Publisher: The Studio Trust
Content: 248 pages, full colour
Language: English
ISBN: 0962514160 (Hardcover).
Dimensions: 11.0 x 8.7 x 1.0 inches
Price: Hardcover: US $29.99, UK £24.99
Editor: Michael Spens
Deputy Editor: Dr Janet McKenzie
Creative Director: Martin Kennedy
Vice-President: Miguel Benavides
To order your copy please contact studio@mwrk.co.uk
Introduction
Rapid currents in cyberspace
This year serves to prove the non-conformist yet globally enriching characteristic of current interchange in the contemporary art world. This in all the experience across the planet defines a remarkable diversity of ends and means. Yearbook 2006 reveals this, although a similar selection could be made from all the other articles by Studio International contributors across the world.
As we look back, it was already fully evident that coverage of China – her history, and her contemporary cultural development – gave a vital new dimension. It is good to recall that The Studio – our predecessor, founded in 1893 – took on, through the Founder/Editor/Proprietor Charles Holme (1848–1923) an important commercial and cultural role stemming from his engagement as an entrepreneur in the Far East, becoming a special conduit for ideas. In this, Studio was well ahead of other competitors striving to make their mark in this field. Today, doors are opening across all South-East Asia. We were able to document the significant and relevant exchange between London’s Royal Academy exhibition ‘Royal Academicians in China’ (page 70) and the reciprocal show ‘China; The Three Emperors, 1662–1795’ (page 56) fully approved, and with exceptional loan items, by the Chinese People’s Republic. We covered the superb exhibition sent from Vienna to China of ‘cutting-edge’ contemporary Austrian architecture (page 170), which was exhibited in both Beijing and Guangzhou and has been a further important European inspiration in the run-up to the Olympics. We include the feature article covering Chinese art history (page 8) by Dr Thomas Lawton, former editor for Artibus Asiae, former director of the Freer Gallery of Art and founding director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. This is an article of rare insight and research, reflecting Dr Lawton’s deep knowledge of the subject.
Drawing down various one-off historical initiatives, we include 19th century paintings by J.C Dahl, as exhibited at the Barber Institute, Birmingham, relating to the Romantic tradition in England and Germany (page 76) and a summary of the Gothic world (page 106), plus a searching essay focused on the 19th century plight of displaced people (page 110). We recognise the contemporary predicament of contemporary artists in Lebanon – as presented by the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (page 132) – and the real struggle that persists to make art in the Middle East today (pages 156).
In London, the dramatic impact of New British Art, as presented at the Tate Triennial 2006 (page 64), could be interestingly set up against the parallel universe of British fashion in our review of the exhibition ‘AngloMania’ shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (page 176). One key design highlight in England was also memorable: the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester (page 152), designed by the veteran Royal Academician Sir Colin St John Wilson, architect of the British Library (d. 2007). This small gem of a building put a historic English cathedral town firmly on the map with a contemporary masterwork that is an exemplary swansong of its designer.
The late Susan Sontag (d. 2004) is commemorated in this 2006 Yearbook by a tribute (page 138) linking her universal talent, as here applied to photography,
a key interest for her. We are thankful to the estate of photographer Peter Hujar (d. 1987) for the sublime image by him, which we have incorporated on the
back cover.
Michael Spens
Editor
Contents
This not-to-be-missed exhibition includes a lifetime of Lijn’s works, providing new insights into ...
Antony Gormley – interview: ‘What is made here is a repositioning of t...
Probably the UK’s best-known contemporary sculptor, Antony Gormley has created a new ‘field’ o...
In his new paintings, the rising Iraqi-born artist Mohammed Sami makes ambiguity alluring...
This fabulous show is dedicated to Mingei, the influential folk-craft movement developed in Japan in...
The Mack: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School of Art
This richly written and sensitive work traces Mackintosh’s masterpiece from the building’s incep...
Wayne Eager – interview: ‘In Central Australia, I was mesmerised by th...
A three-month stay in Central Australia with his partner, the artist Marina Strocchi, turned into a ...
Alex Ely – interview: ‘Ultimately the success of any building is how w...
What is the secret to making buildings that other architects admire and envy, but which are dedicate...
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration
This beguiling exhibition, which spans 170 years, reveals the impressive adaptability of glass in th...
With a mix of new and old works, Anselm Kiefer draws us into a world where good and evil are blurred...
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood
With works covering pregnancy, birth and nursing through to caring for older children, as well as mi...
Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World
This major retrospective celebrates the work of a man whose atmospheric shots of New York street sce...
Paul Maheke: To be Blindly Hopeful
This show sprang from a journal the artist kept during the Covid lockdowns in 2020-21, a time of int...
Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort
Matthew Wong’s exuberant dreamscapes and imaginary worlds sprang from many influences, but his aff...
Sharjah March Meeting 2024: Tawashjuat
This year’s edition of the Sharjah Art Foundation’s March meeting focused on collectives, collab...
Martin Boyce – interview: ‘You’re both inside and outside. There’s...
Martin Boyce’s show at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, offers three distinctive, in-between spaces for exp...
Hanna Bekker vom Rath: A Rebel for Modern Art
This richly documented show does justice to the feisty Hanna Bekker vom Rath, a German art collector...
Infinite Variety: Harold Cohen and Cybernetics in the 1960s
On the occasion of a show of Harold Cohen’s work at Gazelli Art House in London, we consider the p...
Through his sensitive and thoughtful works, Issam Kourbaj ensures the plight of those in his native ...
The English eccentric William Blake meets his German peers in a treasure-strewn exhibition that make...
Chronorama: Photographic Treasures of the 20th Century
Highlights from the golden age of photography, produced for fashion magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair,...
Thea Djordjadze: Framing Yours Making Mine
In this comprehensive show, Georgian artist Thea Djordjadze’s spare sculptural works emanate a sen...
Hurvin Anderson, Michael Armitage, Alberta Whittle and other artists from the African diaspora consi...
A post-apocalyptic landscape or an abandoned toolshed? This compact exhibition, by ceramics sculptor...
This show looks at how John Singer Sargent styled his sitters, insisting they wore certain garments ...
Francis Picabia: Women: Works on Paper 1902-1950
A career-spanning exhibition of drawings and watercolours shows the elusive modernist Francis Picabi...
Entangled Pasts, 1768–now: Art, Colonialism and Change
The Royal Academy, founded at the height of the British empire, brings together more than 100 histor...
Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You
As poetic as it is urgent, Barbara Kruger’s text-based work packs a weighty punch. Her methods of ...
Moon/King: The Work and Friendship of Phillip King and Jeremy Moon – 195...
Phillip King and Jeremy Moon met as students at Cambridge and remained friends until Moon’s death ...
A flurry of museum and gallery exhibitions flags a surge of interest in Korean art. The most compell...
Through paintings, works on paper and projections, this exhibition traces the evolution of AARON, th...
Special issue 2004, Volume 203 Number 1026
Special issue 2004, Volume 203 Number 1026
Special issue 2005, Volume 204 Number 1027
Special issue 2005, Volume 204 Number 1027
Special issue 2007, Volume 206 Number 1029
Special issue 2007, Volume 206 Number 1029
Special issue 2008, Volume 207 Number 1030
Special issue 2008, Volume 207 Number 1030
Special issue 2009, Volume 208 Number 1031
Special issue 2009, Volume 208 Number 1031