SKIRA

Numerous leading artists of the 20th-century showed an interest in jewellery, often through love of a woman, or for their daughters. Despite the opening of art from the 1910s onwards to the abstract and conceptual, they happily bridged the gap that seemed to be deepening between art and craftsmanship. The jewels exert a fascination in part because they bear the trace of the relationship between the creator and the recipient of the work who, in wearing it, offers this to the view of all. The shift from the function of muse to that of support for the work aims to reveal all the aspects of the support a loved woman can offer the artist: collector, interlocutor, inspirer. More, these jewels frequently accompany the evolution of the artists plastic style, especially focused because of the change of scale. The collection of Diane Venet, which she regularly exhibits as in the New York show in the early autumn of 2011 is set out like a veritable intimate museum, narrating a specific history of art.

Emilio Cavallini is a high quality italian brand, offering a touch of class to the hosiery industry. The Emilio Cavallini style is unmistakable for its creativity: geometric cuts, optical motifs, strong colors. Since 1980, when the Emilio Cavallini brand was registered, the designer has been strongly expressing his determined style: unconventional, eccentric, ever changing. Currently Emilio Cavallini is working on a building and archive with the patterns and techniques he developed in 40 years of design. He also nourishes his passion for current and ancient art. This passion leads him to build art pieces of various forms and dimensions using tights as if they were strings. This book is dedicated to this passion for art and his creativity as a fashion designer.

A beautifully designed monograph surveying the works of the highly acclaimed contemporary photographer. Kenna’s photographs captivate viewers through their silent drama and magnetism: rather than being accurate descriptions of a place, the photographer seems interested in capturing the invisible lines which enclose space, and in so doing arousing a viewer’s imagination and reverie. This catalog showcases 290 black-and-white photographs: 200 trace the artist’s career, from early 1970s images shot in England, to the photographs of the following three decades, which result from travels and commissions in every continent throughout the world; 35 record Venice’s everlasting appeal; 20 reflect one of Kenna’s most important jobs, that of recording the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

The Dassiers (Jean Dassier,1676-1763 and his two sons, Jacques-Antoine, 1715-1759 and Antoine, 1718-1780) were the only medalists of their time to have had the honour of being mentioned in the Encyclopedie by Diderot and DAlembert, in which one can read that they have rendered their names famous through their same talent: their fine medals after nature and several other works emerging from their burin prove that they are worthy of being counted amongst the most celebrated engravers. The book examines the works that established the reputation of the Dassiers, starting with an elegant silver watch case by Jean Dassier for the Fabrique de Geneve (Paris, Louvre), three series of small medals or tokens: The Metamorphoses by Ovid (1717; 60 pieces) and Illustrious men of the century of Louis XIV (1723-1724; 73 pieces) and, finally, The Church reformers (1725; 24 pieces). This last series was dedicated to William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, who offered the Dassiers his support in obtaining royal authorization to strike two major series, The Kings of England (1731-1732) and Famous Britons (1731-1738). Borrowing from the fame of his father throughout Europe, Jacques-Antoine, a former pupil of the Ecole de Rome, threw himself into the creation of a new series dedicated to worthies in England, including savants, writers and politicians. At the peak of his career, he had the privilege of producing a portrait of Montesquieu, a work that is a milestone in the history of art (1753). This European reputation ensured that he was invited as engraver to the court of Russia, where he produced his last masterpiece, The founding of the University of Moscow (1754), decorated with an extremely bold portrait of the Empress Elizabeth. The death of Jacques-Antoine in 1759 and of his father four years later marked the end of a glorious artistic and commercial enterprise after 60 years of activity.

A groundbreaking work, edited by Germano Celant in collaboration with the artist and her New York studio, which enriches our knowledge of Louise Bourgeois. Over a long career she worked through most of the twentieth century's avant-garde artistic movements from abstraction to realism, yet always remained uniquely individual, powerfully inventive, and often at the forefront of contemporary art. She was one of the world’s most respected sculptors, best known for her public-space pieces, grand-scale sculptures of spiders so large they must rest outside. But beginning in the 1960s, she used her own clothing and that of her loved ones as components of her sculptures and designs: a reincarnation of her childhood and her past. Her art would expand into new realms in 2002 when she began to weave together scraps of iridescent-colored fabric, creating works that vary from figures of flowers to chromatic abstractions, constituting a repertoire of truly surprising interweaves. This set of images is collected here in its entirety for the first time, constituting the closest thing yet to a general catalog.

Il volume è il catalogo della mostra di Torino (Castello di Rivoli, 30 gennaio — 5 maggio 2002). L'esposizione presenta le opere di Francesco Vezzoli, video installazioni e ricami da lui stesso eseguiti a piccolo punto, che mescolano linguaggi e generi eterogenei, unendo icone pop, cinema d'autore, storia dell'arte e del costume.

The updated story of the Italian company, one of the most important fashion houses in the world, with material from the company’s precious archive. Thanks to a realistic approach and an all-round sense of fashion, Max Mara has been able to sustain its principles and priorities over time, values that are recognised the world over: superior quality, fashion content, superb tailoring even in mass production, design and research and last but not least, leadership in distribution and communication. This is a real voyage into the history of fashion; and the coat, the maison's symbol, which made it famous all over the world, is the key to understanding it all. The publication of this book coincides with a retrospective featuring over eighty historical coats and numerous images that will be shown in Moscow at the prestigious State Historical Museum in November 2011.

This is an exciting monograph dedicated to an extraordinary figure and one of last century's most famous and influential artists. Man Ray (1890-1976) was a photographer, painter, and creator of objects, experimental films and images which were at times enigmatic. This catalogue, which presents more than 200 works and compares and contrasts images with biographical details, enables the reader to grasp the creative process involved in each work and reveals the mechanisms and motivating sources of the artist's inexhaustible imagination.

The Skira History of Photography series will be released in four separate volumes: 1839-1890; 1890-1939; 1939-1980; and 1980-2010. Each volume is made up of essays by specialists, including a series of short monographic essays dedicated to individual photographers written by a single author, providing a narrative voice that ensures continuity throughout and a historical framework that adopts a strictly chronological approach. This first volume (1839-1890) considers the years of the invention of photography and those immediately following-extraordinary years from both the point of view of history and of the development of the inventions. Including the great early forebears, like Daguerre and Talbot, and the great photographic expeditions that placed the world before the eyes of an ever-increasing number of people, this first volume also stresses the fundamental links between photography and the world of science. The volume concludes by examining the burgeoning relationship between photography and the traditional arts disciplines, a point of fundamental importance in the development of a photographic language.

This title presents more than 600 objects from the close of the 19th century to today, characterized by bold juxtapositions of precious materials, a unique purity of design and obsessive attention to detail. An enthralling excursus through jewels of extraordinary beauty, many of which belonged to legends of international cinema, including the splendid jewellery of Anna Magnani, Grace Kelly, Gina Lollobrigida, Anita Ekberg, Diana Vreeland and Elizabeth Taylor, seen here in intriguing photos from the period. The technical drawings and detailed catalogue entries make this catalogue a fascinating work for lovers of beauty and collectors alike, as well as a formidable professional resource for those in the field.

The Art of the 20th Century is a five-volume project that is distinguished by its innovative style and format. Each volume has narrative text and a full index arranged chronologically by artistic period. In this third volume in the series, the halfway mark of the twentieth century to what many would already describe as the contemporary period is examined.

This pocket book is part of the Skira Mini ARTbooks: it is perfect for casual reading or easy reference: a fun and practical art history lesson that everyone can enjoy. Francis Bacon was born in Ireland of English parents in 1909 and died in 1992. Self-taught, he expressed the satirical, horrifying, and hallucinatory in such works as Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944, Tate Gallery, London). His artwork is known for its bold, austere, and often grotesque or nightmarish imagery.

This third book in the series, coming after Contemporary Photography from the Far East and Contemporary Photography from Eastern Europe, this new book brings together the work of artists from Africa and the Middle East. As in the other books in the series, the works are introduced by a critical text and come with a biography of each artist. This heterogeneous selection offers a clear interpretation of contemporary reality through the languages of images. African photographers are looking at the unfolding drama of contemporary life and experience in Africa with a fine-tuned alertness. They are examining and analyzing the dizzying processes of spatial transformation, massive transition, and social adaptation that make up the varied realities of diverse groups: urban and rural, formal and informal communities.

The Bauhaus arts and crafts institute was founded in Weimar by Walter Gropius in 1919. In setting out its programme, it was intended to bridge the gap that had appeared in the 19th century between art and crafts, aiming to build a common expressive language. Avant-garde artists from every part of Europe joined, including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy and Oskar Schlemmer. The innovative approach of the school provoked the immediate hostility of the academic circles of Weimar. Accused of Bolshevism, in 1925 the Bauhaus was forced to move to Dessau, before being definitively suppressed by the Nazi regime in 1933. On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Institute, 50 extraordinary works produced by the Bauhaus and made known at the time through exhibitions, conferences, shows, manifesto books, come back to life in the 96 pages of this unmissable little monograph, the latest in the low-cost Skira Mini ARTbooks series.

A broad monograph devoted to Daido Moriyama, one of the preeminent names in contemporary Japanese photography along with Nobuyoshi Araki, Yasumasa Morimura, and Shomei Tomatsu. Provoke is the title of the magazine founded in 1968 by a group of Japanese photographers, graphic designers, poets, critics, and political activists. Moriyama's photography is indeed provocative, both for the form it takes (dirty, blurry, overexposed, or scratched) and for its content. The viewer's experience of the photo — whether it captures a place, a person, a situation, or an atmosphere — is the central thrust in his work, which vividly and directly conveys the artist's emotions. The approximately 200 black-and-white images sketch out an original perspective on Japanese society, especially during the period from the 1950s to the '70s, although the artist himself chose to conclude this selection with a number of photos shot in the past decade. An outstanding summary of the best projects Moriyama has pursued, in a richly printed volume.

Trash Rubbish Mongo examines the work of artists who use garbage as their artistic medium, creating art that mirrors our alienation and consumerism. Author Lea Vergine suggests trash is a natural medium: It has been said that trash represents risk and fascination, impending disaster and seduction. Now and then it is the mark of a creativity as menacing as it is ambiguous-garbage cannot be foreseen and therefore cannot be eluded. In fact, trash and found objects can be seen in works from the early part of the twentieth-century by Fortunato Depero, Kurt Schwitters, and others, as well as through current works by Christian Boltanski, Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois, and Andreas Serrano.Vergine's view is not limited to figurative art; she also explores the use of trash in other expressive modes such as architecture, cinema, dance, music, and theatre, thus providing a multifaceted interpretation of the artistic use of the very things cast off and abandoned by society.

A detailed and spectacular overview of the arms and armours of the Collection of the Furusiyya Art Foundation. An invaluable contribution to the historical study of Islamic arms and material culture. The furusiyya is a whole of practical and theoretical knowledge related to the horse: horsemanship, hippology, veterinary medicine, art of warfa. It includes/understands also the disciplines of the fauconnery, the archery, the handling of the weapons, the fight, swimming and the set of failures, all considered as art of warfares. The Furusiyya Art Foundation's project of collecting artefacts and arms and armours relating to the arts of the Muslim fata or chevalier, commenced a little over a quarter of a century ago. Starting with a modest collection of white arms, the collection of the arts of the Muslim chevalier now numbers slightly over a thousand pieces spanning the 8th to the 18th centuries, with an accent on the early periods.

An original, thematic book focused on one of Raphael's favourite subjects, female portraits, which embody the typical ideals of Italian Renaissance: Grace and Beauty. This monograph, catalogue of the Paris fall exhibition, presents a selection of Raphael's female portraits, including extraordinary masterpieces such as the Lady with Unicorn, La Fornarina (The Baker Girl), La Muta (The Mute Woman), La Velata (Woman with a Veil) and the Portrait of Giovanna d'Aragona, as well as other paintings and drawings: a rare and unprecedented event, covering the entire career of Raphael through 30 exceptional masterpieces coming from major museums of the world. Raphael of Urbino received his early training in art from his father, the painter Giovanni Santi. In 1499 he went to Perugia, in Umbria, and became a student and assistant of the painter Perugino. In 1504 Raphael moved to Florence, where he studied the work of established painters of the time as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. At this time he made a transition from the typical style of the Umbrian school, with its emphasis on perspective and rigidly geometrical composition, to a more animated, informal manner of painting. In 1508 Raphael was called to Rome by Pope Julius II and commissioned to execute frescoes in the Vatican Palace. In 1513, after the accession of Leo X, Raphael's influence and responsibilities increased. He was made chief architect of Saint Peter's Basilica in 1514, and a year later was appointed director of all the excavations of antiquities in and near Rome. His portraits and double portraits were highly sought after and established a standard for most Italian painters of the high Renaissance. He died in Rome on his 37th birthday, April 6, 1520.

An extensive study on Hopper, which accompanies a major travelling exhibition and illuminates the life and work of one of America’s most celebrated artists. Illustrated with over 150 oils, watercolors, etchings and drawings with comments on their formal and technical characteristics, this exhibition’s catalog offers an updated critical interpretation of Edward Hopper’s work and an alternative view to the extensive literature that already exists on this artist. Among the artworks included are Cape Cod Sunset, Second Story Sunlight, and some interesting self-portraits from the Whitney Museum of American Art; the famous Morning Sun from the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, and a number of lesser-known watercolors and oils from Hopper’s journeys to Paris. Also included are essays by several noted scholars, and an extensive chronology and bibliography. Perfect for casual perusing or serious study, this lavish exploration of Edward Hopper’s work is certain to find a wide audience.

One of the most complete monographs of the artist to date, this volume depicts the career of Roy Lichtenstein, one of the finest American pop artists of his era. Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) was the master of the stereotype, and the most sophisticated of the major pop artists. An emblematic protagonist of the New York art scene of the second half of twentieth century, he became a legend in his prolific lifetime. Even now, thirteen years after his death, his works and lexicon of symbols, subjects and themes continue to intrigue the art world. Published on the occasion of the major exhibition at the Milan Triennial, this monograph covers the entire artistic development of Roy Lichtenstein, through more than 250 paintings and sculptural works, a rich photographic section including unpublished material, and critical text. The reproductions of Lichtenstein’s work are large-format, in full color. The insightful quotes and most of the references to his personal life serve to explain how his art evolved or how he came to be in a particular place in the world. This deluxe edition (large square format with padded cover) offers a dynamic and provocative look at the works of Lichtenstein through a powerful combination of text and visual elements. It will appeal to Lichtenstein fans, critics, dealers, and anyone interested in contemporary art.

A wide-ranging and detailed survey dedicated to the protagonists of the contemporary art scene in Eastern Europe. As the title suggests, history, memory and identity are the principle «open questions» for many countries in Eastern Europe that have over the past twenty years seen their course in history change radically in the wake of the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9th, 1989. The catalogue includes twenty-nine artists from eighteen countries, including the Russian Federation, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Serbia and Croatia, many of which are presented here for the first time in a survey comprising more than 150 photographs, films and video-installations. History Memory Identity marks a continuation of Asian Dub Photography (Skira, 2009) dedicated to Far Eastern art.

The never-before-published wardrobe of a timeless star, for lovers of fashion, photography and film history. Greta Garbo’s influence over fashion has transcended time. Her dresses, suits, impeccably-tailored coats with a slightly masculine look and the indispensable accessories (shoes, bags, glasses, foulards) has created a style emulated, imitated, even occasionally reviled, but never fully examined. For the first time a catalogue of great glamour and a travelling exhibition detail this extraordinary wardrobe whose minimalism fits so well with current fashion trends. Edited by Stefania Ricci, the Director of Museo Salvatore Ferragamo in Florence, as the Divine Greta Garbo was a Ferragamo client from the 1920s until her death, and the founder of the Italian maison designed hundreds of original, classical, futuristic, hand-made shoes and sandals exclusively for her, most of them shown here for the first time. A stunning selection of black and white Garbo portraits by celebrated photographers completes the volume.

The fifth book in the series, this volume concludes this extraordinary publishing project by analyzing the fascinating and controversial phenomena of contemporary art. This volume presents ten chapters, each written by an international expert. To mention just a few: exhibition curator Nicolas Bourriad discusses installations, video and action art in the post-media age. Gabriella Belli, director of the Mart of Trento and Rovereto, tells of the «meaning» of the contemporary museum. Paco Barragán, cultural broker, describes art fairs and explains what is understood by the term neobiennialism. And ample space is also devoted to the critical definitions of contemporary art, to the art market and the new way of collecting, to the relationship between art and politics, to the new, confusing frontiers of photography. Each of these major chapters is followed, in alphabetical order, by the biographies of dozens of contemporary artists, illustrated through their most significant works.

In May, 1909 Sergei Diaghilev astonished the world of dance with his first ballet presentations in Paris which demonstrated an unprecedented combination of vitality and grace, originality and technical sophistication. As a primary axis of Diaghilevs activities during the life of the company known as the Ballets Russes, Monte Carlo is celebrating this centenary with a major exhibition of over 300 artworks relating to the Saisons Russes between 1909 and 1929. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with contributions by leading specialists in the history of the Russian dance and the visual arts.