Charlotte Mullins – författare

A thrilling journey through 100,000 years of art, from the first artworks ever made to art’s central role in culture today Art can help us see the world differently or understand our place in it a little more clearly. It can move us emotionally, even if sometimes we cannot explain why. It is powerful stuff.  Roaming from Japan and India to South America and the Middle East, Charlotte Mullins showcases a host of overlooked artists, and celebrates art’s crucial place in our collective culture. This Little History introduces us to extraordinary anonymous creations such as the Terracotta Army, Renaissance masters like Donatello and Michelangelo, and modern trailblazers like Frida Kahlo, Barbara Hepworth and Yayoi Kusama.  Little Histories – Inspiring Guides for Curious Minds

The British Isles hold a unique position in the history of art, a place where local traditions fuse with international ideas in extraordinary waysAt once isolated by coastal boundaries, yet also part of larger networks of diverse peoples, these islands have always benefited from a dual perspective.Artistic creativity in the British Isles stretches back to Ice Age engravings of reindeer, horses and birds. International networks were already shaping prehistoric art and by 1,000 CE artists working in Britain and Ireland were using lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, walrus tusks from Greenland, garnets from India and elephant ivory from Africa. The Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans introduced new styles from overseas, as did later European artists, attracted by the wealth of royal courts. Art was traded and looted across the British empire by colonial explorers, merchants and the military.In the course of the 20th century these islands have been a refuge, but also a place where migrants have faced resistance. Sculptures by Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazi death camps, paintings by post-war Caribbean artists and protest murals sparked by the Troubles in Northern Ireland all express artists’ complex relationships with the idea of home.Artists today such as Grayson Perry, Lubaina Himid, Yinka Shonibare, Rachel Whiteread and Edmund de Waal consciously reflect on this long history in their work, exploring concepts of identity and belonging.Fresh, pacy and surprising, The Art Isles tells the story of why art in Britain and Ireland is so rich and dynamic – and why it has always extended far beyond geographical borders.

Published to mark the artist's 90th birthday, this is the first and only book to provide an overview of Bryan Organ, one of the world's great portrait painters. This book tells the story of Bryan Organ, whose works have been commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery more than any other 20th-century painter. It is itself a portrait, one that draws on his beginnings on the school cricket pitch and at art college as well as his time sketching others in recording studios, on the polo field and at the Elysée Palace. It tells the stories of his most important paintings, his friendship with Graham Sutherland, and his endless experimentation with movement, space and form. For the first time, it offers a contextual overview of his paintings, drawings, prints and sketches from the 1950s to today. Whether painting Prince Charles, Sir Harold Macmillan, Elton John, President Mitterrand or pigeon fanciers Mr and Mrs Sharples, Organ’s strategy is to find a point of contact with his sitters and get to know them. As this beautiful book illustrates, his acute powers of observation, his facility as a draughtsman and meticulous painting technique enable him to create a psychological likeness that feels like a real human encounter. Despite his success, Organ has always shunned the limelight. When his controversial 1970 portrait of Princess Margaret hit the front pages, he found it difficult to cope with the uproar and retreated to France. Some ten years later, his portrait of Princess Diana was slashed by an anti-monarchist, and Organ decided that enough was enough. Since then, he has continued to work quietly, but refuses to be involved in any exhibitions and avoids all press coverage. Organ provided unprecedented access to his entire archive for this book, the only overview of his illustrious career.

Rachel Whiteread has single-handedly expanded the parameters of contemporary sculpture with her casts of the outer and inner spaces of familiar objects, sometimes in quiet monochrome, sometimes in vivid jewel-like colour. She won the Turner Prize in 1993, the same year as her first large-scale public project, House, a concrete cast of a nineteenth-century terraced house in London's east end. This book, by writer and editor Charlotte Mullins - the first significant survey to examine Whiteread's career to date - has been substantial updated with a new chapter containing 10 major works, including Tate's Turbine Hall installation Embankment and Cabin, Whiteread's first permanent public sculpture in America. Born in London in 1963, Rachel Whiteread is one of Britain's most exciting contemporary artists. Her work is characterised by its use of industrial materials such as plaster, concrete, resin, rubber and metal. With these she casts the surfaces and volume in and around everyday objects and architectural space, creating evocative sculptures that range from the intimate to the monumental.

Emerging in the late 1960s as women artists struggled to 'de-gender' their work to compete in a male-dominated arena, the feminist art movement has played a leading role in the art world over the last five decades. Using the 'female gaze' to articulate socially relevant issues after an era of aesthetic 'formalism', women artists, working in a variety of media, have called to attention ideas around gender, identity and form, criticising the cultural expectations and stereotyping of women, women's struggle for equality, and the treatment of the female body as a commodity. This little book is a short and pithy introduction to some of the most important artworks born out of this movement. 64 outstanding works – from the late 1960s to the present – reflect women's lives and experience, as well as the changing position of women artists, and reveal the impact of feminist ideals and politics on visual culture. Exploring themes such as gender inequality, sexuality, domestic life, personal experiences and the female body, A Little Feminist History of Art is a celebration of one of the most ambitious, influential and enduring artistic movements to emerge from the twentieth century.

A thrilling journey through 100,000 years of art, from the first artworks ever made to art’s central role in culture today  “This lively volume is ideal for the precocious high-schooler, the lazy collegian . . . and any adult who wishes for greater mastery of the subject. . . . Mullins leav[es] readers with an expansive, no-regrets appreciation of art and the human story.”—Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal  “A fresh take on art history as we know it.”—Katy Hessel, The Great Women Artists Podcast  Charlotte Mullins brings art to life through the stories of those who created it and, importantly, reframes who is included in the narrative to create a more diverse and exciting landscape of art. She shows how art can help us see the world differently and understand our place in it, how it helps us express ourselves, fuels our creativity and contributes to our overall wellbeing and positive mental health.  Why did our ancestors make art? What did art mean to them and what does their art mean for us today? Why is art even important at all?  Mullins introduces readers to the Terracotta Army and Nok sculptures, Renaissance artists such as Giotto and Michelangelo, trailblazers including Käthe Kollwitz, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, and contemporary artists who create art as resistance, such as Ai Weiwei and Shirin Neshat. She also restores forgotten artists such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Guan Daosheng and Jacob Lawrence, and travels to the Niger valley, Peru, Java, Rapa Nui and Australia, to broaden our understanding of what art is and should be.  This extraordinary journey through 100,000 years celebrates art’s crucial place in understanding our collective culture and history.