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After studying architecture at Cornell University, Matta-Clark developed more interest in buildings about to be destroyed than in the ones about to be built, as most architects would. He first forced his way into abandoned apartment buildings in the Bronx , and using a chain saw, would act as an architecture pirate, cutting pieces of walls and floors, only to leave behind the remains of what once was architecture. From pieces of walls his work shifted, in 1974, to the scale of a whole suburban house. "Splitting", probably his most popular work, was made by cutting a vertical line through the entire width of the house, and transforming the cut into a yawn, after lowering the foundations on both sides of the house. Erasing the boundaries between architecture, sculpture, and even drawing (his cuts have often been refered to as drawings in space), his building-cuts can also be understood as a social critique of the standardized suburban architecture that flourished during the postwar decades. The book opens with Thomas Crow's survey text on the artist (24,000 words). Divided into 4 chapters plus an epilogue, this richly illustrated essay provides insight into the career of the artist, from his childhood spent between New York and Paris, to his premature death in 1978 at the age of 35. These essays span the multi-faceted practice of Gordon Matta-Clark, with a particular emphasis on his building-cuts, the group of works he is most renowned for and that compose the most important part of his career. This book also includes a "Documents" section, composed of original interviews, articles, and documents compiled by editor Corinne Diserens. Several interviews, some of them never published before, allow the reader to understand more fully, and through Matta-Clark's own voice, the more pragmatic, technical, and physical dimensions related to the creation of his building-cuts. Some articles and essays of reference, most of them published in the 1970s and today out of print, are also republished and offer a unique critical background and context to his work.

A collection of unique portraits by British born, New York based, fashion photographer Platon. Over 120 photographs have been selected from an enormous range of powerful images taken over the last decade and together they constitute a unique and dynamic cross-section through the cult of fame and power. Platon’s Republic is a window into today’s media-led culture that bombards, and sometimes overwhelms us with images of world-wide importance juxtaposed with frivolity. Platon’s Republic replicates the same intense and sometimes surreal experience with portraits of Al Pacino, Bill Clinton, Vivienne Westwood, Leonard Cohen as well as more documentary photographs of Jesse Jackson and Bianca Jagger demonstrating against the death penalty and football supporters. Granted extraordinary access to some of the west’s most powerful people, Platon’s subjects are all leaders in their field. Whether they are from the TV industry, politicians, actors, fashion designers, writers or musicians, they all wield enormous influence within their arena. Platons’ portraits are graphic and intimate, but the unusual angles and revealing expressions are his hallmark.

This is the first book published on Los Angeles architect Archibald Quincy Jones (1913-1979), a pioneer in affordable housing designed with a modern aesthetic. The introductory essay traces Jones's life and career, his post-war planning projects and his long association with Palo Alto building magnate Joseph Eichler. The book contains a catalogue of sixty of Jones's projects illustrated with high-quality black and white period photographs, as well as plans and renderings by Jones. These projects are quintessential examples of mid-twentieth-century American architecture.

It was during the depth of the Great Depression of the late 1920s and 30s, when at least 14 million people were out of work in the USA, that Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) first ventured out on the streets with her camera. In 1935 a report on migrant workers, illustrated with Lange's photographs, came to the attention of Roy Stryker and in response he invited Lange to become a member of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic unit. Like Stryker, Lange believed that photography was a tool of political action, and this was no more apparent then when the federal government responded to the starvation crisis shortly after the San Francisco News received Lange's photographs - it quickly supplied 20,000 pounds of food to feed hungry migrants at the camps. Lange's championing of black migrants can be seen in the photograph "Plantation Overseer"and his Field Hands" of 1936, in which Lange captured the image of a man who exemplified the racist, exploitative and un-democratic attitudes that were rife in Southern plantation life. The evidence of racism revealed in this photograph - and others - is countered by Lange's many dignifying portraits of black subjects. When the bitter years of the Depression were overtaken by the advent of World War II, she continued to demonstrate her opposition to the poor treatment of migrants by opposing the relocation of 110,000 American Japanese to internment camps. She recorded the evacuation in Northern California after being assigned by the War Relocation Authority. In 1955, after a bout of ill health, Lange continued to work on contemporary social issues, namely a photo-essay for "Life" magazine, a sensitive study of the work of a Yugoslav-American public defender, representing those who could not afford to pay their own legal expenses. Lange watched and photographed him on and off for a year, catching the reflective moments of his defendants' body language. Lange was the first woman to be awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship (1941) and was placed on the Honour Roll of the American Society of Magazine Photographers in 1963. She was honoured with major solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Art (1960) and the Oakland Art Museum (1960) and she began preparing a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York shortly before she died in 1965.

Isa Genzken's work encompasses sculpture, collage, film and photography. As one of Germany's leading sculptors to have emerged since the 1980s, her work is noted for combining references to architecture, modernism and art history with the personal, such an installation drawing together photographic images of her own body set alongside sleek, 'constructivist' forms. She is interested in the detritus of material culture, particularly architectural detritus of concrete blocks, glass, mirrored sheets and steel. The combination of materials in her work is remarkable, drawing together animal heads, transparent fluorescent plastic, spray-painted pinecones, found objects such as binoculars or kitchen utensils, and airplane windows, to name but a few. Her work can be uncomfortably 'ugly' - assemblages of unrelated objects and artist's materials (oil paint on store-bought action figures, for example) - or shining and beautiful, as with her magnificent 'cities' of 'New Buildings': small, impeccably crafted, glass and wood skyscrapers. One of her best known and loved works, Rose (1997) is a romantic public sculpture of a single long-stemmed rose made from enamelled stainless steel, rising over 8 metres in height and permanently installed in Leipzig's museum district. Genzken has been exhibiting since the 1970s, but her work came to international attention particularly following her impressive installation of skyscrapers at Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, in 2002. She is included at this year's prestigious Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2005). Genzken's work is represented by Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Neven-DuMont-Str. 17, Cologne 50667, Germany, [email protected], Hauser &, Wirth, 196A Piccadilly, London, W1J 9DY, [email protected] and David Zwirner Gallery, 525 W 19th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA, [email protected]

Dating from the 1850s to the First World War, the Arts and Crafts Movement was an international phenomenon of enormous scope and influence. It encompassed everything from architecture to town planning, metalwork and embroidery, in places as diverse as California and Budapest. Born of thinkers and practitioners in Victorian England its ideological currents reflect the era's most pressing social, political and artistic concerns. In this book Rosalind Blakesley explores the common ideas that give cohesion to a movement of otherwise bewildering breadth and stylistic heterogeneity. At the origins of the movement was a reaction against industrialization, the long-standing division between traditional crafts and Fine Art and the over-elaborate ornamentation which disguised an object or building's true 'function'. Early British Arts and Crafts practitioners campaigned for a revival of old craft techniques, for the elevation of the applied arts and for 'honesty' in design, ideas that were picked up and developed across Europe and the United States, with national variants quickly emerging. Germany, for example, recognized the potential of industrial techniques and experimented with standardization in design, in Finland, then annexed to Russia, Arts and Crafts was allied to the search for self-expression and a national style in art. Examining both acknowledged Arts and Crafts centres and lesser-known communities, Rosalind Blakesley concludes her authoritative and accessible survey with an evaluation of the Movement's significance in the twenty-first century.