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.

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.

William Jackson, one of Gainsborough's closest friends and biographers, noted that if he had "to rest his [Gainsborough] reputation on one point, it should be on his Drawings". Gainsborough was indeed a draftsman of rare talent and creativity, and his experiments in drawing inspired an entire generation of British artists, from John Constable (1776-1837) to J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851). When not occupied with his lucrative portrait business, Gainsborough devoted much of his time to his true passion, the depiction of landscapes, and more than 600 of the artist's approximately 800 surviving drawings depict the British countryside. Like most artists from his generation, Gainsborough did not draw directly from nature but instead re-invented landscape "of his own brain," laying out on his work table stones, branches, leaves, and soil of various colors. His passion for drawing extended to technical experimentation. Gainsborough mixed diff erent kind of media and invented recipes to make drawings in his own personal fashion: he would sometimes immerse his drawing paper in milk, or varnish it to give his landscapes a lucent tint. The exhibition is based on the group of Gainsborough drawings in the permanent collection of the Morgan Library& Museum, one of the richest holdings of Gainsborough drawing in the United States. Additional drawings from private and public collections, among them some borrowed for the exhibition, are included in the introductory essay of the catalogue.

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.

Hokusai: the blue, foam-crested wave rearing above Mount Fuji; the celebrated volcano idealized and reinventedby the artist in every nuance of view, season and painting; extraordinary bridges, the waterfalls of Japan, the contortions, costumes, gestures – the very breath of men, women, peasants, townsmen, warriors, artisans, leaping horses, birds, insects, fish, almost live on the ground on which they are painted – the countless imaginative drawings or the lively sketches done on the spot for the Manga, Hokusai’s record of shapes and forms drawn from life or imagined over time. With a body of work comprising more than 30,000 drawings and paintings, Hokusai (1760–1849) was the most prolific, varied and indisputably the most creative artist of old Japan. A universal genius in everything that constituted drawing and painting in his time, he practised all genres of ukiyo-e, those ‘images of the floating world’, as his contemporaries liked to describe their pleasures and their daily life.

This book traces the career of this child from a working-class district of old Tokyo, then known as Edo, evoking the special atmosphere of this great city and of Japanese life, when Japan – closed to foreigners – developed in a vacuum a powerfully original culture. Hokusai became one of the great masters of the woodcut, this ‘brush gone wild’, as he called himself, being rediscovered by the Impressionists and aesthetes at the end of the 19th century. He remains one of the greatest and – thanks to his personality – one of the most attractive figures of world art.

A landmark exploration of the sold, stolen, and destroyed works of Banksy, perhaps one of the most famous and controversial living artists of our time.

A victim of his own success, Banksy is famous the world over and yet more famously disdainful of the spotlight, preferring to remain anonymous. Considered by many to be one of the greatest living artists in the world and to others a rogue vandal with a political agenda, Banksy has scandalized and enlightened the art world since his acts of guerrilla art began to appear on the streets of Barton Hill in Bristol over 25 years ago. However, this is a book about what you can’t see: the works that have disappeared entirely, whether removed by authorities or whisked into people’s private art collections to languish on walls or in collector’s vaults. These remarkable works are as elusive as their creator but are returned here for public consumption and enjoyment.

Works unveiled in Banksy’s Lost Works include a series of seven pieces painted on partially destroyed buildings around Kyiv, Ukraine, one of which has already been cut off the wall by a group of locals; Valentine’s Day Mascara in Margate that has now been restored and housed in Dreamland after several interventions by Thanet District Council; and Banksy’s disappearing rats, an early symbol of the artist routinely painted over by councils when the name Banksy was more synonymous with “vandal” than “artist.”

Lee Miller, 1927 - New York: A classically beautiful young woman, she is discovered by Conde Nast, hits the cover of Vogue and is immortalized by Steichen, Hoyningen-Huene, Horst and other famous photographers. Lee Miller, 1929 - Paris: Protege and lover of Man Ray, she invents with him the solarization technique of photography, develops into a brilliant Surrealist photographer, and plays the statue in Cocteau's film Blood of a Poet. Lee Miller, 1939-45 - Europe: Living at times with her future husband, the painter Roland Penrose, she becomes a US war correspondent and covers the siege of St Malo and the liberation of Paris. Her photographs of Dachau concentration camp shock the world. These are but three of the many lives of Lee Miller, intimately recorded here by her son, Antony Penrose. Featuring a selection of her finest work, including portraits of her friends Picasso, Ernst and Miro, Penrose's tribute to his mother brings to life a uniquely talented woman and the turbulent times in which she lived. With 116 illustrations

Fostoria was a most remarkable glassd company and George Sakier(1897-1988) was a most remarkable designer of Fostoria glass. For over fifty years, through the Great Depression, Sakier sent classic and modern designs to Moundsville, West Virginia, where millions of delightful glass objects were produced. They appear here in profusion. The book includes a throughly researched text about the man and his art(paintings, industrial designs and glass), as well as hundreds of brilliant color photographs of thousands of Fostoria glass items of many patterns and Sakier's fascinating oil painting landscapes. Sakier's Fostoria glass is American Art Deco design and the book is a fine resource for glass collectors.

Even during the artist's lifetime, contemporary art lovers considered Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) to be an exceptional artist. In this revelatory sequel to the acclaimed Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, renowned Rembrandt authority Ernst van de Wetering investigates the painter's considerations that determined the striking changes in his development from an early age onwards. This gorgeously illustrated book explores how Rembrandt achieved mastery by systematic exploration of the 'foundations of the art of painting'. According to written sources from the seventeenth century, which were largely misinterpreted until now, these 'foundations' were considered essential at that time. From his first endeavours in painting, Rembrandt embarked on a journey past these foundations, thus becoming the 'pittore famoso', whom Count Cosimo the Medici visited at the end of his life. Rembrandt never stopped searching for solutions to the pictorial problems that confronted him; this led over time to radical changes that cannot simply be attributed to stylistic evolution or natural development. In a quest as rigorous and novel as the artist's, Van de Wetering reveals how Rembrandt became the revolutionary painter that would continue to fascinate the art world. This ground breaking exploration reconstructs Rembrandt's theories and methods, shedding new light both on the artist's exceptional accomplishments and on the theory and practice of painting in the Dutch Golden Age. Everyone who is interested in the art of painting should read this phenomenal book, because it was written with incredible knowledge and experience on the subject. It shows in a clear and simple way how Rembrandt worked and the things he had to take into account. At the same time it offers a fantastic sample of Rembrandt's life's work, thanks to the well-chosen selection of illustrations. David Rijser, NRC Handelsblad

'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.

*A National Bestseller* From the internationally bestselling artist Kerby Rosanes, an extraordinary coloring book celebrating some of the incredible animals and landscapes that are disappearing around the globe Fragile World is a coloring book to savor, exploring fifty-six endangered, vulnerable, and threatened animals and landscapes-from the Tapanuli orangutan to the hawksbill turtle, from Philippine bat caves to the Baltic Sea. The illustrations are intricate, detailed, and unforgettable, both magisterial and whimsical. And the result is a stunning tribute to Mother Nature. Fragile World is a coloring experience that is at once vintage Kerby and unlike any other.