Five Continents Editions – serie

Alejandro Merizalde began photographing in Venice in 2008. In his early visits he found the city stiflingly overcrowded, but during a brief winter trip a few years later, the overcast skies and foggy atmosphere allowed him to draw out Venice's legendary beauty without the disruptions of mass tourism. In 2013 he started experimenting with longer exposures to eliminate the distractions of human activity and enable him to concentrate on his architectural compositions. This shift in approach was gradual, but it helped him realise that he was no longer interested in recording iconic features like St Mark’s Basilica, the Bridge of Sighs and the gondola, to name a few. From then on, he dropped the predictable locations and buildings and trained his lens on the Venice lagoon and areas of the city where Venetians actually spend their lives.Text in English, French and Italian.

This volume marks the publishing debut of the Spanish-Argentinian photographer based in Milan, Patricio Reig, and introduces one of the artist’s preferred subjects: the female portrait.Patricio Reig prints and sets his images on special oriental paper, folded over and over, and finally dipped in a bath of coffee and sodium thiosulfate. He has found the result intriguing ever since his very first experiments: fortuitous coffee stains become scars that denote each photograph, and consequently every story they tell. As he himself says: “A portrait is not the recording of a single identity, but rather the layering of many elements. For this reason, the image may be fragmented, pieced back together, or even folded over, and yet it never loses its essence.” Text in English, French and Spanish.

The study of fifteenth-century painting in France was inaugurated a century ago by the exhibition Primitifs français (1904) and has developed considerably over the past few decades, especially thanks to the work of Charles Sterling, Michel Laclotte, Nicole Reynaud, and François Avril. This research has led to the revival of several forgotten figures (Barthélemy d Eyck, André d Ypres, Antoine de Lonhy, Jean Hey, Jean Poyer, etc.) and the reassessment of many centres of artistic production. Linked together, they formed a crucial part of the trade network across Europe. It is this extremely complex artistic geography that this book's three sections attempt to recreate. The first is devoted to the interplay between the French courts and Paris, as a thriving centre of artistic production at the time of the flowering of international gothic (1380-1435). The second examines the spread of ars nova (the illusionist art of Flanders) and its selective adoption in the kingdom of France in the time of Charles VII and Louis XI (1435 1483). The third concentrates on the gradual development of a generally accepted standard form of the French language, based on the model of Jean Fouquet and evolving in parallel to the work of the grand rhetoricians under Charles VIII and Louis XII (1483-1515).

Paris – a photographic book with the city as its theme – takes an abstract approach to depicting the city, while retaining a direct relationship with reality. It is part of the tradition of modernist photography, but it distinguishes itself by the perfect appearance of digitally retouched images.Shadows play a key role in simplifying reality, dissociating locations from their classical visual representation. The economy of form thus created enables the depiction of Paris to be radically transformed, going beyond the customary descriptive task of photography.At first glance, the viewer perceives the overall contrast of the image, with only the light lines standing out against the shadows. As the eye gradually adapts, the details in the shadows become apparent, introducing a second way of reading the photograph and enriching the way it is perceived. Paris is thus viewed anew, moving from shadow to abstraction.Text in English and French.

Laure Pigeon (1882-1965) is one of the leading figures in Art Brut (Outsider Art), along with Aloïse Corbaz and Adolf Wölfli. The Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne probably possesses her entire oeuvre, amounting to over 400 works, including writings, notebooks, small-scale drawings and an extensive series of large compositions in blue ink. These are all part of the corpus of works acquired by Jean Dubuffet, the historic collection around which the museum was founded. In 1978, the Collection de l’Art Brut held the first and only monographic exhibition dedicated to this artist. A new exhibition in 2025 has now been devoted to her exclusively. It offers a representative selection of her striking graphic work, spanning a period of 30 years.Like Madge Gill, Jeanne Tripier, Augustin Lesage and Raphaël Lonné, Laure Pigeon too was a member of the spiritualist fraternity – men and women who feel “selected” to receive messages from the hereafter and claim the deceased are responsible for their creations. The spiritualist’s hand is therefore guided and merely executes what the spirits dictate.The catalogue, in French and English, includes essays by several authors and a large number of colour illustrations.Text in English and French.

Slavko Kopač. Hidden Treasure. Informal Art, Surrealism, Art Brut accompanies the exhibition Slavko Kopač. Hidden Treasure (Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, Florence, 12th September – 13th November 2025). With an introduction by Bernard Blistène, honorary director of the Centre Pompidou and advocate of the acquisition of twelve of Kopač’s works into the museum’s collection, the book explores a multifaceted artist, deeply connected to Surrealism, Informal Art, and Art Brut. A key collaborator of Jean Dubuffet and the first curator of the “Collection de l’Art Brut”, he played a fundamental part in its promotion and configuration. His magical, totemic universe captivated the Surrealists and led to a collaboration with André Breton. At the same time, critic Michel Tapié included him in Un Art Autre (1952), recognising his originality within the Informal Art movement. He used painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, collage, and art books to explore materiality, intertwining reality and fantasy. The volume features contributions by leading international scholars and an extensive iconographic repertoire, including previously unpublished works and archive documents.Text in English, French and Italian.

An elegant photographic book highlights BFF’s new headquarters. Viale Scarampo, in Milan, saw the inauguration in 2025 of the BFF Banking Group’s new headquarters, a building whose transparent airiness and environmental and social sustainability ensure it provides an entirely original contribution to the city’s skyline. Designed by OBR (Open Building Research), the structure places the accent on the brightness of its interior and does not seek to compete in height with the skyscrapers of the nearby City Life district. The book is organised in a series of alternating photographs and text, drawing attention not only to the architectural features and the building’s functional characteristics, but also to the aim of creating a working environment that is intimately linked to its surroundings, in contrast to the traditional view of corporate architecture.Casa BFF is not only the headquarters of a B2B bank, it is also a building that embraces the neighbourhood and the city as a whole, starting with the museum it houses, which is accessible to all and contains the BFF Collection of post-war Italian art. Here the visitor will find works by Valerio Adami, Franco Angeli, Enrico Baj, Alberto Burri, Lucio Del Pezzo, Lucio Fontana, Gianfranco Pardi, Mario Schifano, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Giò Pomodoro and Emilio Tadini. The Bank inaugurated the museum with an exhibition dedicated to Enrico Baj’s series of 40 etchings inspired by John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The book does full justice to the exhibition spaces, as well as to the works that hang on the building’s walls.Text in English and Italian.

Racines | Roots is a vibrant art book reflecting the unique vision of a passionate collector and entrepreneur. Garance Primat unveils a selection of works drawn from the heart of her aesthetic and spiritual journey. For her, art is a life-sustaining force: deep roots nourish our being and link us to nature, allowing us to flourish like a tree.Born into a family responsive to nature and art, she has honed her eye through contact with different cultures during her travels, particularly in Australia and the United States, where she became aware of how everything in the realm of nature was interconnected. This quest inspired her to acquire the Domaine des Étangs in Charente Limousine.With its ability to question the world and shape the future, contemporary art occupies a special place in her eclectic collection, interacting with modern art from around the world, minerals and wisdom-bearing objects. Garance Primat invites us to trust her sensibility as we explore the universal, where words struggle to grasp the interconnectedness of living things. An original message emerges from the “root” of things, awakening a shared consciousness. This book, built around the etymology of seven key words linked to nature and the universe, is an invitation to let ourselves be carried away by the senses and discover the invisible links that unite us.      Text in English and French.

Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) was one of the most innovative furniture and interior designers of the twentieth century, long renowned for the tubular-steel chairs she created with le Corbusier. Her career spanned nearly seventy-five years and included work in her native France as well as in Africa, South America, Asia, and Europe, and today her designs are highly collectable. Recently, several hundred photographic negatives were uncovered in her archives, revealing for the first time the scope of her work as a photographer. In the late 1920s, French interior and furniture designer Charlotte Perriand was at the cusp of her career, just beginning her work as an architect, designer, town planner, and political militant. Starting in 1927, she turned to photography, which was to play a pivotal role in her development as a designer through the pioneering years of the modern movement. Her photographic venture ended in Japan in 1941, when the hope of a better world was shattered by World War II. For Charlotte Perriand, photography was a machine for thinking, taking notes, and stirring emotions, but it was also an instrument of political engagement. Today, her photographs are a revelation, offering unseen glimpses into her creative process and intellectual development. Her photographs express the important themes and questions explored by modern artists of the day, and are part of the vast stream of avant-garde movements in which painters, architects, and photographers - and sometimes all three combined - worked together in a common spirit.

Archaeological objects offer outstanding opportunities to explore the way people conceived life in past ages. Their study demonstrates that subjects such as fertility, myths, rituals and cosmogony are embedded in all man-made artefacts, as they have always been part of daily human life. Even when creating artefacts for individual use, we have adopted imaginative and ingenious ways to represent and convey a message, a narrative that is a facet of our personal and social identity. That's why the amulets presented in this outstanding catalogue hold secrets: memories of deeds, lands and sacred representations. Objects used as offerings are full of life: the warrior recalls his heroic condition during his long mortal journey; the deceased person, who travels to the other world equipped with his objects of power, arrives satisfied and disposed to be generous toward his descendants, who receive fertility and well-being in return.The choice of materials is a fundamental aspect of such objects. The use of metals, for example, is etched into the language of social communication, whereas the vital force that moves the universe is found immersed to a large degree in magical materials like fired clay, the product of extensive chemical transformation, or shell, a product of the sea, its brilliance a sign of spirituality, or imperishable gold, which is the embodiment of the Sun itself, ductile and able to express extraordinary religious ideas. This catalogue introduces us to this world of magic, life and death.Text in English and Spanish.

Supported by a wealth of photographs of archaeological objects, this book delves into a fascinating world of ancestral spirits, revealed by the surprising richness and variety of these pre-Columbian pieces fashioned out of various materials. These works, on exhibition in the Museo Casa del Alabado, in Quito (Ecuador), outline the pre-Columbian view of the world centred on a flow of energy aimed at preserving life. These pieces evoke this primordial energy emerging from mother earth, the source of the good deeds performed by spirits and the ancestral guardian of the permanent renewal of the world of daily life, where spirits constantly draw on the balance of the forces ensuring their survival. Pre-Columbian art has the extraordinary capacity to express the power of reciprocal opposites which together provide a meaning to the existence of animate and inanimate beings.Hard materials, such as stones and shells, served to embody powerful spirits, such as carts, macaws, or primordial ancestors. Ceramics were suitable for the depiction of ordinary plants and animals. The extraordinary growth of metalworking skills led to the creation of ornamental pieces designed for the elite (chest decorations, nose jewellery, earrings, and crowns) whose purpose was to reflect the power of the sun.Each picture in the book is accompanied by notes explaining the function the article would have served, while acknowledging that these pieces have lost none of their expressiveness in the modern world.Text in English and Spanish.

The fashion, history, and development of Jewish dress tells a story that spans the globe and crosses many cultures. In this colourful volume, Jewish communities - particularly those established for centuries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa - are revealed through their garments. Stunning photographs spin tales of family traditions and religious devotion, with a special section dedicated to jewellery worn by brides and grooms. Superb photographs of specific garments, with many close-up details, are juxtaposed with rare contextual photographs from The Israel Museum's archives to create a tapestry of a people revealed through textiles, costume, and images. More than 350 revelatory illustrations tell us how these precious articles of dress were originally worn.

'The Indian tribal art, a new field of exploration of contemporary art' - Le Monde.India's cultural richness makes it an endlessly fascinating country. India is known for its profusion of sacred art reaching back several thousand years, but we are less aware of the fact that over 60 million Indians come from the several hundred miscellaneous tribes with which the country is studded. The Indian government has done more than any other to preserve and give visibility to its tribal and popular art and since 1976 the Indian authorities have regularly accorded the great names in tribal art the same status as those in the modern art that has followed independence. These are India's 'other Masters', as the title of an exhibition held in New Delhi in 1998 put it. At the instigation of the great modern painter and guru Jagdish Swaminathan, the year 1982 saw the inauguration in the very heart of India of the Bharat Bhavan, the first museum to give an equal standing to contemporary artists from both dominant and minority cultures. The groundbreaking historical figures among these other masters, such as Jangarh Singh Shyam and Jivya Soma Mashe, who were present in the historic exhibition Magicians of the Earth (Centre Pompidou, 1989), are enjoying a burgeoning international reputation. Their works are now on display in the great private collections, from the Devi Art Foundation to the Fondation Cartier, and the international press, ranging from the New York Times to Le Monde and including The Hindu, have celebrated these artists' imaginative range. India astonishes once again through its extraordinary capacity simultaneously to provide a stage for all the best examples of contemporary art generated by its diverse cultures, whether they be dominant, minority, global, local, urban or rural. Like contemporary art, India is itself multi-faceted. One word, manifold cultures.

Inspired by the teachings and research of Patricia Fortini Brown, a renowned scholar of Venetian art and history, these beautifully illustrated essays by leading scholars address topics ranging from painted Venetian narrative cycles of the late 15th century to the rebuilding of the Campanile in the early 20th century. This book was derived from papers given at the Giorgione Symposium held at Princeton University on the occasion of Fortini Brown's recent retirement. The superb study offers new reflections on artists as diverse as Andrea Mantegna, the Bellini family, Giorgione, Pietro Lombardo, Paolo Veronese, Andrea Palladio, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

Probably no artist was more prolific among 18th-century topographers than Grimm in recording the landscapes and historic buildings of Great Britain, and none played a more important role. Born near Bern in Switzerland, Samuel Hieronymus Grimm studied under various teachers before deciding to move to London in 1768, where he remained for the rest of his life. A talented watercolour artist, he earned an impressive reputation among his clients as a quick, accurate painter. The most important of his patrons was Sir Richard Kaye, who retained Grimm's services for nearly two decades and during this period accumulated over 2,600 drawings and watercolours. Grimm was a tireless traveller, ranging far and wide over Britain and creating works of various kinds, from simple landscapes to highly detailed and now invaluable scenes of daily rural life. While in London, Grimm also revealed an unexpectedly sharp, witty side to his talent, publishing a series of political caricatures and drawings satirising the society of the time and its fashions. Some of Grimm's most conspicuous commissions came from the Society of Antiquaries, which was keen to build a visual record of historical monuments at risk of being destroyed. In spite of the considerable success he enjoyed during his lifetime, his reputation quickly faded thereafter and the exhibition held in the Kunstmuseum in Bern in 2014 was the first show devoted entirely to his work. The accompanying monograph by Dr. William Hauptman restores Grimm to his rightful place in the history of British painting.

Campi Flegrei, near Naples, is a seismically active landscape that attracts, stimulates, and challenges. It seduces the soul, engages perception, and demands to be interpreted rather than merely registered.People have chosen to live amongst these unique geological and volcanic features, weaving the fabric of human occupation and taming a land in perpetual transformation, one of the harshest yet most enchanting environments. Mankind has matched its own impermanence against the earth’s inevitable and unrestrained convulsions, in the process hewing out some of the most glorious examples of human endeavour, such as Cumae, the oldest Greek colony in the Western Mediterranean, the bustling Roman port of Puteoli, and the “dolce vita” savoured in the baths and villas dotted around the Bay of Baiae.Luigi Spina has been exploring this land since 2020, delving into the complex, stratified geography. Key landmarks include places of memory (archaeological sites, monuments, landscapes), which, like true benchmarks of perception, outline the path towards an understanding of a world that links nature, ancient ruins, and the overwhelming presence of mankind. Balanced between mimicry and contradiction, the Campi Flegrei landscape is now blanketed by a dense urban sprawl, where the ancient and the contemporary coexist in a kind of precarious equilibrium, generating a complex socio-cultural state of affairs that is challenging to govern.Spina explores and photographs places such as the Dragonara Cave, the Piscina Mirabilis, the Theatre of Misenum, the Flavian Amphitheatre at Puteoli, the Temple of Apollo on the shores of Lake Avernus, and the Temples of Venus and Diana, as he wanders through the hills above Baiae, finally heading towards Cumae.

This book is put together like a jewel and contains a carefully chosen selection of around 100 West African combs from one of the world’s largest and finest private collections of sub-Saharan African art. Featuring a hitherto unseen assortment of pieces assembled over a period of more than 60 years, the book also includes an authoritative analysis by Alain-Michel Boyer, who approached this rarely addressed theme in what was his final work, begun almost ten years ago. As well as offering us valuable insights into the cultures that produced these miniature sculptures (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Nigeria), he explores the way the form itself is approached. These creations transform what is in principle a plain accessory and in the effort to attain pure beauty, they display an aesthetic awareness that raises the adornment of the body to the level of fine art.

This A3-format title brings together a selection of 50 exhibition posters designed by Werner Jeker (Les Ateliers du Nord, Lausanne) presented at the Collection de l’Art Brut between 1976 and 2026. This renowned Lausanne-based German-Swiss graphic artist has worked with the museum since it opened and is also responsible for the layout of this publication. The Collection de l’Art Brut would like to take advantage of this project to show its appreciation of this fruitful collaboration spanning five decades.Text in English and French.

Swiss Art Brut 1945–2026 is being published to coincide with an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Collection de l’Art Brut (Swiss). It brings together a wide range of works from the Lausanne museum’s collection that were created by Swiss artists or artists who worked in Switzerland. With Switzerland as the common thread, this publication and the accompanying exhibition highlight the close and lasting ties between the originator of the concept of art brut Jean Dubuffet and this country. Indeed, it was this close bond that led him to donate his collection of outsider art to the City of Lausanne in order to ensure its preservation and the public’s access to it.The book includes a foreword by writer Metin Arditi and a presentation by Sarah Lombardi, director of the museum and curator of the exhibition, followed by Jean Dubuffet’s own handwritten notes recounting his trip to Switzerland in search of extra-cultural works in the summer of 1945. This previously unpublished document is reproduced here in facsimile. Other authors provide further analyses of the works: Michel Thévoz, the museum’s first director; Lucienne Peiry, who succeeded him until 2011; Andreas Steck, president of the Aloïse Corbaz Association; and Astrid Berglund and Eleanor Philippoz, respectively curator and outreach coordinator at the Collection de l’Art Brut.

One of the first people in Europe to consider the gifts which the Aztec ruler Montezuma gave to Hérnan Cortés as works of art was Albrecht Dürer: 'Nothing I have yet seen has given me such joy as the objects brought to the king from the new gold countries [...] Some pieces display an extraordinary skill; I have been astonished by the ingenuity of the inhabitants of those far distant lands,' he wrote. It was 1520 and those works had been sent to Brussels. The five centuries that have passed since the beauty of these objects was first noticed seem not to have been enough for the ancient cultures of Latin America to be fully understood. This catalogue of pre-Columbian art is a fresh attempt to examine and come to terms with artworks produced by a section of mankind that came to the attention of Europeans only after the voyages of Columbus and other explorers. It illustrates the collection of pre-Columbian art of Giancarlo and Inti Ligabue, one of the few collections of its kind in Italian hands: over 150 pieces from Mesoamerica and South America, an extraordinary corpus of objects which give testament to the excellence achieved by ancient artists. But it also tells the story of certain rare objects which belonged to the Medici Collection, one of Europe's greatest treasures. Among these are two atlatls, spear-throwers covered in gold-leaf from the Aztec or Mixtec cultures, a Taíno necklace dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and a Teotihuacan stone mask. These objects are accompanied by pieces from private European collections and a number of significant artworks from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. Essays by leading scholars and archaeologists, such as C. Phillips, C.F. Baudez, J.M. Hoppan, J.J. Leyenard, F. Kauffmann Doig, C. Cavatrunci, D. Domenica, and M. Polia, weave both scientific and humanistic interpretations of Amerindian thought. The Giancarlo and Inti Ligabue Collection of masterpieces of ancient Latin American cultures is part of a huge and broad-ranging hoard of objects gathered over a period of almost fifty years.

Headrests are simple, utilitarian objects. Widely used across Africa, they are predominantly found in the eastern, central, and southern part of the continent. Also known as neckrests or pillows, headrests are valuable and very personal objects which are indispensable to everyday life. They are made to sleep on, to rest the neck, to sit on, and to protect the elaborate coiffure of their owners. At first sight, they appear to be devoid of any symbolic content. This functional utility has confined them through history to the realm of mere objects. Headrests are not that simple, though. They transcend their material purpose to become something more. In many instances, their design, inherent beauty, technical mastery, and uses give them a multi-purpose value and a multi-layered meaning. They are objects with ritual and magical intent concealed inside their utilitarian function. Headrests can be flaunted as status symbols that differentiate chiefs from ordinary people, rich from poor, diviners from healers, farmers from shepherds, and sedentary from nomadic. The volume features full-colour pictures of very rare and fine headrests that have never before been published. Short texts introduce selected pieces among the 230 works that have particularly interesting, well-documented backgrounds. This book is a journey through ethnicity, anthropology, aesthetics, creativity, tradition, and spirituality. A journey to a part of Africa that materialises through a simple artefact that sometimes dreams to become art: a dream that starts with resting the neck on a piece of wood.

Noire Idole is an immersive journey into a sophisticated world, both in terms of the choice of subject matter and form and as regards the way these are given artistic expression. The gear on the set lets the imagination and virtuosity of the craftsmen run riot. None of the objects are fake; they exude a natural perfection whose mirror image is simply reflected back to us.It is also a sensory journey into the shadows, alongside the reclining smoker. The choice of a black background transforms reality. The outlines of the furnishings become blurred, vision becomes clouded, the present is endlessly suspended.At the same time, it is a journey through memory, where drugs are merely a pretext for the narrative. Indochina appears within and between the lines. The author reveals his double loss: a vanished ritual and a dead dream, an unfulfilled French passion. Noire Idole is a collection of texts. A compendium brought together in the name of emotion, cultural exchange, and mutual fascination. The writing is leavened by contemporary pictures in the form of a collection of exceptional, previously unpublished photographs.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum houses an extraordinary collection of 'prisoners' objects'. These were made by prison inmates and presented to the ICRC delegates who visited them, as provided for by the Geneva Conventions. For over a century, these objects have borne mute witness to the numerous violent episodes that continue to ravage our planet, from Chile, Vietnam, Algeria and Yugoslavia, to Rwanda and Afghanistan. Made from simple materials - whatever comes to hand in a prison - these objects express the need to escape the world of the jailbird. As a Lebanese inmate puts it, 'Creating is a way of acquiring freedom of expression, it gives us a means to say what we think while everything we see around urges us to keep quiet and to forget who we are.' While some of these works touch us through their simplicity, others astonish us with their beauty or ingeniousness. Each bears the imprint of a personal story loaded with emotion, inviting us on a journey through time and collective history.

Featuring visionary creators from various fields, from art and contemporary dance to architecture and robotics, this lavishly illustrated book reports from the forefront of the crossdisciplinary synthesis that creates new forms of art. The project was initiated by Diana Vishneva, principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater in New York (2005-2017) and the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, and a tireless experimenter known for collaborations that have redefined the future of dance. The book presents interviews with choreographers William Forsythe and Carolyn Carlson; photographer Nick Knight; artists Bill Viola and Olafur Eliasson; architects Toyo Ito and Santiago Calatrava; robotics inventor Raffaello d'Andrea, and other creators who actively stretch the conventional limits of their fields. Included in the volume is a DVD of a film created for this project using state-of-the-art technologies to translate the language of dance into that of cinema.

Pont-Aven has lent its name to one of the most famous schools of painting in modern art and is now automatically associated with Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard. In 1888, in this Breton village in southern Finistère, the two painters set about inventing the features of a completely new style of painting: Synthetism. Breaking with academic orthodoxy and heavily influenced by Japanese prints, they introduced novel aesthetic principles distinguished especially by a belief in simple forms and the use of colour applied in large patches edged by a dark line. This approach further distanced itself from the art that preceded it in its taste for matt tones and the rejection of traditional perspective.This new book reveals to a wider public the important collection that Alexandre Mouradian amassed in only a few years. The collection reflects its creator's great passion for the artists of the Pont-Aven group, as well as others in Brittany and beyond who embraced the new ideas of Bernard and Gauguin without ever losing their individuality. Whether in painting or printmaking, each of these was able to move beyond the imitation of observed reality to express the deepest aspect of his personality: his emotions. The works selected by the collector eloquently show the international reach of what was not strictly speaking a school, in the full sense of the term. Since the private Paris academies were closed during the summer, artists from all over Europe went to Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu to seek inspiration and 'to dare' like Gauguin.Written contributions by Jean-Marie Rouart of the French Academy and the author and art historian Adrien Goetz, are supported by detailed notes on the works by the museum curator Estelle Guille des Buttes, providing invaluable insights into this exceptional collection.

The Buddhist monument of Borobudur was built in the eighth and ninth centuries on the island of Java. It is one of the most famous and studied religious buildings in the world, but it is also one of the most enigmatic. Since it was rediscovered by the West at the start of the nineteenth century, its ruins – swallowed up by the tropical jungle, suggestive of an ancient civilisation with a glorious past – have constantly been a source of fascination. Its unusual structure in the form of a tiered pyramid, its huge size, and the delicacy of its low reliefs, which include some 1,300 carved narrative panels, have ensured that Borobudur has taken its rightful place among the masterpieces of the world’s architectural heritage. However, given the absence of reliable historical documentation, a wide variety of hypotheses have been advanced to shed light on the secrets of its form, iconographic repertoire, and symbolism. Text in French.

Born into slavery around 1853-4 on a cotton plantation in Benton, Alabama, Traylor has become one of the most important self-taught artists of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most celebrated African-American artists, along with Thorton Dial and William Edmondson. The story of Bill Traylor's life and work is a remarkable one. It is a story that deserves attention both nationally and internationally. This publication, generously illustrated with full-page high-quality reproductions, provides a close examination of Traylor's recurrent themes, composition schemes, favoured iconography, and contextual information related to the artist's biography, creative process and tools, visual environment, and artistic mindset. Each artwork is considered in a context beyond that of an isolated image and in response to one another, forming a series of intricate and consistent narratives, intriguingly cinematic in its development. The elements of Traylor's biography are the anchors of an individual mythology. Instead of merely being a basic depiction, the subject becomes a visual statement structuring Traylor's mind, bringing together hidden symbols from Kongo Vodou, Hoodoo, Southern Baptist, Freemasonry, and Blues sources, as well as layers of references: slavery, uncensored violence in the Jim Crow era, and turbulence within the black enclave known as 'Dark Town' in Montgomery, Alabama. Text in English and French.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in particular Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, and later the Surrealists, then others right up till the present day, Western artists have drawn on the arts of Africa for inspiration. How can this constant impact ever be measured? The same is true for the arts in Africa. Every sculpture carries within it the heritage of a people, culture, and artistic tradition in the originality of its forms. West Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa each has its own set of characteristics, within which the variety of the sculptures - always similar yet also always different - demonstrates the creativity of the ethnic group that created it. This book presents a remarkable collection amassed by a knowledgeable and impassioned art lover that combines sensitivity with quality - a quality of forms meticulously selected among different African cultures. It includes masks and reliquaries carved in Gabon, effigies and statuettes from Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa, and astonishing objects from West Africa, from Mali to Cameroon, the Koro and Mossi peoples, the Ejagham and Ekoi in Nigeria, and the Gouro in the Ivory Coast. An extraordinary collection of artistic forms that well merits its place in the universal patrimony of art. Contents: Introduction; Le Gabon; Le royaume Kongo; Les Teke | Les Bembe | Les Zombo; Les Songye; Les Luba | Les Hemba | Les Bembe/Boyo; Les Chowke | Les Pende | Les Zande/Mangbetu; L'Afrique de l'Ouest: Les Guro | Les Senufo | Les Mossi | Les Koro | Les Fon | Les Bamileke | Les Oku | Les Mendakwe; Conclusion; English text.Text in English and French

Many of Gauguin’s portraits of Breton and Polynesian sitters, as well as his self-portraits, include inanimate objects. Intriguing as these are, the works in Paul Gauguin’s portrait gallery have never really been the subject of a thorough study. This book, first published in English in 2005, fills a gap in the scholarly literature on Gauguin, one of the leading figures in post-Impressionist art, with an in-depth, well-illustrated examination of his portraits. An array of experts on Gauguin’s art reflect on the symbolic attributes his models were endowed with, and the meaning behind the evocative settings he chose for them. The authors explore the many aspects of the artist’s portraits, often in light of the remarks he made about his models, and focus on their importance in relation to his larger oeuvre. This book, which is intended as a standard text in this field, includes essays written by experts in Gauguin’s work, all established scholars and researchers.Text in French.