Art History

A pioneering approach to the history of emotions.

Jean Laude's writings on art.

First French edition of an essential manifesto of modern art written by Russian writer, poet and journalist Ilya Ehrenburg in 1921.

Conceived around an anthropology of the object, this book proposes to follow the course of royal objects of Abomey, former capital of the pre-colonial Kingdom of Dahomey (in present-day Benin).

This book traces the career of Kara Walker (born in 1969), the most internationally recognized African-American artist since Jean-Michel Basquiat, and explores the history of the reception of a work that faces the limits of representation, challenging the question of the figuration of the black body.

Jean Dubuffet, Art Brut, and the primitivist paradigm.

A critical look at the place and stakes of representations of the war of independence in the contemporary construction of the French and Algerian art scene.

The historical-memorial narrative in comics, from Art Spiegelman to Marjane Satrapi, as a new form of representation of History, between individual and collective memory.

French art historian Anne Lafont delivers an unpublished study on the close and paradoxical relations of art and race in the Enlightenment. A new voice in current works on issues of race, art, images and colonization.

A critical examination of the relationship between aesthetics and politics through the iconic figure of Carla Lonzi (1931-1982), an innovative art critic and one of the founders of neo-feminism in Italy.

An investigation into the artistic and political issues of participatory art since the 1990s.

An an extensive analysis of the advent of Christian visual culture in the Kingdom of Kongo and its and development across four centuries.

Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, and the Neuf Moules Mâlic (Nine Malic Moulds): the genesis, the history and the destiny of an artwork as exceptional as the relation between an artist and his collector, of which it was the vector.

The growth of thought on ornament, applied arts and architecture in the industrial age, between ornamental impulse and decorative project.

Based on a set of mostly unpublished archives, this book focuses on the role played by art dealers at the turn of the last century in the definition, promotion and circulation of African objects as artworks, in Europe and the United States.

“Primitivism” as a tool for analysis of post-war French society, between a modernization and decolonization movement, and possible forms of resistance.

The first publication ever dedicated to the musical works of American painter Louis Michel Eilshemius: Halfway between romantic tradition and futurist audacity, these sound pieces which prefigure the use of sampling are interpreted with virtuosity by the young pianist Imke Lichtwark in the accompanying CD. The book also includes texts by Roberto Ohrt, Sven Daigger, Stefan Banz, and by Eilshemius himself.

Special offer for the purchase of two volumes dedicated to correspondence of Gustave Courbet.

A review of the epistolary correspondence of Gustave Courbet, by an ethnologist, a writer, a psychoanalyst, a hunter, a philosopher, a gastroenterologist, a psychiatrist, two curators, and six art historians.

The history of capitalism of the 1960s revisited in the light of the artworks that challenged it.

An in-depth and circumstantial study of the work of Franz Radziwill (1895-1983), a major and controversial representative of “magical realism” in painting.

The life and work of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, who used her fortune to support the arts, sciences and literature, and whose influence on the musical and literary worlds of the twentieth century is immeasurable.

A historiographical study of German art theorist, writer and activist Carl Einstein (1885-1940), that also explores several layers of the history of the early twentieth century, and proposes a critical reflection on some epistemological tropisms of today.

Conférences sur l'affinité de la peinture avec le reste des beaux-arts (“Conferences on the affinity of painting with other fine arts”) shed a new light on the career of the inventor of the famous Morse code, best known at his time as one of America's most promising painters of his generation.

Artistic practices in New York's alternative art spaces (1969-1985).

A biographical essay on the Baroque Brazilian architect and sculptor from the 18th century, Aleijadinho.

Postmodernism and gift culture: everyday objects in contemporary art since the 1960s.

This study addresses the scope of the use of found objects and garbage by the Nouveaux Réalistes in the 1960s.

Edgar Degas and the rediscovery of monotyping in the 19th century.

A story of the Grévin wax museum in Paris from 1881 to 1921.

An essay conceived as an intellectual portrait of the German writer, psychologist and art theorist Karl Philipp Moritz, whose purpose is to investigate the relationships between aesthetics, psychology and anthropology in the second half of the 18th century, and the importance of their simultaneous development for the debates about art after 1800.

Rereading L'Origine du monde and the relationship between Gustave Courbet and James Whistler.

The first French translation of Yve-Alain Bois' reference study on modernism

24 unpublished letters by Gustave Courbet.

A sourcebook / critical anthology of social art history.

A sourcebook / critical anthology of social art history.

From image to object: ten essays on English Pop Art and the New Brutalism in architecture.

An examination of the relationship between Antoine Bourdelle and Alberto Giacometti, thus also exploring the more general history of heritage and artistic education under modernity.

An historical and ethnographic investigation into the popular origin and environment of Cubist innovations.

Ambiguity is inherent in images because visual perception is an interpretative act involving memory and imagination. Modern art has made this aspect of perception crucial to its relationship with the viewer. Images potentielles (Potential Images), the first systematic exploration of this topic, considers those works of art that rely to a great degree on imaginative response.

An investigation into the enigma of the first abstract painting by Kandinsky.

Two leading contemporary art historians offer a subtle and profound reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance.

An examination of the new approach to the artistic phenomenon that emphases the role of sensitivity and centered around the figure of the spectator in the eighteenth century.

The relationship between Modern art and its destruction.

A social history of socialist realism imagery in the former East Germany.

Uses and Utopias – The Exhibition in the Pre-Revolutionary Russian Avant-Garde: an essay on the exhibition practice in Russia in the years 1910-1920, and in particular on the relationship between exhibition and public space in the projects of the historical avant-gardes.

The history and posterity of François Mathey (1917-1993), a singular curator with the destiny of a romantic hero, a major figure in the promotion of contemporary art and a pioneer of artistic heritage.