Martin Pel – författare

Hannah Gluckstein (who called herself Gluck; 1895–1976) was a distinctive, original voice in the early evolution of modern art in Britain. This handsome book presents a major reassessment of Gluck's life and work, examining, among other things, the artist's numerous personal relationships and contemporary notions of gender and social history. Gluck's paintings comprise a full range of artistic genres—still life, landscape, portraiture—as well as images of popular entertainers. Financially independent and somewhat freed from social convention, Gluck highlighted her sexual identity, cutting her hair short and dressing as a man, and the artist is known for a powerful series of self-portraits that played with conventions of masculinity and femininity. Richly illustrated, this volume is a timely and significant contribution to gender studies and to the understanding of a complex and important modern painter.   Published in association with the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery and London College of FashionExhibition Schedule:Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, England(11/18/17–03/11/18)

Biba dominated London fashion from the mid-1960s, defining the dress and outlook of a generation. Celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the opening of the first Biba boutique, this book takes a revealing look at Biba through the words and images of the people who were intimately involved with the company and its phenomenal success.  Established in 1963 as Biba Postal Boutique—a small mail-order company selling inexpensive clothing for women and children—by 1973 Biba was a seven-story department store on London’s Kensington High Street. Customers could fill their wardrobe and furnish their home with Biba products; Biba had become the world’s first lifestyle label. Shoppers could buy a tin of Biba baked beans, take tea on Europe’s largest roof garden, or watch live music performances by the New York Dolls, Iggy Pop, and Liberace in the 500-seat Rainbow Room.  Created by Barbara Hulanicki and her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, Biba was made in the image of its staff and customers. Selling up-to-the-minute and affordable clothing, Biba appealed to teenagers and young women of the postwar generation, becoming the fashion destination of the Swinging Sixties and Seventies. Biba was the place to see and to be seen; its doors were open to everyone, from the Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, and Twiggy to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury.  Biba: The Fashion Brand That Defined A Generation includes photographs by Helmut Newton, Sarah Moon, and Duffy, as well as never-before-seen ephemera from Hulanicki’s personal archive. Interviews with the people closest to Biba bring these images and objects to life, while recollections and anecdotes from Hulanicki herself shine a new light on the very personal nature of Biba as a business.

Examining the life and career of a forgotten yet significant artist who influenced not only art and design but was a pioneer of queer art and aesthetics  Martin Battersby (1914–1982) was a polymath whose career covered numerous disciplines and placed him in many roles, including theatre designer, textile designer, interior decorator, fine artist, and connoisseur and collector of the decorative arts.  At age twenty-three he designed his first stage set, for a production of Hamlet starring Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic. His theatrical work and skills as a muralist also saw him working with Rex Whistler and Lotte Reiniger in the years before World War II, and as Cecil Beaton’s assistant after World War II. Like Whistler, Battersby worked in the trompe l’oeil tradition, creating outstanding artworks for individuals and institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Battersby was considered at the time to be Britain's most important trompe l’oeil artist, and he had eighteen exhibitions of his work during his lifetime.  Unlike his contemporaries, Battersby has been largely forgotten, possibly due to his humble beginnings and, in later life, his overtly queer lifestyle. This is the first publication to fully examine Battersby and his important contribution to the arts and society of the twentieth century.

Dress as Biography looks at the way clothing and dressed appearance contribute to a deep and empathetic understanding of an individual's life.Scholarly writing on dress and identity primarily focuses on dress as an articulation of collective social identities – gender, sexuality, subcultures, ethnicity – with relatively little in-depth attention paid to dress as an expression of the individual. Alongside analysis of social identities, this book explores how appearance can be read as an indicator of an individual’s character and self-identity, while revealing many aspects of their life’s circumstances.With 10 chapters written by leading specialists in their fields, Dress as Biography takes an interdisciplinary approach, exploring the subject through art history, material culture, and literature. With topics ranging from the 16th-century Elizabethan courtier Robert Dudley to the 20th-century graphic artist and writer, Polly Binder, from the "orphaned" clothes of a 1950s anonymous Londoner to Charles and Ray Eames’ fashion choices, the book considers biography through socialisation, feminism, and Black lives.This multi-authored collection builds upon and adds new stimulus to the study of dress, biography and identity, examining how close analysis of the dressed appearance creates a fresh, innovative contribution to an understanding of the individual.