*A Financial Times Book of the Year* 'The first time I opened What Artists Wear, I gasped with pleasure. Imagine it as a kind of punk cousin to John Berger's Ways of Seeing, liberally illustrated with the most astonishing images of artists, decked out in finery or rags ... It transported me to somewhere glamorous, exciting, even revolutionary' Olivia Laing, Guardian Most of us live our lives in our clothes without realizing their power. But in the hands of artists, garments reveal themselves. They are pure tools of expression, storytelling, resistance and creativity: canvases on which to show who we really are. In What Artists Wear, style luminary Charlie Porter takes us on an invigorating, eye-opening journey through the iconic outfits worn by artists, in the studio, on stage, at work, at home and at play. From Yves Klein's spotless tailoring to the kaleidoscopic costumes of Yayoi Kusama and Cindy Sherman; from Andy Warhol's signature denim to Charlotte Prodger's casualwear, Porter's roving eye picks out the magical, revealing details in the clothes he encounters, weaving together a new way of understanding artists, and of dressing ourselves. Part love letter, part guide to chic, and featuring generous photographic spreads, What Artists Wear is both a manual and a manifesto, a radical, gleeful, inspiration to see the world anew-and find greater pleasure and possibility in the clothes we all wear.

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 Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel by noted historian Paul Levitz celebrates Eisner by including not only unpublished and rare art, photographs, letters and sketches from the archives, but original interviews with creators such as Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud,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.

Chihuly at Kew: Reflections on nature is a celebration of the work of iconic artist Dale Chihuly, who once again is exhibiting his luminous artworks in Kew's spectacular landscape, featuring pieces never seen before in the UK. The book showcases these utterly unique artworks across one of London's most spectacular landscapes, in a perfect marriage of art, science, and nature. Stunning photography depicts the dazzling art installations situated across the Gardens, set within the landscape as well as in glasshouses and in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art. Highlights include the Drawings and Rotolo series, some of the most technically challenging work that Chihuly has ever created, as well as Seaforms, undulating forms that conjure underwater life. A specially designed sculpture suspended from the ceiling of the newly restored Temperate House provides one of the moss stunning features of the exhibition and book. An introductory essay by Tim Richardson accompanies the artworks, along with artist's chronology and biography.

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.

Inspired by timeless poems from around the world, Hassan Massoudy's calligraphy takes us on a visual journey through love in its many forms. Through his signature broad strokes and vibrant colours, this master calligrapher brings to life the words and wisdom of some of our greatest poets, from Ibn Zaydoun and Rumi to Kahlil Gibran, John Keats and Paul Eluard. Beautifully designed and illustrated throughout, Calligraphies of Love is the perfect gift for lovers, poets and dreamers.

The famous international painter and performance artist Helmut Schober (* 1947) has focused for the past 40-odd years on the vortex and its intercultural content. Over the decades the vortex has remained a constant in his oeuvre, always supported by his main preoccupations of depicting and making tangible light, time, space and cosmos. The qualities ascribed to the vortex include, amongst others, the constant cyclical continuity of life, triggered by the continuous rotation, as well as fate and fear. We feel ourselves to be subjected to a power which we cannot influence. Today's world, its conflicts, the unfair distribution of property and economic decline, the resulting fear and the unpredictability of the future - all these are merged into the metaphor of the vortex. This attractively designed volume visualises the vortex in numerous illustrations. It captures the viewer in its swirling maelstrom and prompts emotions.

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.

CAUTION: To all the world's thinkers, artists, poets, and misfits: SoulPancake is a movement to chew on Life's Big Questions. Side effects may include change in the way you think about what it means to be human. Don't say we didn't warn you. Somewhere over the course of history, chewing on Life's Big Questions lost its cool factor. Fortunately for mankind, Rainn Wilson (best known for playing Dwight Schrute on NBC's "The Office") and a bunch of his friends are on a mission to change that. CAN MEN AND WOMEN REALLY BE "JUST FRIENDS? IF YOU ONLY HAD ONE HOUR LEFT TO LIVE, HOW WOULD YOU SPEND IT? WHAT PARALYZES YOUR CREATIVITY? WHAT FUELS IT? Based on the wildly successful website SoulPancake.com, this book urges you to explore philosophy, creativity, spirituality, love, truth, science, and so much more. With bold questions, intriguing challenges, and mind-bending art, "SoulPancake" creates a space for you to stimulate your brain stem, spark your soul, and figure out what it means to be human. CRAMMED INSIDE: A revealing Introduction by Rainn Wilson180 Life's Big Questions (the ones that gnaw at your innards)Visual masterpieces from 90+ artistsUnusual activities that launch you into the worldExclusive commentary from the fascinating minds of: Amy Sedaris, David Lynch, Heather Armstrong (Dooce.com), Dr. Drew, Jesse Dylan, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Harold Ramis, Josh Ritter, and Saul Williams.

Claes Oldenburg's commitment to familiar objects has shaped accounts of his career, but his associations with Pop art and postwar consumerism have overshadowed another crucial aspect of his work. In this revealing reassessment, Katherine Smith traces Oldenburg's profound responses to shifting urban conditions, framing his enduring relationship with the city as a critical perspective and conceiving his art as urban theory. Smith argues that Oldenburg adapted lessons of context, gleaned from New York's changing cityscape in the late 1950s, to large-scale objects and architectural plans. By examining disparate projects from New York to Los Angeles, she situates Oldenburg's innovations in local geographies and national debates. In doing so, Smith illuminates patterns of urbanization through the important contributions of one of the leading artists in the United States.

Paul Feeley (19101966) is a towering figure in postwar American modernism. His legendary tenure as head of the art department at Bennington College and resulting associations with the likes of Lawrence Alloway, Helen Frankenthaler, Clement Greenberg, Jackson Pollock, and David Smith informed his unique approach to painting as an open-ended proposition. Represented during his lifetime by the Betty Parsons Gallery and honored posthumously by a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, he is the subject of this timely new publication, which accompanies a major exhibition organized by the Albright- Knox Art Gallery and the Columbus Museum of Art.In addition to color plates of all works in the exhibitionnearly one hundred paintings, works on paper, and sculpturesthis volume features essays by exhibition curators Douglas Dreishpoon and Tyler Cann, as well as poet and critic Raphael Rubinstein, and an illustrated chronology by academic and granddaughter of the artist Cary Cordova. From his early Abstract Expressionistinspired paintings to his organic, anthropomorphic figureground compositions and later diagrammatical, hard-edged works, "Imperfections by Chance" charts the full range of Feeley s influential life and career.The accompanying exhibition opens at The Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH, October 22, 2015January 10, 2016"

Lesley Dill is an American artist working at the intersection of language and fine art in printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance, exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of the writings of Emily Dickinson, Salvador Espriu, Tom Sleigh, Franz Kafka, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others, into works of paper, wire, horsehair, foil, bronze and music — works that awaken the viewer to the physical intimacy and power of language itself. Lesley Dill – Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me features a uniquely inspired group of sculptures and two-dimensional works more than a decade in the making. It is testimony of Dill’s ongoing investigation into the significant voices and personas of America’s past. For the artist, the American voice grew from early America’s obsessions with divinity and deviltry, on fears of the wilderness out there and wilderness inside us. The plates, in colour throughout, are supplemented with essays by Lesley Dill, Brooklyn-based writer Nancy Princenthal, Figge Art Museum’s curator Andrew Wallace, and researcher and tribal historian Juaquin Hamilton-Youngbird. The book also features a literary text by writer by Tom Sleigh and a poem by author and poet Ray Young Bear.

Kris Fierens (born 1957) uses the character of a preliminary study or a sketch as an enduring thing. Or, in their possibility they imitate the character of a preliminary study. Reality and emotion reach a virtual zero point. The gestures that he makes simply become the 'objets trouves'. The object 'on his own' is never present. It's the included matter that enables him to save his dream. Traces of something that still needs to happen. Of which a disappearing memory can already behold. Text in English and Dutch.

The renowned American artist Sherrie Levine engages her ongoing practice of appropriating artworks from the Western art historical canon-this time taking Ad Reinhardt's Blue Paintings as a point of departure. Monochromes After Reinhardt: 1-28 (2018) continues the artist's ongoing investigation of color separated from its representational function. Inspired by the exhibition Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings held at David Zwirner, New York in 2017, Levine has created abstract restatements of the 28 works that were on view, making use of pixilation to consolidate the range of blue tones in each painting into a single, truly monochromatic value. This work revisits a technique first employed by Levine in her 1989 group of woodcut prints Meltdown, where an averaging algorithm was used to create a checkerboard composition based on modernist artists' iconic paintings. Sherrie Levine: After Reinhardt is published on the occasion of Levine's eponymous solo exhibition at David Zwirner's Upper East Side location in New York in 2019. The publication features full color reproductions of Monochromes After Reinhardt: 1-28 and includes the 1965 text "Reinhardt Paints a Picture," in which Reinhardt famously interviewed himself.

From Botticelli to Bacon, da Vinci to Damien Hirst, artists have invested their personalities in the environments in which they have worked. Although today numerous artists have abandoned the studio model in favor of new modes of working enabled by new technologies, the studio space, often containing the visible remains of artistic ingenuity, toil, and torment, continues to present a window into the creative soul and a summary of widely varying methods and approaches.

Sanctuary: Britain s Artists and their Studios is the first publication in half a century to look behind the scenes at both artists working lives and their workplaces, encouraging them to speak, delving into their minds and exploring their methodologies and personalities. Surveying 120 renowned artists living and working in Britain today, from the most noteworthy to new, upcoming talent, Sanctuary offers a visual feast of specially commissioned photography while following each artist through their working routines. Tony Cragg, Anthony Gormley, Jenny Saville, Anish Kapoor, Mark Wallinger, Phyllida Barlow, Jane and Louise Wilson, Thomas Houseago, Tracey Emin, the Chapman Brothers the list goes on. In addition to highly individualized interviews with all of the artists featured in the book, the stage is set by three highly engaging essays exploring the meanings, configurations, and personalities of a huge range of studio settings and environments in the context of the contemporary British art scene."

While almost everybody knows Ludwig Bemelmans' Madeline, the fact that the illustrator published over forty other titles remains a well-kept secret. The first title in Thames & Hudson's brand-new series, this book offers a visually rich insight into the life and work of this important artist and writer. Ludwig Bemelmans grew up under the Austro-Hungarian empire and emigrated to the United States in his late teens, just escaping the outbreak of the First World War. His illustrations for the Madeline books offer a classic vision of Paris that has created a lasting impression on millions of readers. And every illustrator would love to know how he conveyed all the emotions of a spirited little girl drawn with just a few lines and dots; how did he achieve such clarity in simplicity? Laurie Britton Newell's illustrated essay gathers material from Bemelmans' diverse oeuvre, from novels, autobiographical stories, humorous articles and comic strips to murals and menus for hotels and restaurants. The book makes accessible this mesmerizing material, which is otherwise lost to the public, and connects it to the artist's intriguing life. An icon of a fascinating era, Bemelmans through his magical work gives us glimpses of a life that embodied both hard work and glamour, in Paris and New York.

For nearly forty years, John Van Alstine has created abstract sculptures forged from steel and stone. In John Van Alstine: Sculpture, 1971-2018, three notable essayists explore the sculptor's abstract landscapes that reveal the complex synergy between natural forces and man-made elements; by grappling with the challenges of balancing stone and steel, Van Alstine's indoor, outdoor, and site-specific sculptures are measured and calculated, yet simultaneously poetic; their swooping angular lines create expansive spaces beyond the limits of their steel and stone frames to unveil our collective history and imagination, illuminating a deft interplay of natural energies and the human experience. The artist weaves into his works elements of mythology, celestial navigation, implements, human figures, movement, urban forms, and found objects, while using motion, balance, and inertia to incorporate the eternal forces of gravity, tension, and erosion. In an essay on his drawings, Van Alstine details the critical role they play in the initiation and planning of his projects, offering the reader a firsthand perspective on the artist's creative process. Van Alstine's works have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions and are found in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art, and the Phillips Collection, to name but a few. His works are also found in numerous public and private collections. The Artist Book Foundation is gratified to announce the publication of this lavishly illustrated monograph on an esteemed and prolific contemporary artist.