The Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949) was a major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late 19th century and an important precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early 20th century. Daring and socially engaged, Ensor included po...

The artist has been a privileged figure in the modern age, embodying ideals of personal and political freedom and self-fulfillment. Does it matter who gets to be an artist? And do our deeply held beliefs stand up to scrutiny? "Making the Modern Artis...

Between 1667 and 1792, the artists and amateurs of the Acade mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris lectured on the Academie's "conferences", foundational documents in the theory and practice of art. These texts and the principles they embod...

William Blake (1757-1827) is a universal artist – an inspiration to musicians, poets, performers, and visual artists worldwide. By combining his poetry and images on the page through radical printing techniques, Blake created some of the most strikin...

During the nineteenth century, Americans celebrated their towns and cities through printed landscapes. In Maine, lithographs were commissioned from such leading artists as Fitz Henry Lane and talented, lesser known local artists, such as Esteria Butl...

John Clark's magisterial "The Asian Modern" reconstructs the notion of art and its historiography. Writing the history of the Asian modern through the social life of artists, he generates a new paradigm for the narration of art. Both volumes meticulo...

"The Hermitage Cookbook" is a hymn to the unity of material world seen through the prism of art, literature, ethnographic observations and historical documents. The book covers a wide range of culinary recipes – ancient, national, family and royal. A...

Who spoke of the modern? When was the modern written? How was it written? How was it received? This collection features texts spanning the late 19th to late 20th centuries, selected by a group of scholars as responses to questions such as these. They...

In 1981, the Filipino artist and curator Raymundo Albano adopted the expression "Suddenly Turning Visible" to describe the rapid transformation of Manila's urban landscape. The visibility that Albano evoked was aspirational, driven by a desire for ra...

Can the reception of a single, widely disseminated book offer a historical road map for a global art history? This is the question posed by the editors of this volume of essays, which charts the enduring response to the Swiss art historian Heinrich W...