Art

A carefully-integrated group of studies begins with the so-called "Chertsey" ceramic tiles, depicting combat between King Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. Found at Chertsey Abbey not far outside London and admired since the nineteenth century, we present here a new reconstruction of both the tiles and their previously-undeciphered Latin texts. The reconstruction demonstrates not only that the theme of the entire mosaic is the Crusades, but also that the overall appearance of the tiles, when laid as a floor, draws from the composition and iconography of imported Islamic and Byzantine silks. Essays illuminate specific material contexts that similarly witness western Europe's, and particularly England's, engagement with the material culture of the eastern Mediterranean, including ceramics, textiles, relics and reliquaries, metalwork, coins, sculpture, and ivories.

Faith and Empire explores the dynamic intersection of politics, religion, and art in Tibetan Buddhism. At the heart of this dynamic is the force of religion to claim political power. Covering the Tibetan, Tangut, Mongolian, Chinese, and Manchu empires from the seventh to the early twentieth century, this volume illuminates how Tibetan Buddhism presented both a model of universal sacral kingship and a tantric ritual technology to physical power. Tibetans also used the mechanism of reincarnation as a means of succession, a unique form of political legitimacy that they brought to empires to the east. Images were a primary means of political propagation, integral to magical tantric rites and embodiments of power. Through the lens of Tibetan Buddhism's potent historic political role in Asia, Faith and Empire seeks to place Himalayan art in a larger global context and shed light on an important but little-known aspect of power in the Tibetan tradition.

Fifty Early Medieval Things introduces readers to the material culture of late antique and early medieval Europe, north Africa, and western Asia. Ranging from Iran to Ireland and from Sweden to Tunisia, Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey, and Paolo Squatriti present fifty objects--artifacts, structures, and archaeological features--created between the fourth and eleventh centuries, an ostensibly "Dark Age" whose cultural richness and complexity is often underappreciated. Each thing introduces important themes in the social, political, cultural, religious, and economic history of the postclassical era. Some of the things, like a simple ard (plow) unearthed in Germany, illustrate changing cultural and technological horizons in the immediate aftermath of Rome's collapse; others, like the Arabic coin found in a Viking burial mound, indicate the interconnectedness of cultures in this period. Objects such as the Book of Kells and the palace-city of Anjar in present-day Jordan represent significant artistic and cultural achievements; more quotidian items (a bone comb, an oil lamp, a handful of chestnuts) belong to the material culture of everyday life. In their thing-by-thing descriptions, the authors connect each object to both specific local conditions and to the broader influences that shaped the first millennium AD, and also explore their use in modern scholarly interpretations, with suggestions for further reading. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Fifty Early Medieval Things demonstrates how to read objects in ways that make the distant past understandable and approachable.

A desire for intimacy in domestic spaces - motivated by a growing sense of individualistic expression, an incentive to conceal the labor or enslavement taking place, and an appetite for solace and comfort - led to interiors taking on more specific roles in the eighteenth century. By examining the architectural, visual, and material culture of eighteenth-century spaces, Intimate Interiors foregrounds the interrelated concepts of intimacy, privacy, informality, and sociability in order to show how these ideas played an increasingly integral role in the period's architectural and material design.Across eleven innovative chapters that explore issues of gender, politics, travel, exoticism, imperialism, sensorial experiences, identity, interiority, and modernity, this volume demonstrates how intimacy was a fundamental goal in the planning of private quarters. In doing so, the political nature of private spaces is uncovered, whilst highlighting the contradictions and complexities of these highly performative "private" interiors. Employing distinct methodological perspectives across various geographical sites, from Turkey to Versailles, Britain to Benin, Intimate Interiors draws as-yet untraced connections between Enlightenment Europe, imperial outposts, and major metropolitan centers across the globe.

A handsome volume of the renowned photographer's work from 2005 to 2021 Best known for his large-scale photographs, carefully constructed "near documentaries" created in collaboration with the subjects, Jeff Wall (b. 1946) is one of the most influential photographers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Often displayed as backlit color transparencies, Wall's works have helped define the use of color and painterly sensibilities in contemporary art photography. This volume collects over fifteen years' worth of new work from Jeff Wall in a lavish presentation that includes multiple gatefolds to better convey the scale of Wall's work. As a collection of Wall's most recent work, this volume will include numerous pieces that are as-yet unfamiliar to many of his fans. Chevrier's essay deftly summarizes  the varied directions of Wall's recent work and contextualizes them within the body of work that precedes this volume; de Duve's and Campany's wide-ranging conversations with the artist cover the role of performance and the effects of spontaneity and scale, respectively. Distributed for Gagosian

Rock crystal as material, mineral, symbol, and ornament.   Harder than glass, but softer than diamonds, rock crystal has sparked countless legends concerning its origins and strengths. For a long time, people assumed that this variety of quartz was water that had been solidified to form eternal ice. Since antiquity, rock crystal has been used as a remedy, for fortune-telling, in churches, and at courtly banquets. Artisans used it to create objects with a divine aura. This book assembles breathtaking artworks from antiquity to the Middle Ages, including vessels, crosses, chess pieces, amulets, and magnifying glasses. Contributors draw on a range of fields--art, mineralogy, archaeology, philology, and optics--to explore rock crystal's many angles.

Postcards of a nation embracing a new democratic technology The ubiquity of photography and social media today makes it hard to imagine a time when it was not possible for ordinary people to take their own pictures and send them with short messages over long distances. But it was revolutionary when the Eastman Kodak Company, in 1903, unveiled a new postcard camera that produced a postcard-size negative that could print directly onto a blank card. Suddenly almost anyone, amateurs and entrepreneurial photographers alike, could take a picture--of neighbors at home and at work, local celebrations, newsworthy disasters, sightseeing trips--and turn it into a postcard. This book captures this moment in the history of communications--from around 1900 to 1930--through a generous selection of what came to be known as "real photo postcards" from the extensive Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive. As the formality of earlier photography falls away, these postcards remind us that the past was occupied by people with distinct and individual stories, dramatic, humorous, puzzling and surprising.

At the end of his long, prolific life, Titian was rumored to paint directly on the canvas with his bare hands. He would slide his fingers across bright ridges of oil paint, loosening the colors, blending, blurring, and then bringing them together again. With nothing more than the stroke of a thumb or the flick of a nail, Titian's touch brought the world to life. The clinking of glasses, the clanging of swords, and the cry of a woman's grief. The sensation of hair brushing up against naked flesh, the sudden blush of unplanned desire, and the dry taste of fear in a lost, shadowy place. Titian's art, Maria H. Loh argues in this exquisitely illustrated book, was and is a synesthetic experience. To see is at once to hear, to smell, to taste, and to touch. But while Titian was fully attached to the world around him, he also held the universe in his hands. Like a magician, he could conjure appearances out of thin air. Like a philosopher, his exploration into the very nature of things channelled and challenged the controversial ideas of his day. But as a painter, he created the world anew. Dogs, babies, rubies, and pearls. Falcons, flowers, gloves, and stone. Shepherds, mothers, gods, and men. Paint, canvas, blood, sweat, and tears. In a series of close visual investigations, Loh guides us through the lush, vibrant world of Titian's touch.

For three weeks, Julio Grinblatt offered a daily appointment to meet him with his photographic archive of more than 900 photos to artists, galleries, museum directors, curators, writers and other cultural personalities. Upon entering, the participant sits in front of a wooden table, where he faces stacks and stacks of photos, carefully placed inside transparent protectors. In order to touch them, the artist requires the placement of white gloves of cotton. This action gives rise to the book Uses of Photography VII: Photos, which is part of a project by the artist called Uses of the photograph. The book is made up of 83 black and white photos. Each of the portraits is carefully copied to achieve great fidelity to the work of the artist. Includes two essays by Verónica Tell and Mónica Giron.

Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the Contemporaryinvestigates the pictorial representation of types from the sixteenth to the twenty- first century. Originating in longstanding visual traditions, including street crier prints and costume albums, these images share certain conventions as they seek to convey knowledge about different peoples. The genre of the type became widespread in the early modern period, developing into a global language of identity. The chapters explore diverse pictorial representations of types, customs, and dress in numerous media, including paintings, prints, postcards, photographs, and garments. Together, they reveal that the activation of typological strategies, including seriality, repetition, appropriation, and subversion has produced a universal and dynamic pictorial language. Typological images highlight the tensions between the local and the international, the specific and the communal, and similarity and difference inherent in the construction of identity. The first full- length study to treat these images as a broader genre, Visual Typologiesgives voice to a marginalized form of representation. Together, the chapters debunk the classification of such images as unmediated and authentic representations, offering fresh methodological frameworks to consider their meanings locally and globally, and establishing common ground about the operations of objects that sought to shape, embody, or challenge individual and collective identities.