Jo Spence was one of Britain's pioneering photographers. Born into a working-class London family, she worked for many years as a studio photographer. Her political concerns led to documentary photography. Soon after completing her degree in the theory and practice of photography, she discovered she had breast cancer. Through her struggle to come to terms with the illness, to find non-invasive treatments and to share her experience with others, she developed unique ways of using photography.
"Cultural Sniping" brings together a wide range of Jo Spence's photographs and writings for the first time. Through images and texts she explores complex issues of gender, class, health and the body, and their impact on her understanding of personal history and the construction of identity.
"Cultural Sniping" includes images from Spence's early work in documentary photography and from her pioneering photo-therapy projects, undertaken in collaboration with other photographers. In her later work Spence faces up to the experience of illness and dying, and "Cultural Sniping" reproduces work from her "Return to Nature" and "Death Mask" series, in which she tries to come to terms with the reality of death. Jo Spence's commitment to engaging with personal experience, political understanding and critical theory make her writing and photography a vital contribution to our understanding of the politics of representation.

'Whatever Uglow writes about she makes absolutely fascinating.' DIANA ATHILL The story of Sybil Andews and Cyril Power, two artists who changed each other in an age of experiment and turmoil. 'In all her books, she makes us feel the life behind the facts.' GUARDIAN 'Wonderfully sharp and sympathetic . . . Uglow is a perfect biographer.' CRAIG BROWN, MAIL ON SUNDAY In 1922, Cyril Power, a fifty-year-old architect, left his family to work with the twenty-four-year-old Sybil Andrews. They would be together for twenty years. Both became famous for their dynamic, modernist linocuts, streamlined, full of movement and brilliant colour, summing up the hectic interwar years. Yet at the same time they looked back, to medieval myths and early music, to country ways disappearing from sight. Cyril & Sybil traces their struggles and triumphs, conflicts and dreams, following them from Suffolk to London, from the New Forest to Vancouver Island. This is a world of Futurists, Surrealists and pioneering abstraction, but also of the buzz of the new, of machines and speed, shops and sport and dance, shining against the threat of depression and looming shadows of war.

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.

Instrumental in the formation of the underground comics scene in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s, Crumb has ruptured and expanded the boundaries of the graphic arts, redefining comics and cartoons as countercultural art forms. Presenting a slice of Crumb's unique universe, this book features a wide array of printed matter culled from the artist's five-decade career-tear sheets of drawings and comics taken directly from the publications where the works first appeared, magazine and album covers, broadsides from the 1960s and 1970s, tabloids from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, Oakland, Manhattan's Lower East Side, and other counterculture enclaves, as well as exhibition ephemera. Complementing this volume are historical works from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that have inspired Crumb and pages from his rarely seen sketchbooks from the 1970s and 1980s that reveal his exemplary skill as a draftsman. Documenting the critically acclaimed exhibition Drawing for Print: Mind Fucks, Kultur Klashes, Pulp Fiction & Pulp Fact by the Illustrious R. Crumb at David Zwirner, New York, in 2019, curated by Robert Storr, this publication offers an opportunity to immerse oneself in Crumb's singular mind. In the accompanying text, Storr explores the challenging nature of some of Crumb's work and the importance of artists who take on the status quo.

Based on a rich range of primary sources and manuscripts, "A Rossetti Family Chronology" breaks exciting new ground. Focusing on Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the "Chronolgy" deomstrates the interconnectedness of their friendships and creativity, giving information about literary composition and artistic output, publication and exhibition, reviews, finances, relationships, health and detailing literary and artistic influences. Drawing on many unpublished sources, including family letters and diaries, this new volume in the" Author Chronologies" series will be of value to all students and scholars of the Rossettis.

In 1966 the artist Tom Phillips discovered A Human Document (1892), an obscure Victorian romance by W.H. Mallock, and set himself the task of altering every page, by painting, collage or cut-up techniques, to create an entirely new version. Some of Mallock's original text remains in tact and through the illustrated pages the character of Bill Toge, Phillips's anti-hero, and his romantic plight emerges. First published in 1973, A Humument - as Phillips titled his altered book - quickly established itself as a cult classic. Since then, the artist has been working towards a complete revision of his original, adding new pages in successive editions. That process is now finished. This 50th anniversary edition presents, for the first time, an entirely new and complete version of A Humument . This edition includes a revised Introduction by the artist, reflecting on the last 50 years' work on this project, and 92 new illustrated pages. A Special Limited edition is also available: this presents a copy of the 50th anniversary edition in a clamshell box with a limited-edition print, signed by the artist.

An updated edition of this classic survey, a thorough overview of Paul Cezanne's life and work. For Picasso he was 'like our father'; for Matisse, 'a god of painting'. Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is widely regarded as the father of modern art. In this authoritative and accessible study, Richard Verdi traces the evolution of Cezanne's landscape, still-life and figure compositions, from the turbulently romantic creations of his youth to the visionary masterpieces of his final years. The painter's biography - his fluctuating reputation and strained relations with his parents, wife and close friend Emile Zola - is vividly evoked using excerpts from his own letters and from contemporary accounts of the artist. Cezanne was torn between the desires to create art and to seek inspiration - to master the themes of the past, through his copying sessions in the Louvre, and to explore the eternal qualities of nature in the countryside of his native Provence. In this way the artist sought 'to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums'. In this richly illustrated overview Verdi explores the strength, vitality and magnitude of Cezanne's achievement.

N.C. Wyeth's illustrations to Treasure Island and Kidnapped - first published in 1911 and 1913, respectively, by Charles Scribner's Sons - made his artistic reputation. With a bold mastery of light and colour, Wyeth brilliantly conveyed action, character, and setting, lending an extra excitement to Robert Louis Stevenson's tales of pirates and buried treasure, and intrigue in the Scottish Highlands. Now readers can enjoy this classic author-illustrator pairing in a handsome two-volume slipcased set, typeset anew and printed and bound to a high standard. This collectible set also includes a new introduction by Christine B. Podmaniczky, a leading expert on N.C. Wyeth. She reveals Wyeth's daring approach to these illustrations - which he painted at a large scale, directly on the canvas - and explores their later influence on visual culture, including stage and screen adaptations of Stevenson's novels. Also available: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn boxed set, ISBN 9780789213679

This miniature notebook is a portable, hardcover little journal with the classic art of Hiroshige. We've added a touch of gold foil to the beautiful illustration, highlighting the rich art from this world renowned Japanese block-print artist. Our Mini Notebooks have 120 dot-grid pages with cover illustrations by highly collectable artists. Easy to give as gifts and easy to keep - collect them all! 120 pages dot-grid interior pages portable mini size, 127 x 89mm. hardcover with gold foil accents

Following "Drawn From Memory", this is the second volume of memoirs by the artist of "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Wind in the Willows". It describes Shepard's experiences through school, his student days and his marriage to a fellow art student shortly after he had succeeded, at the age of 24, in getting a picture hung at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. These memoirs end on his wedding day, facing married life with #70 in the bank as his total financial resources, and yet full of hope and confidence for the future. Ernest Shepard, "Kipper" to his friends, was born in 1879. He attended art school at the Royal Academy and served in World War I, after which he made his living as an artist and political cartoonist for "Punch" magazine.

This beautifully designed book is filled with illustrations and photographs of the many animals in Picasso's life--those he painted and drew, as well as those he loved. One of the few under-examined aspects of Picasso's life and work was his love of animals. The son of a pigeon breeder and an aficionado of bullfighting, Picasso had an eye trained for capturing an animal's movement, shape, and personality--often with just a single line. Organized around the different types of animals that played a role in the artist's life and body of work--from his beloved dachshund, Lump, to dogs, cats, camels, penguins, pigs, and doves, among others--each chapter offers personal accounts, amusing anecdotes, and wondrous works of art. The perfect gift for lovers of animals or Picasso's art, this exquisite treasury of expertly rendered creatures is filled with humor, warmth, and the tremendous bonds between man and animal.

Now available in paperback, this book remains the definitive survey of the life and work of Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Carrington burst onto the Surrealist scene in 1936, when, as a precocious nineteen-year-old debutante, she escaped the stultifying demands of her wealthy English family by running away to Paris with her lover Max Ernst. She was immediately championed by Andre Breton, who responded enthusiastically to her fantastical, dark and satirical writing style and her interest in fairy tales and the occult. Her stories were included in Surrealist publications, and her paintings in the Surrealists' exhibitions. After the dramas and tragic separations of the Second World War, Carrington ended up in the 1940s as part of the circle of Surrealist European emigres living in Mexico City. Close friends with Luis Bunuel, Benjamin Peret, Octavio Paz and a host of both expatriate Surrealists and Mexican modernists, Carrington was at the centre of Mexican cultural life, while still maintaining her European connections. Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art provides a fascinating overview of this intriguing artist's rich body of work. The author considers Carrington's preoccupation with alchemy and the occult, and explores the influence of indigenous Mexican culture and beliefs on her production.

"Martin Bailey has written some of the most interesting books on Vincent's life in France, where he produced his greatest work" - Johan van Gogh, grandson of Theo, the artist's brother Studio of the South tells the story of Van Gogh's stay in Arles, when his powers were at their height. For Van Gogh, the south of France was an exciting new land, bursting with life. He walked into the hills inspired by the landscapes, and painted harvest scenes in the heat of summer. He visited a fishing village where he saw the Mediterranean for the first time, energetically capturing it in paint. He painted portraits of friends and locals, and flower still life paintings, culminating in the now iconic Sunflowers. He rented the Yellow House, and gradually did it up, calling it 'an artist's house', inviting Paul Gauguin to join him there. This encounter was to have a profound impact on both of the artists. They painted side by side, their collaboration coming to a dramatic end a few months later. The difficulties Van Gogh faced led to his eventual decision to retreat to the asylum at Saint-Remy. Based on extensive original research, the book reveals discoveries that throw new light on the legendary artist and give a definitive account of his fifteen months in Provence, including his time at the Yellow House, his collaboration with Gauguin and its tragic and shocking ending.