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.

David Lynch is internationally renowned as a filmmaker, but it is less known that he began his creative life as a visual artist and has maintained a devoted studio practice, developing an extensive body of painting, prints, photography, and drawing. Featuring work from all periods of Lynch's career, this book documents Lynch's first major museum exhibition in the United States, bringing together works held in American and European collections and from the artist's studio. Much like his movies, many of Lynch's artworks revolve around suggestions of violence, dark humor, and mystery, conveying an air of the uncanny. This is often conveyed through the addition of text, wildly distorted forms, and disturbances in the paint fields that surround or envelop his figures. While a few relate to his film projects, most are independent works of art that reveal a parallel trajectory. Organized in close collaboration with the artist, David Lynch: The Unified Field brings together ninety-five paintings, drawings, and prints from 1965 to the present, often unified by the recurring motif of the home as a site of violence, memories, and passion. Other works explore the odd, tender, and mincing aspects of relationships. Highlighting many works that have rarely been seen in public, including early work from his critical years in Philadelphia (1965 70), this catalog offers a substantial response to dealer Leo Castelli's comment when he enthusiastically viewed Lynch's work in 1987, I would like to know how he got to this point; he cannot be born out of the head of Zeus." Published in association with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

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.

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.

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.

Following her 2010 publication dedicated to roses, Cologne-based artist Sabine Moritz here turns her attention to lilies, which she first began depicting in the mid 1990s. Working on paper to produce fifty-nine charcoal, pastel and oil pastel drawings, similiarly she often approaches works as studies or exercises in observation and representation. During the development of this publication, which was originally conceived as a collection of Moritz s drawings of lilies, the artist had the idea to introduce another ongoing body of work drawings of objects alongside the lilies. These objects are primarily statues, statuettes and figurines hand-made works of art from different periods in history, such as a classical torso, an African figurine, and a Buddhist head. Moritz s drawings of objects reflect a range of ideas and registers, moods and sentiments. Including the objects alongside the lilies opens up questions of time, life, death, belief, truth, human psychology and the very process o

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Elvis Presley and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The Beatles and Andy Warhol. Terry Riley and Ken Kesey. What all these artists have in common is that loops have played a significant role in their work. The short sequences of sounds or images repeated using recording media have proved to be an astonishingly flexible, versatile and momentous aesthetic method in post-World War II art and music. Today, loops must be counted among the most important creative tools of postmodern art and music. Yet until now they have been largely overlooked as an aesthetic phenomenon. Now, for the first time, this book tells a secret story of the 20th century: how a formerly inconspicuous basic function of all modern media technology gave rise to complete artistic oeuvres, musical styles such as minimal music, hip hop and techno, and, most recently, entire scenes and subcultures that would have been unthinkable without loops.

The British painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is famed for his idiosyncratic mode of depicting the human figure. Thirty years after his death, his working methods remain underexplored. New research on the Francis Bacon Studio Archive at Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, sheds light on the genesis of his works, namely the photographic source material he collected in his studios, on which he consistently based his paintings. The book brings together the artist's pictorial springboards for the first time, delineating and interpreting recurring patterns and methods in his preparatory work and adoption of photographic material. In addition, it correctly locates 'chance' as a driving force in Bacon's working method and qualifies the significance of photography for the painter.

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.

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.

Hermann Nitsch produced his first "poured" paintings around 1960. In this form of action painting, the artist is primarily concerned with the substance of the paint, which he investigates from one Painting Action to the next. This catalog illustrates the development of his painterly works from the early 1960s to the present day. The main focus of the content lies in the characteristics of the various work cycles. In addition to the first "splatter" paintings it shows floor "splatter" paintings from the Red Cycle (1995), works from the Six-Day Play (1989) or the yellow Resurrection Cycle (2002). While one colour dominates in the monochrome works, in others a real explosion of colours takes place. The paint is splattered or sprayed; it may be applied in liquid form or impasto. The artist may use a paintbrush or smear the paint with his hands. The focal point is the exploration of the state of the paint, which varies between liquid and solid.

Nobody doubts that the contemporary art of Turkey has `arrived' on the international stage: Hale Tenger's work has been bought by the Pompidou Centre; Fikret Atay features in Tate Modern's collection; Kutlug Ataman has been nominated for the Turner Prize; and collectors flock from around the world to pick up pieces by exceptionally talented Turkish artists. 'Unleashed' is the most comprehensive account yet of the recent storm of activity in Turkey's art scene. A sumptuously illustrated A-Z of over ninety of the most exciting Turkish contemporary artists, it contains many exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names in Turkish art, as well as such up-and-coming artists as Leyla Gediz, Emre Huner and Ali Kazmal and the Turkish diaspora. It also features interviews with and profiles of leading curators, gallerists, collectors, artist-run spaces and museums. The work of the featured artists is put into further context by three important essays written by leading curators and critics, which tackle the issues of identity, and the relationship of Turkish art to international artistic trends.

In 1957 the UK Design Centre launched the first annual Designs of the Year Awards to identify and promote the very best of British design. For the next 30 years, the awards celebrated designed objects in all forms, from the domestic - cutlery, glassware, textiles and furniture - to the communal - street lights, signage and public seating - and everything in between, including fitted kitchens, schooners, bicycles and electronics. This beautifully designed book introduces and illustrates the quirky breadth of the awards. Iconic objects by Robin and Lucienne Day, Kenneth Grange and David Mellor sit alongside such retro classics as the Barbican basin, the ZX81 personal computer and Globoot wellies.

From the 1990s until just before his death, the legendary art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto carried out extended conversations about contemporary art with the prominent Italian critic Demetrio Paparoni. Their discussions ranged widely over a vast range of topics, from American pop art and minimalism to abstraction and appropriationism. Yet they continually returned to the concepts at the core of Danto's thinking-posthistory and the end of aesthetics-provocative notions that to this day shape questions about the meaning and future of contemporary art. Art and Posthistory presents these rich dialogues and correspondence, testifying to the ongoing importance of Danto's ideas. It offers readers the opportunity to experience the intellectual excitement of Danto in person, speculating in a freewheeling yet erudite style. Danto and Paparoni discuss figures such as Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Franz Kline, Sean Scully, Clement Greenberg, Cindy Sherman, and Wang Guangyi, offering both insightful comments on individual works and sweeping observations about wider issues. On occasion, the artist Mimmo Paladino and the philosopher Mario Perniola join the conversation, enlivening the discussion and adding their own perspectives. The book also features an introductory essay by Paparoni that provides lucid analysis of Danto's thinking, emphasizing where the two disagree as well as what they learned from each other.

From the 1990s until just before his death, the legendary art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto carried out extended conversations about contemporary art with the prominent Italian critic Demetrio Paparoni. Their discussions ranged widely over a vast range of topics, from American pop art and minimalism to abstraction and appropriationism. Yet they continually returned to the concepts at the core of Danto's thinking-posthistory and the end of aesthetics-provocative notions that to this day shape questions about the meaning and future of contemporary art. Art and Posthistory presents these rich dialogues and correspondence, testifying to the ongoing importance of Danto's ideas. It offers readers the opportunity to experience the intellectual excitement of Danto in person, speculating in a freewheeling yet erudite style. Danto and Paparoni discuss figures such as Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Franz Kline, Sean Scully, Clement Greenberg, Cindy Sherman, and Wang Guangyi, offering both insightful comments on individual works and sweeping observations about wider issues. On occasion, the artist Mimmo Paladino and the philosopher Mario Perniola join the conversation, enlivening the discussion and adding their own perspectives. The book also features an introductory essay by Paparoni that provides lucid analysis of Danto's thinking, emphasizing where the two disagree as well as what they learned from each other.