Aesthetic seduction, superb workmanship, and historical interest are the three central themes in the collection of Fondation Gandur pour l'Art (Geneva), created in 2010 and still expanding. The aim of this first volume is to catalogue the works in the collection, whose decorative aspects are every bit as important as their narrative content. The works are for the most part sculptures - statuettes and ornamental reliefs - although two-dimensional decorations depicting figurative scenes associated with classical antiquity or Christianity are no less important. The periods represented by the sculptural works discussed in this book reflect the scope of the whole collection, which ranges from the 12th to the 18th century. And since the goal of the collection is to document centuries of cultural exchange between France and neighbouring countries, all the works included in the book come from these latter regions. The hybrid styles are closely linked, and this is an aspect of considerable importance, as is the originality certain pieces display and, last but not least, their aesthetic quality. The book is arranged by topic, which brings out the great originality and extraordinary richness of the collection, as well as the extremely varied nature of the subjects, narrative episodes, and figures portrayed. More specifically, the topics are divided into five sections: ancient gods and heroes; biblical and allegorical figures; scenes from the life of the Virgin; episodes from the life of Christ; and saints and intercessors. Each work has its own entry that describes the historical and geographical context in which it was made, analyses its iconographic content, and includes a bibliography and a list of the exhibitions where the work was exhibited.

The texture of memory and the ability of art and film to bear witness to traumatic events are delicately approached in this book-length essay by a Mekas cinephile.  For years, filmmaker Peter Delpeut has had Jonas Mekas's Movie Journal within easy reach of his desk. Since his student days, he has been a great admirer of the Lithuanian-American ‘Godfather of avant-garde cinema’. Until he was startled in June 2018 by an article in The New York Review of Books. Historian Michael Casper claimed that Mekas had deliberately forgotten or misrepresented certain events during World War II. Seeded by this controversy over Mekas’s memories of his Lithuanian youth and Mekas’s pain over his subsequent exile, Delpeut’s essayistic and self-reflective book flowers into an inquiry about memory and forgetting; the moral compass of the future that cannot find its bearing in the past; the abilities of art to witness; and the roles we all must play in writing the adequate history of events too traumatic for a just accounting.  Although there is little doubt that Mekas himself never participated in the horrors of the Holocaust in Lithuania, his silence about the fate of his Jewish countrymen and neighbors could be said to enable a rewriting of history, at the sacrifice of witness testimonies. As Delpeut follows Mekas through films, diaries, his public performances, his speeches, and finally his testimony given to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), he encounters an impasse for which he was not prepared.

In 1428, a devastating fire destroyed a schoolhouse in the northern Italian city of Forli, leaving only a woodcut of the Madonna and Child that had been tacked to the classroom wall. The people of Forli carried that print - now known as the Madonna of the Fire - into their cathedral, where two centuries later a new chapel was built to enshrine it. In this book, Lisa Pon considers a cascade of moments in the Madonna of the Fire's cultural biography: when ink was impressed onto paper at a now-unknown date; when that sheet was recognized by Forli's people as miraculous; when it was enshrined in various tabernacles and chapels in the cathedral; when it or one of its copies was - and still is - carried in procession. In doing so, Pon offers an experiment in art historical inquiry that spans more than three centuries of making, remaking, and renewal.

Published on the occasion of Ali Kaaf's exhibition Ich bin ein Fremder. Zweifach Fremder at the Museum fur Islamische Kunst in the Pergamonmuseum Berlin, the catalogue documents the sculptural intervention created in the context of the Mschatta Facade. The eventful history of this icon of Islamic architectural culture is not only a metaphor for human existence, but also equally for the biography of the German-Syrian artist. The volume is augmented to include works on paper from past groups of works in the Rift series and Byzantine Corner, which illustrate Kaaf's intermedial working method. In subtle, abstract imagery, he works with layerings, incisions, burns, photography and digital image processing. Through the artistic exploration of breakages and reassemblages, complex spatial voids emerge that reflect both intercultural and internal processes.

Calder by Matter offers an intimate and wholly unique window into the life and work of Alexander Calder, as seen through the lens of his friend and acclaimed photographer Herbert Matter. Given unprecedented access to Calder s work and life during the course of their friendship, Herbert Matter captured Calder s sculptures, the artist at work in his studio, and at home with his family in Roxbury, Connecticut. Calder by Matter includes original essays by esteemed art critic and Calder biographer Jed Perl, Calder Foundation President and Calder grandson Alexander S. C. Rower, and Matter student and colleague John T. Hill. This unique collection of over 300 images, many of which are published here for the first time, offers a new perspective on Calder s oeuvre, life, and creative process."

A new and revised edition of the 2002 popular title, The Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden, this exquisitely produced book showcases the garden in St Ives throughout the seasons, with new photography and updated information on the plants from the Head Gardener, Jodi Dickinson. Barbara Hepworth's studio at Trewyn in St Ives is a unique combination of sub-tropical garden and sculpture museum. A haven of peace, it provided Hepworth with a working environment, a showcase for her sculpture, and the opportunity to pursue her love of gardening. The Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden is a beautiful record of the plants and sculptures at Trewyn through the seasons, exploring the relationship between Hepworth's sculpture and the natural forms that surround them. With specially commissioned photographs and full descriptions of both plants and sculptures, this is a comprehensive record of Barbra Hepworth's years in St Ives, and a beautiful souvenir of the garden. Texts from art historian and previous curator at Tate, Chris Stephens, along with Miranda Philips contextualises the work of Hepworth and the decisions made to create one of the most famous artists gardens in the world.

This catalogue of the Wyvern sculpture collection, which is not open to the public, comprises outstanding European sculptures of the medieval period, as well as some Late Antique and Byzantine pieces and related works of the post-medieval era. Objects are made from wood, stone (including alabaster and marble) and terracotta. Also included are medieval works of art in metal, mostly consisting of crucifix figures (corpora), and other functional metalware such as aquamanilia (water vessels for the washing of hands) and candlesticks. This sumptuous publication will interest all those concerned with the material culture of the Middle Ages.

A selection of Michael Craig-Martin's paintings, prints and sculptures, with an interview. This book is the result of a collaboration between The Gallery at Windsor, Florida, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Born in Ireland, the artist Michael Craig-Martin studied in America. On returning to the UK, he became a key figure in British conceptual art and an influential educator, linked in particular to the YBAs including Damien Hirst and Gary Hume. Craig-Martin's works transform recognisable objects - such as sneakers, headphones, watches and, most recently, Modernist buildings - with bold colour and simplified lines. He cites his 'rationalism' as the root of his practice. Craig-Martin is the latest subject of a three-year curatorial partnership between The Gallery at Windsor, Florida, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, initiated to celebrate the Academy's 250th anniversary. This lively book reproduces a selection of his paintings, prints and sculptures, with an insightful essay by the art critic Ben Luke and an interview between Tim Marlow and the artist. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Gallery at Windsor, Florida, 26 January - 26 April 2019. Ben Luke is the art critic at the London Evening Standard. Tim Marlow is artistic director at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Below images, left to right: Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, Untitled (watch fragment yellow), 2017. Acrylic on aluminium, 90 x 90 cm. Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, Double Take (iPhone), 2017. Acrylic on aluminium in two panels, 2018, 90 x 180 cm. Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, Untitled (trainer fragment), 2017. Acrylic on aluminium, 60 x 60 cm. Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, Untitled (lightbulb blue), 2017. Acrylic on aluminium, 90 x 90 cm. All images courtesy Gagosian. Photos Mike Bruce.

Learn the exciting and satisfying craft of wood sculpting with a chainsaw! This complete guide to chainsaw carving explains everything you need to know to carve amazing wood sculptures safely and successfully. Opening with helpful sections on chainsaw care, maintenance, safety, and other essential tips and tricks, Chainsaw Carving for Beginners will equip you with the fundamental knowledge and techniques of wood carving with a chainsaw! Featuring four projects with step-by-step instructions, coordinating photography, and expert insight throughout, this must-have resource will walk you through the entire process from start to finish for carving and sculpting an old shoe, a rabbit, an elegant lady, and a mountain goat. The perfect place to start for beginners, this guide will encourage and inform any woodworker on this exciting and rewarding craft!

An examination of Japanese contemporary art through the lens of ecocriticism and environmental history Collectively referred to by the word tsuchi, earthy materials such as soil and clay are prolific in Japanese contemporary art. Highlighting works of photography, ceramics, and installation art, Bert Winther-Tamaki explores the many aesthetic manifestations of tsuchi and their connection to the country's turbulent environmental history, investigating how Japanese artists have continually sought a passionate and redemptive engagement with earth. In the seven decades following 1955, Japan has experienced severe environmental degradation as a result of natural disasters, industrial pollution, and nuclear irradiation. Artists have responded to these ongoing catastrophes through modes of "mudlarking" and "muckracking," utilizing raw elements from nature to establish deeper contact with the primal resources of their world and expose its unfettered contamination. Providing a comparative assessment of more than seventy works of art, this study reveals Japanese artists' engagement with a richly diverse repertoire of earthy materialities, elucidating their aesthetic properties, changing conditions, and cultural significance. By focusing on the role of tsuchi as a convergence point for a wide range of creative practices, this book offers a critical reassessment of contemporary art in Japan and its intrinsic relationship to the environment. Situating art within the context of ecology and urbanization, Tsuchi shows artists striving to explore and reprocess raw forms of earth beneath the corruptions of human activity.

This volume follows the development of Greek gem engraving from Alexander to Augustus. Hellenistic gems are studied in their archaeological context with an assessment of the evidence of their use, significance, and value. The book focuses on subject-matter, technique, and style, as well as problems of chronology and distribution.

"The Polymer Clay Cookbook"""celebrates favorite foods with 20 tiny, deliciously realistic food charms to make from polymer clay and fashion into unique jewelry. Styled as a cookbook for the beginning miniaturist "chef," the introductory chapters discuss the "basic ingredients" and techniques used for polymer clay and jewelry-making. The remainder of the book offers 20 "recipes" grouped by category: fruits, breakfast, lunch and dinner, sweets and snacks, and holiday foods. Each recipe has a list of "ingredients," step-by-step directions with photographs, and suggested variations. Each piece is presented as a particular finished jewelry item, such as a necklace, but readers are encouraged to adapt the piece into any type of jewelry they choose. Each chapter also includes one of the authors' own cherished recipes for real food, including Sunday Morning Cinnamon Rolls, Grandma's Pasta Sauce, Decadent Raspberry Chocolate Cupcakes, and Mom's Holiday Sugar Cookies. Throughout, the authors--who are sisters--share their enthusiasm for family, sisterhood, and the tradition and feelings surrounding our favorite foods.

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL CHRISTOPHER BLAND PRIZE 2023*** 'I read the book in one go. I laughed and cried like a baby, and was transported back to a time of innocence, clouded by the enormity of the harsh reality . . . Just amazing' CATHERINE ZETA JONES 'As it happens, I was also a Jill in the eighties - but not half as good a Jill as real Jill' DAWN FRENCH 'Jill met the crisis head on . . . She held the hands of so many men. She lost them, and remembered them, and somehow kept going' RUSSELL T DAVIES A heartbreaking, life-affirming memoir of love, loss and cabaret through the AIDS crisis, from IT'S A SIN's Jill Nalder When Jill Nalder arrived at drama school in London in the early 1980s, she was ready for her life to begin. With her band of best friends - of which many were young, talented gay men with big dreams of their own - she grabbed London by the horns: partying with drag queens at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, hosting cabarets at her glamorous flat, flitting across town to any jobs she could get. But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the 'gay flu', and Jill and her friends now found their formerly carefree existence under threat. In this moving memoir, IT'S A SIN's Jill Nalder tells the true story of her and her friends' lives during the AIDS crisis -- juggling a busy West End career while campaigning for AIDS awareness and research, educating herself and caring for the sick. Most of all, she shines a light on those who were stigmatised and shamed, and remembers those brave and beautiful boys who were lost too soon. 'Thank God for people like [Jill] . . . I cannot recommend this book highly enough' MICHAEL BALL 'An engaging, moving account' TIMES SATURDAY REVIEW 'Simultaneously devastating and uplifting' GRAZIA 'Engrossing, heart-breaking and inspiring' MATT CAIN

The work of Slovak sculptor Maria Bartuszova (1936-96) was first presented to international audiences in Kassel in 2007. Although her art has appeared in influential exhibitions and been included in prestigious contemporary art collections, up until now, she has yet to receive the widespread recognition she deserves. Dziewanska's book offers distinct perspectives on Bartuszova's work from renowned international critics in an effort to increase our awareness of her sculptures. Working alone behind the Iron Curtain, Bartuszova was one of a number of female artists who not only experimented formally and embarked intuitively on new themes, but who, because they were at odds with mainstream modernist trends, remained in isolation or in a marginalized position. Revealing her dynamic treatment of plaster-a material that, from a sculptor's point of view, is both primitive and common-the book deftly reveals how Bartuszova experimented with materials, never hesitating to treat tradition, accepted norms, and trusted techniques as simply transitory and provisional. Offering a much-needed history of a vibrant body of work, Maria Bartuszova: Provisional Forms is an important contribution to the literature on great female artists.

Chinese Buddhist wooden sculptures of Water-moon Guanyin, a Bodhisattva sitting in a leisurely reclining pose on a rocky throne, are housed in Western collections and are thus removed from their original context(s). Not only are most of them of unknown origin, but also do lack a precise date. Tracing their sources is moreover difficult because of the scant information provided by art dealers in previous periods. Thus, only preliminary investigations into their stylistic development and technical features have been made so far. Moreover, until recently none of the Chinese temples that provided their original context, i.e. their precise/exact/specific position within those temple compounds and their respective place in the Buddhist pantheon, have been examined at all. In her study, Petra H Roesch investigates these very aspects, including questions about the religious position and function of the sculptures of this special Bodhisattva. She also looks at the technical construction, the collecting of Chinese Buddhist sculptures in general and those sculptures made of wood in particular. She uses a combination of stylistic, iconographical, buddhological, as well as technical methodologies in her investigation of the Water-moon Guanyin images and sheds light on the Buddhist temples in Shanxi Province, the works of art they once housed, and the religious practices of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries connected with them.

How does photography shape the way we see sculpture? In "David Smith in Two Dimensions," Sarah Hamill broaches this question through an in-depth consideration of the photography of American sculptor David Smith (1906-1965). Smith was a modernist known for radically shifting the terms of sculpture, a medium traditionally defined by casting, modeling, and carving. He was the first to use industrial welding as a sustained technique for large-scale sculpture, influencing a generation of minimalists to come. What is less known about Smith is his use of the camera to document his own sculptures as well as everyday objects, spaces, and bodies. His photographs of sculptures were published in countless exhibition catalogs, journals, and newspapers, often as anonymous illustrations. Far from being neutral images, these photographs direct a pictorial encounter with spatial form and structure the public display of his work.
"David Smith in Two Dimensions" looks at the sculptor's adoption of unconventional backdrops, alternative vantage points, and unusual lighting effects and exposures to show how he used photography to dramatize and distance objects. This comprehensive and penetrating account also introduces Smith's expansive archive of copy prints, slides, and negatives, many of which are seen here for the first time. Hamill proposes a new understanding of Smith's sculpture through photography, exploring issues that are in turn vital to discourses of modern sculpture, sculptural aesthetics, and postwar art. In Smith's photography, we see an artist moving fluidly between media to define what a sculptural object was and how it would be encountered publicly.

This book is a unique, fully illustrated, and fascinating study of all the known carved reliefs decorating official inscriptions in classical and Hellenistic Athens. The author's new and illuminating work on the iconography of these reliefs shows how the gods, heroes, and other personifications were not simply decorative, but integral to the overall political message.

A beautifully written study of three pioneering artists, entwining their work and our understanding of creativity Bringing the creative process of three contemporary artists into conversation, Architectures of the Unforeseen stages an encounter between philosophy and art and design. Its gorgeous prose invites the reader to think along with Brian Massumi as he thoroughly embodies the work of these artists, walking the line that separates theory from art and providing equally nurturing sustenance for practicing artists and working philosophers. Based on Massumi's lengthy-and in two cases decades-long-relationships with digital architect Greg Lynn, interactive media artist Rafael-Lozano Hemmer, and mixed-media installation creator Simryn Gill, Architectures of the Unforeseen delves into their processes of creating art. The book's primary interest is in what motivates each artist's practice-the generative knots that inspire creativity-and in how their pieces work to give off their unique effects. More than a series of profiles or critical pieces, Massumi's essays are creative, developing new philosophical concepts and offering rigorous sentiments about art and creativity. Asking fundamental questions about nature, culture, and the emergence of the new, Architectures of the Unforeseen is important original research on artists that are pioneers in their field. Equally valuable to the everyday reader and those engaged in scholarly work, it is destined to become an important book not only for the fields of digital architecture, interactive media, and installation art, but also more basically for our knowledge of art and creativity.

Starting with James Abbott McNeill Whistler and ending with Matthew Barney, nearly every prominent figure in Modern art is represented in vibrant double-page spreads that show how these artists redefined norms and challenged tradition. Fascinating biographical and anecdotal information about each artist is provided alongside large reproductions of their most celebrated works, stunning details, and images of the artists themselves. From the Impressionists to the Surrealists, Cubists to Pop artists-readers will find a wealth of information as well as hours of enjoyment learning about one of the most popular and prolific periods in art history.

No Victorian parlor was complete without a Staffordshire Spaniel on the mantel. This fascinating text focuses exclusively on these popular Victorian era antiques produced in Staffordshire, England from circa 1840 through the turn of the century. A detailed look at all of the Spaniel variations, along with the history of this "breed" of Staffordshire figure, and the more recent reproductions is provided and beautifully illustrated with over 285 color photographs and illustrations. Also included are the historical context into which these Spaniels fit, background on the Staffordshire potteries and canine statuary, molding processes, decorating techniques, Spaniel types and sizes, tips for collectors, and a helpful glossary. Informative captions offer descriptions, sizes, dates of manufacture, and current market values.

First book to place the art of British sculptor Lynn Chadwick in its international context. Examines in particular the reception and promotion of Chadwick's sculpture in the United States. Richly illustrated. This is the first book to set the work of British sculptor Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003) in its international context. Chadwick, a leading figure in modern British art and celebrated for his innovative steel and bronze sculptures of abstracted, expressive figures and animals, always felt that his work was better understood abroad than in his native country. In this richly illustrated monograph, distinguished British scholar and writer Michael Bird, and eminent American art historian and curator Marin R. Sullivan chart the different phases of Chadwick's long career. They vividly locate his art within the wider narrative of European and American post-war sculpture. They examine in particular the reception and promotion of Chadwick's sculpture in the United States, and how a collection of some 140 of his works at the Berman Museum in rural Pennsylvania came to be.