Bloomsbury Visual Arts – serie

Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons is undoubtedly one of the world’s major fashion designers. In 2017 she was the second living designer ever to be given a retrospective at the renowned Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her work has exerted an extraordinary influence over succeeding generations of designers and is a major point of reference for all those wishing to explore the place of fashion in contemporary culture.The 14 essays in this collection, written by eminent fashion theorists from around the world, explore the relationship of Kawakubo’s work to art, philosophy and architecture, and reveal how Kawakubo's creative output allows us to understand the very notion of fashion itself.

Teaching Fashion Studies is the definitive resource for instructors of fashion studies at the undergraduate level and beyond. The first of its kind, it offers extensive, practical support for both seasoned instructors and those at the start of an academic career, in addition to interdisciplinary educators looking to integrate fashion into their classes.Informed by the latest research in the field and written by an international team of experts, Teaching Fashion Studies equips educators with a diverse collection of exercises, assignments, and pedagogical reflections on teaching fashion across disciplines. Each chapter offers an assignment, with guidance on how to effectively implement it in the classroom, as well as reflections on pedagogical strategies and student learning outcomes.Facilitating the integration of practice and theory in the classroom, topics include: the business of fashion; the media and popular culture; ethics and sustainability; globalization; history; identity; trend forecasting; and fashion design.

Gone are the days when fashion relied on a runway launch with coinciding press promotions to show a couturier’s new range. Today, design houses are thinking beyond traditional methods of display to stimulate interest in their collections, such as to the internet, fashion film and, more recently, fashion installations. This book offers a critical evaluation of the changing ways in which fashion has been exhibited, focusing specifically on the recent turn toward installation, whether in the form of static presentations, interactive performances or the more conventional curated designer exhibition. Connecting viewers – and consumers – on an immersive level, the fashion world has begun to appropriate installation methods traditionally associated with displays of experimental art, transcending the runway system and its constraints. This book turns to the designers who have pioneered fashion installations, such as Aitor Throup, Muccia Prada, Walter Van Beirendonck and Hussein Chalayan among others, and also looks back to the early influential fashion displays by designers such as Worth and Poiret to provide historical context. Divided into three parts, and covering a variety of installations from Vivienne Westwood’s fashioned ‘concept’ stores to Gareth Pugh’s immersive films, this ground-breaking book positions the designer as the curator and exhibition-maker and offers the first focused study of the pertinent concept of fashion installation.

CRITS: A Student Manual is a practical guide to help art and design students obtain maximum benefits from the most common method of teaching these subjects in college: the studio critique. CRITS positions studio critiques as positive, productive, and inspirational means to foster development – not occasions to be feared. It explains the requisite skills, knowledge, and attitudes for meaningful and motivational participation in critiques. CRITS teaches students the hows and whys of critiques so that they can gain enriching benefits from their instructors and peers during and after critiques.Renowned author Terry Barrett informs, guides, and reassures students on the potential value of studio critiques. Filled with real-life examples of what works well, and what doesn’t, Barrett provides readers with the tools to see crits as opportunities to participate, observe, reflect, and develop – improving art and design engagement at all levels.

Fashion illustration is skilful and inventive, and the best fashion illustrators can fulfil a brief creatively using their own unique approach. Visually-led and extremely accessible, this book is the go-to resource for anyone wanting to develop their own style. Easy-to-follow exercises are designed to build confidence and encourage experimentation as readers develop essential skills and learn simple and effective tips and tricks. With concise, accessible chapters on topics such as proportion, movement, line, shape and volume as well as sections on tricky areas such as hands and feet, Creative Fashion Illustration is essential reading for anyone looking to enhance their basic drawing skills. Whether coming to fashion illustration for the very first time, a student looking to develop their techniques and expand their portfolio, or even a more experienced illustrator looking for fresh ideas, this book is the ideal guide to imaginative fashion illustration that will stand out from the crowd.

This book takes a timely look at how Scotland’s national politics have been expressed in its buildings, exploring the role the architecture of Scotland – in particular its world-famous ‘castle architecture’ – has played the ongoing narrative of Scots national identity.Scotch Baronial examines many of the country’s most important historic buildings – from the palaces left behind by the ‘lost’ monarchy, to revivalist castles and proud town halls – examining their architectural styles and tracing their wildly fluctuating political and national connotations. An introduction to a key episode in British architectural history, and a valuable resource for anyone studying the role of architecture in narratives of nationalism and empire globally, Scotch Baronial ends by bringing the story into the 21st century, exploring how contemporary ‘neo-modernist’ architecture in today’s Scotland, as exemplified in the Holyrood parliament, relates to concepts of national identity in architecture over the previous centuries.

Italian-Argentine artist Leonor Fini (1907-1996) can be seen as the original artist-celebrity; her self-mythologization was promulgated by some of the 20th century’s most prominent photographers, from Henri Cartier-Bresson to Dora Maar.Exploring her self-fashioning and dressing-up practices in light of recent theories of performativity, this book highlights how Fini’s extension of artistic creative practices, from painted artworks to her self-creation through costumes, masks and fashion, allowed her to become a living artwork to be created and recreated on daily basis. Applying a multisensory methodology, the book explores Fini’s personal theatricality, photographic self-portraits and self-transformative, genderbending, transgressive dressing-up games in relation to surrealist practices, showcasing the hybrid identities that made up Fini's overall character. In three thematic sections - exploring her theatrical performances at balls, her self-fashioning in photographic and painted portraits, and her becoming-other through dressing-up - the book charts the artist's personal and creative development, the interaction between her paintings and self-creation and her increasing self-empowerment through dressing-up. With over 100 visually-striking colour illustrations, the book analyses and highlights some of Fini's most outstanding performances together with her paintings and self-portraits. Kollnitz argues that the way these identities were represented in the celebrity press compromised Fini’s critical reception as an artist, and how more broadly patriarchal objectification of fashionable women artists has the potential to jeopardise their professional agency. In contrast, this book showcases Fini’s self-fashioning as a tool of artistic and personal empowerment as well as an intrinsic part of her art production. In doing so, the book gives voice to the significance of self-mythologisation for artists to whom identity is fluid and plural.

Shortlisted for the Association of Dress Historians Book of the Year Award, 2024In the first book to examine the role played by textile manufacturing in the development of fashion in Italy, A New History of ‘Made in Italy’ investigates Italy’s transition from a country of dressmakers, tailors and small-scale couturiers in the early post-Second World War period to a major producer of ready-to-wear fashion in the 1980s. It takes the reader from Italy’s first internationally attended fashion show in 1951 to Time magazine’s Giorgio Armani April 1982 cover story, which signalled the fashion designer’s international arrival, and Milan’s presence as the capital of ready-to-wear.Chapters focus on the material substance of Italian fashion – textile – looking at questions including the importance of manufacturing quality, design innovation, composition, production techniques, commerce and the role of textile on the country’s overall fashion system. Through these, Lucia Savi brings to light the importance of synthetic fibres, previously little-known players, such as the carnettisti (a type of textile wholesalers) as well as re-investigating well-known couturiers and designers such as Simonetta, Gianfranco Ferré and Gianni Versace.By looking at how things are made, by whom, and where, this book seeks to unpack the ‘Made in Italy’ label through a focus on making. Informed by extensive archival materials retrieved from a wide range of sources, it brings together the often-separated disciplines of fashion, textile and design history.

Domicide = the systematic and deliberate killing of home.So much architectural response to war has focused on ‘cultural heritage’, the destruction of infrastructure, and of ancient architecture – here, Ammar Azzouz moves the focus somewhere more personal: the home. In Domicide, he uses the notion of the 'home' – his native city of Homs in Syria – to address the destruction of cities and the displacement of people both externally and internally during times of war, and to explore how cities can be rebuilt without causing further damage to the communities that live there.Drawing on interviews with built environment professionals, the book also offers insights from those from other professions who were forced to become ‘architects’ as they rebuilt their homes by themselves; showing how they cope, resist and carry on in long-term conflicts, beyond the dramatic moments of destruction shown in the news.Focusing on Syria, but offering a blueprint for other urban areas of conflict across the wider world, Domicide offers fresh insights into the role of the architect during time of war, and explores how the future reconstruction of cities should mirror the wants and needs, the traditions and ways of living, of local communities. This book is essential reading for researchers in architecture, urban planning, heritage studies and conflict studies.

Architecture Constructed explores the central, open secret of architecture: the long-suppressed conflict between arche and teckton—between those who design, and those who build. This unresolved tension has a centuries-old history in the discipline, persisting through Classical and Renaissance times to the present day, and yet it has rarely been addressed through a historical and theoretical lens.In this book, acclaimed architectural theorist Mark Jarzombek examines this tension head-on, and uses it to rethink the nature of the history of architecture. He reveals architecture to be a troubled, interconnected realm, incomplete and unstable, where labor, craft, and occupation are the ‘invisible’ complements to the work of the architect. Erudite, entertaining, and full of surprising and thought-provoking juxtapositions and challenges, Architecture Constructed is packed with novel insights into the internal conflicts and paradoxes of architecture, and is rich with examples from modern and contemporary practice—including Mies, Koolhaas, Potrc, Hadid, Bawa, Diller + Scofidio—which demonstrate how contemporary architecture inhabits the very same tensions that have riven the discipline since the days of Alberti.This provocative book will stimulate conversations among students, researchers, and designers, as it pushes the boundaries on how we define the professional discipline of architecture and overturns entrenched assumptions about the nature of architectural history and theory.

This book provides an intellectual history of the modernist "minimum dwelling", exploring how early modernism saw mass housing as a primary vehicle for achieving the utopian transformation of society. It reappraises the often-overlooked 2nd and 3rd CIAM conferences (1929-31), addressing their engagement with the "minimum dwelling" and revealing them both as milestones in the organisation's annals and as seminal moments in the history of interwar modernism.In 1929, an eclectic international group of avant-garde modernist architects, including Ernst May, Mart Stam, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, met in Frankfurt for the second instalment of the CIAM conferences. They discussed a design programme for cost-effective, good-quality housing, seeking new approaches and processes to maximize quality and functionality while ensuring affordability for the wider population. In exploring the meaning and form of the 'minimum dwelling', they also re-defined dwelling as the hub of a new way of living, proposing a revolutionary multi-scalar approach to urban design based on the concept of the Existenzminimum (‘optimally minimal housing’).Despite the two conferences falling short of the organizer’s expectations, and being overshadowed by later instalments, the participating architects sanctioned a semantic shift from minimum as bare necessity to a very different, aspirational, kind of minimalism – transforming the entire conversation on mass low-cost dwelling in design, social and ethical terms.Split into two parts, The Minimum Dwelling Revisited first takes a genealogical approach to explore the provenance of the concept of "minimum dwelling" prior to the 2nd and 3rd CIAM conferences, it then traces the proceedings of the two conferences themselves. Addressing the origins of the "minimum dwelling" concept but also its legacies, and serving as a corrective to the overemphasis on 4th CIAM conference and the Athens Charter, the book is essential reading for scholars researching urban design during the Interwar period.

Bringing together a wealth of primary sources and with contributions from leading experts, Dress History of Korea presents the most recent approaches to the interpretation of dress and fashion of Korea. Through close analysis of visual, written, and material sources—some newly excavated or recently re-discovered in global museums—the book reveals how dress and adornment evolved from the period of state formation to the modern era. Authors with a range of academic and curatorial experience discuss the close relation of dress and adornments to the socio-political and cultural history of Korea and place the dress history of Korea within broader contexts in studies of fashion, material culture, museology, and costume design. As in other cultures, modern Korean fashion owes many of its styles to historic dress and this process of adaptation is explored within high fashion and popular culture contexts in ways that benefit historians, curators, and designers alike. With key materials newly available to global readers, Dress History of Korea is the indispensable guide to the study of Korean dress and fashion.

This is the first book to closely examine the curatorial work that the celebrated poet Frank O’Hara (1926-1966) undertook for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and abroad.Upon his premature death, the New York Times obituary ran with the headline: ‘Frank O’Hara, 40, Museum Curator / Exhibitions Aide at Modern Art Dies – Also a Poet’. However, in the half a century since, O’Hara’s fascinating career as a curator, where he oversaw exhibitions of the likes of Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, David Smith, and Larry Rivers, among others, has been eclipsed by the critical attention given over to his poetry. Drawing on a broad range of unpublished archival material, the book reveals the impact O’Hara’s curatorial work had both on the reception of American modern art abroad and on the curatorial profession itself.It focuses on his travelling exhibitions for MoMA’s International Program, a vehicle for soft power during the fraught years of the cultural Cold War, exposing him to new art, artists, and cities, while developing important transnational networks far from New York, from Madrid to Venice, Zagreb to Otterlo.Bringing together close readings of O’Hara’s poems and unpublished letters with a selection of archival illustrations, Holman argues for O’Hara’s sense of exuberant continuity between life as a writer and a curator, an American and a cosmopolitan – revealing that he was so much more besides the quintessential New York poet. It is perfect reading for anyone interested in American art in the mid-20th century, curatorial and museum studies, or simply this lesser known but fascinating aspect of the legendary poet’s career.

What does it mean to be governed and what does it mean to resist? Examining how communities form amidst social and political turbulence, this open access book presents four case studies that demonstrate the power of organic social formations over imposed order. Understanding this formation of community in terms of ‘ungovernability’ and a ‘poetics of resistance’, Ungovernable Spaces charts a movement from oppression, through transformation, into imagining, and finally emergence. Throughout the book, the authors engage methods of situated practice and related modes of writing and image-making to consider a range of global case studies: the destruction of the Mecca apartment building in Chicago’s South Side in 1952, following a decade of resistance from the building’s predominantly African American occupants; M.K. Gandhi’s practices of social activism including the Salt March protest of 1930, and the daily practice of spinning and intermittent fasts; the Ciudad Abierta (Open City), a radical pedagogical experiment started by a poet and an architect in Valparaíso, Chile in 1970; and, finally, the urban ecologies developing on either side of Belfast's ‘peace walls’ in the wake of the Troubles and 1998's Good Friday Agreement. Structured via four spatial configurations – the grid, the charkha, the constellation, and the cluster –each case study explores community formation through artistic and aesthetic practices that resist and unsettle forms of hegemonic order. A truly interdisciplinary work at the intersection of poetry, art and spatial practice, Ungovernable Spaces argues for the importance of ethics, aesthetics, imagination and ecology in developing, of necessity, a new poetics of ‘us.’ In doing so, it demonstrates how the formation of community in and through resistance has the potential to introduce new models of social and cultural interaction that make something new, something different, something unknown of the world.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI. AHRC Techne Doctoral Training Partnership Award [grant number AH/L503940/1].

Architectural Encounters in Asia Pacific explores the architecture of colonial trade and industry, revealing a complex network of transnational connections across the built heritage of the world’s most dispersed and culturally diverse region.A wide-ranging collection of case studies uncover these forgotten connections, drawing together stories of migratory architects, imperial commodities, and indentured labour. From Iran to Tasmania, Japan to Java, and Imperial China to the Pacific Islands, the chapters reveal how remnants of colonial trade and industry shed light on the many multi-faceted mobilities of the imperial age, and their enduring legacy in the postcolonial built environments of Australasia, the Pacific, Southeast Asia and beyond. The chapters also reveal deep strands of cultural influences and material imprints long neglected by national histories of architecture, and showcase new methodologies to analyse the interconnectivities and bordering practices which are shaping our experiences of the 21st century.With almost every chapter arising from new archival sources, this richly interdisciplinary volume brings together the work of architectural historians, geographers and heritage practitioners to provide a new understanding of the rich and contested history of this region.

Examining the significance of cloth in the work of contemporary feminist artists, Intersecting Threads: Art, Cloth and Intersectional Feminism draws on Black feminist theories, queer theories, and anti-colonial theories such as opacity, as well as scholarship on the nonhuman turn in the humanities.In a world where intersectional feminist approaches are increasingly important, this book adds to the growing literature on contemporary feminist art, making a significant contribution to discussions on queer, feminist and anti-racist artists and their work.Through a close reading of both the art and writing of feminist artists including Faith Ringgold, Louise Bourgeois, Elisabeth Perrault, Tau Lewis, and Candice Lin, Julia Skelly shows how their work may be productively analysed through Black feminist scholar and activist Kimberlé W. Crenshaw’s theoretical framework of intersectional feminism. Writing as a Black feminist legal scholar, Crenshaw’s framework is dedicated to illuminating the different kinds of violence that women of colour experience, but it has become an indispensable analytic tool for feminist art historians concerned not only with gender, but also with race, class, and sexuality.Illustrated with over thirty-five images, Intersecting Threads demonstrates the overlaps amongst the political concerns of 20th- and 21st-century feminist artists and reveals the power of textiles in the context of ongoing racism and misogyny.

Contemporary textile artist and researcher Linda Brassington provides an unexpected and expansive critical perspective on the practices, meanings and heritage of a global textile technique.Drawing connections across disciplines from visual arts to anthropology, Brassington provides a distinctly different alternative approach to the historical, technical and ethnographic accounts available. International case studies from traditional and contemporary artists, practitioners and performers take us through workshops, studios and dye rooms from England to Central Europe and Japan. Steeped in this practical and contextual understanding of the process, Brassington probes the visual and sensory language of her practice, the cultural anthropology of its formation, and the metaphorical and personal resonances of its materials, techniques, rhythms, and performative gestures.At the heart of her study lies a bold redefinition of intangible cultural heritage, one that recognizes artistic techniques and processes as living expressions of cultural identity and artistry. Moving beyond the transmission of skills and knowledge, her lyrical accounts reveal indigo and resist dyeing as a sensory space of lived experience alongside material, colour and cloth, and make this innovative study an essential read for scholars, students, and practitioners alike.

Winner of the Mark A. Roglán Publication Award 2025 for exemplary scholarship on Spanish art between 1820 and 1920 from the Meadows Museum’s Custard Institute for Spanish Art and Culture, Dallas.Richly illustrated, this is the first study in English to explore the longevity of Orientalist art in Spain over a period of 120 years.It highlights how artists in Spain shaped perceptions of Al-Andalus (Iberia under Islam 711–1492) and northern Morocco, from Spain’s liberal revolution of the 1830s to the end of the Protectorate of Morocco in 1956. Combining art history with a cultural studies approach, and using exemplary case studies, Hopkins foregrounds the diverse issues that underpin Orientalist expression: reflections on history and the nation, cultural nationalism, gender and sexuality, aesthetics and art commerce, colonialism and racial thinking. In the process, the book challenges over-familiar understandings of Western Orientalism.Beyond Fortuny and Sorolla, many unfamiliar artists and exhibitions are introduced, amongst them Villaamil, whose nostalgic landscapes evoked the loss of Andalusi culture; Bécquer, who celebrated Spanish-Moroccan peace-making through the lens of Velázquez; the Symbolist Rusiñol, whose images of the Alhambra are infused with melancholy; Morcillo, whose extraordinary camp images opened a new space for male subjectivity; Tapiró and Bertuchi, who dedicated their lives to Morocco, and the Moroccan Sarghini, who participated in the state-funded Painters of Africa exhibitions in Franco’s Madrid – an annual exhibition that served the colonial concept of a Hispano-Moroccan brotherhood under the dictatorship.This book traces the shifting impulses and meanings of Orientalist expression in Spain. It makes an original intervention in the field of Spanish art studies and contributes new material to the ongoing debates about Western Orientalism.

Following the watershed Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and the wider public awareness of the legacies of the British Empire that has followed, how have museums developed anti-racist and decolonial practices that engage more directly with slavery’s ongoing legacies?Curating Transatlantic Slavery presents a timely intervention into this important work, examining the curating and decision-making processes that underpin the memorialization and display of Transatlantic Slave Trade histories. Across a series of case studies, the book examines how different methods of curatorial practice have been used to interpret and narrate the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Questioning how contemporary curatorial practice has been shaped by wider processes of race and racialization, and how it can engage further with these issues, Matthew Jones argues that museums must be self-reflective: scrutinizing the ways in which they racialize those they collaborate with, be that artists or communities, and how their own histories are linked with historical structures of racialization.Each chapter focuses on a distinctive aspect of contemporary museum practice in relation to colonial history and race, covering the varying approaches of museums in the UK and Europe. Museums discussed include the: Tropenmuseum in the Netherlands, Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Bristol Museums and National Maritime Museum, all in the UK. Driven by comparative analysis, the chapters are grouped under the following themes, representing the core issues related to engaging with the Transatlantic Slave Trade and colonial histories on a curatorial basis: institutional history and memory; collaborative curatorial practice with communities, artists and academics; affect and the communication of trauma; and finally the impact of contemporary anti-racist movements on the displaying of slavery and anti-slavery resistance. Building on themes established throughout the book, the final chapter presents a survey of the 'collecting' of anti-racism movements in US, UK, and European museums.In deconstructing these processes and histories in modern museum practice, Curating Transatlantic Slavery challenges the role of museums across the world, in the formation of racial representations and provides alternative paths towards instituting anti-racist practices.

Discover the life and work of one of the most innovative designers of 20th-century British fashion, Bill Gibb, in this richly illustrated reappraisal of his work.Scottish-born Bill Gibb (1943–1988) was a fashion pioneer whose fantastical designs encapsulate the vibrancy of the 1970s. British Vogue awarded him the title Designer of the Year in 1970, but despite his contemporary relevance and associations with fashion icons like Bianca Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor and Twiggy, his legacy remains largely unexplored.With a foreword by Dame Zandra Rhodes, this groundbreaking book redefines Gibb's contribution to fashion design, with insights from experts including Iain R. Webb, N. J. Stevenson, Jeena Sharma, Marie McLoughlin, and Christine Rew. There are also interviews with Gibb’s sisters, fashion designer Giles Deacon and Gibb’s long-time collaborator Kaffe Fassett to present a more personal perspective on his creative journey and attitudes to contemporary concerns like sustainability and cultural appropriation.Featuring over 100 colour illustrations including previously unpublished fashion drawings, patterns, and garments, this edited collection offers a unique perspective on Gibb's artistic vision and shows how 21st century designers can learn from his unique body of work.

The Stained and Bloodied Cloths of Ireland presents a textiles and material culture view of Irish shame, oppression, morality and repression.Ireland – North and South – has sustained significant change in the last 100 years, accelerating at the end of the 20th century with the legalization of contraception, divorce, gay marriage, the end of the ‘Troubles’, and freedom to choose abortion and reproductive autonomy. In parallel to this, troubling instances of abuse, repression and cruelty have come to light through a series of scandals. These included the exploitation of unmarried mothers as unpaid labour in laundries, the deaths of women and babies in mishandled miscarriages, the unhealthy entanglement of Church and State, and the intolerance shown to 'visible Irish and immigrant minorities' in the so-called ‘land of a thousand welcomes’.This collection of specially commissioned essays tells the stories of cloth, clothing, textiles and materials that have been actually or symbolically stained by blood or other bodily fluids in Ireland’s last 100 years. By focusing on the role of these materials in the events and experiences of shame, oppression, morality and repression, the book ‘lances the boil’ of Irish social history, celebrating the movement of the island of Ireland into post-Church, post-conflict, post-nostalgia modernity that, while a painful transition, is a vital part of coming to terms with its past and looking to its future.

What can art offer as it extends beyond aesthetic categories and their boundaries? Examining the work of three major American contemporary artists, Jessica Stockholder, Liza Lou, and Sarah Sze, this book explores their installation-specific practice in rich detail, connecting it to wider issues surrounding feminist art, everyday objects, DIY spaces and practice in the 1990s and broader contemporary period.Feminist art practice has long invested in the shape, routines, and materials of everyday life but the 1990s saw a significant return of handwork and process-driven practice within installation art. This book highlights the capacity for artwork to promote alternate categories of aesthetic experience through investigations of inventive and alternative materials and processes. By looking across these artists' contrasting practices and approaches to intermediality, the book shows how their work makes connections between the mundane and surprising, the banal and transformed, and the real and imaginary.Richly illustrated and drawing on interviews with Stockholder, Lou and Sze, each chapter presents a case study for how these artists have questioned the aesthetics of the everyday through their provocative use of everyday objects, craft materials and making techniques. Each artwork is situated within broader issues surrounding materiality and contemporary art, and each artist examined in relation to their contemporaries, including Abraham Cruzvillegas, Haegue Yang, Rachel Harrison, Thomas Hirschhorn, Cady Noland, Gabriel Orozco, Rikrit Tiravanija and Do Ho Suh. What emerges is a new understanding of aesthetic and material value, and the legacy of experimental forms of artistic production.

Drawing new lines between the creative practices of influential Antwerp designers from the 1980s to the 2020s, this vibrant study dissects how menswear, male bodies, and male sexuality have been radically queered through the lens of a crucial epicentre of avant-garde fashion.Retracing and updating historical narratives of the Antwerp fashion scene, Queering Masculinities in Antwerp Fashion expands the focus from the ‘Antwerp Six’ to a new generation of radical designers. From Walter Van Beirendonck and Dirk Bikkembergs to Raf Simons, Bernhard Willhelm, and Glenn Martens, these designers variously use disruptive fashion practices to move beyond gender binaries, affirm non-normative bodies, and embody queer sexual politics through coded and explicit sexual references. Through archival material from Belgian and international fashion museums – from fashion show and campaign photographs to invitations and look-books – and interviews with key figures from the scene, Antwerp emerges as a major, vibrant context for questioning and queering masculinities through vanguardist fashion practice.Integrating rich case studies with key theoretical perspectives, Nicola Brajato offers a conceptual framework for engaging critically with cultural shifts in masculinities, men’s fashion, and identity.

Over the course of the last 180 years, designers have transformed fashion from an elite craft into a cornerstone of global popular culture.This brilliantly written classic guide to the lives and collections of 59 iconic fashion designers was first published in 2009 and is now available in this fully revised and expanded third edition. It draws on the latest academic research and the best of fashion journalism, including the authors’ own interviews with designers. Beginning with Charles Frederick Worth and concluding with the star names of the twenty-first century, the book details each designer's working methods and career highlights with engaging essays that capture the spirit of their times.This new edition widens its remit to explore designers making waves beyond the Western world. It features six new designer profiles: Virgil Abloh, Iris van Herpen, Japan’s Nigo, China’s Uma Wang, India’s Sabyasachi and Nigeria’s Shade Thomas-Fahm. The text has also been updated throughout to reflect growing concern within the fashion world over sustainability issues, and to document a business in constant ferment, with designers swapping jobs and fashion houses at unprecedented speed. The Great Fashion Designers explores these designers' passion and flair, showcasing fashion at its most inspirational.

The 1970s is often considered the period that design forgot. In Private sets out to challenge this view, offering a cultural history of domestic interior design in Britain and America over the course of a decade that shaped the contemporary relationship between fashion and interiors. With each chapter dedicated to a different room in the house, this book explores style, design and socio-cultural influence from the sitting room to the sauna, and from the kitchen to the conservatory. Considering the key critical discourses which arise from the style and function of each space, In Private looks at how the public sphere informed the decorating styles, furniture and furnishing of the private home, from shag pile carpets to Swedish duvets.Demonstrating how the cultural environment of the 1970s sparked the ideas, styles and practices that have become common currency in today’s interior design, the book examines questions of sensuality, tactility, fashion, fantasy and gender. Illustrated throughout and packed with original research, it provides an insight into 1970s innovation and eclecticism in fashion, textiles and the domestic interior.

From ‘shameful’ utilitarian garments to a contemporary, trans­cultural fashion trend: like wabi-sabi and kintsugi before it, boro has gained worldwide recognition as a quintessential Japanese aesthetic and sustainable design practice. How has this cross-cultural reimagining shaped boro’s meaning in art and fashion? And what are we doing when we make, collect, display and wear boro today?As boro’s functional value has decreased in the contemporary context, it has acquired new layers of meaning: from antique object to vintage fashion style, sustainable design practice to contemporary art piece. Reviving Boro investigates this revival using primary materials, including a wealth of unpublished images, oral histories and archival research.Leren Li conducts a thorough examination of the process of value generation, reviewing personal and museum boro collections, emerging boro brands, and recent boro initiatives undertaken by independent fashion innovators. Investigating boro as a revived cultural phenomenon, this is a critical resource for readers wanting to understand the past, present and future of this traditional Japanese textile.

In this in-depth study, author Gaoheng Zhang analyses the relationship between the Italian ready-to-wear fashion industry and the Chinese fast fashion industry, focussing on the 2000s and 2010s.Looking first at the communication of Italian fashion in China before examining the impact of Chinese migrants and Chinese fashion on the Italian fashion industry, the author unpacks perceived tensions between “made in China” fast fashion and “made in Italy” ready-to-wear that is viewed as “slow” fashion. In doing so, Zhang exposes the nuances, controversies and ambivalences of Italy's and China's intertwined fashion systems, revealing not only the competition between these two countries, but also their collaboration.Applying the lenses of communication, cultural and fashion studies to this analysis, Fashion Communications Between Italy and China reflects on global fashion industries more generally and related topics such as globalized fashion-making, fashion-facilitated transcultural identity construction, and fashion-led negotiation of national economic issues.

This book explores the return of the somatic – the bodily and emotional response that an object produces in the viewer – in contemporary life-cast sculpture, revealing how the body-centricity of pre-modern Christian artistic traditions can play out in contemporary art practices. Connecting a chocolate Jesus with the Eucharist, bodily fluids with Adam and Eve, and corporeal fragmentation with medieval relics, it considers how art objects can play on our innate sense of self, trauma, and mortality, and how the literal imprint of the body in an artwork, can evoke strong feelings of loss, grief, fear, and above all, disgust.The book presents detailed readings of four influential artworks from the last 30 years: Cosimo Cavallaro’s Sweet Jesus (2005), Kiki Smith’s Untitled (1990), Marc Quinn’s Self (iterative, 1991-present), and Berlinde de Bruyckere’s Elie (2009), revealing a rich kaleidoscope of references to pre-modern imagery and traditions. Constructed from transient, organic materials, these intimate works close the gap between artist, artwork, and audience; we see the artist, and ourselves, within them. Sharing an inherent ambiguity, they represent life yet embrace death: individual and universal, present yet absent, disgusting yet alluring.Building on recent debates in contemporary art practice, this book will add an important perspective to discourses surrounding the survival of the image, embedded memory, audience participation, the recurrence of Christian imagery in contemporary art, and the impact of sight as multifaceted mediator of aesthetic reception. Author Lisi Linster deconstructs the aesthetic encounter by looking at the semiotics of each artwork alongside their phenomenological aspect, revealing how pre-modern Christian themes interact directly with the unique tangible quality of life-cast sculpture, and exploring how this can play out sensorially in the contemporary art gallery.

"Full of surprises [and] evocative." The Spectator "Passionately written." Apollo "An extraordinary accomplishment." Edmund de Waal "Monumental." Times Literary Supplement"An epic reshaping of ceramic art." Crafts "An important book." The Arts Society Magazine In his major new history, Paul Greenhalgh tells the story of ceramics as a story of human civilisation, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. As a core craft technology, pottery has underpinned domesticity, business, religion, recreation, architecture, and art for millennia. Indeed, the history of ceramics parallels the development of human society.This fascinating and very human history traces the story of ceramic art and industry from the Ancient Greeks to the Romans and the medieval world; Islamic ceramic cultures and their influence on the Italian Renaissance; Chinese and European porcelain production; modernity and Art Nouveau; the rise of the studio potter, Art Deco, International Style and Mid-Century Modern, and finally, the contemporary explosion of ceramic making and the postmodern potter. Interwoven in this journey through time and place is the story of the pots themselves, the culture of the ceramics, and their character and meaning. Ceramics have had a presence in virtually every country and historical period, and have worked as a commodity servicing every social class. They are omnipresent: a ubiquitous art. Ceramic culture is a clear, unique, definable thing, and has an internal logic that holds it together through millennia. Hence ceramics is the most peculiar and extraordinary of all the arts. At once cheap, expensive, elite, plebeian, high-tech, low-tech, exotic, eccentric, comic, tragic, spiritual, and secular, it has revealed itself to be as fluid as the mud it is made from.Ceramics are the very stuff of how civilized life was, and is, led. This then is the story of human society's most surprising core causes and effects.