Joe Tucker's Uncle Eric was a beloved yet unconventional figure throughout Joe's life. A shambolically dressed man who lived with his mother for almost eighty years, he had an almost compulsive need to charm strangers with working men's club comedy routines, and appeared to exist only for daily trips to the bookie - and yet had also amassed over five hundred of his own remarkable paintings without anyone ever realising his achievements.Towards the end of his life, Eric requested an exhibition of his work. As Joe and his family sorted through hundreds of paintings of street scenes, circus and theatre performers, and busy pubs, they began to ask more questions about Eric's life: why had this fanatically sociable man never left his mother's home? Had Eric ever experienced love when he painted it so beautifully? And what had driven him to create so much, yet share it so rarely?In this touching, funny and thoughtful investigation of the nature of expression, the ownership of art and the secret life of those nearest to us, Joe Tucker brings us into his uncle's extraordinary and compelling world. Perhaps more importantly, he also brings Eric Tucker's life's work into ours. Read more

Illuminating reflections on painting and drawing from one of the most revered artists of the twentieth century'Thank God for yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, and permanent green light'How does a painter see the world? Philip Guston, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, spoke about art with unparalleled candour and commitment. Touching on work from across his career as well as that of his fellow artists and Renaissance heroes, this selection of his writings, talks and interviews draws together some of his most incisive reflections on iconography and abstraction, metaphysics and mysticism, and, above all, the nature of painting and drawing.'Among the most important, powerful and influential American painters of the last 100 years ... he's an art world hero' Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine'Guston's paintings make us think hard' Aindrea Emelife, Guardian Read more

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER‘We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life.’ DAVID HOCKNEY Praise for Spring Cannot be Cancelled: 'This book is not so much a celebration of spring as a springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light. It is scholarly, thoughtful and provoking' The Times 'Lavishly illustrated… Gayford is a thoughtfully attentive critic with a capacious frame of reference' Guardian 'Hockney and Gayford’s exchanges are infused with their deep knowledge of the history of art … This is a charming book, and ideal for lockdown because it teaches you to look harder at the things around you’ Lynn Barber,The Spectator 'Designed to underscore [Hockney’s] original message of hope, and to further explore how art can gladden and invigorate ... meanders amiably from Rembrandt, to the pleasure principle, andouillette sausages and, naturally, to spring' Daily Telegraph On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art’s capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live. With 142 illustrations in colour Read more

An updated, expanded edition of Remedios Varo’s translated writings, including pieces never before published in any languageWith the 2018 publication of Letters, Dreams, and Other Writings, Wakefield Press introduced the writings of Surrealist painter Remedios Varo into English for the first time. These texts, never published during her lifetime, present something of a missing chapter, and offer the same qualities to be found in her visual work: an engagement with mysticism and magic, a breakdown of the border between the everyday and the marvelous, a love of mischief and an ongoing meditation on escape in all its forms. This new, expanded volume brings together the painter’s collected writings, an unpublished interview, letters to friends and acquaintances, dream accounts, notes for unrealized projects, a project for a theater piece, whimsical recipes for controlled dreaming, exercises in Surrealist automatic writing and prose-poem commentaries on her paintings. It also includes her longest manuscript, the pseudoscientific "On Homo rodans": an absurdist study of the wheeled predecessor to Homo sapiens (the skeleton of which Varo had built out of chicken bones). Written by the invented anthropologist Hälikcio von Fuhrängschmidt, the essay utilizes eccentric Latin and a tongue-in-cheek pompous discourse to explain the origins of the first umbrella and in what ways “Myths” are merely “corrupted Myrtles.” Also included are newly discovered writings, including three short stories, never before published in any language.Remedios Varo (1908–63) was a Surrealist painter who worked in Spain, France and Mexico. Her paintings were influenced by Old Masters such as Bosch and El Greco, as well as Jungian philosophy and occult writings. While living in Mexico she became close friends with fellow Surrealist Leonora Carrington. Read more

Essays on the art and writings of the long-neglected British occultist and SurrealistStraddling the worlds of Surrealism, occultism and modernist literature, Ithell Colquhoun (1906-88) was widely respected in her lifetime, but her transgressive, esoteric and poetic paintings and writings were long neglected until Richard Shillitoe's 2009 book Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature initiated her revaluation--followed by Fulgur's 2016 publication Decad of Intelligence, the Tate's 2019 acquisition of more than 5,000 Colquhoun works and Amy Hale's 2020 biography. Colquhoun occupies a unique place within the lineage of occult Surrealist painters such as Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, as her presence in the 2022 Venice Biennale exhibition Milk of Dreams demonstrated.This volume is the first critical examination of her diverse legacy, compiling papers from a 2018 conference on Colquhoun and her contemporaries Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini and Stella Snead. Contributors explore themes of authorship and agency, Colquhoun's drawing practice, her Celtic motifs, British Surrealism and alchemy. Read more

‘I like eating cold, clammy wraps from big pharmacies that are open late and sell just a few foods like protein bars and powders.’ Flower is a book of realistic admissions, likes, dislikes, memories and no-brainer observations, treating personal truth as unavailable – something that must be made up and convincing. Taking cues from confessional literature, his daughter’s improvised games, poor internet writing and shitty AI, Ed Atkins, in his first work of non-fiction, equivocates between inanity and divinity, ease and pain, sentimentality and sterility. An anti-memoir, a list, a listless blur – Flower is a highly original, moving and absurd book by one of the most influential artists of his generation, formally inventive and disturbingly of our time. Read more

Francis Bacon: Shadows continues in the revelatory mode established by Inside Francis Bacon. It comprises six essays on diverse topics, interpretative as well as factual, which cumulatively present an abundance of fresh ideas and information about Bacon. The fundamental aim of the series – to rethink Bacon’s art from new perspectives – is impressively fulfilled by the eminent authors. Martin Harrison opens the book with some hitherto unseen Bacon-related photographs and includes a tribute to the great Bacon scholar, David Boxer (1946–2017). Christopher Bucklow turns his attention to the contrast between Bacon's art and the art of our own times, setting Bacon in the context of Romantic Modernism's confidence in the unconscious as a source. Amanda Harrison’s essay explores imagery in Bacon’s paintings that relates to esoteric, mythological and alchemical themes, while Stefan Haus draws on the ideas of philosophers from Plato to Hegel to consider the impact of Bacon’s art. Hugh Davies’s unexpurgated 1973 Bacon Diaries are published here in their entirety for the first time, revealing a more complete view of Bacon as both man and artist. Sophie Pretorius examines Tate's Barry Joule Archive, a collection of working materials and drawings attributed to Bacon. Finally, Martin Harrison explores Francis Bacon's Lost Paintings – works Bacon dubbed 'failures', but preserved by his Estate and published here for the very first time.With 120 illustrations in colour Read more

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Ends with one of the most reverberating shocks in modern crime fiction' The Sunday Times 'A dazzling, unexpected and haunting masterpiece' Daily Mail 'A work of genius... Stunning' Daily Express Jérôme Morval has been found dead in the stream that runs through the gardens at Giverny, where Monet did his famous paintings. In Jérôme's pocket is a postcard of Monet's 'Water Lilies' with the words: Eleven years old. Happy Birthday.Entangled in the mystery are three women: a young painting prodigy, the seductive village schoolteacher and an old widow who watches over the village from a mill by the stream. All three of them share a secret. But what do they know about Jérôme's death? And what is the connection to the mysterious 'Black Water Lilies', a rumoured masterpiece by Monet that has never been found?MICHEL BUSSI: THE MASTER OF THE KILLER TWIST ''A novel so extraordinary that it reminded me of reading Stieg Larsson for the very first time' The Sunday Timeson After the Crash'Inventive, original and incredibly entertaining' Sunday Mirroron Don't Let Go 'Combines an extraordinarily inventive plot with characters haunted by long-ago events - and demonstrates why he has such a hold on readers' The Timeson Time Is A Killer Read more

The author unpicks the threads that link female textile artists and the arts they produce, revealing a global and historic patchwork of assorted roles, identities and representations. Entertaining as well as informative, this book offers a unique overview of female-centric textile art production including embroidery, weaving, soft sculpture and more. Includes over 20 interviews with contemporary textile artists, providing fascinating insights into their practices, themes and personal motivation. Tells us: How knitting became a spying device in wartime Why dress design was so important for the Suffragettes Why spiders were emblems in ancient times and now How women's arts and crafts moved from the backroom to the gallery showroom. Read more

Françoise Gilot’s candid memoir remains “one of the most illuminating [books] we’ve had on the mind and spirit of Picasso”—and gives fascinating insight into the intense and creative life shared by two modern artists (Los Angeles Times).Françoise Gilot was in her early twenties when she met the sixty-one-year-old Pablo Picasso in 1943. Brought up in a well-to-do upper-middle-class family, who had sent her to Cambridge and the Sorbonne and hoped that she would go into law, the young woman defied their wishes and set her sights on being an artist. Her introduction to Picasso led to a friendship, a love affair, and a relationship of ten years, during which Gilot gave birth to Picasso’s two children, Paloma and Claude. Gilot was one of Picasso’s muses; she was also very much her own woman, determined to make herself into the remarkable painter she did indeed become.Life with Picasso is about Picasso the artist and Picasso the man. We hear him talking about painting and sculpture, his life, his career, as well as other artists, both contemporaries and old masters. We glimpse Picasso in his many and volatile moods, dismissing his work, exultant over his work, entertaining his various superstitions, being an anxious father. But Life with Picasso is not only a portrait of a great artist at the height of his fame; it is also a picture of a talented young woman of exacting intelligence at the outset of her own notable career. Read more

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM 2019From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Changing My Mind and Swing Time - discover a second unmissable collection of essays from Zadie Smith'Generous, courageous, and tough-minded... [A] classic English essayist in the vein of Orwell, Woolf and Angela Carter' Financial Times'Engrossing, astute... Should you read this brilliant book? Absolutely' Independent'Generous and curious' Evening Standard'Brilliant, lively and frequently hilarious... She's one of the brightest minds in English literature today' NPRNo subject is too fringe or too mainstream for the unstoppable Zadie Smith. From social media to the environment, from Jay-Z to Karl Ove Knausgaard, she has boundless curiosity and the boundless wit to match. In Feel Free, pop culture, high culture, social change and political debate all get the Zadie Smith treatment, dissected with razor-sharp intellect, set brilliantly against the context of the utterly contemporary, and considered with a deep humanity and compassion. This electrifying new collection showcases its author as a true literary powerhouse, demonstrating once again her credentials as an essential voice of her generation. Read more

For the first time, a comprehensive presentation of these two artistsFeaturing for the first time Goya's two graphic series "Disasters of War" and "The Caprices" in full, with all 80 prints togetherBoth artists' inventive use of different media and techniques comes to show in the book through reproductions of all exhibited art worksUse of two different papers, and linen material on cover Francisco de Goya and Edvard Munch revolutionised art through their groundbreaking pairing of raw realism and unique imaginative power. Exploring inner worlds and existential questions, they had a formative impact on art history and our understanding of our times. The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Goya and Munch: Modern Prophecies, the first comprehensive presentation of these two artists in tandem. It is lavishly illustrated with reproductions of all the exhibited works and features texts by Trine Otte Bak Nielsen, Manuela B. Mena Marqués, Janis Tomlinson, Ute Kuhlemann Falck and Ask Salomon Selnes. Read more

This is the story of Marianne North, an unmarried middle-aged Victorian lady of comfortable means, set off in 1871 on her first expedition to make a pictorial record of the tropical and exotic plants of the world. Marianne produced more than 800 paintings which are housed in a special gallery at Kew. Now in second edtion, this book provides an overview of her paintings and the Marianne North Gallery (built under her patronage) where almost all her paintings hang, the history of the gallery and its architecture and its restoration. The beautiful gift book details Marianne’s life and travels, fully illustrated throughout with her stunning botanical paintings. This second edition of the bestseller features updated information and the new format allows Marianne’s paintings to be reproduced on a larger scale. Read more

'A brave writer whose books open up fundamental questions about life and art' – TelegraphIn this inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a vivid and politically-engaged case for the importance of art – especially in the turbulent weather of the twenty-first century.We are often told art can’t change anything. In Funny Weather, Laing argues that it can. It changes how we see the world, it exposes inequality, and it offers fertile new ways of living.Across a diverse selection of essays, Laing profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body.Written with originality and compassion, Funny Weather is a celebration of art as a force of resistance and repair – and as an antidote to a frightening political moment. Read more

Care to Exhume the Corpses of H.R. Giger and H.P. Lovecraft? Want to commune with the dead without any Criminal Necromancy? Or the hassle of a pitchfork and torches crowd? Unearth the Hidden Secrets of the Two Men who Shaped Our Collective Nightmares in: H.R. Giger and H.P. Lovecraft: From Alien to the Abyss:Alchemist Adventures in the Void. In Alien to the Abyss, you'll learn: Was H.R. Giger the reincarnation of Lovecraft's Richard Upton Pickman? Discover ten enigmas about Lovecraft's dreamlife. Learn what Clive Barker said about H.R. Giger. Investigate ten ways Giger taps our primitive fears. Uncover which elements of dynastic Egypt inspired Giger Find out whether truth is a proposition or a phenomenon? Explore the pitfalls of a psychological autopsy.What are you waiting for? Fight past the fear that your sanity, already teetering on the brink of madness, will topple over into unknown avenues of mortifying horror. Quit waiting for the stars to come aright; get your copy now! There is a séance in every sentence. Read more

The international literary icon opens his eclectic closet and shares photos of his extensive unique personal T-shirt collection. Haruki Murakami's books have galvanized millions around the world. Many of his fans know about his 10,000-vinyl-record collection, and his obsession with running, but few have heard about a more intimate, and perhaps more unique, passion: his T-shirt-collecting habit.In Murakami T, the famously reclusive novelist shows us his T-shirts - including gems found in bookshops, charity shops and record stores - from those featuring whisky, animals, cars and superheroes, to souvenirs of marathons and a Beach Boys concert in Honolulu, to the shirt that inspired the beloved short story 'Tony Takitani'. Accompanied by short, frank essays that have been translated into English for the first time, these photographs reveal much about Murakami's multifaceted and wonderfully eccentric persona.'The world's most popular cult novelist' Guardian Read more

'An uplifting work: complex, precise and bracing' Susie Boyt, Financial Times'A profound book about the intrication of literature and life, about the modest, miraculous ways art helps us to live' Garth GreenwellIn twenty-nine intimate, brilliant and funny essays, Claire Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Crafting a vivid portrait of a life in celebration of the power of literature, Messud proves once again 'an absolute master storyteller' (Rebecca Carroll, Los Angeles Times).'I can think of few writers capable of such thrilling seriousness expressed with so lavish a gift' Rachel Cusk, Evening Standard Read more

Who were the pioneering female painters? Who are the best contemporary women painters around today? Offers a perceptive journey through Western art history, highlighting artists from Gentileschi to Kahlo, from Amrita Sher-gil to Jenny Saville, exploring the fascinating lives of diverse female painters and their artworks within often-challenging cultural contexts. In chapters which consider identity, muses and models, the domestic space, the avant-garde, in addition to war, peace and protest, the world of women who paint is intriguingly unlocked. Includes over 20 interviews with contemporary women artists, providing unique insights into their practices, themes and personal motivation. Read more

The minimal and well-designed composition notebook perfect for writing notes and jotting down thoughts,this one is just for you. Size 6 x 9 inches , 114 pages Read more

This volume on the life and work of Claude Monet is quite unlike any other book on this popular artist, as for the first time his letters have been brought together with his paintings, pastels and drawings. There are letters to his fellow artists and youthful friends, long affectionate letters to family and loved ones and begging letters in times of hardship. We read of Monet's persistence in money matters, his frustrations and successes while on painting expeditions to Italy, Brittany and Norway, and his experience of solitude, illness and bereavement in later life. Monet emerges from the correspondence as a more troubled and complex individual than his sun-filled canvases might suggest. Alongside the artist's letters are more than 200 superb colour reproductions. These accompany the text and enable the reader to follow the young artist through his first encounters with the Parisian art scene, his days as a commanding presence in the Impressionist movement and the final chapter of his life when he produced some of his most ambitious and colourful work at Giverny. Read more