This volume comprises published papers from the Ninth International Insular Art Conference held in Durham in 2022. It brings together the latest scholarship on early medieval (AD 400–1100) art in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Perspectives taken include classical art historical analysis of form, style and design, but also a close attention to the materials used and the complex process of production and artisan skill required to create these objects. This volume focuses on manuscripts, metalwork and other media, with research on stone sculpture appearing in Volume 2.

This volume comprises published papers from the Ninth International Insular Art Conference held in Durham in 2022. It brings together the latest scholarship on early medieval (AD 400–1100) art in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Perspectives taken include classical art historical analysis of form, style and design, but also a close attention to the materials used and the complex process of production and artisan skill required to create these objects. This volume focuses on stone sculpture and carving, with research on manuscripts, metalwork and other media appearing in Volume 1.

This is a fascinating study of rare Siamese illuminated manuscripts of two kinds, biological and cosmological. Beautiful in themselves, they are produced under unusual conditions and no one of these manuscripts is like another, though they draw on a common pool of rituals, actions and stories. This ground-breaking publication examines closely and contextualizes fourteen of the most striking and visually unique manuscripts of this kind known, in or outside Thailand. These manuscripts are religious in nature, containing several genres of Buddhist texts including liturgical, narrative, historical, grammatical, psychological, ritual, and magical material, but, compared to other Thai and other South-East Asian examples they are particularly strong in the realms of medical, biological and cosmological Thai thought. A recurrent feature is the story of Phra Malai, a monk whose travels to various heavens and hells is described and illustrated. A number of rare medical manuscripts serve to reveal how mythology, biology, astrology, physiognomy and pharmacology are blended together in the pre-modern Siamese/Thai tradition. These and other such illuminated manuscripts were produced in 18th- and 19thcentury Siam (as Thailand was then known) and are richly illustrated both with delightful and evocative depictions of the Buddha, Hindu deities, Bodhisattvas, nuns, monks, and laypeople, and with some grotesque and terrifying ones - they attest to a particular interest in corpses and their implications among some of their readers.The author, who has both lived the Buddhist life in Thailand and researched in Thai monasteries, has an extensive knowledge not only of the history but of the dynamic of Thai religion, studying not just older texts but continuing rituals and contemporary media. He was inspired to write this book by the very great value he saw in these particular manuscripts, a most unusual collection amassed with a discriminating eye.The book consists both of an explanation and a detailed catalogue of some exemplary manuscripts and of a fascinating introductory essay discussing the belief systems and activities they represent.

This catalogue sheds new light on the Paris Olympics of 1924, often considered the first international games. From their origins in ancient Greece to their modern transformation into a visually powerful event on the world stage, the Olympics have retained their unique place in sport and culture. Published to coincide with the Paris Olympics of 2024, the book accompanies a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The summer of 2024 will see the Olympics return to Paris after a century. The Olympics in 1924 were arguably the first truly international games, the first games to transmit live radio broadcasts and the first to have an Olympic village. They incorporated an art competition as well as sporting events, and yielded thirty-five medals for Britain, including for Cambridge sprinter Harold Abrahams of Chariots of Fire fame. This catalogue explores the Olympic games from a visual perspective, investigating the tensions between their classical beginnings and their representation in 1924 and across the modern era. How were the 1924 Olympics shaped by the visual culture of the period? And how, in turn, were the arts shaped by them? From plaster casts of fifthcentury BCE athletic statues to Hollywood cinema, and from classic portraits of the protagonists to more abstract art, this catalogue brings together painting, sculpture, film, photography, posters, letters, medals and other memorabilia to tell a story of sporting endeavour that equally mirrored and shaped its times. Issues of gender, race and class, as well as an exploration of celebrity and spectatorship, show that the debate around sport was as complex and momentous in the past as it is today. The exhibition catalogue offers readers the opportunity to explore some of the key themes of the show in more depth. It comprises essays by specialists from the fields of Classics, art history, French history, sports history and medicine, each of whom will focus on key themes in the exhibition and key protagonists in the Olympic story. The wide range of art will appeal to fans of classicism, modernism, Cubism, Surrealism and Futurism, as well as Art Deco, while the subject matter will also chime with sports fans – and tap into the enthusiasm for all things Olympic in 2024.

This book proposes a narrative model for the creation of immersive and interactive filmic experiences, in which the interactor has agency within the virtual environment to alter the course of the story and shape their own journey. The book focuses in detail on the epistemology of the immersive interactive movie by analysing its aesthetic, narrative and interactive features, examining the workflow of production and presenting an evaluative protocol for VR experiences of this kind. From the nature of the frameless moving image to the newest human-computer interfaces, passing through the design and evaluation of interactive digital narratives, this volume builds a bridge between cinema and VR, proposing that all VR movies should be interactive.

This beautifully illustrated and scholarly catalogue presents a selection of exceptional drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection. It accompanies an exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum. The drawings assembled by Clement C. (“Chips”) Moore constitute one of the preeminent private collections of Dutch drawing in America. The collection also includes works by Flemish, French, Italian and British artists, ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. These works have long been intended to join the collections at the Morgan Library & Museum, and this exhibition – timed to coincide with the Morgan’s centennial celebrations – makes formal the promised gift. Accompanying the exhibition, this catalogue will demonstrate the breadth of the Moore Collection with a selection of around eighty works that highlight the principal themes of Dutch art, the various functions and techniques of Dutch drawings, and the connections between the Dutch and other European artistic traditions. Works by Hendrick Goltzius, Jacob de Gheyn, Jan Bruegel, Rembrandt van Rijn, Aelbert Cuyp, Jacob van Ruisdael, Peter Lely, Claude Lorrain, Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable are among those featured. The catalogue includes an introductory essay by Jane Turner and entries authored by an international team of specialists.

Ray Atkins (b.1937) is one of the least well known major painters of his generation. He studied at Bromley College of Art in Kent before gaining a post graduate place at the Slade despite having failed the National Diploma in Design in 1961. His first teaching post was at Reading University in 1965 where he lived and recorded in paint the huge upheavals that the town was undergoing, leading to a one person exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London in 1974.A teaching post at Falmouth Art School in 1974 led to a thirty four year stay in Cornwall where he painted the extraordinary landscape of the china clay country around St Austell with its collossal pits and mounds of micae.The desolation left over by the demise of the tin mining industry was also a major theme, The more intimate subjects of children, gardens, family life and inevitably the sea were also part of the oevre. The nineties also saw a long series of works on the theme of dance.To celebrate the uncelebrated was his dictum.Peter Davies follows Atkins’ journey from the dark but creative London period to the high spots in the eighties with a retrospective at the Royal West of England Academy and with work selected for the John Moores in Liverpool, a room at a Serpentine summer Show, and representation in shows at the Hayward gallery.The book also follows the tensions and problems arising from Atkins’ insistence on working direct from his subjects and places the artist’s career in the wider context of the twists and turns of events in the art world in the UK, Europe and beyond.In addition, David Stoker gives a personal account of his discovery of Atkins in France, leading to a growing friendship and a deep understanding and respect for the work.

This catalogue, the fi rst of its kind in the UK, accompanying the 2024 exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, explores the important contribution to Japanese woodblock printing of the Yoshida family, from patriarch Hiroshi down to the current generation, led by Yoshida Ayomi. The story of the Yoshida family has been woven into the story of Japanese printmaking across two centuries, with each generation infusing this traditional art form with their sensitivity and imagination. Trained as a painter and watercolourist, Yoshida Hiroshi (1876–1950) was a pioneer of the shin hanga artistic movement, which revived the traditional ukiyo-e prints (‘pictures of the floating world’) focusing on beautiful landscapes and landmarks and combined them with Western influences. His incredible corpus of woodblock prints, inspired by his travels across Japan but also in Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and North America, greatly contributed to the popularity of Japanese prints in the West. A rare instance in the early twentieth-century Japanese art world, the Yoshida legacy relies also on the important contribution of its women: first Fujio (1887–1987), Hiroshi’s wife, a watercolourist, painter and printmaker, who was the first Japanese woman artist to gain international acclaim. Her style developed over time from naturalism towards greater stylization and organic abstraction, with her late still lifes strikingly balancing boldness and sensuality. Toshi (1911–1995) and Hodaka (1926–1995), Hiroshi and Fujio’s sons, represent the second generation of this artistic dynasty; Toshi introduced post-war abstraction to the Japanese printmaking process, while Hodaka pushed these modernist instances further, achieving a unique personal style inspired by the sosaku hanga movement of artistic self-expression. His wife Chizuko (1924–2017) co-founded the first group of female printmakers in Japan, the Women’s Print Association. Her works sapiently connect popular art movements like Abstract Expressionism with Japanese printmaking. The youngest member of the Yoshida family is Ayomi (b. 1958), daughter of Hodaka and Chizuko, whose practice bridges the gap between ukyio-e and contemporary art thanks also to the exploration of organic materials. She has been exhibited at major international institutions and will contribute an original installation to the Dulwich show.

This catalogue invites readers to dive deeper into the captivating dialogue between materiality and imagination, as envisioned by IRTH إرث at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Prepared for the Biennale Architettura 2023, for which the theme was ‘The Laboratory of the Future’, the catalogue of IRTH إرث immerses visitors into the profound interplay between material and immaterial. It chronicles the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia’s multi-faceted contribution to the discussion, in which the essence of earth as a material becomes a canvas for envisioning tomorrow’s architectural legacies. In a curatorial journey told through essays from visionary architects, researchers and experimental material alchemists, the catalogue represents the multiple viewpoints and projects emerging from Saudi Arabia and its wider region. It delves into vernacular Saudi architecture, which, meticulously deconstructed and reimagined, forms the key point of reference for this journey. As we navigate the universal challenges of belonging and legacy, this exhibition transcends geographical boundaries, seeking common ground in the tapestry of diverse identities and perspectives. Through the lens of materiality, the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia compels us to answer collectively the problems of tomorrow, one narrative at a time. Notable topics: The Exploration of Immateriality in Architecture; Examining Experimental Materials for Future-proofed Built Environments; Understanding Vernacular Architecture and Modernization in Saudi Arabia.

Winner, 2018 SAH Alice Davis Hitchcock Award Mexico City became one of the centers of architectural modernism in the Americas in the first half of the twentieth century. Invigorated by insights drawn from the first published histories of Mexican colonial architecture, which suggested that Mexico possessed a distinctive architecture and culture, beginning in the 1920s a new generation of architects created profoundly visual modern buildings intended to convey Mexico’s unique cultural character. By midcentury these architects and their students had rewritten the country’s architectural history and transformed the capital into a metropolis where new buildings that evoked pre-conquest, colonial, and International Style architecture coexisted. Through an exploration of schools, a university campus, a government ministry, a workers’ park, and houses for Diego Rivera and Luis Barragán, Kathryn O’Rourke offers a new interpretation of modern architecture in the Mexican capital, showing close links between design, evolving understandings of national architectural history, folk art, and social reform. This book demonstrates why creating a distinctively Mexican architecture captivated architects whose work was formally dissimilar, and how that concern became central to the profession.

Self-taught and influential in the advocacy of photography as an art form, Mayne was passionate about representing human life as he found it – most famously, in his street images of low-income communities in West London. Capturing children at play and the emerging phenomenon of the ‘swaggering teenager’, Mayne discovered in the young a defining energy that perfectly embodied both the scars and the vitality of post-war Britain.The exhibition of more than sixty photographs brings together a selection of Mayne’s iconic London scenes with later, almost entirely unknown intimate portraitsof his own family in rural Dorset. While these two strands have a different tenor, they share Mayne’s radical empathy and his evident desire to create images with lasting impact, sensitivity and artistic integrity. With those pictured from the 1950s now in their senior years and a new generation of young people faced with myriad crises, Mayne’s images of childhood, adolescence and family feel especially poignant and timely.The catalogue is richly illustrated and includes an original essay by Jane Alison and an interview with Mayne’s daughter, Katkin Tremayne.

Henry Spencer Moore (1898–1986) was one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. This catalogue considers Moore’s celebrated Shelter drawings as the point of departure for a new reading of the artist’s fascination with images of walls, during and immediately after World War II. It accompanies a focused exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. After the destruction of his London studio early in World War II, Henry Moore began drawing figures sheltering from bomb raids in the London Underground. This catalogue and exhibition consider Moore’s celebrated series as the point of departure for a new reading of the artist’s fascination with images of walls, during and immediately after World War II. In the London Underground, where Moore drew these figures, the walls of these sheltered spaces came to absorb his attention in an altogether new way, becoming scene-setters, and key components of his drawings. This fascination with the bricks and the presence of walls, their texture, mass and volume, became especially important after his project to illustrate the wartime radio play The Rescue, based on Homer’s Odyssey. Henry Moore: Shadows on the Wall, a collaboration with the Henry Moore Foundation, suggests for the first time that the walls in his drawings offer a new way to understand some of his most individual and monumental Post-War sculpture projects.

Accompanying a major exhibition at Philip Mould & Company, Fruit of Friendship: Portraits by Mary Beale presents the work of the remarkable sevenenteenth-century woman artist. Mary Beale (1633–1699) was Britain’s first woman artist to run a successful studio practice. In an era when the arts in Britain were flourishing and portraitists were in high demand, Beale established a unique practice that set her apart from her competitors and brought her great acclaim. Friendship and family played a crucial role in Beale’s success. She was the figurehead of her family and studio, while her husband dedicated himself to supporting the business, often preparing paints and canvasses. Beale’s portraits, many of which are illustrated here for the first time, build a picture of a talented and multi-faceted woman – artist, writer, businesswoman, mother and friend. The title of this publication and of the accompanying exhibition is drawn from Beale’s own writings, and the materials presented span her entire career. Featuring essays by leading scholars, the catalogue introduces a number of recently discovered portraits by Beale and showcases several important works that have never been publicly displayed before.

Iceland is best known for its stunning scenery and majestic landscapes. When photographer Nancy Libson first visited Iceland for a hiking trip some twenty years ago, she immediately fell in love with the country and its dramatic landscape. She vowed to return again, camera in hand. Beginning in 2015, Libson did just that, revisiting Iceland for four additional summers to photograph the land and its people.When Libson began her project, she chose to get to know the Icelandic people in rural areas. As she continued to experience this remote and beautiful land, she developed an awareness of the unique qualities of childhood in Iceland, and so her emphasis shifted from people of all ages to children at home and at play. Libson noticed that Icelandic children were granted an unusual level of freedom while living securely in close-knit families and supportive communities. She was further inspired to capture Iceland’s remoteness and beauty and its impact on the children who live there.As portrayed in Children in Iceland, Libson’s photographs provide an intimate and evocative view of the lives of the children surrounded by Iceland’s natural landscape. By photographing Iceland’s children, Libson began to better understand not only the children, but through them the culture and spirit of growing up in this remarkable country. The book is further enhanced by an afterword by Kristín Helga Gunnarsdóttir, the well-known Icelandic children’s author, who shares her thoughts about the freedom that Icelandic children feel from living with and close to nature.

Focusing on the British virtuoso Rex Whistler (1905–1944), who was linked to many of the most illustrious figures of the inter-war period, this book explores an exceptional case of artistic patronage in the twentieth century. In weaving together social and art history, this beautifully illustrated volume will be as much about the artist as it is about his patrons. It accompanies a major exhibition at the Salisbury Museum, which holds the Rex Whistler Archive. Whistler’s cast of patrons reads like the Who’s Who of his time: the art collector and poet Edward James, the avid diarist and socialite Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, Lord and Lady Louis Mountbatten, Cecil Beaton, Duff and Diana Cooper, author and poet Lady Dorothy Wellesley and many others for whom Whistler worked on a diverse range of commissions, from murals, portraits and bookplates to architectural improvements and even book illustrations. The exchange with his patrons, the book argues, gave Whistler an opportunity to explore a rich variety of subjects, materials and techniques. The artworks discussed in the volume range from a recently re-discovered painting for Sir Malcolm Bullock, a substantial history painting unique in Whistler’s oeuvre, to the magnificent murals at Port Lympne and Trent Park designed for Sir Philip Sassoon, one of the greatest hosts of the age, to Plas Newydd, where Whistler created one of the largest private mural schemes in the inter-war period for the 6th Marquess and Marchioness of Anglesey. It culminates with Maud Russell’s mansion at Mottisfont, where in 1938–39 the artist was painting one of his fi nest works in trompe l’oeil as war loomed over Europe, the war in which Whistler gave his life for his country. Whistler’s commissioning circle were both diverse and privileged, with many embracing the sexual fluidity of the time, and the book deepens our understanding of how the elite were protected by their wealth and position from the strict societal mores of the 1920s and 30s. The artist understood the importance of creating beautiful private spaces for all his clients; but, for some, at a time when homosexuality was still illegal, he was painting murals in houses that were acknowledged havens where sexual preferences could be expressed without fear of discrimination. Dr Nikki Frater, an expert on Whistler’s work, draws on extensive archival research and newly available material to present a fresh interpretation of the relationship between the artist and his milieu. Frater’s behind-the-scenes approach illuminates Whistler’s creative methods and techniques and includes many previously unseen drawings and sketches. The book speaks not only of his patrons, but also paints a nuanced portrait of his oeuvre and the artist himself, as he tried to combine his challenging career with a complicated romantic life. This is a timely re-examination, given the recent controversy surrounding his mural at the Tate Gallery Restaurant, and offers an opportunity to understand fully Whistler’s place in and contribution to the arts and culture of his time.

In his inimitable style John Quinn pays homage to fifty well-known people from various fields – the arts, education, politics, business, science, economics – all of whom he interviewed in the course of his twenty-seven-year career in broadcasting. It includes unique and insightful interviews, talks and writings from contributors such as Maeve Binchy, Seamus Heaney, John Hume, Dervla Murphy, Brendan Kennelly, John McGahern and George Mitchell.