Art

International modernism outside Europe has rarely been considered in the history of photography. It is not very well-known, for example, that Brazil played a prominent role in photography from the 1830s onwards and developed an outstanding repertoire of techniques, discourses and individual formal languages. Based on intensive archival work and starting out from the photographer Valério Vieira, Alina Hofmann reconstructs the aesthetic and cultural context of photography in the “Brazilian Belle Époque”. She explores the question of what could or should have been achieved by photographic images around 1900. Vieira found humorous and critical answers to this question. His photographs convey a more comprehensive picture of the turn of the century than previously considered in research.

First German-language publication about Valério Vieira

A key research contribution on international modernism outside Europe

Combines art and media studies discourse with the history of photography

This bilingual volume explores Cree Canadian artist Kent Monkman’s five-part reimagining of Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl through Monkman’s Two Spirit alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.

Monkman is frequently inspired by museum collections, re-envisioning iconic works through a contemporary Indigenous lens, exploring themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, resilience—the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences—across painting, film/video, performance, and installation. His gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, often appears in his work as a time-traveling, shapeshifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples.

In this English / Canadian French volume, Monkman, as Miss Chief, is seated across from a male figure in a room similar to the one in Vermeer’s iconic painting. Five paintings depict Miss Chief joined by a seventeenth-century Dutch officer, an eighteenth-century French explorer, a nineteenth-century American soldier, a twentieth-century Catholic priest, and a twenty-first tech executive, respectively.

Monkman’s artworks are held in the permanent collections of numerous institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Denver Art Museum; the Hirshhorn Museum; the Hood Museum of Art; the Heard Museum; and in Canada, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; the Glenbow Museum; the Art Gallery of Ontario; and macLYON in France. Private collections that house his works include Art Bridges; the Horseman Foundation; the Tia Collection, the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation; Forge Project; the Gochman Family Collection; the Sobey Art Foundation; and the Rob & Monique Sobey Foundation.

A visual survey of the overlooked aesthetics of urban design, bringing together drain cover imprints from cities worldwide.

For over 25 years, artist Alex Fischer has been exploring the hidden beauty beneath our feet through his Drainspotting project. To date, he has created over 500 frottages of drain covers from 135 cities spanning 35 countries and 6 continents. 

Each imprint transforms a utilitarian object into art, exposing the industrial and cultural character of its origin and, collectively, reflecting a rich spectrum of cultures and eras. 

The imperfections of the rubbings invite imagination and subjectivity, contrasting with the rigid precision of the originals. Alex‘s work celebrates diversity, discovery, and the overlooked artistry of urban design.

“I cannot look at Fischer’s work without being reminded of the film The Third Man by Carol Reed… The manhole cover was the door to a double life.“

The artist behind the physics professor 

Art & Science sums up and offers an insight into Jürg Nänni's unique body of work, in which art and science are intertwined in a compelling and distinctive way. His work has evolved over time, ranging from early Cartesian images in primary colours, to chaotic pictorial tapestries, to the vibrating waves of the moiré works, and finally to the late oeuvre with its free forms and liberated use of colour. Order and chance, reason and intuition, structure and emotion exist in remarkable harmony. 

This comprehensive selection of his works is connected with texts on perception, mathematics and colour theory. In this way, Nänni’s art becomes accessible as a space for thought, as well as being visible. Furthermore, this publication pays homage to the beauty of clarity and to art as a form of knowledge.

This volume is the first in over fifty years to focus on the work, life, and career of nineteenth-century genre painter John Quidor (1801-1881), introducing new audiences to the offbeat, frenzied, and often comically macabre paintings of a visionary but overlooked artist whose eccentric style became formative to American Romanticism.

Born and raised in the small town of Tappan, along the Hudson River, Quidor later lived and worked in the notorious Five Points district of New York City. There, he skirted the margins of the New York art world, splitting his career between painting engine panels for the city’s rough and ribald fire brigades and producing literary genre scenes—the majority based on the tales of Washington Irving and steeped in the Netherlandish lore of the Hudson River Valley—for exhibition at the National Academy of Design and the American Academy of Fine Arts. Uniting these two facets of production was the artist’s abiding penchant for overturning convention and upending the exalted stature of history to present the past not as fact but rather as a complex and elusive matter bound to invention, imagination, and selective storytelling. During an age that prized reason and honored the past, Quidor questioned the very reliability of history. His work upends both history and history painting, and this catalogue explores his critical approach to a past that can never fully be known.

This new book interweaves some of Quidor's best known literary paintings—scenes from Irving’s A History of New-York and Tales of a Traveller, as well as the short stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”—with new objects including a plaster bas-relief representing the second only known likeness of the artist, his sole surviving engine painting for New York City’s early firefighting companies, and a newly rediscovered student copy after Quidor’s lost original for Columbian Fire Engine No. 14.

The catalogue features works from The New York Historical, as well as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Newark Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Historic Hudson Valley; Yale University Art Gallery; and Brooklyn Museum.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition John Quidor: New York Stories on display at The New York Historical from October 30, 2026 through April 4, 2027.

Harper’s iconic depictions of animals have long enjoyed robust appreciation among nature lovers and aficionados of mid-century modern furnishings, which they exquisitely complement. A longtime resident of Cincinnati, Harper developed his “minimal realism,” as he referred to his style, in the 1940s and 50s, stripping down nature to its essential characteristics in elegant, engaging, vividly coloured designs that breathe life and personality. Harper was an indefatigable worker who transformed an array of drawings, collages, and paintings into his beloved screen prints, book illustrations, and posters. An ardent advocate of wildlife conservation and climate activism, Harper has been the favorite artist of nature organizations across the United States, including the National Park Service and the Audubon Society for whom he designed eye-catching illustrations and posters.

This new publication offers a comprehensive exploration of every Black American artist represented in the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama's preeminent collection of art, spanning the early nineteenth century to the present day.

The volume features over 250 artworks across various media, paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, quilts, and mixed-media works, by artists living and working both in Alabama, and across the wider United States, including David Driskell, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Robert S. Duncanson, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mary Frances Whitfield, Trena Banks, Purvis Young, Glenn Ligon, Edmonia Lewis, Lorna Simpson, Chakaia Booker, Sam Gilliam, Kerry James Marshall, Joshua Johnson, Nick Cave, Elizabeth Catlett, Amalia Amaki, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Artistic Labour of the Body examines VALIE EXPORT’s and Elfriede Jelinek’s use of the body and psyche as artistic material to explore Adorno’s concept of artistic labor.

By deploying the body as artistic material, their works challenge women’s reduction to reproductive function or sexual object, articulating a feminism beyond “innocence”. Gush demonstrates how their art critiqued post-war Austria’s culture of disavowal, where unprocessed legacies of Nazism perpetuated Austria’s victimhood myth, while also exploring the complex identifications within this critique. The book reframes post-war artistic practices that revealed the body as both a site of patriarchal-capitalist violence and of resistance.

A visual and cultural odyssey through the fantastical beasts of art, literature, and design—from ancient bestiaries to contemporary creativity.

This strikingly illustrated volume explores the evolving relationship between humans and animals through the lens of the bestiary: part taxonomy, part storytelling, and part symbolic expression. Spanning centuries and cultures, it reveals how mythical creatures and hybrid beasts—part human, part animal—have shaped religious iconography, moral allegories, and artistic imagination.

Far beyond scientific description, the bestiary has long served as a mirror for humanity’s fears, desires, and subconscious dreams. From medieval manuscripts and Renaissance encyclopedias to Borges’s literary monsters and contemporary visual art, this book invites readers into a world where the real and the imaginary coexist in symbolic harmony.

An essential reference for lovers of art history, mythology, natural philosophy, and fantastical design, this book celebrates the enduring power of the beast within.

This Is Not a Hoax shows how the work of some contemporary artists and writers intentionally disrupts the curatorial and authorial practices of the country’s most respected cultural institutions: art galleries, museums, and book publishers. 

This first-ever study of contemporary Canadian hoaxes in visual art and literature asks why we trust authority in artistic works and how that trust is manifest. Heather Jessup claims that hoaxes, far from being merely lies meant to deceive or wound, may exert a positive influence. Through their insistent disobedience, they assist viewers and readers in re-examining unquestioned institutional trust, habituated cultural hierarchies, and the deeply inscribed racism and sexism of Canada’s settler-colonial history.

Through its attentive look at hoaxical works by Canadian artists Iris Häussler, Brian Jungen, and Rebecca Belmore, photographer Jeff Wall, and writers and translators David Solway and Erin Mouré, this book celebrates the surprising ways hoaxes call attention to human capacities for flexibility, adaptation, and resilience in a cultural moment when radical empathy and imagination is critically needed.

A complete outdoor painting course in ink and watercolour!

Learn the art of painting big by going tiny. From building your pocket-sized art kit to conquering creative fears, acclaimed artist Leslie Stroz teaches you how to capture the essence of a place with just a few strokes of pen and brush.

• Packed with step-by-step guidance and expert tips
• Discover the key elements of tiny art: from Line and Value to Form and Texture
• Go beyond the basics and learn how to choose dynamic compositions, mix colours, and avoid common mistakes
• Practical advice on planning a trip to the great outdoors and how best to enjoy Plein Air Painting
• Follow the progress of five art projects from start to finish to fully understand the practice, process and principles of tiny painting
• Be inspired to find joy in the small, whether you’re in your garden, a bustling cafe, or a seaswept beach

For beginners and seasoned artists alike, Leslie Stroz will show you how to see the world differently and to capture it, one pocket-sized masterpiece at a time.

Tone Roald creates a new foundation for aesthetics by taking seriously real-life experiences with works of art. Relying upon descriptions of experiences with art in the autobiographical and literary texts of St. Augustine, Denis Diderot, Stendahl, Virginia Woolf, and Proust, as well as fifteen-years' worth of interviews with museumgoers about their most intense experiences with visual arts, Roald explores the variety of aesthetic experiences available to us throughout history and articulates why experiences with art remain important today. The book draws upon phenomenological psychology, psychoanalysis, and cultural theory to articulate a taxonomy of basic affective experiences with art. What affect is, what affective experiences with art are like, and what meanings these experiences have for us have been limited in aesthetic theory. Beginning with pleasure, continuing with wonder and resonance, and ending with rapture and serenity, she notably reveals similarities in aesthetic experience across history. Roald's work seeks a democratization of art; not concerned with the "correct interpretation" of the work of art or with idealized responses to art, this eye-opening new approach grants primacy to experience – historical and contemporary – and lays an experiential foundation for the development of a different kind of aesthetic theory.

Tone Roald creates a new foundation for aesthetics by taking seriously real-life experiences with works of art. Relying upon descriptions of experiences with art in the autobiographical and literary texts of St. Augustine, Denis Diderot, Stendahl, Virginia Woolf, and Proust, as well as fifteen-years' worth of interviews with museumgoers about their most intense experiences with visual arts, Roald explores the variety of aesthetic experiences available to us throughout history and articulates why experiences with art remain important today. The book draws upon phenomenological psychology, psychoanalysis, and cultural theory to articulate a taxonomy of basic affective experiences with art. What affect is, what affective experiences with art are like, and what meanings these experiences have for us have been limited in aesthetic theory. Beginning with pleasure, continuing with wonder and resonance, and ending with rapture and serenity, she notably reveals similarities in aesthetic experience across history. Roald's work seeks a democratization of art; not concerned with the "correct interpretation" of the work of art or with idealized responses to art, this eye-opening new approach grants primacy to experience – historical and contemporary – and lays an experiential foundation for the development of a different kind of aesthetic theory.

A vibrant journey through Seymour Chwast’s picture books—where graphic design reshapes storytelling. Seymour Chwast, legendary co-founder of Push Pin Studios, reinvented how we see and read picture books. 

The Picture Book Book gathers over 40 of his works, curated by Steven Heller, and offers a rare look at his playful, incisive approach to visual storytelling. From bold graphics to sly wit, Chwast’s books expanded the boundaries of design and children’s literature alike. As a collectible volume, it bridges gestalten and Little Gestalten—celebrating visual culture that is both sophisticated and accessible.

An examination of artworks that illuminate the critical role of community among artists active in Philadelphia, Chicago, Massachusetts, San Francisco, and New York

All artists enrich their creative lives through engagement with others, especially fellow artists. Peers provide inspiration, share mutual interests, provide points of rivalry, commiserate in setbacks, and celebrate successes. Understanding the relationships between artists, especially those active in specific communities, tells a compelling story about the values and character of a place. It is a way to center people rather than style and brings empathy to bear on what artists depict.

Bodies & Souls tells overlapping stories about circles of artists through works of art in the Robert and Frances Colbourn Kohler Collection. This collection of nearly 500 artworks from the 1940s to the present, given and promised to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, focuses on artists who made figuration relevant to their inner and social lives. In turns irreverent, hilarious, sensual, vulnerable, and expressive, the work reflects the full range of human experience. The collection illuminates the critical role of figuration and the relevance of community among artists active in Philadelphia, Chicago, Massachusetts, San Francisco, and New York, including Luis Cruz Azaceta, Joan Brown, Gregory Gillespie, Sidney Goodman, Gladys Nilsson, and others. These stories, of an earlier generation, some now passed, can speak powerfully to artists today, especially younger emerging artists in search of circles and contexts that help them thrive.

“The first-ever sweeping history of how artists and organizers have worked together to advance an array of social movements,” (The GIA Reader), Ken Grossinger’s updated paperback edition of his celebrated Art Works “truly illustrates how art can be a weapon, an organizing tool, and a mirror for activists and organizers to view their own work” (The Progressive) .

Distilling lessons and insights from grassroots leaders and luminaries such as Ai Weiwei, Courtland Cox, and Shepard Fairey, and drawing from historical and present-day examples—including Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, the Hip Hop Caucus, the Legacy Museum, and the Art for Justice Fund—Grossinger “tells the complicated and fascinating story of the recent history of activism and the arts and points to new ways in which the arts, pop culture, and institutions are aligning themselves to address issues of violence, beauty, capitalism, and justice” (Laurie Anderson).

With a new preface and a postscript describing how to combat authorianism in this new political era, along with new illustrations Art Works offers a rich tapestry of tactics and successes that speak directly to the challenges and needs of today’s activists and artists.

Learn how to watercolor-in and create dynamic, original art using easy techniques with this interactive workbook

• A practical companion book to the bestselling Creative Abstract Watercolor by Kate Rebecca Leach
• With high-quality art paper pages, this interactive workbook provides simple exercises and projects for absolute beginners to get started in painting
• Explore techniques, tips and tricks to create your own vibrant art with help on composition and ideas for mixed media concepts

Get started today – practice, play, and paint with the Creative Abstract Watercolor Workbook and discover new levels of creativity and expression for your art.

“Unser Lieben Frauen” in Bremen is the city’s oldest parish church, founded in the 11th century on former pagan sites. Its hall church with twin towers, extended choir, and Gothic aisles reflects Bremen’s rich history: from Romanesque basilica to council church and the Protestant Reformation. Highlights include the St. Veit Chapel, the Baroque pulpit from 1709, and Alfred Manessier’s abstract stained-glass windows, whose colors vividly accompany the liturgy. The church combines architecture, art, and history, offering visitors a unique cultural and spiritual experience.

Diese kleine, attraktiv bebilderte Reihe bietet kunstinteressierten Lesern fundierte Informationen zu vielen verschiedenen Kunststätten in Deutschland. Die Kunstführer sind in erster Linie für den Verkauf vor Ort konzipiert, sie können aber auch über den Verlag erworben werden.

Jeder Band: 11,6 × 17,4 cm, geheftet

The first sacred building on the site of today’s St. Reinoldi Church in Dortmund was likely erected as early as the 9th century as a Carolingian mission center. Excavations after World War II uncovered the foundations of a 10th-century hall church. The present structure, rebuilt after the war, reflects the 1270 construction in the transitional style from Romanesque to Gothic, with late Gothic additions. Most of the 14th- and 15th-century artworks inside survived the air raids and can still be admired by visitors today.

• Historic Landmark: Oldest city church of Dortmund, dating back to the 9th century.

• Architectural Splendor: Romanesque-Gothic blend with late Gothic additions.

• Art Treasures: 14th- and 15th-century masterpieces that survived air raids.