple beginnings -- as well as the false starts -- that characterize the period.

Back in print, the most authoritative overview on the beloved Bauhaus Renaissance man and pioneer of abstraction, the first artist to take a line for a walk The many books on Paul Klee (1879-1940) published over the years should not obscure the fact that there has been no new, comprehensive Klee overview since Will Grohmann's oft-reprinted 1954 monograph. With Paul Klee: Life and Work, the Zentrum Paul Klee has set out to fill this gap, drawing on a wealth of new resources including the Klee family's archives, much of which is published here for the first time. Life and work are truly integrated in this massive, 344-page volume: Klee's vast body of work is surveyed chronologically, as the book narrates his life alongside the abundant reproductions of drawings, paintings, watercolors, sculptures, puppets and numerous archival documents and photographs (nearly 500 reproductions in total). The book divides Klee's career into eight periods: "Childhood and Youth"; "Munich and the Encounter with the Avant Garde"; "World War I and the Breakthrough to Success"; "At the Bauhaus in Weimar"; "Master of Modern Art"; "The Move to Dusseldorf and the Nazi Rise to Power"; "First Years of Emigration in Bern"; and "Final Years." The result of many years of research and labor, this magisterial publication demonstrates conclusively why Klee numbers among the most influential and best-loved artists of the past 100 years.

This first survey of Antonio Bernal's life and work, The Artist as Eyewitness features essays that assess his murals, situating them within the historical, political, and cultural frameworks of the Chicano movement. It also includes an analysis of Bernal's unpublished novel, Breaking the Silence; a biography of Bernal; reproductions of his artwork; and a selection of his writings. Drawing on personal correspondence and writings, photographs, and audiovisual materials that document Bernal's travels, artwork, and family history, this book offers an important contribution to Chicana/o studies and art history.

"It was sheer chance that I encountered David Bohm's writing in 1958 ... I knew nothing about him. What struck me about his work and prompted my initial letter was his underlying effort to seek for some larger sense of reality, which seemed a very humanized search." - Charles Biederman, from the foreword of the book
This book marks the beginning of a four thousand page correspondence between Charles Biederman, founder of Constructivism in the 1930s, and David Bohm the prestigious physicist known for his interpretation of quantum theory. Available for the first time, we are given a rare opportunity to read through and engage in a remarkable transatlantic, intellectual discussion on art and science, creativity and theory.

The historic encounter around 1911 between the composer Arnold Schonberg and the painter Wassily Kandinsky occurred at a moment when the first wild revolts against traditional art - Dada and Futurism - had just manifested themselves. This volume is a collection of the papers presented at the conference on Schonberg and Kandinsky at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in January 1993. The conference focused on the varying aspects of the avant-garde from 1910 to 1913, when both Schonberg and Kandinsky formulated their far-reaching views on the ways in which music and painting should develop, and discussed their common interest in new theatrical forms of presentation.

The historic encounter around 1911 between the composer Arnold Schonberg and the painter Wassily Kandinsky occurred at a moment when the first wild revolts against traditional art, Dada and Futurism, had just manifested themselves. Independently of those sometimes spectacular activities, both Schonberg and Kandinsky had already concluded that the material and the compositional methods they had relied on in the past were exhausted and did not satisfy the development of their artistic ideas.
Both artists had already submitted their modes of production to a critical analysis which resulted in Schonberg's Theory of Harmony and Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art, both of 1911 - indeed the two artists had already been putting their self-criticism into practice for some time. In Schonberg's case this led to breaking with tonality; Kandinsky effected the transition to abstract painting.
This book is a collection of the papers presented at the conference on Schonberg and Kandin

The political and social turmoil of the twentieth century took Magda Nachman from a privileged childhood in St. Petersburg at the close of the nineteenth century, artistic studies with Leon Bakst and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin at the Zvantseva Art Academy, and participation in the dynamic symbolist/modernist artistic ferment in pre-Revolutionary Russia to a refugee existence in the Russian countryside during the Russian Civil War followed by marriage to a prominent Indian nationalist, then with her husband to the hardships of emigre Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s, and finally to Bombay, where she established herself as an important artist and a mentor to a new generation of modern Indian artists.

The Art of Fine Gifts: Twentieth-century painter, designer and wood engraver Eric Ravilious was responsible for a fascinating range of different works, from illustrations for books to designs for ceramics for the established Wedgwood pottery firm. This gorgeous new book features beautiful woodcut images of countryside life, watercolours of rolling landscapes and many of Ravilious' acute and profound war paintings.

Mark Rothko's awe-inspiring yet deceptively simple, iconic colour field paintings belie the mythical and emotional complexity behind them. Rothko put his heart and soul into creating works that were to act upon the viewer in an almost physical way, progressing from figurative and symbolist works to eventually using shimmering and enveloping colour to elevate you to a higher spiritual awareness. This gorgeous book enables you to discover the themes, thinking and methodology behind the oeuvre, from Greek tragedy and Nietzsche to music and colour, whilst experiencing his pieces displayed in full, free of clutter, for you to immerse yourself and be swept away.

In the mid-1950s, Yves Klein (1928-1962) declared that "a new world calls for a new man." With his idiosyncratic style and huge charisma, this bold artist would go on to pursue a brief but bountiful career, producing more than 1,000 paintings over seven years in an oeuvre now considered a mainstay of postwar modernism. Klein made his name above all with his large monochrome canvases in his own patented hue of blue. International Klein Blue (IKB), composed of pure pigment and binding medium, is at once rich and luminous, evocative and decorative, and was conceived by Klein as a means of evoking the immateriality and infinitude of the world. The works of this "Blue Revolution" seem to draw us into another dimension, as if hypnotized by a perfect summer sky. Klein was also renowned for his deployment of "living brushes," in which naked women, daubed in International Klein Blue, would make imprints of their bodies on large sheets of paper. This Basic Art introduction presents key Klein works to introduce an artist who was at once a showman, inventor, and pioneer of performance art. With page after page of the ever-alluring International Klein Blue, it is both an essential guide to a modern art master and a meditation on the unique effects of a single color. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Modernism, referring to the period dating roughly from the late 19th century to 1970, is regarded as a crucial moment in the history of American art. Although Modernist artists adopted a wide range of styles, they were linked by a desire to interpret a rapidly changing society and to cast aside the conventions of representational art. Some, such as Stuart Davis and Joseph Stella, responded to consumerism, urbanism and industrial technology; others, such as Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe, found inspiration in nature and the Native American culture of the Southwest. This magnificent new book presents the works of the Vilcek Collection, an unparalleled private collection of American Modernist paintings, drawings and sculpture. Art historian Lewis Kachur explores almost 100 rarely seen works by 20 leading artists active during the first half of the last century, while William C. Agee contributes an incisive introduction. Lavishly illustrated throughout, Masterpieces of American Modernism provides an outstanding overview of the radical shift in art driven by this major aesthetic movement.

This profusely illustrated book is the first full-length study of the Canadian-born sculptor David Rabinowitch. Working in New York since 1972 and extensively in Europe since the early 1980s, Rabinowitch became Professor of Sculpture at the Staatliche Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf, in 1984. Whitney Davis closely analyzes six groups of works produced by Rabinowitch between 1963 and the present, comparing their rigorous constructivism with the "minimalism" of American sculptors such as Donald Judd. Davis also explores Rabinowitch's relations to the work of modern painters and sculptors from Cezanne to David Smith, and his involvement with the wider history of art.

This title is published in conjunction with an exhibition which opened at the Fogg Museum in September 1996.

In recent years Eric Ravilious has become recognized as one of the most important British artists of the 20th century, whose watercolours and wood engravings capture an essential sense of place and the spirit of mid-century England. What is less appreciated is that he did not work in isolation, but within a much wider network of artists, friends and lovers influenced by Paul Nash's teaching at the Royal College of Art - Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, Enid Marx, Tirzah Garwood, Percy Horton, Peggy Angus and Helen Binyon among them. The Ravilious group bridged the gap between fine art and design, and the gentle, locally rooted but spritely character of their work came to be seen as the epitome of contemporary British values. Seventy-five years after Ravilious's untimely death, Andy Friend tells the story of this group of artists from their student days through to the Second World War. Ravilious & Co. explores how they influenced each other and how a shared experience animated their work, revealing the significance in this pattern of friendship of women artists, whose place within the history of British art has often been neglected. Generously illustrated and drawing on extensive research, and a wealth of newly discovered material, Ravilious & Co. is an enthralling narrative of creative achievement, joy and tragedy.

A year of weekly interviews (1949-1950) with artist Diego Rivera by poet Alfredo Cardona-Pena disclose Rivera's iconoclastic views of life and the art world of that time. These intimate Sunday dialogues with what is surely the most influential Mexican artist of the twentieth century show us the free-flowing mind of a man who was a legend in his own time; an artist who escaped being lynched on more than one occasion, a painter so controversial that his public murals inspired movements, or, like the work commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, were ordered torn down. Here in his San Angelin studio, we hear Rivera's feelings about the elitist aspect of paintings in museums, his motivations to create public art for the people, and his memorable, unedited expositions on the art, culture, and politics of Mexico. The book has seven chapters that loosely follow the range of the author's questions and Rivera's answers. They begin with childlike, yet vast questions on the nature of art, run through Rivera's early memories and aesthetics, his views on popular art, his profound understanding of Mexican art and artists, the economics of art, random expositions on history or dreaming, and elegant analysis of art criticisms and critics. The work is all the more remarkable to have been captured between Rivera's inhumanly long working stints of six hours or even days without stop. In his rich introduction, author Cardona-Pena describes the difficulty of gaining entrance to Rivera's inner sanctum, how government funtionaries and academics often waited hours to be seen, and his delicious victory. At eight p. m. the night of August 12, a slow, heavy-set, parsimonious Diego came in to where I was, speaking his Guanajuato version of English and kissing women's hands. I was able to explain my idea to him and he was immediately interested. He invited me into his studio, and while taking off his jacket, said, "Ask me..." And I asked one, two, twenty... I don't know how many questions 'til the small hours of the night, with him answering from memory, with an incredible accuracy, without pausing, without worrying much about what he might be saying, all of it spilling out in an unconscious and magical manner. A series of Alfredo Cardona-Pena's weekly interviews with Rivera were published in 1949 and 1950 in the Mexican newspaper, El Nacional, for which Alfredo was a journalist. His book of compiled interviews with introduction and preface, El Monstruo en su Laberinto, was published in Spanish in 1965. Finally, this extraordinary and rare exchange has been translated for the first time into English by Alfredo's half-brother Alvaro Cardona Hine, also a poet. According to the translator's wife, Barbara Cardona-Hine, bringing the work into English was a labor of love for Alvaro, the fulfillment of a promise made to his brother in 1971 that he did not get to until the year before his own death in 2016.

A fun and fact-filled introduction to the dismissed Black art masters and models who shook up the world. Elegant. Refined. Exclusionary. Interrupted. The foundations of the fine art world are shaking. Beyonce and Jay-Z break the internet by blending modern Black culture with fine art in their iconic music video filmed in the Louvre. Kehinde Wiley powerfully subverts European masterworks. Calls resonate for diversity in museums and the resignations of leaders of the old guard. It's clear that modern day museums can no longer exist without change-and without recognizing that Black people have been a part of the Western art world since its beginnings. Quietly held within museum and private collections around the world are hundreds of faces of Black men and women, many of their stories unknown. From paintings of majestic kings to a portrait of a young girl named Isabella in Amsterdam, these models lived diverse lives while helping shape the art world along the way. Then, after hundreds of years of Black faces cast as only the subject of the white gaze, a small group of trailblazing Black American painters and sculptors reached national and international fame, setting the stage for the flourishing of Black art in the 1920s and beyond. Captivating and informative, BLK ART is an essential work that elevates a globally dismissed legacy to its proper place in the mainstream art canon. From the hushed corridors of royal palaces to the bustling streets of 1920s Paris-this is Black history like never seen before.

American art underwent a transformation during the period 1940-55, and nowhere is that change better exemplified than in the work of Ralston Crawford (1906-1978). Crawford worked in a variety of media throughout his career, and his wartime and early postwar art ranged from designing camouflage and creating weather infographics for the US Army to documenting the detonation of the atomic bomb for Fortune magazine. This exciting new book explores Crawford's influences and the ideas and experiences he had during World War II and its aftermath, and chronicles a period of change, during which Crawford gradually moved away from celebrating feats of engineering and industrial development to creating imagery that was more abstract and far more personal, expressing the grief and anxiety of the postwar world. Crawford's painting during the 1930s had largely been a dazzling series of Precisionist works that reflected American advances in industry, engineering and technology. After the United States entered World War II, Crawford served in the Weather Division of the Army Air Forces. He created pictorial representations of weather patterns for airplane pilots, and was exposed to countless photographs of air crashes. He continued working as an artist throughout the conflict, receiving a commission to paint the Curtiss-Wright aircraft plant in Buffalo, New York, and, in 1946, an assignment to observe and record one of the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. These experiences had a profound impact on Crawford, and marked a major turning point in his life and art. Published to coincide with an exhibition opening at the Dayton Art Institute, Ralston Crawford: Air & Space & War presents a remarkable selection of Crawford's paintings, drawings, photographs and prints from this time. These vary from powerful images of chaos and devastation to ordered and precise paintings of airplane assembly at the Curtiss-Wright plant and cover illustrations and charts related to weather, flight and radar for Fortune magazine. The evolution of many of the works can be traced from photograph and drawing to the finished painting, revealing Crawford's decisions about form and space, which were informed by his experiences with airplanes and flight. Accompanying the artworks is a series of perceptive essays. Rick Kinsel considers Crawford's war years in the context of developments in both aviation and American art. Emily Schuchardt Navratil reflects on aerial views by Crawford and on his Curtiss-Wright commission. Amanda Burdan looks at Crawford's work for Fortune, while Jerry Smith surveys various American and European abstract renditions of airplanes and flight as a means by which to place Crawford's interest in aviation during World War II into a broader historical context. In the final essay, John Crawford examines the importance of photography in his father's work, and explores collage as both a compositional technique and as a term that may be used to describe the series of intense experiences that contributed to Crawford's development as an artist in the 1940s and early 1950s.

This catalogue for a show at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels, brings Picasso's relationship to abstraction into focus. With more than 120 exceptional works of art in dialogue with some of the great works of the early 20th century abstraction movement, it addresses the major stages that punctuated the links between Picasso's work and the history of abstract art. It covers the period from the first Cubist experiments of 1907, carried out simultaneously with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, to his later work, which is sometimes situated on the borders of gestural painting.

One of Pablo Picasso's most important muses is the subject of this diverse and beautiful collection of drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, and ceramics. She was known as "the girl with the ponytail" and her image has become one of the art world's most iconic. Sylvette David was a shy girl when she met Picasso on the Cote d'Azur in the spring of 1954. For the artist, Sylvette represented the ideal beauty of the time and she was his model for numerous works that covered nearly every aspect of his oeuvre. This book brings together the series of more than fifty masterpieces culled from museums and private collections from around the world. It further provides a unique insight into Picasso's art of the 1950s and the culture of the time."