Roger Fry (1866–1934) is best known as a champion of Post-Impressionism and a pioneer of Modernist art criticism. But his fi rst love was early Italian painting, on which he became a recognized authority, publishing a monograph on Giovanni Bellini in 1899. Even after the Post-Impressionist exhibitions in 1910 and 1912 and the foundation of the Omega Workshops, Fry continued to write and lecture on Italianart right up until his death. He looked at modernism through Quattrocento eyes rather than the other way around, as is often wrongly assumed. It is impossible not to be struck by how fresh and immediately readable his writings are, how pioneering in some ways his approach remains. His work on Italian art modifi es the received view of him as a pure formalist. Apart from a famous article on Giotto which Fry republished in Vision and Design (1920), the writings on Italian art are relatively little known, and a selection of the best of them is republished here, thus introducing an important aspect of Fry’s many-sided work to a new audience. The fi rst part of the book sets Fry’s writing on Italian art into context by combining intellectual biography with the history of art history, art criticism and art institutions. It draws on new documentary material, including Fry’s travel notebooks, which contain sketches and brilliant observations taken down in front of works of art. By exploring the whole range of Fry’s published and unpublished writings, theauthor is able to refute erroneous received ideas – that he was uninterested in colour, for example. The infl uence of his Italian lectures and publications on such fi gures as E.M. Forster, Kenneth Clark and Michael Baxandall is also examined. The second part consists of writings by Fry – each with an introductory text by the author and fully illustrated in colour. Included in this volume are some of the unpublished lectures that his biographer Virginia Woolf suggested would make a fascinating book of extracts. Four long pieces are of outstanding interest – on Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Baldovinetti and Piero di Cosimo, all artists whose critical status was radically re-examined in the twentieth century. Fry had a close and lifelong connection with The Burlington Magazine, as cofounder, contributor, saviour-fundraiser, editor (1909-1919) and adviser. Roger Fry and Italian Art is appropriately the fi rst in a series of books on art history to be published by The Burlington Magazine and Ad Ilissvm in association - to be announced in due course.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, visual art has displayed an ambivalent nature, torn between the poles of abstractionism and realism, conceptual and postmodern, classicist nostalgia and the violent provocation for its own sake. This essay builds an argument in favour of tracing a different path for the visual arts, in which art might be able to recover its fullness and universality. The artists analysed in this volume – starting with Hopper and Balthus, singled out as precursors – appear to be following this shared path, even though they belong to different generations. Perhaps for this reason, they have for the most part been misunderstood by their contemporary critics. As in the art of Ancient Greece or the Middle Ages abstract tensions that intensify the visual field can bring simple figures to life, radically changing their meaning. This is a “sunniness” that is akin to the Claritas with which Medieval scholastics indicated the splendour of the works of their times. We’ll have to undertake a tireless process of exercising our perceptions, if we wish to be able to grasp its basic aesthetic quality.

The Courtauld Collection: A Vision for Impressionism accompanies a landmark exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris exploring Samuel Courtauld’s role as one of the great collectors of the twentieth century. The catalogue and exhibition showcase Courtauld’s extraordinary collection, which will be on display in Paris for the first time in over sixty years. One of the finest collections of Impressionism anywhere in the world was assembled by the English industrialist and philanthropist Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947). During the 1920s, Courtauld acquired seminal works by all of the major Impressionists, from Renoir’s early masterpiece La Loge to Manet’s last great work, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. His collection grew to include such iconic works as Gauguin’s great Tahitian nude Nevermore and one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Courtauld was particularly devoted to Cézanne and put together the largest collection of his work in the United Kingdom, including the epic Montagne Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine and one of the celebrated Card Players. After a decade of collecting, Courtauld gave the majority of these remarkable works to establish The Courtauld Institute of Art and Gallery in London. This will be the first time that Samuel Courtauld’s collection has been shown in Paris in over 60 years. The landmark exhibition will bring together masterpieces from The Courtauld Gallery alongside works formerly in Courtauld’s collection and now dispersed internationally. It will be a unique opportunity to enjoy some of the greatest modern French paintings of the 19th century and will shed light on Courtauld’s pioneering role in shaping public taste for Impressionism in the United Kingdom. The lavishly illustrated catalogue presents new research on the personality of Samuel Courtauld as well as his taste, collecting habits and wide-ranging philanthropy. It also explores afresh his network of dealers and places him within the wider context of contemporary collectors of Impressionism throughout Europe and the United States. The exhibition features almost a hundred works, each given its own entry and enhanced with close-up images and comparative illustrations to provide an in-depth exploration of this extraordinary collection.

Lynne Buchanan began photographing Florida’s inland waters to create artistic records of her connection with those waters and to learn lessons from being in the present moment and aligning with the flow of life. The more time she spent photographing waterways in her native Florida, the more she noticed what was being damaged and lost due to human impact. She resolved to draw attention to the situation through her photography and to work with water-quality and environmental advocates, from members of the Water-keeper Alliance to Native American citizens fighting to preserve the integrity of their ancestral lands and drinking water. The result is Changing Waters, which not only showcases the beauty, diversity, and complexity of Florida’s waters, but also documents the negative effects of agricultural and industrial pollution, a growing population with its urban growth and land development, and climate change on Florida’s inland and coastal waters and springs. Though her work is place specific, the book reveals the interconnected and global nature of environmental problems. Indeed, Florida’s fragile springs, wetlands, rivers, and coastal waters can be considered a tragic and powerful example of what is happening to aquatic systems else-where in the nation and world as a result of unchecked human action. Buchanan’s photographs invite viewers to consider their personal relationship to water and en-courage better stewardship of this vital––and finite––resource. They are also a call to action to find more effective ways to preserve these waterways for both their natural beauty and essential role in our survival.

Anna Halprin, vanguard postmodern dancer turned community artist and healer, has created ground-breaking dances with communities all over the world. Here, she presents her philosophy and experience, as well as step-by-step processes for bringing people together to create dances that foster individual and group well-being. At the heart of this book are accounts of two dances: the Planetary Dance, which continues to be performed throughout the world, and Circle the Earth. The Circle the Earth workshop for people living with AIDS has generated dozens of "scores" for others to adapt. In addition, the book provides a concrete guide to Halprin's celebrated Planetary Dance. Now more than 35 years old, Planetary Dance promotes peace among people and peace with the Earth. Open to everyone, it has been performed in more than 50 countries. In 1995 more than 400 participants joined her in a Planetary Dance in Berlin commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Potsdam Agreements, at the end of World War II. More recently, she took the Planetary Dance to Israel, bringing together Israelis and Palestinians as well as other nationalities. Throughout this book Halprin shows how dance can be a powerful tool for healing, learning and mobilizing change, and she offers insight and advice on facilitating groups. If we are to survive, Halprin argues, we must learn, experientially, how our individual stories weave together and strengthen the fabric of our collective body. Generously illustrated with photographs, charts and scores, this book will be a boon to dance therapists, educators and community artists of all types.

In the course of the 18th century, drawings by old and contemporary masters became an esteemed collectors’ item and, in consequence, a highly valued commodity of the art market. This study looks at this business from the perspective of the art dealer Guillaume Jean Constantin (1755-1816), who was active in Paris during the last quarter of the 18th and the first years of the 19th century. Constantin’s transactions are reconstructed on the evidence of his dealer’s mark applied to drawings – here identified for the first time – and unpublished material drawn from archives in Paris. His dealership in drawings is analysed with a focus on his business network within France and his far-reaching contacts, which also covered other regions of Europe, including England, Italy, Germany and Russia. Due to a particlularly rich documentation, his relationship with Johann Friedrich Städel, a Frankfurt collector and founder of the eponymous institute, can be described in detail. Other aspects of Constantin’s multi-faceted activities were his work as an expert in estate evaluation, as an auctioneer and as a print publisher, including in 1794 the publication of the famous portrait of the revolutionary hero Jean-Paul Marat after a design by Jacques-Louis David. He also served as paintings curator to Empress Joséphine, Napoleon’s wife. Working in proximity to the contemporary art world, he promoted living artists, among them his close friend Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. Constantin’s working life spanned the period between the French Revolution and the Empire, established under Napoleon. His changing allegiances are to be seen against this historical background. This handsomely produced book is published by Ad Ilissvm in a new series, The Fondation Custodia Studies in the History of Art, which reflects and continues forward into the present the scholarly interests of the institution’s founder, Frits Lugt. The next book in the series, prepared by Jean-Paul Bouillon, will publish a previously unknown collection of letters, recently acquired by the Fondation Custodia, byÉdouard Manet to his friend the painter and printmaker Félix Bracquemond.

This special issue of Cinéma & Cie explores the cultural dynamics, ideological aporias and political struggles that characterize the relationship between Maoism and national cinemas, from the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution to the present day. All the articles included in the special issue highlight the complexity of the process of translation and ‘reinvention’ of Maoism in different cultural contexts, focusing on subjects and historical episodes that have been suppressed in public debates and in traditional film history books.

Joy Harjo's play Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light is the centerpiece of this collection that includes essays and interviews concerning the roots and the reaches of contemporary Native Theater. Harjo blends storytelling, music, movement, and poetic language in Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light—a healing ceremony that chronicles the challenges young protagonist Redbird faces on her path to healing and self-determination. This text is accompanied by interviews with Native theater artists Rolland Meinholtz and Randy Reinholz, as well as an interview with Harjo, conducted by Page. The interviews highlight the lives and contributions of Meinholtz, a theater artist and educator who served as the drama instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts from 1964–70 and a close mentor and friend to Harjo; and Reinholz, producing artistic director of Native Voices at the Autry, the nation's only Equity theater company dedicated exclusively to the development and production of new plays by Native American, First Nations, and Alaska Native playwrights. The new interview with Harjo focuses on her experiences working in theater.Essays on Harjo's work are provided by Mary Kathryn Nagle—an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee nation, playwright, and attorney who shares her insights on the legal and historical frameworks through which we can better understand the significance of Harjo's play; and Priscilla Page—writer, performer, and educator (of Wiyot heritage), who looks at indigenous feminism, jazz, and performance as influences on Harjo's theatrical work.

Vietnam is an ancient and beautiful land, with a deep history of occupational conflict that remains an enigma in Americans’ collective memory. It is still easy to forget that Vietnam is a country and not a war, even as America’s role in Vietnam inflamed and divided the American citizenry in ways that are still evident today. It is as if Vietnam’s civil war resurrected our own. And if you are a Vietnam War veteran or a family member of a vet, it’s worse, because, even after a half-century, many of the wounds won’t heal. What do you do when you have given up on forgetting? Chuck Forsman is one of a sizable number of aging Vietnam vets who have found deep satisfaction in revisiting Vietnam, supporting charities, orphanages, and clinics, doing volunteer work and more—anything to redeem what the U.S. military did there. He is also a renowned painter and photographer who depicts places and environments in ways that become unforgettable visual experiences for the contemporary viewer. Lost in Vietnam chronicles a journey, not a country. They were taken on visits averaging two months each and two-year intervals over a decade. Forsman traveled largely by motorbike throughout the country—south, central, and north—sharing his experiences through amazing photographs of Vietnam’s lands and people. His visual journey of one such veteran’s twofold quest: the one for redemption and understanding, and the other to make art. The renowned Le Ly Hayslip introduces the book and sets the table for Forsman’s incredible sojourn.

Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes explores the work of the legendary Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, focusing on a genre called spalliera that Botticelli employed with staggering originality. The catalgoue and exhibition, held at the Gardner Museum, Boston, include significant loans from European and American public collections. Accompanying the exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (14 February – 19 May 2019), this catalogue explores the work of legendary Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli (about 1444–1510). Today the alluring and enigmatic Primavera forms the cornerstone of his modern fame, but its familiarity belies distant origins in the heady intellectual environment of Laurentian Florence and the residences of its moneyed elite. Part of a genre called spalliera, so named for their installation around shoulder (spalla) height, this type of painting introduced beautiful, strange, and disturbing images into lavish Florentine homes. With staggering originality, Botticelli reinvented ancient subjects for the domestic interior, paneling patrician bedrooms with moralizing tales and offering erudite instruction to their influential inhabitants. At the center of this exhibition is a spalliera reunited, the Gardner’s Tragedy of Lucretia and its companion The Tragedy of Virginia (Accademia Carrara, Bergamo). Together with extraordinary loans of the same genre from European and American public collections, Heroines and Heroes explores Botticelli’s revolutionary approach to antiquity – from ancient Roman to early Christian – and offers a new perspective on his late career masterpieces. Catalogue essays address Botticelli’s spalliera (Nathaniel Silver), their violence (Scott Nethersole), his textual sources (Elsa Filosa), and rediscovery in Gilded Age Boston (Patricia Lee Rubin). Entries include new insights for each work and up-to-date bibliographies, while a special section features archival materials devoted to Gardner’s pioneering acquisition of the first Botticelli in America.

Ever since Linda Nochlin asked in 1971, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’, art history has been probing the female gaze. Through scholarship and exhibitions, readings have been put in place to counter prevailing assumptions that artistic creativity is primarily a masculine affair. Fifty Works by Fifty British Women functions as a corrective to the exclusion of women from the ‘master’ narratives of art. It introduces fifty artworks by known and lesser-known women – outstanding works that speak out. Fifty commentaries by fifty different writers bring out each artwork’s unique story – sometimes from an objective art historical perspective and sometimes from an entirely personal point of view – thereby creating a rich and colourful diorama. This exhibition does not, however, attempt to present a survey or to address all the arguments around the history of women and art. Anthologies are of necessity incomplete, and many remarkable imaginations are not here represented. Women artists have been set apart from male artists not only to their own disadvantage but also to the detriment of British art. While there were some improvements for women to access an artistic career in the twentieth century in terms of patronage, economics and critical attention – all the things that confer professional status – women had the least of everything. By showcasing just a few of the remarkable works produced, this exhibition draws attention to the fact that a vision of British twentieth century art closer to a 50/50 balance would not only provide a truer account, but also a more vivid and meaningful narrative.

“Break Boundary” refers to the transformative point at which any system suddenly and irrevocably changes from its original state into something new. Coined by Kenneth E. Boulding in 1963, the term serves as the underlying metaphor for the photographs of Jenee Mateer. In her original works of art, the horizon that divides land, water, and sky shifts and multiplies producing bands of varied colors and luminosity that transform the natural landscape into imaginative “waterscapes” and challenge our understanding of photography. Reminiscent of the abstract paintings of Mark Rothko and the photographic seascapes of Hiroshi Sugimoto and New Mexican landscapes of Edward Weston, Mateer’s images are layered photographs of the natural world assembled to suggest imaginary places where light, water, land and sky coalesce into rhythmic patterns of shimmering opalescence or luscious color. Break Boundary features 34 of Mateer’s waterscapes and also includes her opening essay about the work and two poems by the artist, "The World Is Water" and "The Sky Is Lemonlime," that separate the first series of images from the second series and offer a deeper look into the artist’s thoughts about the work. In the concluding essay by Francine Weiss, curator of the Newport Art Museum, Weiss writes: “From surface to self, Jenee Mateer takes the viewer on a journey from one psychological and spiritual state to another. In Mateer’s “waterscapes,” the conventional or anticipated boundaries between land, water, and sky begin to vanish; horizons multiply and join; and the break boundary emerges.

Music and Modernity among First Peoples of North America is a collaboration between Indigenous and settler scholars from both Canada and the United States. The contributors explore the intersections between music, modernity, and Indigeneity in essays addressing topics that range from hip-hop to powwow, and television soundtracks of Native Classical and experimental music. Working from the shared premise that multiple modernities exist for Indigenous peoples, the authors seek to understand contemporary musical expression from Native perspectives and to decolonize the study of Native American/First Nations music. The essays coalesce around four main themes: innovative technology, identity formation and self-representation, political activism, and translocal musical exchange. Closely related topics include cosmopolitanism, hybridity, alliance studies, code-switching, and ontologies of sound. Featuring the work of both established and emerging scholars, the collection demonstrates the centrality of music in communicating the complex, diverse lived experience of Indigenous North Americans in the twenty-first century and brings ethnomusicology into dialogue with critical Indigenous studies.

The Ancient Art of Transformation: Case Studies from Mediterranean Contexts examines instances of human transformation in the ancient and early Christian Mediterranean world by exploring the ways in which art impacts, aids, or provides evidence for physical, spiritual, personal, and social transitions. Building on Arnold van Gennep’s notion of universal rites of passage, papers in this volume expand the definition of “transformation” to include widespread transitions such as shifts in political establishments and changes in cultural identity. In considering these broadly defined “passages,” authors have observed particular changes in the visual record, whether they be manifest, enigmatic, or symbolic. While several papers address transitions that are incomplete, resulting in intermediary, hybrid states, others suggest that the medium itself can be integral to interpreting a transition, and in some cases, be itself transformed. Together, the volume covers not only a broad chronological span (c. 5th century BC to 4th century AD), but also an expansive geographical range (Egypt, Greece, and Italy). Reflecting upon issues central to a variety of Mediterranean cultures (Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, and early Christians), The Ancient Art of Transformation documents how personal, societal, and historical changes become permanently fixed in the material record.​ The Ancient Art of Transformation examines the visual manifestation of human transformation in the ancient and early medieval Mediterranean world, exploring the role of art and visual culture in enabling, hindering, or documenting physical, spiritual, personal, and social transitions such as pregnancy and birth, initiations, marriage, death and funerals. The definition of “transformation” is also expanded to address instances of less personal and more widespread transitions such as shifts in political establishments and changes in cultural identity in geographic locations. Additionally, although the ancient material record documents certain rites of passage such as marriage and death extensively, artifacts and their accompanying images are often studied simply to reconstruct these social processes. Authors here suggest that material evidence itself can be integral to interpreting a transition, and in some cases, be itself transformed. Further, several papers address transitions that are incomplete, resulting in intermediary, hybrid states that are very often reflected in the visual record such as Athenian vase-painting imagery forecasting the bride as a mother, displays of nudity that reflect intermediate life stages in Etruscan art and Octavian’s visual transformation into Pharaoh and Augustus in Egyptian architecture and material culture. At its core the volume establishes current methods for understanding how ancient visual culture shaped, informed, and was affected by processes of transformation. Together, these papers offer a close examination of various types of visual evidence from several cultures and periods (e.g., Etruscan, Greek, Roman, early Christian), and document how personal, societal, historical changes become permanently fixed in the material record.

Published to accompany Piano Nobile's exhibition of the same title, Cyril Mann: The Solid Shadow Paintings, is the first book to describe this vivid and art historically significant group of still-life paintings. As well as including a fully-illustrated catalogue of the exhibition, the book describes how Mann's solid shadow style emerged in the early nineteen-fifties. Though Mann spent the rest of his career painting natural light, the solid shadow paintings were made under the glow of an electric lightbulb. After moving into a lightless flat at Old Street, Mann’s pictures began to course with unnatural, electric colour. For the first time, he noticed the line that joins together an object with the shadow it casts. He depicted this line in his paintings as if it were itself a solid object, laid on the table before him beside apples and Pelican paperbacks. Undertaken between 1951 and 1957, Mann's solid shadow paintings were a dazzling interjection in the subdued art world of fifties Britain. This was his most original period and it stands as his lasting contribution to the history of twentieth-century painting. These works have never been displayed together before and the accompanying exhibition to this catalogue will provide an insight into the artist’s radiant formal language.

If there is a feature of the Central European Neolithic period that deserves increased attention of researchers and all those with interest in prehistory, it is circular architecture of the dimensions of many tens of metres, from which only negative imprints of the ditches and imprints of posts in the form of postholes or narrow trenches are preserved to this day. The reason is that it offers quite a different insight into the skills and interpersonal relationships of ancient societies that lived in Europe in the first half of the fifth millennium BC. The authors of the book ask whether these structures, most often termed rondels, can be regarded as ‘architecture of power’ – the first clear evidence of thought-out power strategies of some individuals or their groups. Using anthropological terms – were they skilful and exceptional entrepreneurs with an ad hoc status (such as Big Men) living in egalitarian/segmented communities, or rather powerful Chiefs living in rank and hereditary based societies/chiefdoms?In the introduction, the book points out the difficulties that necessarily arise when cultural (social) anthropology and archaeology join forces in an attempt to generalise information about kinship and socio-political relationships, in an effort to project them into the world of archaic societies that are only known from material culture in the archaeological record. After summing up various hypotheses, the authors use selected sites, results and often only recently processed terrain research projects to summarise more information about the settlements and burials in order to present the important period in which an attempt at accumulation of power took place, perhaps not the first but definitely not the last in European prehistory.Besides other methods used in archaeology to evaluate the archaeological record, the book devotes an important chapter to the radiocarbon dating method, which may – with a critical assessment of the outcomes of dating of carefully selected samples – bring fundamental information not only about dating itself but also about the limits of archaeological sources.Welcome to the world of rondel builders, from whom we are separated by nearly 280 generations of people!