Bøger udgivet af Ludion

An original, accessible and comprehensive guide to the ever-popular master Surrealist, René Magritte

Stan Douglas: The Secret Agent surveys three recent works by Stan Douglas (born 1960), all dealing with the politics and culture of the turbulent 1970s. The video installation The Secret Agent, which lends this monograph its title, transposes Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel to Lisbon during the upheaval following the Carnation Revolution of 1974. Disco Angola compares two roughly simultaneous moments--the hedonistic glamour of New York nightlife in the '70s and the Angolan Civil War--in a series of eight staged historical photographs set in New York and Angola. The third work, Luanda-Kinshasa, is a six-hour jazz film set in 1974, constructed around 11 songs recorded at the legendary 30th Street Studio where the likes of Miles Davis and Glenn Gould worked. Stan Douglas: The Secret Agent includes original scripts, film stills, production shots and extensive archival material to illustrate these crucial works from Douglas' oeuvre.

- Fun and visually appealing way to understand how a book is made, through the work of 30 diverse contemporary makers and artists - Broad appeal: this book speaks to a broad audience of craftspeople and anyone related to books and bookmaking whether they are amateurs or professionals - Beautifully illustrated with colorful and inspiring images, behind-the-scenes shots of the makers' studios, and photographs of the makers at work - Includes contributions from experts that give insight into the different processes used to make a book Books are a meeting place. A sum of their many parts and artistic approaches. Form, concept, material, and craft are bound together to create something rooted in its functionality; a process that often crosses over into the messier realm of art. Books. Art, Craft & Community presents a thriving ecosystem of papermakers, printers, bookbinders, artists, designers, and publishers from around the world. They draw on traditional skills, art, and experimentation to make books that matter today. With over 30 profiles - spanning traditional craftspeople, to modern makers reimagining the book for new audiences - and contributions from experts, we are given an insight into the history and contemporary context of the processes behind the books. Selected by Simon Goode and Ira Yonemura of the London Centre for Book Arts, these artists and makers share a spirit of curiosity and resilience. They not only adapt to new ways that readers engage with books, but are forging new possibilities for their craft along the way.

Hiroshige: Nature and the City is the most extensive overview of the career of the famed Japanese print artist, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797¿1858) in the English language to date. It is based on the largest collection of Hiroshige in private hands outside Japan, the Alan Medaugh collection. The catalogue consists of 500 entries, with an emphasis on urban and rural landscapes, fan prints and prints of birds and flowers. Grouped chronologically by subject it presents Hiroshige¿s interpretation of the urban scenes from his hometown Edo (present-day Tokyo), the great series documenting travel along the famous highways of Japan, and the idylls of nature as represented in his bird-andflower prints. Hiroshige often incorporated poetry in his works and for the first time all textual content is transcribed and translated. Additionally, the catalogue pays due attention to the differences between variant editions of his prints. Thus, it provides essential comparative material for every scholar, dealer, and collector. Five essays precede the catalogue section, each written by specialists in the field. Rhiannon Paget (Curator of Asian Art at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art) provides a general introduction to Hiroshige¿s life and career. Andreas Marks (Curator Minneapolis Museum of Art) contributes two essays: on the publishers of Hiroshige¿s prints and on Hiroshige¿s collaborative works designed with his colleagues. Shiho Sasaki (conservation specialist at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco) discusses the pigment use in Hiroshige¿s prints while John Carpenter (Curator of Japanese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) investigates the source of the poetry of Hiroshige bird-and-flower prints.

This lavishly illustrated book gives an overview of the celebrated photographer Ruud van Empel's career, from the 1990's up to today. Lush vegetation in a jungle, butterflies in a field of colorful, blooming flowers. The work of Ruud van Empel (Breda, 1958) initially seems lovely, but appearances are deceptive: 'The struggle for life and death continues day and night in nature,' says the artist. Van Empel's works are wondrous and alienating at the same time. For however normal it may seem, he brings together things that never come together in reality. He uses countless details of people, plants, animals or objects photographed by himself to cut and paste digitally. On the computer, he assembles this material into a composition, a process that, until 1995, was done in an analog way. The resulting `collages¿ are ingenious and realistic, but the images do not exist in real life. With painting, film and (staged) photography as his sources of inspiration, he has, like a pioneer, developed a new genre. He himself speaks of `building a photographic image¿ or `photo-objects¿. With his precisely composed scenes, worked out to the smallest details, Van Empel plays with image-making. His fictional worlds seduce, they lead the viewer astray or cause a sense of discomfort. Without seeking controversy, there are 'other' meanings lurking under the surface of Van Empel's aesthetic images. In doing so, he shows us how we are influenced by different visual cultures in everyday life. This monograph offers an overview of Van Empel's oeuvre from the 1990s to the present day.

Women and men ¿ strong, proud, tragic or beautiful ¿ from the heyday (1765¿1865) of Japanese printmaking are this book¿s subject. It seeks to dig below the surface of the prints to describe the often subtle iconography employed in these masterful creations by the most famous artists of their time. It begins with Suzuki Harunobüs subdued and introverted scenes of women seated on verandas. The book then moves on to the spectacular `big face¿ (okubi-e) portraits of prostitutes and Kabuki actors by artists like Kitagawa Utamaro, Toshusai Sharaku and Utagawa Kunimasa. Frail `streetwalkers¿, forced by circumstance into the lowest ranks of prostitution, are transformed into elegant beauties, obscuring their tragic existence. The spectacle of heroes from Japan¿s rich mythological and pseudo-historical past crowd the printed sheet. Stern-faced actors drawn by the confident hands of Utagawa Toyokuni and his pupil Kunisada demonstrate the economy of line and powerful expression of the woodblock medium. Each print is explored in the finest detail in order to explain the riddles of Ukiyo-e ¿the intriguing and captivating mode of visual expression that would have such a profound influence on Western art.

We live in a single-use society, where fashion is fast, disposability is the norm and it is easier to replace than to repair. We don¿t need to mend things anymore ¿ and yet we do. What is it about Homo faber ¿ man the maker ¿ that cannot resist fixing what is broken? As we start to decouple from the linear take-make-waste model that has dominated Western economies since the Industrial Revolution and seek something more circular, an enquiry into what mending means has never been more urgent. With a foreword by The Repair Shop¿s Jay Blades, this new book by craft and circularity advocate Katie Treggiden celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Sheds light on Kerry James Marshall¿s 'Rythm Mastr', a comic series on which the artist has been working since 1999 until today

Dieter Roelstraete is curator at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society in Chicago. Previously he was a curator for the important contemporary art exhibition documenta 14 and a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago from 2012 and 2015. Fran¿s Piron is a well-known independent exhibitions curator, art critic and editor. Kersten Geers is a renowned architect and part of the successful OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen. He collaborated with Pieter Vermeersch on a site-specific work at the Solo House Office KGDVS in Matarra¿a, Spain. Moritz K¿ng is an independent curator and editor. He worked in Z¿rich, Antwerp and currently lives and works in Barcelona.

Influential Chinese photographer Zhang Hai'er presents seventy of his most defining works created between 1988 and the present. Since the rise of modern feminism, and with increased urgency in the last half century as women have become familiar in new social roles, 'the male gaze' has been the subject of polemic debate. How should women be looked at? How should they be portrayed? How do they want to be seen? Why does the feminine body cleave to an image of female beauty long since determined by men? Especially in this gender-fluid age when beauty is liberated from previously immutable male/female silhouettes? Moreover, against widespread allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour in the worlds of film and art, how should women see themselves and permit themselves to be seen today? Chinese photographer Zhang Hai'er has been photographing women throughout his career. He loves looking at the female form and is frank about indulging in the electric eroticism that the privileged relationship between photographer and subject permits. His earliest photographs are of two contrasting women, his grandmother who he gazed upon with reverence and love, and his wife, now of thirty-five years, whom he gazes at with love suffused with lust. His major oeuvre, presented here, offers a wider group of women who might be friends, or just total strangers, and who he gazes at with undisguised sexual fascination. But the gazing is not all one-way. Zhang's female subjects are demonstrably complicit in the process, fearless before his gaze, and as fully in command of their libido as any man can be. The women belong to their era in China, one in which they struggle to find their own way and counter the force of society's moralizing gaze. 'These girls are defined as "bad"', he says, 'but why should they be? I love their nature, the energy they exude. To me they are beautiful, real woman.'

Uitgegeven naar aanleiding van de monumentale overzichtstentoonstelling Intolerance van Luc Tuymans die plaatsvindt in de Qatarese hoofdstad Doha (20.10.2015-30.01.2016). Het gelijknamige boek biedt nieuwe inzichten in Tuymans' oeuvre van de voorbije vijfentwintig jaar. Het bevat een aantal wetenschappelijke essays van de hand van vooraanstaande kunstcritici, alsook een interview met de kunstenaar. Met meer dan achthonderd beelden is Intolerance rijkelijk geïllustreerd. Naast zo'n honderd schilderijen en een zestig tekeningen vind je in deze ambitieuze publicatie studies, archiefmateriaal en installatiefoto's van de belangrijkste tentoonstellingen uit de carrière van de kunstenaar. De werken worden belicht aan de hand van verhelderende commentaren. De curator van de tentoonstelling, Lynne Cooke (National Gallery of Art, Washington), bevraagt Luc Tuymans over het belang van tentoonstellingen en hun totstandkoming. De Amerikaanse kunsthistorica Jan Avgikos onderzoekt de rol van fotografie, film en digitale media in het oeuvre van de kunstenaar.