The first ever critical biography of Helen Chadwick, who died tragically young but is now revered as a pioneering feminist artist.Helen Chadwick (1953–1996) embraced the sensuous aspects of the natural world, breaking taboos of the "traditional" or "beautiful." Her sculpture, performance, and photography is radical, provocative, and often steeped in humor, and employs unusual, sometimes grotesque materials—bodily fluids, meat, flowers, chocolate, and compost among ...

Children’s picturebooks are the very first books we encounter and play a major role in introducing us to both art and language. But what does it take to create a successful picturebook for children? This revised edition of a bestselling title carries invaluable insight into a highly productive, dynamic sector of the publishing world. Featuring interviews with leading illustrators and publishers from across the world, it remains essential reading for students and aspiring children’s book il...

The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse – a fear of corruption or contamination through colour – lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge colour, either by making it the property of some ‘foreign body’ – the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological – or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic.

At a time when work and home life are becoming increasingly blurred, and modern technology brings the realm of the public into what used to be a personal and private space, Ed Hollis looks at what it means to make a home in today's world.Exploring the meaning of private and public space, the importance we place on physical objects and the demands we make of our home environment, How to Make a Home challenges us to re-imagine the concept of home and hearth.

From the author of The Bad Book Affair comes a witty, personal, and entertaining meditation on the history and significance of paper—an international cultural study and a series of personal reflections on the meaning of this essential product.Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear. Would anything be lost? Everything would be lost.Paper surrounds us. Not only as books, letters and diaries, but as beer mats and birth certificates, board games and business ca...

A study of Kusama's era-defining work, a “sublime, miraculous field of phalluses,” against the background of abstraction, eroticism, sexuality, and softness.Almost a half-century after Yayoi Kusama debuted her landmark installation Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli's Field (1965) in New York, the work remains challenging and unclassifiable. Shifting between the Pop-like and the Surreal, the Minimal and the metaphorical, the figurative and the abstract, the psych...

Everything around us is designed and the word 'design' has become part of our everyday experience. But how much do we know about it? Fifty Chairs That Changed the World imparts that knowledge listing the top 50 chairs that have made a substantial impact in the world of British design today. From Thonet's 1870 Side Chair to Konstantin Grcic's Chair_One, each entry offers a short appraisal to explore what has made their iconic status and the designers that give them a special place in design...

The years since 1989 have seen a complete untethering of what art can be, who makes it and where it can be found, which has been matched by a reassessment of art's appropriate place in society and the financial value that should be attached to it. In this new book in the World of Art series, Kelly Grovier surveys the dynamic developments in art practice worldwide since 1989, going in search of those artists who have undertaken to shape a fresh visual vocabulary and whose work reflects on t...

Beautifully designed and featuring breathtaking photography, this book from the creator of The Modern House makes the perfect coffee table book and is the ultimate gift for home design enthusiasts'A source of fascination, inspiration and fantasy' GuardianIn 2005, childhood friends Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill set out to convince people of the power of good design and its ability to influence our wellbeing. They founded The Modern H...

Fishing for Lightning gathers together acclaimed poet and critic Sarah Holland-Batt's celebrated columns on contemporary Australian poetry. In fifty illuminating and lively short essays on fifty poets, Holland-Batt offers a masterclass in how to read and love poetry, opening up the music of language, form, and poetic technique in her casual and conversational yet deeply intelligent style. From the villanelle to the verse novel, the readymade and the remix to the sonnet, Holland-Batt's essa...

This international survey of contemporary painting by a leading author features artwork from over 250 renowned artists whose ideas and aesthetics characterize the painting of our time.The twentieth century brought radical changes in art—including the shift from modernism to postmodernism—which were accompanied by fierce debates regarding the place of painting in contemporary culture. Contemporary Painting argues that the medium has not only persisted in th...

A witty, personal and entertaining reflection on the history and meaning of paper during the (passing) era of its universal importance.Paper serves nearly every function of our lives. It is the technology with which we have made sense of the world.Yet the age of paper is ending. Ebooks now outsell their physical counterparts. Still, there are some uses of paper that seem unlikely to change – Christmas won’t be Christmas without wrapped presents or crackers. And the language...