This book is an accessible and visually rich study of Japanese photography since 1945 by an experienced curator specializing in Japanese art and culture. 
This rich volume provides one of the first overviews of Japanese photography to be published in English. Drawing on extensive research, Lena Fritsch traces the development of Japanese photography chronologically, from the severity of post-war Realism to the diverse ingenuity of photography in contemporary Japan. Interspersed are fascinating original interviews with some of the most influential photographers of each era, including Daido Moriyama.
Ravens and Red Lipstick offers a visually bold survey of Japanese photography’s recent history. Fritsch masterfully frames each movement with their business, education, and art-institutional backdrops―she shows the consumerism and intense political debates of 1960s and ’70s Japan, for example, to be central to the rough style of the “Provoke” artists. Fritsch’s great achievement is to bring observations from a range of disciplines to bear on her commentary with imagination and clarity. As a result, this comprehensively illustrated volume is both an accessible introduction and an illuminating work of analysis of Japanese photography since 1945. c. 200 illustrations

Ravens and Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography since 1945

Arts & Photography

Fritsch, Lena

Photography & Video

Thames&Hudson

Ravens & Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography Since 1945 (compact edition) /anglais

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) is best known for his distinctive elongated figures that are inescapably linked to the post-War climate of existential despair. This book, created with unparalleled access to the extraordinary collection and archive of Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, offers a lively, clear, and comprehensive introduction to Giacometti’s sculpture from his first works of art through his surrealist compositions to the emergence of his mature style, and presents the ongoing debates concerning his significance.  

Tate Introductions: Alberto Giacometti

History & Criticism

Tate

Ibrahim El-Salahi (b.1930 in Omdurman, Sudan) is a pioneer of African and Arab Modernism and one of the most influential figures in Sudanese art today. His paintings, drawings and book illustrations draw from a vivid imagination rooted in the traditions of his homeland, which he fuses with inventive forms of calligraphy, African abstraction and a profound knowledge of European art history. His work is held in international museum collections including MoMA, New York, the Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi and Tate Modern, London. This lively and accessible book accompanies the first solo exhibition of El-Salahi's work in Oxford, the city which has been his home for the past twenty years. The exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum offers a new perspective on the artist's work, setting it into dialogue with objects from the Museum's ancient Sudanese collection. This catalogue explores the story of El-Salahi's artistic evolution, from his early abstracted works on paper, through his extraordinary multi-panel paintings, to the emergence of his mature, meditative drawings on medicine packets and small envelopes. It also includes an exclusive interview with the artist and an illustrated chronology. Lena Fritsch is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Sudanese Artist in Oxford

Individual Artists

Ashmolean Museum

<ul>
<li>Showcases the work of internationally acclaimed German artist A.R. Penck (1939-2017). 2019 marks 80 years since his birth; it is also the 30-year-anniversary of the end of the Cold War</li>
<li>The project honors an important artist who emigrated from East to West Germany and whose work addresses issues facing modern man in society</li>
<li>Published to accompany a show at the Ashmolean, Oxford, from 27 June to 3 November, 2019</li>
</ul>
The artistic language of A.R. Penck (1936–2017) – characterised by brusquely and expressively painted signs and 'primitive' symbols – is instantly recognisable. Abiding interests in systems theory and cybernetics, as well as pre-historic cultures and science fiction, guided his art toward an investigation of the relationships between man and society's power systems. His prolific artistic output was primarily driven by his desire to create a universal artistic language that addresses the issues facing modern man. 
This publication accompanies A.R. Penck's first solo exhibition in Oxford. It features works created between 1970 and 1990 and introduces his art to an audience that might be unfamiliar with it by focussing on the artist's signature motif of the Standart stick figure in its diverse forms. 
The artist was born as Ralf Winkler in Dresden, East Germany. Rejected by the establishment for the decidedly un-academic style of his works and their political overtones, he persisted as an ‘underground' autodidact in what was then the GDR. He adopted the pseudonym A.R. Penck to counter difficulties with East German authorities who banned his works from public exhibition. With the aid of friends, his works were smuggled to West Germany, where they were exhibited for the first time in 1968 in Cologne. In 1980, Penck emigrated to the West, first living outside Cologne, then in London and Ireland, often dividing his time between different locations.

A.R. Penck: I Think in Pictures

* Published to accompany the first solo exhibition of Philip Guston at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from 23 November 2019 to 8 March 2020* Features many works by the American artist not seen in the UK beforePhilip Guston (1913-1980) was an internationally acclaimed American artist whose response to the political and social tumult of the post-war decades resulted in a prolific artistic output. Over the course of his career, his style transformed from figuration to abstraction to figuration. Born Phillip Goldstein, the artist began drawing incessantly at the age of 12. Aware of antisemitism, he changed his name in 1935, the year he moved to New York. After producing award-winning murals in a 'realist' style for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s and early 1940s, Guston embraced the painting trend of Abstract Expressionism. The upheavals of the 1960s - civil rights protests, brutal state violence, race riots - made him question the relevance of gestural abstraction, however, and his drawing explored the new figuration for which he is best known. In response to the Vietnam War and the hypocrisy of the political administration under President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, his figurative drawing intensified to address universal issues facing modern humankind. Guston's productive output was driven by his desire to unify the story and the plastic structure of the artwork in response to a changing political and social landscape. 'Locating the image' through intensive periods of drawing was central to this. This exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, curated by Professor Karen Lang with Dr Lena Fritsch, is the first solo show of Guston's work in Oxford. His artistic language, characterized by masterful technique, exuberant stylistic variety and the depiction of everyday objects, is readily recognizable. This catalog introduces Guston's art to visitors who may be unfamiliar with it by displaying works on paper from each stylistic phase. At the same time, it presents a new understanding to those familiar with Guston's practice by focusing on two themes: the role of drawing on the one hand, and the inspiration he took from literature on the other.

Philip Guston: Locating the Image

Lang, Karen

* This book accompanies the Ashmolean's first exhibition of its new Ashmolean NOW series, featuring the work of painters Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, which will in part be inspired by the Museum's historic collections* There will be a show for both artists at the Ashmolean from 8 July 2023 to 14 January 2024The book will coincide with the first Ashmolean NOW exhibition in Gallery 8, opening in July 2023. The Ashmolean NOW Program features exciting works by prominent early to mid-career artists based in the UK, seeking to attract new audiences interested in contemporary art. Artists who have established international reputations and emerging artists whose international status is anticipated with a strong degree of confidence are approached pro-actively. In addition to exhibiting their existing works, all artists are invited to create at least one new work as a response to the museum and/or its collections. This first exhibition presents two linked solo shows: paintings/drawings by Flora Yukhnovich, and paintings/drawings by Daniel Crews-Chubb. The double-sided style of the book will mirror the exhibition concept, while presenting itself as a unique, well designed object that has a life beyond the exhibition.

Ashmolean NOW: Daniel Crews-Chubb x Flora Yukhnovich

* First Oxford show for Pio Abad * Inspiration for the art includes Benin bronzes, and discussed by Dan Hicks (author of The British Museum) * Accompanies an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum from 9 February to 8 September, 2024 Pio Abad's artistic practice is concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work, encompassing drawing, painting, textiles, installation and text, mines alternative or repressed historical events and offers counternarratives that draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people. Deeply informed by unfolding events in the Philippines, where the artist was born and raised, his work emanates from a family narrative woven into the nation's story. Abad's parents were at the forefront of the anti-dictatorship struggle in the Philippines during the 1970s and 80s and it is the need to remember this history that has shaped the foundations of his work. This beautifully designed book accompanies the Ashmolean Museum's second exhibition of its new Ashmolean NOW series, featuring the work of Pio Abad. Abad's artistic practice is concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work, which includes drawing, painting, installation, textiles and text, mines alternative or repressed historical events, offering counternarratives. Abad's new works link narratives found in the Museum's collections and Oxford with his personal life in the UK and Philippines, where the artist was born and raised. The book features a new text by Abad and contributions by art historical experts including Dan Hicks.

Ashmolean NOW: Pio Abad

Hicks, Dan

Pio Abad Pio Abad

* Accompanies the first Oxford show for Bettina von Zwehl; the exhibition takes place at the Ashmolean Museum from 12 October 2024 to 11 May 2025 * Inspiration for the art comes from the original 'Wunderkammers' - largely thought to be the birth of the modern museum This well-designed publication features new photographs by London-based artist Bettina von Zwehl (b.1971 in Munich). Following her graduation from the Royal College of Art in 1999, von Zwehl has completed high-profile residencies and had solo exhibitions at museums around the world, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Freud Museum, Holburne Museum, and the New York Historical Society Museum. During a residency in Oxford, von Zwehl researched the Ashmolean's founding collections and the many narratives embedded within the historical objects. This served as inspiration for a unique Wunderkammer book and exhibition that seamlessly transition between still-life, portraiture, monumental and miniature elements, as well as non-art objects and specimens from natural history collections. The artist's aim is to rekindle wonder and curiosity as critical tools for exploring new ideas and unique practices, expanding the boundaries of the photographic medium.

Ashmolean NOW: Bettina von Zwehl

Grosz, Stephen

Ennis, Ciara

In the early 1990s various trips took Jungjin Lee into the endless expanse of America, where she captured archaic, primal images of deserts, rocks, undergrowth, and cactuses. Drawing on her South Korean heritage, the artist developed a highly unique pictorial language in series such as Ocean, On Road, Pagodas, Things, and Wind, in which her fundamental interest in nature and culture is expressed in a space of poetic resonance. In her work, Jungjin Lee taps her profound understanding for materiality, texture, and craftsmanship. Working with Liquid Light, she applies photosensitive emulsion onto rice paper with a coarse brush. The publication presents eleven groups of works, commentated and contextualized in essays by Lena Fritsch, Hester Keijser, and Liz Wells–providing, for the very first time, an overview of an oeuvre spanning two decades.

Jungjin Lee: Echo

Wells, Liz

Keijser, Hester

Spector Books

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Books by Fritsch, Lena