Edgar Degas’s interest in the day-to-day activities of ordinary people changed painting forever, while his commitment to drawing was no less radical.
We live in a fascinating retail era. As the aftershocks from retail parks, Amazon and the ‘death of the high street’ reverberate, a recalibration of shops and their function seems to be taking place. From ‘Boxparks’ made of shipping containers to pop-up concession shops-within-shops, from lifestyle record/book/coffee stores to ad hoc hipster street stalls, there are untold experiments in getting people not just spending their money, but enjoying doing so.
Illustrator Richard Graham explains how his trips to Tate and his visits to the junk shops of Liverpool helped him come up with the idea of caterpillar living in a piano.
During a period of huge political tension between East and West, Harry Gruyaert photographed two worlds apparently in polar opposition – Las Vegas and Los Angeles in 1981, and Moscow in 1989. A new book reproduces almost 100 photographs from these series, over 70 for the first time.
Jen Campbell and bookshops are a well-known and much loved combination. She is the author of two volumes of the hilarious 'Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops', based on her experience as a bookseller, and 'The Bookshop Book', in which she sought out 200 weirdly wonderful and individual bookshops across six continents. Now Jen has created her own bookshop…
In the early 1980s, archaeologist Paul Bahn brought a group of visitors to the Pech Merle Museum of prehistoric art in the Lot valley, which at the time was curated by Michel Lorblanchet, a leading authority on Palaeolithic art. Some 30 years after that first meeting the idea for their book 'The First Artists: In Search of the World’s Oldest Art' was born. Here, these two leading lights discuss the oldest and, arguably, greatest art of all.
It's hard to think of anyone who could have created 'The Grammar of Spice' with its seamless weaving of decoration and reference, poetry and history. As a designer, Caz Hildebrand has worked on books by some of the people most responsible for broadening the vocabulary of seasoning in western cooking, notably Yotam Ottolenghi, and Sam and Sam Clark of Moro. And, as we shall see, she has had her own journey through the understanding of global cuisines, which has tied into her own work.
Authors Fiona Rogers and Max Houghton discuss their book 'Firecrackers' – a vivid showcase of work by more than thirty of the world’s leading contemporary female documentary photographers.
On the eve of World War Two, a Polish publisher took the unusual step of commissioning an advertising duo to illustrate some children’s verse. The result was a landmark in the history of picture books.
A pioneer of video art and conceptualism in the 1970s, American artist William Wegman has had his paintings, photographs, videos and drawings displayed in museums and galleries around the world. But he is most famous for his photographs of Weimaraner dogs, posing for individual portraits or pictured together in a whole host of elaborate set-ups.