SKIRA

Assembled during the last twenty years, the Jose Maria Castane collection of paintings, drawings, and prints constitutes a panorama of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian art, one of the most exciting moments of modern cultural history. Unlike other representations in the West, however, the Castane collection does not focus exclusively on the avant-garde, Socialist Realism or the dissident movement, but, instead, offers a broader and sometimes alternative enquiry into the history of the Russian visual arts, acquainting us with often unfamiliar works by luminaries such as Leon Bakst, Aleksandr Deineka, and Liubov Popova as well as with less celebrated names such as Aleksandr Chirkov, Nikolai Lapshin, and Aleksandr Venedernikov. With full curatorial descriptions, biographies, critical essays, and artists statements (for the most part, published for the first time in English), Of Peace and War pays homage to the initiative and foresight of a private collector and to the purposefulness and enthusiasm which molded the selection.

The visionary projects by architect Vasily Klyukin. As skyscrapers emerge in large numbers, only the most beautiful of them become symbols of the cities that host them. This book presents Vasily Klyukin's projects: towers and residential buildings that have not found their home yet but will be built in the future and become architectural symbols of our age.

A reference book written by collectors for collectors. An essential guide to estimate and buy vintage motorbikes from this prestigious international brand. Ninety years after the first BMW, the R32, was created in 1923, this magnificent volume serves as a unique source of reference for all collectors and enthusiasts of vintage BMW motorbikes. With precise images and technical information on every single model produced between 1923 and 2000, this book provides precious advice and suggestions, as well as in-depth analysis of the motorbikes' characteristics. For the first time, all the specific details are gathered in a single publication: chassis, motor numbers, and engines of every model, economic values, and original auto parts. This accurate and practical guide is accompanied by a historic overview of the Bayerische Motoren Werke, from its origins in 1917 to the present day.

This book is devoted to the complex relationship between Russian art and the East — be it the Russian East or the Far East — with special focus on the radical artists who shaped the development of modern art a century ago. The rituals of Siberian shamans, the ancient funerary sculptures from the steppes seen as a crystallized presence of archaic and everlasting forms of worship, Chinese popular prints, Japanese engravings, Theosophic and Anthroposophic theories, and Indian philosophy are but some of the elements that inspired the aesthetic and theoretical pursuits of the new generation of Russian artists and writers just before the October 1917 Revolution. This book examines figures such as Leon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, Pavel Filonov, Natalia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Larionov, and Kazimir Malevich, who were deeply aware of the significance of the East for their art, and contributed to launching a rich debate that left a deep and permanent mark on their artistic praxis.

The book examines remediated sites, reclaimed quarries, former landfills, terrains vagues, and unused spaces that have been recognized in the last twenty years as potential venues for the development of new social, economic, and environmental assets. It provides a 'map' of the state of the art internationally and describes what has been achieved to date, opening a window onto possible scenarios for the future. The book examines remediated sites, reclaimed quarries, former landfills, terrains vagues, and unused spaces that have been recognized in the last twenty years as potential venues for the development of new social, economic, and environmental assets. It provides a 'map' of the state of the art internationally and describes what has been achieved to date, opening a window onto possible scenarios for the future.

This volume analyzes, from a new and innovative point of view, the life and works of Francesca Woodman through the photographs and writings that belong to her Roman sojourn.A precocious artist, a border-line personality between the American culture and the Italian culture, Francesca Woodman reaches the acme of her artistic parable in Rome that, to her, is the place and the moment where her aesthetics and style are developed to the fullest. By tracing back the author's Roman itineraries and by gathering the stories told by her friends, this study reconstructs Woodman's most significant encounters that happened between the Maldoror bookshop in Via del Parione and the ateliers of the Nuova Scuola Romana at the ex Pastificio Cerere in San Lorenzo.Through the writings and accounts recorded over a long period of research, this book highlights the echoes and references to Surrealism that can be found in Francesca Woodman's photos; her use of the body as a proper language; and the topic of the metamorphosis as a sequel of life, where death is no longer seen as a final lap. In her pictures the observer discretely approaches the images and timidly takes part in the private and precious conversation that takes place inside each shot.This essay shows a new and intimate side of this great photographer, taking the reader by the hand through an intimate journey where words and images intertwine to trace the contours of Francesca Woodman's universe.Isabella Pedicini was born in Benevento, Italy, in 1983. A journalist and a writer, she moved to Rome where she graduated, first with a BA and then with an MA, in art history at La Sapienza University. She collaborates on a regular basis with the gallery book shop «Il Museo del Louvre» and she writes for «Artribune», a magazine of contemporary art.

A stunning selection of late and unseen works by Louise Bourgeois analyzed from philosophical, critical and artistic points of view. Working fearlessly during the last ten years of her life, Louise Bourgeois makes a final incursion into her personal memories and yet universal concerns about art and the experience of being a woman in the 20th century. Through her sculptures, large drawings, prints, assemblages, cells, and her writings she confronts her demons, abruptly and exhaustively, with the distance or intensity of experience, questioning or bearing witness to a life and an oeuvre that will leave their indelible mark on the 20th century.

Anish Kapoor is the creator of popular public sculptures and the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Turner Prize (1991). He emerged in London in the early 1980s and has created a remarkable body of work that, employing intense colors and refined surfaces and working with contrasts between form and void, and light and darkness, blends a modernist sense of pure materiality with a fascination for the manipulation of form and the perception of space. Published to accompany a major exhibition in Milan, this richly illustrated book surveys Kapoor's work since 1979 and traces his artistic development over the course of a career spanning more than thirty years. With more than ninety color images of the artist's works, two original essays, and selections from his sketchbooks, this book confirms Anish Kapoor's place as one of the most remarkable sculptors working today. Essays by curators Gianni Mercurio and Demetrio Paparoni, as well as archival materials, offer insights into the artist's endeavors and process.

The first analysis of the relationship between art and video games, from the sixties until today. Video games have emerged as an art forum in the tweny-first century. Games like Portal and Machinarium have redefined the medium, blurring the boundaries between art and entertainment. In recent years they have had a crucial influence on other arts: cinema, literature, music, and visual arts. They stand at the crossroads between very diverse forms of culture and industry, and it is precisely the anomaly inherent in this encounter/clash that makes them so terribly fascinating. Neoludica is an in-depth exploration of the relationship between art and video games, and it underlines how the video game is an art form that has yet to be understood by the world of culture. Readers will find much to learn and explore in this beautiful collection of images from thirty-three artists, as well as brief biographies, compelling stories about the game designer's work, and historical details that contextualize the interactive media.

The first complete monograph on the Iraqi artist Halim Al-Karim will appeal to anyone interested in following one of the world's most exciting artist. This is the second title in the Contemporary Arab Artists series, whose mission is to establish a living link between the Arab-Muslim world and the Western art scene.

The paintings of the Musée dOrsay. An exceptional collection. Built up over time through purchases by the state, donations and bequests from artists, collectors and patrons, and also thanks to an active acquisitions policy, the Musée dOrsays collection of pictures today constitutes an exceptional holding represented by the greatest names and schools of painting between 1848 and 1914: — official art (history painting, portraits and classic landscapes); — symbolism (Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon); — realism (Courbet, Fantin-Latour); — the Barbizon school (Corot, Millet, Rousseau); — impressionism (Caillebotte, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley); — post-impressionism (Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec); — the Nabis (Bonnard, Denis, Vuillard). For its new hanging in the picture galleries, the Musée dOrsay is highlighting its extraordinary masterpieces to offer the public an increasingly complete yet fresh survey of that fruitful and varied era, one of the most creative and abundant in the history of art. Published for this occasion, the volume presents 300 works in an order that is both chronological and thematic, thereby offering a comprehensive overview of the history of painting of the period, with the didactic intent of rendering it accessible to the widest possible public.

An excellent overview of Anselm Kiefers long career. Over the past four decades, Anselm Kiefer has produced a diverse body of work in painting, sculpture and installation that has made him among the most important artists of his generation. His subject-matter ranges over sources as diverse as Teutonic mythology and history, alchemy and the nature of belief, all depicted in a bewildering variety of materials, including oil paint, dirt, lead, models, photographs, woodcuts, sand, straw and all manner of organic material. By adding found materials to the painted surface of his immense tableaux, he invents a compelling third space between painting and sculpture.

The perspective of one of the most influential contemporary artists on the complex web of conceptual and material connections between China and the Arab world. Saraab («mirage» in Arabic) is the catalog of Cai Guo-Qiang’s first solo exhibition in the Middle East. It is a journey of personal and artistic discovery that demonstrates the emotional breadth of Cai’s work, from the intimate to the spectacular. Featuring the artist’s characteristic use of symbols and stories about local history and transnational movements, the book is inspired by the multilayered history of the artist’s hometown of Guangzhou, China, and it illuminates the long-standing but little-known relationship between China and the Arab world dating back to the ancient maritime Silk Road. It features conversations between Cai Guo-Qiang and scholars on Sino-Arab history and a monographic essay on the artist by Yuko Hasegawa, as well as images of never-before-published early works.

A clear interpretation of contemporary reality of India and South America through the language of images. Among the Indian artists: Samanta Batra Metha, Nikhil Chopra, Priyanka Dasgupta, Amar Kanwar, Fariba Salma Alam, Ketaki Sheth, Sudarshan Shetty, Dayanita Singh, Raghubir Singh, Vivan Sundaram. Among the South American artists: Claudia Andujar (Brasile), Adriana Bustos (Argentina), Luz Maria Bedoya (Perù), Matias Duville (Argentina), Laura Glusman (Argentina), Marco Pando (Perù), Ishmael Randall Weeks (Perù), Sara Ramo (Brasile), Rosângela Rennó, Mauro Restiffe (Brasile), Sebastian Szyd (Argentina), David Zink Yi (Perù).

A new monograph on the finest African photographer recognized as the living memory of Mali. Born in 1936 at Soloba, in the Yanfolila Cercle, Mali, Malick Sidibé is now an internationally recognized artist and is considered the greatest African photographer. In 1962, just after Mali proclaimed its independence, Sidibé opened his studio in Bamako, devoting himself to reportage and documentary photography. His famous black and white images portray youth culture and dance evenings in the Malian capital. During the 70s he turned to highly studied studio portraits which appeared, nonetheless, extremely spontaneous and fresh. Since 1999, his work has been marked by a particularly poetic approach to portraying people from behind, managing to convey their character despite such an unusual perspective.

An acclaimed fashion photographer provides a personal, luminous, and moving account of post-tsunami Japan. This volume is an extraordinary photographic report by the famous Japanese fashion photographer Yasushi Handa, taken a few weeks after the terrible earthquake and tsunami that battered the eastern coastline of Japan in March 2011. It includes the detailed history of the provinces affected by the disaster, an accessible scientific explanation of the reasons why such an event can occur, and a look to the future that talks clearly about how damage can be limited and how nuclear disasters can be prevented. The book also reveals the composure of the Japanese people and their incredible capacity to resurrect themselves. The photographs were exhibited in Tokyo, Kobe, and Okinawa between January and March 2012 and were admired by a great number of visitors.

The first, intimate visual documentation of artists who have influenced and transformed the Chinese art scene over the last two decades German photographer Thomas Fuesser has been following artists in China since 1993, when he was first invited by renowned Dutch curator Hans van Dijk (19462002) to join a group of foreign journalists and photographers to visit the up-and-coming members of the then fledgling Beijing and Shanghai art scenes. Reports on this visit, by New York Times art critic Andrew Solomon and several others, later played a major role in the making of prominent artists, such as Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi, and Yue Minjun. Over many years, Füsser has developed close and enduring professional relationships with the artistic community in China. His striking portraits tell their stories and depict their work and personalities in an entirely distinct style, documenting a part of contemporary history and an immensely dynamic time in China. Recording the lives and thought processes of leading artists, such as Ai Weiwei, Cai Guo-Qiang, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Peili, Feng Mengbo, Wu Shanzhuan, and Zhou Tiehai, SHORT CUTS, inspired by Robert Altmans concept of multiple parallel destinies that interact, provides a fascinating visual insight into the heart and soul of Chinese society.

The first title of the Skira Contemporary Arab Artists series, directed by Brahim Alaoui, previous director of the Museum of the Institute of the Arab World in Paris. Bahraini-born Saudi national Faisal Samra graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He worked as an art and graphic design consultant for the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), and later a stage designer for Saudi television. In 2004 he taught in the Fine Arts department of the Amman University in Jordan and obtained his first artist residency in Paris, at the Cite International des Arts, in 2005, which he continues to be a part of today. Faisal Samra has taken part in numerous group shows, including Word Into Art at the British Museum (London and Dubai), Languages of the Desert: Contemporary Arab Art from the Gulf States (Abu Dhabi, Paris and Kunstmuseum, Bonn), and Traversée, (Paris, Cairo, Rabat). He has had solo exhibitions in Middle-Eastern and European institutions alike, and is in the collections of The British Museum (London) National Museum (Mexico City), Modern Art Museum (Cairo), Enrico Navarra (Paris), Saeb Eigner (London), Sheikha Paula Al Sabah (Kuwait), among others.

After Baby Cashmere and The Lotus Flower, Loro Piana tells us the story of the vicuña and its coveted fibre. The vicuña is a small camelid that lives in the high alpine areas of the Andes. Prized since the time of the Incas for its extraordinarily soft and fine wool, and deeply venerated by the ancients, the vicuña was long threatened with extinction, being hunted indiscriminately for its coveted fibres. Only in recent times, thanks partially to the efforts of Loro Piana, the small camelid has returned from the brink of extinction and now lives protected in strictly regulated reserves in the high Andes. This book tells the story of the vicuña, portraying the graceful animal in its natural habitat, underscoring its aura of legend and its role in the life and economy of the local communities, and focusing on the complexities of its existence and the efforts to save it.

Don McCullin (London, 1935) is one of the most important photographers of our time. For more than 50 years, his uncompromising black and white photographs have shaped our awareness and understanding of modern conflict and its consequences. His images tell the remarkable story of his life and work, including his most famous assignments in Berlin, Vietnam, Cambodia, Biafra, Bangladesh and the Middle East. The Winner of the Warsaw Gold Medal and the World Press Photographer Award, he was awarded the ICP Cornell Capa Award in 2006. Key periods in McCullin's life including his early experiences of evacuation and the Blitz, his commissions from Berlin in 1961 and Cyprus in 1964 and his most famous work for the Sunday Times are here explored alongside more recent projects with Christian Aid, his photographs of last tribes in the Omo River Valley, South Kenya, and Irian Jaya, New Guinea, and, in the last few years, those of still life and English landscapes at his home in Somerset. A photographic journey across the ruins and landscapes of the boundaries of the Roman Empire completes the volume.

With these pictures, Leonie Purchas presents a new and innovative photographic approach to the human condition. The photographer chose to take an introspective look at herself through the members of her family. The resulting photos form a highly personal and emotional record of life in the Purchas household, in which both the photographer and the other members of the family show their vulnerability. By exposing this vulnerability, Purchas breaks through the distance that often separates photographer and subject. The camera shields and at the same time opens up a world that is entirely familiar, yet nevertheless reveals itself anew.

Now completely revised and updated, this new edition collects documents and insightfully analyses the birth, development and decline of the 20th-century artistic movements, art styles, artists from the famous to the obscure in Italy and abroad up to nowadays. The text has been extensively expanded with new material and images. It functions as a small dictionary-guide, a helpful manual for approaching the art world of our time and a very useful reference source for lovers of contemporary art and the public at large.

The development of Soviet realist painting over fifty years through a selection of works from Russia's leading museums. Socialist realism remains an exceptional phenomenon in twentieth-century art. By affirming the value of content over form and restoring the central role of traditional practices, socialist realism was the declared opponent of the modern movement. In fact, it represented the only completely alternative artistic system. Created by the great Russian artists (Deineka, Malevich, Adlivankin, Laktionov, Plastov, Brodsky, Korzhev), the works present multiple themes and approaches to art, spanning from the last phases of the civil war to the beginnings of the Brezhnev era, stopping at the early 1970s when trends in Soviet art took on varied and inconsistent directions, causing the socialist-realist trend to fade. A non-monolithic view emerges, in which the movement does not originate exclusively as the product of totalitarian control and political pressures but as an evolving organism that reflected internal issues and echoed the great historic events of the twentieth century.

A collection of some two hundred cartoons dedicated in various ways to the Beatles from all latitudes. A subtle thread links the Beatles to comic strips. And not just because the four musicians had always been fanatic readers of those comics printed on cheap paper. Genuine icons of pop culture, like Marilyn and Coca-Cola, they were fated to meet up with the most classic means of expression, with a clear popular bent, a medium with great narrative and entertainment capacities that easily grabbed the attention of teens of both sexes. The book for the first time investigates and documents the interest that cartoonists, publishers and enthusiasts have shown in their special relationship with the universe of comic strips; a rich and variegated relationship with thousands of publications, in every part of the world, and a production that continues to the present day. In some stories the Beatles are the protagonists, in others they make cameo appearances, while others feature their lyrics transformed into comic strips. Published on the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four first single (Love Me Do) at the beginning of September 2012, the book celebrates the band with a festive, fun and original product, conveying a dimension that does not age, transmitting the legend that endures through the years and changing fashions.