Metropolitan Museum of Art

Highlighting the creativity and symbolism of covered portraits, this volume explores an intriguing but largely unknown aspect of Italian and Northern European Renaissance art Many small Renaissance portraits were richly adorned with covers or backs bearing allegorical figures, mythological scenes, or emblems that celebrated the sitter and invited the viewer to decipher their meaning. Hidden Faces includes seventy objects, ranging in format from covered paintings to miniature boxes, that illuminate the symbiotic relationship between the portrait and its pair. Texts by thirteen distinguished scholars vividly illustrate that the other “faces” of these portraits represent some of the most innovative images of the Renaissance, created by masters such as Hans Memling and Titian. Uniting works that have in some cases been separated for centuries, this fascinating volume shows how the multifaceted format unveiled the sitter’s identity, both by physically revealing the portrait and reading the significance behind its cover. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Unparalleled in its luxurious presentation, this publication celebrates the virtuoso artistry of Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019). Designed to evoke an elegant parchment-and-cloth artist’s portfolio, it boasts a pageant of stunning fashion photography alongside Lagerfeld’s original sketches, offering a behind-the-scenes window into his process as well as his sartorial brilliance. Silver inks and select gold pages punctuate the book’s stylish packaging and recall the designer’s signature accessories. An illustrated timeline, unfurling from the back of the volume, chronicles the designer’s long and illustrious career. Lagerfeld produced over 10,000 pieces of clothing across his extraordinary 65 years as a powerhouse fashion designer, from his time at Chloé and Fendi in the 1960s and 1970s to his celebrated leadership in the 1980s and beyond at Chanel and with his own label. His voracious curiosity and boundless imagination yielded beautiful, evocative garments, more than 200 of which are showcased here. These are accompanied by personal reflections from Lagerfeld’s premieres d’ateliers—the seamstresses behind his extraordinary creations—as well as by Anna Wintour, Patrick Hourcade, Amanda Harlech, and Tadao Ando. A lavish work of art in its own right, this book is also an essential resource on Lagerfeld and how his designs transformed the entire fashion industry. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

The first comprehensive, posthumous monograph and retrospective on Bernd and Hilla Becher, best known for their photographs of industrial structures in Europe and North America For more than five decades, Bernd (1931-2007) and Hilla (1934-2015) Becher collaborated on photographs of industrial architecture in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States. This sweeping monograph features the Bechers' quintessential pictures, which present water towers, gas tanks, blast furnaces, and more as sculptural objects. Beyond the Bechers' iconic Typologies, the book includes Bernd's early drawings, Hilla's independent photographs, and excerpts from their notes, sketchbooks, and journals. The book's authors offer new insights into the development of the artists' process, their work's conceptual underpinnings, the photographers' relationship to deindustrialization, and the artists' legacy. An essay by award-winning cultural historian Lucy Sante and an interview with Max Becher, the artists' son, make this volume an unrivaled look into the Bechers' art, life, and career. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (July 11-October 30, 2022) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (December 17, 2022-April 2, 2023)

The untold modern history of the Japanese kimono and its dynamic relationship to Western culture Japan's engagement with Western clothing, culture, and art in the mid-nineteenth century transformed the traditional kimono and began a cross-cultural sartorial dialogue that continues to this day. This publication explores the kimono's fascinating modern history and its notable influence on Western fashion. Initially signaling the wearer's social position, marital status, age, and wealth, older kimono designs gave way to the demands of modernized and democratized twentieth-century lifestyles as well as the preferences of the emancipated "new woman." Conversely, inspiration from the kimono's silhouette liberated Western designers such as Paul Poiret and Madeline Vionnet from traditional European tailoring. Juxtaposing never-before-published Japanese textiles from the John C. Weber Collection with Western couture, this book places the kimono on the stage of global fashion history. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (June 7, 2022-February 20, 2023)

Featuring decorative, religious, and utilitarian objects from the Geometric period to the Hellenistic Age, this is the ideal introduction to Greek sculpture Introducing eight centuries of Greek sculpture, this latest addition to The Met's compelling and widely acclaimed How to Read series traces this artistic tradition from its early manifestations in the Geometric period (ca. 900-700 BCE) through the groundbreaking creativity of the Archaic and Classical periods to the dramatic achievements of the Hellenistic Age (323-31 BCE). The 40 works of art featured represent a broad range of objects and materials, both sacred and utilitarian, in metal, marble, gold, ivory, and terracotta. Sculptures of deities and architectural elements are joined by depictions of athletes, animals, and performers, as well as by funerary reliefs, perfume vases, and jewelry. The accompanying text both provides insight into Greek art as a whole and illuminates centuries of Greek life. Detailed commentaries on each work and an overview of major themes in Greek art offer a fascinating, object-focused introduction to one of the most influential cultures in Western civilization.

A completely new way of looking at and understanding Surrealism, with a focus on the worldwide sweep of the movement "The variety of discoveries, detailed with exceptional scholarship in a ravishing keeper of a catalogue, defeat generalization."-Peter Schjeldahl, New Yorker This groundbreaking book challenges conventional narratives of Surrealism, tracing its impact and legacy from the 1920s to the late 1970s in places as diverse as Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Syria, Thailand, and Turkey. In doing so, it presents a more inclusive and accurate understanding of the fundamentally international character and lasting significance of the revolutionary artistic, literary, and philosophical movement. Vibrantly illustrated with more than 300 works of art by both well-known figures-including Dali, Ernst, Kahlo, Magritte, and Miro-and numerous underrepresented artists, this expansive book pushes beyond the borders of history, geography, and nationality to provocatively redraw the map of the Surrealist movement, investigating how its visual languages, ideals, theories, and practices were framed or reframed in contexts far from its Parisian origins. Contributions from more than 40 distinguished international scholars explore themes such as the channels used to transmit ideas; artists' responses to the challenges of political oppression, social unrest, and the effects of colonialism; and experiences of displacement and exile in the twentieth century.

Traces fashions from 1870 to the present along a conceptual, disruptive, and nontraditional timeline of fashion history About Time: Fashion and Duration traces the evolution of fashion, from 1870 to the present, through a linear timeline of iconic garments, each paired with an alternate design that jumps forward or backward in time. These unexpected pairings, which relate to one another through shape, motif, material, pattern, technique, or decoration, create a disruptive fashion chronology that conflates notions of past, present, and future. Virginia Woolf serves as "ghost narrator," and excerpts from her novels reflect on the passage of time with each subsequent pairing. A new short story by Michael Cunningham, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Hours, recounts a day in the life of a woman over a time span of 150 years through her changing fashions. Scholar Theodore Martin analyzes theoretical responses to the nature of time, underscoring that time is not simply a sequence of historical events. Fashion photographer Nicholas Alan Cope captures 120 fashions with sublime black-and-white photography. This stunning book reveals fashion's paradoxical connection to linear notions of time.

A stunning look at the paradoxical relationship between the artisanal and the technological in fashion The complex and often ambiguous relationship between the hand crafted and the machine made is examined in this intriguing look at the ever-changing world of fashion and taste. Manus x Machina traces styles of dress from one-of-a-kind works and haute couture created by highly skilled artisans, through the introduction of industrial manufacturing, to extraordinary recent technological advancements applied to high fashion, such as 3D printing, laser cutting, and computer-generated weaving and patterns. The oppositional relationship between the machine, as representative of democracy and mass production, and the hand, as the hallmark of elitism, is explored in its many facets in this fascinating book. Paradoxically, technology in fashion has both advanced artistic creation and obscured the sense of the designer's expert hand. Similarly, handmade garments have come to represent either a nostalgia for lost craftsmanship or, in haute couture, a cult of personality and affluence.Interviews with renowned and cutting-edge designers such as Sarah Burton, Karl Lagerfeld, and Miuccia Prada discuss how technology can blur the line between haute couture and pret-a-porter, and ultimately question the relevance of the distinction between hand and machine. A tour de force in art book production, Manus x Machina incorporates two volumes into its innovative package. The main volume of the book includes a smaller hand-sewn booklet, which features the printed interviews, tucked into the back jacket flap. The outer cover of the main volume is made of three-ply plastic layers with high-frequency weld and die-cut flaps. The paperback cover is die cut (modelled on the punch cards used in the first automated weaving looms), and the main volume includes 5 different paper stocks and silver foil stamping, and is printed with both high-density and ultraviolet inks. The book also features new photography of extraordinary pieces, including intricate 19th-century floral designs by William Morris, handcrafted haute couture of designers such as Christian Dior and Alexander McQueen, and the specatuclar 3D creations of Iris van Herpen.