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Raqib Shaw is an Indian-born British artist whose work is as vibrant and ornate in color and detail as it is ambitious in scope, with a remarkable synergy between his fantastical and often violent imagery and the delicacy of his technique. Deeply inspired by the old masters but infused with his own personal iconography, and drawing equally on eastern and western mythology, his work represents a compelling and profoundly contemporary hybridization of aesthetics and sensibilities. His opulent and intricately detailed paintings of fantastical worlds, often with surfaces inlaid with vibrantly colored jewels and painted in enamel, reveal an eclectic fusion of influences from Persian carpets and Northern Renaissance painting to industrial materials and Japanese lacquerware but ultimately reflect the universality of the human condition. Collected here, in the first comprehensive monograph on the artist to date, are more than 100 of Shaw s works, representing thirty years of painting in which intricate detail, rich color, and bejeweled surfaces mask the intensity and depth of his imagery.

In 2014, Damien Hirst (born 1965) unveiled a new series of "paintings" composed of vast numbers of surgical instruments, which combine to form bird's-eye views of cities from around the world. With these Black Scalpel Cityscapes, Hirst investigates subjects pertaining to the sometimes disquieting realities of modern life--surveillance, urbanization, globalization and the virtual nature of conflict--as well as those relating to the human condition in general, such as our inability to arrest physical decay. Buildings, rivers and roads are rendered as scalpels, razor blades, hooks and safety pins. Described by the artist as "portraits of living cities," the full series is illustrated in this volume and accompanied by detail illustrations. Also included is an essay by Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps, and a short story by novelist and arts writer Michael Bracewell.