Constant change and expansion have been the hallmarks of Swedish art history as an academic discipline since the first university chairs were established a hundred years ago. It has crossfertilized with related disciplines and benefited from the parallel emergence of art museums and other institutions in Sweden. Swedish art history should thus be seen as the result of people and institutions tapping into one another’s activities, united by their dedication to art and visual culture as an object of study and experience. In this edited volume – the first Swedish survey for an international readership – the authors dwell on their own understanding of the early formation of the discipline and examine its current identity and potential progress. The contributors elaborate on art history research and teaching at Swedish universities, but also at related institutions such as the Swedish Institute in Rome, Nationalmuseum, and Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art in Lund. The book’s authors come from a variety of research fields, institutions, and generations and provide a multifaceted picture of the past and the future of Swedish art history.

Russian painter, explorer, and mystic Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) ranks as one of the twentieth century’s great enigmas. Despite mystery and scandal, he left a deep, if understudied, cultural imprint on Russia, Europe, India, and America. As a painter and set designer Roerich was a key figure in Russian art. He became a major player in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and with Igor Stravinsky he cocreated The Rite of Spring, a landmark work in the emergence of artistic modernity. His art, his adventures, and his peace activism earned the friendship and admiration of such diverse luminaries as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, H. G. Wells, Jawaharlal Nehru, Raisa Gorbacheva, and H. P. Lovecraft. But the artist also had a darker side. Stravinsky once said of Roerich that “he ought to have been a mystic or a spy.” He was certainly the former and close enough to the latter to blur any distinction. His travels to Asia, supposedly motivated by artistic interests and archaeological research, were in fact covert attempts to create a pan-Buddhist state encompassing Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet. His activities in America touched Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s cabinet with scandal and, behind the scenes, affected the course of three US presidential elections. In his lifetime, Roerich baffled foreign affairs ministries and intelligence services in half a dozen countries. He persuaded thousands that he was a humanitarian and divinely inspired thinker - but convinced just as many that he was a fraud or a madman. His story reads like an epic work of fiction and is all the more remarkable for being true. John McCannon’s engaging and scrupulously researched narrative moves beyond traditional perceptions of Roerich as a saint or a villain to show that he was, in many ways, both in equal measure.

Frank Auerbach: The Sitters provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s portraiture. It reveals the special connection between the artist and his ‘sitters’ - the small group of dedicated models who have been Auerbach’s chief subject over a career spanning seven decades. A comprehensive list of his sitters has been compiled here for the first time, providing new biographical information about his models from E. O.W. to J.Y.M. and beyond. Frank Auerbach: The Sitters includes a wide range of contributors. An essay by the art critic William Feaver describes the experience of sitting for Auerbach, while a conversation from 2001 between the artist and Martin Gayford describes Auerbach’s intentions and process. Auerbach’s close friendship with the art historian Michael Podro is also explored, with a short memoir by Natasha Podro and a re-published, little known essay from 1969 by Podro himself. Forty paintings and drawings from 1956 to 2020 are illustrated in colour, with thoroughly researched catalogue entries that shed new light on the artist’s relationships and his work. The publication accompanies Piano Nobile’s exhibition Frank Auerbach: The Sitters, held in autumn 2022.

A comprehensive, novel reassessment of the life and work of one of America's most influential self-taught artists, John Kane. The book presents a full account of Kane's life as a working man, including his time as a steelworker, coal miner, street paver, and commercial painter in and around Pittsburgh at the height of the industrial era. How these occupations shaped his development as an artist and his breakthrough success in the modern art world is carefully explored and analyzed in this richly illustrated volume. Kane's dramatic life story demonstrates the power of perseverance and creativity: his dedication to painting resulted in a fascinating body of work that has ended up in some of America's most important museums and private collections.

By 1920, Buenos Aires was the largest and most cosmopolitan city of Latin America due to mass immigration from Europe. Unbridled urban expansion had drastic effects on the social and cultural topography of the Argentine capital, raising ideological and aesthetic issues that shaped the modernist landscape of the country. Artists across disciplines responded to these changes with conflicting depictions of urban space. Centering these conflicts as a cognitive map of modernity’s new realities in the city and in understandings of the city itself, Buenos Aires and the Arts looks at the interaction between modernity and modernism in literature, photography, film, and painting during the interwar period. This was a time of profound change and heightened cultural activity in Argentina. Eleni Kefala analyzes works by Jorge Luis Borges, Oliverio Girondo, José Ferreyra, Xul Solar, Roberto Arlt, and Horacio Coppola, with a focus on the city of Buenos Aires as a playground of modernity.

Harlan Hubbard (1900-1988), Kentucky writer, environmentalist and artist, spent many years trying to rediscover and revive the vanishing language of landscape in his watercolor paintings. Known for their sense of drifting movement and their depiction of the simple way of life for which Hubbard was known, they inexplicably remain his least-studied artworks, despite being some of the best evidence of Hubbard's place in the history of landscape painting.The Watercolors of Harlan Hubbard not only argues Hubbard's place in the art historical canon, but also highlight and analyze the artist's own voice. In this unique collection, more than 200 watercolors are interspersed with anecdotes to present a personal meditation on the influence that Hubbard's work has had on the lives of those who knew him.

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was part of an important group of artists who left Europe for America during the Second World War. Andre Breton described her as possessing two priceless gifts: the enlightenment of a lucid madness and the sublime potential of solitary thought. For Max Ernst, she was the Bride of the Wind, a figure who brought energy through her intense life, mystery and poetry. The current volume brings together a reconstruction of Carrington’s biography with a detailed analysis of her artistic production, beginning with her fleeing English high society to follow a dream of freedom, her crazy love affair with Max Ernst and her time in the small village of Saint Martin d’Archèche in the south of France, where she began to paint, write and sculpt. After the outbreak of war, the abyss of madness led her to an asylum, to escaping to New York and finally to Mexico. The culture of Mexico fed her imagination, inspiring a fantastic mythography that amalgamates a deep understanding of the Italian Renaissance, the hybrid figures of Surrealism and studies of esotericism and alchemy, producing original and extremely sophisticated creations. The book provides an intense narrative that spans across the fundamental stations of Carrington’s life, situating her individual journey within the cultural context of the 20th century, a journey that begins in England, moves across the Ocean and concludes in the new millennium in Mexico City, where the author met and became acquainted with the artist.

The New York Times called the Speed Art Museum's Promise, Witness, Remembrance - centered around artist Amy Sherald's portrait of Breonna Taylor and originally commissioned by Ta-Nehisi Coates for the cover of Vanity Fair magazine - one of the best art exhibitions of 2021. In the words of critic Holland Cotter, "the show was assembled in four months - warp speed in museum-time - and created a prototype for institutional responses to history-as-it's-happening." This breathtaking book documents not just the 32 works featured in the exhibition, but also the process by which the Speed used this opportunity to memorialize the life of Breonna Taylor, who was killed by Louisville police in March 2020, and to serve its community through art, featuring real-time quotations from Curator Allison Glenn, Community Engagement Strategist Toya Northington, Director Stephen Reily, Tamika Palmer (Breonna Taylor's mother), artist Amy Sherald, and others. With 200 photos, featuring work by 22 Black artists, including Sam Gilliam, Lorna Simpson, Kerry James Marshall, Hank Willis Thomas, and Theaster Gates, Promise, Witness, Remembrance is a vital addition to the canon of Black American art.

‘A lover of light’: in 1912, a French critic used these words to describe the great Danish painter Peder Severin Krøyer, who had close ties to the French art scene for more than two decades. Krøyer first visited Paris in 1877, and his many letters clearly show the impact French art had on Krøyer’s own development as a painter, on the artists’ colony in Skagen, and on Danish art history in general. In Krøyer and Paris. French Connections and Nordic Colours, art historians Mette Harbo Lehmann and Dominique Lobstein describe Krøyer’s artistic development from the Golden Age tradition favoured by the Danish academy to Naturalism and the Modern Breakthrough. They show how inspiration from France can be traced in his painting technique and his open-air paintings from Skagen, revealing how French Naturalism made its mark on Krøyer’s distinctive style.

‘The conference volume Munch and his World offers an excellent overview of Munch's multifaceted print and photographic techniques within the context of his contemporaries, which makes it particular valuable. This extremely readable book is aimed both at a specialist audience and interested non-professionals and, through its selected image comparisons and high-quality illustrations, conveys a vivid impression of Munch's prints within avant-garde art in Berlin and Paris.’ – Print QuarterlyThe art of Edvard Munch is striking for the originality and universality of its themes, which cross moments in place and time. Yet he was very much an artist of the nineteenth century, and the focus of this publication is to show how especially in his prints and photographs Munch was enabled by technical advances developed by his contemporaries to create an entirely new visual language. Munch is probably best known for his desire to express emotions surrounding love, illness and death. However, the authors in this volume show that this preoccupation was not only based on biographical events but reflects wider contemporary debates on developments in medicine and science, including treatment of mental illness, as well as a proliferation of technical expertise in the production of prints.The arguments presented expand on subjects touched upon in the critically acclaimed British Museum exhibition Edvard Munch: love and angst (2019). Munch's remarkable prints were fundamental to establishing his international career, but there remains much to investigate in connection with the background to his innovatory techniques, his relationship with contemporary printmakers and his experiments with photography. The authors in this volume go some way to address these themes and outline future avenues of research.

This book reveals that Pablo Picasso wasn't simply a figurehead of the Modern Age. He grew up in the 19th century: the extraordinary mixture of values that was fin de siècle Europe penetrated deep into his personality, remaining with him through his life. While he was the quintessential Modern in so many ways, he was also a Victorian, and this duality explains the complexity of his genius. He was simultaneously looking forwards and backwards, and feeding off the efforts of others, before developing his own idioms for depicting the contemporary world. The young artist recognised that society was increasingly in a process of transformation, not in a transitory or temporary way, but permanently, under the inexorable pressures of modernisation. He realised that the emergence of Modern art through the last quarter of the century was a product of this transformation. Throughout his life, Picasso would feel the tension between modernity and the histories it replaced. He would also struggle with the role of the individual, and subjectivity, in this new environment. Each chapter shows how the young artist embraced successive styles at large in the art world of his time. By the age of 14 well capable of drawing in a highly competent Beaux Arts mode, he drew in a Classicist manner of redolent of Ingres, or early Degas. He then moved through various forms of Impressionism, Symbolism, and Post-Impressionism, before arriving in his early twenties at his first wholly individual style, the Blue period, albeit that all these earlier sources were still evident. The Rose period followed, after which the artist began a truly seminal period of experimentation which culminated in the development of Cubism. By 1910, Cubism had become a fully mature vision, practiced by a wide range of artists. It was to provide the springboard for much Modern art across the disciplines, and it positioned Picasso as perhaps the single most important artist of the new century.

Between 1958 and 1961, William Crozier painted a series of daring and original landscapes. He lived in north Essex at the time and found inspiration in that bleak environment, even as he looked inwards to give his paintings existential angst. William Crozier: Nature into Abstraction brings these works together for the first time since the 1960s. William Crozier: Nature into Abstraction is a fully illustrated catalogue including a poignant introduction by the art critic and writer Thomas Marks. The book shows Crozier to be one of the leading artists in post-war Britain and is published to accompany an exhibition of the same title at The Lightbox, Woking. A prolific artist who produced a dizzying range of styles over short periods of time, William Crozier has yet to receive the recognition his work deserves. This publication offers a detailed look at just three years of the artist’s career, addressing a gap in the existing literature about Crozier.

Returning from a visit to New York in 1979, William Crozier had a rush of creative energy. Newly confident in his European identity and inspired by art of the past, he produced a cycle of still life work. This fully illustrated book presents a selection of Crozier’s still life paintings and watercolours from an important period in his career. William Crozier was one of the premier painters in post-war Ireland. His still life paintings pulse with the memory of both Chardin and Picasso, even as he remade the genre in his own inimitable style. Executed in 1979 and 1980, the paintings illustrated here belong to a significant and previously undescribed period in Crozier’s career. Most have never been reproduced until now. William Crozier: Seize the Flow’r accompanies Piano Nobile's exhibition of the same title and includes lavish illustrations and an essay exploring the artist’s profound attitude to his still life subjects.

Tony Birks was a prolific writer on art, particularly in British studio ceramics. This is the first publication to bring together his writings in a single volume. During the 1970s studio ceramic grew dramatically as a force on the international art scene. In Britain and America particularly, but also across Europe, practice flourished and powerful thinkers sought to define and describe what was happening. It was a dynamic and a controversial time, in which the nature of pottery showed itself capable of radical change. In the decades that followed this outburst, ceramic consolidated into a complex aesthetic and cultural discourse. Tony Birks was at the heart of this new wave of activity. A consummate writer and an artist himself, he supported what had happened in previous decades to generate a Modern ceramic art, and he championed the new generation blossoming around him. His publications provided crucial support to a discipline barely served by mainstream art history and criticism. He wrote monographs on major established figures, but he also had an extraordinarily perceptive eye for new talent, which served to bring attention to vibrant young artists. A number of these went on to become leading forces on the international scene. This book gathers together for the first time a comprehensive selection of Tony Birks's writing. A number of the essays are about the nature of ceramic practice, but the majority are about individual practitioners, among them are Bernard Leach, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Claudi Casanovas, Tony Hepburn, Andrew Lord, Ruth Duckworth and Takeshi Yasuda. Taken as a whole, the book is a window on the world of ceramic art at a crucial time in its growth - the issues and the personalities - opened for us by one of its most significant critical voices. The book also includes a catalogue of the ceramic works owned by Tony Birks that were gifted to the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia.

Ingenuity in the Making explores the myriad ways in which ingenuity shaped the experience, discourse and conceptualization of materials and their manipulation in early modern Europe. Contributions range widely across the arts and sciences, examining objects and texts, professions and performances, concepts and practices. The book considers subjects such as spirited matter, the conceits of nature, and crafty devices, investigating the ways in which wit acted in and upon the material world through skill and technique. Contributors ask how ingenuity informed the “maker’s knowledge” tradition, where the perilous borderline between the genius of invention and disingenuous fraud was drawn, and what were the ambitions of material ingenuity in a rapidly globalizing world.

Performance/Art explores the phenomenology of skilled performance, ranging from athletics to the performing arts, including music, dance and acting. Gallagher reviews a variety of studies concerning different degrees of mindful awareness operative in performance, and builds on the concept of a meshed architecture, suggesting ways to make it more complex and dynamic. He draws on ideas from enactivist embodied cognition about how different types of movement can be meaningful and intelligent and can scaffold learning and problem solving. He also explicates the notion of an empathic mindfulness in performance and develops the idea of a double attunement to explain aesthetic experience in performance, distinguishing the latter from aesthetic experience in the observer/ audience perspective.