The history and art of one of the most important suburban aristocratic residences of the 16th century, among the oldest and most beautiful in the Alps Illustrated by spectacular images, which are the result of a special photographic campaign conducted by Massimo Listri, this volume documents the architecture and rich artistic treasures of the famous residence, which is the only example in the Trentino region of a suburban villa from the Council period of the mid-16th century characterized by a portico and loggia arrangement, typical of Veronese architecture of the time. Inside the villa, Italian, Flemish, and German artists created frescoed decorations of the highest quality, including the cycle of 12 frescoes dedicated to the victories of Charles V, those depicting episodes from the Old and New Testaments, and those depicting the 12 months of the year. Alongside these extraordinary frescos, the book presents sculptures and furniture, mainly from the Flemish and German area, and wooden metopes painted with grotesques and male and female portraits that can be traced back to specialists in this type of decoration, influenced by the engraving art of the time.
Lighting, whether for domestic use or for the grander areas of public or private spaces of ministerial buildings or post offices, of theatres or hotels, represents an important constituent of Murano glass production. The Venini firm distinguished itself with significant results also in this sector, particularly because of its constant ability to modernise and its characteristic openness to the world of design, aspects which made it a reference point for the foremost national and international architects. This volume, which covers a period from 1921 to 1985, illustrates the work of the glassworks in the area of lighting, on the larger or smaller scale, giving an overview of the most significant projects. More than five hundred cards, accompanied by a considerable body of hitherto mostly unpublished iconographic illustrations, document an unremitting activity made up of numerous projects of historical and cultural importance, among which those carried out in collaboration with Angiolo Mazzoni in the 1930s, the production of the velarium of Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 1951, the large installation by Carlo Scarpa for Italia 61 in Turin, the Fulda theatre in Germany in 1978 etc. A careful selection of works tells of the transformation of Venini lamps, their form and their material: from the elegant reworking of the traditional chandelier with arms to the new fixtures with modular elements, from Vittorio Zecchin to Carlo Scarpa, from Massimo Vignelli a Ludovico Diaz de Santillana. The volume, with material coming from the historic Venini archive and for the greater part unpublished previously, is also accompanied by a rich documentary apparatus made up of a substantial corpus of graphic illustrations (catalogue drawings, preparatory drawings for the Blue Catalogue and the pages of the Red Catalogue) for a total of more than four hundred images that contribute to telling the extraordinary story of the Venini company and light.
Luciano Ventrone (1942-2021) was discovered in 1983 by Federico Zeri, who defined him as the "Caravaggio of the 20th century" and encouraged him to apply his talent to still life. Thus began his long research into various aspects of nature, as he captured more and more details which are otherwise almost invisible to "eyes bombarded by millions of images", such as those of people of our era. In each of his exhibitions, Ventrone's paintings are seen by tens of thousands of people who come to be astonished. He established himself as a true master of figuration, displaying an extraordinary virtuosity with few precedents in the history of art. He is a painter of hyperbole, and indeed, more than hyper-realistic, his iconic still lifes - renowned in all five continents - are hyperbolic, exaggerated, and baroque. Over the decades, his work has commanded the attention of critics and art historians, including Federico Zeri, Giorgio Soavi, Roberto Tassi, Achille Bonito Oliva, Vittorio Sgarbi, Marco Di Capua, Antonello Trombadori, Edward Lucie-Smith, Angelo Crespi, Beatrice Buscaroli, Evgenia Petrova and Victoria Noel-Johnson. One year on from his death, in collaboration with the foundation that bears his name, the General Catalogue of Luciano Ventrone's works has been published. By identifying the Master's authentic works over more than fifty years of painting, the monograph will surprise his admirers, revealing pictorial periods and cycles rarely exhibited or published before now, with genuine "finds" coming from private collections around the world.
The Fondazione Henraux collection is dedicated to modern and contemporary art, featuring works by Italian and international artists of the calibre of Henry Moore, Jean (Hans) Arp, Isamu Noguchi, Joan Miró and many others. The original core of works was created in the 50s and 60s when Henraux decided, thanks to the insight of the administrator at the time, Erminio Cidonio, to focus on non-figurative statuary. In that process, she forged a close collaboration with the English sculptor Henry Moore, which gave rise to a highly-respected centre for contemporary sculpture. In only a few years, the company's factories began projects with artists such as Henri Georges Adam, Jean (Hans) Arp, Emile Gilioli, Georges Vantongerloo, Pablo Serrano, Joan Mirò, Alicia Penalba, François Stahly, Costantino Nivola, Isamu Noguchi, Maria Papa, Pietro Cascella and Giò Pomodoro. The collection was comprised of a number of large and medium format works some of which, once Cidonio was no longer administrator, were taken over by the Banca Commerciale Italiana, owner of the company. Since 2011, with the establishment of the Foundation, the collection has been steadily enriched by new acquisitions, activities associated with the Premio Henraux and initiatives to support artists and institutions with which the Foundation collaborates. There is also a plan to create an exhibition space and a museum of the business that displays the collection and documents the history of the company, from its founding in 1821 up to today, through the events and major works created in Italy and abroad over the course of nearly two centuries. Currently an industry leader for the extraction and processing of marble products, Henraux began in 1821 when Marco Borrini of Seravezza purchased part of the marble field on Monte Altissimo (a site explored around 1518 by Michelangelo) and founded a company to re-open and exploit the quarries with the French Jean Baptiste Alexandre Henraux. The company enjoyed an extraordinary, rapid success, receiving numerous prestigious orders, including one in 1845 from the Tzar of Russia for the St Petersburg Cathedral, another between 1945 and 1962 for the grand reconstruction of the Abbey of Montecassino and, beginning in the 60s, the fruitful, long-lasting relationship with the famous sculptor Henry Moore.
Andrea Bianconi's Stupidity Exercise Manual is a collection of drawings that describe actions which no rational person would ever think of performing. "Bark like a dog in the presence of a dog", "Take a big, empty box and put it over your head", "Beg a door to open", "Look at the rainbow with someone who's colour-blind". Bianconi recommends doing one of these exercises every day for at least 10 minutes because, he explains, stupidity training is easily lost. Designed to take its place in anyone's home, the manual is a genuine artist's book in the form of spiral-bound postcards with a free-standing cover (like a table calendar) so that it can be displayed as a work of art. The rationale for this operation fits into a long-standing artistic tradition. Paraphrasing David Byrne, "The Dadaists used nonsense to make sense of a world that didn't make sense", Bianconi enthusiastically and optimistically declares, "Doing meaningless things is great because it imbues the meaningless with meaning." The purpose of the actions described in Bianconi's drawings is not so much to become stupid (perhaps we're already there), but to do so in the right way. The book is curated by critic and journalist Luca Fiore.
The art of Arabic calligraphy originates in the transcription of the Quranic revelation, an expression of faith in God, as well as the beauty and harmony of Arabic script. Over the course of a millennia, it has been enhanced, codified, stylized, and lent itself to abstraction. In 2022, following an initiative led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in a collaboration between a total of 16 Arabic speaking countries, Arabic calligraphy was inscribed on UNESCO¿s Intangible Cultural Heritage List, thus testifying to its immense value for humanity. Organized by the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the second edition of the Scripts and Calligraphy: Paths to the Soul exhibition and catalog focus on four complementary themes: Light, Letter, Space, and Poetry, all of which shed light on the spirituality that infuses both the reflection and techniques of the calligrapher, and the emotion that Arabic calligraphy arouses in those who read it and contemplate it. The exhibition gracefully interlaces classical and contemporary artworks, thus creating a constant dialogue between past and present. It casts light on Arabic calligraphy as both an ancient craft and a modern art. It will be presented initially in Qasr Khuzam, a palace in Jeddah dating from the first quarter of the twentieth century (23rd February ¿ 23rd May 2023), and then in JAX, Diriyah ¿ a contemporary exhibition space in Riyadh (23rd June ¿ 15th September 2023). Scripts and Calligraphy: Paths to the Soul catalogue is an invitation to embark on an intimate journey of discovery and reflection on Arabic calligraphy, which represents an inherent part of the culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It constitutes a personal encounter with calligraphy as a sublimation of the cultural treasure that the Arabic alphabet embodies.
The art of Arabic calligraphy originates in the transcription of the Quranic revelation, an expression of faith in God, as well as the beauty and harmony of Arabic script. Over the course of a millennia, it has been enhanced, codified, stylized, and lent itself to abstraction. In 2022, following an initiative led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in a collaboration between a total of 16 Arabic speaking countries, Arabic calligraphy was inscribed on UNESCO¿s Intangible Cultural Heritage List, thus testifying to its immense value for humanity. Organized by the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the second edition of the Scripts and Calligraphy: Paths to the Soul exhibition and catalog focus on four complementary themes: Light, Letter, Space, and Poetry, all of which shed light on the spirituality that infuses both the reflection and techniques of the calligrapher, and the emotion that Arabic calligraphy arouses in those who read it and contemplate it. The exhibition gracefully interlaces classical and contemporary artworks, thus creating a constant dialogue between past and present. It casts light on Arabic calligraphy as both an ancient craft and a modern art. It will be presented initially in Qasr Khuzam, a palace in Jeddah dating from the first quarter of the twentieth century (23rd February ¿ 23rd May 2023), and then in JAX, Diriyah ¿ a contemporary exhibition space in Riyadh (23rd June ¿ 15th September 2023). Scripts and Calligraphy: Paths to the Soul catalogue is an invitation to embark on an intimate journey of discovery and reflection on Arabic calligraphy, which represents an inherent part of the culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It constitutes a personal encounter with calligraphy as a sublimation of the cultural treasure that the Arabic alphabet embodies.
Bologna-based painter Puglisi's "Il Grande Sacrificio"--a wood panel painting with strong, gestural strokes of white on black--is exhibited alongside "The Last Supper" in Milan as an homage to Leonardo da Vinci on the 500th anniversary of his death. This volume documents Puglisi's work alongside sketches and preliminary studies.y studies.
This highly anticipated monograph for celebrated British artist, Kate Malone (b.1959) abounds with beautiful illustrations of her exceptional works of art Renowned for her unique and highly skilled handling of clay, this publication demonstrates how Malone's pots distil the power and energy of nature. Personal observations and fantastical translations of growth patterns and natural abundance continue to inspire her whilst captivating an ever-increasing audience. The book also explores Malone's dedication to glaze research, illustrating a life's work in the treatment and development of her signature crystalline glazes. Step into her studio and witness how, with an alchemist's touch, pure forms in bisque-fired clay are transformed with an astonishing array of unique and magnetically coloured glazes. Critical essays from University of Cambridge-Art Historian and BAFTA-nominated broadcaster Dr. James Fox and Freelance Journalist, Writer and Editor, Emma Crichton-Miller explore Malone's background, inspirations and standing within her artistic field.
Georgy Frangulyan (b. 1945) creates monumental, classical figurative sculptures including many public works. This monograph is the first book to consider the life and work of this ¿Off-modern¿ artist; that is, one who exists on the margins of modern art history and at the margins of error of major philosophical, economic, and technological narratives of modernization and progress. It considers his work in light of the context of Social Realism, the Cold War, the avant garde. The core of the book is a survey of 30 monumental works and sculptures as well as a thorough exploration of craftsmanship in his work, his training at the Stroganov Academy, the oldest university of applied and industrial art in Russia, his use of bronze, and the way the work exists on the periphery of the global market. Frangulyan¿s sculptures are in many collections: the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, both in Moscow, at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Albertina Museum in Vienna, the Museo Dantesco in Ravenna, the Municipal Library of Colmar (France), the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, museums in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Berdyansk (Ukraine), the museum collections of Sochi, Tambov, and Kaliningrad (Russian Federation), as well as private collections in Italy, the US, France, Sweden, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. The artist is based in Moscow, working in a studio housed in an antique wooden villa, located in the center of the city, which features a foundry and a gallery of sculpture, paintings, and drawings. The book includes prefaces by two curators associated with the Garage in Moscow, Ruth Addison and Valentin Diaconov.
This book provides insights on Farah Ossouli¿s artistic pursuits with miniature painting, explains the historical background of Iranian Contemporary and the challenges of contemporary image making in the new political and social climate. Farah Ossouli (born in 1953 in Zandschan, lives and works in Tehran) has explored innovative approaches to the medium painting, most commonly through juxtaposition of images and texts that scrutinize preconceptions about gender and race while undermining collective assumptions in post-revolutionary Iran. A hallmark of her paintings are exceptionally fine miniatures; her subjects are figurative but nevertheless not easily deciphered. Even through titles can identify what is portrayed, they often only hint at a possible interpretation of the picture. Through most of her works have a private character, Ossouli refers to historical events and occurrences with collective memory internationally, which still disturbs to this day. Ossouli can interpret history through an artwork, since the aesthetics of representation creates a challenge to the ethics of what is represented. The aesthetic quality of the paintings is what first allows the viewers to address his content. The dissolution of subjectivity and its rearticulation in miniature compositions is a major trope. Early on Ossouli began to use mirrors to facilitate this process ¿ as myth and metaphor doubling and redoubling a fragmented vision ¿ returning the viewer to that moment of ego formation described by Jacques Lacan as the mirror stage. Farah Ossouli¿s paintings, gouaches, conceptual miniature works, drawings, artist books and texts since the mid-1970s have been characterized by a keen awareness how the conditio humana is a product of its representation in mass media. She has developed a unique aesthetic practice committed to a metaphorical and feminist narration. For more than four decades, Ossouli has been delving into the violent peripheries of a society mediated by images, in genuine compositions whose fine surfaces contain an unsettling visual poetics, political allure, and hope. Her works are monumental sites of confrontation with ideologies that manipulate and often obliterate the individual. This corporal trauma is expressed in an almost documentary realism with the elements of classical Persian Miniature Paintings that presents little more than the bare facts, it is also reflected in every aspects of composition, from the projection of contemporary political issues and the removal of entire sections in the narration, to unnerving collapse of the figure with space it occupies.
Taking its title from a 2017 painting by the American artist Nicole Eisenman held in the collection, this publication brings together recent acquisitions that question the meanings and functions of figuration in contemporary art. As the very definitions of truth have eroded dramatically in recent years, many contemporary artists - especially those working in the United States - have proceeded to analyze, interrogate, and deconstruct the notion of realism. Dark Light brings together work from an emerging group of artists who are investigating new approaches to figurative imagery through autobiography, depictions of the body, and the influence of new technologies, along with contributions by important predecessors who have anticipated current discussions around representation and verism. The recent acquisitions featured in Dark Light include important works by established painters such as Etel Adnan, George Condo, Karen Kilimnik, Maria Lassnig, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Peter Saul, and Joan Semmel, presented in dialogue with an intergenerational group of artists including Louise Bonnet, Cecily Brown, Shara Hughes, Lucy McKenzie, Laura Owens, Christina Quarles, Henry Taylor, and Matthew Wong.
"Barkley L. Hendricks is rightly known as one of the foremost American painters of the late 20th century. His six-decade artistic oeuvre encompasses not only portraits but also includes evocative landscapes, hard-edged geometric abstractions, lush watercolors on paper and singular photographs informed by his studies with Walker Evans. This final publication of a five-volume set dedicated to the artist is a 300-page monograph that captures his full evolution as a portraitist. Solid! is a compilation of Hendricks' acclaimed figurative paintings: large-scale canvases of distinctively dressed (or undressed) individuals, including several self-portraits, against solid-color backgrounds. Critical essays from curators and fellow artists provide further, often personal, insight into all aspects of Hendricks' practice: probing his photographic experimentation as a forbear to contemporary street photography; celebrating his sensitivity as a colorist whose unique expertise seamlessly combines oil-based and water-based pigments; and highlighting the observational genuineness in his provocative and personal interpretations of women, of unapologetically visible queer identities and of his own beloved Black communities across the African Diaspora. The book closes with a conversation between Trevor Schoonmaker and Barkley's widow, Susan Hendricks, in which she recounts their trips to Jamaica and Barkley's process for creating landscape and fruit paintings outdoors." --
As the presence of AI and digital tools is growing in our lives, the computer has become a new medium of expression for the artist. This art technique is also a language. Art Must Be Artificial: Perspectives of AI in the Visual Arts presents the historical and current art practices of leading international and Saudi artists using computer technology, spanning from the 1960s until today. This exhibition aims to question the nature and aspects of the most accomplished computational and robotic artworks through the historic perspective of the pioneers of computer art. With a majority of artworks from the Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation's comprehensive computing art collection, the exhibition includes more than thirty artists from fifteen countries, representing four generations of this innovative, creative practice. Organized by the Saudi Ministry of Culture and presented at the soon-to-open Diriyah Art Futures in Riyadh, the inaugural exhibition is curated by Jerome Neutres, a leading expert in the field who theorized the concept of ¿Computing art¿ and has been examining most of the participating artists' work for more than twenty years. The exhibition focuses on how the pioneers of yesterday and the emerging figures of today are depicting a meaningful history of the evolution of the homo digitalis, the new human civilization. It aims to demonstrate that digital technology is a true medium of art, opening infinite visual possibilities, rather than an experimental school or a fad art movement. The exhibition highlights some of the specificities of this new art medium: how it has placed the viewer at the heart of the artistic experience, how it presents the dream of an unlimited artwork, close to an organic creation¿it is art with a nervous system. In our algorithmic era, technology and art inspire each other. Artists are perhaps the best mediators to question the complex and numerous issues of this new world. Because imagination is an artificial reality, art must be artificial.
Starting in the 1960s with the first examples of visual artworks that Azzawi conceived as books and his earliest reimaginings of entire poems in the book form, through to the shattering war diaries during the Gulf War, the introduction of limited-edition printed books and the experimental dissolution of the medium into sculptural objects, this is a lesser-known, private side of Azzawi's practice that has never been seen before. While the incorporation of Arabic text in paintings, sculptures and graphic design is one of the best-known features of the work of the Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi (born in 1939), these artist's books (dafatir, plural of daftar) more directly reflect Azzawi's love of literature itself and how it informs his overall practice. A deep fascination with poetry, both written and spoken, led him to create over 100 artworks based on a huge range of literature, including poetry from the medieval and modern eras and works by Arab and non-Arab writers. Initially inspired by illustrated manuscripts from the Islamic era (including the extant Yahya al-Wasiti drawings for a C13th manuscript of Maqamat al-Hariri) and modern book art (such as Henri Matisse's Jazz and Chafic Abboud's interpretation of Maqamat al-Hariri), Azzawi reimagines the experience of hearing poetry in his distinctive visual style, including detailed line drawings and explosions of colour, thereby transforming the experience of the listener or reader into that of the viewer. Over time, he also reimagined the daftar medium itself by blurring the line between sculpture and book art as he shifted from works on paper and sketchbooks to sculptural forms, as he increasingly envisaged the daftar as a standalone three-dimensional object.
This book documents the exhibition Lux et Veritas, organized by NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in 2022. The exhibition¿s title alludes to Yale University¿s motto, Lux et Veritas, which translates from Latin to ¿Light and Truth¿; in this context, the title references how these artists thought with critical complexity about their work and their movement through institutional structures. As with similar programs, Yale School of Art, in New Haven, Connecticut, had not been historically diverse, which spurred these art students to form affiliations across the departments of painting, graphic design, sculpture, photography and art history. They filled gaps in the school¿s curriculum and counteracted the lack of diversity among the faculty by inviting artists, curators and writers of colour as advisors and guest speakers, developing an interdisciplinary forum, publishing art journals, organizing exhibitions and documenting their experiences in video and photography. The relationships they formed at school evolved into communities that networked and provided essential support and feedback for one another, often passing on these efforts beyond graduate study. Their re-evaluation of the Western art canon, and commitment to the method and practice of teaching has contributed to a greater recognition of artists of colour, challenged stereotypes and enriched the overall shared spaces of learning and thinking about art and the art praxis. Lux et Veritas provides a public forum in which to address the directions these artists took based on the explorations that began in graduate school and were instilled thereafter in their practice.
The monographic survey of Chung Seoyoung's (b.1964) sculptural practice from the 1990's up to the present is published in conjunction and response to Chung's retrospective exhibition held at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) from September 1 to October 31, 2022. Chung Seoyoung is a sculptor who has pioneered the discourse and the artistic practice around 'things' and their status and relations in flux over time, and is regarded as a representative artist who demonstrated the turn towards contemporaneity in the 1990's Korean art scene. More than an exhibition documentation, the publication traces how the problems of the world that the artist deals with have transitioned by considering Chung Seoyoung's sculptural practice in both synchronic and diachronic manner. In the artist's engagement in the physical paths through which the world is perceived and her interest in things as manifestation of the world's relations converted to matter, Chung expands the scope of sculpture, and simultaneously searches for ways to remember the vernacular of sculpture. The book includes essays written by art historian Jihan Jang, curator and art historian Chus Martinez, and writer and critic Marina Vishmidt, and a conversation with artist Sung Hwan Kim. Their in-depth research and diverse perspectives not only put forth novel interpretations of Chung Seoyoung's oeuvre, but also recast both subtle and major shifts in Korean contemporary art that is yet to be widely discussed.
Katalin Ladik is pioneering figure in Central and Eastern European art histories, merging performance, (visual) poetry, photography, and installation in a practice that spans over six decades. Her practice is intertwined with the art histories of Novi Sad in former Yugoslavia - where she was a key protagonist among a generation of avant-garde artists and writers in the 1960s - and Budapest, her adopted home since the mid-1970s. The catalogue for the exhibition Ooooooooo-pus, organized at Muzeum Susch in 2022/2023, contextualizes Ladik¿s wide-ranging practice within post-war international discourses on (lens-based) performance, concrete and visual poetry, scoreand instruction-based work, feminist histories, as well as the presence of ritual and folklore in recent art. Authors such as Diedrich Diederichsen (theorist and critic, Berlin), Hendrik Folkerts (Curator of International Contemporary Art, Moderna Museet, Stockholm), Irena Haiduk (artist, Belgrade and New York), Ana Janevski (Curator of Media and Performance, Museum of Moderna Art, New York), and Dieter Roelstraete (writer and curator, Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, University of Chicago) will contribute longer-form essays, while various experts including Emese Kürti (art historian and critic, Budapest), Bhavisha Panchia (cura tor and writer, Johannesburg), Gloria Sutton (Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History, Northeastern University, Boston), Paolo Thorsen-Nagel (musician and artist, Berlin), and Mónica de la Torre (poet, New York) will discuss a single work from Ladik¿s practice.
Photographer Richard Avedon, with a more than six-decade-long career, produced innovative and delightful work in fashion, as well as incisive and captivating portraits. Over the course of his lifetime he worked with a number of models and a wide range of portrait subjects, creating a powerful body of pictures that allow his viewers to study the likenesses of actors, ballet dancers, celebrities, civil rights activists, heads of state, inventors, musicians, visual artists and writers. Avedon offers viewers the opportunity to study faces without crossing any socially imposed boundaries about staring too long; he encourages viewers to think about the people before them, the lives they have lived, their private personalities and public personas, their struggles, accomplishments, disappointments, and joys. Richard Avedon. Relationships presents a selection of 100 iconic fashion photographs and portraits, from the extensive collection at the Center for Creative Photography, to delve into his approach to photographing people. Avedon¿s combination of talent and skill, technical proficiency and attuning to his individual subjects, allowed him to make portraits that are riveting presentations of the people he photographed. Indeed, he achieved mastery of the portraiture form. Avedon had the opportunity to photograph a number of his portrait subjects on more than one occasion. Within the catalogue it is possible to see painter Jasper Johns in 1965 and 1976; novelist Carson McCullers in 1956 and 1958; the Beatles Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, and poet Allen Ginsberg in 1963 and 1970. Perhaps the most dramatic and powerful example of Avedon¿s ongoing photographic relationship is that with his friend and collaborator, Truman Capote.
Since 2011, Alcantara has initiated a series of collaborations and virtual projects, establishing a new form of intervention in the art world. A unique, tailor-made approach, in perfect harmony with the brand¿s values and identity. Visual artists, fashion and industrial designers, directors and video makers, architects and musicians from all over the world have worked with Alcantara, developing works exhibited in some of the most prestigious museums, cultural institutions and international theatres, from MAXXI in Rome to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, the Mori Museum in Tokyo, the Teatro Regio in Turin and the Teatro Massimo in Palermo. Some real highlights stand out among the many collaborative projects with international artists: from the designers Nendo, Marcel Wanders, Ross Lovegrove, Giulio Cappellini and Ingo Maurer to the architect Nanda Vigo, known for introducing the concept of spatialism in interior design; from the most poetic of Italian video makers, Yuri Ancarani, to Chinese calligraphy artists such as Qin Feng and Qu Lei; from the visionary haute couture designer Iris Van Herpen to brilliant musicians such as Matthew Herbert, Caterina Barbieri and Soundwalk Collective, and so on. These are just some of the protagonists of the creative scene with whom Alcantara has had the privilege of establishing a relationship of genuine complicity, enjoying the privilege of sharing their creative path for a certain period of time. Founded in 1972, Alcantara represents the very best of Italian production. The result of a unique and proprietary technology, Alcantara is a highly innovative material able to offer an unparalleled combination of sensory aspects, aesthetics and functionality. Thanks to its extraordinary versatility, Alcantara is the choice of the most prestigious brands in numerous fields of application: fashion and accessories, automotive, interior design and home décor, consumer-electronics. These characteristics, together with a serious and certified commitment to sustainability, enable Alcantara to express and define the contemporary lifestyle.
This volume presents the works of Kerunen and Sekajugo, whose dual ways of making art, despite their different aesthetic approaches, find common ground in their respective visions of materiality and form. Says Shaheen Merali, curator: "Radiance. They Dream in Time refers to the essential knowledge and lived experiences of Kerunen and Sekajugo in speaking to the many different territories of Uganda as well as to urban trade and living conditions in its urban centres. Both artists have been actively working with formal and informal archives of Uganda's dynamic visual culture". Acaye Kerunen's process as a socially engaged artist foregrounds the work of local and regional Ugandan craftswomen, celebrating them as integral collaborators and elevating the artistic practices of local artisans who are the gatekeepers of their local wetlands, drawing upon a sacred and unspoken knowledge of ecological stewardship. By deconstructing utilitarian materials and artisan crafts, Kerunen repositions the work in order to tell new stories and posit new meaning. The act of re-installing these deconstructed materials is a response to the agency of women's work in Africa and an acknowledgment of the role that this artistic labor plays in the climate ecosystem. Collin Sekajugo approaches his work from a distinct, aesthetic departure point that resides in his repeated return to pop culture and the omnipresent influence exuded by the global mainstream, conversing and critiquing its many biases across visual, oral and digital cultures. Since 2012, Sekajugo has worked with the manipulation of the common stock image to reveal its inherent biases of entitlement and privilege largely modelled on the Western self. Sekajugo's artistic practice highlights a contemporaneous anthropological reversal of this mainstream culture through the lens of a decidedly African sense for irreverence and play on the ad-hoc. Conceptually, the works of Sekajugo become pure theatre, a hacking of identity that exposes some truths behind these stock images that quietly continue to colonise the entire globe by the weight of their own popularity.
This book examines a selection of paintings by Bernardino Luini (ca. 1480/85¿1532) that were influenced by Leonardo da Vinci (1452¿1519). Comparative analysis shows that Luini, from adopting Leonardös compositions and motifs, went on to incorporate elements of his style and expression in a group of works dating to the 1520s. These are the focus of the book. In imitating Leonardo, Luini traded complexity for clarity, simplifying his manner and making it accessible to a broad audience undifferentiated by age, gender, or class. The artist¿s method of popularizing Leonardo, however, led to criticism of his works as merely derivative, but that fails to consider their function as devotional images. Beyond church teachings and practices, little is known about how ordinary viewers looked at religious art in this period. Their responses are not recorded. But Luini¿s paintings themselves provide clues, like the foregrounding of the figures and their interaction with each other and the beholder, to indicate how they served a devotional purpose. The artist may not have been an intellectual like Leonardo, but the thinking inherent in his works is absolutely coherent and consistent. Their clear organization and unequivocal meaning effectively communicate the religious message he sought to convey. This book revisits the idea that Leonardo da Vinci was the essential inspiration for his younger contemporary Bernardino Luini. Instead of a broad notion of Leonardös influence, however, the book offers a more complex understanding of the relation between the two artists, one that seeks to account for Luini¿s much-criticized lack of originality vis-à-vis the older master. In one artistic category in which Leonardo offered few models ¿ devotional images of the Passion of Christ ¿ Andrea Solario, himself influenced by Leonardo, had a decisive impact on Luini. Solariös influence complemented Leonardös, enabling Luini to set a new standard for depicting a broad range of sacred subjects.
This book examines a selection of paintings by Bernardino Luini (ca. 1480/85¿1532) that were influenced by Leonardo da Vinci (1452¿1519). Comparative analysis shows that Luini, from adopting Leonardös compositions and motifs, went on to incorporate elements of his style and expression in a group of works dating to the 1520s. These are the focus of the book. In imitating Leonardo, Luini traded complexity for clarity, simplifying his manner and making it accessible to a broad audience undifferentiated by age, gender, or class. The artist¿s method of popularizing Leonardo, however, led to criticism of his works as merely derivative, but that fails to consider their function as devotional images. Beyond church teachings and practices, little is known about how ordinary viewers looked at religious art in this period. Their responses are not recorded. But Luini¿s paintings themselves provide clues, like the foregrounding of the figures and their interaction with each other and the beholder, to indicate how they served a devotional purpose. The artist may not have been an intellectual like Leonardo, but the thinking inherent in his works is absolutely coherent and consistent. Their clear organization and unequivocal meaning effectively communicate the religious message he sought to convey. This book revisits the idea that Leonardo da Vinci was the essential inspiration for his younger contemporary Bernardino Luini. Instead of a broad notion of Leonardös influence, however, the book offers a more complex understanding of the relation between the two artists, one that seeks to account for Luini¿s much-criticized lack of originality vis-à-vis the older master. In one artistic category in which Leonardo offered few models ¿ devotional images of the Passion of Christ ¿ Andrea Solario, himself influenced by Leonardo, had a decisive impact on Luini. Solariös influence complemented Leonardös, enabling Luini to set a new standard for depicting a broad range of sacred subjects.
On the Move features three different groups of nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists in three vastly different regions ¿ the Central Sahara in Africa, the Arabian Gulf and the Central Eurasian steppes ¿ highlighting crosscutting themes relevant to contemporary concerns about the human condition and our planetary future. The book shares lessons we might learn from the ways of pastoral nomads, such as living lightly on the land and working creatively with and through the sometimes challenging natural environments within which they move and know intimately. Themes under exploration include mobility and self-sufficiency; materialism, consumerism and environmental destruction; the potency of experience-based knowledge both practical and richly imaginative; and how the concepts we use affect our appreciation of cultural differences. The book seeks to highlight the gap between the ways these groups see and understand themselves and the stereotypes - both negative and romantic - by which outsiders (from travellers and architects to ecologists and state officials) have represented them or sought either to appropriate or to control and change them. Working against tendencies to view such groups as timeless or remnants of the past, this exhibit follows a historical approach, juxtaposing different historical periods to show how the pastoralists¿ ways of living and possibilities for flourishing have been affected by both environmental and political forces, specifically from key ruptures of the past century. At the same time, it suggests that we have much to learn from the pastoralist way of life.
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