In the times when the Ukrainian art sphere was regulated by the Soviet institutions, local monumental and decorative arts existed at the frontier of the Party's propaganda and the artistic thirst to experiments. Nowadays, Ukrainian mosaics are wrested out of the architectural context of the country in both literal and metaphorical ways. The artworks are liquidated from the buildings they were specifically created for and indiscriminately despised as ideological pieces of no value. Furthermore, in legal terms mosaics are not defined as objects of art that makes them unguarded in the face of the decommunization process. Initially incepted as a guide, this book is an equally beneficial companion for the journey through space (in the context of the geographical area of modern Ukraine) and hitchhiking through time (in terms of Ukrainian cultural history). It incorporates the selection of Ukrainian mosaics which undermines the simplified perspective on the Soviet art heritage in Ukraine. The volume is generously supplemented with unique photographs of the documentary photographer Yevgen Nikiforov who continues the research, initially presented in the book Decommunized: Ukrainian Soviet Mosaics (2017). Together with the art historian Polina Baitsym who reveals striking linkages of the mosaics' plots with broader historical context, he will guide you through the testimonies of the genuine creativity of Ukrainian monumental artists which managed to flourish on the most infertile soil.

Since the debut of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the Harry Potter film franchise has become one of the most popular and successful in the world. Beautifully crafted and presented in a deluxe, large-format with lavish production values, these pages present a visual chronicle of the work by artists and filmmakers to bring the wizarding world to life onscreen. Bursting with hundreds of rare and unpublished works of art, including production paintings, concept sketches, storyboards, blueprints, and more, this collectible book is the definitive tome on the visual legacy of the Harry Potter films. Fans will recognise beloved characters, creatures, locations, and more as they embark on a journey through the wizarding world, from Gringotts to the Quidditch pitch.

Trevor Paglen is an American artist, geographer, and author. What I want from art," says Paglen, "is to help see the historical moment we live in." His photographs make visible things we're not meant to see; he regards this invisibility as emblematic of that moment. Looking toward the earth, sea, or sky as earlier artists have, Paglen captures the same horizon seen by Turner in the nineteenth century or by Ansel Adams in the twentieth. Only in Paglen's images, a drone or classified communications satellite is also visible. "For me," Paglen observes, "seeing the drone in the twenty-first century is a bit like Turner seeing the train in the nineteenth century." Turner was less interested in the technology than its effects on perception, by its ability to accelerate human motion. Paglen is interested in our evolving perception in space. Standing in the Western landscape where Adams worked, Paglen photographs the drone as it photographs him. His images suggest that our conceptions of space and visuality are undergoing radical change; the physical limits of vision are no longer a reliable measure of what is visible to (often mechanical) others.Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen is the first major career survey for the artist in the United States. it presents Paglen's key photographic series: Limit Telephotography; Tapped Underwater Cables and Cable Landing Sites; and The Other Night Sky and Untitled (Drones). Other works included are Code Names, NSA Triptych, 89 Landscapes, Trinity Cube, Autonomy Cube, and The Fence. The volume includes an essay by curator John Jacob; an essay by Luke Skrebowski of the University of Manchester; and a conversation between the artist and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Katherine Crawford.

Michael Snow is one of Canada's greatest living artists, widely acknowledged as one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century Canadian art. Early Snow focuses on the nascent stages of the artist's career-which is comparatively underexamined in art commentary and critical literature-and demonstrates how wide-ranging were his achievements in painting, drawing, sculpture, foldage, cinema, and photography. Snow's first achievements may serve as a blueprint for his later career, but they also give ample proof of the creative heights he had already reached by the age of thirty-three. This book reveals a young man whose catholic interests in art and literature contributed to his uncanny ability to create profoundly original works of art. Perceptive essays by James King argue that these artworks are best approached in the context of Snow's knowledge of modern European art (Paul Klee, Ben Nicholson, Alberto Giacometti) and contemporary American art (Willem de Kooning, Conrad Marca-Relli, Donald Judd, Marcel Duchamp), and that, ultimately, the work created during this era is about transformation.

In diesem Band stellt der Autor, der seit den fruhen 60er Jahren empirisch auf dem Gebiet der trivialen Lesestoffe gearbeitet hat, seine Ergebnisse aus der Trivialliteratur- und Popularkulturforschung zusammenfassend dar. Gegenuber germanistischen, primar literaturwissenschaftlich orientierten Arbeiten zeichnet sich diese Studie dadurch aus, dass Leserprofile, aber auch die Produktionsbedingungen genauer beschrieben werden, als dies bisher der Fall war. - Ein gutes Lehrbuch, das sowohl fur Literatur- wie auch fur Sozial- und Kommunikationswissenschaftler ein Muss ist."

The seminal writing of Carlos Cruz-Diez, best known for his experiential works exploring color and its properties Trained as a painter, Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923-2019) developed a conceptual platform for his work based on optical and chromatic phenomena, which led him to take a revolutionary new approach to his work beginning in 1959. Building on the chromatic experiments of figures like Sir Isaac Newton, the impressionists, and Josef Albers, Cruz-Diez explored the perception of color as an autonomous reality evolving in space and time, unaided by form or support, in a perpetual present. Originally published in Spanish in 1989, Reflection on Color details Cruz-Diez's theories of color and traces the aesthetic and conceptual evolution of his practice. Though the book was translated into English in Cruz-Diez's lifetime, it never saw broad distribution. In this text, Cruz-Diez explores eight of his major investigations into color phenomena, including his signature Physichromie and Chromosaturation series. Generously illustrated with examples of Cruz-Diez's work, this important text introduces Cruz-Diez's writing and thinking to a new generation of artists and scholars. Distributed for the Cruz-Diez Foundation

Tinka Pittoors (b. 1977) is a Belgian visual artist, who regularly exhibits her work in Flanders, Wallonia, the Netherlands and France. Anyone who crosses the threshold of her studio will feel as if they've stepped into an artificial secret garden. An explosion of shapes and colours awaits in a place where everything has the potential of becoming an artwork. In her sculptures and objects, Pittoors examines the utopia of a malleable world, often using the nature-culture divide as her starting premise. Each presentation is a moment in time, a snapshot, that is tailored to the venue. Les Voyageurs is published on the occasion of her eponymous exhibition in the gardens of Chateau Seneffe. Many people in Flanders have yet to discover this hidden gem. And yet the castle and gardens of Seneffe are Wallonia's equivalent of Versailles, with fountains, pavilions, pristine nature, and dreamy paths on 22 hectares of land. For this exhibition, Pittoors created a trail that reflects on the various possibilities of travel, displacement and detachment, arriving and leaving, escapes and quests. The introduction was written by Pieter Vermeulen. Other contributors include Marjolaine Hanssens, Veronika Pot, Carine Fol, Isabelle Pouget, Dominique Legrand, Stijn Tormans, Marc Ruyters, Jan Braet and Saskia De Coster. Text in English, French and Dutch.

Anna Freeman Bentley’s paintings use architectural imagery to explore the emotive potential of space. Grounded in an interest in the baroque her source material includes junk shops, restaurants, private members clubs, flea markets and designed interiors. Central to her work is an investigation into surface, tension and the atmosphere evoked by these different interior surroundings. The spaces she depicts are empty, yet visual signifiers point to evidence of people and social happenings. This, Freeman Bentley’s third publication to date, is centred on the relationship between painting and cinema and is divided into sections dedicated to major paintings on canvas and panel, and a number of works on paper (all works 2021–22). Freeman Bentley’s work here is focused on sets from 'The Colour Room' (2021), a film that tells the story of the early career of celebrated British ceramicist Clarice Cliff (1899–1972). The foreword to the book is written by Rollo Campbell and Matt Incledon of Frestonian Gallery. An essay by writer and critic Thomas Marks draws out the importance to her work of historic and contemporary cinema and temporary architecture. Marks notes a change in palette in these new paintings, with Freeman Bentley embracing pastels and tracing parallels between the artist herself and Cliff. An interview with Georgie Paget, co-founder of Caspian Films, production company for 'The Colour Room', meanwhile, provides insight into the artist’s particular interest in the artifice of film props and of the film set as a layered space ‘steeped in meaning, purpose and potential.’ The two discuss the reciprocity of painting and cinema in detail, recounting Freeman Bentley’s experiences on the film’s sets and discussing her working processes, beginning with taking photographs on set, through to oil sketches and the later development of large-scale canvases. The publication is edited by Matt Incledon and Matt Price. It is designed by Joe Gilmore, printed and bound by Gomer, Wales, and co-published by Frestonian Gallery, London, and Anomie Publishing, London. The publication coincides with the second solo show by Anna Freeman Bentley at Frestonian Gallery, by whom the artist is represented. The exhibition, also titled ‘make believe’ is divided between two sites: the 2022 Armory Show, New York, and Frestonian Gallery, London. Anna Freeman Bentley studied Painting at Chelsea College of Art, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee and the Royal College of Art. Awards and residencies include Palazzo Monti Residency, Brescia, Italy, 2019; The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant 2019 and 2017, and Artist in Restaurant residency at Michelin-starred restaurant Pied à Terre, London, 2012. Selected exhibitions (* denotes solo) include DENK Gallery, Los Angeles, 2019*, Ahmanson Gallery, Irvine, 2018*; Space K, Seoul, 2017; 68projects, Berlin, 2017; the East London Painting Prize 2014 and 2015; Workshop Gallery, Venice, 2012*; MAC Birmingham, 2011; Prague Biennale, 2011, and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2009. Her work is part of the Hotel Crillon collection, Paris; Saatchi Collection, London; Hogan Lovells Collection, London; the Ahmanson Collection, California, and numerous private collections worldwide.

In Dragging Away Lex Morgan Lancaster traces the formal and material innovations of contemporary queer and feminist artists, showing how they use abstraction as a queering tactic for social and political ends. Through a process Lancaster theorizes as a drag-dragging past aesthetics into the present and reworking them while pulling their work away from direct representation-these artists reimagine midcentury forms of abstraction and expose the violence of the tendency to reduce abstract form to a bodily sign or biographical symbolism. Lancaster outlines how the geometric enamel objects, grid paintings, vibrant color, and expansive installations of artists ranging from Ulrike Muller, Nancy Brooks Brody, and Lorna Simpson to Linda Besemer, Sheila Pepe, and Shinique Smith offer direct challenges to representational and categorical legibility. In so doing, Lancaster demonstrates that abstraction is not apolitical, neutral, or universal; it is a form of social praxis that actively contributes to queer, feminist, critical race, trans, and crip politics.

As his personal circumstances move in constant flux, Ai Weiwei remains a cultural magnet. Renowned for his political activism and social media activity almost as much as for his social interventions, contemporary approach to the readymade, and knowledge of Chinese traditional crafts, Ai's fame extends throughout and beyond the art world. Drawn from TASCHEN's limited Collector's Edition, this monograph explores each of Ai's career phases up until his release from Chinese custody. It features extensive visual material to trace Ai's development from his early New York days right through to his recent practice. Focus moments include his international breakthrough in the early 2000s, his porcelain Sunflower Seeds at the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, his response to the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, and his police detention in 2011. With behind-the-scenes studio pictures, production shots, and numerous statements derived from exclusive interviews with Ai, we gain privileged access to the artist's process, influences, and importance. The book includes texts from Uli Sigg, Ai's longtime friend and former Swiss ambassador to China and Roger M. Buergel, who curated the 2007 documenta and hosted the artist's Fairytale piece. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

Play art' or interactive art is becoming a central concept in the contemporary art world, disrupting the traditional role of passive observance usually assumed by audiences, allowing them active participation. The work of 'play' artists - from Carsten Holler's 'Test Site' at the Tate Modern to Gabriel Orozco's 'Ping Pond Table' - must be touched, influenced and experienced; the gallery-goer is no longer a spectator but a co-creator. Time to Play explores the role of play as a central but neglected concept in aesthetics and a model for ground-breaking modern and postmodern experiments that have intended to blur the boundary between art and life. Moving freely between disciplines, Katarzyna Zimna links the theory and history of 20th and 21st century art with ideas developed within play, game and leisure studies, and the philosophical theories of Kant, Gadamer and Derrida, to critically engage with current discussion on the role of the artist, viewers, curators and their spaces of encounter. She combines a consideration of the philosophical implications of play with the examination of how it is actually used in modern and postmodern art - looking at Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Relational Aesthetics. Focusing mainly on process-based art, this bold book proposes a fresh approach - reaching beyond classical cultural theories of play.

Thirteen years after her first Rizzoli monograph, British artist Jenny Saville releases this much-anticipated volume--her most comprehensive to date--including many never-before-published paintings. One of the most renowned living figurative painters of our time, Saville has set auction records and her highly sensual canvases invite us to consider the female form in all its glory. Great artists are of their moment, but push boundaries to revitalize our world. The British artist Jenny Saville is best known for painting monumental close-ups of large nude women exposing things that are usually left unshown: flab, fat, bulge. Today, when the body has never mattered more or counted less, Saville is undoubtedly the painter for our times. Saville has specialized in subjects on the margins of society: the obese, the disfigured, and transsexuals; yet under her fluctuating light and painstaking hues and layers, her subjects transcend their strangeness to take on a universal quality. Among artists of her generation, Saville is unusual in her devotion to figurative painting. This much-anticipated volume unites new work with almost all of Saville's paintings and drawings to date, many of them unpublished works. Published in association with Gagosian Gallery, the book also features a complete and illustrated chronology of the artist's career. A conversation with acclaimed American photographer Sally Mann, and essays by art critic Mark Stevens and Gagosian Director, London Richard Calvocoressi complete the volume.