The Art of Storytelling: Books that Bring Art to Life

A vibrant contemporary art anthology that explores the complex ties between race, climate crisis and colonialism by 100 leading artists of African diasporic, Latin American and Native American identity.

Black Earth Rising presents works by artists of African diasporic, Latin American and Native American identity that address vital questions of land, presence, climate crisis, and social and environmental justice against the historical backdrop of European settlement of the New World. Supported by an exhibition curated by the author, this timely publication invites us to trace and make the connections between race, the climate crisis and colonialism.

Works by 100 contemporary artists are presented in three thematic sections: Reckoning, Reimagining and Reclaiming. Complex and intertwined concepts are explored: forced migration and slavery, the environmental consequences of colonialism, the occupation of Native lands, the urban plight of Black and Brown communities, and how cultural practices and knowledge systems of indigenous peoples can change our perspectives of the natural world.

Compelling and thought-provoking, Black Earth Rising presents a discourse around climate change that situates the voices of people of colour at the active centre rather than on the passive periphery and expands our understanding of aesthetic perspectives on climate change through artworks that reach to the poetic and lyrical rather than the didactic.

Accessible yet original, this comprehensive guide to Salvador Dalí contains over 400 colour reproductions and a unique selection of historical photographs.

Dalí in 400 images explores the full range of one of the most significant Surrealist painters of the twentieth-century. The exhaustive selection of works will reveal key masterpieces by perhaps the most famous of the Surrealists, as well as less familiar works including drawings and objects. Spanning the entire scope of the artist’s career, this volume shows the complexity of the artist’s vision from the early works inspired by Post-Impressionism and his engagement with Cubism in the mid-1920, his major Surrealist paintings of the 1930s, through the American years (1940s), the artist’s embracing of Classicism in the 1950s, with his return to Spain, and finally his reengagement with avant-garde experimentation in the 1960s and beyond. The 400 reproductions of Dalí’s work are complemented by a unique selection of historical photographs. Alive with images and information, this compact gem is a must-have for all art enthusiasts and connoisseurs.

A fitting homage to this remarkable woman.” ―The Wall Street Journal

This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art. In this compelling biography, author Marilyn Chase brings Asawa’s story to vivid life. She draws on Asawa’s extensive archives and weaves together many voices―family, friends, teachers, and critics―to offer a complex and fascinating portrait of the artist.

Born in California in 1926, Ruth Asawa grew from a farmer’s daughter to a celebrated sculptor. She survived adolescence in the World War II Japanese American internment camps and attended the groundbreaking art school at Black Mountain College. She then went on to develop her signature hanging-wire sculptures, create iconic urban installations, revolutionize arts education in her adopted hometown of San Francisco, fight through lupus, and defy convention to nurture a multiracial family.

• This richly visual volume is illustrated with over 70 reproductions of Asawa’s art and archival photos of her life, including portraits shot by celebrated photographer Imogen Cunningham.
• It documents Asawa’s transformative touch, most notably the way she turned wire―the material of the internment camp fences―into sculptures.
• Additions to the paperback: a foreword by Jonathan Laib, director of the David Zwirner Gallery, and an author’s note that charts the continued rise of Asawa’s star in the art world and beyond. 

Ruth Asawa forged an unconventional path in everything she did. Her beloved fountains are now San Francisco icons, and her signature hanging-wire sculptures grace the MoMA, de Young, Getty, Whitney, and many more museums and galleries across America. Everything She Touched invites us to step into Asawa’s story so “we can admire the magic of her sculpture and beauty as a person.” (Harry S. Parker III, former director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)

Perfect for: 

• Artists and art students
• Fans of contemporary sculpture
• Anyone interested in Asian American culture and history
• Feminists, mothers, teachers, and history buffs
• Readers of art biographies and retrospectives such as Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work, The Art of Feminism, and Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art 

A collection of extraordinary 19th-century portraits that radically shifts our understanding of the presence and identities of the Black subject in Victorian Britain.

These striking studio portraits, curated and brought together following ten years of research championed by Autograph, constitute the most comprehensive collection of 19th-century photography depicting the Black subject in the Victorian era, including some of the earliest known images of Black people photographed in Britain.

The historically marginalized lives of both ordinary and prominent Black figures of African, Afro-Caribbean, South Asian and mixed heritage are seen through a prism of curatorial advocacy and experimental scholarly assemblage. Black Chronicles features high quality reproductions of plate negatives, cartes de visite and cabinet cards, many of which were buried deep in various private and public archives including the Hulton Archive’s remarkable London Stereoscopic Company collection, unseen for decades. These photographs are linked with imperial and colonial narratives through newly commissioned essays and rare lecture transcripts, in-conversation and text interventions by Caroline Bressey, Henry Louis Gates Jr, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, M. Neelika Jayawardane, Lola Jaye, Renée Mussai and Val Wilmer, and an afterword by Mark Sealy.

Built upon groundbreaking, in-depth new research, Black Chronicles opens up photographic archives to expand and enrich photography’s complex cultural histories and subjectivities, offering an essential insight into the visual politics of race, representation and difference in the Victorian era by addressing this crucial missing chapter.

Introduction and texts by Renée Musai, Foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Text by Paul Gilroy, Text by Stuart Hall, Text by Caroline Bressey, Text by Lola Jaye, Text by M. Neelika Jayawardane, Afterword by Mark Sealy, Text by Val Wilmer

Published by Thames & Hudson in partnership with Autograph.