Eleanor Clayton

This book explores one of the most enchanting and recurrent motifs in Marc Chagall’s oeuvre: the circus. Throughout his prolific career, Chagall returned to the vivid imagery of acrobats, clowns, and fantastical performers, transforming the circus into a metaphor for the complexities, joys, and sorrows of the human experience. Presenting Chagall's celebrated lithographs on this subject alongside a selection of paintings, it offers both an introduction to Chagall’s work and life and an examination of his unique vision and symbology. By situating these works within the context of Chagall’s personal background, his experiences as an immigrant, and his lifelong embrace of theatricality, the book will illuminate how these factors shaped his circus imagery. It will further contextualise these images among those of Chagall's peers within European modernism. While central to Chagall’s art, the circus has never been the sole subject of a comprehensive study. The book also features a new translation of Chagall's essay 'The Circus', first published in French in 1967 but never published in English in its entirety. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE The Hepworth Wakefield 21 November 2026 - 25 April 2027 Wilhelm-Hack-Museum 7 May - 28 August 2027 Published by Paul Holberton Publishing/Distributed by Yale University Press

An incisive introduction to the life and work of Henry Moore, whose semi-abstract works – inspired by organic shapes and the rolling landscapes of his Yorkshire roots – celebrated the blending of human figures with natural forms, and established a British sculptural renaissance. Henry Moore (1898–1986) is well-known for his large-scale, semi-abstract works that blend together human-like forms with the natural shapes of the British landscape, thereby creating a distinctly unique and signature style. This introduction offers an incisive look at the life and work of Moore. It features a generous selection of his works, from his monumental bronze sculptures to his carvings, prints and drawings, including his sensitive yet powerful depictions of Londoners sheltering during the Blitz. Positioning him as one of the most important British sculptors of the twentieth century, it examines how he pioneered a new vision for post-war modern sculpture, the influence of which can still be seen in British art to this day.

Barbara Hepworth: Strings is the first publication dedicated to the artist’s stringed sculptures, paintings and drawings. In 1939, Hepworth (1903–1975) made her first sculpture threaded with strings. For the rest of her career, she intermittently combined string with works made from plaster, wood, metal and stone. These were some of her most personally distinctive artistic achievements. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death, Barbara Hepworth: Strings provides for the first time a comprehensive thematic account of string in the artist’s work, exploring the different ways that she used it and the symbolism she invested it with. This publication includes a fully-illustrated catalogue of Piano Nobile’s accompanying exhibition. It features essays by some of the leading specialists on Hepworth’s work. The exhibition co-curator Michael Regan offers a personal response to the stringed sculptures and considers their affective quality. In his essay, Dr Stephen Feeke explores fresh perspectives and previously unpublished source materials relating to Hepworth and string. A further text by Eleanor Clayton, senior curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, gives a close reading of the most significant stringed works including the artist’s celebrated commission for John Lewis’s flagship store on Oxford Street. The book also includes a comprehensive, illustrated list of Hepworth’s stringed sculptures.

Published to mark the centenary of Surrealism, this publication offers a new perspective on one of the most famous art movements with pioneering new research on its links with ecology and with politics. The development of Surrealism in the 1920s and 30s coincided with that of important new research and knowledge in the sciences, notably in biology. Forbidden Territories explores the unexamined interplay between Surrealism and life science, including the mutual influence of Sigmund Freud, illuminating how Surrealist strategies draw the eye to the astonishing aspects of scientific data and knowledge of the landscape, in ways that are prescient, even revelatory, in the present. The book further looks at the role of international conflict within Surreal landscapes and how these terrains became a vehicle for political statements and dissent. Finally, it expands on the Surrealist mythologization of the unconscious as a great ocean 'where the sharks of madness cruise', analysing the 'ecology of the mind', examining links between bodies of water and psycho-surreal worlds in poetry, paintings and photographs from the unique perspective of female Surrealist artists. Spanning the movement, this survey includes works by Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Lee Miller and Yves Tanguy as well as interventions by contemporary artists working within the lasting legacy of Surrealism, such as Maria Berrio and Michael Dean.

Barbara Hepworth is one of the most important artists of the 20th century, yet she has been the subject of relatively few monographs in comparison to her male counterparts. This biography moves beyond the traditional narratives of modernism, truth to materials, and the landscape to provide a penetrating insight into Hepworth’s remarkable life, work and legacy. Barbara Hepworth was reproached for single-mindedness in her lifetime, with critics and commentators framing both the artist and her work as ‘cool and restrained’. A continued focus on her modernist abstract sculpture of the 1930s and its relation to her male contemporaries has left vast swathes of her work and related passions overlooked. This fully illustrated biography reflects for the first time Hepworth’s multi-faceted, interdisciplinary and networked approach, shedding light as never before on her interests in music, dance, poetry, contemporary politics, science and technology; her engagement with these fields through friends and networks as well as her artistic practice; and the ways in which she synthesized sometimes seemingly conflicting disciplines and ideas into one coherent and inspirational philosophy of art and life.With 178 illustrations

This mid-career retrospective volume focuses on Viviane Sassen's fine art photography, revealing a surrealist undercurrent in her work. Sassen recognizes Surrealism as one of her earliest artistic influences, seen in the uncanny shadows, fragmented bodies, and otherworldly landscapes she captures in her work. In addition to images from the acclaimed series "Umbra," this volume draws from the series "Flamboya," in which she returned to Kenya, "Parasomnia," a dreamlike exploration of sleep, the "Roxane" series, a mutual portrait created with her muse, Roxane Danset, "Of Lotus and Mud," a study of procreation and fecundity, and "Pikin Slee," a journey to a remote village in Suriname. This book features a contextualizing essay and an insightful interview with the artist. Throughout, Sassen emerges as a poetic photographer obsessed with light and shadow and a brilliant technician, who is a master of both vibrant color and muted hues. Selected by Sassen herself from across the last ten years, the images draw on the surrealist strategies of collage and unexpected juxtapositions to give a survey of her practice.