Staging Brazil: Choreographies of Capoeira is the first in-depth study of the processes of legitimization and globalization of capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian combat game practiced today throughout the world. Ana Paula Höfling contextualizes the emergence of the two main styles of capoeira, angola and regional, within discourses of race and nation in mid-twentieth century Brazil. This history of capoeira's corporeality, on the page and on the stage, includes analysis of illustrated capoeira manuals and reveals the mutual influences between capoeira practitioners, tourism bureaucrats, intellectuals, artists, and directors of folkloric ensembles. Staging Brazil sheds light on the importance of capoeira in folkloric shows in the 1960s and 70s—both those that catered to tourists visiting Brazil and those that toured abroad and introduced capoeira to the world.

Following the sell-out 2014 publication ‘Paul Nash: Watercolours 1910 – 1946' this revised and expanded edition has been published to coincide with an exhibition of Paul Nash’s work in New York, May 2019. The fully illustrated catalogue includes major oils as well as watercolours, prints and photographs and examines one of Britain’s most acclaimed artists of the twentieth century. Written by David Boyd Haycock, author of 'Paul Nash' (Tate Publishing, 2002) and the hugely successful 'A Crisis of Brilliance' (Old Street Publishing, 2009), the catalogue charts the whole of Nash's career from his early days before studying at the Slade School of Art, through to his time at the Western Front during World War I as a serving officer and then an official War Artist, and to his mature Surrealist-era works. In this centenary year that marks the official end to the First World War, the publication reflects on Nash’s unprecedented impact on British Art and the lingering contemporary power of his works today. This selection of works is drawn from major museum and private collections, and includes several hitherto unseen works, spanning all the major genres and themes present in Nash’s diverse career.

The practice of Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmiths College graduate Greg Rook (b.1971, London) explores the rich visual history, curious cultural politics and often complex ideologies of those who seek to start a new life or wish to lead alternative lifestyles. From pioneers travelling to new continents to those wanting to stay put and live self-sufficiently, Rook invites us to join him on his own aesthetic and critical journey through a world of colonies, communities, communes and cults. By means of figurative painting that pushes the boundaries between realism and lyricism, Rook captures something profoundly revealing in terms of the hopes, dreams and successes as well as the disappointments, disillusionment and disasters that radical departures from home life and mainstream society can entail. For some, utopias can turn to dystopias, the Romantic imaginary can turn to tragedy, the sublime can turn to misery. For those fleeing oppression, however, it can be completely the opposite – newfound freedom, affluence and happiness. Rook’s oeuvre, which incorporates cowboys and communists, agrarians and anarchists, believers and book-burners, depicts how the relationship between people and land is regularly fraught with issues, especially when migration and a clash of mindsets or ways of life is involved. What are brave new worlds for some are threatened old worlds for others… This hardback publication, the first monograph to be devoted to the work of Greg Rook, has been co-published by Vento & Associati and Anomie to coincide with a substantial mid-career survey exhibition of the artist’s work being staged by Vento & Associati at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan in spring 2019. Featuring approximately fifty illustrations of paintings and works on paper made by Rook since 2006, along with an introduction by London and Milan-based critic and curator Michele Robecchi and a significant newly commissioned essay by Matt Price, a leading voice in the field of contemporary British painting, the publication offers an engaging and pertinent commentary on Rook’s long-standing painterly investigation into how people choose to live their lives.Vento & Associati is a Milan-based company operating in global contexts that specializes in strategic cultural communication within fields such as public affairs, corporate and social responsibility, and cultural fundraising. Vento & Associati manages a programme of exhibitions at the Fabbrica del Vapore as part of the Spazi al Talento initiative of the City of Milan.

Now in its nineteenth year of publication, Ceramics in America is considered the journal of record for historical ceramics scholarship in the American context and is intended for collectors, historical archaeologists, curators, decorative arts students, social historians, and contemporary potters. The special focus of the 2018 volume of Ceramics in America is The Last Drop Project, held in conjunction with the North Car-olina Pottery Center, where seventeen American potters were invited to create new ceramic works inspired by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drinking vessels. Included are two wonderfully illustrated articles on con-current installations at the Pottery Center: Michelle Erickson: DISTILLED and In the Pale Moonlight: Pottery & Alcohol in North Carolina. Other articles examine contemporary potters working in the field of historical ceramics reproductions. The journal concludes with an important interdisciplinary study of a late-nineteenth-century industrial pottery of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

Extreme poverty, which intensified in India during colonial rule, peaked in the 1920s—after decades of imperialist exploitation, famine, and disease—a time when architects, engineers, and city authorities proposed a new type of housing for India’s urban poor and industrial workers. As Farhan Karim argues, economic scarcity became a central inspiration for architectural modernism in the subcontinent. As India moved from colonial rule to independence, the Indian government, business entities, international NGOs, and intergovernmental agencies took major initiatives to modernize housing conditions and the domestic environment of the state’s low-income population. Of Greater Dignity than Riches traces multiple international origins of austerity as an essential ingredient of postcolonial development. By prescribing model villages, communities, and ideal houses for the working class, this project of austerity eventually reduced poverty into a stylized architectural representation. In this rich and original study, Karim explains the postwar and postcolonial history of low-cost housing as an intertwined process of global transferences of knowledge, Cold War cultural politics, postcolonial nationalism, and the politics of economic development.

Beginning in the 1950s, an explosion in rural-urban migration dramatically increased the population of cities throughout Peru, leading to an acute housing shortage and the proliferation of self-built shelters clustered in barriadas, or squatter settlements. Improvised Cities examines the history of aided self-help housing, or technical assistance to self-builders, which took on a variety of forms in Peru from 1954 to 1986. While the postwar period saw a number of trial projects in aided self-help housing throughout the developing world, Peru was the site of significant experiments in this field and pioneering in its efforts to enact a large-scale policy of land tenure regularization in improvised, unauthorized cities. Gyger focuses on three interrelated themes: the circumstances that made Peru a fertile site for innovation in low-cost housing under a succession of very different political regimes; the influences on, and movements within, architectural culture that prompted architects to consider self-help housing as an alternative mode of practice; and the context in which international development agencies came to embrace these projects as part of their larger goals during the Cold War and beyond.

Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, upended traditional practices of how art is made and marketed. A key figure in minimalism and conceptualism, he proclaimed that the work of the mind is much more important than that of the hand. For his site-specific work—wall drawings and sculpture in dozens of countries—he created the idea and basic plan and then hired young artists to install the pieces. Though typically enormous and intricate, the physical works held no value. The worth was in the pieces of paper that certified and described them. LeWitt championed and financially supported colleagues, including women artists brushed aside by the bullies of a male-dominated profession. Yet the man himself has remained an enigma, as he refused to participate in the culture of celebrity. Lary Bloom's book draws on personal recollections of LeWitt, whom he knew in the last years of the artist's life, as well as LeWitt's letters and papers and over one hundred original interviews with his friends and colleagues, including Chuck Close, Ingrid Sischy, Philip Glass, Adrian Piper, Jan Dibbets, and Carl Andre. This absorbing chronicle brings new information to our understanding of this important artist, linking the extraordinary arc of his life to his iconic work. Includes 28 illustrations.

At the end of the last century, the so-called "new technologies" started to question the process of design, production, sales and consumption through a radical change, which today re-defines many concepts both in industry and every-day life. The notion of "size" – a cross-cutting term in the cultural and creative sector – has gone through a phase of crisis from which it is now re-emerging, enriched with new meanings and possibilities. To re-define this complex term, the authors of the book have observed the path of audiovisual products and social media, fashion, everyday objects, architectures and cities, and identified in each of these fields elements of continuity, breaking points with the past as well as future alternatives. In this collection of essays, the authors adopt an interdisciplinary approach overcoming the boundaries of their discipline. Through different perspectives this volume presents and develops new paradigms that explain the complexities of the contemporary era and its new "sizes".

In this persuasive study, Tracy McMullen draws on philosophy, psychology, musicology, performance studies, and popular music studies in order to analyze the rise of obsessively precise live musical reenactments in the United States at the turn of the millennium. She investigates this practice, what she terms, Replay, in popular music, jazz, and performance art arguing that it is a symptom of deep-seated fears of the fleeting nature of identity. Musical Replay claims a type of authenticity that is grounded in the exact material details of the original (instruments, props, costumes, people, etc. ), and attempts to make up for the loss of identity: cloning the past and using it as a replacement. The scholarship is wide-ranging and ties theory and evidence from diverse fields and experiences together seamlessly and convincingly. Haunthenticity ultimately argues for a new way of conceiving subjectivity and identity within critical and cultural studies, moving beyond Western epistemologies.

History of Cinema Without Names is an editorial project which gathers research papers presented at Gorizia Conference. It promotes a new research perspective on the notions of film authorship, style, and genre, with the aim of re-articulating their theoretical definition.

Originating from Berlin Hagedorn moved to Manchester in 1905 to train in textile production. Having studied art under Adolphe Valette at the local Manchester School ofArt and then The Slade School of Art, his training was completed by a period in1912-13 where, working under Maurice Denis, he absorbed a range of avant-garde styles. On his return to England, he made a consciously pioneering attempt to introduce Modernism into Manchester through his work as both painter and designer, exhibiting at the Manchester Society of Modern Painters, RA, RBA, RSMA and with the NEAC. . He became a British subject in 1914 and served as a Lance-Corporal in the Middlesex Regiment during World War I. In 1925 he received the Grand Prix at the International Exhibition of Decorative Art, Paris and in 1935 he was elected RBA. He exhibited at a number of leading galleries in London and the provinces, and was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Royal Society of Marine Artists, the New English Art Club and the NS. Hagedorn has only been the subject of one exhibition and publication: ‘Manchester’s First Modernist’, a catalogue produced by the Chris Beetles Gallery on the occasion of the retrospective organised in conjunction with the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

Published to accompany the exhibition, Leon Kossoff: A London Life, this fully illustrated catalogue examines the paintings and drawings of one of Britain’s most acclaimed living artists. With a catalogue raisonné of Kossoff’s paintings in preparation, this is an apt moment to consider his oeuvre. The publication brings together masterworks from each period of the artist’s career, demonstrating the unwavering rigour, the nuance and the psychological intensity of his output. The exhibition explores the artist’s working practice and his creative environment. The city of his birth, London has played a central role in his career and many cityscapes will be on display – from Willesden Junction to Christ Church, Spitalfields. His friends and family have also contributed to his vision and the exhibition will reflect on the relationship between the artist and his models. Together, these landscape and figure paintings will present an irrefutable argument for Leon Kossoff’s place in the canon of modern master painters. The publication has an introduction by Jackie Wullschlager (chief art critic for The Financial Times) and essays by Andrew Dempsey and Lulu Norman (writer and translator).

Since the middle of the twentieth century, visual art has displayed an ambivalent nature, torn between the poles of abstractionism and realism, conceptual and postmodern, classicist nostalgia and the violent provocation for its own sake. This essay builds an argument in favour of tracing a different path for the visual arts, in which art might be able to recover its fullness and universality. The artists analysed in this volume – starting with Hopper and Balthus, singled out as precursors – appear to be following this shared path, even though they belong to different generations. Perhaps for this reason, they have for the most part been misunderstood by their contemporary critics. As in the art of Ancient Greece or the Middle Ages abstract tensions that intensify the visual field can bring simple figures to life, radically changing their meaning. This is a “sunniness” that is akin to the Claritas with which Medieval scholastics indicated the splendour of the works of their times. We’ll have to undertake a tireless process of exercising our perceptions, if we wish to be able to grasp its basic aesthetic quality.

Lynne Buchanan began photographing Florida’s inland waters to create artistic records of her connection with those waters and to learn lessons from being in the present moment and aligning with the flow of life. The more time she spent photographing waterways in her native Florida, the more she noticed what was being damaged and lost due to human impact. She resolved to draw attention to the situation through her photography and to work with water-quality and environmental advocates, from members of the Water-keeper Alliance to Native American citizens fighting to preserve the integrity of their ancestral lands and drinking water. The result is Changing Waters, which not only showcases the beauty, diversity, and complexity of Florida’s waters, but also documents the negative effects of agricultural and industrial pollution, a growing population with its urban growth and land development, and climate change on Florida’s inland and coastal waters and springs. Though her work is place specific, the book reveals the interconnected and global nature of environmental problems. Indeed, Florida’s fragile springs, wetlands, rivers, and coastal waters can be considered a tragic and powerful example of what is happening to aquatic systems else-where in the nation and world as a result of unchecked human action. Buchanan’s photographs invite viewers to consider their personal relationship to water and en-courage better stewardship of this vital––and finite––resource. They are also a call to action to find more effective ways to preserve these waterways for both their natural beauty and essential role in our survival.

Anna Halprin, vanguard postmodern dancer turned community artist and healer, has created ground-breaking dances with communities all over the world. Here, she presents her philosophy and experience, as well as step-by-step processes for bringing people together to create dances that foster individual and group well-being. At the heart of this book are accounts of two dances: the Planetary Dance, which continues to be performed throughout the world, and Circle the Earth. The Circle the Earth workshop for people living with AIDS has generated dozens of "scores" for others to adapt. In addition, the book provides a concrete guide to Halprin's celebrated Planetary Dance. Now more than 35 years old, Planetary Dance promotes peace among people and peace with the Earth. Open to everyone, it has been performed in more than 50 countries. In 1995 more than 400 participants joined her in a Planetary Dance in Berlin commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Potsdam Agreements, at the end of World War II. More recently, she took the Planetary Dance to Israel, bringing together Israelis and Palestinians as well as other nationalities. Throughout this book Halprin shows how dance can be a powerful tool for healing, learning and mobilizing change, and she offers insight and advice on facilitating groups. If we are to survive, Halprin argues, we must learn, experientially, how our individual stories weave together and strengthen the fabric of our collective body. Generously illustrated with photographs, charts and scores, this book will be a boon to dance therapists, educators and community artists of all types.

This special issue of Cinéma & Cie explores the cultural dynamics, ideological aporias and political struggles that characterize the relationship between Maoism and national cinemas, from the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution to the present day. All the articles included in the special issue highlight the complexity of the process of translation and ‘reinvention’ of Maoism in different cultural contexts, focusing on subjects and historical episodes that have been suppressed in public debates and in traditional film history books.