Rizzoli Electa – The Bell Bookshop

Masterpieces from The Royal Collection

Emma — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Every year, millions of art lovers visit The Royal Collection which consists of over a million objects including 7,000 paintings, 150,000 works on paper, and 30,000 watercolours and drawings. This stunning, erudite volume showcases in particular the collection’s masterpiece paintings including works by Bellini, Mantegna, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Canaletto, DÃ¼rer, Cranach, Holbein, Rubens, Rembrandt, van Dyke, Vermeer, Hogarth, Gainsborough, and many others. From still life paintings to landscapes to portraits, some of the world’s finest paintings are reproduced in exacting detail. This remarkable volume traces the evolution of this unparalleled collection and reads like a veritable history of western art. Begun almost by accident, it was one of the last of the great European royal art collections to be formed, and one of the largest to have survived intact into the twenty-first century. Also included in this special survey is a smattering of treasures from its vast collection of drawings and watercolours. The Royal Collection is spread over 13 locations – all historic royal residences. Members of the Royal Family reside in most of these, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham House, and Kensington Palace, while others – the Queen’s Gallery and Hampton Court Palace – have become spaces devoted to the public display of art. The story of the Royal Collection is a visual record of the tastes and obsessions of Britain’s kings and queens over the past 500 years, and this revealing insight into the history of the British monarchy will surely be of interest to Anglophiles everywhere.

Knole

Emma — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Sumptuous photographs by designer Ashley Hicks (who recently photographed the interiors of Buckingham Palace) capture the smouldering spirit of the place: from the state rooms, which house possibly the finest collection of royal Stuart furniture in the world, to the private apartments and gardens, to the behind-the-scenes labyrinth of cellars and attics. Knole provides a window onto English history. The characters who people the pages of the book-the grave Elizabethan statesman, the good-for-nothing gadabout at the seedy Court of King James I, the dashing Cavalier, the Restoration rake, the 3rd Duke, that magnificent and melancholy representative of the ancien regime, the whiskery and dark-hearted Mortimer who caused three nights of rioting in 1884 by closing the park to visitors-are all representative of their age (members of a family described by Vita Sackville-West as “a race too prodigal, too amorous, too weak, too indolent, and too melancholy”: in short, “a rotten lot, and nearly all stark staring mad.” Of course, Vita’s torn legacy with the property prompted her dear friend Virginia Woolf to pen Orlando, furthering the place’s fame and glamorous lustre. Similarly, the architectural and decorative features of the house, so splendidly revealed by Ashley’s photographs, illustrate the different tastes of successive ages, from Thomas Sackville’s seventeenth-century makeover of a ramshackle medieval mansion to an early twentieth-century suite of rooms designed in the Bohemian style. Knole has never been illuminated in this way before.

Banksy

Emma — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This monograph gathers and presents the largest assemblage in one volume about the life, work, and ideas of Banksy – the world’s most discussed artist of recent decades. Featuring hundreds of works – Girl with Balloon, Mickey Snake, Dismaland, Love is in the Air, Barcode, Monkey Queen — the book includes reproductions of paintings, serigraphs, and stencils. The most iconic works are here, but so too are numerous installation objects and a selection of memorabilia all with the official approval of Pest Control, the group that manages all things Banksy.

Banksy is considered the world’s greatest practitioner of street art at work today. His work has always implied political critiques – of inequality, injustice, discrimination, consumerism, pollution, and the establishment. But, Banksy is a ghost — no one knows his identity. He is an exemplary case of fame and notoriety built upon absence, anonymity, and the denial of one’s explicit contribution to the public debate if not in terms of creative activism.

Banksy’s relationship with the art market is also complex: at the same time mocking, distant, and hostile and yet all he does is based upon a marketing logic that has proven to be among the most effective ever attempted. In short, an apparent (or real) contradiction between adhesion to the market and ferocious criticism of the market itself.

This volume is published to coincide with a major traveling exhibition of over one hundred Banksy works, but it is sure to be a must have for art lovers and Banksy fans alike for years to come.

Frida Kahlo

Emma — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

An ideal introduction to the painter’s work, this volume features over 100 of Kahlo’s most beloved paintings illustrating all aspects of her diverse oeuvre including works from both private and public collections-many rarely seen in public. The best and most important Frida Kahlo paintings are showcased here to coincide with a global event – an immersive exhibition of her masterworks that will travel widely. The accuracy of the newly commissioned reproductions and their fidelity to the original pieces are so astounding that this is a must have book for Kahlo’s legion of fans as well as for exhibition visitors. Included are paintings from private collections that are rarely shown in public in addition to popular favourites, which makes the contents fresh, varied, and engaging. Author Roxana Velásquez, the world’s foremost Kahlo authority, provides insight into the artist’s persona and work, and is also coordinating the exhibition.