This seventh volume in the beautiful Strokes of Genius series celebrates creative drawing with more than 140 diverse pieces by today's best artists in charcoal, pencil, pastel, colored pencil, scratchboard, pen+ink and more. * Drawing is an essential skill that all artists use no matter what their primary medium * 100+ of the best artists showcased from 1000s of entrant * Oversized book has coffee-table appeal and is great for collectors * Inspiring captions let readers uncover the secret processes of contemporary masters.

Chuck Close immediately liked the idea of a book without words. As a child, his severe dyslexia stood in the way of reading, making images all the more important. To this day, he remembers a visual encyclopaedia from his early years and the feeling of being overtaken by the intensity of its pictures. The idea was also compatible with Close's ongoing interest in revealing the process of his work, which he accomplishes largely through visual presentation, using very few words, if any. Scribble Book is a self-portrait that emerges step-by-step out of the printing process, one plate and one colour at a time. The viewer follows a series of 9 individual plate proofs along with a corresponding series of 9 progressive proofs. By comparing the plate proofs against the progressive proofs, the viewer may ascertain not only the effect as one colour is added to another to create the final 9-colour self-portrait, but also the compositional decisions and careful modifications made by Close at each stage of the project. A similar work was made with 12 plates and included in the exhibition Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2004. It was an immediate success. However, Close became fully aware of the effectiveness of the work only by means of an error: two of the prints were hung out of sequence, a circumstance that evaded the notice of both Close and the museum staff. It was not long before representatives of the museum received letters from two visitors who had noticed the error. "And just imagine," Close relates, "if two people took the time to write letters, how many more must have figured it out and not bothered to write in " Careful viewing was all that was needed, and the work inspired just that. Scribble Book is presented in this Steidl edition as two accordion-fold books. The first shows the series of plate proofs, and the second the series of progressive proofs, culminating with a 9-colour self-portrait. For those seeking a more detailed understanding of the printmaking process, these books are accompanied by a separate text booklet in which the artist gives a personal account of the drawing process as recorded through the soft-ground etching method.

Philippe Apeloig's design career began in 1985 at the Musee d'Orsay when he designed the poster for the Museum's first exhibition, `Chicago, Birth of a Metropolis'. He is noted for his posters, many of which are in the collection of MoMA, and his typography, including the typefaces Octobre and Drop. This exhibition and book surveys and explores the entirety of Apeloig's graphic design process and philosophy. His posters, logos, visual identities, books and animations are reproduced along with the steps in their development, and the major influences that fuel his work.

This book explores the career of the St Ives artist Kate Nicholson, daughter of Ben and Winifred Nicholson, from her early landscapes, the still lifes painted in Cumberland and St Ives, the abstracts - many of them inspired by her travels in Greece - to the late works made on the Isle of Eigg in the Hebrides. It examines her artistic relationship with her mother, with whom she painted side by side in Cumberland and Scotland, and on their many Greek travels. It also discusses her creative relationship with her father with whom she lived in St Ives in the mid-1950s for two years, as well as her friendship with many of the St Ives artists and her role in the Penwith Society.

Published to accompany the exhibition 'Kate Nicholson' at Falmouth Art Gallery, this book is the first monograph on this highly talented artist who deserves to be better known. It illustrates many works from both public and private collections and draws on groundbreaking new research, together with the author's experience of travelling with her on painting trips.

The groundbreaking sculptor's most comprehensive monograph to date

Jean-Michel Othoniel is an artist who creates sculptures that explore themes of fragility, transformation, and ephemerality. Using the repetition of such modular elements as bricks or beads, his work deploys various strategies that hint at loss and despair – cracks in his objects' perfect surfaces, negative spaces and, early in his career, transient materials such as sulfur. The most authoritative study of the artist's work to date, it includes intimate gallery pieces as well as monumental public commissions around the world.

In 2007, Ai Weiwei (born 1957) presented a surprising new project titled "Fairytale" at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. He invited 1001 Chinese citizens of different ages and from various backgrounds to travel to Germany, all expenses paid, to experience their own fairytale holiday for 28 days. The logistics for this project were complex and entailed a hefty budget, as the artist later recalled, enumerating the considerations: "to design the trip and activities for the tourists, to hope to get their passports, their visas, their insurance and air tickets, to organize the place where they can live in Kassel, to hire cooks, make products which are connected to the journey and would be needed for it..." Happily, "Fairytale" was a runaway success for the artist, the participants and for Documenta. It was judged by critics to be one of the most sensational artworks at Documenta that year, and led to an acclaimed documentary and global media coverage. This publication offers critical analyses of the project from Roger M. Buergel, Daniel Birnbaum, Christian Holler, Raphael Gygax and Ai Weiwei himself.

A remarkable illustrated volume of artwork and images selected from the diaries David Sedaris has been creating for four decades In this richly illustrated book, readers will for the first time experience the diaries David Sedaris has kept for nearly 40 years in the elaborate, three-dimensional, collaged style of the originals. A celebration of the unexpected in the everyday, the beautiful and the grotesque, this visual compendium offers unique insight into the author's view of the world and stands as a striking and collectible volume in itself. Compiled and edited by Sedaris's longtime friend Jeffrey Jenkins, and including interactive components, postcards, and never-before-seen photos and artwork, this is a necessary addition to any Sedaris collection, and will enthrall the author's fans for many years to come.

A highly acclaimed and extremely prolific artist, Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) has been active since the early 1970s. Working in mediums such as sculpture, video, film, installation, performance, and printmaking, he shies away from developing a single characteristic style. His work toys with text and fragmented images of the human body. Often provocative in nature, he connects physical realities of violence, sex, and death with visceral, spiritual messages, like an early neon sign proclaiming, 'the true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.' On top of many achievements in his career, Nauman recently represented the United States at the 2009 Venice Biennale and was awarded the Golden Lion prize for best national pavilion. This book accompanies Nauman's major exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, showing in Paris from 15 March to 14 June 2015. This will be the most significant exhibition of his work in France since the retrospective organized by the Centre Pompidou in 1997. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will bring together eight works hitherto unseen in France, some of which are his latest projects.

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.

Paulina Olowska's paintings, collages, and knitted works explore Communist Poland's fascination with Western consumerism and celebrates the spirit of what Polish writer Leopold Tyrmand called the "Applied Fantastic," or the vernacular recreations of Western styles--while also paying tribute to American Pattern and Decoration art of the 1970s. This first overview includes an interview with Adam Szymczyk and an essay by Jan Verwoert.

The celebrated Spanish sculptor Juan Munoz (1953-2001) died at the height of his powers, when he was considered "one of the most complex and individual artists working today" (Guardian). His challenging, enigmatic works almost inexorably draw in viewers. "The spectator," Munoz said about his installations, "becomes very much like the object to be looked at, and perhaps the viewer has become the one who is on view." This handsome book, distinguished by more than 30 stunning photographs, documents a group of Munoz installations at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Representing the full range of Munoz's sculptures-from First Banister (1987), which reflects the artist's early use of architectural language, to Conversation Piece (2001), a work that shows his later interest in the human figure-the book demonstrates how Munoz invented a mode of storytelling through objects that spoke to space, memory, and displacement. David Breslin contributes a reflection on notions of interiority and exteriority, and of perception and absorption, as expressed in Munoz's work. Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

If participation has been an ideal in politics since ancient democracy, in art it became central only with the avant-gardes emerging from WWI and the Russian Revolution. Politics and aesthetics are still catching up with each other. In the 21st century, since the revolutionary unrest of the 1960s, participation in art and architecture has lost its utopian glow and become the focus of a fierce debate: does 'participatory' art and architecture shape social reality, or is it shaped by it? Contemporary critics see in participation only technocratic control, while others embrace it as a viable politics in an era of global capitalism. This innovative book breaks the impasse by looking at how participants themselves exert power, rather than being victimized or liberated from it. From artists hijacking Google Earth to protesters setting up a museum of the revolution in Cairo, art, architecture and daily life are explored in their participatory dimension.

Shedding fresh light on modern art beyond the West, this text introduces readers to artists, art movements, debates and theoretical positions of the modern era that continue to shape contemporary art worldwide. Area histories of modern art are repositioned and interconnected towards a global art historiography. * Provides a much-needed corrective to the Eurocentric historiography of modern art, offering a more worldly and expanded view than any existing modern art survey * Brings together a selection of major essays and historical documents from a wide range of sources * Section introductions, critical essays, and documents provide the relevant contextual and historiographical material, link the selections together, and guide the reader through the key theoretical positions and debates * Offers a useful tool for students and scholars with little or no prior knowledge of non-Western modernisms * Includes many contrasting voices in its documents and essays, encouraging reader response and lively classroom discussion * Includes a selection of major essays and historical documents addressing not only painting and sculpture but photography, film and architecture as well.

The official art book for the animated movie Spies in Disguise.

Super spy Lance Sterling (Will Smith) and scientist Walter Beckett (Tom Holland) are almost exact opposites. Lance is smooth, suave and debonair. Walter is… not. But when events take an unexpected turn, this unlikely duo are forced to team up for the ultimate mission that will require an almost impossible disguise - transforming Lance into the brave, fierce, majestic… pigeon. Walter and Lance suddenly have to work as a team, or the whole world is in peril.

In this coffee table hardback, uncover the concept designs, character sketches, storyboards, and production art, alongside insight from the artists, filmmakers, and directors for this animated buddy comedy set in the high-octane globe-trotting world of international espionage.

A comprehensive look at works made by Baldessari between the years 1987 and 1993 This handsome volume, the third of the John Baldessari (b. 1931) catalogue raisonne project, compiles 400-plus unique works of art made by the influential conceptual artist from 1987 through 1993. Here we see the artist's large-scale photo-based works, many of which employed his signature colored discs painted over the faces of people in the photos, accompanied by entries that trace the shifts and developments in Baldessari's work as his collaged photo narratives achieved maturity and mastery. A critical essay by Briony Fer provides a close reading of selected works, giving historical context for Baldessari's art from this period. In addition to a detailed chronology, complete exhibition history, and bibliography, this volume notably features a previously unpublished conversation between Baldessari and the artist Ed Ruscha, which was undertaken specifically for this publication. In the conversation, the artists discuss their early careers in Southern California and the shared thematic concerns in their work. The artworks in this volume demonstrate Baldessari's ability to express-and, in many cases, combine-the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language within the boundaries of a single piece. Published in association with Marian Goodman Gallery

Wang Guangyi's art is significant not only in China but across the world: this book investigates his artistic path from a new perspective. For any reader interested in understanding contemporary Chinese culture and art, this book provides a unique viewpoint: it approaches the story of a Chinese contemporary artist from the perspective of the history of ideas and art rather than that of news and politics. It adopts methods and approaches easily understandable by Western readers in order to draw them closer to the enigma that Chinese contemporary culture represents.

A groundbreaking method for writing art history, using the language of geometry.   How do we embark on a history of art from the assumption of a global majority, outside of essentializing categories like race or hollow proclamations of solidarity? With this book, Joan Kee presents a framework for understanding the rich and surprisingly understudied relationship between Black and Asian artists and the worlds they initiate through their work.   The Geometries of Afro Asia breaks down this relationship and chronology into points, angles, and trajectories. Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Kee looks at the relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—from civil rights struggles in the United States and the development of South Korea amid US military occupation in the 1960s and 1970s to debates over multiculturalism and critiques of globalization in the 1990s and 2010s. Through geometry, a language of magnitudes and alignments, Kee opens up new ways of seeing how artworks shape our lives and politics by getting us to commit some of our most valuable resources—time and attention—to one another.

To what extent have developments in global politics, artworld institutions and local cultures reshaped the critical directions of feminist art historians? The significant research gathered in Feminism and Art History Now engages with the rich inheritance of feminist historiography since around 1970, and considers how to maintain the forcefulness of its critique while addressing contemporary political struggles. Taking on subjects that reflect the museological, global and materialist trajectories of 21st-century art historical scholarship, the chapters address the themes of Invisibility, Temporality, Spatiality and Storytelling. They present new research on a diversity of topics that span political movements in Italy, urban gentrification in New York, community art projects in Scotland and Canada's contemporary indigenous culture. Case studies focus on the art of Lee Krasner, The Emily Davison Lodge, Zoe Leonard, Martha Rosler, Carla Lonzi and Womanhouse. Together with a synthesising introductory essay, these case studies provide readers with a view of feminist art histories of the past, present and future.

Featuring never-before-seen drawings by the renowned contemporary artist, a beautiful facsimile edition that reveals the working process of an extraordinary creative mind Sketchbook reproduces original working drawings and sketches by the contemporary American artist and designer Daniel Arsham, whose work freely crosses the boundaries of art, architecture, film, and design, and also speaks to fans of pop culture, including sneakerheads, car enthusiasts, and anime devotees. Spanning a decade and featuring previously unpublished drawings by this highly skilled draftsman, this beautifully produced facsimile edition provides an unprecedented, intimate look at Arsham's working process, revealing a new side of an extraordinary creative mind. Published in association with No More Rulers

Recent events have pushed artists to visualize ideas of closeness in a new light. Kinship, published on the occasion of the National Portrait Gallery's tenth "Portraiture Now" exhibition, features the work of eight leading contemporary artists who explore familial relationships through photography, painting, sculpture, and performance. Contemporary portraiture offers a way to consider the mutable yet enduring qualities of familial relationships and the internal and external forces that affect our bonds with others. For example, interpretations of distance - whether emotional, physical, or geographical - have recently become more fraught. By recognizing the transformations that occur in the genre of portraiture and the threads that today's portraits share, we can better understand the universality and specificity of kinship. List of artists: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jess T. Dugan, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jessica Todd Harper, Thomas Holton, Sedrick Huckaby, Anna Tsouhlarakis

This stunning exhibition catalog visualizes what freedom looks like for Black Americans today and the legacy of the Civil War in 2023 and beyond. Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation sits at the intersection of history and contemporary life. Building upon in-depth conversations about representations of enslavement and emancipation at the close of the Civil War, this project originates from an analysis of sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward's The Freedman (1863), one of the first bronze representations of a Black person in the United States, and expands into an investigation of how living artists envision emancipation, freedom, and liberation today. Featuring interviews with artists Sadie Barnette, Alfred Conteh, Maya Freelon, Hugh Hayden, Letitia Huckaby, Jeffrey Meris, and Sable Elyse Smith, the exhibition catalog explores their practices along with cutting-edge scholarship by Kirsten Pai Buick and Kelvin Parnell, among others, as well as a haunting story of embodiment and exploitation by celebrated science-fiction author N. K. Jemisin. Burdened by failed promises but buoyed by hope, this project is mournful and melancholy yet also reflective and celebratory in its aspirations for a brighter future. Published in association with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art Exhibition dates: Amon Carter Museum of American Art: March 12-July 9, 2023 Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University: August 5-November 11, 2023 Williams College Museum of Art: February 16-June 16, 2024

Over the past decade, German artist Michael Riedel has incorporated a wide range of media into his practice, including large-scale works on canvas, fabric works, film and video, audio recordings, installations, and events. A central focus of his work is the publishing and production of artist's books, catalogues, brochures, posters, and cards. In 2000, Riedel and Dennis Loesch launched a collaborative project in an abandoned building in Frankfurt. Using the building's address- Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16-as the name for their new space, they created an experimental laboratory where they restaged cultural events held at other locations throughout the city, effectively duplicating them in space and time. Occasionally, these re-presented events-which included book readings, film screenings, art exhibitions, and music concerts-were hosted on the same night as the actual event elsewhere in the city, but mostly, they were presented days or weeks after the original activity took place. According to Riedel, "We presented one concept over and over again. To create a distance to some original that had been done at another place." With the call of "record, label, playback," a group of young artists reiterated the language of a city's cultural offerings, often without a full understanding of what they were reciting, but always with an acute aesthetic interest in the faults of transmission and transference.