Bestselling author of Modernists & Mavericks, Martin Gayford recounts some of the extraordinary journeys he has made during the course of a career spent thinking and writing about art. The critic has travelled all over the world in pursuit of first-hand encounters with art and artists, often to fairly inaccessible places involving frustrations and complications, but he also made serendipitous encounters and outcomes which he makes as much a part of the story as the final destination. Ever amusing, informative and self-deprecating, he recounts trips to see Brancusi's Endless Column in Romania, prehistoric cave art in France, the Museum Island of Naoshima in Japan, the Judd Foundation in Marfa Texas and a Roni Horn work in Iceland. Other journeys are to meet artists like Robert Rauschenberg in New York, Marina Abramovic in Venice, Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris or a trip to Beijing with Gilbert & George. He takes a descent into Anselm Kiefer's Underworld, discusses Leonardo's Lady with Jenny Holzer, considers the Sistine Chapel and the moment when a wave breaks with Jenny Saville. He also meets with Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Frank and Gerhard Richter. These encounters provide insights into the way artists approach and think about their art, and reveal the importance of their personal environment to their practice. They also affect Gayford's own evolving ideas over a lifetime of passionate engagement with art. He is a perceptive and knowledgeable companion who shares the highs and lows with cultural travel and convinces us that where art is concerned only being there will do. 192pp well illustrated with colour photos. A glamorous Thames & Hudson publication.

Combining stunning visuals of both exciting and rare designs with an insightful text, this history shows the new pathways in fashion design development which have forever changed the way we dress today. It features 75 of the world's most legendary designers, their personal lives and innovative collections over the last century from Hermès, Worth, Burberry, Gucci, Chanel, Schiaparelli, Balenciaga, Hartnell, Dior, Balmain, Cardin, Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta, Ungaro, Armani, Mary Quant, Barbara Hulanicki, Yves Saint Laurent, Issey Miyake, Ralph Lauren, Vivien Westwood, Calvin Klein, Ossie Clark, Jil Sander, Paul Smith, Versace, Donna Karan, Prada, Lacroix, Jean Paul Gaultier, Helmut Lang, Dries Van Noten, Dolce & Gabbana, John Galliano, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh among them. Arranged in a broadly chronological order, the book uses boxed features to display key dates, pull quotes and one glamorous full page left hand example of the designer's work, often modelled by celebrities, models or actresses like Yves Saint Laurent's muse Catherine Deneuve wearing a strictly tailored double-breasted velvet coat in 1970. One exceptionally glamorous image is Valentino's last haute couture show in Paris in 2008 with a finale seeing the models wearing identical backless, signature red bias-cut column dresses. Brocade, sequins, florals, denim, Twiggy modelling Biba, Peggy Moffitt wearing a sleeveless mini dress with a central plastic strip and houndstooth patterned boots from 1966, or David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust costumes by Yamamoto, this is a visual feast. 312 huge pages in sturdy softback, 19.7 x 29.2cm.
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In the superb Thames & Hudson World of Art series with 132 illustrations, 16 in colour and written by a French historian who wrote over 30 books on the history of art. Auguste Rodin was born on 14th November 1840 on the outskirts of Paris and became the most famous and influential sculptor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work was in defiance of academic conventions, but in later life he became a famous and widely respected figure and this work reappraises his achievement and analyses his significance as an innovator as well as giving an account of his personality and life. He was considered to be as successful as Michelangelo, whom he emulated and his genius was a lifelong inspiration to him. Despite the realistic quality of his sculpture, Rodin was spared the prolonged and bitter hostility meted out to the Impressionists who were his contemporaries. In this authoritative translation of this monograph, Bernard Champigneulle discusses Rodin's lasting influence. Heavyweight 284 page softback, 132 quality illustrations of his Torso of a Young Woman 1909, Cambodian Dancer, Two Women Embracing, Nude Study of Balzac, Head of Sorrow 1882, The Burghers of Calais, Saint John the Baptiste, The Man with the Broken Nose and many more. Includes superb detailed close-ups.

Born in a Salvation Army Home for unmarried mothers, James Reeve was sent to the misery of Rugby School, won a scholarship to Oxford, quicky moved to Florence and then Madrid where he studied art and the dissection of corpses, joined an enclosed religious order, but after a diet of water and lentils he rejoined the world to begin in earnest to paint. From a slum house in London he set forth to work in 'then' remote places - Uganda, Jordan, the Australian Outback, Haiti, Madagascar, Rajasthan, the Yemen and at last he found his proper home in Mexico - first in a house he built in a cloud forest, and then when tourists discovered the place, a tenement in the old centre of Mexico City. Encoraged by authors Rachel Billington, Selina Hastings, Alexander Waugh, Antonia Fraser and Tom Roberts, James Reeve has at last put his talents together in a series of chapters recalling travels, anecdotes and encounters which he has illustrated with his vividly colourful vignettes. Always travelling with the purpose of work, in Italy he meets Harold Acton, in the Outback he draws among other things dumps and decrepit dwellings, and here too is Madam Tongere catching a Wichetty grub. He meets Princess Elizabeth of Toro in Uganda and is captured by pygmies in the Congo forest. He paints the fearsome Mrs Gilbert Miller's portrait in Palm Beach and travels in Rajasthan with Diana Wordsworth, a last relic of the Raj. Living in Mexico for 35 years, among his friends are Doña Olive, the retired prostitute, and the Dominican nuns of an enclosed order who let him in to teach them how to make marmalade. Approximately 100 colour illustrations throughout these 314 beautifully designed large pages.

Sexy, sensual and otherworldly, Fantasy art is that colourful blend of myth, muscle and sexy maidens. It took off in 1923 with the launch of Weird Tales magazine, was reinvigorated in the 1960s with The Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian paperbacks with Frank Frazetta covers, and the late ?60s emergence of fantasy psychedelia, went big in the ?70s with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the brilliant French magazine Métal Hurlant, and the first Star Wars film. Frank Frazetta?s oil paintings, when they infrequently come to market, have sold for more than $ 5 million in recent years. Fans line up at Comic-Cons to meet Boris Vallejo, Rodney Matthews, Greg Hildebrandt, Michael Whelan, and Philippe Druillet, and memorialize dead icons HR Giger, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, and Frazetta. Vallejo describes his fantasy life; Julie Bell The Visionary; space architect Druillet; the biomechanic Giger; the Brothers Hildebrandt, masters of light; Mcebius the psychedelic surrealist; Rowena Morrill the pioneer; Sanjulian the classicist; and Michael Whelan the realist. This heavyweight colour book features original paintings, contextualized by preparatory sketches, sculptures, calendars, magazines, and paperback books, insightful bios give an accurate and eye-opening look into the life and motivation and inspiration of each artist in this fanciful and dynamic genre. 15.6 x 21.7 cm, 512 pages. You can smell the colour!

A large children's Flat with artist Ruth Brown's own brilliantly imagined masterpieces in this playful exploration of the artistic styles of famous painters through the years. Tom wandered into a side room while visiting an art gallery with his granny and discovered a cat emerging from a Jackson, an exotic Persian cross sleek black cat with bejewelled collar slipping into a Gustav Klimt painting, a cat emerging from the brightly coloured squares of a Mondrian, a Frida Spanish wildcat cross, a René Chartreux gently dreaming, a ginger feral cat with one ear chewed away sitting on Van Gogh's famous yellow chair, a Japanese bobtail riding Hokusai's waves, Henri Munchkin in a Parisian alley with a windmill in the background, and Edvard the Norwegian Forest cat in The Scream is quite hilarious. Persian kittens, an English tabby, the gallery by the end will be full of cat characters you will not want to leave. Amazing illustrations, one for every cat lover of any age. 32 pages, 24.7 x 27.7cm.

A William O'Connor painting of a mountain city with steep staircase, a Vincent Prace artwork of a city scene with dinosaurs being ridden by humans in Arab style costume, a cloudy cityscape with a chained monster head, a seaside village scene with fruit seller, shops and a knight on a horse which could be from a children's book, a huge dragon monster being slayed, a futuristic stylised castle on a rocky cliffside, a Zoltan Boros fantasy image of a street fight with medieval weapons, warriors riding griffin-like birds over a city scene, a shaded smoky forest, a tumbling city being attacked, a futuristic seaport - here are 12 rather random Dungeons & Dragons smoky subtle images and different city scenes from across the Forgotten Realms. 8" x 10" removable from the book on sturdy card.

The Kisokaido route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country's then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travellers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaido journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838. Both Eisen and Hiroshige were master print practitioners. In The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaido, we find the artists' distinct styles as much as their shared expertise. From the busy starting post of Nihonbashi to the castle town of Iwamurata, Eisen opts for a more muted palette but excels in figures, particularly of glamorous women, and relishes snapshots of activity along the route, from shoeing a horse to winnowing rice. Hiroshige demonstrates his mastery of landscape with grandiose and evocative scenes, whether it's the peaceful banks of the Ota River, the forbidding Wada Pass, or a moonlit ascent between Yawata and Mochizuki. Taken as a whole, The Sixty-Nine Stations collection represents not only a masterpiece of woodblock practice, including bold compositions and an experimental use of colour, but also a charming tapestry of 19th century Japan, long before the spectre of industrialization. This volume is sourced from one of the finest surviving first editions and revives the series in our compact anniversary edition. Text in English, French and German. Colour, 15.6 x 21.7cm, 512 pages. New from Taschen.

Publishers Taschen have chosen to combine reproductions of Redouté's masterpieces of botanical painting with a text by two devoted experts. French flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté is often viewed as one of the last and the best of these painters and engravers. Commissioned by among others, Napoleon's Josephine, Redouté studied with the finest flower painters in France and Amsterdam. His illustrations of the botanical alphabets of D. M. Guillamain were a landmark in flower painting for their accuracy and beauty. He was also an innovator in the techniques of printing, introducing "stipple-engraving" to France. The revered tradition of botanical illustration dates back to the Renaissance. It emerged from the desire to catalogue nature in its unpredictable splendour, and the process demanded the most precise and talented of artists. Working from live plants rather than from the herbarium specimens gave Redoute's watercolours unusual subtlety and freshness. His impressive collection comprises over 2,000 paintings of plants rendered with great accuracy and strict adherence to nature. In this exquisite edition of Les Roses, Redouté turns his attention to the most romantic, desirable, and evocative flower. Originally published in three volumes between 1817 and 1824, it remains his most famous and celebrated work. 14 x 19.5 cm, 192 pages. Colour, new from Taschen.

The cobalt blue pendant-vaulted ceiling with golden lettering and decoration at Hampton Court Palace has been restored and is exactly what Henry VIII would have seen. Angels Costumes has eight miles of hanging rails and is an 'unparalleled dressing up box' housing more than a million costumes and accessories, military uniforms, medals, insignia and outfits for actors. The Daily Express building in Fleet Street has a stunning Art Deco lobby. Television Centre White City has a statue of the sun god Helios outside its curved exterior. The Royal Hospital Chelsea, Old Royal Naval College, the Honourable Artillery Company, Old Bailey, 10 Downing Street, Big Ben, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the disused Aldwych Underground Station, BT Tower, the Thames Barrier, Battersea Power Station, Mansion House, the Bank of England, Repton Boxing Club, Lord's Cricket Ground, St Sophia's Greek Orthodox Cathedral, New West End Synagogue, King Henry VIII's Wine Cellar to Tower Bridge, we embark on a thrilling tour of the hidden interiors of some of London's most iconic buildings. Celebrated photographer Peter Dazeley takes us deep into the boiler room of the city's infrastructure, into the changing rooms of our greatest temples of sport, into the heart of the Establishment, and behind the scenes at the most opulent buildings, livery companies and halls in the Square Mile. Some buildings are derelict, many still working and all of these extraordinary buildings are accompanied by the story of how each of these places was created, how they are used, and what they reveal about the currents of power flowing through the city. These are doors which may be otherwise closed to us in a magnificent volume, revised and updated in 2017 to include the royal palaces of Hampton Court, the Tower of London and Inigo Jones's Banqueting Hall at the Palace of Whitehall, the Royal Courts of Justice Supreme Court and Bow Street Magistrates' Court. Blazing in colour, a superb heavyweight 272 page publication, 24.8 x 31cm.
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