"The written word is the most basic element of human culture. To touch the written word is to touch the essence of culture." - Xu Bing Book from the Sky certainly seemed to have fallen from the heavens: the text of this installation piece was written in a new language that resembled traditional Chinese. No matter who scours Xu Bing's book for 'meaning', they will only discover a semblance of it: mutated characters that resist interpretation. Carving out approximately four thousand wood blocks by hand, Xu Bing spent four years, from 1987 to 1991, making (in his own words) "something that said nothing". After creating a book no one could read, it only made sense for Xu Bing to develop his next project: a book that transcended barriers of language: Book from the Ground. Composed entirely of pictographs, Book from the Ground is a groundbreaking study into the concept of universal communication. Whether his goal is total comprehension or confusion, Xu Bing's masterful exploration of language challenges the way we think about the written word.

The story of porcelain making and decorating in Limoges, France, is a tale of artists and potters; kings and an emperor; a revolution; and the emergence of a great industry. Limoges comes to life in over 1,100 photographs of porcelain and porcelain marks made over the past 100 plus years, concentrating on pieces dating from the 1860s to the present day. Along with a discussion of the manufacturing and decorating of both fine porcelain pieces and boxes, there is a full section dedicated to Limoges companies and their manufacturing and decorating marks. Captions include price guides. A fine index turns a lovely illustrated book into a valuable reference tool. All the photos of porcelain and boxes are in color.

Phil Smith (Crabman/Mythogeography) and Tony Whitehead join forces with master photographer John Schott to lead readers on a `virtual’ journey to explore difference and change on their way to an unknown destination. “What is most real is what you have still to discover.” “Relax in your seat. Allow the train to take you along the water’s edge to the beginning point of your walking pilgrimage… When the train pulls into the platform, step off. Hidden behind the platform is a broken machine; a mechanised fortune teller – the `voice of truth’ – discarded from the nearby arcade of slot machines. Propped against the side of a building, its mouth is silent, its pronouncements have ceased; any truths you find today will be your own.” Pilgrimages – real and imagined - are always popular, sometimes compulsory. Bodh Gaya, Santiago, Mecca, Jerusalem, Puri: a few of the sites that beckon. The pilgrimage to the authentic self takes a similar path in an interior landscape. In the 15th century, Felix Fabri combined the two, using his visits to Jerusalem to write a handbook for nuns wanting to make a pilgrimage in the imagination, whilst confined to their religious houses. For Guidebook for an Armchair Pilgrimage, the authors followed Fabri’s example: first walking together over many weeks – not to reach a destination but simply to find one – then, in startling words and images, conjuring an armchair pilgrimage for the reader… along lanes and around hills, into caves and down to the coast. “We arrived again and again at what we assumed would be a final `shrine’, only to be drawn onwards and inwards towards another kind of finality… rather than reaching a destination, the pilgrimage was repeatedly reborn inside us, until its most recent rebirth in this book.” Over the course of the 19-day Armchair Pilgrimage, they invite us to experience the world around us just as they did as they walked. So, over the first three days, they suggest that we contemplate, among other things: • Our habit of generalising – acquired 40-50,000 years ago, when our `chapel’ mind of specialisms became a `cathedral’ mind • Our tendency to let one thing remind us of another thing • What it might be like to be an ocean where fish swim through us • How the world experiences us just as we experience it: `gently feel for the feelers feeling for you’ • A world where we tend to `add’ meaning and intensity • A world where we let go (without the aid of dementia) of memory, imagination, desire and wild fancy. And, as the pilgrimage concludes: “Returning is never going back to the same place.” “A brilliant idea, inviting us to `be present’ to a reality that is imagined and recorded, mediated by words and images. The feelings and emotions are no less `real’ than if we were actually standing in and experiencing that reality. I love the genius of words and images displayed here -- no less than the reality itself.” Carol Donelan, Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, Carleton College, Minnesota

What is an immersive soundscape? It can be as simple as a recording made in a forest: leaves crunching underfoot, birds chirping, a squirrel chattering. Or it can be as complex as a movie soundtrack, which involves music but also uses many other sounds--to set the mood for the action and to literally put the viewer in the picture. Sound art defies categorization, and artists using this medium describe their work in many different ways: as sound installations, audio art, radio art, and music.
"The Art of Immersive Soundscapes" provides a fascinating tour of contemporary sound art practices that comprises scholarly essays, artists' statements, and a DVD with sonic and visual examples. Included are perspectives from soundscape composition and performance, site-specific sound installation, recording, and festival curation. The book and accompanying DVD will appeal to a broad audience interested in music, sound, installation art, the environment, digital culture, and media arts. Importantly, it recognizes the pioneering place of Canadian sound artists within this international field.

First opened in 1873, the Victoria and Albert Museum's Cast Courts were purpose built to house copies of architecture and sculpture from around the world. They contain some of the Museum's largest objects, including casts of Trajan's Column (shown in two halves) and the twelfth century Portico de la Gloria from the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. Among the Museum's most popular galleries, the Cast Courts are an extraordinary expression of Victorian taste, ambition and public spirit. Published to celebrate the opening of the refurbished Cast Courts at the V&A, this book presents a fresh perspective on the Museum's diverse collection of reproductions including plaster casts, electrotypes and photographs.

This volume accompanies the largest exhibition of contemporary art from Australia to be presented outside the continent. It's characterised by a surprising richness and variety, offering a combination of personal stories, languages, ethnic origins, religions and traditions. The artists belong to many Aboriginal cultures and First Nations and those that arrived from the Pacific, Europe, Asian countries and America. Curated by Eugenio Viola, this project encompasses a broad constellation of cultural, political and social practices and perspectives, and takes into consideration different means of expression such as painting, performance, installation, sculpture, video, drawings and photography. Artists: Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Khadim Ali, Brook Andrew, Richard Bell, Daniel Boyd, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Barbara Cleveland, Destiny Deacon, Hayden Fowler, Marco Fusinato, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Julie Gough, Fiona Hall, Dale Harding, Nicholas Mangan, Angelica Mesiti, Archie Moore, Callum Morton, Tom Nicholson (with Greg Lehman), Jill Orr, Mike Parr, Patricia Piccinini, Stuart Ringholt, Khaled Sabsabi, Yhonnie Scarce, Soda Jerk, Dr Christian Thompson AO, James Tylor, Judy Watson, Jason Wing and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. Text in English and Italian.

Best known as one of the most widely used industrial ceramic techniques, slipcasting has become increasingly attractive to individual artists and craftspersons. Slip, a water and clay solution, is poured into porous molds. As the mold absorbs water from the slip, a layer of clay forms a cast. The excess slip is removed from the mold and the cast is stiffened, removed, dried, and fired in a kiln. Since the molds can be based on anything from delicate sculpture to found objects, slipcasting frees artists from the constraints of other ceramic techniques while allowing them to create multiples of their works. Sasha Wardell's Slipcasting is a straightforward, practical guide for those interested in the boundless possibilities of the technique. The book contains more than one hundred color illustrations, diagrams, and slip formulas. An inspiring "Individual Approaches" chapter discusses the slipcast work of a variety of contemporary ceramicists from around the world.

At first glance, there may appear to be more to separate Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Bill Viola (b. 1951) than to unite them: one, the great master of the Italian Renaissance; the other, the creator of state-of-the-art immersive sound and video installations. And yet, when Martin Clayton showed Viola Her Majesty The Queen's unsurpassed collection of Michelangelo drawings at Windsor in 2006, parallels began to emerge. This book presents a new perspective on both artists' works. Stills and sequences from ten key video pieces by Viola are reproduced alongside fourteen of Michelangelo's presentation drawings, as well as the Taddei Tondo, the only Michelangelo marble sculpture in the UK and a treasure of the Royal Academy's collection. Texts by Martin Clayton examine how existential concerns - the preoccupation of many Renaissance artists, not least Michelangelo - are explored in Viola's often profoundly moving video installations, while Kira Perov provides insight into Viola's working processes.

Leo Steinberg was one of the most original and daring art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretative risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures that ranged from old masters to contemporary art, he combined scholarly erudition with an eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His works, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital and influential reading. For half a century, Steinberg delved into Michelangelo's work, revealing the symbolic structures underlying the artist's highly charged idiom. This volume of essays and unpublished lectures explicates many of Michelangelo's most celebrated sculptures, applying principles gleaned from long, hard looking. Almost everything Steinberg wrote included passages of old-fashioned formal analysis, but here put to the service of interpretation. He understood that Michelangelo's rendering of figures as well as their gestures and interrelations conveys an emblematic significance masquerading under the guise of naturalism. Michelangelo pushed Renaissance naturalism into the furthest reaches of metaphor, using the language of the body and its actions to express fundamental Christian tenets once expressible only by poets and preachers--or, as Steinberg put it, in Michelangelo's art, "anatomy becomes theology." Michelangelo's Sculpture is the first in a series of volumes of Steinberg's selected writings and unpublished lectures, edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz. The volume also includes a book review debunking psychoanalytic interpretation of the master's work, a lighthearted look at Michelangelo and the medical profession and, finally, the shortest piece Steinberg ever published.

After years of neglect, the variety, technical quality and imaginative content of Gilbert Bayes's work is receiving the appreciation it deserves. This is the first full study and catalogue raisonne of this 2Oth-century figurativist.

The career of Bayes spanned the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism. While figures were his specialty, Bayes also designed presentation cups, caskets, mirrors, stained glass and more. His best known works are the large scale low relief panels designed for architectural settings, some of which include the Saville Theatre and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Discover the thrill of working with hot metal and creating your own pieces. This book shows you how: with lavish photographs, it captures the excitement of working at the fire and explains the techniques to get you started. Drawing on traditional methods, it encourages you to develop your own style and to design your own tools and creations. Step-by-step instructions to shaping, bending, splitting and drawing down hot metal are given along with advice on traditional methods to fasten metal pieces together. Projects included in this new book are making a hanging basket bracket and a toasting fork.

For seven years, photographer and artist Lena Herzog followed the evolution of a new kinetic species. Intricate as insects but with bursts of equine energy, the "Strandbeests," or "beach creatures," are the creation of Dutch artist Theo Jansen, who has been working for nearly two decades to generate these new life-forms that move, and even survive, on their own. Set to roam the beaches of Holland, the Strandbeests pick up the wind in their gossamer wings and spring, as if by metamorphosis, into action. As if it were blood, not the breeze, running through their delicate forms, they quiver, cavort, and trot against the sun and sea, pausing to change direction if they sense loose sand or water that might destabilize their movement. Coinciding with a traveling exhibition, Herzog's photographic tribute captures Jansen's menagerie in a meditative black and white, showcasing Jansen's imaginative vision, as well as the compelling intersection of animate and inanimate in his creatures. The result is a work of art in its own right and a mesmerizing encounter not only with a very surrealist brand of marvelous, but also with whole new ideas of existence.

The Dark Side is a project that solicits the public on the 'dark side' that is in each of us, which manifests itself in ancestral fears such as the fear of the dark ( to which this first volume is dedicated), the fear of loneliness, the fear of time. These fears require a pause, a reflection: they destabilise, but at the same time ignite new possibilities, new thoughts, new perspectives. This volume Who's Afraid of the Dark? investigates the theme of physical and metaphorical darkness, and consequently the relationship with its opposite, light. It includes works ranging from installations, multi-sensory experiences, mixed media and large scale-works from 13 of the most important international artists such as Gregor Schneider, Robert Longo, Hermann Nitsch, Tony Oursler, Christian Boltanski, James Lee Byars up to the new protagonists of the contemporary art scene such as Monster Chetwind, Sheela Gowda, Shiota Chiharu and, among Italian artists, Gino De Dominicis, Gianni Dessi, Flavio Favelli, Monica Bonvicini. The artistic perspective is countered with the interventions by theologian Gianfranco Ravasi, physicist-theorist Mario Rasetti, psychiatrist Eugenio Borgna and philosopher Federico Vercellone, who offer a polyphonic look of great intellectual interest on this theme. The Dark Side project inaugurates Musja, a new museum in the city of Rome, which is proposed as a reference for the most innovative trends in the contemporary art scene. Text in English and Italian.

Pioneering investigation of the popular "double tomb" effigies in the Middle Ages. 2022 Historians of British Art Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period before 1600 2021 International Center of Medieval Art Annual Book Prize Medieval tombs often depict husband and wife lying side-by-side, and hand in hand, immortalised in elegantly carved stone: what Philip Larkin's poem An Arundel Tomb later described as their "stone fidelity". This first full account of the "double tomb" places its rich tradition into dialogue with powerful discourses of gender, marriage, politics and emotion during the Middle Ages. As well as offering new interpretations of some of the most famous medieval tombs, such as those found in Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral, it draws attention to a host of lesser-known memorials from throughout Europe, providing an innovative vantage point from which to reconsider the material culture of medieval marriage. Setting these twin effigies alongside wedding rings and dresses as the agents of matrimonial ritual and embodied symbolism, the author presents the "double tomb" as far more than mere romantic sentiment. Rather, it reveals the careful artifice beneath their seductive emotional surfaces: the artistic, religious, political and legal agendas underlying the medieval rhetoric of married love. Published with the generous financial assistance of the Henry Moore Foundation.

Clay-sculpting royalty 'The Shiflett Brothers' offer unique insight into their practices and the techniques used to create their stunning fantasy characters. Learning from the biggest and best creators in any industry is a rare and sought after opportunity. In this book, clay-sculpting royalty "The Shiflett Brothers" guide us through their creative journey as well as sharing in-depth insight into the processes they use to create their dynamic and captivating fantasy sculpts. Joined by fellow esteemed sculptors Simon Lee, Aris Kolokontes, and Forest Rogers, the Shifletts bring together a collection of visually led step-by-step tutorials that are sure to broaden your creative horizons and add an expansive set of practical skills to your sculpting arsenal. With studio-quality photography and a how-to section on creating the Shiflett's very own tools, this book is a prize possession for any member of the brothers' huge and loyal fan base and as an exhilarating follow-on from the popular Beginner's Guide to Sculpting Characters in Clay.

Painter, draftsman and engraver, Pierre Lesieur (1922-2011) was one of the most influential French artists of the second half of the 20th century. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris - where he took lessons from Andre Lhote - and at the Academie de Montmartre, he had his first exhibition in 1952. Lesieur's paintings of the 1950s are characterised by the use of brightly coloured areas, in line with the work of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard. In the 1960s, this research bordered on abstraction, particularly in still lifes and representations of objects. From the 1970s onwards, through his paintings and drawings, Lesieur took a particular interest in interiors, as well as in portraits and female nudes. Early in his career, Pierre Lesieur was recognised as an important artist. After his first personal exhibition in 1952, his work was regularly shown at the Coard Gallery in Paris. From the 1990s, Lesieur's notoriety became international, resulting in further exhibitions in Japan and the United States. Some of his works are now housed in major museums such as the Center Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Hiroshima Museum. Text in English and French.

David Nash, sculptor and environmental artist's, response to the 300 year old yews in the gardens of Powis Castle on the Welsh borders. Unshaped and trimmed only annually, the yews have grown into fantastic, mountainous shapes which captuivated Nash's imagination. This book catalogues the response of David Nash in sculptures, reliefs and drawings to the 300 year old yews in the gardens of Powis Castle. After decades without cutting some 20 yews have grown into fantastic organic shapes not usually associated with the usual formal training of garden yews. Their striking plasticity instantly challenged Nash when he first saw them. The resulting work is gathered in full colour together with a brief essay by Nash and a short history of the gardens. Beautifully produced, the book acts as a catalogue for the touring exhibition of the works and will be of interest to gardeners and art historians alike.

Latinx artist Tamara Kostianovsky began using her discarded clothes as artistic material shortly after immigrating to the United States, addressing cultural and physical displacement, assimilation and identity, and the brutal history of Latin America. Today, these emotionally charged materials coalesce in a post-colonial vision for an ecological future. Tamara Kostianovsky creates sculptures from textiles that address the relationship between landscapes, the body, and violence. This volume highlights distinct bodies of her work including sculptures of butchered carcasses, slayed birds, and severed trees. Built with layers of texture, colour, and emotion, these works dive head-first into the tension between beauty and horror, confronting histories of systemic violence and transforming them into utopian environments.

On the leading edge of trauma and archival studies, this timely book engages with the recent growth in visual projects that respond to the archive, focusing in particular on installation art. It traces a line of argument from practitioners who explicitly depict the archive (Samuel Beckett, Christian Boltanski, Art & Language, Walid Raad) to those whose materials and practices are archival (Miroslaw Balka, Jean-Luc Godard, Silvia Kolbowski, Boltanski, Atom Egoyan). Jones considers in particular the widespread nostalgia for 'archival' media such as analogue photographs and film. He analyses the innovative strategies by which such artefacts are incorporated, examining five distinct types of archival practice: the intermedial, testimonial, personal, relational and monumentalist.

Sticks are essentially practical aides but are also works of art that often become integral to the owner. They have to be strong and reliable, but are beautiful too. This essential book covers all these qualities - it explains the traditional principles and methods of stickmaking, but also celebrates the designs and ideas behind these creations. Written by an award-winning stickmaker, it provides a full account of this age-old craft. Topics covered include materials, equipment and tools required to make a variety of sticks from timber, antler and horn; stick types and shapes; preparing timber to make handles and shanks; straightening shanks; making joints and exhibiting and competing. This new book will be an inspiration for all stickmakers, both new and old.