Focusing on the prolific trade, transport and consumption of Chinese silk and porcelain, and Japanese lacquer abroad between 1500 and 1644, this groundbreaking book will show how the material cultures of late Ming China and Momoyama/Early Edo Japan on one side of the globe, and Western Europe and the New World on the other, became linked for the first time, through an exchange of luxury Asian manufactured goods for currency. It offers new insight into these multi-layered long-distance commercial networks, which resulted in an unprecedented creation of material culture that reflected influences of both East and West. New research reveals evidence of the trade of these three Asian manufactured goods, first by Portugal and Spain, and later by the trading companies formed by the Northern Netherlands/Dutch Republic and England. Important documentary information is brought to light concerning, for example, the use of Chinese porcelain in Western Europe, and the objects made to order in European shapes for the Dutch and English trading companies in Japan and China. The study also sheds light on both the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific commercial trading networks through which these Asian goods circulated, as well as the way in which these goods were acquired, used and appreciated by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English societies in Western Europe and the multi-ethnic societies of the European colonies in the New World and Asia. 400 illustrations of extant examples of Chinese silks and porcelains, along with Japanese lacquers of the period, complement the information gleaned from archival and textual material. In the case of Chinese porcelain, a large number of the examples illustrated are provided by archaeological finds from European shipwrecks, survival campsites, colonial settlements in Asia, the New World and the Caribbean, and their respective mother countries in Western Europe. Breaking new ground in its comparative study of the impact these European trading empires or companies had on the material cultures of China and Japan, this book shows the influence that the European merchants and missionaries exerted on the goods made specifically to order for them in both China and Japan. It also traces the worldwide circulation of these luxury objects, which were intended for secular and religious use in European settlements in Asia, and their respective mother countries in Western Europe and colonies in the New World. More importantly, this book shows that these specific orders led to the creation of a wide variety of hybrid manufactured goods in both China and Japan, which combined elements from very different and distant cultures, reflecting the fascinating and complex East-West cultural exchanges that occurred in the early modern period.

"Backscatter is the reflection of particles, waves, or signals back to the direction from which they came: in underwater photography, back to the lens. The reflection, however, is diffuse, as opposed to clear like a mirror, thus softening images and even making them obscure.For this book, Tom Young has embraced backscatter as both subject and metaphor to render spaces below and above the water's surface—between here and there—in highly original ways. Our senses are awakened as Young creates images that evoke an evolutionary path from sea to land, that speak of a global environment increasingly threatened by human action, and that enlighten our consciousness with an abiding spirit larger than ourselves. In Young's previous book, the masterful Timeline: Learning to See with My Eyes Closed, the artist was drawn to the way multiple images can be assembled into a single photographic plate that both alters the intent and enhances the meaning of the individual images. Young has followed that same path in Backscatter, as the edge of one image is shared with the edge of another that simultaneously can fuse them into one voice or let them remain as separate voices, suggesting a deep conversation either way. As the sequence evolves, so, too, does the visual narrative whose assembly of diverse images presents unexpected relationships and an unforgettable storyline. Metaphorically, Backscatter is about looking head on into a void where what lies above and below the water's surface can seem harmonious yet helter-skelter. As John Rohrbach observes in his afterword, this is a “ferocious book” that brings us to a myriad places, each one real and imagined, conveying an overall sense of the human journey through life."

Winner of the 2017 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Literature award for photography.The rural American South has no grand cathedrals or other wonder-of-the-world monuments to religious belief. Nor has it ever been the site of religious wars or large-scale religious persecutions we see throughout the world. Nevertheless, as David Wharton reveals in his remarkable new book of photographs, the rural South is a place—a land, a region, a culture, a "way of life"—so heavily invested in religious belief that the spiritual is constantly made manifest in the ordinary. This is how religion becomes pervasive and integral to everyday life in the South for believers and nonbelievers alike.Just as David Wharton did for his pioneering book, Small Town South, he has traveled throughout the entire South since 1999, on hundreds of trips, making thousands upon thousands of photographs about the region's spiritual landscapes—from churches both active and abandoned in all vernacular shapes and sizes to actual church services and outdoor baptisms, from iconographic signs about Jesus and redemption and sin to welcoming gestures about the wonders of revivals and of grace and compassion. Lurking behind every image, however, is a sense of place about this most distinctive American region, in which religious commitment is confined neither to Sundays nor to individual houses of worship. Religion in the rural South is, quite literally, everywhere.It is Wharton's unique gift that his photographs have meaning and memory beyond merely recording the physical appearance of spiritual sites and worship activities. The people and places that appear in The Power of Belief are seen not to be a product of recent changes in religious life seen elsewhere in urban and suburban America but, instead, as an ongoing living tradition that dates back far into the history and culture of the rural South.

Rodin & Dance: The Essence of Movement is the first serious study of Rodin’s late sculptural series known as the Dance Movements. Exploring the artist’s fascination with dance and bodies in extreme acrobatic poses, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue give an account of Rodin’s passion for new forms of dance – from south-asian dances to the music hall and the avant garde – which began appearing on the French stage around 1900. Rodin made hundreds of drawings and watercolours of dancers. From about 1911 he also gave sculptural expression to this fascination with dancers’ bodies and movements in creating the Dance Movements, a series of small clay figure studies (each approx. 30 cm in height) that stretch and twist in unsettling ways. These leaping, turning figures in terracotta and plaster were found in the artist’s studio after his death and were not exhibited during Rodin’s lifetime or known beyond his close circle. Presented alongside the associated drawings and photographs of some of the dancers, they show a new side to Rodin’s art, in which he pushed the boundaries of sculpture, expressing themes of flight and gravity. This exhibition catalogue aims to become the authoritative reference for Rodin’s Dance Movements, comprising essays from leading scholars in the field of sculpture. It includes an introductory essay on the history of the bronze casting of the Dance Movements and the critical fortune of the series, an essay on the dancers Rodin admired, and an extensive technical essay. The Catalogue will comprise detailed entries on the works in the exhibition and new technical information on the drawings. Contributors include Alexandra Gerstein, Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Courtauld Institute of Art; Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, Director, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris; Juliet Bellow, Associate Professor of Art History, American University in Washington, DC and currently Resident Fellow, the Center for Ballet and the Arts, New York University; FrançoisBlanchetière, Curator of Sculpture at the Musée Rodin; Agnès Cascio and Juliette Lévy, distinguished sculpture conservators; Sophie Biass-Fabiani, Curator of Works on Paper at the Musée Rodin; and Kate Edmonson, Conservator of Works on Paper at The Courtauld Gallery.

This ground-breaking case study examines record production as ethnographic work. Since its founding in 2003, Seattle-based record label Sublime Frequencies has produced world music recordings that have been received as radical, sometimes problematic critiques of the practices of sound ethnography. Founded by punk rocker brothers Alan and Richard Bishop, along with filmmaker Hisham Mayet, the label’s releases encompass collagist sound travelogues; individual artist compilations; national, regional and genre surveys, and DVDs—all designed in a distinctive graphic style recalling the DIY aesthetic of punk and indie rock. Sublime Frequencies’ producers position themselves as heirs to canonical ethnographic labels such as Folkways, Nonesuch, and Musique du Monde, but their aesthetic and philosophical roots in punk, indie rock, and experimental music effectively distinguish their work from more conventional ethnographic norms. Situated at the intersection of ethnomusicology, sound studies, cultural anthropology, and popular music studies, the essays in this volume explore the issues surrounding the label—including appropriation and intellectual property—while providing critical commentary and charting the impact of the label through listener interviews.

The importance of Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960) in the history of British 20th century art is continually being reassessed and belatedly recognised. A gifted draughtswoman: youthful prodigy; brilliant student at the Royal College of Art under Sir William Rothenstein and a galaxy of teaching staff including Allan Gwynne-Jones, Alan Sorrell and Charles Mahoney; principal muralist at Brockley School; book illustrator; devout Christian Scientist; official World War 2 artist, the only woman artist to be salaried throughout the war; post-war allegorist and much-loved teacher; subtly insistent feminist; devoted plantswoman, gardener and inspired advocate of 'green' values; warm and witty but self-effacing personality with many accomplishments including, unexpectedly, rock-climbing and playing the banjo; but above all a very individual artist of spirited imagination and consummate technique, whose work, which hangs in all major UK galleries and several overseas, defies ready classification.Dunbar's nephew Christopher Campbell-Howes gives a sparkling, scholarly and measured account of her life and work in a richly illustrated book that combines biography, memoir and catalogue raisonné.

For a long time, comparisons of cinema and photography have been predominantly a question of contrast, both of their forms and their ways of seeing. This special issue of Cinéma & Cie reverses the perspective, by addressing some of the fundamental spaces of convergence and coexistence betweenthe two languages. While they have always been somewhat present in the history of thetwo arts (not only in chronophotography, but also astronomic photography, photographic series, and still photography), the photocinematic forms have become particularly relevant in the archaeology of post-media culture that has characterised much scholarship lately. What tools should we employ to study these confluences today? Is it possible to perceive overlapping images also in strictly cinematic or photographic works? From this perspective, the special issue deals with borderline authors, such as Jeff Wall; post-filmic aesthetics, such as the cinematic tableau vivant and innovative examples of contemporary, experimental audiovisual production.

This book is published on the eve of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the launch of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee and the iconic War Pictures by British Artists series. The scheme, devised by Kenneth Clark, played a vital role in both how the war was perceived at the time and how it has been perceived by future generations. The WAAC initiative also changed the course of the careers of the 400 artists whom became involved, 37 of whom were salaried. Brian Foss’s introductory essay gives a fascinating account of the origins of the scheme and its aims and evolution. Using the format established in the War Pictures by British Artists’ publications the chapters are organised into 8 sections, (as per the eight books in the original series). Alongside the work of the better known Official War Artists this publication will also include examples of work by less well know (unofficial) war artists adding resonance to the remarkable story of War Pictures by British Artists. The book is completed by an appendix providing a statistical analysis of how many artists were involved, who they were and what they produced.

“These poems erupted in the East Greenlanders heart–the human sea at the outer limit of the north–on Earth's most desolate and rugged shores. They were found in the living tradition of a small, recently discovered Eskimo people that I (Thalbitzer) had gone to study. For the first time I heard their language as it sounded on people's lips, as it must have sounded through many generations. I understood that this was part of the Inuit people’s ancient poetry, and these songs and poems deserved to be written down for greater humanity.” —from the introduction

Featuring an interview with Sina Najafi, an essay by Martin Herbert, and designed by Dominique Clausen, this is the first major monograph on the British-born, New Yorkbased artist Oliver Clegg. An eclectic, polyphonic and multidisciplinary artist, Clegg’s oeuvre stretches from painting, drawing and printmaking to sculpture, installation, site-specific art, participatory projects and beyond. Indeed, his practice is in many ways a shining example of ‘post-medium’ creativity today, pursuing the essence of art itself beyond any specific medium or artform. The irony is, he’s pretty damn good with each artform too. With his erudite, surprising and striking repertoire, and his diverse materials and methods (from glass, wood and steel to neon, resin and concrete, weaving and casting to engraving and industrial manufacture), Clegg offers the viewer a complex, sometimes playful, other times moving journey into existential and ontological notions of objecthood and matter, images and signs, languageand communication, creation and being. From the studio and gallery walls to the streets of London and New York,from Freud’s house to the Joshua Tree National Park, from foosball tables to state asylums, Clegg turns up to do remarkable things with the fabric of spacetime. And yes, it’s an emotional rollercoaster of a ride – in fact, Clegg’s oeuvre spans a significant proportion of the spectrum of human emotion, his unique trans-Atlantic blend of humour, sarcasm and wit coming face to face with the much more serious matters of memory, psychology, truth, belief, meaning, love, life and death. Nostalgia, childhood, games, play and sentimentality career headlong into the realms of kitsch, Pop and the history of the avantgarde, resulting in a delightful yet challenging range of responses from the viewer, whether amusement, camaraderie, joy, bemusement, outrage, disillusionment or a call to arms. Clegg is an artist with great energy, incredible spirit, and one of the most engaging, curious, cryptic and entertaining oeuvres currently making waves in the world of art. In many ways an exploration of the id, ego and superego, Clegg’s practice plays out the struggle between our basic desires, our rational minds, and the underlying mores that keep us in check. Not unlike Freudian notions of the psyche, Clegg’s practice articulates the battle that takes place inside us all on a daily basis, spilling into the outside world in myriad ways. It is a fight, yes, but it is play too.

Published to accompany the exhibition Peter Salter: Drawing Walmer Yard at Piano Nobile marking the launch of Peter Salter's first residential building in Britain, this fully illustrated catalogue presents a selection of Salter's extraordinary drawings for the project. With a new essay by Peter Salter on his drawings and an introduction by architectural associate Fenella Collingridge, the catalogue reveals the intrinsic importance of Salter's drawings to the process of his architectural practice. Exploratory, indicative, and instructive, Salter’s drawings oscillate between place and detail, idea and representation, strategy and materiality. Persuasively imaging a lived environment, Salter effortlessly shifts between high level planning and intricate detail – an overarching idea is formulated through the exposition of detail. One sheet of tracing paper might encompass scales of 1:100, 1:20 and 1:1 as a problem is worked through; controlled struggle to enable critical development resides on the surface of the tracing paper. The integrity of the idea manifests through the removal of extraneous information, variation in stress and weighting of pen lines, and the whimsical figures that populate the drawings, sleeping, sitting, and reading. Salter writes “Because of the fragmentary nature of idea and detail, the drawing becomes a compound of notions. Intuition becomes honed by redrawing, the judgement of the eye tuned by retracing the familiar, and sometimes a critical reading achieved through erasure.” Peter Salter AADipl (Hons) was educated at and taught at the AA for 13 years, in Intermediate and Diploma School. In the early years of his career he worked for Alison and Peter Smithson, and his work attempts to carry the convictions of that practice. In 2004 he was jointly awarded the Annie Spinks prize for Excellence in Teaching, reaffirmed by the award of an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA in 2012. Following seven years as Head of School (Architecture) at the University of East London, he was appointed Professor of Architecture at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff, where he still teaches. His early built projects were in Japan, including the Inami Woodcarving Museum and Kamiichi Pavilion; Walmer Yard is his first building in the UK.

Historic New England’s jewellery collection spans centuries of family tales, industrial development, and artistic expression. Some of these adornments bear designer names and museum-worthy pedigrees. Some are well used, with stories embedded in every nick and missing stone. Some represent up-to-the-minute trends. Some embody deeply held spiritual beliefs. Through full-color photographs and engaging stories, Keepsakes and Treasures is a gorgeous overview of what jewelry looked like for New Englanders from the mid-1700s to the present. Each piece illuminates a new facet of New England life across the centuries.

"A shed is the shortest line between need and shelter," writes Howard Mansfield. Drawing on material from his recent book Dwelling in Possibility, Mansfield explores the different types of sheds found around New England and beyond: covered bridges, barns, worksheds, "worship sheds" (meeting houses), extended farmhouses, bob houses for ice fishing. In lyrical style and supported by photographs by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey, Mansfield shows the connection between the design of these structures and their roles in our lives. "Sheds are like our lives - not the grandest building or the most graceful. Sheds are ordinary - and in that they are exalted."Anyone who has ever traveled the back roads of America will enjoy this beautifully photographed exploration of simple, useful structures.

This book has been conceived from a series of speeches which took place during the Filmforum Festival of Udine and Gorizia whose main theme was the use of moving images in the space of contemporary art. The aim of this publication is to create a scientific framework of some of the most important artistic experiences: from the use of archive images to the newest participatory practices. The book consists of essays selected during the Filmforum Festival and the MAGIS International Film Studies Spring School and texts from invited researchers. It examines the ways in which the transient qualities of time have been used in contemporary moving images production and in their display.

An important and strikingly beautiful book about the sacred Hindu practice of threshold drawing!In the Hindu world-view, threshold is a profoundly important concept that represents a passage between one space and place and another, creating a visual bridge between the secular and the sacred. Accordingly, the literal threshold a person crosses when entering and exiting a home or business symbolizes the threshold one crosses between the physical and spiritual realms of existence. Hindus have long believed it is possible to affect a person's well-being by using diagrams to sanctify the "threshold space." The diagrams do so by "trapping" ill will, evil, bad luck, or negative energy within their colorful and elaborate configurations, thereby cleansing those who traverse the space and sending them on their way with renewed spirit, positive energy, and good luck and fortune.The creation of the threshold diagrams is steeped in Indian history and culture going back thousands of years. Practiced by women, it was long considered a vernacular art. But, as this pioneering book reveals, the diagrams represent highly sophisticated mathematical and cosmological underpinnings that have been handed down from one generation of women to the next. As India has modernized and rapidly become more urban, however, more Indian women have acquired more complicated lives, allowing less time to continue the practice of threshold drawing and relying, increasingly, on homogenized pattern books. And so a long-standing and critically important expression of Indian life, religion, and culture is becoming less common to the point the tradition is threatened.Across the Threshold of India reveals, the story of the threshold drawings for the first time, history of how the threshold drawings evolved, what they have meant and represent in Indian and Hindu culture, and how the practice became a high form of vernacular art for religious and everyday life. By combining her unforgettable photographs—most of which are in the permanent collection of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the nation's foremost research center for Indian culture and art—with the most recent scholarship on the history and art of the threshold drawings, Martha A. Strawn has given the world a unique and enduring gift. Her book is a work of visual ecology that perceptively portrays one of India's and the world's longest and least-known religious practices—the art of sanctifying space through the creation of threshold diagrams.By presenting the most recent scholarship on the history and art of the threshold drawings and combining that engaging tale with her wonderful fine-art and documentary photographs, Martha Strawn has given the world a unique and enduring gift: a work of visual ecology that perceptively portrays one of India's and the world's longest and least-known religious practices: the art of sanctifying space through threshold drawings.

The Work Beyond examines the extraordinary work of French-born artist Henri Barande. Edited by art critic David Galloway, the book contains stunning reproductions of Barande s sculptures and paintings, together with a collection of essays by Henri Claude Cousseau, Romaric Sulger Buel and Michel Weemans that explore Barande s artistic achievements. This extensive monograph is published on September 8th 2016 and coincides with an exhibition at Saatchi Gallery which opens on October 4th. Booth-Clibborn Editions have chosen to reflect the extraordinary breadth and sequential nature of Barande s work in the book design. Each of the 3,500 book covers, all based on Barande s paintings , will be unique and numbered.