To this gifted French photographer, who died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 36, photographs were objects of wonder and mystery, even possessing a touch of the supernatural. "Photographs are not innocent." Guibert writes in one of the most provocative essays in Ghost Image, a collection of critical and autobiographical writings on photography translated for the first time into English by Robert Bononno. "They influence and...betray what is hidden beneath the skin. They weave not only lines and grids, but plots, and they cast spells....They are an impressionable material that welcomes spirits." Guibert, photography critic of La Monde for many years, himself weaves a spell with his many topics and moods, delineated in a continually unpredictable mixture of precise descriptions and poetic musing. Guibert recalls family members through the frozen reality of pictures taken at different times. He offers a compact history of the Polaroid, and informative remarks on noted travel journals resembling photography. He confesses to having betrayed an actress he photographed, and silently ponders whether certain pictures should arouse him, adding his views on the differences between visual erotica and pornography. His own occasional role as model causes ambivalence. A flurry of other incidents and thoughts - some real, others fantasy - crowd Guibert's pages as he struggles to fathom the essence of that which captures life. In an unforgettable conclusion, through his account of an enigmatic portrait and its strange fate, Guibert finally achieves the union of person and picture he sought. Ghost Image is a collection of beautifully and hauntingly written essays on what is and what lies behind any photograph.

    Heads will roll unless the independent fan-maker, erotically cast in the shadow of de Sade, can justify her art and friendships to a court known for its rigid and prudish proprieties.

    He had led migration of Bohemian Paris across the city from Montmartre to Montparnasse, he had helped formulate the principles of 'Cubism', having written one of the first books on the subject, and coined the word 'Surrealist'; and he had demonstrated in his own work those innovations we have come to associate with the most vital investigations of the avente - garde.

    Home life, formerly characterized by stiff formality, was revolutionized by the simultaneous introduction of the sofa (a radical invitation to recline or converse), the original living rooms, and the very concept of private bedrooms and bathrooms, with far-reaching effects on the way people lived and related to one another. DeJean highlights the revolutionary ideas-and the bold personalities behind them-that fomented change in the home and beyond, providing new insight into the household habits and creature comforts we often take for granted.

    The first section of the issue contained previously unpublished critical texts, and the second section contained translations of primary texts that had previously been unavailable in English. The emphasis was on the SI's profound engagement with the art and cultural politics of their time (1957-1972), with a strong argument for their primarily political and activist stance by two former members of the group, T. J. Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith.Guy Debord and the Situationist International supplements both sections. It reprints important, hard to find essays by Giorgio Agamben, Libero Andreotti, Jonathan Crary, Thomas Y. Levin, Greil Marcus, and Tom McDonough and doubles the number of translations of primary texts, which now encompass a broader and more representative range of the SI's writings on culture and language. In a field still dominated by hagiography, the critical texts were selected for their willingness to confront critically the history and legacy of the SI. They examine the group within the broader framework of the historical and neo-avant-gardes and, beyond that, the postwar world in general. The translations trace the SI's reflections on the legacy of the avant-garde in art and architecture, particularly on the linguistic and spatial significance of montage aesthetics. Many of the translated works are by Guy Debord (1932-1994), the impresario of the SI, especially known for his book The Society of the Spectacle.

    But it’s not the friendly literary community she had imagined and Lily Heller becomes a character inside the world that she had fantasized about—but with chilling consequences. In her quest to return home, Lily throws herself on the mercy of legendary Shakespeare and Company bookseller Sylvia Beach. A celebration of a timeless city’s allure, an engaging romantic fantasy, and a valentine to book lovers in every era, Chasing Sylvia Beach is a novel to savor.

    Reflecting an unusual mix of design influences (Baroque, rococo, neoclassical and Art Deco) and personal taste, its style is luxurious, playful, and wholly original. In "The Paris Apartment, " Claudia Strasser, the founder and owner of the shop, offers readers the quintessential guide to achieving this romantic Parisian look without having to spend a fortune. With easy-to-follow instructions and helpful advice, she shows readers how they can transform their homes into a living environment that reflects both their personal style and timeless French elegance. Laid out in the form of an entertaining diary, the book helps Francophiles define their fantasy home, find inspiration, select a color palette and use light creatively. She also includes instructions for making canopies and valances; advice on dyeing fabrics and restyling furniture; tips on budgeting; guidance on shopping at flea markets and auctions; and a glossary of terms. Color photographs throughout illustrate the ideas and techniques shown in the book.As interest in the home experiences a resurgence, and as Americans become more careful about their spending, nesting has become the pastime of the '90s. People want luxury homes without spending a fortune. With its unbeatable combination of style and solid practicality, "The Paris Apartment" is a home-decorating guide to treasure and draw inspiration from for many years to come.Visit The Paris Apartment online.

    (from back cover)

    Here is the dramatic - and tragic - story of Versailles and the men and women who made it their home.

    In her early nineties, she generously shared her hospitality and wisdom with writer Malte Herwig, who started out as an interviewer but found himself drawn into the role of pupil as Gilot, whom he called “a philosopher of joy,” introduced him to different ways of seeing the world.

    It is one of Europe's greatest treasures and its own story is full of drama and surprise. Who commissioned the tapestry? Was it Bishop Odo, William's ruthless half-brother? Or Harold's dynamic sister Edith, juggling for a place in the new court? Hicks shows us this world and the miracle of the tapestry's making: the stitches, dyes and strange details in the margins. For centuries it lay ignored in Bayeux cathedral until its 'discovery' in the eighteenth century. It became a symbol of power as well as art: townsfolk saved it during the French Revolution; Napoleon displayed it to promote his own conquest; the Nazis strove to make it their own; and its influence endures today. This marvellous book, packed with thrilling stories, shows how we remake history in every age and how a great work of art has a life of its own.

    The sparkling redesigned city fostered a culture of energetic crowd-pleasing and multi-sensory amusements that would apprehend and represent real life as spectacle.Vanessa R. Schwartz examines the explosive popularity of such phenomena as the boulevards, the mass press, public displays of corpses at the morgue, wax museums, panoramas, and early film. Drawing on a wide range of written and visual materials, including private and business archives, and working at the intersections of art history, literature, and cinema studies, Schwartz argues that "spectacular realities" are part of the foundation of modern mass society. She refutes the notion that modern life produced an unending parade of distractions leading to alienation, and instead suggests that crowds gathered not as dislocated spectators but as members of a new kind of crowd, one united in pleasure rather than protest.

    Like Ghelderode's plays, the stories are marked by a powerful imagination and a keen sense of the grotesque, but in these the author speaks to us still more directly. Written at a time of illness and isolation, and conceived as a fresh start, Spells was Ghelderode's last major creative work, and he claimed it as his most personal and deeply felt one: a set of written spells through which his fears, paranoia and nostalgia found concrete form.By turns mystical, macabre and whimsically humorous, and set in the unsettled atmosphere of Brussels, Ostend, Bruges and London, Spells conjures up an uncanny realm of angels, demons, masks, effigies and apparitions, a twilit, oppressed world of diseased gardens, dusty wax mannequins and sinister relics.Combining the full contents of both the 1941 and 1947 editions, this translation of Spells is the most comprehensive edition yet published.Michel de Ghelderode was born in Brussels in 1898. After nearly a decade of penning fiction, drama, literary journalism and puppet plays, in 1926 he began to write almost entirely for the theater and the following ten years saw the creation of most of his major plays. After 1936 he suffered from poor health and his involvement with the theater diminished. In the later 1940s, performances of his plays in Paris sparked a major awakening of interest in his work. Ghelderode died in 1962; the interior of his apartment, packed with books, pictures, puppets and masks, has been reassembled in Brussels as the Musee-Bibliotheque Michel de Ghelderode.

    For the political-minded philosopher, the connection between visual art and power was clear: art is not an aesthetic pursuit, but a means to explore and challenge power dynamics. A precursor to Foucault's later work on le regard, or the gaze, the text examines paintings like Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère, where Manet used the mirror to imply the multiple gaze of the waitress, the viewer, and the man at the bar, who may or may not be the artist himself. Foucault used Manet as a basis for a wider exploration of culture.With a new introduction by leading French critic and Tate curator Nicolas Bourriaud and a note on the translation by Matthew Barr, this is a major contribution to the fields of both modern philosophy and art history.

    How have we thought "the body"? How can we think it anew? The body of mortal creatures, the body politic, the body of letters and of laws, the "mystical body of Christ"-all these (and others) are incorporated in the word Corpus, the title and topic of Jean-Luc Nancy's masterwork.