Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal presents a survey of the artist's prolific and extraordinary interdisciplinary career, with a particular focus on the work's relationship to the photographic image and to issues of representation and perception. At the core of Hank Willis Thomas's practice, is his ability to parse and critically dissect the flow of images that comprises American culture, and to do so with particular attention to race, gender, and cultural identity. Other powerful themes include the commodification of identity through popular media, sports, and advertising. In the ten years since his first publication, Pitch Blackness , Thomas has established himself as a significant voice in contemporary art, equally at home with collaborative, trans-media projects such as Question Bridge, Philly Block, and For Freedoms as he is with high-profile, international solo exhibitions. This extensive presentation of his work contextualizes the material with incisive essays from Portland Art Museum curators Julia Dolan and Sara Krajewski and art historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, and an in-depth interview between Dr. Kellie Jones and the artist that elaborates on Thomas's influences and inspirations.

A Kenyan upbringing is the ticket to this voyage into a remarkably real created world entered via carved, integrating frames. Twice TVs pick of the show at the Royal Academies and with crowds and fan mail at a third RA Summer Exhibition, James remains a virtual unknown in his own country. A production rate averaging just one painting a year may account for this, but in an Art World where price is all, his output is sufficient to net him a viable living selling internationally. Also introducing the remarkable paintings of his artist son Alexander James. Together their art is akin to a vigorous breath of fresh air in a stuffy room.

The 1000 piece World of Yayoi Kusama jigsaw puzzle by Laurence King Publishing is an art puzzlers dream. Jigsaw puzzles are back as a wellness trend and this beautifully illustrated one is sure to help you relax while immersing yourself in the life of Yayoi Kusama.

From 1960s New York to today's Tokyo, there's a huge cast of extras - her friends, lovers and collaborators. Discover references to her artworks and her love of the polka dot. Once complete why not frame the artwork or keepsake poster to keep forever.

1000-PIECE PUZZLE:
The 1000-piece colourful jigsaw puzzle features the world of Yayoi Kusama in mind-blowing detail. Piece together the intricate illustrations by Laura Callaghan

FUN, COLOURFUL ILLUSTRATIONS:
Spot the famous figures, fellow artists and references to her polka dot artwork as you build this colourful jigsaw puzzle.

POSTER INCLUDED:
Includes a fun facts about Kusama's life and work in a fold out keepsake poster (A2)

EASY HANDLING:
The 1000 puzzle pieces are thick and sturdy, and the back sides are a white matte finish. The completed puzzle measures A2 in size and the jigsaw puzzle box measures 267 x 267 x 48mm. GIFT: The perfect gift for people who love art and want to spend time away from their screens while building this jigsaw puzzle

'I don't know how my pictures happen, they just do. They exist, but for the life of me I can't explain them'. Beryl Cook, O.B.E. 1926 - 2008 Beryl Cook began to paint during the 1960s and became a local phenomenon in Cornwall, England where she lived with her family, but it wasn't until 1975 that she first exhibited her work. Her appeal was classless and she rapidly became Britain's most popular artist. She was a 'heart and soul' painter, compelled to paint with a passion. Her work became instantly recognisable and was soon a part of our artistic vernacular. A modern-day Hogarth, Beryl Cook was a social observer, albeit with a more sympathetic view of humanity. The warm, original style of her paintings encapsulates joy. She possessed that rare gift - the power to uplift. Now the work of Beryl Cook can be seen again, both by her loyal fans and a new generation, in this vibrant and fun product range from Kinkajou.

In a 2019 interview with the webzine DC in the 80s, Jeff Lemire (b. 1976) discusses the comics he read as a child growing up in Essex County, Ontario-his early exposure to reprints of Silver Age DC material, how influential Crisis on Infinite Earths and DC's Who's Who were on him as a developing comics fan, his first reading of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, and his transition to reading the first wave of Vertigo titles when he was sixteen. In other interviews, he describes discovering independent comics when he moved to Toronto, days of browsing comics at the Beguiling, and coming to understand what was possible in the medium of comics, lessons he would take to heart as he began to establish himself as a cartoonist. Many cartoonists deflect from questions about one's history with comics and the influences of other artists, while others indulge the interviewer briefly before attempting to steer the questions in another direction. But Lemire, creator of Essex County Trilogy, Sweet Tooth, The Nobody, and Trillium, seems to bask in these discussions. Before he was ever a comics professional, he was a fan. What can be traced in these interviews is the story of the movement from comics fan to comics professional. In the twenty-nine interviews collected in Jeff Lemire: Conversations, readers see Lemire come to understand the process of collaboration, the balancing act involved in working for different kinds of comics publishers like DC and Marvel, the responsibilities involved in representing characters outside his own culture, and the possibilities that exist in the comics medium. We see him embrace a variety of genres, using each of them to explore the issues and themes most important to him. And we see a cartoonist and writer growing in confidence, a working professional coming into his own.

'Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades's] intense baroque and catholic cleverness' Roger Lewis, The Times 'One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don't deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph' Steven Poole, Guardian 'There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph 'Such a useful and important critic . . . He is very much on the reader's side, bringing his full wit to bear on every single thing he writes' Nicholas Lezard, Spectator This landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life. Thirty years ago, Jonathan Meades published a volume of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. The critic James Wood was moved to write: 'When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.' Pedro and Ricky Come Again is every bit as rich and catholic as its predecessor. It is bigger, darker, funnier and just as impervious to taste and manners. It bristles with wit and pin-sharp eloquence, whether Meades is contemplating northernness in a German forest or hymning the virtues of slang. From the indefensibility of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word 'iconic', to John Lennon's shopping lists and the wine they call Black Tower, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, France, concrete, faith, politics, food, history and much, much more.

A new understanding of Francis Bacon’s art and motivations.

The second in a series of books that seeks to illuminate Francis Bacon’s art and motivations, and to open up fresh and stimulating ways of understanding his paintings.

Francis Bacon is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His works continue to puzzle and unnerve viewers, raising complex questions about their meaning. Over recent decades, two theoretical approaches to Bacon’s work have come to hold sway: firstly, that Bacon is an existentialist painter, depicting an absurd and godless world; and secondly, that he is an anti-representational painter, whose primary aim is to bring his work directly onto the spectator’s ‘nervous system’.

Francis Bacon: Painting, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis brings together some of today’s leading philosophers and psychoanalytic critics to go beyond established readings of Bacon and to open up radically new ways of thinking about his art. The essays bring Bacon into dialogue with figures such as Aristotle, Hegel, Freud, Lacan, Adorno and Heidegger, as well as situating his work in the broader contexts of modernism and modernity. The result is a timely and thought-provoking collection that will be essential reading for anyone interested in Bacon, modern art and contemporary aesthetics.

Newly published in paperback to coincide with the Barbara Hepworth retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain in 2015, this fascinating book combines a fully illustrated catalogue of the sculptor's surviving prototypes in plaster (and a number also in aluminium and wood), generously gifted to The Hepworth Wakefield by the Hepworth Estate, with a detailed analysis of her working methods and a comprehensive history of her work in bronze. The Hepworth's collection of over forty unique, unknown sculptures are the surviving working models from which editions of bronzes were cast. They range in size from works that can be held in the hand to monumental sculptures, including the Winged Figure for John Lewis's Oxford Street headquarters. The majority are original plasters on which the artist worked with her own hands and to scale. It was in plaster that Hepworth experimented most as she made the transition from stone and wood to bronze, testing the potential of her new material as she went. Sophie Bowness's illuminating text describes the different means by which this increasingly important artist made her plaster works, and why. Drawing extensively on archival records and photographs, this publication is an important source of information about a significant collection of work, the gallery which houses it and Hepworth in general. The catalogue illuminates the histories of Hepworth's sculptures through fascinating archival photographs, which demonstrate everything from the varied tools used by Hepworth to the logistical problems of transporting her monumental pieces through the narrow streets of St Ives. The book provides a much-needed account of Hepworth's studio practice, her relations with foundries, and the evolution of her public commissions.

Nicholas Hilliard has helped form our ideas of the appearance of Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Francis Drake and James I among others. His painted works open a remarkable window onto the highest levels of English/British society in the later years of the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth century, the Elizabethan and Jacobeans ages. In this book Karen Hearn gives us an intimate portrait of Nicholas Hilliard, his life, his work and the techniques he used to produce his exquisite miniatures. Karen Hearn is curator of Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Art at the Tate Britain. She has written on Marcus Gheeraerts II, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630 and In Celebration: The Art of the Country House.