Dusseldorf-based artist Mischa Kuball (born 1959) spent over a year photographing and interviewing 100 immigrants from 100 different nations in Germany's Ruhr region. Together, the individual stories of these immigrants offer a cross-generational perspective on the area and the cultural and industrial transformations that are helping to define Western Germany as the "New Pott" or new melting pot.

The book is a collection of fifteen introductory essays excerpted from the Annual of Contemporary Art in China, covering the years from 2005 to 2019, showcasing the development and changing landscapes of contemporary art in China. The Annual documents exhibitions, events, creative practices, and critical literature concerning contemporary art in China since 2005. Based on archival documentation and statistics data from these annuals, notable phenomena, events, and discourses from a given year, as well as key works and artists are reviewed in each introduction, with no ideological or market-driven undertone. The author unravels industrial and institutional factors, while also broaching important issues of abstract art, new media art and so on, and probing the historical and socio-cultural context as well. In this regard, the book offers a panorama of contemporary Chinese art and critically engages with the art scene in China, including Hongkong, Taiwan, and among the Chinese diaspora. The title will appeal to scholars, students and general readers interested in contemporary art history, art criticism, contemporary Chinese art, iconography, and contemporary art theory.

Published on the occasion of Damien Hirst's exhibition at the Wallace Collection, London, in October 2009, this small volume presents 30 colorplates showcasing a selection of blue skull and flower paintings from that show, and three gatefolds. An interview also featured in the larger Wallace Collection catalogue is also included here.

Neither authentic nor kitsch, readymade nor traditional craft, the works of Swiss artist Valentin Carron (born 1975) play with material ambiguity--fake wood, fake concrete, fake bronze--to unpack the iconography of power and authority. "Learning from Martigny" offers photographic source material intertwined with images of his sculptures and paintings.

The main themes and aims of this book are understanding aesthetics, contemporary art and the end of the avant-garde not from the traditional viewpoint of the metaphysics of the beautiful and the sublime but rather thru close connection to the techno-genesis of virtual worlds. This book tackles problems in contemporary art theory such as the body in space and time of digital technologies, along with other issues in visual studies and image science. Further intentions exhibit the fundamental reasons for the disappearance of the picture in the era of virtual reality starting from the notion of contemporary art as realized iconoclasm; art has no world for its "image". The author argues that the iconoclasm of contemporary art has severe consequences. This text appeals to philosophers of art and those interested in contemporary art theory.

This catalogue for an exhibition at MAXXI Museum in Rome brings together 50 contemporary artists from ex-Yugoslavia whose work explores the history of the region through the action of contemporary heroes, and reflects on issues of acceptance and peaceful coexistence. In thematic sections (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Hope, Risk, the Individual, Otherness, Metamorphosis), the show asks if the legacy of Socialism can help to recover the concept of "common good" in a complex region which has recently endured the tragedy of a civil war and the rise of Nationalism. Text in English and Italian.

Start your personal planning any time of the year with this stylish, undated weekly calendar. Start your personal planning any time of the year with this undated weekly calendar that features sixty customizable pages. Perfect for home or the office, it has plenty of space each day of the week to schedule appointments and meetings or to jot down important to-dos or notes.

The first comprehensive monograph on Mickalene Thomas, a key figure in 21st-century contemporary art Over the past two decades, Mickalene Thomas's critically acclaimed and extensive body of work has spanned painting, collage, photography, video, and the immersive installations that have become her signature. With influences ranging from nineteenth-century painting to popular culture, Thomas's art articulates a complex and empowering vision of aspiration and self-image through gender and race while expanding on and subverting common definitions of beauty, sexuality, and celebrity. This book, made in close collaboration with Thomas, is the first to survey the breadth of her extraordinary career. Publication coincides with the opening of Mickalene Thomas's first global exhibition, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, at Levy Gorvy galleries in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris.

Celebrate the history and explore the unique universe of tokidoki in this 400-page monographTokidoki, which translates to “sometimes� in Japanese, is an internationally recognized and iconic lifestyle brand based on the vision of Italian artist Simone Legno. Since debuting in 2005, tokidoki has amassed a cult-like following for its larger-than-life characters and has emerged as a sought-after global lifestyle brand. Tokidoki has managed to develop commercial public collaborations with brands and organizations like Sephora, Levi's, MLB, the San Francisco Giants, and T-Mobile, while also developing more artistic partnerships with Karl Lagerfeld and the Guggenheim museum, and crossovers with other iconic pop culture characters like Barbie, Hello Kitty, Marvel heroes, and Peanuts.

Award-winning and hugely popular artist Rosie Sanders showcases the beauty of the rose in her follow up to Rosie Sanders Flowers. Over 80 stunning paintings and sketches are shown for the first time. The artist writes a personal letter on each of her rose paintings (to be given unopened to the final recipient or buyer of the painting). Many of these personal letters sit alongside the paintings, as they explain the creative and emotional process she went through to create it. The book is a revealing insight into the artist's muse and the author's sketches and drawings are also included to show the full artistic process. The book is introduced by an extended essay on the resonance of the rose - all across the world - in our art, literature, poetry, folklore and gardens. The rose emblem is timeless and this book not only celebrates its beauty in art but tells the story of the rose as one of nature's most powerful motifs.

Despite the fact that he shaped Venice and its contemporary form, Eugenio Miozzi remains a little-known figure. Yet both locals and visitors experience his legacy every day, in particular when they cross his bridges: from the Ponte della Liberta, the Ponte dell'Accademia, the various bridges over the Rio Nuovo, to the exemplary Ponte degli Scalzi. Miozzi, chief engineer of the Commune of Venice from 1931 to 1954, carried out a large number of works and projects, including a vast modernist parking garage and the Casino on the Lido. The prolific engineer-architect played a role in the development of the Fenice, made plans for the restoration of the city and the extension of the Tronchetto, and designed a trans-lagoon road and a motorway from Venice to Monaco. These projects and the others presented in this illustrated volume represent Miozzi's efforts to combine the centuries-old traditions of Venice with a spirit of innovation as a guarantee for the city's survival.

This volume presents for the first time in English a curated selection of writings by the design thinker Gui Bonsiepe from the 1960s to the present day. Addressing as it does questions of non-Western design and a design practice that is both radical and democratic, Bonsiepe's work has assumed new importance for current debates inspired by global political and environmental crises. Structured into three sections, the anthology first addresses Bonsiepe's work on design theory and practice, particularly in relation to the history and contemporary relevance of the Ulm design school, where Bonsiepe was a professor in the 1960s. A second section then represents Bonsiepe's writings after his move to South America in the 1960s and '70s, where he worked as a design consultant for the Allende government in Chile before the military takeover. In writings from the period, Bonsiepe explores the concept of design 'at the periphery' and the relationship of national design traditions and practices in Latin American countries to those of 'the core' - Western European and American design. The final section comprises selections of Bonsiepe's writings on design in relation to literacy and language, visuality and cognition. This indispensable volume includes new interviews with Bonsiepe as well as his original, previously unpublished texts.

Will Eisner (1917-2005) is universally considered the master of comics storytelling and is best known for his iconic comic strip The Spirit and for his seminal work A Contract With God. Considered the first significant graphic novel, upon publication in 1978 it ushered in a new kind of personal, non-super-hero genre of comics storytelling. Since then, Eisner went on to write and illustrate over twenty award-winning graphic novels. Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel by noted historian Paul Levitz celebrates Eisner by including not only unpublished and rare art, photographs, letters and sketches from the archives, but original interviews with creators such as Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud, Jeff Smith and Neil Gaiman, all of whom knew and were inspired by Eisner and have offered their support to help publicise this long-awaited tribute to a comics legend.

This book examines how contemporary Scottish writers and artists revisit and reclaim nature in the political and aesthetic context of devolved Scotland. Camille Manfredi investigates the interaction of landscape aesthetics and strategies of spatial representation in Scotland's twenty-first-century literature and arts, focusing on the apparatuses designed by nature writers, poets, performers, walking artists and visual artists to physically and intellectually engage with the land and re-present it to themselves and to the world. Through a comprehensive analysis of a variety of site-specific artistic practices, artworks and publications, this book investigates the works of Scotland-based artists including Linda Cracknell, Kathleen Jamie, Thomas A. Clark, Gerry Loose, John Burnside, Alec Finlay, Hamish Fulton, Hanna Tuulikki and Roseanne Watt, with a view to exploring the ongoing re-invention of a territory-bound identity that dwells on an inclusive sense of place, as well as on a complex renegotiation with the time and space of Scotland.

Jon Harris has lived, breathed and drawn Cambridge for over 50 years. His architect's sense of structure and fabric, his draughtsman's eye and vigorous use of pen and brush have produced an outstanding body of work. In 1997 the Fitzwilliam Museum honoured him with an exhibition of some 90 paintings and drawings. A great many of his best works are published for the fi rst time in Artist about Cambridge. They include drawings from the more than 40 sketchbooks which have been his constant companions over the past half century. Jon Harris's text describes in compelling detail how the images came into being. Harris's work is not a depiction of Cambridge as the tourist might like to have it, but is rather about his fascination with unregarded vistas, its back streets, crucial buildings lost to the wrecking ball, and with the city's industrial past. The artist's unrivalled knowledge and understanding of Cambridge and its environs inform every painting and drawing, helping you enjoy a thousand things you might otherwise miss.

Painter Eugénie Paultre reflects on her residency at Damien Hirst's workshop Matter of Life is the story of a six-month residency from French painter, poet and philosopher Eugénie Paultre written and illustrated by the artist and published in a colorfully illustrated paperback book. In the spring of 2018, Paultre relocated from her studio in Paris to a workshop in the English countryside. Immersed in her practice with line and pigment, this intensive residency allowed the artist to enlarge the scale of her paintings and work on large canvases up to four meters tall--an assignment which presented physical as well as philosophical confrontations between the artist and the blank canvas. Paultre's abstract works feature carefully selected lines of color that create beautifully balanced and evocative paintings. Matter of Life showcases a remarkable new series of contemporary paintings and features text written by the artist with ruminations on color and its language as well as reflections on art, and by that very fact, on matters of life. Recalling her personal encounters--from her conversations with artist and poet Etel Adnan and notes from the poetic works of Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire to observing antagonisms of the modern world and moments of clarity in view of natural landscapes--Paultre shows a profound connection to the world around her and, in this book, considers what it means to make something of life and to do something worthwhile.

Steelworks

Pierre Koenig's modern materials

There are few images of 20th-century architecture more iconic than the nighttime view of Case Study House #22. At its eagle's nest promontory above Los Angeles, the building is a vision of streamlined glass and steel, its slick lines echoing the twinkling city boulevards below. With this and his other equally innovative build for the famous project of the Arts & Architecture magazine, American architect Pierre Koenig (1925-2004) became one of the leading figures of the Modern movement.

While still a student of architecture, Koenig designed and built his first exposed steel house in 1950, proving that the use of prefabricated materials could allow for spatial freedom in affordable houses. Throughout his career, he would champion socially responsible design, as well as buildings that responded deftly and directly to the Southern Californian climate. Through windows, water, terraces, skylights, and glazing, his buildings optimized the rapport between inside and outside, while aiming for a simplistic purity of appearance.

Through all of Koenig's major projects, including the Johnson House (1962) and Oberman House (1962), this book introduces an architect pioneering in method and material and iconic of his time, as fueled by experimentalism as the postwar optimism of the age.

An in-depth history of the Stalinist skyscraper In the early years of the Cold War, the skyline of Moscow was forever transformed by a citywide skyscraper building project. As the steel girders of the monumental towers went up, the centuries-old metropolis was reinvented to embody the greatness of Stalinist society. Moscow Monumental explores how the quintessential architectural works of the late Stalin era fundamentally reshaped daily life in the Soviet capital. Drawing on a wealth of original archival research, Katherine Zubovich examines the decisions and actions of Soviet elites-from top leaders to master architects-and describes the experiences of ordinary Muscovites who found their lives uprooted by the ambitious skyscraper project. She shows how the Stalin-era quest for monumentalism was rooted in the Soviet Union's engagement with Western trends in architecture and planning, and how the skyscrapers required the creation of a vast and complex infrastructure. As laborers flooded into the city, authorities evicted and rehoused tens of thousands of city residents living on the plots selected for development. When completed in the mid-1950s, these seven ornate neoclassical buildings served as elite apartment complexes, luxury hotels, and ministry and university headquarters. Moscow Monumental tells a story that is both local and broadly transnational, taking readers from the streets of interwar Moscow and New York to the marble-clad halls of the bombastic postwar structures that continue to define the Russian capital today.

When Bas Jan Ader's boat, Ocean Wave, was found unmanned and partially submerged 150 miles off the coast of Ireland by a Spanish fishing vessel in 1976, it was taken to La Coruna for investigation. Days later, the boat was stolen and the cult of Ader, whose body was never recovered, and who was thought by many to have staged this incident, was truly cemented. In this volume, Marion van Wijk and Koos Dalstra, who spent 10 years investigating this unsolved mystery, reproduce the entire police report in facsimile. They also include many pages of eerie written documentation and transcriptions of interviews they conducted during their decade of intensive sleuthing. The report has 74 pages: it begins on April 27, 1976 and ends on February 1, 1977. It relates the history of the Ocean Wave from the discovery of the vessel to the closure of the case. This book is a reprint of the earlier edition from Veenman Publishers with additional research included.

The San Francisco artist Jess (1923-2004) has for decades been known to cognoscenti as an inventive and sophisticated master of the collage aesthetic. Recently however, his works are receiving fresh attention from a younger generation attuned to Jess' interests in myth, narrative and appropriation. Jess used images taken from sources ranging from "Dick Tracy" to Durer, from a Beatles bubblegum card to medical textbook drawings, from 1887 "Scientific American" line engravings to frames from George Herriman's "Krazy Kat." In reexamining myth through a synthesis of art and literature, Jess' work remains a crucial assemblage of the meanings of our time. This volume brings to light collages, collage books, word poems and altered comics that have been largely inaccessible or unavailable since their making. Originally published in small editions and hard-to-find journals, or made as one-off artist's books, these works demonstrate the full range of Jess's extraordinary verbal and visual play. Several of Jess's surreal comic-strip manipulations, "Tricky Cad" (1954-1959), are reproduced for the first time in their entirety, as are others such as "Ben Big Bolt" and "Nance" that have never before been published. The book also includes a group of complex wraparound book covers, several unpublished collage poems, and two artist's books never before reproduced in full: "From Force of Habit," a "fantastic tale" which plays with the pages of a Swedish cult sci-fi novel, and "When a Young Lad Dreams of Manhood," a homoerotic paean (and naughty parody) of the priapic urge. A facsimile reproduction of the 20-page collage masterpiece "O " is included as a separate booklet, and the book sports a dustjacket that folds out into a poster-size collage.