new and bestselling art, architecture and fashion titles...

New and Bestselling Art, Architecture and Fashion Titles, Winter 2018

Hbk | 256pp | 9780300217469 | 10/04/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$74.99 | NZ$89.99 Yale University Press

The term “macaroni” was once as familiar a sartorial term as “punk” or “hipster” is today. In this beautifully illustrated book devoted to notable 18th‐century British male fashion, award‐winning author and fashion historian Peter McNeil brings together fashion, biography, and historical events with the broader visual and material culture of the late 18th century. For thirty years, macaroni was a highly topical term, yielding a complex set of social, sexual, and cultural associations. Pretty Gentlemen is grounded in survivi....

Pretty Gentlemen: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World

Peter McNeil

Hbk | 192pp | 9781848222199 | 9/03/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$59.99 | NZ$74.99 Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd

The roll‐call of wars down the centuries is paralleled by an equally extensive narrative of the theft, destruction, plundering, displacement and concealing of some of the greatest works of art during those conflicts ‐ a story that is expertly told in this original publication.

Plundering Beauty: A History of Art Crime during War charts the crucial milestones of art crimes spanning two

Plundering Beauty: A History of Art Crime during War

Arthur Tompkins

Hbk | 152pp | 9780691157665 | 19/11/2012 | RRP (inc GST) A$19.99 | NZ$27.99 Princeton University Press

This collection of quotes demonstrates the elegant simplicity of Ai Weiwei’s thoughts on key aspects of his art, politics, and life. A master at communicating powerful ideas in astonishingly few words, Ai Weiwei is known for his innovative use of social media to disseminate his views. The short quotations presented here have been carefully selected from articles, tweets, and interviews given by this acclaimed Chinese artist and activist.

Weiwei-isms

Ai Weiwei

Hbk | 176pp | 9781848222182 | 11/01/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$99.99 | NZ$125 LH Professional

Richly illustrated and drawing on historical examples and contemporary design studies, this book takes the reader through the history, theory and design of prefabricated and modular housing, leading up to a discussion of contemporary problems and opportunities. Including a broad international survey, wide ranging interviews, case studies of leading designers and companies, and cutting‐edge research in the field, it suggests a future scenario for industrialized building that will both challenge those professions concerned with the design and producti....

Prefab Housing and the Future of Building: Product to Process

Mathew Aitchison

19-Jun-18www.footprint.com.au

Pbk | 96pp | 9781857094848 | 24/06/2010 | RRP (inc GST) A$22.99 | NZ$24.99 National Gallery London

Erika Langmuir examines the presence and surprisingly complicated history of angels in Christian art. She points out that angels need not be winged; they can wear antique dress, contemporary church vestments, secular fashions, armor, or nothing at all; their gender and age are uncertain; they may not even have bodies but appear only as winged heads; and they are not always good (Satan, of course, is a fallen angel). Langmuir explores these intriguing characteristics of angels by looking at some of the best‐known and most engaging religious paintings in t....

A Closer Look Series A Closer Look: Angels

Erika Langmuir


Faces are everywhere in the National Gallerys collection: in portraits and narrative scenes, in allegories and paintings of everyday life. It is often the faces shown that communicate most directly in a picture; their expressions may reveal the drama of a story, or the character of a sitter in a portrait. A Closer Look: Faces examines a wide array of fascinating faces found in paintings at the National Gallery. It explains why artists in the past created faces to look as they do, what painters through the ages have co....

A Closer Look: Faces

Alexander Sturgis


Landscape is probably the most popular type of painting, but anyone who has ever been disappointed by vacation photographs knows how difficult it is to turn a view into a picture. This book shows how artists in past centuries translated outdoor space and light into paint, and how landscape imagery evolved from mere ornament into a visual metaphor of the human condition. The story is told from its beginnings in Roman mural decoration, through the Renaissance transformation of landscape into a vehicle for feelings and ideas, to the Impress....

A Closer Look: Landscape

Erika Langmuir


Painters in the past and commercial artists in our own day have relied on allegory to create 'message pictures.' Once thought to rival literary works or political oratory in influence and prestige, such paintings, with their references to ancient myth, the Bible, or medieval astrology, all too often puzzle modern viewers. This Closer Look guide illustrates and explains the main types of visual allegory in Western art and the contexts in which they were originally created and viewed.....

A Closer Look: Allegory

Erika Langmuir

Pbk | 96pp | 9781857096163 | 1/07/2017 | RRP (inc GST) A$22.99 | NZ$24.99 Yale University Press

For more than six centuries, European painters have been ambitious to depict objects as if they possessed real volume, placing them in a space that seems equivalent to the real space of our world. This “fiction” was central to the artist’s purpose. Through a close examination of paintings from the 1400s to the early 20th century, including works by Uccello, Vermeer, Titian and Monet, Nicholas Penny explains in this latest title in the National Gallery’s Closer Look series how artists sought to make the fiction of pictorial space compelling,....

A Closer Look: Pictorial Space

Nicholas Penny



Drawing on the National Gallerys comprehensive collection of religious images, A Closer Look: Saints explains the importance of saints and their role in the history of European painting. Erika Langmuir underlines the fundamental importance of saints in many of the National Gallerys paintings and, using examples of works by Raphael, Drer, and Crivelli, among others, explains the sometimes puzzling conventions for identifying saints by their attributes. She also describes how saints became part of the institutions of the Chri....

A Closer Look: Saints

Erika Langmuir


What is still life? We are familiar with the objects portrayed but have difficulty explaining the essence of this popular artform. Erika Langmuir examines the special fascination of still life, and what distinguishes it from other categories of painting. She discusses its evolution from the trompe loeil wall paintings of antiquity, through its revival in the age of Caravaggio and Velazquez, and again in the works of Cézanne and Picasso. Originally published as Pocket Guide Still Life, this eloquent survey benefits from a wider format, new reproductions,....

A Closer Look: Still Life

Erika Langmuir


How do experts spot masterpieces? Paintings are not always signed or noted in historical records, so how can we tell an obscure gem from an altered image? Scientists, conservators and art historians use a range of methods to examine the physical nature of pictures and unravel their hidden histories. Through a series of intriguing examples and clearly explained processes, this new addition to the National Gallery’s popular Closer Look series will draw the reader into the complex issues—not all of them fully resolved—confronted by gallery pro....

A Closer Look: Deceptions and Discoveries

Marjorie E. Wieseman


Frames often catch the eye and arouse the curiosity of visitors to galleries and museums, yet labels and catalogues rarely comment on them. Nicholas Penny conveys his interest in the history of frames, the design and techniques of frame‐making, what frames do for paintings, and the part they play in the decoration and often the architecture of an interior. The emphasis is on the changing function and varied purpose of frames as well as the different styles of ornament, materials, finishes, and techniques used. This Closer Look guide is illu....

A Closer Look: Frames

Nicholas Penny


How do artists create different effects when painting?The medium they choosesuch as oil, watercolor, or egg temperaplays an important part. So too does the material they paint on, the pigments used, and even the type of brush. Using examples from the National Gallery Collection, Jo Kirby shows how a painting is made, and reveals the processes behind an array of fascinating techniques. With clear explanations and close‐up photography, this book will help you see paintings with a fresh eye.....

A Closer Look: Techniques of Painting

Jo Kirby


Hbk | 716pp | 9783038600756 | 1/01/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$129 | NZ$157 Park Books

Widely disliked in their heyday and only recently beginning to be appreciated, brutalist buildings around the world are at risk of being lost ‐ in many cases to demolition, and in some to insensitive reconstructions that would forever alter buildings’ appearance beyond recognition. SOS Brutalism is a distress signal, an attempt to galvanize public awareness of the architectural heritage that is at risk of being forever lost. Case studies of hotspots such as the Macedonian capital Skopje or New Haven, Connecticut, and essays....

Architecture SOS Brutalism: A Global Survey

Oliver Elser, Philip Kurz, and Peter Cachola Schmal

Hbk | 240pp | 9783038600541 | 1/01/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$69 | NZ$84 Park Books

The success of any architectural project depends on the architect's ability to depict it. Conveying architectural ideas as drawings, pictures, or models is both a critical part of the process and one that can tell us much about the design itself in a particular time or place. Over the past two decades, major new trends in architectural representation have emerged in Japan, which have gained widespread attention in the western world.

Pictures of the Floating Microcosm: New Representations of Japanese ArchitectureOlivier Meystre


This revealing book looks at the groundbreaking work of Gordon Matta‐Clark (1943–1978), whose socially conscious practice blurred the boundaries between contemporary art and architecture. After completing a degree in architecture at Cornell University, Matta‐Clark returned to his home city of New York. There he employed the term “anarchitecture,” combining “anarchy” and “architecture,” to describe the site‐specific works he initially realized in the South Bronx.

Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect

Antonio Bessa and Jessamyn Fiore

Pbk | 144pp | 9780300228625 | 1/12/2017 | RRP (inc GST) A$64.99 | NZ$79.99 Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibitions have long played a crucial role in defining disciplinary histories. This fascinating volume examines the impact of eleven groundbreaking architecture and design exhibitions held between 1956 and 2006, revealing the different ways they have shaped how these disciplines are understood and practiced today. Featuring written and photographic descriptions of the shows and illuminating essays from noted curators, scholars, critics, designers, and artists, As Seen: Exhibitions that Made Architecture and Design History ....

As Seen: Exhibitions that Made Architecture and Design History

Zoe Ryan

Pbk | 272pp | 9780691163895 | 21/09/2014 | RRP (inc GST) A$44.99 | NZ$49.99 Princeton University Press

Originally delivered as the prestigious Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts in 1995, After the End of Art remains a classic of art criticism and philosophy, and continues to generate heated debate for contending that art ended in the 1960s. Arthur Danto, one of the best‐known art critics of his time, presents radical insights into art's irrevocable deviation from its previous course and the decline of traditional aesthetics. He demonstrates the necessity for a new type of criticism in the face of contemporary art's wide‐open possibilities. Thi....

Art Criticism After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History

Arthur C Danto


Hbk | 136pp | 9780691150444 | 21/10/2012 | RRP (inc GST) A$46.99 | NZ$56.99 Princeton University Press

Art as we know it is dramatically changing, but popular and critical responses lag behind. In this trenchant illustrated essay, David Joselit describes how art and architecture are being transformed in the age of Google. Under the dual pressures of digital technology, which allows images to be reformatted and disseminated effortlessly, and the exponential acceleration of cultural exchange enabled by globalisation, artists and architects are emphasising networks as never before. 39 colour illustrations.

After Art

David Joselit

Pbk | 176pp | 9781584350989 | 1/01/2011 | RRP (inc GST) A$27.99 | NZ$32.99 Semiotext(e)

In Where Art Belongs, Chris Kraus examines artistic enterprises of the past decade that reclaim the use of lived time as a material in the creation of visual art. Chronicling the sometimes doomed but persistently heroic efforts of small groups of artists to reclaim public space and time, Where Art Belongs describes the trend towards collectivity manifested in the visual art world during the past decade, and the small forms of resistance to digital disembodiment and the hegemony of the entertainment....

Where Art Belongs

Chris Kraus

Pbk | 192pp | 9780226266633 | 1/04/2016 | RRP (inc GST) A$32.99 | NZ$39.99 University of Chicago Press

Was it a trick of the light that drew our Stone Age ancestors into caves to paint in charcoal and red hematite, to watch the heads of lions, likenesses of bison, horses, and aurochs in the reliefs of the walls, as they flickered by firelight? Or was it something deeper ‐ a creative impulse, a spiritual dawn, a shamanistic conception of the world efflorescing in the dark, dank spaces beneath the surface of the earth where the spirits were literally at hand? In this book, Jean Clottes, one of the most renowned figures in the study of cave paintings, p....

Art History What Is Paleolithic Art?: Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity

Jean Clottes

Hbk | 264pp | 9780262037433 | 1/03/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$54.99 | NZ$69.99 The MIT Press

Cosmism emerged in Russia before the October Revolution and developed though the 1920s and 1930s; like Marxism and the European avant‐garde, two other movements that shared this intellectual moment, Russian Cosmism rejected the contemplative for the transformative, aiming to create not merely new art or philosophy but a new world. Cosmism went the furthest in its visions of transformation, calling for the end of death, the resuscitation of the dead, and free movement in cosmic space. This volume collects crucial texts, many available in English for ....

Russian Cosmism

Boris Groys


In Art Can Help, the internationally acclaimed American photographer Robert Adams (b. 1937) offers over two‐dozen meditations on the purpose of art and the responsibility of the artist. In particular, Adams advocates art that evokes beauty without irony or sentimentality, art that “encourages us to gratitude and engagement, and is of both personal and civic consequence.”

Art Theory Art Can Help

Robert Adams


Pbk | 264pp | 9780719069598 | 1/02/2006 | RRP (inc GST) A$43.99 | NZ$52.99 Manchester University Press

Art History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods provides a lively and stimulating introduction to methodological debates within art history. Offering a lucid account of approaches from Hegel to post‐colonialism, the book provides a sense of art history’s own history as a discipline from its emergence in the late‐eighteenth century to contemporary debates.

Art History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods

Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk

Hbk | 192pp | 9780226333151 | 1/01/2016 | RRP (inc GST) A$54.99 | NZ$69.99 University of Chicago Press

The book collects Hickey's best and most important writing about female artists from the past twenty years. But this is far more than a compilation: Hickey has revised each essay, bringing them up to date and drawing out common themes. Written in Hickey's trademark style ‐ accessible, witty, and powerfully illuminating ‐ 25 Women analyzes the work of Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley, Fiona Rae, Lynda Benglis, Karen Carson, and many others. Hickey discusses their work as work, bringing politics and gender into the discussion onl....

25 Women: Essays on Their Art

Dave Hickey

Pbk | 208pp | 9781606064818 | 1/08/2016 | RRP (inc GST) A$84 | NZ$99 Getty Publications

"A curator, a paintings conservator, a photographer, and a conservation scientist walk into a bar." What happens next? In lively and accessible prose, color science expert Roy S. Berns helps the reader understand complex color‐technology concepts and offers solutions to problems that occur when art is displayed, conserved, imaged, or reproduced. Berns writes for two types of audiences: museum professionals seeking explanations for common color‐related issues and students in conservation, museum studies, and art history progr....

Color Science and the Visual Arts – A Guide for Conservations, Curators, and the CuriousRoy Berns

Hbk | 288pp | 9780226078304 | 1/09/2008 | RRP (inc GST) A$55.99 | NZ$68 University of Chicago Press

In May 1965, vice president Hubert Humphrey declared that “the Viet Cong has committed the most unbelievable acts of terrorism the world has ever known.” And throughout the long conflict in Vietnam, Americans similarly demonised the enemy fighters as reds, gooks, and fanatical killers. Offering a radically different view of these supposedly savage soldiers, Mekong Diaries presents never‐before‐published drawings, poems, letters, and oral histories by ten of the most celebrated Viet Cong war artists.

Asian Art Mekong Diaries : Viet Cong Drawings and Stories

Sherry Buchanan

Hbk | 423pp | 9780300233254 | 17/07/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$150 | NZ$175 Mercatorfonds

Taking an approach that is equal parts anthropological and art historical, this lavishly illustrated volume offers a rare look at the art, artifacts, and culture of the Naga people, an ethnic group spanning several tribes native to northeastern India and northwestern Myanmar. The book seeks to shed light on this geographically isolated and historically insular people, identifying cultural aspects and artistic traditions that are common among all Naga tribes, as well as ways in which the tribes differ. The works featured include textiles, baskets, wo....

NAGA: Awe-inspiring Beauty

Michel Draguet


Hbk | 224pp | 9781851242504 | 1/09/2016 | RRP (inc GST) A$84.99 | NZ$99.99 Bodleian Library

This book explores the stories behind seventy‐five extraordinary maps. It includes unique treasures such as the fourteenth‐century Gough Map of Great Britain, exquisite portolan charts made in the fifteenth century, the Selden Map of China – the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography – and an early world map from the medieval Islamic Book of Curiosities, together with more recent examples of fictional places drawn in the twentieth century, such as C.S. Lewis’s own map of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth. Drawing on the uniqu....

Cartography Treasures from the Map Room: A Journey through the Bodleian Collections

Debbie Hall

Hbk | 192pp | 9780262027601 | 25/06/2014 | RRP (inc GST) A$59.99 | NZ$69.99 The MIT Press

Surf Craft examines surfboard design and craft with 150 colour images and an insightful text. From the ancient Hawaiian alaia, the traditional board of the common people, to the unadorned boards designed with mathematical precision (but built by hand) by Bob Simmons, to the store‐bought longboards popularized by the 1959 surf‐exploitation movie Gidget, board design reflects both aesthetics and history.

Contemporary Art Surf Craft: Design and the Culture of Board Riding

Richard Kenvin

Pbk | 96pp | 9781588396273 | 6/02/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$44.99 | NZ$54.99 Metropolitan Museum of Art

Joseph Cornell first viewed Cubist painter Juan Gris's The Man at the Cafe in October 1953. This visual encounter prompted Cornell to create more than a dozen hand‐constructed shadow boxes as homages to Gris, each featuring a variation on a motif that echoes formal elements in Gris's painting. This unique book explores Cornell's deep fascination with Gris, uncovering compositional similarities that indicate numerous cross‐currents, including allusions in Cornell's work to Gris's crucial influence and the artists' shared interests in French culture a....

Birds of a Feather: Joseph Cornell’s Homage to Juan Gris

Mary McKinley

Hbk | 160pp | 9780520283961 | 29/10/2014 | RRP (inc GST) A$89.99 | NZ$115 University of California Press

David Lynch is internationally renowned as a filmmaker, but it is less known that he began his creative life as a visual artist and has maintained a devoted studio practice, developing an extensive body of painting, prints, photography, and drawing. Featuring work from all periods of Lynchs career, this book documents Lynch's first major museum exhibition in the United States, bringing together works held in American and European collections and from the artists studio. Organised in close collaboration with the artist, David Lynch: The U....

David Lynch: The Unified Field

Robert Cozzolino

Pbk | 208pp | 9781781300510 | 1/02/2017 | RRP (inc GST) A$54.99 | NZ$64.99 Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd

In Spring 2017 Dulwich Picture Gallery will present the first major museum exhibition devoted to the work of British female modernist painter Vanessa Bell (1879‐1961). This accompanying publication beautifully showcases the oil paintings, photographs, ceramics, fabrics, decorative screens and works on paper in a stunning display of her vibrant and wide‐ranging talent. Long overshadowed by the complexity of her family life and romantic entanglements, the editors assess Bell in the context of her relationship with sister, Virginia Woolf, and as muse a....

Vanessa Bell

Sarah Milroy


Hbk | 408pp | 9780226203232 | 1/01/2010 | RRP (inc GST) A$85 | NZ$104 University of Chicago Press

Gerhard Richter is one of the most important and influential artists of the post‐war era. For decades he has sought innovative ways to make painting more relevant, often through a multifaceted dialogue with photography. Today Richter is most widely recognized for the photo‐paintings he made during the 1960s that rely on images culled from mass media and pop culture. Written with full access to Richter and his archives, this fascinating book offers unprecedented insight into his life and work.

Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting

Dietmar Elger

Hbk | 400pp | 9780262017770 | 31/08/2012 | RRP (inc GST) A$125 | NZ$150 The MIT Press

When the fashion industry declares that lime green is the new black, or instructs us to “think pink!,” it is not the result of a backroom deal forged by a secretive cabal of fashion journalists, designers, manufacturers, and the editor of Vogue. It is the latest development of a color revolution that has been unfolding for more than a century. In this book, the award‐winning historian Regina Lee Blaszczyk traces the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of....

The Color Revolution

Regina Lee Blaszczyk

Hbk | 400pp | 9780300224054 | 6/06/2017 | RRP (inc GST) A$115 | NZ$140 The Cleveland Museum of Art

Capturing the dynamic pulse of the era's jazz music, this lavishly illustrated publication explores American taste and style during the golden age of the 1920s. The Jazz Age showcases developments in design, art, architecture, and technology during the '20s and early '30s, and places new emphasis on the United States as a vital part of the emerging marketplace for Art Deco luxury goods. Featuring hundreds of full‐color illustrations and essays by two leading historians of decorative arts, this comprehensive catalogue shows ....

The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s

Stephen Harrison, Sarah Coffin and Emily Orr

Pbk | 208pp | 9780674744431 | 23/03/2015 | RRP (inc GST) A$44.99 | NZ$54.99 Harvard University Press

The primacy of words over images has deep roots in Western culture. But what if the two are inextricably linked, equal partners in meaning‐making? Written and drawn entirely as comics, Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking. Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge. Fusing words and images to produce new forms of knowledge, Unflattening teaches us how to access modes of understa....

Unflattening

Nick Sousanis

Hbk | 352pp | 9780300123494 | 1/10/2007 | RRP (inc GST) A$177 | NZ$217 Yale University Press

British artist Euan Uglow (19322000) maintained a lower profile than others of his generation, yet his beautiful, intelligent, humane, and often witty landscapes, still lifes, and figure studies are today gaining the recognition they so clearly deserve. Many critics and admirers now consider Uglow one of Britains greatest post‐war artists. This is the first book devoted to Uglow and his oeuvre. Richard Kendalls essay explores Uglows fundamental attitudes, beliefs, and processes in the years 1950 to 1970, and Catherine Lampert looks at the content and pe....

Euan Uglow: The Complete Paintings

Catherine Lampert and Richard Kendall


Pbk | 240pp | 9780262515672 | 24/02/2011 | RRP (inc GST) A$54.99 | NZ$64.99 The MIT Press

The “death of painting” and its subsequent resurrection in transformed conditions is a leitmotif of the modern era. Painting’s postconceptual resurgence at the start of the 1980s began a dramatic expansion of its field. If painting remains important today, it is because its contradictions have been acknowledged as artists have radically diversified the components of its production and presentation. Compiled by a leading critic of painting who actively participated in these conversations while also teaching young artists in the studio classroom, this coll....

Painting

Terry R Myers

Pbk | 240pp | 9780262524810 | 31/03/2008 | RRP (inc GST) A$49.99 | NZ$59.99 The MIT Press

This unique anthology reflects on the aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical meaning of colour through the writings of artists and critics, placed within the broader context of anthropology, film, philosophy, literature, and science. This chronology of writings from Baudelaire to Baudrillard traces how artists have affirmed colour as a space of pure sensation, embraced it as a tool of revolution or denounced it as decorative and even decadent. It establishes colour as a central theme in the story of modern and contemporary art and provides a fascinating ....

Colour

David Batchelor

Hbk | 416pp | 9780300237221 | 1/04/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$180 | NZ$220 Bard Center

This intriguing book examines the small woven and wrought works artist Sheila Hicks has produced for the past fifty years. With their distinctive colors, thoughtful compositions, and narrative, these miniature creations reveal the emergence and continuity of the artist’s approach to her work. Internationally recognized for her mastery of a textile vocabulary of extremely different scales—sculpture, tapestry, site specific commissions for public spaces, environments of recuperated clothing and uniforms, and more—Hicks has thoughtfully crafted miniatu....

Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor

Nina Stritzler-Levine

Hbk | 312pp | 9781588396440 | 17/04/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$105 | NZ$125 Metropolitan Museum of Art

Since the earliest myths of the sculptor Pygmalion bringing a statue to life through desire, artists have explored the boundaries between sculpture and the physical materiality of the body. This groundbreaking volume examines key sculptural works from 13th‐century Europe to the global present, revealing new insights into the strategies artists deploy to blur the distinction between art and life. Sculpture, which has historically taken the human figure as its subject, is presented here in myriad manifestations created by artists ranging from Donatell....

Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body

Luke Syson, Sheena Wagstaff, Emerson Bowyer, Brinda Kumar, Schwartz Hillel and Marina Warner


One of the most important artists of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko (19031970) created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting over the course of his career. Rothko also wrote a number of essays and critical reviews during his lifetime, adding his thoughtful, intelligent, and opinionated voice to the debates of the contemporary art world. Although the artist never published a book of his varied and complex views, his heirs indicate that he occasionally spoke of the existence of such a manuscript to friends and colleagues. Stored in a New York....

The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art

Mark Rothko, Christopher Rothko and Kate Prizel Rothko


Hbk | 164pp | 9780226500973 | 1/04/2008 | RRP (inc GST) A$44.99 | NZ$53.99 University of Chicago Press

Inspired by the vast nest collection at the Field Museum, which features specimens gathered throughout North and South America, Peggy Macnamara’s paintings are enhanced by text written by museum curators. Architecture by Birds and Insects at last gives the tiniest engineers their rightful moment in the spotlight, and in so doing increases awareness and encourages the protection of birds, insects, and their habitats.

Architecture by Birds and Insects

Peggy Macnamara

Hbk | 272pp | 9780300232844 | 20/03/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$130 | NZ$155 Whitney Museum of American Art

This comprehensive study of Grant Wood (1891–1942) is packed with extensive new scholarship and provides fresh insight into the career of one of the key figures of 20th‐century American art. Working primarily in the traditional genres of portraiture and landscape, Wood infused his paintings with a palpable tension that is grounded in the profound epistemological and social upheavals of his time. Exploring Wood’s oeuvre from a variety of perspectives, this book presents the artist’s work in all of its subtle complexity and eschews the idea that Wood ....

Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables

Barbara Haskell

Hbk | 138pp | 9780262014045 | 30/04/2010 | RRP (inc GST) A$72 | NZ$89 The MIT Press

Although the term ''psychedelic'' was coined to describe hallucinatory experiences produced by drugs used psychotherapeutically, the story these images tell is about the influence of psychedelic culture on the art world ‐ not necessarily the influence of drugs. As contemporary art evolved into a diverse and pluralistic discipline, the psychedelic evolved into a language of color and light. In Psychedelic, more than seventy‐five vivid color images chart this development, exploring the art chronologically, from early Op Art t....

Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s

David S Rubin

Hbk | 256pp | 9781781350010 | 17/05/2013 | RRP (inc GST) A$34.99 | NZ$44.99 Independent Thinking Press

A wise man once said that ‘attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering cold iron’. If that is the case consider this book as your own little portable furnace. Written by an educationalist whose PhD focuses on the allimportant but often overlooked role of wonder in learning, this unique book is a consummate cornucopia of the awe‐inspiring, the jaw‐dropping, the very weird and the most wonderful, all designed to help tap into children’s natural curiosity and inspire them to great learning. The Little....

Curiosities The Little Book of Awe and Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities

Matthew McFall and Ian Gilbert

Hbk | 496pp | 9780300204353 | 17/04/2015 | RRP (inc GST) A$195 | NZ$240 Paul Mellon Centre BA

This lavishly produced volume presents a survey and analysis of a fascinating cabinet of curiosities established around 1750 by the Cobbe family in Ireland and added to over a period of 100 years. Although such collections were common in British country houses during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Cobbe museum, still largely intact and housed in its original cabinets, now forms a unique survivor of this type of private collection from the Age of Enlightenment. A detailed catalogue of the objects and specimens is accompanied by beautiful, specially comm....

The Cobbe Cabinet of Curiosities: An Anglo-Irish Country House Museum

Arthur MacGregor



Arguably the most influential, imaginative, and provocative designer of his generation, Alexander McQueen both challenged and expanded fashion conventions to express ideas about race, class, sexuality, religion, and the environment. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the full breadth of the designer's career, from the start of his fledgling label to the triumphs of his own world‐renowned London house. It features his most iconic and radical designs, revealing how McQueen adapted and combined the fundamentals of Savil....

Fashion Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Andrew Bolton, Tim Blanks, Susannah Frankel and Sølve Sundsbø


Since antiquity, religious beliefs and practices have inspired many of the masterworks of art. These works of art have, in turn, fueled the imagination of fashion designers in the 20th and 21st centuries, yielding some of the most innovative creations in costume history. Connecting significant religious art and artifacts to their sartorial expressions, Heavenly Bodies provides a critical analysis of fashion’s engagement with notions of the divine. Exploring fashion’s complex and often controversial relationship with Catholi....

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

Andrew Bolton


The great pantheon of fashion designers produces only a handful of creators who are masters of their métier. Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons is one of them. Widely recognized among her contemporaries as the most important and influential designer of the past forty years, she has, since her Paris debut in 1981, defined and transformed the aesthetics of our time. This lavishly illustrated publication examines Kawakubo’s fascination with interstitiality, or the space between boundaries. 200 color illustrations.

Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between

Andrew Bolton


What woman can resist imagining herself in a beautiful designer dress? Here, for the first time ever, are 100 fabulous gowns from the permanent collection of the renowned Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, each of which is a reminder of the ways fashion reflects the broader culture that created it. Featuring designs by Paul Poiret, Coco Chanel, Madame Grès, Yves Saint Laurent, Gianni Versace, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and many others, this one‐of‐a‐kind collection presents a stunning variety of garments. Ranging from th....

100 Dresses: The Costume Institute / The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Harold Koda

Hbk | 208pp | 9781588395849 | 27/03/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$94.99 | NZ$115 Metropolitan Museum of Art

The spectacular transformation of Paris during the 19th century into a city of tree‐lined boulevards and public parks both redesigned the capital and inspired the era’s great Impressionist artists. The renewed landscape gave crowded, displaced urban dwellers green spaces to enjoy, while suburbanites and country‐dwellers began cultivating their own flower gardens. As public engagement with gardening grew, artists increasingly featured flowers and parks in their work.

Impressionist Art Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence

Colta Ives


Hbk | 312pp | 9780300232622 | 1/11/2017 | RRP (inc GST) A$105 | NZ$130 Editions Hazan, Paris

Claude Monet (1840–1926) was the founder of French Impressionism and remains one of the world’s best known and most beloved painters. His works are on view in the many of the finest museums, and details of his storied life are well‐documented. Less well known are Monet’s activities as an art collector; Monet The Collector sumptuously illustrated volume traces this history, and in the process reconstitutes the artist’s private collection.

Monet The Collector

Marianne Mathieu and Dominique Lobstein

Hbk | 84pp | 9788874397198 | 6/10/2015 | RRP (inc GST) A$39.99 | NZ$49.99 5 Continents

French painter Claude Monet (1840‐1926) is one of the most popular artists of all time. His paintings of water lilies, haystacks, cathedrals, and much more are all celebrated and beloved. For the first time, this book explores a new aspect of Monet's work: his fascination,during the 1870s, with bridges. After moving to Argenteuil, a small town on the outskirts of Paris, Monet was drawn to the local footbridge near his house on the banks ofthe Seine. His painting of it, The Wooden Bridge, 1872, is a composition of startling modernity. The book begins....

Monet: A Bridge to Modernity

Anabelle Kienle Ponka

Hbk | 200pp | 9780300233261 | 10/07/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$79.99 | NZ$94.99 Mercatorfonds

Vincent van Gogh’s (1853–1890) encounter with Japanese ukiyo‐e prints during his time in Paris was decisive for the direction that his art would take in the years to come. He enthusiastically assembled a collection of the prints with the idea of dealing in them, and soon was captivated by their colorful and cheerful imagery and style, which began to exert a dramatic influence on his own work. Gradually this enchanted world became his main artistic reference point. From then on, he positioned himself as an artist in the Japanese tradition in order to....

Van Gogh and Japan

Louis van Tilborgh, Cornelia Homburg, Nienke Bakker and Tsukasa Kodera

Hbk | 336pp | 9780300217018 | 8/07/2017 | RRP (inc GST) A$120 | NZ$150 Art Institute of Chicago

Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist draws on extensive new research into the artist’s working methods, presenting him as a consummate craftsman ‐ one whose transmutations of the ordinary yielded new and remarkable forms.

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) was a creative force above and beyond his legendary work as a painter. Surveying the full scope of his career‐spanning experiments in different media and formats ‐ clay, works on paper, wood, and paint, as

Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist

Gloria Groom

Hbk | 176pp | 9780300236521 | 10/07/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$84.99 | NZ$105 Mercatorfonds

Acclaimed and beloved for her paintings of women and children in intimate, informal settings, Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was the only American artist to exhibit with the French Impressionists in Paris. Cassatt celebrated women in an age of rapid female advancement, and she explained her affinity for depicting children, saying they are “natural and truthful,” two of the qualities that her generation of artists was energetically pursuing. This beautiful book, edited by a preeminent Cassatt scholar, brings together more than sixty important works that sp....

Mary Cassatt: An American Impressionist in Paris

Nancy Mowll Mathews and Pierre Curie


Hbk | 296pp | 9780300220117 | 1/06/2016 | RRP (inc GST) A$120 | NZ$150 Mercatorfonds

This extensive publication, complete with hundreds of illustrations by such renowned artists as Carl Larsson, Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershoi, Pekka Halonen, Akseli Gallen‐Kallela, Christopher Dresser, Pietro Krohn, Alf Wallander, and Frida Hansen, among others, offers an unprecedented study of Japanese influence on the visual arts in the Nordic countries. This unlikely diffusion of Japanese culture, known collectively as Japonisme, became increasingly apparent in England, France, and elsewhere in Europe during the 19th century, although nowhere was the....

Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 1875-1918

Gabriel Weisberg and Anna-Maria Bonsdorff

Pbk | 272pp | 9780300207736 | 19/10/2014 | RRP (inc GST) A$59.99 | NZ$74.99 Kimbell Art Museum

Faces of Impressionism explores the development of the portrait in French painting and sculpture between 1860 and 1910 as showcased in one of the worlds greatest collections of Impressionist artthe Musée dOrsay in Paris. Splendidly illustrated, this book assesses the portrait collection through the expert eyes of George T. M. Shackelford and Guy Cogeval, as well as from the perspective of a new generation of distinguished scholars, Isolde Pludermacher and Xavier Rey. Featuring some of the best‐loved portraits in the history....

Faces of Impressionism: Portraits from the Musée d'Orsay

George Shackelford, Guy Cogeval, Isolde Pludermacher and Xavier Rey

Hbk | 224pp | 9781606065495 | 20/03/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$83 | NZ$102 J. Paul Getty Museum

Scholarship on photography's earliest years has tended to focus on daguerreotypes on metal or on the European development of paper photographs made from glass or paper negative. But Americans also experimented with negative‐positive processes to produce photographic images on a variety of paper formats in the early decades of the medium. Paper Promises: Early American Photography presents this rarely studied topic within photographic history. The well‐researched and richly detailed texts in this book delve into the complexi....

Photography Paper Promises - Early American Photography

Mazie M Harris

Hbk | 160pp | 9781606065525 | 20/03/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$66 | NZ$79 J. Paul Getty Museum

This sumptuously illustrated volume examines the impact of Indian art and culture on Rembrandt (1606–1669) in the late 1650s. By pairing Rembrandt’s twenty‐two extant drawings of Shah Jahan, Jahangir, Dara Shikoh, and other Mughal courtiers with Mughal paintings of similar compositions, the book critiques the prevailing notion that Rembrandt “brought life” to the static Mughal art. Written by scholars of both Dutch and Indian art, the essays in this volume instead demonstrate how Rembrandt’s contact with Mughal painting inspired him to draw in an en....

Traditional Art Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India

Stephanie Schrader

Pbk | 384pp | 9780892367726 | 1/01/2005 | RRP (inc GST) A$38.99 | NZ$48.99 Getty Publications

Nature and Its Symbols is the fifth volume in the series A Guide to Imagery, reference guides whose goal is to explain the symbols used in art. This volume includes chapters on plants, flowers, fruits, and animals of the earth, air, and water, as well as fantastical creatures such as centaurs, griffons, and dragons. The vivid illustrations, which include paintings and tapestries from some of the world's premier museums, are accompanied by texts that offer a careful analysis of the artists' depictions of the natural world. f....

Nature and Its Symbols

Lucia Impelluso


Hbk | 448pp | 9780300208030 | 1/11/2014 | RRP (inc GST) A$135 | NZ$170 YC British Art

Sculpture Victorious highlights the diversity, originality, and ubiquity of sculptural production during the reign of Queen Victoria. This lavishly illustrated book examines how colorful marbles, bronzes, finely wrought silver, and exquisitely detailed electrotypes, as well as gems, cameos, and porcelain, related to and contributed to the contemporary world. In an age of unprecedented territorial expansion, sculpture reflected the power of the British empire; at the same time, increased access to materials and resources fac....

Sculpture Victorious: Art in an Age of Invention, 1837-1901

Martina Droth, Jason Edwards and Michael Hatt

Hbk | 296pp | 9780300232967 | 1/05/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$139 | NZ$174 Museum Fine Arts Houston

Peacock in the Desert traces the evolution of royal identity in the kingdom of Marwar‐Jodhpur in southwestern Rajasthan from the 17th century to the establishment of independence after 1947, presenting the area as a microcosm of India’s extraordinarily vibrant culture. An international team of contributors has contextualized these regional narratives in relation to external ‐ and even global ‐ forces. The book thus offers a new perspective on the acquisition and commissioning of objects through patronage, diplomacy, matrimo....

Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India

Karni Jasol


Newly independent in 1585, the increasingly prosperous and politically powerful Dutch Republic experienced a tremendous rise in the production of artwork that was unparalleled in quantity, variety, and beauty. Now back in print, this classic book (originally published in 1996) examines the countrys rich artistic culture in the seventeenth century, providing a full account of Dutch artists and patrons; artistic themes and techniques; and the political and social world in which artists worked. Distinguished art historian Mariët Westermann examines the worl....

A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic, 1585-1718

Mariët Westermann


The Poetry of Nature offers an in‐depth look at more than 40 extraordinary Japanese paintings that represent every major school and movement of the Edo period, including Kano, Rinpa, Nanga, Zen, Maruyama‐Shijō, and Ukiyo‐e. The unifying theme is a celebration of the natural world, expressed in varied forms, from the bold, graphic manner of Rinpa to the muted sensitivity of Nanga. Among the artists whose works are included are Ike Taiga (1723–1776), Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795), and Sakai Hōitsu (1761–1828). John T. Carpenter l....

The Poetry of Nature: Edo Paintings from the Fishbein-Bender Collection

John Carpenter and Midori Oka

Hbk | 240pp | 9780691172446 | 1/04/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$109 | NZ$134 Princeton University Press

Roughness is the sensual quality most often associated with Rembrandt's idiosyncratic style. It best defines the specific structure of his painterly textures, which subtly capture and engage the imagination of the beholder. Rembrandt's Roughness examines how the artist's unconventional technique pushed the possibilities of painting into startling and unexpected realms.

Rembrandt's Roughness

Nicola Suthor


Hbk | 272pp | 9781588395900 | 14/06/2016 | RRP (inc GST) A$99.99 | NZ$125 Metropolitan Museum of Art

This splendidly illustrated publication features over 90 important paintings from the predominantly Hindu Rajput tradition of Indian painting, and are highlights from the Kronos Collection, one of the finest holdings of Indian art. These remarkable works ‐ most of them published and illustrated here for the first time ‐ were painted between the 16th and 18th centuries for the Indian royal courts in Rajastan and the Punjab Hills. 200 color illustrations.

Divine Pleasures Painting from India's Rajput Courts. The Kronos Collection

Terence McInerney

Pbk | 384pp | 9780892368457 | 1/06/2006 | RRP (inc GST) A$38.99 | NZ$48.99 Getty Publications

An icon (from the Greek word "eikon," "image") is a wooden panel painting of a holy person or scene from Orthodox Christianity, the religion of the Byzantine Empire that is practiced today mainly in Greece and Russia. It was believed that these works acted as intermediaries between worshipers and the holy personages they depicted. Their pictorial language is stylized and primarily symbolic, rather than literal and narrative. Indeed, every attitude, pose, and color depicted in an icon has a precise meaning, and their painters‐‐usu....

Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church

Alfredo Tradigo

Hbk | 96pp | 9781606065198 | 9/05/2017 | RRP (inc GST) A$32.99 | NZ$39.99 Getty Publications

For centuries Italy has fascinated travelers and artists. From the crumbling ruins of ancient Rome to the crystal‐clear light of Venice, artists have found inspiration not only in the cities but also in the countryside and in the deep history and culture. From as early as the 1500s, artists visiting from France, England, the Netherlands, and Germany drew sketches to preserve vivid memories, often creating work of extraordinary atmosphere and beauty in the process. A growing number of tourists in the subsequent centuries fueled a further demand for s....

The Lure of Italy – Artists` Views

Julian Brooks

Pbk | 136pp | 9780300227055 | 7/03/2017 | RRP (inc GST) A$59.99 | NZ$74.99 Dallas Museum of Art

This splendidly illustrated book explores the universal and multifaceted theme of nature as manifested in Western European art of the Middle Ages. Fascinating essays consider the concept in the context of medieval philosophy, theology, and poetry. The masterpieces highlighted here, from the distinguished collection of the Musée de Cluny, span the 12th through the 16th centuries and include an impressive array of objects destined for both religious and secular purposes ‐ from exquisite stained glass and carved capitals to spectacular enameled j....

Art and Nature in the Middle Ages

Nicole Myers

Hbk | 144pp | 9781848222649 | 1/04/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$69.99 | NZ$84.99 Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd

This book is the first full‐length study into the multifarious influence of Renaissance prints on maiolica and bronze. Focusing on designs by major artists such as Andrea Mantegna, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Parmigianino, and Albrecht Dürer, the book tells the story of how printed images were transmitted, transformed, and translated onto ceramics and small bronze reliefs, creating a shared visual canon across artistic media and geographical boundaries.

Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints into Maiolica and Bronze

Jamie Gabbarelli



The twelve silver‐gilt cups known as the Aldobrandini Tazze ‐ magnificent examples of 16th‐century European goldsmithing in size, design, and quality of execution ‐ feature figures and scenes from Roman historian Suetonius’s classic work The Twelve Caesars, all rendered in minute, intricate relief. Dispersed hundreds of years ago, the tazze are reunited here for the first time since the 19th century, each piece newly photographed to highlight the dazzling detail and show the works as they were originally made. The acc....

The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery

Julia Siemon, Ellenor Alcorn, Mary Beard, Michele Bimbenet-Privat, Wolfram Koeppe, Xavier Salomon, Timothy Schroder and Stefanie Walker


This eloquent book makes the important point that artists were fascinated by and extremely skilled at still life significantly before the officially recognized emergence of the subject as an independent genre at the beginning of the 17th century. Exploring the origins of the genre in classical antiquity and the gradual re‐emergence of still life in Renaissance painting, the author presents a visual anthology of finely executed flowers, fruit, food, household objects, and furnishings seen in the background of paintings. Paintings are reproduced in fu....

Still Life before Still Life

David Ekserdjian

Hbk | 400pp | 9780300226744 | 8/05/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$129 | NZ$158 Yale University Press

For patricians in the Republic of Venice, paintings in manuscripts marking their appointment to high office expressed a tension between selfless service and individual ambition. Originally of value solely in confirming an elected officer, these unique documents were transformed through art into enduring monuments promoting state ideals, individual status, and family memory. This book introduces the reader to a long‐hidden world of beautiful and complex images and to tales of personal sacrifice, political maneuvering, and family intrigue. Analysis of....

Venice Illuminated: Power and Painting in Renaissance Manuscripts

Helena Szepe

Hbk | 96pp | 9780892369829 | 13/03/2018 | RRP (inc GST) A$32.99 | NZ$39.99 J. Paul Getty Museum

Images in the Margins is the third in the popular Medieval Imagination series of small, affordable books drawing on manuscript illumination in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library. Each volume focuses on a particular theme and provides an accessible, delightful introduction to the imagination of the medieval world.An astonishing mix of mundane, playful, absurd, and monstrous beings, called marginalia, are found in the borders of English, French, and Italian manuscripts ....

Images in the Margins

Margot McIlwain Nishimura

Hbk | 216pp | 9781857094930 | 16/12/2010 | RRP (inc GST) A$62 | NZ$78 National Gallery London

The National Gallery in London houses one of the richest collections of Western European paintings in the world, ranging from the 13th to the 20th century. In this beautiful book, one hundred of the greatest works from the collection, each by a different artist, are presented in chronological order, and accompanied by a lively, informative text and full‐page color reproductions.

One Hundred Great Paintings

Louise Govier


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