The painter, Romi Behrens, lived in West Cornwall for nearly sixty years, voraciously painting the subjects around her every day. Her artistic career was as long as it was broad and spanned many genres, including still life, portraiture and landscape painting. This is the first monograph to pay homage to the extent of her career, providing a selected but characteristically-diverse range of visual and written material from the artist’s oeuvre and archives, starting with Romi's earliest paintings of her family, friends and the streets of Penzance and extending to religious themes done later in her life. Rachel Rose Smith gives chronological shape to the span of Romi’s work, analysing the varying relationships throughout between the person and her work, as it reflected the many identities she held, including painter, woman, wife and mother. The author also explores rich connections embedded within her ways of seeing to formative examples from the history of painting, including Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso, with whom she arguably worked in dialogue. Romi’s works, however, are very much her own throughout, with those forms of expression and attention learnt from precedents mingling with her own humour, flair and surrounding life. Romi’s Christian faith and the loving focus she gave to her many subjects, whether friends or inanimate objects, are similarly explored, revealing a body of work which is both tender and vibrant, as well as persistent and constantly on the move.

The botanical drawings of the American naturalist William Bartram.

A new understanding of the birth of jazz through a fine-grained social history of early African American musicians/>/>Brassroots Democracy recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from below," following the musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes. Perhaps most importantly, Barson locates the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas—Haiti—as a nexus for cultural and political change in nineteenth-century Louisiana. In dialogue with the work of recent historians who have inverted traditional histories of Latin American and Caribbean independence by centering the influence of Haitian activists abroad, this work traces the impact of Haitian culture in New Orleans and its legacy in movements for liberation./>/>Brassroots Democracy demonstrates how Black musicians infused participatory music practice with innovative forms of grassroots democracy. Late nineteenth-century Black brass bands and activists rehearsed these participatory models through collective performance that embodied the democratic ethos of Black Reconstruction. Termed 'Brassroots Democracy,' this fusion of political and musical spheres revolutionized both. Brassroots Democracy illuminates the Black Atlantic struggles that informed music-as-world-making from the Haitian Revolution through Reconstruction to the jazz revolution. The work theorizes the roots of the New Orleans brass band tradition in the social relations grown in maroon ecologies across the Americas. Their fruits contributed to the socio-sonic commons of the music we call jazz today.

A multivoiced dance history book, authored by twelve diverse choreographers In an effort to deepen our understanding of what dance is and how it has functioned throughout human history, this prismatic book project is dedicated to an artist-centric perception of dance history. Diverse dance artists from the American dance field contribute personal views of how dance has unfolded over time, answering the question: "Who is in your imaginary dance family tree, FROM the beginning of time to YOU/now?" Twelve illustrated booklets, each written by a working choreographer, address the subject of dance history from nonacademic, subjective, poetic perspectives. The books model a way of enlarging and complicating how we view dance history by giving the authorial microphone to artists, to learn how their embodied perceptions relate to or diverge from the dominant dance canon. With contributions by mayfield brooks, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Keith Hennessy, Bebe Miller, Okwui Okpokwasili, Eiko Otake, Annie-B Parson, Javier Stell-Fresquez, Ogemdi Ude, Mariana Valencia, and Andros Zins-Browne. Published by Big Dance Theater, Dancing Foxes Press, and Wesleyan University Press with support of the Howard Gilman Foundation and Virginia and Timothy Millhiser.

A one-of-a-kind tour through exquisitely preserved, chronicled and illustrated historic buildings/>/>Preservation in Action is the first publication that tells the compelling story of Old Wethersfield, Connecticut's largest and oldest historic district in its oldest town. Based on original research, with stunning photography and handsome design, through ten examples of restoration, rehabilitation, renovation, adaptation, and reuse, it demonstrates the community's efforts over more than a century to preserve the architectural legacy of its historic village, through individual and institutional commitments, civic planning decisions, historic preservation, and design review./>/>The examples range from the oldest house in town, with a 17th century addition added thirty years ago, to a 19th century commercial building whose greenhouse was repurposed as a cafe in 2022 and includes the town's old high school whose redevelopment, in a bold partnership between the Town and the Historical Society, together with the Society's redevelopment of another town owned building, has spurred the economic revival of the old village.

Portrait miniatures were highly prized in Europe for nearly four hundred years and, unusually, artists based in Britain were the acknowledged masters of this specialised field. Many of the best painters are represented in this remarkable but relatively little-known collection. As is illustrated and described in this book, miniatures were frequently made as tokens of love or memorials of loved ones; part-likeness, part reliquary and part-jewel, they might be wearable in a locket, on a bracelet or even on a finger ring, but their portability also made them desirable as gifts. Styles, techniques and modes of presentation naturally evolved between 1560 (the date of the first miniature in the catalogue) and around 1900. Some changes happened rapidly; in England, for example, the foundation of exhibiting societies in 1760s created a demand for larger miniatures that could hang on the wall alongside full-sized portraits. The Thomson collection includes fine examples of the work of Nicholas Hilliard (from the Elizabethan period) and John Smart (from the eighteenth century) as well as notable portraits by less familiar names such as Jacob Van Doordt and James Scouler. It is apparent from the scope and character of his acquisitions that Ken Thomson never planned an encyclopaedic collection. Reacting to miniatures that spoke most eloquently to him when held in the hand, or examined under a glass, he developed over time a fondness for particular artists and had no qualms about omitting others altogether. Using this collection housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario as a case study, the catalogue discusses the function of miniatures, their material presence, the circumstances in which they were made and aspects of their later history. The homes and studios of the most successful painters, as sumptuous as those occupied by oil painters, often passed from one generation to another: here, one key property in Covent Garden is described and illustrated. In this book, for the first time, a number of specialist artists’ suppliers are identified, showing where ivory could be obtained and enamel plates prepared and fired. The links between enamelling for clock and watch faces and enamelling for miniatures are demonstrated. The illicit practice within the late nineteenth and early twentieth century art trade of duplicating old miniatures, a topic generally avoided in the literature, is addressed here. Miniatures are difficult to display in museums, but recently-developed photographic methods of identifying pigments are also proving to be a way of introducing a new audience to this multi-layered subject. Eighteen years after Ken Thomson’s death, there could not be a more opportune moment to highlight his collection.

“Animation” implies that the image or figural object is alive, endowed with anima: a “soul”, “spirit” or “vital principle.” In the Middle Ages, holy or emphatically unholy imagery often possessed an ability to come to life, to act and do things, to move and gesticulate, to speak and exude. This “life” might be a result of natural or supernatural principles; it might be a work of magic, a work of mechanics or a miracle (a divine work). This book is about the different modes of animation that made medieval images perform their spectacular wonders of locomotion and physical transformation, ranging from mechanical machinery to magical conjuration and miraculous ensoulment. Talking and bleeding crucifixes are investigated alongside robot Redeemers, weeping Madonnas, automated devils and self-propelled statues – “statuas animatas” – that enacted their visible and audible animations in monasteries and churches, in historical technologies and treatises, in theurgical tales and demonologies. With its confessed reinvigoration of animism, this book will animate anyone with an interest in medieval art and art history, culture, ideas, religion, anthropology, philosophy and theology.

The costumes and ritual equipment presented in this volume were obtained from shamans in Mongolia and Siberia and represent today a unique cultural world heritage. They were collected in the 1930s by two Danish legendary travelers, Henning Haslund-Christensen in Mongolia, and Knud Rasmussen in Siberia. Parts of the material were described by Haslund-Christensen in earlier publications, but with senior researcher Rolf Gilberg’s manuscript, the entire material is now thoroughly described, analyzed and presented in a context for an international public. The analysis contains the history of collection of the objects alongside a well-informed description of the cosmology of Shamanism, and the diversity of shamans in the larger Mongolian region. With the expertise accumulated over more than forty years’ studies, Gilberg’s analysis is guided by an abundance of original illustrations of drawings and photographs, of which many are new recordings. The book is rounded off with a chapter where the historical costumes and ritual objects are placed in a contemporary context through the depictions of Gilberg’s meetings with Mongol shamans in Mongolia in the 1990s.

Examines John Coltrane's "late period" and Miles Davis's "Lost Quintet" through the prisms of digital architecture and experimental photographyLiving Space: John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Free Jazz, from Analog to Digital fuses biography and style history in order to illuminate the music of two jazz icons, while drawing on the discourses of photography and digital architecture to fashion musical insights that may not be available through the traditional language of jazz analysis. The book follows the controversial trajectories of two jazz legends, emerging from the 1959 album Kind of Blue. Coltrane's odyssey through what became known as "free jazz" brought stylistic (r)evolution and chaos in equal measure. Davis's spearheading of "jazz-rock fusion" opened a door through which jazz's ongoing dialogue with the popular tradition could be regenerated, engaging both high and low ideas of creativity, community, and commerce. Includes 42 illustrations.

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 portraits of 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.

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.

The 2023 volume of Ceramics in America is filled with content of interest to students of American ceramics history. The articles cover a wide range of topics and regions, including ceramics made in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Virginia. Of particular importance is the analysis of a small porcelain snuff box from the so-called “A”-marked group of porcelains made in London ca. 1745 from china clay obtained in America’s Cherokee Territory. A featured essay on the remarkable ceramics of John Wesley Carpenter offers for the first time an in-depth look at this nineteenth-century potter, who worked in the back country of North Carolina and Virginia. Several articles present thematic discussions about historic ceramics made and used to promote the abolition of slavery in both America and England. The use of ceramics to effect social change continues to this day, as is illustrated in the words and works of ceramic artist David Mack of Baltimore, Maryland.

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.

Belleroche was an integral part of the Parisian art scene during the Belle Époque - he was a close friend of the artist John Singer Sargent with whom he shared studios in Paris and London; he was admired and collected by luminaires such as Degas and Renoir - anbdchampioned by the art critic Roger Marx. With Toulouse-Lautrec he shared the celebrated model Lily Grenier. And it is even said that Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray was inspired by Belleroche. Belleroche was considered by his contemporaries to be an innovator. In the art of lithography he developed techniques that built on the experiments of Degas and other Impressionist, (with whom he shared a fascination for monotypes). Despite all these fascinating facets of his life and art, his story remains largely unknown.

This fascinating volume presents a wide-ranging overview of one of the lesser known yet fundamental disciplines of Art History: conservation. What happens when art ages? By bringing together some of the leading experts in the field, the essays chart a journey through the theoretical, aesthetic and technical debates surrounding the conservation of Old Masters. The problem of how to look after paintings as they grow old is a historically complex one. Should they be ‘restored’ to their original glory, or should the patina of time be acknowledged? What is to be done with damp and dirt, with rotten panels and yellowing varnishes? The development of conservation is profoundly entwined with the development of Art History itself, as both deal in the interpretation of the past and its preservation for the future. The seventeen essays collected by editors Jane Martineau and David Bomford, which originally appeared in The Burlington Magazine, explore how these questions have been answered from the mid-sixteenth century to the present day. Masterpieces like Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece or Rembrandt’s Night Watch have been treated and mis-treated many times in their long lives. By the nineteenth century, the growing knowledge of the techniques employed by the old masters had a profound influence on the treatments applied to their works. In the same period, the birth of national galleries as public institutions entrusted with the collective heritage led to the need to preserve large numbers of paintings and establish conservation departments rooted in scientific research. By the mid-twentieth century, the materials and techniques of painting were utterly transformed, demanding fresh approaches to their preservation. A discipline that sits uniquely at the crossroads of art, science, philosophy and technology, modern conservation is the result of an ongoing collaboration between conservators, scientists and art historians following rigorous ethical standards and training programmes.

This new series will enchant seasoned country house visitors and amaze people new to art and architecture as they read about surprising snippets of history that occurred at, or because of, a country house in England, Scotland, or Wales. Three volumes in total, the first covering the letters A through H, each book will contain fascinating content and beautiful illustrations.Curt DiCamillo’s series of three high quality hardback books use the alphabet to frame an astonishing variety of material as a backdrop to endless, beguiling stories. Curt’s series of crisp, zesty entries dive into fascinating moments of British cultural history—from tea to bananas, from Canaletto to Agatha Christie, from porcelain to ghosts. The text is an exhilarating whistle stop tour—perfectly pitched for pleasurable sampling that will enchant both newcomers and seasoned visitors to country houses.