History & Criticism

How does artistic life flourish during revolution and conflict? Ukraine in the early 1900s endured unimaginable political upheaval, yet this became a period of true renaissance in Ukrainian art, literature, theatre and cinema.

In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s presents the ground-breaking art produced in Ukraine in the early 20th century, focusing on the three key cultural centres of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa. Against a complicated socio-political backdrop of collapsing empires, World War I, the revolutions of 1917 with the ensuing Ukrainian War of Independence, and the eventual creation of Soviet Ukraine, several strands of distinctly Ukrainian art emerged.

While émigrés such as Sonia Delaunay and Alexander Archipenko found fame outside their homeland, the followers of Mykhailo Boichuk focused on Byzantine revivalism, and the artists of the Kultur Lige sought to promote the development of contemporary Yiddish culture. The first avant-garde exhibitions in Ukraine featured the radical art of Davyd Burliuk and Alexandra Exter, and the dynamic canvases of the Kyiv-based Cubo-Futurist Oleksandr Bohomazov. In Kharkiv, Vasyl Yermilov championed the industrial art of Constructivism, while Vadym Meller, Anatol Petrytskyi, Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov and Borys Kosarev revolutionized theatre design. The attempt to build a national identity in Ukraine resulted in a polyphony of styles and artistic developments across a full range of media – from oil paintings, sketches and sculpture to collages, cinema posters and theatre designs.

Twelve internationally renowned scholars, including curators from the National Art Museum of Ukraine, bring to life this astonishing period of creativity in Ukraine and all the movements it encompassed.

Read more

This new publication, accompanying a major European touring exhibition, will include works by 40 artists from across the globe, from well-known practitioners such as Carmen Herrera, Etel Adnan, Sandra Blow and Helen Frankenthaler, to lesser-known names from countries such as Australia, China, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, Mozambique, Romania and Venezuela: women who took up the ideas and methodologies of the movement but endowed them with specific cultural and subjective dimensions.

The catalaogue will include essays by Christian Levett, Joan Marter, Agustin Perez Rubio and Elizabeth Smith, as well as full colour illustrations of all the works.

Read more

Read more

Based on the blockbuster 2022 solo show in London, KAWS: New Fiction documents the groundbreaking, multi-layered exhibition that presented the artist’s new and recent works in physical and augmented reality.

A unique collaboration between the acclaimed artist KAWS, the Serpentine Galleries, digital art platform Acute Art, and the online video game phenomenon Fortnite, KAWS: New Fiction bridges the gap between the physical and virtual worlds, showcasing KAWS’s artworks as they’ve never been seen before. This one-of-a-kind book chronicles the iconic KAWS figure as it journeys through viewing the exhibition’s paintings, sculptures, site-specific additional artworks revealed via augmented reality (visible at the show through a dedicated AR app), and the virtual recreation of the physical gallery simultaneously featured in Fortnite. KAWS: New Fiction is a celebration of the unprecedented exhibition, and KAWS’s creative influence, as it was experienced in physical, virtual, and augmented realities.

Read more

Phaidon’s ‘Vitamin’ series has long proved an extraordinarily accurate predictor of tomorrow’s stars. This paperback edition of the latest volume is a cutting-edge and indispensable survey of the very best of contemporary drawing, as chosen by a panel of the world’s leading art experts

Over the past 50 years, drawing has been elevated from a supporting role to a primary medium, ranking alongside painting as a central art form. Since Phaidon’s publication of the first such surveys (Vitamin D in 2005 and D2 in 2013), contemporary artists have continued to explore drawing’s possibilities – from intimate to large-scale works, in a diversity of mark-making processes and materials. Vitamin D3 showcases more than 100 such artists, as nominated by a global panel of more than 70 international art experts.

The more than 70 nominators include such iconic figures as: Iwona Blazwick, Louisa Buck, Mark Coetzee, Thelma Golden, Laura Hoptman, Geeta Kapur, Pablo León de la Barra, Christine Macel, Kate Macfarlane, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Zoe Whitley.

The more than 100 selected artists include: Miriam Cahn, Robert Crumb, Tom Friedman, Tania Kovats, Claudette Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Otobong Nkanga, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Deanna Petherbridge, Christina Quarles, Qiu Zhijie, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Wael Shawky, Emma Talbot, and Johanna Unzueta.

Read more

The first publication dedicated to artists’ zines in North America, a revelatory exploration of an unexamined but thriving aesthetic practice

Copy Machine Manifestos captures the rich history of artists’ zines as never before, placing them in the lineage of the visual arts and exploring their vibrant growth over the past five decades. Fully illustrated with hundreds of zine covers and interiors, alongside work in other media, such as painting, photography, film, video, and performance, the book also features brief biographies for more than 100 zine-makers including Beverly Buchanan, Mark Gonzales, G.B. Jones, Miranda July, Bruce LaBruce, Terence Koh, LTTR, Ari Marcopoulos, Mark Morrisroe, Raymond Pettibon, Brontez Purnell, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Kandis Williams. Accompanying a major exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, this expansive book, bound as a paperback with a separate jacket, focuses on zines from North America, celebrating how artists have harnessed the medium’s essential role in community building and transforming material and conceptual approaches to making art across all media since 1970. 

Read more

A magnificent new biography of the founder of Impressionism

In the course of a long and exceptionally creative life, Claude Monet revolutionized painting and made some of the most iconic images in western art. Misunderstood and mocked at the beginning of his career, he risked everything to pursue his original vision. Although close to starvation when he invented impressionism on the banks of the Seine in the 1860s-70s, in the following decades he emerged as the powerful leader of the new painting in Paris at one of its most exciting cultural moments. His symphonic series Haystacks, Poplars, and Rouen Cathedral brought wealth and renown. Then he withdrew to paint only the pond in his garden. The late Water Lilies, ignored during his lifetime, are now celebrated as pioneers of twentieth century modernism.

Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger’s enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet’s turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature, and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring devastating bereavements, he pushed the frontier of painting inward, to evoke memory and the passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms – the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was his closest friend. Rich intellectual currents connected him to writers from Zola to Proust; affection and rivalry to Renoir, Pissarro and Manet.

Monet said he was driven ‘wild with the need to put down what I experience’. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.

Read more

One of today’s leading conceptual artists, Los Angeles-based Walead Beshty (b. 1976, London) works across photography, sculpture and words. Beshty’s art is expansive and best described as an ongoing conversation, to which this monograph is his next articulation. Through a deconstructing lens, Walead Beshty explores every exhibition and project the artist has presented in collaboration with Thomas Dane Gallery in London, Turin and Naples. The monograph offers a guide to some of the artist’s key bodies of work.

Uncovering processes is central to Beshty’s art. He deliberately incorporated marks made by oxidation and human touch into his FedEx copper works and Copper Surrogate works, as well as photographing the many individuals involved in his exhibitions in Industrial Portraits. The work that has gone into this substantial new monograph, which features contributions from publisher Francis Atterbury, book designer Billie Temple and Thomas Dane partner Francois Chantala, is, quite literally, laid bare. Also presented is an insightful essay by leading professor of Juridical Sociology at Univer¬sity of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Carlo De Rita.

Adopting a semiotic approach to books as ‘not just a thing you hold, but something held in common’, Walead Beshty embraces the archetypal format, tropes and conventions of a traditional – if unorthodox – book, employing printing and publishing practices seldom seen in contemporary bookmaking. It reflects on what an artist’s monograph might represent as it explores the contingencies that allow art to function. Walead Beshty is itself another carefully curated exhibition of his work.

Read more

This book explores the variety of ways in which contemporary artists from around the world have come to approach drawing as the primary, sometimes the sole, element of their practice, and one which is autonomous: an end in itself rather than a means to an end in another, more substantial medium. In an era of advanced technologies where image production has accelerated – potentially beyond the capacity of human attention – what values can be attributed to the slow, deliberate process of drawing by hand?

The artworks featured in this volume are not confined to traditional tools – one can also draw on a computer, tablet or smartphone, and examples of digital drawing are incorporated into the narrative not as a separate category but as one medium among many. Grouped thematically by specific approaches, including abstraction and figuration, nature and artifice, social observation and critique, with essays and feature spreads for each section, this selection of international artists of diverse backgrounds and experience includes not only recognizable names such as Michael Armitage, Camille Henrot, Robert Longo, Amy Sillman and Kara Walker, but also a host of emerging talents.

Beautifully presented in a visually appealing and tactile format with the feel of an artist’s portfolio, this is an inspiring overview of the best drawing practice today.

Read more

• Records the first UK exhibition to include works from Abramović’s entire career
• Accompanying catalogue for the Marina Abramović exhibition at the Royal Academy from 23 September – 1 January 2024
• An augmented reality app for iOS and Android enables readers to watch films of Abramović’s original performances while reading the book

Over the past half century, Marina Abramović has earned worldwide acclaim as a pioneer of performance art. This handsome new book records the first UK exhibition to include works from her entire career. Re-performances of some of her best-known and most radical pieces appear alongside new and recent work. An augmented-reality app for iOS and Android enables readers to watch films of Abramović’s original performances while reading the book.

An essential purchase for all followers of Abramović’s extraordinary 55-year career, this important publication brings expert voices into the debate that her groundbreaking art engenders. How far should an artist push herself in pursuit of her work? What role does the audience play in creating a performance? How can performance art outlive the moment in which it takes place?

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

• The first book (and exhibition) ever to present a focused study on Rubens’ depictions of women, with an exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery that will run from October 2023 to January 2024
• This will challenge the popular assumption that Rubens only painted one type of woman
• Instead, it will show the varied and essential role that women played in the artist’s life and work
• A chance for readers to get to know the real man behind some of his most famous works – we meet not only Rubens the artist, but Rubens the father, husband, lover, diplomat, friend
• Includes the latest scholarly developments in subjects such as the identities of Rubens’ sitters, 17th century artistic theory and practice, and Rubens’ treatment of the human body
• Featuring beautiful illustrations of artworks from international and private collections, many of which will be appearing in the UK for the first time in 2023
• Provides a complete catalogue for works in this groundbreaking accompanying exhibition, as well as contextual essays that raise current debates around sexuality, power and feminism

The art of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) is synonymous with the female nude, with the term ‘Rubenesque’ first coined in the 19th century to describe a voluptuous female body. Yet remarkably, there has never been a focused study of Rubens’ depictions of women, making this book, and the exhibition that it will accompany, a first.

Bringing together a diverse range of paintings and drawings from throughout the artist’s career and from a range of international lenders, the exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery (October 2023 – January 2024) will challenge the popular assumption that Rubens only painted one type of woman. Instead, it will present a more nuanced view of the varied and essential role that women played in the artist’s life and work, uniting and contributing to recent scholarly developments in subjects such as the identities of Rubens’ sitters, 17th century artistic theory and practice, and Rubens’ treatment of the human body.

Rubens evidently enjoyed painting the female figure, especially in its sensual and unclothed form. But his women are never mere bodies trapped by the male gaze, on the contrary; they are proud and complex heroines, full of character and gravitas. No other male artist has created such potent images of female power, assurance, determination, commitment, and beauty. Providing a catalogue for the works in the exhibition and featuring three introductory essays that contextualise Rubens’ work, this publication will both contribute to the existing corpus of scholarly literature on Rubens and introduce his masterpieces to new audiences, discussing them in the context of current debates around sexuality, power and feminism.

Read more

Developments in contemporary art have followed no straightforward line of progress or sequence of movements. Recognizing this, Tony Godfrey creates a narrative from a series of often dramatic creative conflicts and arguments around what art is or should be. From object versus sculpture and painting versus conceptual to local versus global, gallery versus wider world, The Story of Contemporary Art traces a history in terms of drastic changes in social and political life over the last sixty years.

How do we experience being human in a world that seems to change so quickly? In exploring art’s relationship to this question, Godfrey asserts that multiple voices must be heard: critics, theorists, curators and collectors, but also audiences and artists themselves. Key to the book is the story of how a perception that art was made almost exclusively by white men from North America and Western Europe has been radically overturned. Compelling and intelligent, but never academic, this book tells us how.

Read more

Banksy is the world’s most discussed artist of recent decades, and this seminal collection features hundreds of works including Girl with Balloon, Pulp Fiction, Love Is in the Air, Barcode, and Monkey Queen. It also includes scores of paintings, serigraphs, stencils, and installation objects as well as a selection of memorabilia―many of which have never been published previously. Created with the cooperation of Pest Control, the group that manages all things Banksy, this is as official and authorized as any Banksy publication could be.
 
Banksy is the world’s greatest practitioner of street art. His work has always been political, involving pointed critiques of inequality, injustice, consumerism, and the establishment, yet no one knows his identity. He is an exemplary case of fame and notoriety built upon absence and anonymity. His relationship with the art market is also complex: marked by mocking hostility while being one of the most marketable and most collected contemporary artists.

Read more

• Including new pieces and illuminating texts by Perry himself
• 76 works from the exhibition form the centrepiece of this vibrant and insightful retrospective of his life and work
• Published to accompany the Grayson Perry: Smash Hits exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, July to November 2023

Grayson Perry is one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary artists and cultural figures. This book, which includes first sight of new and previously unpublished works, is published to accompany the largest-ever retrospective of Perry’s art. It offers a vibrant insight into his life and work, from his youth in rural Essex to sell-out stage shows at the Royal Albert Hall.

Grayson Perry vividly reflects on his art, life and career, remembering the sources of inspiration and influences along the way. Victoria Coren Mitchell’s thought-provoking contribution considers the role of humour in Perry’s art, highlighting the often-underestimated effort involved in being at once a serious artist and a lovable character. Patrick Elliott provides an illuminating biographical essay of the artist. The reader is also given a fascinating glimpse into the technique and process behind Perry’s prints, pots and tapestries.

Showcasing 75 exhibited works, the book covers the full range and breadth of his astonishing career.

Read more

• Some 70 masterworks on paper by leading Impressionists and Post-Impressionists
• Published to accompany an exhibition at the Royal Academy from 25 November 2023 to 10 March 2024

Best known for their superlative oils on canvas, Degas, Cézanne, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and numerous other Impressionists and Post-Impressionists also regularly used paper as a support for works in watercolour, gouache, pencil, tempera and that most elusive of media, pastel. Their practice transformed the status of these works from preparatory studies, to be left in the studio and not shown in public, to works of art in their own right.

With insightful texts by acknowledged experts in the field, this sumptuous book brings together some 70 masterworks on paper by leading Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. Their bold innovations challenged traditional attitudes, radically transformed the future direction of art and ultimately paved the way for later movements such as Abstract Expressionism.

Read more

Others are intended to be the highest expressions of their art, ambitious allegorical or decorative compositions that like the frescoes of the

Renaissance would speak through the ages to later generations. The individuals and committees who commissioned them similarly believed they would both represent the best that Britain had to offer and mark the high accomplishment of contemporary society, elevating the public and private spaces they occupied and inspiring moral purpose.This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘British Murals & Decorative Painting 1910-1970’ which took place at the Fine Art Society – London (13 February – 9 March 2013) in association with Liss Llewellyn Fine Art. It coincided with the Sansom & Co publication British Murals & Decorative Painting 1920-1960.

Read more