Frits Lugt (1884–1970) had a passion for miniatures that began early on in his life. Hedemonstrated it in the small but ardent Le portrait-miniature of 1917, the year in which hebought the first portrait miniature for his collection. Since then it has been constantlyenriched, and now numbers more than 100 works by artists from Great Britain, the LowCountries, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark and Switzerland, covering the period fromthe sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Thanks to the expertise of specialist Karen Schaffers-Bodenhausen, who has studiedthe growing collection in recent years with great dedication and patience, we now havethis first catalogue of the portrait miniatures in the Frits Lugt Collection, FondationCustodia, Paris.In addition to a foreword by director Ger Luijten, the first volume containsdetailed descriptions and exhaustive analyses of the portraits, their attributions, andidentifications of the sitters. The author also examines the techniques employedand sets out to establish a date for each portrait. The volume closes with a table ofconcordance, a detailed index of proper names and a comprehensive bibliography.Comparative illustrations are incorporated in the descriptions. The second volume hascolour plates of all the works in the collection, almost all of them full size, and concludeswith reproductions of the backs of the miniatures if they provide additional supportinginformation.

Public spaces have long been the object of countless studies. Yet, most of these have focused almost exclusively on the metropolitan setting, while neglecting the nature and function of public spaces in rural areas. This volume addresses precisely this gap, drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s theories in order to propose an alternative vision of public spaces – one which is centered on the local rhythms of rural areas and on their peculiar complexities. Rural public spaces can present all features of a Lefebvrian abstract space, in a way that is akin to that of cities. However, at the same time, their specific ‘otherness’ allows them to offer communal and organic responses to the pressure of global challenges, in a way that is largely precluded to cities.

This book concerns objects that were “meaningful” jewels, a term we choose to designate a wide range of precious wearable objects that had particular meaning. An Anglo-Saxon glass pendant, a Spanish “magic belt,” a Mexican lantern pendant (once adorned with New World feathers), and an Imperial Memento Mori Skull, these are just a few of the remarkable objects included. These intimate meaningfuljewels are meant to be opened, touched, manipulated, pinned, gathered and strung. In the same series of books on jewelry inaugurated in 2007 with Toward an Art History of Medieval Rings (repr. 2014), the present volume divides the jewels into six sections (such as “Ways and Means of Prayer,” “Hidden and Revealed,” “Kissed and Touched”) that creatively explore the complex meanings these objectsheld for their owners. Cynthia Hahn, internationally known for her explorative ground-breaking studies of the reliquary arts, has written the stimulating essays and accompanying entries in the body of the book. She has collaborated here with Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, who, with her great mastery of the history of jewelry, has contributed a scholarly catalogue that authenticates, describes, and situates eachobject. Together the essays, entries, and catalogue create a context that helps us see this jewelry in a new way and adds new research that establishes the historical and artistic importance of a relatively little-studied group of “meaningful jewels.” In the words of Cynthia Hahn, “Jewels, and that word here includes jewelry, are literally the foundation of art in the Middle Ages. It is surely not irrelevant thatthese things are so beautiful.” Sandra Hindman, Founder and President of Les Enluminures states “I have bought these pieces one by one over a period of fi fteen years (and put them aside with this project in mind), and to my knowledge no such collection has been assembled, studied, and exhibited in modern times”. She goes on to say, “Not at all unlike the medieval manuscripts I also present, they are some of the most intimateof art objects from the Middle Ages.”

William Jackson, one of Gainsborough’s closest friends and biographers, noted that if he had “to rest his [Gainsborough] reputation on one point, it should be on his Drawings”. Gainsborough was indeed a draftsman of rare talent and creativity, and his experiments in drawing inspired an entire generation of British artists, from John Constable (1776–1837) to J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). When not occupied with his lucrative portrait business, Gainsborough devoted much of his time to his true passion, the depiction of landscapes, and more than 600 of the artist’s approximately 800 surviving drawings depict the British countryside. Like most artists from his generation, Gainsborough did not draw directly from nature but instead re-invented landscape “of his own brain,” laying out on his work table stones,branches, leaves, and soil of various colors. His passion for drawing extended to technical experimentation. Gainsborough mixed diff erent kind of media and invented recipes to make drawings in his own personal fashion: he would sometimes immerse his drawing paper in milk, or varnish it to give his landscapes a lucent tint. The exhibition is based on the group of Gainsborough drawings in the permanent collection of the Morgan Library& Museum, one of the richest holdings of Gainsborough drawing in the United States. Additional drawings from private and public collections, among them some borrowed for the exhibition, are included in the introductory essay of the catalogue.

In this publication, British artist Anna Freeman Bentley presents a series of new paintings and works on paper documenting her journey into the exclusive realm of private members clubs. Having started out in her home city of London, her research took her to California, and in particular to some of the most desirable clubs of Los Angeles, where through friends, professional networks and a number of courteous emails, doors were temporarily opened to her. In places where photography is often strictly forbidden, Freeman Bentley was authorized to document some of the many luxurious lounges, well-stocked bars, and high-end restaurants that are second homes to the members who pay considerable fees to use them. Whether celebrities, self-made business people or those born into lavish lifestyles, members clubs are synonymous with wealth and success, where people can relax, socialize or do deals in a smart and protected environment free from fans, paparazzi or the general public. It is a world of affluence and glamour tailor-made for the jet-set, a meeting place where artists and art collectors fly in and drink cocktails, where high-net worth individuals and media moguls hang out with the great and the good from Hollywood or the music industry, and where social media stars can switch their phones to flight mode for a while and chat freely with friends. Freeman Bentley uses the photographs she takes of these interior and exterior spaces out of hours as the starting point for unpeopled drawings, collages and painted sketches, transforming her studies of members clubs into complex paintings that hover between reality and invention.Freeman Bentley is known for her paintings of architecture and interiors, not only exploring the physical attributes of the built environment, but also raising questions about how and why they are used, and how this is reflected in the ambiance and dynamics of a given space. At a time of heightened awareness of wealth inequality, through her painterly works Freeman Bentley gives us a glimpse inside the spaces of the social milieu of the financially successful, the movers and shakers, the leaders and trend setters, inviting us to respond as viewers in whatever ways we choose. For some, it may be a matter of curiosity or of desire and aspiration; for others the very idea of members clubs might be elitist or snobbish. Yet for others it might be an occasional treat, or simply an everyday occurrence, the norm. With her characteristic combination of matter-of-fact observation, critical reflection, and atmospheric perception, Freeman Bentley presents us with a body of work that is as enigmatic as it is intriguing, asking us not only about issues of individuality and communality, private and public life, exclusivity and inclusivity, but also about how we each fit into such dialectics, and what this says about our inner and outer lives.'Exclusive' has been co-published by Pinatubo Press, Inc., and Anomie Publishing, and released to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at the Ahmanson Gallery, Irvine, California, in spring 2018. This hardback publication showcases images of approximately twenty paintings and as many works on paper, alongside a foreword from collector and patron Roberta Ahmanson, an introduction by the exhibition curator John Silvis, and a specially commissioned essay from critic Jane Neal. Anna Freeman Bentley (b.1982) is an artist based in London. She studied painting at Chelsea College of Art and Design before graduating with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2010. She has had solo exhibitions at venues including Wolfson College, Oxford (2017), Husk Project Space, London (2015), Workshop Gallery, Venice (2012), and Galerie Kollaborativ, Berlin (2007). Selected group exhibitions include ‘London Now’ at Space K, Seoul, South Korea (2017), ‘Der Kuhle Glanz’ at 68projects, Berlin (2017), the East London Painting Prize (2015 and 2014), the Prague Biennale 5 (2011), and Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2009). Freeman Bentley has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including Breathing SPACE Residency, London (2015-16), the ERDF New Creative Markets Programme, London (2013-14); Artist in Restaurant at Pied à Terre, London (2012); The Florence Trust Artists Residency, London (2010-11) and The Chelsea Arts Club Trust Award, London (2009).

The Brazilian television industry is one of the most productive and commercially successful in the world. At the forefront of this industry is TV Globo and its production of standardized telenovelas, which millions of Brazilians and viewers from over 130 countries watch nightly. Eli Lee Carter examines the field of television production by focusing on the work of one of Brazil's greatest living directors, Luiz Fernando Carvalho. Through an emphasis on Carvalho's thirty-plus year career working for TV Globo, his unique mode of production, and his development of a singular aesthetic as a reaction to the dominant telenovela genre, Carter sheds new light on Brazilian television's history, its current state, and where it is going—as new legislation and technology push it increasingly toward a post-network era.

Patron Saints: Collecting Stanley Spencer is a revealing new exhibition at the renowned Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham – Spencer’s spiritual home and major source of inspiration. The exhibition draws together a spectacular collection of loans, including The Centurion’s Servant (Tate); Love on the Moor (Fitzwilliam); John Donne Arriving in Heaven, (Fitzwilliam) and one work not seen in the public domain in over 50 years. The exhibition and catalogue examine the often complex relationships between Spencer and his patrons and what drove them to collect his work. Spencer was a single-minded genius, but the influence of his patrons on his painting is far greater than has hitherto been realised. At the turn of the century, collecting art was no longer the preserve of the aristocracy and the upper classes, but Spencer’s art appealed to a broad spectrum of art lovers, fellow artists, businessmen and politicians. Many of his patrons lived in Cookham, where he lived and found artistic inspiration, and many of his paintings were influenced by his spiritual feelings for that place. His idiosyncratic and deeplypersonal approach gave him a wide and enduring appeal, and he was patronised by some of the most important cultural figures and taste-makers of that time. Curator Amanda Bradley comments, “Behind Stanley Spencer, one of the greatest Modern British artists, were a group of individuals who enabled his very existence – both artistically and emotionally. They were not wildly rich, but they were powerful, cultivated, intellectual and artistic. Some bought on spec, others were true patrons, giving him the freedom to fulfil his artistic genius. Most fostered long-lived relationships with the artist, influencing his life and work more than has hitherto been realised. These were the patron saints.” Patron Saints: Collecting Stanley Spencer explores the emergence of Spencer as an artistic personality, looking at those who helped him and why he – and his popularity – was a product of the zeitgeist (first half of the twentieth century) characterised by social and economic anxiety.

This catalogue presents a selection of important European terracotta sculptures from the neolithic to the neoclassical periods. The accompaning exhibition traces the history of ‘fired clay’ starting with the Vinca civilisation of South-Eastern Europe in the fifth millennium BC, which produced the fascinating Idol of a Mother and Child in the show and from there, via the ancient classical period and the Renaissance, to the high baroque, ending with the neoclassical era. Among the works included is a North Italian idealised Portrait Relief of a Lady from the late fifteenth century, and an attentively described Portrait Bust of a Man from Emilia in Northern Italy, ca. 1500. Both testify to the birth of terracotta as a medium for portraiture which continued well into the early modern era. Among further highlights is a Portrait Bust of a Gentleman by the rare Flemish sculptor Servatius Cardon (1608–1649) and a poignant Portrait of a Young Man attributed to the great French artist Philippe-Laurent Roland (1746–1816). The latter work is a beautiful representation of the birth of the modern portrait, where hierarchy and status give way to the expression of individuality and emotion. Parallel to this, the exhibition and catalogue demonstrate how terracotta was essentialto artistic practice as a means for sculptors to develop ideas and compositions, shown by a recently rediscovered terracotta model for an allegorical representation of Winter, by the Venetian baroque master Giovanni Bonazza (1654–1736), which offers a crucial insight intothe work of the sculptor, presenting a highly accomplished model for a finished work to be carved in either stone or marble. A similar case is illustrated by a Character Head executed by Antonio Canova (1757–1822) around 1780, when he was still a young sculptor on the cusp of greatness. Inspired by the famous Laocoön group in the Vatican, this terracotta exists as an invenzione in its own right, and so a testimony to the sculptor’s search for his own artistic vocabulary. Deeply and richly modelled, the Character Head betrays a preoccupation with the representation of emotions, framed within a wider exploration of antiquity that would be a central themethroughout Canova’s career. Another remarkable discovery and a highlight is a terracotta model for a figure of Saint Mark by Giuseppe Piamontini (1664–1742), a colossal marble statue carved for the new baroque church of Santi Michele e Gaetano in Piazza Antinori on the central ViaTornabuoni in Florence.

In 2018 the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts will celebrate its 40th anniversary. Opened in 1978, the building was both Sir Norman Foster’s first public commission and a new paradigm in museum design. The Sainsbury Centre forms part of one of the last, great phases of modernism, combining structural integrity and precision engineering with a radical approach to the integration of services. The publication will be released to coincide with the opening of Superstructures: The New Architecture 1960-1990, a major exhibition that will situate the Sainsbury Centre within its historical context and will explore architecture’s fascination with new technology, lightweight structures, building techniques and engineering solutions that emerged in the post-war decades, eventually redefining the spaces of culture, work, travel and living. Contents of the book include essays by Jane Pavitt and Abraham Thomas, curators of the show, and an interview to Sir Norman Foster conducted by Jonathan Glancey. An extensive photo essay will feature a range of unpublished photographs of the building under construction.

Harry Clarke is an internationally renowned Irish stained-glass artist. His magnificent windows in St Joseph’s Church, Terenure, highlight his unique style and skilled craftsmanship. He founded the Harry Clarke Studio in 1930 and the works of his successors are also on display in the church. They carried on his legacy and ensured that an indigenous Irish industry outshone the more bland stained glass that was prevalent at the time. This books outlines the background to these stained-glass windows and the church itself offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity to see this progression – and Harry Clarke’s legacy.

What is the current status of the human body in the digital era? Taking this question as a starting point, the book explores how our perception of the body has been modified by the advent of new media (videogames, transmedia platforms, ARGs), by the rise of recent devices such as wearable technologies,Virtual Reality, cosmetic surgery and by the creation of different narratives such as science-fictions, and TV series. Which kind of identities emerge within this context? How is our body image disseminated? In the ‘Post-Cinematic’ or ‘Post-Media’ condition, the body becomes a changeable, flexible, ‘unstable object’. The first part of this volume analyses the presence of body in the field of television/film and in social media (changes, aesthetics, new spaces); the second part focuses on the relationship between the digital media and the viewer/user, showing how the spectator’s body is subject to a constant shape modification.

Who is the Subaltern in the current global frame? Has neoliberalism changed the experience of subalternity? How do subalterns write history and what kind of history is written about subalternity? Cinéma& Cie's special issue addresses these and other questions through various theoretical approaches. The essays argue for the importance of a multidisciplinary perspective and address issues of media representation from a variety of perspectives, such as visual culture, history, philosophy, and postcolonialism. They focus on contemporary subalternity, especially on the migrant – characterized by diaspora and condemned to invisibility by hegemonic power – and the postcolonial subaltern – who has now the possibility to express her/himself in unexpected ways, in particular by using new media. The scattering and pervasiveness of media devices and gazes is discussed in depth in these essays, which delve into the dialectic between subaltern cultures and agency embodied in the subjects of representation.

Many voices today call for a profound rethinking of European identity. If we wish to answer their call, however, it is necessary to start with a reconsideration of the notion of boundaries, particularly as they are at work in the Mediterranean region. The knowledge and cultural values of the Mediterranean may be the driving force able to overcome the impasse from which Europe seems unable to free itself. This volume focuses on the opportunity to employ Mediterranean knowledge and cultural values as a stimulus for the review of European policies, in the interest of creating a solid bridge between different cultural legacies and over the daunting challenges of our shared future. This means being able to stay – simul – outside and inside the borders, within and beyond the “un”- limit; looking for an image of Europe which finally stops thinking about the Mediterranean as its internal vulnus, as its lesion and contamination. This volume suggests how it is possible to think both inside and outside of borders, combining the ‘foreign’ forces of promiscuity, exchange, latency, expectancy and hope, with a ‘domestic’ circulation of thought and knowledge, in the interest of a defense of all cultures and of an egalitarian recognition of the right to dignity.

In this first book-length study of chindon-ya, Marié Abe investigates the intersection of sound, public space, and sociality in contemporary Japan. Chindon-ya, dating back to the 1840s, are ostentatiously costumed street musicians who publicize a business by parading through neighborhood streets. Historically not considered music, but part of the everyday soundscape, this vernacular performing art provides a window into shifting notions of musical labor, the politics of everyday listening and sounding, and street music at social protest in Japan. Against the background of long-term economic downturn, growing social precarity, and the visually and sonically saturated urban streets of Japan, this book examines how this seemingly outdated means of advertisement has recently gained traction as an aesthetic, economic, and political practice after decades of inactivity. Resonances of Chindon-ya challenges Western conceptions of listening that have normalized the way we think about the relationship between sound, space, and listening subjects, and advances a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the ways social fragmentation is experienced and negotiated in post-industrial societies.Hardcover is un-jacketed.

ACE Report 41, The Cemetery of Meir Vol. IV: Tombs of Senbi I and Wekhhotep I, by N. Kanawati and L. Evans, is now available. The volume is devoted to the Middle Kingdom tombs of B1 and B2, which belonged to local ruler Senbi I and his son and successor Wekhhotep I. Presenting a full description of both tombs and illustrated with extensive colour plates and line drawings, Report 41 contains a wealth of information about the art and funeral practices of Egypt's Twelfth Dynasty.

Alan Sorrell’s archaeological reconstruction drawings and paintings remain some of the best, most accurate and most accomplished paintings of their genre that continue to inform our understanding and appreciation of historic buildings and monuments in Europe, the Near East and throughout the UK. His famously stormy and smoky townscapes, especially those of Roman Britain, were based on meticulous attention to detail borne of detailed research in collaboration with archaeologists such as Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Sir Cyril Fox and Sir Barry Cunliffe, who excavated and recorded his subjects of interest. Many of his reconstructions were commissioned to accompany visitor information and guidebooks at historic sites and monuments where they continue to be displayed. But archaeological subjects were not his only interest. His output was prodigious: he painted murals, portraits, imaginative and romantic scenes and was an accomplished war artist, serving in the RAF in World War II. In this affectionate but objective account, Sorrell’s children, both also artists, present a brief pictorial biography followed by more detailed descriptions of the genesis, research and production of illustrations that demonstrate the artist’s integrity and vision, based largely on family archives and illustrated throughout with Sorrell’s own works. So influential were Sorrell’s images of Roman towns such as London, Colchester, Wroxeter, St Albans and Bath, buildings such as the Heathrow temple and the forts of Hadrian’s Wall, that he became known as the man who invented Roman Britain.