Five Continents Editions – serie

This project grew out of the artist's fervent desire to live in close contact with the sea. To this end, Pradelli chose to move to these islands off the Sicilian coast (Lipari, Vulcano, Salina, Filicudi, Alicudi, Panarea, Stromboli) during the winter, when the light is brighter and clearer. These are not the summer Eolians, but islands shrouded in an atmosphere of profound, silent calm, with only the hiss of the sea and the unsettling rumble of the volcanoes. The project was not to produce a photographic record of the islands, but to register a personal visual journey, in which Pradelli identifies with the places themselves, feeling their pulse and portraying them in their changing moods. Pradelli has included only two human figures in his portraits of the islands: Turi the fisherman and Angela, whose simple gestures manage to encapsulate the very essence of life itself. He has chosen to work in black-and-white so as to be able to stress the powerful geometry of the landscape and the faces and in order to highlight the contrast between the white of the sky and the fire and the black of the sea and the land.

The story of Japanese design, told through works selected from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.Japanese designers' special ability to combine aesthetic tradition with contemporary visual culture and material innovation has created a distinctive and exceptionally successful design industry in Japan, which has produced such divergent icons of modern design as Sori Yanagi's Butterfly Stool, the Sony Walkman, the Honey-Pop Armchair by Tokujin Yoshioka, and the Toyota Prius. This book traces the development of Japanese design from the country's craft revival in the early twentieth century to the extraordinary objects of high technology that have been a specialty of Japanese designers since mid-century. Paola Antonelli's lively introduction provides an overview of Japan's design culture; an essay and timeline by Penny Sparke illuminate the masterpieces of modern Japanese design that are superbly reproduced in the volume's plate section.

Eclectic, eccentric and tirelessly innovative, art crafted from cut paper has experienced an exciting renaissance in recent years. Published to accompany a travelling exhibit organised by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Slash: Paper Under the Knife examines the resurgence of traditional handicraft materials and techniques in contemporary art and design. Highlighting the work of forty-five international artists, among them Olafur Eliasson, Tom Friedman, William Kentridge, and Kara Walker, the book features not only cut but also burned, torn, laser-cut, shredded and sculpted paper art.In addition, the book includes cut-paper animation, as well as cut paper incorporated in photography and fashion. Works range from small-scale intricate cuttings to large-scale architectural inventions and sculptures. With an essay by well-known decorative arts expert David Revere McFadden, this singular book reveals that, with ingenuity and craftsmanship, one of our most familiar implements can be transformed into unforgettable works of art.

First published in 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus is perhaps the most famous work of literature to deal with man's obsession with the creation of life itself, thereby supplanting God and nature. In more recent times the theme has been taken further, particularly in the world of cinema and theatre, where special-effects artists have dreamed up automata, androids, and monstrous beings of all kinds. Their experiments are virtual simulations of the divine creation of man, and as such reflect the obsessions, feelings and emotions of their creators. Driven by the urge to recreate the 'spectacle of life', these artists make their characters appear life-like and 'emerge' from the film itself, so that they remain impressed on viewers' memory. The photographs in this book illustrate the many ways that special-effects artists have recreated the human form with inanimate materials.Includes contributions by Massimo Centini (holder of the Chair of Cultural Anthropology at the Università Popolare of Turin, a member of the Scientific Committee and Department of Anthropology of the European association of Traditional Medicines. He has written numerous texts, including Guida al sacro in Europa (Newton & Compton 2000). Jonny Costantino (journalist and film critic), Mara Granzotto (teacher of photography and exhibition curator), and Georges Vercheval (founder of the Photography Museum of Charleroi).Text in English and Italian.

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.

Over the centuries, craftsmen have applied their creativity and technical skills to exploit the generous resources of Nature to marvellous effect. In this case they have employed seeds, leaves, flowers and fibres from the plant world, along with feathers, plain or iridescent shells, teeth, and fur from the animal kingdom to fashion objects of astonishing beauty, enhanced with the addition of elements in iron, copper, silver, and gold. Such materials have always provided the basis for magnificent headdresses of all varieties, including hats, caps, crowns, and headbands. In time, as the conditions of trade and pilgrimage routes improved, rare materials and manufactured products spread all over the globe, as well as new knowledge, techniques, and methods of fabrication. Each class of individual sported a distinct type of headdress: initiates and adults, hunters and warriors, religious dignitaries and healers, rulers and notables; unmarried girls, married women, and young mothers. In each case the author explains their opulence and symbolism to the reader.

The Bori is a kind of African shamanism, an animist cult centred on possession by the spirits of the ancestors, which has spread throughout West Africa. Its followers, priests (also known as Bori) and assistants are clairvoyants or faith healers. They perform ecstatic ritual dances to conjure up the djinns-spirits-that they hope will protect society and its individual members from evil powers. Faith healers (Boka) employ traditional plants to heal the sick. Although living in societies which are for the most part Islamic, women play an important role in the Bori and sometimes occupy key positions. Caroline Alida's black-and-white portraits do not depict the often brightly coloured and seductive clothes/costumes of the Bori any more than they dwell on the objects used in ritual practices. The dim natural light, which barely leaks into the confined spaces, makes all the peripheral details disappear, drawing out only the essential elements and imbuing the photos with a contemplative atmosphere.

As elsewhere in the world, mountains have been instrumental in defining identities in Switzerland. The theme has not ceased to fascinate artists and mountain landscapes have attracted photographers since the earliest days of the new art, when masterful work was produced during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Today mountain chains are seen differently, recognised as having an unsettling fragility in the face of their occupation by human beings. What remains of the myths linked to mountains? Are mountains still a source of inspiration for today's artists? How do perceptions of them shift as their populations disappear, and references are increasingly centred on an urban existence? High Altitude provides some of the answers to these questions.This book has been conceived as a companion to the Swiss photography festival, Alt. +1000, held in Rossinière, a well-known village in the foothills of the Alps. High Altitude features works of contemporary photographers who record mountains in their various and multiple states: spectacular, sublime, domesticated, constructed (even artificial!) and frightening. Young artists from around the world, many of whom live far from a mountainous environment, celebrate and challenge deeply-rooted myths, and each in his own way tries to interpret this elusive landscape. The famous landscape photographer Olaf Otto Becker (Germany 1959), renowned for his views of Greenland, has been invited to make a portrait of a natural park situated close to the festival. He was chosen for the breathtaking beauty of his work, a beauty that nonetheless reminds us that nature is being radically modified by climate change.Unspoiled nature versus mountains altered by man is the theme interpreted by talented artists, whose visions are far removed from those of tourist postcards.Text in English and French.

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.

Stunning, powerful photographs, illuminated by contributions from some of the most eminent writers, thinkers, and journalists specialising in the Middle East and foreign relations, combine to present these roadside inns found along ancient caravan routes in the Muslim world.

This book is the fruit of twelve years' study of the rituals performed by ethnic-Igbo Nigerians living in Italy. It is first and foremost a journey through the customs, rites, and ceremonies carried out in makeshift places of worship created by men and women who gather together on abandoned football pitches or in hangars. Since human vicissitudes have led to many of these rites no longer being performed in Africa, this research also tells us much about the role of memory and the importance of what once was; these rituals have now become part of our postmodern culture. The desire to reproduce an event as it was experienced in its place of origin is an unavoidable instinct that tends to build an elementary form of transnationality. These Nigerians thus turn into "healthy bearers" of a particular culture in their relations with the host population or with their compatriots, who today often seem cut off from their roots. It is ritual that makes a place sacred: the Nigerian community performs its rituals in a particularly run-down environment, but man s action turns it into a place of purity. This sense of sacredness pervades the photographs of Aniello Barone, where the darkness of the night is lit up by a "brightness" that seems to emanate from the soul of succour. The observer, the witness to the rite, man, the camera, and the actors end up as part of the same symbolic world.Text in English, French and Italian.

The first book to examine the rich jewellery traditions of the Batak people in Indonesia is a gorgeous tribute to a vanishing way of life. Batak jewellery is characterised by a wide variety of materials and forms, and has many functions: Jewels can be status symbols, badges of rank, attributes of membership of a certain age group, amulets and talismans, or simply ornaments. Men, women, small children, and even babies were once adorned with gold, silver, brass, bronze, or the gold-and-copper alloy known as suasa. Today, the Batak wear traditional jewellery only for celebrations like weddings, and these stunning works are rapidly disappearing, being melted down or sold.

'As a painter I use a realist technique, but the emblems I invent are not real. They are purely imaginative... Painting is a thing of the mind. My realism is not nature, or landscape, or still life, but the psychological world.' - Agustín Fernández.At the time of his death in 2006, Agustín Fernández (b. 1928) ranked among Cuba's most outstanding artists. Defying simple categorisation, today his work is most recognisable for its ambiguous and precariously balanced forms, erotic overtones, surreal juxtapositions, and metallic palette. This superbly illustrated book is the first comprehensive study of Fernández's work, and includes contributions by renowned critic Donald Kuspit and a team of experts. Fernández's work has been exhibited throughout Europe and North and South America, and is represented in major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work found a wider audience when one of his larger paintings was featured in the 1980 Brian de Palma film, Dressed to Kill.

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.

The first book devoted to the art of the vast South Seas island groups in the Bismarck Archipelago.

Carlos Luna, one of the foremost contemporary Cuban award-winning painters is part of a generation of Cuban artists who embrace their strong heritage and traditions but have reinvented themselves along the way. Thrumming with the spirit of Afro-Cuban tradition, Luna's works range from jacquard tapestries, works on metal sheets, and Talavera ceramic plates to mixed media on wood and largescale oil paintings. This monograph illustrates Luna's blend of influences from living and working in Cuba until 1991, then in Mexico for thirteen years, and now in Miami, since 2002. This book, lavishly illustrated, will take the reader through the artist's amazing world of bright colours and will show, by a selection of plates and details, some unpublished works as well as his renowned masterpieces. Carlos makes visible the invisible, conveying messages and lessons from his past to offer to the present and future. His work is not on the surface, it is filled with subtle embedded messages. One must know the issues to decode. Often these messages are hidden in plain sight, lessons to be learned through reflection. His towering centerpiece, El Gran Mambo, a massive six-panel painting, which stood on display at the Museum of Latin American Art in 2008, serves as a focal point for 2015's Green Machine: The Art of Carlos Luna at The Frost Art Museum in Carlos's adopted home of Miami. Text in English and French.

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.

More than any other civilisation, China is renowned for its long tradition of ceramic production, from its terracotta and stoneware works in ancient times to the imperial porcelain manufactured at Jingdezhen from the end of the fourteenth century. These works have been admired and collected over centuries for their outstanding quality and refinement. Now two hundred masterpieces from prominent private collections around the world have been brought together for the first time in a new book. The Baur Collections in Geneva, formed between 1928 and 1951, and the Zhuyuetang Collection (the Bamboo and Moon Pavilion in Hong Kong), which has been building since the late 1980s, reveal the elegance and variety of imperial monochrome porcelain wares produced during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, which followed on from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) periods. These restrained pieces - both profane and sacred - exemplify the values of simplicity and modesty espoused by classical Chinese texts. With chapters devoted to the historical, cultural and technical contexts in which these pieces were made, this book will be a key reference on Chinese monochrome ceramics for all lovers of the subject, as well as students, researchers and connoisseurs. Text in English and French with Chinese summaries.

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.

Kifwebe masks are ceremonial objects used by the Songye and Luba societies (Democratic Republic of Congo), where they are worn with costumes consisting of a long robe and a long beard made of plant fibres. As in other central African cultures, the same mask can be used in either magical and religious or festive ceremonies. In order to understand Kifwebe masks, it is essential to consider them within the cosmogony of the python rainbow, metalworking in the forge, and other plant and animal signs. Among the Songye, benevolent female masks reveal what is hidden and balance white and red energy associated with two subsequent initiations, the bukishi. Aggressive male masks were originally involved in social control and had a kind of policing role, carried out in accordance with the instructions of village elders. These two male and female forces acted in a balanced way to reinforce harmony within the village. Among the Luba, the masked figures are also benevolent and appear at the new moon, their role being to enhance fertility. Although the male and female masks fulfil functions that do not wholly overlap, they do have features in common: a frontal crest, round and excessively protruding eyes, flaring nostrils, a cube-shaped mouth and lips, stripes, and colours. Art historians and anthropologists have taken increasing interest in Kifwebe masks in recent years.

When the American art world turned toward abstract art and action painting, Francis Cunningham remained focused on figurative art and the human form. His interest never waned. This book chronicles his development over an astonishing seven decades. Presented in a nonlinear order, the arc of his work is there for the discerning eye to see. Landscapes, still life, and human forms are interrelated. Cunningham’s work reveals the connection between abstraction and representation. Their coexististence is the material and subject of this book, disclosing a new understanding of American painting by a living artist.Accompanying over 180 high quality reproductions, the artist's many facets are explored in essays by art historians and art critics, including Christopher Knight, Edward Lifson, John Walsh, and Valentina De Pasca, as well through the reminiscences of one of his life models, Regina Hawkins-Balducci.Cunningham attended the Art Students League of New York, where he studied drawing and anatomy with Robert Beverly Hale and painting with Edwin Dickinson. He became an influential master instructor, cofounding the New Brooklyn School of Life Drawing, Painting and Sculpture (1977-1983) and the New York Academy of Art in 1983. At his current age of 90, he continues to paint in his studio in Manhattan and in the rural western part of Massachusetts, known as the Berkshires. This is the first monograph devoted to his work.

This publication sets out to acquaint a European public with the Yidaki, commonly known as the didgeridoo, a captivating music instrument, and with the unique culture who produced it and with the land where it originated.

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (Ivory Coast, 1923-2014) was a self-taught artist and one of the most relevant international voices of the second half of the 20th century, not only for his visual creation, but also thanks to his contributions to other cultural fields, such as poetry, philosophy, and essay writing. In 1948 he experienced a “revelation”: from that moment on, he called himself “Cheik Nadro” (he who does not forget) and he not only undertook a philosophical research into African reality and the meaning of life, but he also began creating a monumental work of art entitled Connaissance du monde. With pen and coloured pencils on 10x15 cm (3.9x5.9 in) sheets of construction paper, he gave life to a sort of visual encyclopaedia that grew richer by the day.Another especially interesting work by this artist is Alphabet Bété, an alphabet made up of 448 monosyllabic pictograms intended to establish a connection between the European and African cultures and to inspire a sense of brotherhood.These two extremely relevant works, as well as other series of drawings by the artist, are the central nucleus of this volume, which complements the exhibition at the MoMA in New York, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound. Bouabré has been featured in all the most prestigious international venues, from the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, from the Tate Modern in London to the Portikus in Frankfurt. He was also present at the 55th Biennale in Venice, at Documenta in Kassel, and at the Bienal in São Paulo.Text in French.

This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Helen McNicoll. An Impressionist Journey at Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Quebec City, Canada 20 June 2024 to 05 January 2025. Edited by Anne-Marie Bouchard, curator of Modern Art, the volume focuses on the idea of mobility in the life of the Canadian artist Helen McNicoll (1879-1915).In the early 1900s, when women from well-to-do backgrounds were often confined to family and domestic life, Canadian Impressionist Helen McNicoll stood out for her love of travel and the discovery of new spaces. The artist emphasised painting outdoors and researching the effects of light and atmosphere that her numerous trips sustained. Her favourite subjects were scenes of everyday life, although she succeeded in offering an interpretation distinct from the Impressionists in that she focused more extensively on women’s labour.The Helen McNicoll. An Impressionist Journey exhibition presents more than 60 works by the artist, 25 of them from the Pierre Lassonde collection. Through the prism of travel, the book thus examines the themes of female independence, risk-taking, friendship, and freedom for women in the stimulating context of the struggle by English suffragettes to win the right to vote.Text in English and French.