Despite the challenges of ill health and asylum life, Van Gogh continued to produce a series of masterpieces – cypresses, wheatfields, olive groves and sunsets during his time there. This fascinating and insightful work from Van Gogh specialist Martin Bailey examines his time there, from the struggles that sent him to the asylum, to the brilliant creative inspiration that he found during his time here. He wrote very little about the asylum in letters to his brother Theo, so this book sets out to give an impression of daily life behind the walls of the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole and looks at Van Gogh through fresh eyes, with newly discovered material. An essential insight into the mind of a flawed genius , Starry Night is indispensable for those who wish to understand the life of one of the most talented and brilliant artists to have put paintbrush to canvas.

    1951) has made experimental, elegiac, and hauntingly beautiful photographs that explore the overarching themes of existence: memory, desire, death, the bonds of family, and nature’s magisterial indifference to human endeavor. What unites this broad body of work—portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and other studies—is that it is all “bred of a place,” the American South. Mann, who is a native of Lexington, Virginia, uses her deep love of her homeland and her knowledge of its historically fraught heritage to ask powerful, provocative questions—about history, identity, race, and religion—that reverberate across geographic and national boundaries. Organized into five sections—Family, The Land, Last Measure, Abide with Me, and What Remains—and including many works not previously exhibited or published, Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings is a sweeping overview of Mann’s artistic achievements.

    Her whimsical illustrations are known for their offbeat color combinations, artful arrangements and endearing quirkiness. In this book, you'll learn how to partner with the wonderfully spontaneous medium of watercolor to create your own brand of magic. Start by creating a handmade journal, then follow exercises and start-to-finish projects to fill it with illustrations that are small in size but big on color. Along the way, Danielle shares her fresh takes on color theory, perspective, composition and more. Designed to get your brush moving, this book makes practice feel like play. It's a one-of-a-kind journey for any artist wishing to tap into the utter joy of watercolor painting and make it a cherished part of your daily life. Inside you'll find: Imaginative techniques that help you override perfectionist tendencies while making the most of watercolor's unpredictable nature An inventive approach (using scraps of paper, ribbon and other ephemera) for more creative color choices A simple strategy that makes drawing new subjects less intimidating and more fun Sweet ways to add hand lettering to your artwork Inspirational exercises that make finding subjects to paint as easy as A-B-C "Don't underestimate the giddiness you feel when you mindlessly grab a color and mix it with another and create the most beautiful wash ever!" --p43

    Adapting art viewing to contemporary demands within a rapidly changing world, deSouza outlines how art functions as politicized culture within a global industry. In addition to offering new pedagogical strategies for MFA programs and the training of artists, he provides an extensive analytical glossary of some of the most common terms used to discuss art while focusing on their current and changing usage. He also shows how these terms may be crafted to new artistic and social practices, particularly in what it means to decolonize the places of display and learning. DeSouza's work will be invaluable to the casual gallery visitor and the arts professional alike, to all those who regularly look at, think about, and make art—especially art students and faculty, artists, art critics, and curators.

    Conversations about Sculpture is both an intimate look at Serra’s life and work, with candid reflections on personal moments of discovery, and a provocative examination of sculptural form from antiquity to today. Serra and Foster explore such subjects as the artist’s work in steel mills as a young man; the impact of music, dance, and architecture on his art; the importance of materiality and site specificity to his aesthetic; the controversies and contradictions his work has faced; and his belief in sculpture as experience. They also discuss sources of inspiration—from Donatello and Brancusi to Japanese gardens and Machu Picchu—revealing a history of sculpture across time and culture through the eyes of one of the medium’s most brilliant figures.   Introduced with an insightful preface by Foster, this probing dialogue is beautifully illustrated with duotone images that bring to life both Serra's work and his key commitments.

    . . . Before our eyes, Zanele Muholi transforms into a mother, a domestic worker, an Afrofuturist, an oracle. It's fiction and it is not."--Yrsa Daley-Ward, The New York Times Book Review Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is the long-awaited monograph from one of the most powerful visual activists of our time. The book features over ninety of Muholi's evocative self-portraits, each image drafted from material props in Muholi's immediate environment. A powerfully arresting collection of work, Muholi's radical statements of identity, race, and resistance are a direct response to contemporary and historical racisms. As Muholi states, "I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces--brave enough to create without fear of being vilified. . . . To teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves--to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back."With more than twenty written contributions from curators, poets, and authors, alongside luxurious tritone reproductions of Muholi's images, Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is as much a manifesto of resistance as it is an autobiographical, artistic statement.

    The bird activity it holds is diluted and disguised by the vast flat open land and sky that offers an impression of little going on. In January 2015, with an inkling of bird activity being more prominent than at first met my eyes, I decided to try to pull them out of the sky. I set up an 8cm diameter stage in the form of a wooden pillar that was around one and half meters in height, and opposite it another the same on which I mounted a camera that was triggered by motion.I visited the camera a few days later and, to my surprise, it had worked. The pillar somehow managed to funnel the birds from the sky by offering them a place to rest, feed, nurse their young, and observe. I was captivated immediately. The images were often unsettled, the birds awkward like contortionists, completely off-beat and the shapes and soft lines created were so arresting. From my kitchen window the pillar could be seen in the distance like a matchstick in the flat distance. My absence in turn somehow allowed a greater mental presence during the making of the work. I was frequently there though only in my mind, wondering what was happening at that very moment as I sat on a local train, or went about my daily routine. Even when I was out of the country I would be imagining the activity on the stage.

    In Houston, they built the Menil Collection, the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, the Cy Twombly Gallery, and underwrote the Contemporary Arts Museum. Now, with unprecedented access to family archives, William Middleton has written a sweeping biography of this unique couple. From their ancestors in Normandy and Alsace, to their own early years in France, and their travels in South America before settling in Houston. We see them introduced to the artists in Europe and America whose works they would collect, and we see how, by the 1960s, their collection had grown to include 17,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, rare books, and decorative objects. And here is, as well, a vivid behind-the-scenes look at the art world of the twentieth century and the enormous influence the de Menils wielded through what they collected and built and through the causes they believed in.

    The struggles of heroes, both triumphant and tragic, with gods, monsters, and fate, exert a particular grip on our imagination. Visual artists have long expressed and reworked these foundational stories. This is the first book to unite myth-inspired artworks by ancient, modern, and contemporary artists, from Botticelli and Caravaggio to Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.

    There would be no art, no life, without light." -Rachel Wolf (p5)Like moths to a flame, watercolor artists are forever fascinated, sometimes obsessed, and often frustrated by their quest to capture the elusive qualities of light. Splash 19 showcases 125+ shining successes, fresh out of the studios of today's top artists.These artists revel in the possibilities of light, reflection, refraction, and shadows. Their paintings celebrate the magic that happens when light dances across the landscape, bounces around a still life, or pierces a rainy city night. From the riot of reflections on water, to a cat basking in the sun, to the inner glow of innocence in a child's expression...light brings this work to life.Alongside each painting, commentary from the artist offers firsthand insight into how they use light to create mood, tell a story, or evoke a sense of time and place. A brilliant representation of contemporary watercolor, this 19th volume continues the proud tradition that has made Splash the longest-running "best of watercolor" competition series.- Paintings from more than 100 of today's leading contemporary artists, selected from thousands of entries - Captions reveal inspirations and techniques, allowing readers to appreciate the work on a deeper level - Themed chapters include cityscapes, animals, interiors, still life, portraits, landscapes, seascapes and more"A gift of painting is this power to create the light we want to tell the story we choose." -Kathryn Keller Larkins (p 31)"Light can change a rather ordinary subject into something extraordinary!" -Kathie George (p44)"While painting, I became absorbed again by the emotional power of light streaming into a darkened room to create a beautiful tableau from a modest glass of flowers." -David Cox (p112)"I find nothing more magical than wandering through forests of towering trees letting dappled streams of light filter their way toward me, challenging me to capture that moment in time." -Erica Qualey (p128)

    Strongly inflected by her longstanding involvement with philosophy and yoga, her pioneering investigations into the political, social, psychological, and spiritual potential of Conceptual art have had an incalculable influence on artists working today. Published in conjunction with the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date, this catalogue presents more than 290 artworks that encompass the full range of Piper’s mediums: works on paper, video, multimedia installation, performance, painting, sound, and photo-texts. Essays by curators and scholars examine her extensive research into altered states of consciousness; the introduction of the Mythic Being—her subversive masculine alter-ego; her media and installation works from after 1980, which reveal and challenge stereotypes of race and gender; and the global conditions that illuminate the significance of her art. Previously unpublished texts by the artist lay out significant events in her personal history and her deeply felt ideas about the relationship between viewer and art object. This publication expands our understanding of the Conceptual and post-Conceptual art movements and Piper’s pivotal position among her peers and for later generations.