Art deco and modernist ceramics

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Jessica Kerwin Jenkins

"All the Time in the World proffers a miscellany of customs, traditions, and pleasures people have pursued throughout the ages. An antidote to the contemporary cult of Getting Things Done, the book takes its cue from the medieval books of hours, which prescribed certain readings and contemplations for various parts of the day and year. Full of witty bon mots, interesting etymologies, and arresting anecdotes, the book encompasses an array of cultures and eras including ancient Greece, Renaissance Florence, 1930s Shanghai, and the Hollywood Hills of the late 1960s, drifting through the worlds of fashion, beauty, art, food, or travel. Focusing on the glamorous, eccentric, unusual and sublime, subjects covered include: the daylong ceremony of laying a royal Elizabethan tablecloth; the radicalization of sartorial chic in 1890s Paris; Nostradamus' belief in the aphrodisiac power of jam (and the book of recipes he published the same year as his predictions); the sensuous practice of sniffing incense in 15th century Japan; the American fascination with flaming desserts; the short-lived artistic discipline of "lumia," or visual music; the Ottoman Empire's 17th century ban on coffee; the magnetic atmosphere that fueled Parisian highlife in the 1920s; Henriette d'Angeville's fearless ascent of Mont Blanc, armed with 13 guides, 24 roast chickens, and 18 bottles of wine; the elaborate treasure hunts concocted by London's Bright Young Things; and the musical revolution known as bebop. Entertaining, unexpected, and charming, All the Time in the World digs up the forgotten treasures of the past and inspires a passion for good living in the present"--

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R. Tripp Evans

He claimed to be “the plainest kind of fellow you can find. There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, or experienced,” said Grant Wood, “that’s been even the least bit exciting.” Wood was one of America’s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an “almost mythical figure,” recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America’s traditional values—a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age. In this major new biography of America’s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . . R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie” of small-town America.

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Enrica Crispino

Traces the brief and troubled life of van Gogh: his birth in a Dutch village, his travels in Belgium and England, his arrival in Impressionist Paris and his discovery of the delights of the south of France, where he died at 37. Shows how, in spite of suffering mental crises and inner turmoil, van Gogh always continued to search for ways of painting that expressed the true essence of his subjects.

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Klaus Humann

Die Freiheit der Meinung und die Freiheit der Kunst sind leicht verwundbar. Das haben uns nicht zuletzt die Morde in Paris am 7. Januar 2015 vor Augen geführt. Dieses Buch gibt der Freiheit der Meinung eine Stimme. Dem Aufruf »Wir wehren uns mit Stift und Pinsel« sind 29 renommierte Illustratoren aus Australien, Deutschland, England, Frankreich, Österreich und den USA gefolgt und haben uns ihre Gefühle und Gedanken dazu gezeichnet. Entstanden ist eine Sammlung eindringlicher Bilder der Trauer, Wut, aber auch der Zuversicht und Stärke. Mit einer Einleitung von Andreas Platthaus