Before Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria, and Penelope Cruz, there was Lupe Velez—one of the first successful Latin-American Hollywood stars, who swept past the xenophobia of Old Hollywood to pave the way for future icons from around the world. Her career began in the silent era when her beauty was enough to make it onto the silver screen, but with the rise of talkies, Velez could no longer hope to hide her Mexican accent. Yet Velez proved to be a talented dramatic and comedic actress (and singer) and was much more versatile than such legends as Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Gloria Swanson. Velez starred in such films as Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934), and Hollywood Party (1934). In the 1940s, Velez's popularity peaked after appearing as Carmelita Fuentes in eight Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalize on Velez's well-documented fiery personality.Nicknamed "the Mexican Spitfire" by the media, Velez's personal life was as colorful as her screen persona. Fan magazines mythologized her mysterious childhood in Mexico, while mainstream publications obsessed over the drama of her romances with such figures as Gary Cooper, Erich Maria Remarque, and John Gilbert, along with her stormy marriage to Johnny Weissmuller. In 1944, a pregnant and unmarried Velez died of an intentional drug overdose. Her tumultuous life and the circumstances surrounding her early death have been the subject of speculation and controversy.In Strictly Dynamite: The Sensational Life of Lupe Velez, author Eve Golden uses extensive research to parse fact from fiction and offer a thorough, riveting, and comprehensive examination of the real woman underneath the gossip columns' caricature. Through astute analysis of the actress's iconic filmography and interviews, Golden illuminates the path Velez blazed through Hollywood. Her success was unexpected and extraordinary at a time when her distinctive accent was an obstacle, yet very few published books have focused entirely on Velez's life and career. Written with even-handedness, humor, and empathy, Golden has finally given the remarkable Mexican actress the uniquely nuanced portrait she deserves.

For decades, James Bawden and Ron Miller have established themselves as maestros of provocative interviews, giving fans unmatched insights into the lives of Hollywood A-listers. In their fourth collection, the authors pay tribute to film pioneers who lit up Tinseltown from the 1930s through the 1960s. They Made the Movies features conversations with legendary directors who created many of film's all-time classics, including Frank Capra (It's A Wonderful Life, 1946), Richard Fleischer (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, 1960), Ralph Nelson (Lilies of the Field, 1963), Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, 1965), and Chuck Jones (How the Grinch Stole Christmas! 1966). Tantalizing firsthand details about many acclaimed films are revealed, such as the revelation of Mervyn LeRoy's first-choice of lead actress for The Wizard of Oz ("Shirley Temple… but Shirley couldn't sing like Judy [Garland]"), Billy Wilder's insights on directing ("You have to be a sycophant, a sadist, a nurse, a philosopher"), and how megaproducer Hal B. Wallis purchased an unproduced play titled Everyone Comes to Rick's and transformed it into Casablanca ("The part [of Sam] almost went to Lena Horne, but I thought she was too beautiful"). The authors also celebrate the contributions of marginalized filmmakers such as Ida Lupino, James Wong Howe, Oscar Micheaux, and Luis Valdez, who prevailed in Hollywood despite the discrimination they faced throughout their careers. They Made the Movies appeals to film and television enthusiasts of all ages.

The artist Michael Sandle (b. 1936) is well known for his powerful and uncompromising sculptures such as A Twentieth Century Memorial (1971-78), The Drummer (1985) and Iraq: The Sound of Your Silence (2009). Sandle has also been a very prolific draughtsman over the years, making a large number of prints and drawings, both in relation to his sculpture and also apart from it. This new publication looks closely at his works on paper across his whole career. It presents his two-dimensional work from his early years whilst training at Douglas School of Art (1951-54), at the Slade School of Art (1956-59), where he studied painting and printing, and at the Atelier Patris in Paris (1960), right up to the present day. Alongside lithographs and etchings, it shows pages from his sketchbooks and many medium and larger format drawings.The book begins with a new and extensive ‘in conversation’ conducted between Sandle and the art historian and curator Jon Wood that looks in detail at the interconnected lives led by his prints, drawings and sculptures over the last sixty years. Their discussion focusses on the materials and techniques the artist has used, as well as on the subjects, concerns and contexts of this extraordinary body of work.

Since the 1920s, fashion has played a central role in Hollywood. As the movie-going population consisted largely of women, studios made a concerted effort to attract a female audience by foregrounding fashion. Magazines featured actresses like Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford bedecked in luxurious gowns, selling their glamour as enthusiastically as the film itself. Whereas actors and actresses previously wore their own clothing, major studios hired costume designers and wardrobe staff to fabricate bespoke costumes for their film stars. Designers from a variety of backgrounds, including haute couture and art design, were offered long-term contracts to work on multiple movies. Though their work typically went uncredited, they were charged with creating an image for each star that would help define an actor both on- and off-screen. The practice of working long-term with a single studio disappeared when the studio system began unravelling in the 1950s. By the 1970s, studios had disbanded their wardrobe departments and auctioned off their costumes and props.In Designing Hollywood: Studio Wardrobe in the Golden Age, Christian Esquevin showcases the designers who dressed Hollywood's stars from the late 1910s through the 1960s and the unique symbiosis they developed with their studios in creating iconic looks. Studio by studio, Esquevin details the careers of designers like Vera West, who worked on Universal productions such as Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dracula (1931), and Bride of Frankenstein (1931); William Travilla, the talent behind Marilyn Monroe's dresses in Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955); and Walter Plunkett, the Oscar-winning designer for film classics like Gone with the Wind (1939) and An American in Paris (1951). Featuring black and white photographs of leading ladies in their iconic looks as well as captivating original color sketches, Designing Hollywood takes the reader on a journey from drawing board to silver screen.

Brilliant, beautiful, driven, uncompromising, elusive, iconic - Jessica Lange is one of the most gifted and fascinating actors of her generation. From her rise to fame in Dino De Laurentiis's remake of King Kong (1976) and her Oscar-winning performances in Tootsie (1982) and Blue Sky (1994); to her Emmy-winning work in Grey Gardens (2009) and the American Horror Story series; and her Tony Award–winning turn in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (2016), Lange has had a long and illustrious career on-screen and onstage. She has worked with some of the most celebrated names in the business, including Jack Nicholson, Bob Fosse, Martin Scorsese, Kim Stanley, Halle Berry, and Kathy Bates. Jessica Lange: An Adventurer's Heart, the first full-length biography of Lange, presents a comprehensive study of the life and work of an exceptional actress. Beginning with her upbringing in Minnesota, author Anthony Uzarowski traces Lange's formative years as a restless soul who found solace in art and a life on the road before turning to acting. While critics initially questioned her talent, she refused to be dismissed as yet another pretty face. She continued to study her craft and immersed herself in her roles, honing the poignant and emotionally charged performances for which she is renowned. Lange was introduced to a whole new generation of fans with her acclaimed work in Ryan Murphy's anthology series, American Horror Story. Murphy later created another chance for Lange to shine with his television miniseries, Feud: Bette and Joan, costarring Susan Sarandon. This meticulously researched and wide-ranging biography also gives a glimpse into Lange's carefully guarded private life: her years as a free-spirited artist in the 1960s, her dedication to motherhood, and her legendary partnership with Sam Shepard, which was one of the most passionate, tumultuous, and secretive long-term relationships in Hollywood.

Contemporary media history is a rapidly growing field that extends far beyond traditional studies of technology or institutions such as radio, film, and television. This volume expands the scope further still to analyse ephemeral, mundane phenomena long overlooked by media historiography. In eight original essays, the volume demonstrates the strengths of a broad concept of the media. The first part centres on media systems and media events, with studies of spiritist séances, Gallup polls, the mediated persona of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the burial of a Swedish elder statesman in 1915. The second part focuses on media materialities and infrastructure such as art replicas, ring binders, tourist guidebooks, and media technology in the IKEA home. Aimed at students and academics alike, Expanding Media Histories offers new empirical research, which engages critically with key concepts in media history today.

Smickel Inn is a publication of works by London-based Anglo-Dutch artist Nick Goss, produced by Ingleby, Edinburgh, and co-published with Matthew Brown, Los Angeles, and Anomie Publishing, London. Along with around sixty plates and illustrations, the publication features an essay by writer, journalist and critic Hettie Judah, and an in-conversation between Goss, fellow painter Michael Armitage and writer Thomas Marks. ‘Smickel Inn is a real place in an unreal place,’ writes Judah, ‘a snack bar on an outer extremity of the port of Rotterdam. ’ It’s a venue that is popular with port workers and sailors—a clientele of regular and transitory people often involved in sea freight or oil shipping, though their lives, personalities and stories are largely played out in Goss’s mixed-media paintings through the bar’s interior décor: an old vase with fresh flowers, a stack of glass ashtrays, a well-worn piano with a pile of books on top, an eclectic selection of picture frames with faded scenes and a clock that might only be right twice a day.Filtered through Goss’s imagination, Smickel Inn carries its history with it, much of it decorating the countertop; it’s a venue that charms with its informality—a place that knows itself, and its disparate customers. In real life, the bar has a cinematic view of the port and the North Sea, translated here, through Goss’s creative process of painting and silk-screening, into a scene from an engraving of seventeenth-century Sicily. Fragments from different places and eras infiltrate his images, creating a patina of palimpsests, visual echoes, perhaps, of memories of travellers coming through the port. The body of work takes us around the wider Dutch coastline and beyond—we see passengers on foot disembarking a ferry, have a backseat view of a car ride around the village of Stavenisse, and join a night-time campfire on the beach at Scheveningen, among other more mysterious, if not abstruse, locations and scenarios. Observation from contemporary life mingles with visual culture spanning centuries and continents in Goss’s oeuvre, creating lyrical yet strangely haunting and melancholic paintings, trapped in time somewhere between personal experience and collective memory.Nick Goss is an Anglo-Dutch painter, born in Bristol in 1981. He studied first at the Slade School of Art (2002–06) and then at the Royal Academy Schools, London (2006–09). He has exhibited widely in Europe and America, including solo exhibitions with Josh Lilley, London, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles, Simon Preston, New York, and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin. His first institutional survey, Morley’s Mirror, was presented in 2019 at Pallant House, Chichester, UK. Smickel Inn is published to coincide with Goss’s first exhibition at Ingleby, Edinburgh, in the autumn of 2023.

Gideon Rubin (b. 1973, Israel) is an artist who lives and works in London. Exploring identity, history and the inheritance of trauma in his enigmatic paintings, Rubin’s subject matter draws on myriad references such as film, popular culture, art history and literature, creating and investigating mythologies from the recent past. Haunting and subtly theatrical, the paintings often feature faceless yet familiar figures. Underlying each work is Rubin’s expressive mark-making, muted palette and understated use of negative space and raw canvas. Look Again is Gideon Rubin’s second major trade monograph and showcases his substantial body of work since 2015, including studies of people in nature and scenes of solitude and intimacy. Author and art critic Jennifer Higgie discusses the evolution of his artistic style and his many influences—Balthus, De Kooning, Guston and Diebenkorn to name a few. Dr Matthew Holman’s expansive essay touches on Rubin’s cinematic characters, source material, his use of artistic conventions and engagement with sexuality. Holman investigates the meaning of redaction in Rubin’s work, both in his faceless portraits and in Black Book—a work in which Rubin used black paint to erase the contents of a 1938 English translation of Mein Kampf.Exhibited at the Freud Museum in London in 2018, Black Book is an exploration of what is left out of history, as much as what is remembered.Painting is essential to Rubin, as both a creative and therapeutic act; ‘a log keeping him afloat in the middle of the sea’, as he puts it. In conversation with fellow artist Varda Caivano, Rubin analyses his motivations, processes and doubts, and explains his surprising route to painting. Despite coming from a lineage of painters on his father’s side, it was largely his mother’s academic love of art that galvanised his artistic career, as well as a transformational experience in South America that opened him up to painting. An emotive poem by South Korean author Park Joon sheds further light on Rubin’s imagination.Rubin studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and then at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. He has had numerous international one-man shows and his works are included in a number of international private and public collections. Recent exhibitions include 13, Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milan (2023), Dark Noise, The Kupferman House Collection, Israel (2023), Portrait without a Face, Fox Jensen Gallery, Tokyo (2023), a solo show at CASSIUS&Co., London (2023) and Living Memory, a two-person show with Louise Bourgeois in a Grade II listed chapel in London (2023). Rubin’s work has been featured in publications such as Artribune, San Francisco Examiner, Vestoj, Koln Kultur, Galerie Magazine, Südostschweiz Newspaper and Elephant among others. The publication has been supported by Galerie Karsten Greve, who represent Rubin’s work in Paris, Cologne and St. Moritz.

A fully illustrated biography of London artist;Francophile and Western Australia colonial settler John de Mansfield Absolon painted superb ship-board scenes in an impressionistic style reminiscent of Edouard Manet's.

Original fine-art prints inspired by the classical architecture of Florence.

Uncertain Swimmer is the second monograph on the work of British artist Jonathan Wateridge (b. 1972, Lusaka, Zambia), presenting around eighty paintings and works on paper made between 2019 and 2022. Following on from the bodies of work Enclave and Expatria (2016–18), Uncertain Swimmer develops the artist’s interest in modes of representation and the legacies of twentieth-century modernist painting through a visual and social exploration of the motif of the pool, depicting swimmers and sunbathers, often by night. Far from being an escapist environment of aspiration and privilege, Wateridge imbues the pool with a disquieting atmosphere, creating a cumulative feeling of unease and ennui among those present, now seemingly unsure of their world. The publication charts a marked evolution in the artist’s style from the realism of his earlier paintings with complex multi-figure compositions to more solitary, gestural and expressive works. His masterly application of paint takes new forms in the beautiful, curious and often haunting paintings and works on paper showcased here. Art historian and curator Marco Livingstone’s essay considers the change from Wateridge’s naturalistic paintings to the flattened, reduced shapes, forms and lines of the modernism- and abstraction-infused pieces he is making today. Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch and Paul Cézanne are among numerous art historical influences cited by Livingstone, who ruminates on the identity of the people in Wateridge’s portraits and the mercurial spaces they occupy, examining how Wateridge’s current critical preoccupations have transitioned from the autobiographical to more formal concerns.In the featured conversation between Wateridge and fellow painter Caroline Walker, the two artists discuss their overlapping experiences studying painting at Glasgow, as well as Wateridge’s fourteen-year break from painting until 2005. He eventually returned to the medium when he realised it excited him more than anything else. Wateridge elaborates on his fascinating painting process, staging shoots in studios with hired actors and using elements from the photographs in the paintings, often over a period of years. On his canvases, he will scrape back the paint and reapply it, frequently taking pictures of the paintings in their various stages; he will then print the photographs and draw over them to continue working out what he will do with the final paintings. For Wateridge, a painting works when it stops failing, and he embraces unforeseen conclusions.Jonathan Wateridge has recently exhibited with the Hayward Gallery, London; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, New York and Brussels; TJ Boulting, London; Galerie Haas, Zurich; Pace Gallery and HENI, London. Wateridge's art is in the collections of institutions worldwide, including Aïshti Foundation, Lebanon; Pinault Foundation, Venice; the Saatchi Collection, London; the Rennie Collection, Vancouver; and Simmons & Simmons, London. He has been featured in publications such as The Sunday Times, The Independent, Fad Magazine, Artforum and Artnet. Wateridge is represented by Nino Mier Gallery.

Tom de Freston (born 1983) is a British artist and writer, living and working in Oxford. He graduated from Cambridge University in 2007. De Freston’s multimedia art tackles themes of trauma, humanity and intimacy across paintings, films and performance. He builds rich visual narratives, drawing on literature, art history and social issues. A prolific author, Granta published de Freston’s debut non-fiction book, Wreck, in 2022 and his second will be released in 2024. Julia and the Shark (Hachette, 2021), created with his wife Kiran Millwood Hargrave, won the Waterstones Children’s Gift of the Year and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Children’s Writing on Nature and Conservation. De Freston was chosen to illustrate the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of David Almond’s Skellig, published in 2023.I Saw This was born out of a collaboration between de Freston, filmmaker Mark Jones and Dr Ali Souleman after de Freston was introduced to the academic in 2017. The paintings and mixed-media works that resulted from the project are an exploration into Souleman’s experiences of terrorism, displacement and war in Syria and ruminate on how art can attempt to represent suffering and terror. In 1996, a bomb explosion in Damascus on New Year’s Eve nearly killed Souleman and left him blind. A sensitive and highly-charged topic, Souleman explained to de Freston the importance of engaging with what is happening in Syria. Disembodied mouths, hands and feet appear frequently in the works. Circles recur as a motif, which bear an uncomfortable resemblance to eyes and eye sockets. In the Mirror paintings which stand upright in black boxes, de Freston embeds ash, screws, thick glue, dirt and bits of wood into the canvas. They are corporeal and volcanic, visceral and abstract. The sense of molten heat in the paintings was compounded by a fire in de Freston’s studio in 2020, which was simultaneously destructive while giving the artist and the collaboration new momentum. The collaborative process involves de Freston describing the paintings to Souleman through words and touch. Souleman brings fresh meaning to the works, grounding them in his psychological landscape. Mark Jones captures these interactions in striking photographs and film footage.Habda Rashid, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Kettle’s Yard and the Fitzwilliam Museum, introduces I Saw This and considers the challenges of incorporating elements from real life. Journalist Yasmina Floyer’s contribution describes her reaction to de Freston’s work at his 2022 exhibition From Darkness at No 20 Arts, London, where she found that the sooty-black feet stencils and inky circles depicted resonated with her own experience of child loss. The moving text shows how de Freston’s art carries both specific and universal meanings. Editor Matt Price focuses on de Freston’s paintings, structuring his essay with fascinating quotes from Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri, the eleventh-century blinded Arab philosopher. Crucially, de Freston, Jones and Souleman’s voices are presentin the book, with each shedding light on their part in the project. De Freston’s art is rooted in empathy and I Saw This is a culmination of this, translating Souleman’s world of memory and metaphor.

R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles explores the relationship between Kitaj’s art and the places where he lived. This is the first significant publication about the artist in over a decade and provides a chronological overview of Kitaj’s career. Published to accompany Piano Nobile’s exhibition of the same title, it includes 43 paintings and drawings with catalogue entries containing original research, in many cases presenting new information about Kitaj's sources and sitters for the first time.The book contains three essays, which describe the artist's lives in London and Los Angeles. Andrew Dempsey recounts Kitaj’s relationship with artists, institutions and art critics during his thirty-eight-year period in London. Colin Wiggins, who worked with Kitaj on his National Gallery exhibition in 2001, writes about the artist’s last decade in Los Angeles. Marco Livingstone in his essay remembers the long correspondence he shared with Kitaj. A further section includes extended excerpts from Kitaj’s letters to Livingstone, which are now held by the Tate Archive and are published here for the first time.

This beautiful book, of paintings by Alice Mumford and poems by Sue Leigh, brings together exciting new work from the two makers. Collaboration is perhaps not the right word for a project in which paintings and poems sit side by side, each illuminating the other. Onlooker and reader are offered another glimpse, another view which may change the experience of looking and reading. The book includes conversations between painter and poet in which they discuss their experience of working in their different media and consider the limitations and possibilities of each. They talk about their sources of inspiration, how they might choose a subject (or does it choose them?), and the process that surrounds the making of their work. What do they share in their creative lives and how do they differ? The work of these two contemporary artists celebrates the intimacy and beauty that can be found in our everyday lives.

One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formation in the early twentieth century, the studio has been a constant presence in cinema history, responsible for the creation of acclaimed films, blockbuster brands, and iconic superstars. These days, the studio is best known as a media conglomerate with a broad range of intellectual property, spanning movies, TV shows, and streaming content. Despite popular interest in the origins of this empire, the core of the Warner Bros. saga cannot be found in its commercial successes. It is the story of four brothers - Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack - whose vision for Hollywood helped shape the world of entertainment as we know it.In The Warner Brothers, Chris Yogerst follows the siblings from their family's humble origins in Poland, through their young adulthood in the American Midwest, to the height of fame and fortune in Hollywood. With unwavering resolve, the brothers soldiered on against the backdrop of an America reeling from the aftereffects of domestic and global conflict. The Great Depression would not sink the brothers, who churned out competitive films that engaged audiences and kept their operations afloat - and even expanding. During World War II, they used their platform to push beyond the limits of the Production Code and create important films about real-world issues, openly criticizing radicalism and the evils of the Nazi regime. At every major cultural turning point in their lifetime, the Warners held a front-row seat.Paying close attention to the brothers' identities as cultural and economic outsiders, Yogerst chronicles how the Warners built a global filmmaking powerhouse. Equal parts family history and cinematic journey, The Warner Brothers is an empowering story of the American dream and the legacy four brothers left behind for generations of filmmakers and film lovers to come.

This book provides a comprehensive guide with detailed explanations, illustrations and photographs of late-7th century to 11th century Anglo-Saxon Churches and stone sculpture. It is divided into four parts.The first part includes an extensive glossary explaining the terms likely to be encountered, it explains Celtic and Roman Church practices and the Synod of Whitby, how Anglo-Saxon churches were established and their plans, and also provides a summary to the settlements of the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Hiberno-Norse in England. The second part provides a comprehensive description of the construction and architectural features of extant Anglo-Saxon Churches including their walling, plinths and quoining, archways, doorways, windows and belfry-openings of whatever shape or format or wherever their location. It also explains features such as string-courses, pilaster-strips, pilaster-buttresses, hood-moulding and strip-work. Also included are extant Anglo-Saxon stairways and crypts. Explanations are included on porticus, galleries, the use of rooms in towers, roofs, church seating and other furnishing, balusters and baluster-shafts.The third part provides a comprehensive description of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian Decoration on stonework. It details all the designs and patterns involved including those which also have scenes depicting creatures, beasts, birds, serpents and humans, figures, and scenes from Christianity and Norse Mythology. It explains and provides examples of the stonework on which these designs and patterns appear namely standing crosses, cross-heads, cross-shafts and cross-bases; grave-markers, grave-covers, grave-slabs and grave-memorials and crosses; sarcophagi and shrine chests; wall friezes and wall panels; fonts; and sundials. The fourth part provides an alphabetical list of 183 recommended churches and museums with summarised information on their individual architectural features, and/or stone sculpture. Many of the churches are further expanded in detail in the text in the second and third parts. Also provided is a page and photographic index of all the churches and museums where they are referred to in the text. All the places referred to in the text have been personally visited by the author.