• Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy

    04
    THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

    ‘A burst of springtime joy’ Daily Telegraph

    ‘A springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light’ The Times

    ‘Lavishly illustrated’ Guardian

    David Hockney reflects upon life and art as he experiences lockdown in rural Normandy

    On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquility for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art.

    Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art’s capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others.

    We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see… but about how to live.

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    £12.20£16.10
  • Pop Art

    03

    Peaking in the 1960s, Pop Art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, the role of the artist, and of what constituted an artwork.

    Focusing on issues of materialism, celebrity, and media, Pop Art drew on mass-market sources, from advertising imagery to comic books, from Hollywood’s most famous faces to the packaging of consumer products, the latter epitomized by Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans. As well as challenging the establishment with the elevation of such popular, banal, and kitschy images, Pop Art also deployed methods of mass-production, reducing the role of the individual artist with mechanized techniques such as screen printing.

    With featured artists including Andy Warhol, Allen Jones, Ed Ruscha, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein, this book introduces the full reach and influence of a defining modernist movement.

    About the series

    Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art History series features:

    approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions

    a detailed, illustrated introduction

    a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

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    £11.40£14.30

    Pop Art

    £11.40£14.30
  • Visions of the Occult: An Untold Story of Art & Magic

    02
    The first major survey of the occult collection of artworks, letters, objects and ephemera in the Tate Archive. Revealing over 150 unseen esoteric and mystical pieces, never before seen by the public and giving a new understanding to the artists in the Tate collection and the history and practice of the occult. The first major survey of the occult collection of artworks, letters, objects and ephemera in the Tate Archive. Revealing over 150 unseen esoteric and mystical pieces, never before seen by the public and giving a new understanding to the artists in the Tate collection and the history and practice of the occult. Offers in-depth exploration of the occult and it’s relationship to art and culture including witchcraft, alchemy, secret societies, folklore and pagan rituals, demonology, spells and magic, para-sciences, astrology and tarot. This lavishly illustrated magical volume acts a potent talisman connecting the two worlds of Tate – the seen public collection and the unseen secrets lurking in the archive. The pages of this book explore the hidden artworks and ephemera left behind by artists for the first time idea and will shed new light on our understanding of the art historical canon. Expect to find the unexpected with artists such as Ithell Colquhoun, John Nash, Barbara Hepworth, David Mayor, Max Armfield, Cecil Collins, Jill and Bruce Lacey, Francis Bacon, Alan Davie, Joe Tilson, Henry Moore, William Blake, Leonora Carrington and Hamish Fulton. For the first time, the clandestine, magical works of the Tate archive are revealed with archivist Victoria Jenkins acting as the depository of it’s secrets. This book explores the symbiotic relationship between art and the occult and how both can act as a form of resistance to challenging environments. This book will change perceptions forever and illuminate the surprising breadth and extraordinary ways in which artists interpret not just the physical world around them but also the supernatural, and in doing so make the unseen, seen. If you think you know Tate artists, it’s time to think again.

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    £19.30£23.80
  • Vitamin C+: Collage in Contemporary Art

    02

    As seen in Forbes, Colossal, and The Art Newspaper

    Over 100 global artists working with collage, as chosen by a team of art experts – an indispensable who’s who of the most exciting and innovative names working in the medium

    Collage is an artistic language comprising found images, fragmentary forms, and unexpected juxtapositions. While it first gained status as high art in the early twentieth century, the past decade has seen a fresh explosion of artists using this dynamic and experimental approach to image making.

    Organised in an A-Z sequence by artist, the book features both well-known collagists including Njideka Akunyili Crosby; Ellen Gallagher; Peter Kennard; Linder, Christian Marclay; Wangechi Mutu; Deborah Roberts; Martha Rosler; and Mickalene Thomas, and a plethora of lesser-known names deserving of greater attention. Taking a broad definition – from analog cut-and-paste compositions and photomontages to digital composed imagery and animations – Vitamin C+ showcases 108 living artists who employ collage as a central part of their visual-art practice, as selected by 69 leading experts, including museum directors, curators, critics, and collectors. The survey also features an engaging and informative introduction by Yuval Etgar, an internationally renowned expert in the area.

    The 69 expert nominators include: Cecilia Alemani; Iwona Blazwick; David Campany; Raphael Chikukwa; Patrick Elliott; Max Hollein; Hettie Judah; Christine Macel; Roxana Marcoci; Duro Olowu; Scott Rothkopf; Russell Tovey; Zoe Whitley; and Heidi Zuckerman.

    Artists include: Njideka Akunyili Crosby; Kader Attia; Adam Broomberg; Sara Cwynar; Moyna Flannigan; Ellen Gallagher; Lauren Halsey; Lyle Ashton Harris; Thomas Hirschhorn; Peter Kennard; Justine Kurland; Linder; Christian Marclay; Wangechi Mutu; Frida Orupabo; Heather Philipson; Tabita Rezaire; Deborah Roberts; Martha Rosler; Dee Shapiro; Eva Stenram; John Stezaker; Mickalene Thomas; Kara Walker; and Billie Zangewa.

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    £36.90£47.50
  • African Art Now: Fifty pioneers defining African art for the twenty-first century

    01

    Over the past two decades contemporary African art has taken its rightful place on the world stage. Today, African artists work outside the confines of limiting categories and outdated perceptions; they produce art that is as much a reflection of Africa’s tumultuous past as it is a vision of its boundless future.

    Far-reaching in its scope, African Art Now celebrates the diversity and dynamism of the contemporary African art scene across the continent today.

    Featuring the work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Michael Armitage, Amoako Boafo, Cassi Namoda, Cinga Samson, Zina Saro-Wiwa and many more.

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    £3.80
  • Sketching from the Imagination: Dark Arts

    08

    Sketching and drawing are fundamental to creating great art; the simple doodle is often where the artist first brings their ideas and concepts to life. In Sketching from the Imagination: Dark Arts, we have gathered together fifty talented traditional and digital artists to showcase work from their sketchbooks, share inspiration, and give insight into how they create imaginative and dark illustrations. Featuring a range of artwork and artists from many fields, from concept design and animation to illustration and comic art, Sketching from the Imagination: Dark Arts is a collection of beautifully macabre sketches with plenty of useful tips and creative insights—an invaluable resource that will inspire artists of all abilities.

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    £17.90£19.00
  • Neurophototherapy: Playfully Unmasking with Photography and Collage

    Neurophototherapy

    ‘A love letter to late discovery!’

    This joyful and life-enhancing creative method offers a gentle invitation to ‘reconnect with the sparky kid who didn’t mask…’. Neurophototherapy is for neurodivergent people and anyone seeking to explore their true identity in new and creative ways with readily available materials. This method is suitable for artists and creative beginners alike.

    Boué has identified a need for creative self-support strategies for people who discover their neurodivergent identities as adults. It is also a method that can be easily adopted by others.

    This gorgeously illustrated publication includes explanatory texts, colour photographs, collage works and contextual essays by renowned author and poet, Dr. Joanne Limburg and Professor of Performance at the University of Kent School of Arts, Prof. Nicola Shaughnessy.

    ND people, families, allies, arts and arts and health organisations, art lovers, photographers, collagists, therapists, community group leaders and academics alike will find this original, informative, and upbeat publication of interest and relevance.

    Quotes

    ‘So that’s Neurophototherapy: therapeutic, empowering and – above all – FUN.’ Dr. Joanne Limburg

    ‘Neurophototherapy is the most emotionally immersive and satisfying thing I’ve ever done. I now know I need to put creativity at the heart of my well-being.’ Chloe Lawson

    ‘It’s a complicated process to unmask and there’s no doubt that the creative tools contained in Neurophototherapy enable this to happen iteratively, flexibly and intuitively.’ Prof. Nicola Shaughnessy

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    £17.10
  • Disrupted Realism: Paintings for a Distracted World

    08
    Disrupted Realism is the first book to survey the works of contemporary painters who are challenging and reshaping the tradition of Realism. Helping art lovers, collectors, and artists approach and understand this compelling new phenomenon, it includes the works of 38 artists whose paintings respond to the subjectivity and disruptions of modern experience. Widely published author and blogger John Seed, who believes that we are “”the most distracted society in the history of the world,”” has selected artists he sees as visionaries in this developing movement. The artists’ impulses toward disruption are as individual as the artists themselves, but all share the need to include perception and emotion in their artistic process. Six sections lay out and analyze common themes: “”Toward Abstraction,”” “”Disrupted Bodies,”” “”Emotions and Identities,”” “”Myths and Visions,”” “”Patterns, Planes, and Formations,”” and “”Between Painting and Photography.”” Interviews with each artist offer additional insight into some of the most incisive and relevant painting being created today.

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    £34.60£43.70
  • See What You’re Missing: 31 Ways Artists Notice the World – and How You Can Too

    01

    The internationally bestselling author on how art can help us appreciate life in all its strange and exhilarating beauty

    Artists have learnt to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on autopilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvellous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

    In his typically engaging style, Will Gompertz takes us into the minds of artists – from emerging stars to old masters – to show us how to look at and experience the world with their heightened powers of perception.

    In See What You’re Missing we learn, for example, how Rembrandt can help us see ourselves, how David Hockney helps us to see nature, and how Frida Kahlo can help us see through pain. Each artist has their own unique way of looking, which when applied to our own lives stimulates our senses so we might know the intoxicating feeling of being truly alive.

    ‘Art can amaze us into changing our minds. This remarkable book teaches us how’ Es Devlin

    ‘Highly engaging and thought-provoking’ Philip Hook, author of Breakfast at Sotheby’s

    ‘Lucid and revealing’ Michael Prodger, The Times

    ‘Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had’ Guardian

    Read more

    £15.20£19.00
  • Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s

    02
    Worlds Beyond Time is the definitive visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and imagined industrial machinery of 1970s paperback sci-fi art and the artists who created these extraordinary images.
     
    In the 1970s, mass-produced, cheaply printed science-fiction novels were thriving. The paper was rough, the titles outrageous, and the cover art astounding. Over the course of the decade, a stable of talented painters, comic-book artists, and designers produced thousands of the most eye-catching book covers to ever grace bookstore shelves (or spinner racks). Curiously, the pieces commissioned for these covers often had very little to do with the contents of the books they were selling, but by leaning heavily on psychedelic imagery, far-out landscapes, and trippy surrealism, the art was able to satisfy the same space race–fueled appetite for the big ideas and brave new worlds that sci-fi writers were boldly pushing forward.
     
    In Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s, Adam Rowe―who has been curating, championing, and resurrecting the best and most obscure art that 1970s sci-fi has to offer on his blog 70s Sci-Fi Art―introduces readers to the biggest names in the genre, including Chris Foss, Peter Elson, Tim White, Jack Gaughan, and Virgil Finlay, as well as their influences. With deep dives into the subject matter that commonly appeared on these covers―spaceships, alien landscapes, fantasy realms, cryptozoology, and heavy machinery―this book is a loving tribute to a unique and robust art form whose legacy lives on both in nostalgic appreciation as well as the retro-chic design of mainstream sci-fi films such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Alien: Covenant, and Thor: Ragnarok.
     
    Includes Color Illustrations

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    £36.90
  • Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting

    02
    An authoritative and comprehensive survey of the life and work of the visionary and influential painter Philip Guston.

    Driven and consumed by art, Philip Guston painted and drew compulsively. This book takes the reader from his early social realist murals and easel paintings of the 1930s and 1940s, to the Abstract Expressionist works of the 1950s and early 1960s, and finally to the powerful new language of figurative painting, which he developed in the late 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on more than thirty years of his own research, the critic and curator, Robert Storr, maps Guston’s entire career in one definitive volume, providing a substantial, accessible and revealing analysis of his work.

    With more than 850 images, the book illustrates Guston’s key works and includes many unpublished paintings and drawings. An extensive chronology, illustrated with photographs, letters, articles, publications and other ephemera drawn from the artist’s archives and other sources, contextualizes Guston’s life and provides in-depth coverage of his life at home, his work in the studio, his relationship with fellow artists and his many exhibitions.

    Guston was able to speak about art with unrivalled passion and fluency. In celebration of this, the book features Guston’s own thoughts on his drawings and his great heroes of the Italian Renaissance.

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    £48.60£57.00
  • Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines

    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. 

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    £28.30£33.20
  • Pollock

    05

    The rebel hero of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) careened through his life like a firework across the American art landscape. Channeling ideas from sources as diverse as Picasso and Mexican surrealism, he rejected convention to develop his own way of seeing, interpreting, and expressing.

    Pollock’s most famous works are his drip paintings, where he dripped and poured household enamel paint over the canvas with a variety of instruments, from sticks to syringes, hardened brushes to broken bits of glass. The splattered results pulsate with energy, replacing the refinement of easel and brush with something altogether more immediate, vivid, and physical. To evade the viewer’s search for figurative elements in his paintings, Pollock abandoned titles and identified each work with a neutral number only.

    Notoriously reclusive and volatile, struggling with alcoholism, married to fellow Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner, and killed in a car crash aged just 44, Pollock is as much a compelling celebrity icon as an artistic pioneer. This essential artist introduction explores both his work and his fame to shed light on masterpieces of the modernist story, and the making of a cultural icon.

    About the series

    Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:

    a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance

    a concise biography

    approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

    Read more

    £12.50

    Pollock

    £12.50
  • Mark Hearld’s Work Book

    08
    The new compact hardback edition of the bestselling Mark Hearld’s Work Book, the first collection of the artist’s beguiling art. Mark Hearld finds his inspiration in the flora and fauna of the British countryside: a blue-eyed jay perched on an oak branch; two hares enjoying the spoils of an allotment; a mute swan standing at the frozen water’s edge; and a sleek red fox prowling the fields. Hearld admires such twentieth-century artists as Edward Bawden, John Piper, Eric Ravilious and Enid Marx, and, like them, he chooses to work in a range of media – paint, print, collage, textiles and ceramics. The works are grouped into nature-related themes introduced by Hearld, who narrates the story behind some of his creations and discusses his influences. He explains his particular love of collage, which he favours for its graphic quality and potential for strong composition. Art historian Simon Martin contributes an essay on Hearld’s place in the English popular-art tradition, and also meets Hearld in his museum-like home to explore the artist’s passion for collecting objects, his working methods and his startling ability to view the wonders of the natural world as if through a child’s eyes.

    Read more

    £19.90£23.70
  • Peter Doig (Rizzoli Classics): -compact edition-

    05
    In every generation of artists, there are a few who propose a new set of ques- tions and alter the way we understand art. Peter Doig is such an artist. This handsome monograph considers the painter’s entire career, beginning with the early work produced in the 1990s when Doig’s enigmatic but wholly new conception of painting was first introduced to audiences. Doig was born to Scottish parents, spent several years as a child in Trinidad, later settling in Canada for his formative early teen years. He found his voice while at art school in London, albeit one that was out of step with the work of the time (much of it installation-based and dripping with neo-conceptualist leanings). He had developed a small following of fellow artists and critics when the rest of the art world caught up and took notice. In 2002, he left London for Trinidad, where he has remained. The small Caribbean island-with its own distinctive light and landscape-has deeply influenced his recent work. This volume was designed in close collaboration with the artist, with a cover and various interior elements created especially by the artist.

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    £41.70£47.50
  • Salvador Dali. The Paintings (Bibliotheca Universalis)

    08
    The seminal surrealist

    Exploring Dalí’s grandiose and grotesque oeuvre

    Picasso called Dalí “an outboard motor that s always running.” Dalí thought himself a genius with a right to indulge in whatever lunacy popped into his head. Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) was one of the century s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting, approaching the subconscious with extraordinary sensitivity and imagination.

    This publication presents the entire painted oeuvre of Salvador Dalí. After many years of research, Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret finally located all the paintings of this highly prolific artist. Many of the works had been inaccessible for years in fact so many that almost half the illustrations in this book had rarely been seen.

    Read more

    £15.20£19.00
  • Subway Art: (reduced format edition) (Street Graphics / Street Art)

    08
    In 1984, photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant captured the imagination of a generation with Subway Art, a groundbreaking book documenting the work of graffiti writers who illegally painted subway cars in New York City. The 2009 edition of the book is now available in a new, slightly reduced format. Henry Chalfant’s images of the trains retain their impact, while Martha Cooper’s narrative pictures tell the story. In the introductions, the authors recall how they gained entry to the New York graffiti community in the 1970s and 1980s and describe the techniques that they used to photograph it. Afterwords report how the lives of the original subway artists have unfolded, and chronicle the end of the subway graffiti scene in the late 1980s and its unexpected rebirth as a global art movement. This is an essential book for all fans of graffiti, stunning photography and 1980s-cool.

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    £13.70£17.10
  • Haring

    04

    One of the key figures in the New York art world of the 1980s, Keith Haring (1958–1990) created a signature style that blended street art, graffiti, a Pop sensibility, and cartoon elements to unique, memorable effect. With thick black outlines, bright colors, and kinetic figures, his public (and occasionally illegal) interventions, sculptures, and works on canvas and paper have become instantly recognizable icons of 20th-century visual culture.

    From his first chalk drawings in the New York City subway stations, to his renowned “Radiant Baby” symbol, and his commissions for Swatch Watch and Absolut Vodka, Haring’s work was both emblematic of the manic work ethic of 1980s New York, yet distinctive for its social awareness. Belying their bright, playful aesthetics, his pieces often tackled intensely controversial socio-political issues, including racism, capitalism, religious fundamentalism, and the increasing impact of AIDS on New York’s gay community, the latter foreshadowing his own death from the disease in 1990.

    In this vivid introduction to Haring’s work, we explore the dynamic life and innovative spirit of this singular artist, who spent little more than a decade in the spotlight, but through the accessibility of his visual vocabulary and the strength of his political commitment became one of the most significant artists to emerge from New York’s vibrant, downtown community.

    About the series

    Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:

    a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance

    a concise biography

    approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

    Read more

    £11.40£14.30

    Haring

    £11.40£14.30
  • Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood

    08

    ‘I have never read such a stimulating short guide to art’ Lynn Barber, Sunday Times

    Now Grayson Perry is a fully paid-up member of the art establishment, he wants to show that any of us can appreciate art (after all, there is a reason he’s called this book Playing to the Gallery and not ‘Sucking up to an Academic Elite’). Based on his hugely popular BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures and full of pictures, this funny, personal journey through the art world answers the basic questions that might occur to us in an art gallery but seem too embarrassing to ask.

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    £8.60£9.50
  • Women of Abstract Expressionism (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities/Princeton University Press Lec)

    07
    The celebrated survey of female Abstract Expressionist artists revealing the richness and lasting influence of their work

    The artists Jay DeFeo, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and many other women played major roles in the development of Abstract Expressionism, which flourished in New York and San Francisco in the 1940s and 1950s and has been recognized as the first fully American modern art movement. Though the contributions of these women were central to American art of the twentieth century, their work has not received the same critical attention as that of their male counterparts.
     
    Women of Abstract Expressionism is a long-overdue survey. Lavishly illustrated with full-color plates emphasizing the expressive freedom of direct gesture and process at the core of the movement, this book features biographies of more than forty artists, offering insight into their lives and work. Essays by noted scholars explore the techniques, concerns, and legacies of women in Abstract Expressionism, shedding light on their unique experiences. This groundbreaking book reveals the richness of the careers of these important artists and offers keen new reflections on their work and the movement as a whole.

    Published in association with the Denver Art Museum

    Exhibition Schedule:

    Mint Museum, Charlotte, N.C. 
    (10/22/16–01/22/17)

    Palm Springs Art Museum
    (02/18/17–05/28/17)

    Read more

    £47.50
  • Marina Abramović: Nomadic Journey and Spirit of Places

    01

    Never before published, this self-curated, intensely personal collection of travel notes and sketches by the world’s most revered performance artist offers readers a kind of iconography of Abramović’s daring and utterly original body of work.

    An artist’s notebooks are arguably the most authentic means of understanding her process, techniques, and impulses. And, for a performance artist, a rare, permanent record of how she develops her craft. Compiled over the course of four decades on stationery from various hotels, and other temporary residences, this collection of Marina Abramović’s original drawings, collages, poetry, writings, cut-outs, photographs, and doodles offers glimpses of a brilliant mind in constant motion. Beautifully produced and packaged, it takes readers on a journey through Abramović’s thoughts―and traces the evolution of the most fruitful phase of her career.

    “I believe we humans need to keep moving forward, and my own life was purely nomadic,” Abramović writes of her travel diaries. “My home was everywhere I went because my home was my own body.” With the archival material elegantly reproduced in the original size on high-quality paper, this collection offers Abramović’s enormous fanbase unprecedented access to her creative process.

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    £29.30£38.00
  • George Little: The Ugly Lovely Landscape

    No artist has been more committed to recording and interpreting such environments than George Little. Born in the east end of Swansea in 1927 he grew up next to the abandoned copper works, slag heaps and still-busy docks of Dylan Thomas’s ‘ugly, lovely town’.

    Read more

    £16.70£19.00
  • Grayson Perry

    08
    In this major monograph on Grayson Perry, now updated and expanded, writer and art historian Jacky Klein explores the artist’s work through a discussion of his major themes and subjects. Klein’s text is complemented by intimate and perceptive commentaries by Perry on individual pieces, giving unique access to his imaginative world and creative processes. This third edition not only has updates throughout, but also includes two new chapters, on the ‘House for Essex’, designed and built in 2015 with Living Architecture (a UK not-for-profit holiday rental company founded by philosopher and writer Alain de Botton, which aims to promote, educate and enhance appreciation of modern architecture), and on ‘Identity Politics’, covering new work made since the previous edition of this book was published in 2013.

    Read more

    £23.70£28.50

    Grayson Perry

    £23.70£28.50
  • Rave Art: Flyers, invitations and membership cards

    08

    In the mid- to late 1980s, rave culture developed. It influenced music, design, art, drugs, fashion, language and even the law. Originally emerging in the USA, it was refined in the UK by people who wanted to dance, party and express themselves in terms of art and music. It started in in small, sweaty clubs but such was the popularity that soon enormous Raves, with tens of thousands of people, were common.

    ‘House’ music and illegal drug ecstasy were the driving forces behind what turned into a global phenomenon. Events that started as secretive nights in underground clubs, with word-of-mouth advertising grew from one-off take-overs of unusual venues into huge open land-based events. Pager and telephonic communication became the medium of message-passing, and flyers were key to it all: informing the right people about the right place at the right time. Chelsea Berlin was there from the beginning, attending many of the now legendary events, from Club Shoom to Energy and beyond.

    In Rave Art, the whole exciting movement is documented through the flyers that were handed out freely (often privately) to inform partygoers of the next venue. Flyer design became an artform, and this book contains hundreds of the most significant and rare examples from Chelsea’s huge collection.

    Together with personal reminiscences and quotes from famous, infamous and not-so-famous attendees, Rave Art paints a vivid picture of what is probably the last significant youth culture movement of modern times.

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    £13.00£16.10
  • Banksy You Are an Acceptable Level of Threat and if You Were Not You Would Know About It

    08
    New expanded 248pp 2019 Edition.
    The single best collection of photography of Banksy’s street work that has ever been assembled for print. If that isn’t enough there are some words too. You Are An Acceptable Level of Threat covers his entire street art career, spanning the late ’90s right up to the ‘Seasons Greetings’ Christmas 2018 piece in Port Talbot, Wales. This new edition includes his self-destructing ‘Love is in the Bin’ intervention, which according to Sotheby’s is “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.” The groundbreaking ‘Dismaland’ show, his Paris ’68 revisited works, The Walled Off Hotel, Brexit, Cans Festival, Brookyln and Basquiat, as well as new works from Gaza and New York. Also featuring the controversial ‘Cheltenham Spies’ as well as ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, ‘Art Buff’ and the spectacular ‘Mobile Lovers’ which appeared outside Bristol Boys Boxing Club.
    248 pages featuring his greatest works of art in context.

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    £23.50£28.50
  • Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

    08

    Now in paperback, the #1 New York Times bestselling chronicle of the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty, from CNN anchor and journalist Anderson Cooper and historian and novelist Katherine Howe.

    One of the Washington Post’s Notable Works of Nonfiction

    When eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one could have imagined that one day he would, through ruthlessness, cunning, and a pathological desire for money, build two empires—one in shipping and another in railroads—that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore,” subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of The Breakers—the seventy-room summer estate in Newport, Rhode Island, that Cornelius’s grandson and namesake had built—the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all.

    Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Cooper and Howe breathe life into the ancestors who built the family’s empire, basked in the Commodore’s wealth, hosted lavish galas, and became synonymous with unfettered American capitalism and high society. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue, from the ornate summer palaces of Newport to the courts of Europe, and all the way to modern-day New York, Cooper and Howe wryly recount the triumphs and tragedies of an American dynasty unlike any other.

    Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.

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    £11.40£12.30
  • Rothko

    08

    Resisting interpretation or classification, Mark Rothko (1903–1970) was a prominent advocate for the artist’s consummate freedom of expression. Although identified as a key protagonist of the Abstract Expressionist movement, first formed in New York City, Rothko rejected the label and insisted instead on “a consummated experience between picture and onlooker.” Following a repertoire of figurative works, Rothko developed his now iconic canvases of bold color blocks in red, yellow, ochre, maroon, black, or green. With these shimmering, pulsating color masses, Rothko stressed that he had not removed the human figure but rather put symbols or shapes in its place. These intense color forms contained all the tragedy of the human condition. At the same time, Rothko explicitly empowered the viewer in the expressive potential of his work. He believed “A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer.” From his early development through to his most famous color fields, this book introduces the intellect and influence of Rothko’s dramatic, intimate, and revolutionary work.

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    £11.40£14.30

    Rothko

    £11.40£14.30
  • Andrew Cranston – Never a Joiner

    Andrew Cranston (b.1969, Hawick, Scotland; lives and works in Glasgow) is a painter-storyteller, a way of working that is enhanced by his often painting on the linen-bound covers of old books. His stories coalesce in the process of making – the paintings emerging gradually through the manipulation of his materials: layering, lacquering, bleaching, collaging and constantly re-working his way into images that seem to shift backwards and forwards in time. He once described a work as ‘a painting that came out of my brush one day’, a statement that sums up his approach. They are resolutely contemporary in spirit and yet connected by a strong thread to painters of the past, especially perhaps to the intimism of Vuillard and Bonnard, or to Matisse or Munch. These are narrative paintings, drawn from the artist’s memory and observations of life and liberally sprinkled with references to cinema, literature and art history.

    This publication presents a selection of the book cover paintings for which Cranston has become so well known in recent years. The cover image is a detail of Cat and cheeseboard (2018) in which a cat sits on the upholstered arm of a sofa surveying what the artist describes as ‘a selection of bries and camemberts, as mousetraps’. Other animals pop up from time to time – a horse, some fish, a leopard; the skeleton of an elk. There are still lifes with fruit, flowers and/or pottery, and lots of landscapes, from the bleak to the fantastical. There are peopled and unpeopled interiors, portraits of family members and celebrities (occasionally curious hybrids thereof), and childhood memories from school classrooms and classical music-filled assemblies to holidays in Switzerland and visits to granny’s flat. And there are quite a few watering cans too.

    Each featured painting is accompanied by a text based on notes made by the artist before, during or after making a work. Mostly private thoughts, memories and anecdotes, these fragments jotted down on scraps of paper or tapped into his mobile phone were never intended to be published, but the resulting texts offer personal observations and reflections that Cranston considers ‘something like album sleeve notes where a musical artist might give some background to each song’. The texts are at times amusing, at others melancholic and moving, offering illuminating insights into the mind and life of the artist and the subjects, references and influences that feed into his painting practice. There are notes about technique and colour, about family and friends, about particular places at certain moments in time. For Cranston, writing has become ‘another way of engaging with painting and of activating the interesting afterlife that a work can have when it leaves the studio and goes out into the world.’

    Andrew Cranston – Never a Joiner has been produced by Ingleby, Edinburgh, and co-published with Anomie Publishing, London. It has been published to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at Ingleby, Edinburgh, and launched as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2023.

    Andrew Cranston was born in Hawick in the Scottish Borders in 1969 and currently lives and works in Glasgow. He studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen and at the Royal College of Art in London. Cranston has exhibited widely in the UK and USA and his work is housed in many museums and institutions across the world.

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    £27.50£33.30
  • Remedios Varo: Science Fictions

    An exploration of the captivating work and mystical outlook of the modern artist Remedios Varo, focusing on her years in Mexico City
     
    This publication offers a definitive look at the artistic practice of Remedios Varo (1908–1963) following her emigration from Spain to Mexico City in 1941. Her work from 1955 to 1963 made a lasting contribution to modern art and the legacy of Surrealism. In Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, fresh historical and material findings establish the integral relationship between Varo’s layered interests―in alchemy, architecture, magic, mysticism, philosophy, and science―and her beguiling technical approach to art making. Essays detail specific works’ complex stories and spectacular surfaces. An illustrated taxonomy of Varo’s artistic techniques, including automatic mark making as well as careful manipulation of materials and media, offers new insights into the artist’s craft. An illustrated inventory of a major portion of Varo’s library―published here for the first time―reveals the artist’s engagement with a wide range of subjects. Stunning new photography of many of her artworks are presented within a dynamic geometric design inspired by the artist’s work. Situating Varo as a woman working in midcentury Mexico City and living among a tight-knit community of local and émigré artists, poets, and thinkers, the catalogue illuminates the complex worldview that shaped her search for individual and collective transcendence.
     
    Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago, in partnership with the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City
     
    Exhibition Schedule:
     
    Art Institute of Chicago
    (July 29, 2023–November 27, 2023)

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    £37.30
  • Joan Mitchell

    08
    A sweeping retrospective exploring the oeuvre of an incandescent artist, revealing the ways that Mitchell expanded painting beyond Abstract Expressionism as well as the transatlantic contexts that shaped her

    Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) was fearless in her experimentation, creating works of unparalleled beauty, strength, and emotional intensity. This gorgeous book unfolds the story of an artistic master of the highest order, revealing the ways she expanded abstract painting and illuminating the transatlantic contexts that shaped her. Lavish illustrations cover the full arc of her artistic practice, from her exceptional New York paintings of the early 1950s to the majestic multipanel compositions she made in France later in her career. Signature works are represented here along with rarely seen paintings, works on paper, artist’s sketchbooks, and photographs of Mitchell’s life, social circle, and surroundings.
     
    Featuring scholarly texts, in-depth essays, and artistic and literary responses, this book is organized in ten chronological chapters. Each chapter centers on a closely related suite of paintings, illuminating a shifting inner landscape colored by experience, sensation, memory, and a deep sense of place. Presenting groundbreaking research and a variety of perspectives on her art, life, and connections to poetry and music, this unprecedented volume is an essential reference for Mitchell’s admirers and those just discovering her work.

    Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

    Exhibition Schedule:

    San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
    (September 4, 2021–January 17, 2022)
     
    Baltimore Museum of Art
    (March 6–August 14, 2022)
     
    Fondation Louis Vuitton 
    (October 5, 2022–February 27, 2023)

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    £33.40£47.50

    Joan Mitchell

    £33.40£47.50
  • The Art Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

    08

    Learn about key movements like impressionism, cubism and symbolism in The Art Book.

    Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Art in this overview guide to the subject, brilliant for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Art Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in.

    This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Art, with:

    – More than 80 of the world’s most remarkable artworks
    – Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts
    – A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout
    – Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding

    The Art Book is a captivating introduction to painting, drawing, printing, sculpture, conceptual art, and performance art – from ancient history to the modern day – aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you’ll discover more than 80 of the world’s most groundbreaking artworks by history’s most influential painters, sculptors and artists, through exciting text and bold graphics.

    Your Art Questions, Simply Explained

    This fresh new guide examines the ideas that inspired masterpieces by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Klimt, Matisse, Picasso, and dozens more! If you thought it was difficult to learn about the defining movements, The Art Book presents key information in a clear layout. Find out about subject matters, techniques, and materials, and learn about the talented artists behind the great works, through superb mind maps and step-by-step summaries.

    The Big Ideas Series

    With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Art Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

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    £14.20£19.00
  • Warhol

    08

    Andy Warhol (1928–1987) is hailed as the most important proponent of the Pop art movement. A critical and creative observer of American society, he explored key themes of consumerism, materialism, media, and celebrity.

    Drawing on contemporary advertisements, comic strips, consumer products, and Hollywood’s most famous faces, Warhol proposed a radical reevaluation of what constituted artistic subject matter. Through Warhol, a Campbell’s soup can and Coca Cola bottle became as worthy of artistic status as any traditional still life. At the same time, Warhol reconfigured the role of the artist. Famously stating “I want to be a machine,” he systematically reduced the presence of his own authorship, working with mass-production methods and images, as well as dozens of assistants in a studio he dubbed the Factory.

    This book introduces Warhol’s multifaceted, prolific oeuvre, which revolutionized distinctions between “high” and “low” art and integrated ideas of living, producing, and consuming that remain central questions of modern experience.

    About the series

    Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:

    a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance

    a concise biography

    approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

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    £11.40£14.30

    Warhol

    £11.40£14.30
  • I Paint What I Want to See: Philip Guston (Penguin Modern Classics)

    03

    Illuminating reflections on painting and drawing from one of the most revered artists of the twentieth century

    ‘Thank God for yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, and permanent green light’

    How does a painter see the world? Philip Guston, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, spoke about art with unparalleled candour and commitment. Touching on work from across his career as well as that of his fellow artists and Renaissance heroes, this selection of his writings, talks and interviews draws together some of his most incisive reflections on iconography and abstraction, metaphysics and mysticism, and, above all, the nature of painting and drawing.

    ‘Among the most important, powerful and influential American painters of the last 100 years … he’s an art world hero’ Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine

    ‘Guston’s paintings make us think hard’ Aindrea Emelife, Guardian

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    £8.70£9.50
  • Art Record Covers. 40th Ed.

    01

    Since the dawn of modernism, visual and music production have had a particularly intimate relationship. From Luigi Russolo’s 1913 Futurist manifesto L’Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noise) to Marcel Duchamp’s 1925 double-sided discs Rotoreliefs, the 20th century saw ever more fertile exchange between sounds and shapes, marks and melodies, and different fields of composition and performance.

    In Francesco Spampinato’s unique anthology of artists’ record covers, we discover the rhythm of this particular cultural history. The book presents 450 covers and records by visual artists from the 1950s through to today, exploring how modernism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, postmodernism, and various forms of contemporary art practice have all informed this collateral field of visual production and supported the mass distribution of music with defining imagery that swiftly and suggestively evokes an aural encounter.

    Along the way, we find Jean-Michel Basquiat’s urban hieroglyphs for his own Tartown record label, Banksy’s stenciled graffiti for Blur, and a skewered Salvador Dalí butterfly on Jackie Gleason’s Lonesome Echo. There are insightful analyses and fact sheets alongside the covers listing the artist, performer, album name, label, year of release, and information on the original artwork. Interviews with Tauba Auerbach, Shepard Fairey, Kim Gordon, Christian Marclay, Albert Oehlen, and Raymond Pettibon add personal accounts on the collaborative relationship between artists and musicians.

    About the series

    TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program―now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

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    £19.80£23.80
  • A-Z Great Modern Artists (A-Z Great Modern series)

    08
    A most striking, design-led reference book, A to Z Great Modern Artists features artist and graphic designer Andy Tuohy’s portraits of 52 key modern artists, rendered in each artist’s own characteristic style – including Aleksandr Rodchenko in his constructivist poster style, Andy Warhol as a classic repeat print, and Barbara Hepworth illustrated to resemble one of her distinctive bronze and rod sculptures.

    With expert text by art historian Christopher Masters, each artist’s entry includes a summary of the essential things you need to know about the artist; their biographical details, why they’re so significant, where you can find their works today, and a surprising fact about them plus reproductions of key works.

    Whether you’re already an art expert, or looking for a helpful cheat to navigating around a gallery, you’ll love this stunning and intelligent guide to global artists of the modern age.

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    £16.60£18.00
  • Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters: A Visual History

    06

    On the night of 14–15 April 1912, Titanic, a brand-new, supposedly unsinkable ship, the largest and most luxurious vessel in the world at the time, collided with an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage. Of the 2,208 people on board, only 712 were saved. The rest perished in the icy-cold waters of the North Atlantic, and the tragedy has fascinated and perplexed the world ever since.

    This stunning book tells the story of not just the Titanic, but also of its sister ships, Olympic and Britannic. Maritime experts J. Kent Layton, Tad Fitch, and Bill Wormstedt tell the stories of these legendary liners with a compelling narrative alongside original artwork from up-and-coming artists, bringing to life the design, construction and service of the ships together with the wrecks of the ill-fated Titanic and Britannic.

    From the cold, starry night when Titanic collided with her iceberg to the tragic wartime loss of Britannic and the impressive reliability of the long-lived Olympic, this cinematic and immersive new study captures all of the glory and drama of the Olympic-class age and allows readers to visualise Titanic and her sisters like never before.

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    £25.70£38.00
  • A Big Important Art Book (Now with Women): Profiles of Unstoppable Female Artists–And Projects to Help You Become One

    06

    Celebrate 45 women artists, and gain inspiration for your own practice, with this beautiful exploration of contemporary creators from the founder of The Jealous Curator.

    Walk into any museum, or open any art book, and you’ll probably be left wondering: where are all the women artists? A Big Important Art Book (Now with Women) offers an exciting alternative to this male-dominated art world, showcasing the work of dozens of contemporary women artists alongside creative prompts that will bring out the artist in anyone!

    This beautiful book energizes and empowers women, both artists and amateurs alike, by providing them with projects and galvanizing stories to ignite their creative fires. Each chapter leads with an assignment that taps into the inner artist, pushing the reader to make exciting new work and blaze her own artistic trail. Interviews, images, and stories from contemporary women artists at the top of their game provide added inspiration, and historical spotlights on art “herstory” tie in the work of pioneering women from the past. With a stunning, gift-forward package and just the right amount of pop culture-infused feminism, this book is sure to capture the imaginations of aspiring women artists.

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    £16.20£20.90
  • The Illustrated Story of Art: The Great Art Movements and the Paintings that Inspired them

    08

    This is your A to Z guide to art!

    From cave paintings to pop art and modern masterpieces, this absorbing and beautiful art encyclopedia explores the development of art in spectacular detail.

    Here’s what you’ll find inside the pages of this visually stunning art book:

    – Covers every major movement in art from prehistory to the present day
    – Each movement is tracked in a visual timeline that showcases its key paintings and notable artists and explains its context – the major events in its evolution
    – Each section ends with a stunning image of a masterwork and a curator’s analysis that encapsulates its values, style, composition, and subject matter
    – Glossary of technical terms and a comprehensive index

    Get ready to embark on a unique guided tour throughout the history of art. Get to know more than 700 of the greatest artists, from Michelangelo and Monet to Damien Hirst and Picasso. Discover 2500 of the world’s most iconic artworks, paintings and sculptures that have shaken the art world through centuries and across continents.

    Truly comprehensive in scope, The Illustrated Story of Art presents the most remarkable art movements throughout history in chronological order and explains the social and cultural background of each period. Turning-point paintings that triggered or epitomised each artistic movement are identified and explained, against a backdrop of influences – from admired techniques of an earlier artist to the changes in society that enabled new directions in art.

    A must-have for your bookshelf, this is an indispensable art reference book for art-lovers everywhere!

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    £12.20£23.80
  • Unlocking Women’s Art: Pioneers, Visionaries & Radicals of Paint

    Who were the pioneering female painters? Who are the best contemporary women painters around today? Offers a perceptive journey through Western art history, highlighting artists from Gentileschi to Kahlo, from Amrita Sher-gil to Jenny Saville, exploring the fascinating lives of diverse female painters and their artworks within often-challenging cultural contexts. In chapters which consider identity, muses and models, the domestic space, the avant-garde, in addition to war, peace and protest, the world of women who paint is intriguingly unlocked. Includes over 20 interviews with contemporary women artists, providing unique insights into their practices, themes and personal motivation.

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    £14.20£19.00

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