Des Hughes

I Want To Be Adored

Texts by Stephen Feeke, Bruce Haines and Harry Thorne

A witty, dark and sensitive humour runs through the work of British artist Des Hughes. His practice is an obsessive, physical enquiry into the traditions of sculpture, rethinking conventional methods and materials. Nothing is as it first appears; crudely modelled clay is meticulously cast in resin but, with the inclusion of marble or iron dust, could easily have been carved from a block of stone or forged in a blacksmith’s furnace. He collects, he dismembers, he puts things back together in fragments, or leaves pieces in an unfinished state – or just leaves them in pieces. He is a Surrealist de nos jours. At the same time, there is always a tender acknowledgment of the canon of modernist sculpture, and of the fragile heroism inherent in the handmade object. Alongside this sculptural work, textiles have also become a potent aspect of his practice. While time-consuming, his embroidering looks spontaneous, like a hastily handwritten scrawl. His cross-stitch is self-taught and has a distinctly amateur appearance; raw edges and wonky letters give his sewn samplers a homespun quality.

In this beautiful and compelling book, Hughes leads the reader through the passages of his creative mind, offering a commentary on his most significant works. Texts by Stephen Feeke, Bruce Haines and Harry Thorne respond to particular aspects of the practice. The result is the first comprehensive monograph on the quiet revolutionary at the heart of contemporary sculpture.

Des Hughes is a British artist who studied at Bath School of Art and Design and Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has had multiple solo exhibitions at galleries including Hepworth Wakefield; Manchester Art Gallery; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle; Nottingham Contemporary; and Frieze Art Fair, London. He has been in numerous group shows, including at the Tate Britain; Royal Academy; Saatchi Gallery; Henry Moore Foundation and Henry Moore Institute; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; New Art Centre; Camden Arts Centre; and in the Sculpture Garden of Frieze Art Fair, London.

Stephen Feeke is Director of the New Art Centre at Roche Court, Salisbury.

Bruce Haines is a gallerist, curator and researcher based in London.

Harry Thorne is a writer and editor based in Berlin. He is assistant editor of frieze magazine and a contributing editor of the White Review.

Tim Braden

Looking and Painting

Texts by Christopher Bedford, Jennifer Higgie and Dominic Molon

Constantly shifting between representation and abstraction, while referencing art, architecture and design and embracing the decorative, Tim Braden’s work is a celebration of the act of making things. His expressive and lushly seductive painting explores the in-between spaces between categories and states, dissolving and reassembling the world in high-key colour and vivid brushstrokes to re-present reality as something new and newly felt. His painterly works, both abstract and figurative, often depict or imagine interior spaces such as homes and studios, or gardens and landscapes, as well as individuals working, making, or looking. Found objects and images play an important role in the practice. His paintings frequently evolve from historical photographs, book and magazine covers, or anecdotes involving celebrated twentieth-century artists and designers such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Sonia Delaunay, and Roberto Burle Marx. Braden also plays with scale and expectation, creating ‘found’ abstract compositions from cropped fragments of his own figurative works that he then realizes as oversized paintings on canvas or small oil sketches on card.

Assembling a body of work produced over the last decade, Tim Braden: Looking and Painting is the first monograph on the artist in ten years. It draws together the various themes and styles of his work, and includes many paintings that have never been shown in public before. The book includes responses to Braden’s work by Jennifer Higgie, Christopher Bedford, and Dominic Molon.

Tim Braden studied at the Ruskin Oxford; St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He has exhibited widely, including at Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow; Gemeente Museum, The Hague; Hamburger Bahnhof at Museum fur Gegenwart, Berlin; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam; the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; and the Goethe Institute in New York. His work is in many private and public collections internationally including New Art Gallery, Walsall, and the Zabludowicz Collection, London. He lives and works in London.

Christopher Bedford is the Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Jennifer Higgie is a writer and editorial director of frieze. She is the editor of The Artist’s Joke, author of the novel Bedlam and the children’s book There’s Not One.

Dominic Molon is the Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art at the RISD Museum, Rhode Island.

Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Edited by Sinéad McCarthy

‘Such energy and dynamism … demands [to] be seen’ — Telegraph
‘Many highlights’ — Observer
‘Invigorating’ — Times

Published on the occasion of the tenth edition of Liverpool Biennial, this book reflects on the timely question Beautiful world, where are you? It is derived from a 1788 poem by the German poet Friedrich von Schiller, later set to music by Austrian composer Franz Schubert in 1819. The years between the composition of Schiller’s poem and Schubert’s song saw great upheaval and profound change in Europe, from the French Revolution to the fall of the Napoleonic empire. Today the poem continues to suggest a world gripped by deep uncertainty; a world of social, political and environmental turmoil. It can be seen as a lament, but also as an invitation to reconsider our past, advancing a new sense of beauty that might be shared in a more equitable way.

Featuring contributions from a range of disciplines and presenting a diversity of perspectives on the theme, the book includes contributions from the artists in the Biennial, as well as writers, ecologists, musicians, poets, scientists, journalists and political commentators from around the world. It considers the international nature of both Liverpool and the Biennial and presents images of historical artefacts from the city’s rich collections. Addressing urgent issues such as gender and racial inequality, conservation, extinction, education, resource extraction, indigeneity and post-colonialism, while articulating alternatives and new possibilities, this book captures a moment in time and an expression of hope for the future.

Sinéad McCarthy is Curator at Liverpool Biennial

The Art of Rodin

Introduction by Louis Weinberg

An Art / Books Vintage Classic

Auguste Rodin is a colossus in the history of art. In a career that spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Paris-born sculptor rebelled against the idealized forms and practices of traditional art and paved the way for the birth of modern sculpture. While he believed that art should be true to nature, he sought to penetrate beneath the surface appearance and to express inner truths of the human psyche. The hallmarks of his style – its highly eroticized, sometimes explicit character, his use of incomplete figures, his emphasis on formal qualities rather than on narrative, and his desire to retain the marks of the sculptural process – were considered revolutionary at the time. As a result, his intense, evocative works courted controversy, inspiring violent hatred and ardent admiration in equal measure. By the end of his life, however, his reputation was established and he had become one of the most celebrated artists in the world.

This centenary facsimile edition faithfully reproduces the pages of a 1918 volume published immediately in the wake of Rodin’s death. With an essay by American artist, critic, and teacher Louis Weinberg, it presents almost seventy of Rodin’s greatest works in a beautiful clothbound format for a contemporary audience. It is a perfect gift, collectible and keepsake for any Rodin enthusiast or lover of modern sculpture.

Louis Weinberg (1885–1964) was an artist, writer and professor emeritus of art at City College in New York. He was the author of The Art of Rodin, Color in Every Day Life, America in the Making, and America in the Machine Age.

ABC

An Alphabet

Written and pictured by Mrs Arthur Gaskin

An Art / Books Children’s Classic

This classic Victorian children’s ABC primer was originally published in London and Chicago in 1895. It was the first book by the Arts and Crafts artist and designer Georgie Gaskin, celebrated for the jewellery she produced with her husband Arthur. Exquisite woodcut illustrations and rhymes by Gaskin accompany each letter of the alphabet and combine to create a volume that charms and delights both children and adults. It soon became a favourite and was published in several editions from the late 1890s, including a hand-painted deluxe version printed on vellum of only a handful of copies. This new facsimile is the first to reproduce the original clothbound trade edition of 1895. It is bound with a silkscreened cloth cover and printed on high-quality paper to create a collectible object that recipients will treasure long into adulthood. It is the first volume in a series of special facsimiles of historic illustrated children’s titles selected and produced by Art / Books.

Georgina Evelyn Cave Gaskin (1866–1934), known as Georgie Gaskin, was an English jewellery and metalwork designer. With her husband Arthur Gaskin, she was one of the original members of the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen, and a leading jeweller of the Arts and Crafts movement. They produced silver and enamel work, book illustrations and jewellery, both independently and in partnership. Georgie wrote and illustrated a number of books under her own name and as Mrs Arthur Gaskin, beginning with ABC: An Alphabet in 1895, a year after the couple married. She continued to design jewellery until shortly before her death.

The Art of Aubrey Beardsley

Preface and introduction by Arthur Symons

An Art / Books Vintage Classic

Aubrey Beardsley was a leading figure of the fin de siècle Aesthetic Movement and the most controversial artist in 1890s London. His delicate yet bold drawings of grotesque, sensual and erotic subjects transformed the art of illustration but also scandalized Victorian society with their dark and often perverse imagery. Prolific until his early death at the age of twenty-five from tuberculosis, in just six years and with almost no formal training he produced an enormous body of work that symbolized the decadence of the period.

Published twenty years after he died, The Art of Aubrey Beardsley presented sixty-four of his works in an intimate pocket-sized edition. With a personal memoir and critical appreciation by the poet and editor Arthur Symons, written upon the death of his friend and collaborator, it was the definitive word on the provocative artist’s seductive and individual art, the text becoming a collectors’ item that was privately printed until being published for a wider audience. This centenary facsimile edition faithfully reproduces the pages of the 1918 volume, presented in a special cloth binding with a black-and-gold motif adapted from one of Beardsley’s own designs for a book cover. A perfect gift for any Beardsley enthusiast, this book will also appeal to anyone interested in the fin de siècle era and the beginnings of modern graphic art.

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872–98) was born in Brighton on 21 August 1872. By the age of seven, he was showing signs of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him. From 1891 to 1892, he took evening classes at the Westminster School of Art, the only formal artistic training he ever received. That year, he visited Paris and discovered the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and Japanese prints, both of which influenced his own style. In 1893, he received his first commission, to illustrate Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Over the next six years, he completed numerous projects, including illustrations for editions of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, and drawings for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. He also co-founded the literary magazines the Yellow Book and the Savoy. By 1897, his health was deteriorating, prompting a move to Menton on the French Riviera, where he died on 16 March 1898.

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was a British poet, critic and magazine editor and one of the key exponents of Symbolism in Britain. He contributed poems and essays to the illustrated quarterly literary periodical the Yellow Book, whose principal illustrator and first art editor was Aubrey Beardsley. From late 1895 through 1896 Symons edited, along with Beardsley and Leonard Smithers, The Savoy, a short-lived magazine of literature, art, and criticism whose contributors included Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Joseph Conrad. Until he suffered a breakdown in 1909, Symons wrote numerous volumes of verse, plays, and essays, including the important The Symbolist Movement in Literature, which would have a major influence on W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot.

The Christian Year in Painting

John S. Dixon

‘A gorgeous repository of … images’ — Spectator
‘[Dixon’s] depth of knowledge of the Christian liturgy, his enthusiastic educator’s way of presenting, and his smart succinct writing style make this book fascinating … a rich, deeply satisfying read’ — New York Journal of Books

The stories of Christianity and painting have been intertwined since at least the Middle Ages. The painters of the early, high, and late Renaissance in Italy, Spain, and northern Europe learned their art and craft while working in the service of both the Church and devout patrons, producing depictions of scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints for the benefit and instruction of clergy and worshippers alike. This book follows a course through the Christian year – from Advent and the Christmas season, through Holy Week and Easter, to All Saints’ Day – to present numerous works celebrating the key events and festivals of the liturgical calendar by some of the best-known names from art history.

Velázquez, Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, Raphael, Giotto, Titian, Rubens, and Caravaggio are just some of the many artists included in the book with their celebrated depictions of feasts such as the Immaculate Conception, the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday.

John S. Dixon guides the reader by offering detailed analysis of the formal qualities and symbolism of each painting, while outlining the biblical stories that inspired their creation and explaining their religious and art-historical significance. Full illustrations and close-up details of the featured works are accompanied by comparative illustrations of paintings and sculptures of the subjects by other masters. This beautiful book will enable all lovers of painting, both Christian and non-Christian, to expand their appreciation of these magnificent works of art.

John S. Dixon is the former Deputy Principal of Trinity and All Saints College in Leeds (now Leeds Trinity University) and a former tutor in art history at the Open University. He has also been for many years the arts correspondent for the weekly newspaper the Catholic Times.

59 Paintings

In which the artist considers the process of
thinking about and making work

Paul Winstanley

What does a painter think about when he or she sets out to make a work? Where do their ideas and inspirations come from? How do they begin to translate those thoughts into a painted image? Taking his own works as a starting-point, award-winning artist Paul Winstanley presents a series of texts that together reveal what it means to conceive, make and think about paintings. Among the varied subjects that he considers are how a painter seeks out and finds inspiration in life and the world; the relationship between observed and depicted realities; what constitutes ‘truth’ in a painting; how to approach conceptual and technical challenges; the role of the viewer in the transaction at the heart of painting; and the various belief systems that lie behind the business of creating and looking at paintings. The result, a rare monograph on the work of an artist written by the artist himself, is an exquisite personal account of the art and craft of making painted images today.

Paul Winstanley was born in Manchester in 1954. He studied painting at Cardiff College of Art from 1973 to 1976, and at the Slade School of Art in London between 1976 and 1978. He won the first prize of the Unilever Award at the Whitechapel Open in 1989, and two years later was appointed Kettle’s Yard artist-in-residence at the University of Cambridge. He has work in important public and private collections in Europe and the United States. He is represented by Mitchell Innes + Nash, New York; 1301PE, Los Angeles; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg; and Alan Cristea Gallery, London. He lives and works in London.

Becoming Henry Moore

Edited by Hannah Higham
Texts by Sebastiano Barassi, Tania Moore, Jon Wood

‘Fascinating look at the birth of a modern master ★★★★’ — Telegraph
‘Visually rich and quietly subversive’ — Times Literary Supplement

Accompanying an exhibition of the same name, Becoming Henry Moore tells the story of the artist’s creative journey between 1914 and 1930, from gifted schoolboy to celebrated sculptor. Displaying artistic skill and ambition from a young age, Moore spent his early years studying the art of the past and of his contemporaries, absorbing a wide variety of sculptural ideas and forms as he developed his own individual and now iconic style.

In this beautiful, richly illustrated book, Sebastiano Barassi presents a lively account of this formative period, from Moore’s time at Castleford Secondary School, where his talent was first spotted, through his active service in the First World War and student life at Leeds School of Art, and culminating with his move to the Royal College of Art in London and subsequent entry into the world of contemporary sculpture. What is revealed is a rich story of friendships, mentors, and collectors, and a range of artistic influences, from classical and non-Western art to Renaissance and modern masters and dialogues with other leading figures from the British and European avant-gardes. Moore’s encounters with collections both public and private and the importance of ancient art in his development are brought to life by contributions from Tania Moore and Jon Wood, who show not only how these experiences were critical in the formation of the artist’s early style, but also how they continued to inform his work for the rest of his career.

Richly illustrated with sculptures, drawings and photographs from his life, and including a chronology of the early years, this book shows the myriad influences at play as Henry Moore took his first steps on the path to becoming Britain’s foremost modern sculptor.

Sebastiano Barassi is Head of Henry Moore Collections and Exhibitions at the Henry Moore Foundation
Hannah Higham is Curator at the Henry Moore Foundation.
Tania Moore is Curatorial Assistant at the Royal Academy of Arts, London
Dr Jon Wood is Research Curator at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

Fahrelnissa Zeid

Painter of Inner Worlds

Adila Laïdi-Hanieh

‘Her biography reads like a novel’ — Evening Standard
‘Laidi-Hanieh’s elegant prose brings to life the rich cultural environment in which Fahrelnissa lived and which she created around her.… The book’s excellent text is enriched by truly stunning images of Fahrelnissa’s paintings, as well as sketches and photos, and a comprehensive chronology of her life events and multiple exhibitions.’ — Jordan Times
‘Elegant … carefully researched … this handsome tome, the product of a thorough investigation into the artist’s life and work, challenges orientalist interpretations of her art. In so doing, it redefines Zeid as one of the foremost modernist painters of the last century.’ — Harper’s Bazaar Arabia
‘[Brings] her work out of the shadows and into the collective consciousness’ — New York magazine
‘Comprehensive and painstakingly researched … this is a book to read and reread.’ — Cornucopia magazine
‘A timely and much-needed contribution to the study of transnational feminist art histories’ — Third Text

The story of Fahrelnissa Zeid’s (1901–91) life is truly like no other. A Turkish noblewoman by birth and Iraqi princess by marriage, she was the first female artist to have a solo exhibition at London’s prestigious Institute of Contemporary Arts. Friend and relative of kings, queens, and statesmen, and busy wife of an ambassador, she was also a leading figure of Turkish modernism in the 1940s and a prominent member of the avant-garde in postwar Paris, praised by fellow artists and critics alike. Despite her privileged background, she fought personal tragedy, psychological turmoil, and social and artistic prejudice to chart a unique and innovative path all of her own. She became celebrated in her lifetime for her monumental and dynamic abstract compositions that engulf the viewer in fields of colour, light, and energetic movement, as well as for her later expressionistic portraits of family and close friends. These works reflect her conception of art as a ceaseless forward quest, driven by a spiritual need to produce painterly renditions of cosmic journeys and inner psychic universes.

Coinciding with a retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern, this book is written by a former student of the artist and based on unprecedented access to her private papers and personal archive. It provides a revisionist and definitive account of both her extraordinary life and the constant innovation and reinvention that characterized her career right up until her final decades working and teaching in Jordan. It foregrounds the importance of her extensive knowledge of European culture and her shifting mental state on her artistic vision, and challenges orientalist interpretations of her art. In doing so, it redefines Fahrelnissa Zeid for the contemporary reader as one of the most important modernists of the twentieth century.

Dr Adila Laïdi-Hanieh is director of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, and a writer and academic focusing on Arab and Middle East arts and cultural practices. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University in Virginia, United States, which she obtained as a Fulbright Scholar. A former painting student of Fahrelnissa Zeid, she writes and lectures on contemporary art of the Middle East.