Mike Kelley's Arenas series of the late 80s and early 90s mark a shift away from the artist's performance-oriented activity and towards a new sculptural dexterity, in which cultural resonance is elicited from an eerie reframing of everyday objects. First exhibited in 1990 at Metro Pictures, the Arenas are comprised of stuffed animals arranged around the edges of blankets (or occasionally posed isolate in their center). Ten or twenty such toys in such groupings might convey a cheery childhood picnic scenario, but Kelley rarely selects more than five or six, and places them carefully so that their cuddliness and their capacity to comfort is entirely canceled out. Instead, we encounter the toy as a commodity entity--a mass-manufactured product positioned to enter into play but far from inviting it. Skarstedt's exhibition of seven of the eleven Arenas is here recorded in superb installation shots and with critical commentary.

"Paper Pools is the most recent major group of works by David Hockney, demonstrating his fascination with new techniques in the service of his passionate pursuit of creative representation. In 1976, Hockney had become obsessed with the technique of coloured etching, which he had been taught by the French print-maker Aldo Crommelynck and which resulted in the Blue Guitar series, among other inventive works. Now Hockney has applied himself with infectious enthusiasm to the making of Paper Pools, in which painting and paper-making are totally fused." --preface.

This groundbreaking book explores the evolving concept of unfinishedness as essential to understanding art movements from the Renaissance to the present day. Unfinished features more than 200 works, created in a variety of media, by artists ranging from Leonardo, Titian, Rembrandt, Turner, and Cézanne to Picasso, Warhol, Twombly, Freud, Richter, and Nauman. What unites these works, across centuries and media, is that each one displays some aspect of being unfinished. Essays and case studies by major contemporary scholars address this key concept from the perspective of both the creator and the viewer, probing the impact that this long artistic trajectory—which can be traced back to the first century—has had on modern and contemporary art. The book investigates the degrees to which instances of incompleteness were accidental or intentional experimental or conceptual. Also included are illuminating interviews with contemporary artists, including Tuymans, Celmins, and Marden, and parallel considerations of the unfinished in literature and film. The result is a multidisciplinary approach and thought-provoking analysis that provide valuable insight into the making, meaning, and critical reception of the unfinished in art.

A celebration of evolving taste, told through the stories behind 250 objects sold by the world's leading auction house Founded in London in 1766, Christie's is one of the most important auction houses in the world. During its history, Christie's has sold masterpieces by artists such as Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh, often at record-breaking prices; and, away from the world of art, the personal possessions of such well-known figures as Napoleon Bonaparte, Marilyn Monroe, Yves Saint Laurent, and Princess Diana. From furniture to works of fine and decorative art, vintage cars to clothing and jewellery, the items sold at its auctions hold a mirror to our history and reflect our culture at large. Going Once vividly brings to life the shifts in aesthetic trends, fashion, and design over the centuries, showcasing 250 of the most outstanding objects in its storied history - including some of the very first pieces sold at the auction house.

Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia was an immensely influential book that attempted to describe the entire world across all of human history and analyse its constituent elements of geography, history, ethnography, zoology and botany. First published in 1544 it went through thirty-five editions and was published in five languages, making it one of the most important books of the Reformation period. Beginning with a biographical study of Sebastian Münster, his life and the range of his scholarly work, this book then moves on to discuss the genre of cosmography. The bulk of the book, however, deals with the Cosmographia itself, offering a close reading of the 1550 Latin edition (the last and definitive edition worked upon by Münster). By analysing the contents of the Cosmographia it attempts to recreate how the world of the sixteenth century appeared to a scholar living in Basel, and understand what he saw and heard. Through this examination of Münster, his publications and scholarly networks, the conflicts and continuities between medieval scholarly traditions and the widening horizons of the sixteenth century are explored and revealed. Of interest to scholars of humanist culture, the Reformation and book history, this ambitious work throws into relief previously overlooked aspects of the intellectual and religious culture of the time.