Silvana – serie

Giacomelli's landscape is both real and invented, just as his eye is both visionary and visual. It is a pretext to represent another situation. His landscapes are 'written landscapes' in which the horizon is almost completely eliminated: a fusion of time and non-time. In his landscapes, the relationship between countryside and memory, between Giacomelli and a denied and accepted mother earth, is more dramatic, resulting in a dry and great representation. He captured the marks, material and furrows of the earth and in them he found parallels with human bodies, since the earth, in his poetics, is the flesh of man. Text in English and Italian.

Paul Guiragossian (1926-1993) is one of the most influential artists to emerge from the Arab World in the 20th century. Born to Armenian parents, survivors of the Armenian Genocide, he experienced the consequences of exile, first as a child, and later on as a young refugee from Jerusalem arriving to Beirut in the late 1940s.In the '50s Paul started teaching art in several Armenian schools and worked as an illustrator. He later started his own business with his brother Antoine painting cinema banners, posters, and drawing illustrations for books. Soon after he was discovered for his art and introduced to his contemporaries after which he began exhibiting his works in Beirut and eventually all over the world.

Arman 1975–2005, edited by Chiara Spangaro and produced by Studio Celant in collaboration with the Arman Archives, New York, is devoted to the artist’s creative journey and production of the last 30 years of his life.The volume, which continues and completes the earlier monograph Arman 1954–1974 edited by Germano Celant (2020), presents the professional biography and oeuvre of the French-American artist through original research that addresses in detail the evolution of his practice and investigates his constant exploration in the many series he conceived, including New Accumulations, Shooting Colors, Dirty Painting, Atlantis, Accumulations de collections, Emersions, and Sandwich Combos, just to mention a few.In addition to the editor’s introductory essay, the volume is further enriched by a series of studies by Cécile Debray, Rose­mary O’Neill and Jérôme Sans. The authors draw on contemporary critical discourse to investigate key aspects of Arman’s work, including his performances, his global outreach, the development of his monumental projects, and his influence on subsequent generations.These essays are followed by an extensive illustrated chronology of Arman’s professional and personal life that highlights the outstanding events, exhibitions, and works in the last 30 years of his artistic endeavours. Particular emphasis is placed on the many critical accolades he has received, interwoven with accounts of the historic and artistic context of the time. The volume is completed by a full scholarly apparatus.

This book is published on the occasion of an exhibition in Milan, which was first shown in Murcia (Spain) and after in Siena (September 2009 - January 2010), featuring a selection of 114 pictures, some of which are previoiusly unpublished, almost all of small size, by the famous American photographer Francesca Woodman. Born in Denver in 1958, daughter of the ceramist Betty and the painter George Woodman, Francesca started to work with the camera when she was only thirteen, by making her first self-portrait. In the nine following years, before her suicide in January 1981 when she was only twenty-three, she kept on taking pictures of herself at home, in the midst of nature, on her own or with friends, while in action shots or in studied poses. With texts by Isabel Tejeda, Marco Pierini and Lorenzo Fusi, a biography of the artist and a complete bibliography, this book is the most recent and most complete publication of the artist's work. Text in English and Italian.

What do we see when we observe? What do we see when we observe a photograph? Ghirri's work is distinguished by the tension between the object and its representation, and there is nothing that he loves more than those situations in which boundaries become permeable; his work has taught us a new way of seeing, giving meaning to what is seemingly obvious. This is not the landscape that is normally perceived, but the one that is supposed to be latent, inscribed on the reverse: landscape of memory and fairytale, the landscape of hidden figures and wonders. In this direction, Ghirri has always preferred common and familiar places, already seen, but for the first time 'observed' with different eyes, where everything is suspended between past and future and where, like in the countryside, the world can be imagined as a vision which still arouses wonder. A thought-landscape. Text in English and Italian.

The dramatic events of the troubled life of Caravaggio, one of the most formidable painters in the history of art of all time, are retraced in this volume, updated in light of the latest discoveries, and published on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of his documented birth in Milan in 1571. Examined here are the most significant circumstances that shattered, in just 14 years, the brief course of the great Lombard genius’ professional life: from his arrival in Rome in 1596 to his tragic and still mysterious death in Porto Ercole in 1610. A compelling story that exerts an irresistible attraction, perhaps equal to that emanating from the artist’s masterpieces, in which his innermost essence shines through.His exceptional works, characterised by ingenious intuitions and a revolutionary way of painting, are here rigorously analysed, for the first time on a large scale, not only from a historical and stylistic point of view but also from a technical- executive one. A methodology that in recent years has become one of the essential components for a full understanding of the Caravaggio phenomenon. It is for this reason that the historical-artistic files of the autograph works are flanked by specific technical-diagnostic notes that complete and integrate the reading of his extraordinary paintings.

The immense ambition and scale of Gordon Matta-Clark's projects, and their fearless reimagining of the urban landscape, challenged city-dwellers to reconsider the very notion of built structure and the fragility of seemingly unassailable edifices. Matta-Clark's first interventions took place in abandoned, derelict structures, upon which he performed his famous 'building cuts' and 'intersects'. First published in 2008 (for a show at SMS Contemporanea in Siena), and organised thematically and chronologically, this substantial volume looks at these and other bodies of work, such as the Food restaurant, the performances, the 'estates' and the artist's pursuit of alternative economical housing. The catalogue also includes a filmography and critical essays, plus an interview done by Judith Russi Kirshner in 1978. Text in English and Italian.

Throughout the nineteenth century, artists painted the Seine, its light, its banks, its bridges and its ports. Above all, however, it was the impressionists and their emulators, careful observers of modern life, who made it their favourite subject. From dawn to dusk, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Gustave Caillebotte and Armand Guillaumin never grew weary of observing the play of reflections on the surface of the water. Often the Seine also enchanted Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of independence for seventeen African countries, the Museum for Fine Arts in Brussels in partnership with the Royal Museum of Central Africa presents during Summer 2010 the festival L'AFRIQUE VISIONNAIRE (VISIONARY AFRICA). This catalogue is published to accompany an exhibition celebrating fifty years of African photography, illustrating how collective identities of postcolonial Africa were built. Panafricanism has become something concrete in the exchange between artists, above all in connection with the elaboration of common aesthetic and research. Photography, in the process of emancipation and the writing of an endogenous history, is undoubtedly the best support: African photographers' innovative role will therefore be highlighted in the process of understanding generational and social changes. The catalogue will include an introduction by Simon Njami and a text by Jean-Loup Pivin.

Magnum Photographers on Film Sets takes readers behind the scenes of cinematic masterpieces including Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (with W. Eugene Smith), Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (with Elliott Erwitt), Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (with Dennis Stock), Orson Welles' The Trial (with Nicolas Tikhomiroff), John Huston's Moby Dick (with Erich Lessing), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer (with Burt Glinn), Andrzej Zulawski's L'important c'est d'aimer (with Jean Gaumy), Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (with Bruce Davidson) and Volker Schlöndorff's Death of a Salesman (with Inge Morath). The publication features both classic and rarely-seen photos of Hollywood's finest such as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Charlton Heston, Dustin Hoffman, Buster Keaton, Klaus Kinski, John Malkovich, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, Anthony Perkins, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, Natalie Wood and many more. Text in English, Italian and French.

This volume retraces the work of Elliott Erwitt through 136 black & white photographs he has personally selected. His is a sharp and original gaze capable of gently bringing out the humorous, unusual or even ridiculous side of certain aspects of life, especially through street snapshots: "It is a matter of reacting to what you see, without preconceptions; you can find subjects to photograph everywhere, all it takes is simply to notice things, take an interest in what surrounds us, and be concerned with people."Text in English, Italian and French.

Featuring over 100 black-and-white photographs, this collection of Bischof's images conveys his sense of empathy and humanity.Text in English, Italian and French.

This book coincides with a related exhibition presented at Palazzo Madama, Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Turin, but does not specifically document the show. Throughout her long career, Eve Arnold photographed celebrities and Hollywood stars at the height of glamour - such as Marilyn Monroe (a close friend of Arnold's), Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich - as well as the poor and dispossessed. Her work was sought out by presidents, royalty and political activists: Malcolm X personally asked Eve Arnold to document his fight against racism. For her international work, which took her from Afghanistan to Mongolia and was often commissioned by leading magazines, she received numerous honours and awards, culminating in her election as Master Photographer, the world's most prestigious photographic honour. Eve Arnold includes a biography of the artist, a foreword by Angela Madesani and text by Arnold's close friend Simonetta Agnello Hornby.  Text in English, Italian and French.

The graphics range from the advertising produced for the first steam ships of the 1880s to those for the ocean liners of the 1920s, cruise liners of the 1930s and, finally, those for the last transatlantic lines in the 1960s. Posters: The Sea Voyage collects placards, posters, announcements, advertising leaflets, brochures and pamphlets produced to promote passenger ships, cruises, sea journeys and Atlantic crossings. In addition to identifying these graphics, text by architect and scholar Pablo Piccione contextualises and historicises the development of Italian graphic styles and tastes. Text in English and Italian.

For leading magazines like Life and Regards, David Seymour covered the most significant events of his time: the Spanish Civil War; the places and faces of a Europe ravaged by the Second World War; the hopes placed in the new State of Israel. He also documented a post-war Italy filled with contradictions: the rising stars of the Cinecittà Studios, the Vatican palaces and Venice, along with religious processions and the small rural schools scattered through the South. This volume traces the career of this extraordinary photographer through over 120 shots in black and white. A man who honestly captured the spirit of his time, backed by a strong social conscience, and always determined to be in the middle of the action.Text in English, Italian and French.

The elusive oeuvre of the German photographer Herbert List is hard to categorise. He worked in almost every genre that photography has to offer: architecture, still life, street-photography, portraiture, documentation and cataloguing. Yet he also blurred the demarcation between those fields: architectural shots seem like composed still lifes or surreal compositions, documentation of the Greek sculpture or African artefacts borders on portraiture, and when capturing the classical beauty of the male physique, one does not quite know if we look at painstakingly composed arrangements or a private photo-diary, shot spontaneously. With this book we invite the reader to discover List's multifaceted work, by exploring many masterpieces and some lesser known work side by side. The result is a visual journey leading from enigmatic night shots, surreal and dark compositions, to the Mediterranean sunlight on the bodies of young men and the ruins of ancient Greece. Text in English, Italian and French.

Through frames, documents, publicity materials, texts, original screenplays, extracts from interviews, letters and declarations, this book traces the fundamental stages of Neorealism and puts the spotlight back on that unrepeatable moment which still fascinates and moves us today, capturing the reflection of what we were and the presage of what we were to become. Text in English and Italian.

Who other than Henri Matisse's daughter Marguerite could describe his engraving in this way? Responsible for validating her father's press-proofs, she is, along with her son Claude Duthuit, the author of this catalogue raisonné of his engravings. She has devoted a large part of her life to allowing this 'unknown continent' to be discovered which is nevertheless essential in understanding the progression of an artist known above all for his mastery of colour.The Matisse Departmental Museum, with the help of the Matisse family, Barbara Duthuit, and some most prestigious institutions, explores in this catalogue all of the engraving techniques used by Matisse from 1900 up to the end of his life. For him, engraving, drawing, painting, and sculpture all had the same importance, and in this work all the key themes that led him to build his research around the human figure, are represented.For the very first time the matrices (woodcut, lithograph, drypoint, etching, linocut...) accompany the works and help us to understand that high standards and hard work, along with an economy of means, led Matisse to transform black into a colour that he used to serve the purity of line.Text in English and French.

Who other than Henri Matisse's daughter Marguerite could describe his engraving in this way? Responsible for validating her father's press-proofs, she is, along with her son Claude Duthuit, the author of this catalogue raisonné of his engravings. She has devoted a large part of her life to allowing this 'unknown continent' to be discovered and which is nevertheless essential in understanding the progression of an artist known above all for his mastery of colour. The Matisse Departmental Museum, with the help of the Matisse family, Barbara Duthuit, and some most prestigious institutions, explores in this catalogue all of the engraving techniques used by Matisse from 1900 up to the end of his life. For him, engraving, drawing, painting, and sculpture all had the same importance, and in this work all the key themes that led him to build his research around the human figure, are represented. For the very first time the matrices (woodcut, lithograph, drypoint, etching, linocut...) accompany the works and help us to understand that high standards and hard work, along with an economy of means, led Matisse to transform black into a colour that he used to serve the purity of line. Text in English and French.

The first previously unpublished series of photographs - Residents of New York - was produced in the artist's hometown in 2014 and the second - Denizens of Brussels - in March 2015 in close cooperation with the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts during preparations for Serrano's retrospective in Brussels, when he walked the streets of the capital for ten nights to encounter the most marginal of its inhabitants. With his unique vision, making no judgements and conveying no political message (a point he insists on), he presents men and women generally invisible to passersby, forcing us by the sheer power of his photographs to see these urban residents. The text is by Michel Draguet, and Andres Serrano himself talks about his approach, the two series and the specific qualities of each. Text in English, French and Dutch.

The question of the portrait in the exploration of signs of the times, the dead body in a classical presentation of pictorial inspiration, the abstract space of the studio and the artist's recent immersion in the city, violence in the relationship with the other on the path from procreation to creation, poverty and its relation to place, religious feeling and the collective dynamics of the group portrait are some of the subjects Andres Serrano addresses. The questions he poses give rise to debate and sometimes violence. These freely chosen subjects are thus joined by themes imposed on the work, namely vandalism and censorship. Four experts develop an original discourse on Serrano's work: Nathalie Dietschy, PhD in art history at the University of Lausanne, a specialist on the figure of Christ in contemporary art; Jan Koenot, Jesuit, theologian, PhD in philosophy and specialist on contemporary art; Germano Celant, art critic and specialist on contemporary art, currently artistic director of the Prada Foundation in Milan; Quentin Bajac, curator of photography at the Musée d'Orsay and currently chief curator of photography at the MoMA in New York.

Today, the relationship between art and politics is more crucial than ever, and the volume Crusades and Other Stories is significant for its production of knowledge, new perspectives, and reflection through shared sensibilities about our contemporary time of unrest and uncertainty.Wael Shawky works with an original visual language in video, drawing, and performance that draws on histories of oral storytelling and recreation. In so doing, Shawky opens a foundational debate that explores the construction of history universally to look at how narratives of the past are controlled and rewritten in order to define present and future understandings of the world.Adopting a vocabulary of theatre and cinema, and mixing forms of aesthetics and production, Wael Shawky's films are performances of the reconstruction of well-known and sometimes disputed tales, myths, and legends that interrogate human histories as creative spectacle. Child actors in the series Al Araba Al Madfuna and hand-crafted marionettes in the Cabaret Crusades trilogy intentionally exaggerate the meaning of the roles they play in a statement on the theatricality of existence.Text in English and Arabic.

The images and the articles preserved by Maria Callas are often enhanced by autograph annotations revealing the names of the people portrayed alongside her, on special occasions or simply in moments of her everyday life. This volume is thus an ideal album of the Divina's memories, fully respecting the order and the themes she favoured, highlighting the sacrality of her personal objects, her career, and her unbridled passion for fashion and elegance. Text in English and Italian.

Through photographs, plans, sketches, text and quotations, this volume looks back at the 50-year career of Italian architect and designer Mario Bellini (born 1935), examining his buildings, museums, fairground complexes, international competitions and major exhibition designs.  Text in English and Italian.

Pierre Alechinsky: Marginalia highlights an aspect of the artist's work that is perhaps less familiar: his long-standing interest in the illustrated book. This fascination has fed Alechinsky's collaborative projects with writers and his incorporation of 'marginal remarks' into his own monumental paintings over many years. Maintaining a deep engagement with the written word in literary and painting contexts, Alechinsky has worked with writers such as André Breton, Eugene Ionesco, Christian Dotremont, Roger Caillois, Hélène Cixous, Joyce Mansour, Michel Butor, Hugo Claus, E.M. Cioran, Marcel Moreau, Pierre-Andre Benoit and Roland Topor. Pierre Alechinsky: Marginalia presents Alechinsky in three characteristic modes - as reader, illustrator and artist. Text in English and French.

The 'imaginary' journey that Gastel has developed through publication in magazines - from Vogue Italia to Harper's Bazaar - advertisement campaigns - from Dior to Guerlain - and exhibitions - from Gastel per Donna to Maschere e Spettri - is displayed through the reconstruction of forty years of experimental and commissioned work, in which 'serial' ensembles and individual products highlight the features of his storytelling, his unique use of light and his comparisons between people and objects.The goal is to document his operating method, based on the analysis and presentation of a subject in series: still life, portrait, fashion shot and personal research.

Born in Iraq in 1966, Mahmoud Obaidi's artistic career is marked by transition, conflict, fragmentation and exile. Encompassing sculpture, conceptual objects, film and painting, his work is a series of politically-charged fragments which are herewith brought together within this publication and exhibition.This book captures the multiple elements that constitute Obaidi's work. In addition to literature, film, music and installation, he has also embarked on architectural projects, such as the Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha where he produced drawings and worked with civil engineers to design this structure.War, terrorism, pollution and ecology are just some of the topics that are filtered through his work. The central display structure of the exhibition - the rope - evokes Duchamp's Twine (1942), which is here re-purposed into the precarious connecting device that holds each element together. As is always present within Obaidi's work, however, connection and unity has the potential to be broken through war and its capacity to segregate and isolate. The taut rope holding everything together is quickly broken with the cut of a knife.

Using Caravaggio's The Cardsharps as the focus, we may understand how the three figures depicted are set in contrast: by social class, age and appearance. These differences are underpinned by the clothing that they wear, and on closer examination, it is apparent that the fabrics described in paint are directly comparable to those of the historic collections of Novara.In their insightful and detailed analysis, the authors of this volume present a comprehensive overview of the development of fashion and fabrics, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, when Italy's textile industry was at its peak.Text in English and Italian.

Ewa-Mari Johansson's work is endowed with a sort of internal coherence that appears as stages of a single dialectic path without a real beginning or a definite end. But it has developed in a circular manner - often returning to investigate the same field, but each time with a different and heightened critical and aesthetic awareness. Text in English and Italian.