Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd – serie

Since Seth Stein founded his practice in 1990, he has gained an international reputation and numerous awards for creating extraordinary buildings, both residential and commercial. From new-built coastal retreats to revitalised historic urban townhouses and palazzos, his architecture is always both striking and elegant: sculptural and flowing in form, light-filled, with a mastery of materials and exquisite detailing. There is a strong sense of place in his projects, as a country house curves around the contours of a ridge, making the most of its vantage over the sea, or a futuristic urban interior is juxtaposed within an elegant listed structure, revitalising it for contemporary living. Running through the practice's work is a deceptive simplicity, an exciting and innovative use of new building methods and materials, along with an intrinsic environmental sustainability. This monograph aims not only to bring together the full range of Seth Stein Architects' projects for the first time, but in doing so, to offer insights into the practice's ethos and design processes, setting them within context and exploring key issues and themes.

Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) was an American connoisseur of Lithuanian Jewish extraction who was a hugely significant figure in the evolution of the commercial art world from the late 1880s to the 1940s. This book examines his conception of connoisseurship and its impact through his famous protégés, who included Geoffrey Scott, Meyer Shapiro, John Walker and especially art historian Kenneth Clark, of Civilisation fame. This is framed through a biographical account of Berenson’s complex and duplicitous character, together with a description of his important methods for determining authorship and assigning value to Renaissance artworks. In terms of the assignation of authorship and the determination of value, Berenson remains a seminal if contradictory figure in the history of the art market, for whom the artwork was subject to a series of negotiations and the act of connoisseurship was both an aesthetic pursuit and a ‘scientific process’. Berenson’s commercial dealings ran counter to his own assertion that the connoisseur needed to be ‘disinterested’ in their consideration of art and engaged in an other-worldly ‘art in life’. The book examines Berenson’s complex and lucrative dealings with the industrialists of the American Gilded Age, including Isabella Stewart Gardner. These transactions were enmeshed in issues of authenticity and forgery, as well as inflated estimates and unscrupulous skimming from both clients and business partners, including the notorious dealer Joseph Duveen.These negotiations afforded him such celebrity and financial gain that 'everyone', as Marcel Proust once quipped, 'wanted to know about Berenson'. In this way, Berenson is not only an historic figure, but also a precursor to those sometimes slippery intermediaries who appear throughout the history of contemporary art.

This book shows how the current team at Conran & Partners is building upon this rich heritage, while also taking the firm onwards into new sectors and fresh parts of the world, embracing 21st-century challenges.

In Razzle Dazzle ‘Em, John Lahr, the lead theatre critic for The New Yorker for 21 years and a multi-award-winning biographer, captures the essence of some of Hollywood’s most influential actors and directors. This compelling collection of pen portraits offers a rare glimpse into the minds of those we see on screen. In this volume, Lahr’s profiles of Helen Mirren, Ethan Hawke, Viola Davis, Sean Penn, Julianne Moore, Todd Haynes, Cate Blanchett, Sam Mendes, Claire Danes, Judi Dench, Mike Nichols, Emma Thompson, and Al Pacino, spanning from 2000 to 2022, are brought together for the first time alongside Lahr’s award-winning essay Petrified, on stage fright. Showcasing the voices of these industry titans, Lahr masterfully explores the triumphs, challenges, and artistic processes that define the careers of these 'show-biz legends’.

This kaleidoscopic study of Antonio Canova (1757-1822), one of the most celebrated sculptors of the Neoclassical era, reconsiders his life, work and artistic legacy in the wake of the two-hundredth anniversary of his death. Pestilli here examines how critics such as Carl Ludwig Fernow and Quatremère de Quincy critically shaped both Canova’s work and its reception and delves into the striking similarities between Canova and his renowned predecessor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The narrative breathes new life into the sculptor’s art by placing it within the rich cultural context in which he and his contemporaries worked. Drawing from a wealth of sources—including hundreds of letters and original drawings—Pestilli examines a range of previously unexplored themes that will enhance the understanding of specialists and art enthusiasts alike. This study highlights Canova as a sculptor whose work will continue to resonate for years to come.

After studying painting at the Slade School of Art in London and Paris, Russell Page’s passion for plants led to a career as a professional garden designer, beginning in 1928. This book not only provides a comprehensive and insightful biography, but reveals the landscape architect’s design process from concept, through to detailing and realisation (as is more common with architectural history), and includes working drawings, from concept to presentation watercolour perspectives. It follows his career from his brief partnership with his good friend Geoffrey Jellicoe and through the 1940s and 50s when Russell lived and worked in France and enjoyed an international practice, undertaking commissions in Europe, the Middle East and North and South America. He undertook all types of gardening projects from small private gardens to parks and estates and public spaces and continued to work up until his death in 1985.In 1962, Russell Page’s book The Education of a Gardener was published and is now recognised as a classic in the field of garden and landscape design and planting. Page wrote a lot on particular topics in garden design such as colour, designing with water, and designing for particular topographies and climates, which are explored through a carefully selected range of case studies, reflecting the full scope of his work.

Henley Halebrown are multi-award-winning architects based in London, producing architecture that takes account of the way people actually use buildings and how they affect our sense of well-being. With insightful essays by founding director and architectural writer Simon Henley, this book highlights the critical thinking which is at the heart of their work.The book details twelve projects built between 2010 and 2022, mainly in the fields of housing, education and commercial space, and including both new builds and re-use. These projects are all infused with character that engenders affection in their users, as well promoting social interaction and striving for continuity rather than novelty. The buildings they produce are inherently flexible and able to accommodate changing functions. The practice’s approach to sustainability de-mystifies the technology, helping people to understand and participate in a building’s environmental performance.Each project is critically assessed by leading architects Tony Fretton, Pierre d’Avoine, Hugh Strange and Adam Khan, and critics Jay Merrick, Edwin Heathcote, Rob Wilson and Rosamund Diamond.

This unique and bold publication vividly stages an encounter between medieval and contemporary art with many unexpected resonances sounding between recent works and much earlier objects and texts.Taking as their focus the Rule of St Benedict, a book written in the sixth century which provided monks with a framework for communal living, Jessica Barker and Ed Krčma invite readers to consider assumptions about contemporary life and how these beliefs might be unsettled by historical models, specifically medieval monastic life. Exploration of the rich material culture of religious communities of the Middle Ages throws up unexpected connections with contemporary art, and a reciprocity emerges, shifting our perspectives on both medieval and contemporary ways of life. Including outstanding artworks such as the Arundel and Gorleston Psalters, and works in a variety of media by celebrated contemporary artists, including Tacita Dean and Andrea Büttner, Living by the Rule makes a compelling case for looking beyond the chronological tracing of art history.

London Transport Posters, now available in an attractive paperback edition, celebrates a century of outstanding graphic design commissioned by the Underground, London Transport, and its present-day successor, Transport for London. The book explores the organisation's pioneering role as Britain's greatest patron of poster art, a unique role developed in the early 20th century under the visionary leadership of Frank Pick. The selected artworks and posters, many published here for the first time, reflect a dazzling variety of period styles and techniques, produced by an extraordinary range of artists and designers attracted by the Underground's world-wide reputation. The resulting legacy includes works by practitioners as diverse as John Hassall, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Laura Knight, Man Ray, Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Abram Games, William Roberts, Howard Hodgkin and David Shrigley.Drawing on newly researched sources in the archives of the London Transport Museum and Transport for London, the book discusses and illustrates the different styles and themes emerging from the posters over the last hundred years. These include the contrasting approaches of commercial graphic designers and the group of modernist avant-garde artists commissioned by the Underground in the 1920s and 1930s; the use of posters to support the expansion of the Tube by attracting new audiences and selling an aspirational vision of suburbia; the important role of women in the development of poster advertising both as designers and consumers; the different uses of the transport poster during two world wars; the changing fortunes of the poster in the post-war period; and the public view of posters from 1908 to the present day.More than 250 images are drawn from the London Transport Museum's collection of over 5000 posters and artworks, which  represents the most complete graphic archive of its kind to be assembled by a single organisation over so long a period anywhere in the world.