If one can "see" the wind and "feel" the swell at the sight of a painting, it's probably a painting of Johannes Holst (1880- 1965). Over seven decades Holst has created more than two thousand paintings that are admired and collected all over the world. This new magnificent volume gathers more than 1,500 paintings of Johannes Holst. The text section outlines Holst's oeuvre as well as the ups and downs of his life, supplemented by top-class guest contributions.

Melanie Smith: Farce and Artifice is the publication that takes up the idea of the exhibition organised by the MACBA, jointly with the MUAC Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo and UNAM, in Mexico City, and the Museo Amparo, in Puebla, Mexico. It is the largest organised to date in Europe about the work of an artist who defies easy classification, born in England (Poole, 1965) but active on the Mexican art scene since the nineties.

Nancy Spero (born in Cleveland, Ohio, 1926) is a pioneer of feminist art and a key figure in the New York protest scene of the 1960s and 70s, as highly regarded as famed artists Martha Rosler and Adrian Piper. With a career spanning over 50 years, Spero continues even today to engage, question, and defy our current political, social and cultural scene. Her work has recently been exhibited throughout the US and Europe, including the last edition of the "Venice Biennial". This book focuses on the artist's search to create her own language, featuring the best of her work, from early student works on paper to her latest presentation at the Venice Biennial.

American artist, Joan Jonas' experimental projects in the late sixties and early seventies were essential to the development of contemporary performance, video, and conceptual art. Born in New York in 1936, she is regarded as a pioneer of video art and performance. Her work fuses video, dance, theatre, sculpture, drawing. Her projects have included collaborations with dancers like Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer and composers like Alvin Lucier. She investigates space, perception and time, ritual gestures, symbolic objects and stereotypes (especially female cliches), and the magical role of the narrator who conveys a drama in each action.

This is the catalogue that accompanies a solo exhibition of the work of Domenec, an artist born in 1962 in Mataro, a town in Catalonia. The exhibition sets out to contemplate, through the artist`s work, how neoliberalism destroys social projects with its escalation of individualism. In doing so it offers a retrospective of Domenec`s work from the late 1990s to the present, and includes some new projects. Using certain emblematic buildings or monuments as referents, Domenec analyses the proposals of the modern movement and its legacy within contemporary practice. Supporting his research are projects in situ, installations, maquettes, photographs, workshops, seminars and videos. Based on various local contexts, his work establishes a dialogue with other international themes to highlight the impact on the present of the utopian ideas that resulted from the Industrial Revolution, and are seen as a stand against capitalism. The rise of an urban proletariat in the C19 led to discourses and social models based on social justice and egalitarianism. Utopian communism and socialism developed architectonic models promoting a concept of coexistence in the urban space based on services to the community and better living conditions. Domenec investigates these exemplary systems and the breakdown of what he calls the ` fragile contract between capital and the social body` . The transformations of the socio-political circumstances generated by these systems can also lead, at times, to changes of usage and the creation of dystopic models. Social housing turned into military barracks or internment camps; statues of circumstantial heroes that were pulled down because of their meaning, or counter meaning; or the absurdity of a ghost city used for military training in urban warfare, but never officially recognized, are some of the cases used by Domenec to investigate the dysfunctions of the processes of modernity and the political accounts marginalised by these narratives. In other words, the breakdown of a social project that has become, as a result of neoliberalism, the exacerbation of individualism. Domenec`s work gives voice to the protagonists of that story, to unofficial discourses, and avoids the dominant narratives to bring back memory

The project, chosen to represent Mexico at the 55th Venice Biennial, is examined in this bilingual (Spanish/English) edition in an introductory essay by curator Itala Schmelz and texts by Osvaldo Sanchez, Karla Jasso, Maria Paz Amaro, and Ariel Guzik himself. Also included in the volume is a wealth of unpublished material (diagrams, sketches, and notes) that allow us to explore the artist's creative process. The contents are further enriched by numerous images showing Guzik and his team at work on the complex production process of his sound machines. This volume constitutes a detailed logbook of more than three decades of unremitting activity.

The title of this book, "Autofocus Retina" means a configuration of four diamond shaped mirrors connoting the inner mechanics of a camera lens: the photographic eye. Lothar Baumgarten (b. Germany 1944, living and working in Berlin/New York) presents a personal selection of photographs, sculpture, drawings and film, from the late 1960s to the present day. The book follows the creative trajectory of an artist who does not comply with the aesthetic vision of art but who continually questions the logic structuring Western thought and systems of representation. It features essays on Baumgarten's work by Hal Foster, Michael Jakob, Craig Owens, Anne Rorimer and Friedrich Wolfram Heubach. Each text has been chosen by the artist himself along with special graphic illustrations and images.

Asier Mendizabal (b. Ordizia, Guipuzkoa, 1973) is a new generation Basque artist who pays special attention to the relations between form, discourse and ideology. His oeuvre could be described as a critique of ideology, based on the mise en scne of the structures that shape it. Through art, rock music, cinema, politics and theory, his view on social structures leads him to sketch out a map of the totality of production relationships. Asier Mendizabal's transversal, multidisciplinary approach focuses sharply on the difficulties of representation inherent in the political, as well as on the gaps between artistic activity and the "political unconscious" in cultural production and mass movements.

Krishna Reddy's artistic quest includes the exploration of nature beyond the limitations of the visible world, and a spiritual curiosity about the cosmos. This has led to devising ways to overcome technical difficulties in creating icons which reduce the appearances of objects to their pure and essential forms. This creativity is a process of learning for the artist and his students. It enables an observer to peer into the innermost essence of things and ponder on the universe in constant upheaval. The inward life of the cosmos itself is shown here through Reddy's viscosity prints. Krishna Reddy worked a revolution in printmaking by discovering this method of printing numerous colours from a single metal plate.

Sandra Blow (1925-2006) is among the most important British artists of the later twentieth century. During a time of rapid change in the art world, her commitment to abstract painting resulted in a large and diverse body of work of distinctive power and subtlety. Michael Bird's fascinating survey of Sandra Blow's life and art is now available for the first time in a handsome paperback edition. Compiled in collaboration with the artist during the last years of her life, it provides a definitive overview of her career. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with a fully representative selection of Blow's work. In this highly readable account, Michael Bird looks in depth at Blow's evolving studio practice and the personal nature of her abstract vision. He places Blow's achievement firmly within the wider context of British and international art movements of the post-war period and late twentieth century. He also casts new light on the role played in her life by Alberto Burri and Roger Hilton, two influences she acknowledged to be crucial to her art. Through close attention to Blow's working methods, this book provides a unique insight into her creative process. It reveals the intensity of emotional engagement and technical experimentation that lie behind the apparent spontaneity of her vivid handling of materials, colour and form.

The Book of Small is a collection of thirty-six short stories about a childhood in a town that still had vestiges of its pioneer past. Emily Carr tells stories about her family, neighbours, friends and strangers-who run the gamut from genteel people in high society to disreputable frequenters of saloons-as well as an array of beloved pets. All are observed through the sharp eyes and ears of a young and ever-curious girl. Carr's writing is a disarming combination of charm and devastating frankness.

The paintings and drawings of J.R.R. Tolkien are featured in this illustrated study, seen in the context of his writing. He is the author of "The Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion". This book explores Tolkien's art at length, from his childhood paintings and drawings to his final sketches. Central to the book are his illustrations for his works, especially his tales of "Middle-earth". Also examined are the pictures Tolkien made for his children, notably in his "Father Christmas" letters and for the story of "Mr Bliss", his calligraphy, his love of decoration, and his contributions to the typography and design of his books. Wayne G. Hammond is the author of "The Graphic Art of C.B. Falls" and "J.R.R. Tolkien: a Descriptive Bibliography" and he is a contributor of notes on Tolkien to the journal "Mythlore". Christina Skull is the author of "Soane Hogarths" and she edits the journal, "The Tolkien Collector".

John Martin's many influential works brought him huge popularity in his lifetime and his paintings have gone on to inspire film-makers, designers and artists in Europe and America. This beautifully illustrated book makes an important contribution to the revival of national and international interest in him and will complement a forthcoming touring exhibition. Establishing the context of Martin's youth in rural Northumberland, his career in London and subsequent national and international fame, Morden captures the apocalyptic mood in England from the 1790s to the 1840s and examines Martin's central position as a painter of the "sublime". The distinctive character of his work is explored through key paintings in terms of his techniques, devices and subject matter and their relationship to the culture and of popular entertainment of the time. Influencing 19th century railway and public architecture, Martin's reputation spread to Europe and America, going on to determine the course of early 20th century cinema and anticipate inter-active mass media in the 21st century. This book establishes John Martin as an important figure in cultural history, shaping the way we view and respond to our modern world.

Laura Knight (1877-1970) was one of the most distinguished women artist of the early 20th century with an international reputation. This highly readable and objective biography covers her early years in Nottingham, her relationship with her husband Harold, life in the artists colonies of Staithes on the North Yorkshire coast, her immersion in the world of ballet, the circus and theatre and her travels in Europe and America. It also examines her role as Official War Artist during World War II and recorder of the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46. This revised and updated book offers so much more than just an account of an artist's work, it allows the reader to experience the vibrant personality of the artist as well as the darker shades of her personality. It gives this portrait of an artist depth and perspective.

Kenneth Paul Block is one of the most influential fashion illustrators of the twentieth century. His childhood dream was "to draw glamorous ladies in beautiful clothes". After graduating from Parsons School of Design, his first job was at the powerful "Women's Wear Daily" in the 1950s, an association that lasted over thirty years and where Kenneth witnessed and recorded one of the most important periods in fashion history - the postwar shift as the exclusive world of couture transformed into pret-a-porter. Attending all the major fashion shows in Paris, London, and New York, Kenneth was the first one on the scene, drawing the latest style-setting clothes from such venerable houses as Balenciaga, Chanel, and Saint Laurent.He also documented the up and coming designers of the time, including Marc Jacobs, Perry Ellis, and Halston. He was well known in society, sketching Gloria Vanderbilt and the Duchess of Windsor. He reported on sensational parties in Palm Beach and New York attended by Babe Paley and Jackie Kennedy Onassis and created a unique archive of the era. "Drawing Fashion: The Art of Kenneth Paul Block" is the first monograph on the artist and brings together a lifetime of drawings, watercolours, and observations. Fashion illustration disappeared from publications as photography took over, giving added emphasis to this book as an important historical document. "Drawing Fashion", designed by Shahid & Company, captures a critical moment in time when fashion, art, and commerce coincided.

Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh is renowned for his architectural achievements on a public and domestic scale, interior design, and furniture design. This book reviews his work in context, and considers how his ideas can be interpreted. His handling of colour, use of materials, and graphic approach to form are explored, and photographs show original designs and plans. Inspired by nature, fired by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, rooted in the vernacular traditions of his native region, Mackintosh's genius was to forge an entirely new style for a new age. Radical but intensely personal, his architecture, interiors and furnishings retain all their essential vigour nearly a century after they were first conceived. In this compelling study Elizabeth Wilhide considers Mackintosh's sensitive handling of colour, robust use of materials and graphic approach to form. The abundance of photographs of original schemes still in existence provide direct inspiration. His items of furniture are icons of early modern design and suppliers and listed for those currently in production.