Violette Editions

Published in October 2013 by Violette Editions

The first major monograph on this artist features essays by Brian Dillon and David Campany, as well as a conversation between the artist and A M Homes.

‘Jones is very much in command of her subject matter, controlling the placement and relationship of elements, if only through decisions about framing and focal plane. What the viewer is offered by these choices is evidence of an engagement with the world, a materiality through and against which life might be given shape.’ – Michael Archer, Artforum

‘Her photographs are rich with colour; and psychological tension, and fixated upon hair, identity and home…She is deeply serious, sees life with a Technicolor, X-ray vision all her own.’ – A M Homes, frieze

Sarah Jones’s photographs address established pictorial genres and our associated expectations by paring back space, subject and gesture. This book brings together work from a 15-year period, including many pieces never previously published, and looks at the themes and concerns that have remained constants in her work. The sequence of images chosen and arranged by the artist specifically for this publication is informed by Jones’s interest in how we see and represent her chosen subjects, using tropes from the stereograph, the double, the still life and portraiture.

Jones first gained notice in the late 1990s for her photographs taken in psychoanalysts’ consulting rooms. These provocative sites have been explored through her practice over the years, in particular the couches that, in Jones’s images, show visible signs of the imprint of the patients who had reclined upon them during consultation. Her well-known later studies of adolescent girls uncomfortably caught in the flash of the camera in domestic settings draw attention to the staged relationship between model, photographer and location. Recent diptychs of horses and rose bushes refer to the viewing of early stereographic prints and explore the potential for photography to reveal uncanny perspectives on a subject. In The Rose Gardens series, Jones photographs the front and back of rose bushes in public gardens so that viewers can contemplate both viewpoints simultaneously.

Jones’s overarching imperative is to look at subjects stripped back to an emotional truth. The imprints on the couches, the view of the roses that are beginning to wilt and the glazed look in the eyes of her models all investigate ideas of beauty and ritualized everyday gesture.

Concept by Sarah Jones
Edited by Robert Violette
Designed by William Hall
Hardback, 212 pages, 160 colour plates
29.7 x 24.6 cm (h x w, portrait)
ISBN 978-1-900828-43-7

Published in September 2013 by Violette Editions

Known for subverting the conventions of fashion and photography, Teller here turns his eye to the complexity and originality of two-Michelin-starred food created by chef Antonio Guida at Hotel Il Pellicano. Eleven menus of five ambitiously inspirational courses encapsulate the unique, offhanded chic of this exclusive Tuscan retreat, in Teller's second photographic collaboration with Violette Editions.

One of the hippest and most beautiful destinations in the world, the Hotel Il Pellicano is a hangout for the design, fashion and art worlds. In 2011, an eponymous book published by Rizzoli in association with Violette Editions – with photography by co-founder John Swope, longtime visitor Slim Aarons and new collaborator Juergen Teller, and an introduction by Bob Colacello – chronicled the glamour of this modern-day dolce vita, from the days when Emilio Pucci, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Britt Ekland and Susanna Agnelli could be found relaxing by the pool to the carefree spirit preserved today. Also edited and produced by Robert Violett, this first book reprinted within a year.

Eating at Hotel Il Pellicano itself is a photography book whose subject is contemporary food, style and place. Each menu presented by Guida is named after one of today's illustrious visitors – Missoni, Borghese, etc – conjuring delicious fantasies of Italian holidays in days of endless sunshine. Writer Will Self sets the scene in a preface despatched from his suite.

Juergen Teller is one of the most celebrated photographers at work today. Author of numerous publications of his work, Teller has photographed Marc Jacobs and Vivienne Westwood advertising campaigns for the last two decades. In 2013, a major solo show of his work was held at the ICA in London. Teller also contributed specially commissioned photographs to the first book on Hotel Il Pellicano.

Chef Antonio Guida, from the Puglia region of Italy, held two Michelin stars while at the Hotel Il Pellicano's restaurant. Admired by chefs around the world, Guida's often surreal ideas for dishes always remain true to the freshest local ingredients, grown or sourced at Il Pellicano and the Argentario peninsula of Tuscany.

Will Self is one of the best known literary figures in Britain. Self is the author of seven novels, six collections of stories and five collections of non-fiction. His novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has also been a food writer for The Observer.

Photographs by Juergen Teller
Food and recipes by Antonio Guida
Introduction by Will Self

Edited by Robert Violette
Designed by Studio Frith
Hardback, 256 pages
135 colour plates
22.6 x 34 x cm (h x w, landscape)
ISBN 978-1-900828-45-1

Published in June 2013 by Violette Editions

In this first comprehensive book on his work, celebrated British designer Tom Dixon reveals the inspiration behind his work since the 1980s.

In his own words, and with hundreds of comparative illustrations, this self-taught designer illuminates the often surprising ideas behind his finished pieces. Dixon transforms notions of plumpness observed in a painting of an overfed pig into an overstuffed sofa; or a fishpan from a Chinese supermarket literally into the seat of a chair; gigantic concrete sea defences on the coast of Japan become the distinctive shape of his famous stacked Jack Light.

In personal and accessible notes on each of the 150 pieces reproduced, Dixonary offers insights, explanations and the occasional post-rationalisation into his unique and uninhibited design process. Works range from ephemeral handcrafted rarities incorporating salvaged materials, rubber or tissue paper, to mass-produced icons such as the S-Chair, manufactured by Cappellini and now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art.

Tom Dixon (b. 1959) founded his studio in the 1980s following his discovery of the pleasures of welding while repairing damaged motorcycle frames. He is now one of Britain's leading masters of design, having also produced accessible, high quality objects as Head of Design at Habitat from 1998 to 2008 in addition to his role as Creative Director at Artek, the Finnish furniture company founded by Alvar and Aino Aalto. His current practice, the Tom Dixon brand – lighting and furniture design and manufacturing – was established in 2002. www.tomdixon.net

Dixon’s previous books on design subjects include Rethink (2002), an analysis of each room in the modern home, The Interior World of Tom Dixon (2008), a book of ideas and observations on design, materials and style, and Industry (2011), in which Dixon discusses the changing landscape of industrial manufacture and retail. Dixonary is the first monograph on the work of this great innovator.

Edited by Camilla Belton and Robert Violette
Designed by Matt Willey
Hardback, 632 pages, 312 colour plates
20.8 x 15 cm (h x w, portrait)
ISBN 978-1-900828-42-0

Published in November 2012 by Violette Editions

'Beautiful and extraordinarily innovative' – AnOther magazine
'An original tale and arresting illustration' – Wallpaper* magazine
'A delightful new children's story' – The Independent Magazine

A beautiful and utterly unique picture storybook of enchanting luminograms and verse, The Mushroom Picker is the first children’s book to be published by Violette Editions. Text and hand-crafted mushroom lumigrams by David Robinson tell the tale of charismatic funghi characters thriving in an English wood, and of one heroine in particular, Penny Bun – a rare and spectacular porcini – who evades the Mushroom Picker's annual autumn harvest.

Set against the dark night sky, Robinson’s cast of characters comes to life in these richly illustrative images, as Penny Bun and her friends (Rosy Earthstar, Scarlet Cup, Slippery Jack and others) conspire to build a rocket ship to escape the Picker’s grasp.

Lovingly crafted by a mushroom obsessive – the co-founder of internationally renowned Sporeboys street-kitchen – these unique images show highly fanciful scenes and portraits from this adventure. Robinson's luminograms themselves are created in his darkroom in mysterious fashion using a cameraless process: Robinson artfully arranges hand-cut mushrooms directly on the plate glass of his enlarger and varies the intensity of light exposed to his subjects to create Penny Bun's extraordinary universe.

David Robinson is a Northern Irish artist based in London. Over the past decade his photographic work has appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Blueprint and Creative Review. He has had solo shows in London and Belfast and has work included in various touring group exhibitions.

Robinson is also a chef and co-founder of Sporeboys, a mushroom street-food kitchen touring food markets in London and festivals across the UK. Sporeboys food has been celebrated in The New York Times and The Independent – loyal local and international customers flock each week to Broadway Market to savour their mushroom medley sandwich. For many years, Robinson's artwork has combined his passion for photography and food, producing these magnificent and highly original illustrations in his east-end darkroom, where he also prints for Martin Parr and other distinguished photographers.

Written, illustrated and created by David Robinson
Designed by Charlotte Heal
Hardback, 48 pages
29.4 x 23.3 cm (h x w, portrait)
ISBN 978-1-900828-41-3

Published in Spring 2012 by Violette Editions

Assembled by photographer and filmmaker Norbert Schoerner as a cinematic narrative, Third Life collects new and previously unseen work produced by him over the last seven years.

From the introduction by Tom Morton:

‘These photographs have no single subject or theme, and belong to no single genre. They comprise images snapped for Schoerner's “sketchbook” and highly choreographed tableaux, urban and rural landscapes, still lives and what might tentatively be called abstract works ... Although they are preoccupied with the promises and pitfalls of representation, they do not seek to contrast the "natural" with the "artificial", but rather position both as aspects of the same reality. Aside from the occasional colour correction, there is no postproduction on the majority of Schoerner's shots, and no real need for it. After all, these are images of a world that constantly edits and re-edits itself.'

From additional text by Geoff Cox:

‘Small, sudden acts abound here, in this new world, amidst the exhausted bones and irradiated plastic meat of the last: an impossibly casual levitation, a shape shifting. A transubstantiation. Anything can trigger the event. ... But the final glimpses linger, the dying visions, glimmering into third life, signalling through a stilled landscape of cenotaph.'

Norbert Schoerner is a photographer and filmmaker whose fashion campaigns have included Comme des Garçons and Prada; his editorial work has been seen in The Face, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue and many other publications. Schoerner's work has been widely exhibited, including shows at White Cube, Chapman Fine Arts and the 10th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2006). This is his second collaboration with Violette Editions, following a photographic essay he created for Judith Clark's and Adam Philips' The Concise Dictionary of Dress (2010).

Tom Morton is a writer and curator based in London. He is co-Curator of British Art Show 7, and Contributing Editor of Frieze magazine.

Geoff Cox has worked with film directors John Hillcoat, Philippe Grandrieux, Asia Argento, Lucile Hadzihalilovic and Peter Strickland, and musicians Nurse With Wound, Current 93 and Cyclobe, among others. He wrote the text for Ossian Brown's book of Halloween photographs Haunted Air (Jonathan Cape, 2010)
with an introduction by David Lynch and is the author of Anna & the Witch's Bottle (2009) and Anna & the Juniper Dog (2011), the first two volumes of a trilogy illustrated by Rohan Daniel Eason. He lives on an island in Oxford.

Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Micha Weidmann
Hardcover, 160 pages, 100 colour illustrations
24.7 x 30 cm (h x w, landscape)
ISBN 978-1-900828-38-3

Published in October 2011 by Violette Editions

A collaboration between Louise Bourgeois and Gary Indiana pairs her beautiful colour-wash male and female torso images with his word-poems, creating a meditation on relationships, sexuality and physicality.

This Violette Editions publication faithfully reproduces in reduced size the original large-format artists' book, which was made in fabric in an edition of only seven copies.

To Whom It May Concern is one of the final projects Bourgeois completed and is an apt demonstration of the enduring power of her work. Rich pinks, purples, reds and blues describe bodies comprising swollen bellies, heavy breasts, engorged phalluses and stooped torsos in a series of pairings on facing pages. Deceptively simple in design, the varying intensity and range of colour within each figure reveals a dynamism in each repeated coupling of these headless, limbless bodies: male and female at their essential, and the relationship between the two, changing but the same. Indiana's short, visceral but lyrical texts are interspersed throughout and form a conversation with these images, an unconventional non-narrative, part of a broader dialogue about the barrier of flesh, about desire and intimacy.

Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. She lived in New York from 1938 until her death in 2010. Using the body as a primary form, Bourgeois explored the full range of the human condition. From poetic drawings to room-size installations, she was able to give her fears a physical form in order to exorcise them. Memories, sexuality, love and abandonment are the core of her complex oeuvre. Her work appears in collections worldwide, and in 2007 she was the subject of a major travelling retrospective organised by the Tate Modern, London, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Gary Indiana is an influential American writer, essayist and journalist, who came to prominence as an art critic for New York's Village Voice. Alongside satirical novels such as Resentment (1997), Three Month Fever (1999) and Depraved Indifference (2002), he has also written non-fiction on a broad range of cultural phenomena from Pasolini to Warhol.

Drawings by Louise Bourgeois
Text by Gary Indiana
Limited edition of 1,500 numbered copies
Hardback, 76 pages, 24 colour illustrations
32.4 x 22.9 cm (h x w, portrait)
ISBN 978-1-900828-36-9

Published in association with Artangel in 2010 by Violette Editions

‘The game is this: Phillips provides definitions of a series of fashion terms while Clark creates installations that do the same (represented in the book by Norbert Schoerner’s photographic record). Naturally it's a stunningly elegant production’ – Mark Rappolt, Art Review

'The visual element is only half the experience. The other half exists in the form of a book, published by Violette Editions: a handsome artefact in its own right' – Jane Shillling, The Daily Telegraph

This book examines the nature of dictionaries, archives and dress curation, and adds a stunning visual essay recording two overnight tours through an Artangel-commissioned exhibition at Blythe House.

Phillips’ definitions for words commonly associated with fashion
and appearance were paired with eleven stations created by
Clark on a walk through this vast building, home of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s archive. Here in print, extending beyond the works at Blythe House, Phillips adds more words, more definitions and an overarching essay asking broader questions about what dictionaries are, how we use them and why they matter. Judith Clark also presents a written analysis of the Dictionary in her response to questions posed anonymously by authorities in cultural theory, fashion history, arts curation and architecture, as well as a catalogue of references used in creating the installations.

Judith Clark is Reader in the field of Fashion and Museology at London College of Fashion. She has curated major exhibitions
at the V&A, ModeMuseum in Antwerp, Palazzo Pitti in Florence and Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Adam Phillips, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London, is a psychoanalyst and author of 15 acclaimed books, including On Balance and On Kissing and Being Bored. He is the Editor of the New Penguin Freud translations, and a regular reviewer for the London Review of Books.

Norbert Schoerner is a photographer and filmmaker whose fashion campaigns have included Comme des Garçons and Prada; his editorial work has been seen in The Face, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue and many other publications. Schoerner's work has been widely exhibited, including shows at White Cube, Chapman Fine Arts and the 10th International Architecture. His book Third Life was published in 2011 by Violette Editions.

Designed by Studio Frith
Hardback, jacket, 136 pages, 79 colour and b/w illustrations
24.5 x 18.5 cm (h x w)
ISBN 978-1-900828-35-2

The first monograph on this major artist, published in September 2011 by Violette Editions

'An extraordinary book for an extraordinary artist ... A really stunning piece of work.' – Creative Review

'There is no dancer-choreographer alive who so naturally treads the line between the rigour of classical dance and the reckless glamour of rock and fashion.' – The Independent on Sunday

'Clark is now beyond doubt one of Britain's most important living creators of dance.' – The Daily Telegraph

Other text contributions from Richard Alston, Karole Armitage, Charles Atlas, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Christine Binnie, Val Bourne, Lesley Bryant, Michael Clark, Kate Coyne, Peter Doig, Sophie Fiennes, Bruce Gilbert, Richard Glasstone, David Gothard, Matthew Hawkins, Melissa Hetherington, Jeffrey Hinton, David Holah, Sarah Lucas, Judith Mackrell, Jann Parry, Lorcan O'Neill, Grayson Perry, Jane Quinn, Steven Scott, Susan Stenger, Stevie Stewart, Ellen van Schuylenburch, Arabella Stanger, Simon Williams and Cerith Wyn Evans.

Photography by Julian Broad, Henrietta Butler, Dee Conway, Gaultier Deblonde, Ravi Deepres, Malcolm Garrett, Hugo Glendinning, David Gwinnutt, Chris Harris, Richard Haughton, Nick Knight, Thomas Krygier, David Lachapelle, Laurie Lewis, Tony McCann, Chris Nash, Nigel Norrington, Pierre Rutchi, Michael Stannard, Andrea Stappert, Wolfgang Tillmans, Allan Titmuss, Jake Walters, Fred Whisker and Darryl Williams.

Michael Clark is a dancer and choregrapher who collaborates with designers, artists and musicians at the heart of the British post-punk scene. Born in Scotland in 1962, Clark began traditional Scottish dancing at the age of four. In 1975 he left home to study at the Royal Ballet School in London, and on his final day at the school he was presented with the Ursula Moreton Choreographic Award. In 1979, he joined Ballet Rambert, working primarily with Richard Alston. Attending a summer school with Merce Cunningham and John Cage led Clark to work in New York with Karole Armitage. He subsequently formed his own dance company in 1984, appearing in or creating more than 40 works over the last 25 years. In 2005 Michael Clark became an Artistic Associate of the Barbican Centre, London, and embarked on his Stravinsky Project, a three-year collaboration to produce a trilogy of works to seminal dance scores by Igor Stravinsky. Michael Clark Company's later work evolves from the choreographer's admiration for the music of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. In June 2011, Michael Clark Company presented a site-specific work with movement, film, light and sound, in a special commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London.

Suzanne Cotter is an Australian with over thirty years’ international experience and currently Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Melbourne. Formerly the Director of the Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (MUDAM), Luxembourg, her distinguished career includes roles as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Serralves Foundation in Porto (Portugal), Curator for the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, New York, and Deputy Director and Curator at Large of Modern Art Oxford (UK). She also has occupied curatorial positions in London at the Whitechapel Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery. Curator with Rasha Salti of the 10th Sharjah Biennial, 2011, in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Cotter has edited and contributed to numerous books and publications on contemporary art.

Edited by Suzanne Cotter and Robert Violette
Designed by Studio Frith
Hardback, cloth, 348 pages, more than 580 illustrations
29.7 x 22 cm
ISBN 978-1-900828-33-8

The first collection of Malerie Marder’s photographic works in print, published in November 2011 by Violette Editions.

'Carnal Knowledge is a step back into Eden, away from Sodom and Gomorrah, where love reigns over all, and a book which will become a classic of contemporary photography.' – Charlie Finch, artnet

'Intimacy can be bruising, but Marder's subjects seem determined to risk it, even if their only connection is to the woman with the camera. As for the photographer, she's happy for her work to remain enigmatic – "not an answer, but a clue".' – Vince Aletti, Photograph Magazine

Texts by Gregory Crewdson, James Ellroy, A M Homes, James Frey, Bruce Wagner, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Charlotte Cotton.

A seminal early experience for Malerie Marder was when a family friend invited her to photograph her with her lover, naked and in the anonymous setting of a motel room. This set the tone for Marder's work for the next decade. Her photographs of nudes are composed simply, her subjects sitting plainly near the centre of the frame, often set against the bleak anonymity of motel rooms, their impassive gazes almost daring a viewer to interpret their bodies.

Beautifully illustrated with more than 70 works by Marder – described by Charlotte Cotton in her introduction as an ‘episodic drama of adjacencies’ – Carnal Knowledge also contains a preface by Gregory Crewdson, a text by novelist James Ellroy, short stories inspired by Marder’s works by A M Homes, James Frey and Bruce Wagner, as well as a written and photographic correspondence between Marder and Philip-Lorca diCorcia.

An installation of previously unexhibited works from Carnal Knowledge was shown at Blain|Southern Gallery, 21 Dering Street, London W1S 1AL, from 6 to 21 April 2011.

Malerie Marder lives and works in Los Angeles. Marder studied at Bard College with Stephen Shore, and at Yale University with Gregory Crewdson, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Nan Goldin, where she won the Schicke-Collingwood Prize and John Ferguson Weir Award. Her work is in several international collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne) and the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (New York).

Gregory Crewdson is Professor Adjunct in Graduate Photography at the Yale University School of Art. Crewdson's work has been included in many international public collections.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia lives in New York, and since 1985 has exhibited his influential work at museums and galleries around the world.

James Ellroy is an American crime writer and essayist known for his hard-boiled, staccato style, author of novels including The Black Dahlia and L A Confidential.

Charlotte Cotton is Creative Director of the National Media Museum, UK. She was formerly head of programming at the Photographers’ Gallery, London.

Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Studio Frith
Hardback, 176 pages, 164 colour illustrations
25 x 30 cm (h x w, landscape)
ISBN: 978-1-900828-31-4

Published in May 2012 by Violette Editions

Essays from art historians and practicing psychoanalysts Donald Kuspit, Meg Harris Williams, Juliet Mitchell, Philip Larratt-Smith, Mignon Nixon, Elisabeth Bronfen, Paul Verhaeghe and Julie de Ganck.

An astonishing selection of approximately 80 unpublished writings by Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) appears here in print for the first time, written notes made throughout the psychoanalysis that dominated her life and artistic production and often concerned with sexual and confessional themes. These personal notes – combined with eight extensive scholarly essays – turn our critical understanding of Bourgeois on its head. A new and unprecedented insight into the work of one of the 20th century’s greatest artists.

Famed for works including The Destruction of the Father (1974), Arch of Hysteria (1993) and her huge and emblematic piece Maman (1999) – an enormous spider as an icon of maternal protection and withdrawal – for decades Bourgeois investigated the realm of psychoanalytic meaning through her sculptures, paintings and writings.

Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed is the first book to show the enduring presence of psychoanalysis as a motivational force and a site of exploration in her life and work. Selected and edited by Philip Larratt-Smith, for a time her literary archivist, these texts and essays provide a comprehensive overview and re-reading covering 60 years of artistic production. The second volume in this set also serves as a monograph, detailing works made across the artist’s lifetime.

This book follows the highly successful 1998 publication by Violette Editions of collected writings and interviews by Louise Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings 1927–1997, edited by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Marie-Laure Bernadac, subsequently translated into five languages.

Philip Larratt-Smith is a writer and curator based in New York, who for several years was Bourgeois’s literary archivist. He was also the curator of the international programme at Malba – Fundación Costantini in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Edited by Philip Larratt-Smith
Designed by Philip Larratt-Smith and Lydia Skinner
Slipcased hardback, PLC, two volumes
500 pages, 123 illustrations
27 x 19.2 cm x 2 vols (h x w, portrait)
ISBN 978-1-900828-37-6

Published in May 2007 by Violette Editions

‘By all means untie the maroon satin ribbon holding Double Game closed and open the floodgate of Calle's images, ideas, stories, memories. The book Calle has created ... is rich and true and completely satisfying. But like a great French meal, it leaves us wanting more.’ – Julie Martin, New York Times Book Review

‘A hefty, luxurious, compendium, Double Game is a hall of mirrors.’ – Yves Alain Bois, Artforum

‘A fine book ... we come to know Sophie Calle as we know a character in a work of fiction – and a truly fascinating and eccentric character she is.’ – William Boyd, The Daily Telegraph

Double Game is the first major publication in English by French artist Sophie Calle. Taking the form of a double jeu, between the work of Sophie Calle and the fiction of Paul Auster, this title is reprinted in a smaller format – reprising all the qualities of the first edition, including its ribbon – to coincide with the 52nd Venice Biennale, at which Calle represented France.

The story begins with Maria, the fictional character in Paul Auster’s novel, Leviathan. Most of Maria’s works are, in fact, based on those of Sophie Calle. The first section of Double Game takes us through the few original works by Maria that Sophie makes her own, presented both in their fictional context and illustrated by Calle’s actual reproduction of them. In the second section, the story delves deeper into the crux of Calle’s world, with a sequence of Calle’s seminal narrative and abstract works in texts and images that were appropriated by Maria in Leviathan. The third section of Double Game takes the dialogue straight to Maria’s original creator, Paul Auster, who in turn takes Calle as his subject, formulating for her the Gotham Handbook, which offers ‘Personal Instructions for SC on How to Improve Life in New York City (Because she asked...)’.

Sophie Calle works with photography, performance and literature. Born in Paris in 1953, since the 1980s her work has been shown at galleries and museums throughout the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou, which hosted a major retrospective in 2005. In 2007, Calle represented France in a critically acclaimed show at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Paul Auster is known for his writing about identity and personal meaning. He was born in New Jersey in 1947. After attending Columbia University he lived in France for four years. Since 1974 he has published poems, essays, novels and translations. His novels include The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and Mr Vertigo.

With the participation of Paul Auster
Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Frost Design (Vince Frost and Melanie Mues)
Hardback, 296 pages, over 400 illustrations
19 x 14 cm (7.5 x 5.5 in, h x w)
ISBN: 978-1-900828-28-4

Paperback edition published in 2010 by Violette Editions

‘A ripe blend of master craftsmanship and Monty Pythonesque lunacy.‘ – Monument

’Pure inspiration ... superbly designed.’ – Ink

Introduction by William Gibson (in English, French, German, Italian and Japanese). Collaborations with and/or writings by Richard Williams, James Flint, Glen Baxter, Paul Slater, Mick Brownfield, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Semir Zeki, Jim Davies and others.

Sir Paul Smith has combined a flair for eccentric, subversive detail,
a dedication to the highest standards of craftmanship, and a business and marketing sense that has enabled him to become perhaps the most successful fashion designer in British history. However, this particular book – Smith’s first major publication – is not a fashion monograph. Rather, imagine Paul Smith's brain on a page, a book that explores his universe and creative process in novel and surprising ways.

Sir Paul Smith (b. 1946) is a multi-award-winning designer who works in a variety of media and is best known for his menswear collections. He was knighted in 2000 for services to fashion design and in 2007 he was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Forty years after opening his first shop, Paul Smith has expanded to a global brand with stores in New York, Tokyo, Cape Town, Moscow, Dubai and throughout Europe, each of which is inspired by his original Covent Garden premises in Floral Street but individually designed to suit its locality. Smith’s designs have been the subject of exhibitions including True Brit at the Design Museum, London, which toured to Europe and Japan, and Observations at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

William Gibson, acclaimed writer and psychogeographer, is perhaps best known for coining the term 'cyberspace' in his Sprawl trilogy – Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Later novels include Pattern Recognition, which reached number four on The New York Times Bestseller list, and Spook Country.

Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Alan Aboud
Paperback, 296 pages, over 1000 illustrations with two posters and a comic book
25.4 x 21.6 cm (10 x 8.5 in, h x w)
ISBN 978-1-900828-29-1

Published in association with Les presses de Réel in 2006 by Violette Editions

Texts, writings and interviews by Annette Messager from 1971 to 2005, including interviews with Harald Szeemann, Robert Storr, Bernard Marcadé, Suzanne Pagé, Hans-Ulrich Obrist and others.

Texts and words are of crucial importance to Messager’s work – for her, ‘Words are images’. And so words – at once autonomous from, parallel to, and the sources of her visual creativity – are woven throughout her production. She has looked directly at our diverse relationships to language in forms ranging from the early scrapbooks of the 1970s to the large sculpted words of the late 1990s, and others including personal diaries, letters, calligraphy, alphabets and primers. She works with the repeated, drawn, framed and sculpted word; newsprint, collage and montage of texts and photographs; and handwritten texts. Plays on words and palindromes turn up in her exhibition titles and, more recently, in her children’s books. All of these uses of language stem as much from Dada and Surrealism as from the aesthetics of the banal and the everyday, and they give rise to unclassifiable texts, which fall somewhere between a literature of the news item or photo-essay and poetic maxims for personal use. Messager’s frequent recourse to copying down and to repetition then serves as a kind of exorcism: in those cases, writing is like sewing, with a soothing function.

The first section of Word for Word focuses on writing in Messager’s artworks. The second includes numerous texts published in magazines or catalogues, as well as unpublished notes on her work and personal reflections on art and life. All her interviews from 1974 to the present are also included.

Annette Messager, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, was born in France in 1943 and is one of Europe’s most important living artists. Her range of art production includes painting, embroidery, sculpture, assemblage, collage, film montage and writing. She says of her work that, ‘Conceptual art interests me in the same way as the art of the insane, astrology and religious art. It’s not the ideologies which these areas perpetuate [that] interest me: they are for me, above all else, repertories of forms. I make fun of sorcery and alchemy even if I make full use of their signs.’ A major retrospective of Messager’s work took place in 2007 in Paris at Centre Georges Pompidou.

Marie-Laure Bernadac served as chief curator in charge of contemporary art projects at the Louvre. She previously worked at the Picasso Museum, at the Centre Georges Pompidou and at the Capc Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux. Bernadac has published numerous books on artists’ writings, including those of Picasso, Louise Bourgeois (Violette Editions) and Jenny Holzer. Bernadac was curator of the exhibitions Feminine-Masculine: Sex in Art at the Centre Pompidou (1995), with Bernard Marcadé, and Presumed Innocent: Contemporary Art and Childhood in Bordeaux (2000), with Stéphanie Moisdon.

Edited by Marie-Laure Bernadac
Translated from the French by Vivian Rehberg
Hardback with dustjacket, 464 pages, 300 illustrations
25.5 x 19.5 cm (10 x 7 ¾ in)
ISBN: 978-1-900828-21-5

Originated by Violette Editions and published in 2007 by Thames and Hudson in association with Violette Editions

‘Utterly compelling’ – The Sunday Telegraph

’There is one writer/photographer at work today who seems
to be properly exploiting the possibilities of integrating text and image. ... Sophie Calle is well worth seeking out if you enjoy pictures alongside your words.’ – Alain de Botton, The Independent on Sunday

’In February 1998, I was invited to create a show entitled Appointment in the house at 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, where Dr Freud lived, and died. After having a vision of my wedding dress laid across Freud's couch, I immediately accepted. I chose to display relics of my own life amongst the interior of Sigmund's home.’ – Sophie Calle

A unique assembly of Calle’s own texts and personal objects juxtaposed with objects from Sigmund Freud’s personal collection, held in his Hampstead house, Appointment features fragments from the artist’s own fascinating life story, characteristic texts that reveal secrets and unravel Calle’s childhood memories and adult relationships. Calle’s references to particular mementoes from emotionally charged events in her life engage parallels with Freud’s psychoanalytic practice and his passion for collecting.

Sophie Calle works with photography, performance and literature. Born in Paris in 1953, since the 1980s her work has been shown at galleries and museums throughout the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou, which hosted a major retrospective in 2005. In 2007, Calle represented France in a critically acclaimed show at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Afterword by James Putnam
Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Peter B Willberg
Hardback with bespoke Indian shot-silk cover
and ribbon page marker
156 pages, 80 illustrations
18.4 x 14.4 cm (7 1/4 x 5 5/8 in, h x w)
ISBN 978-0-500-51199-2

Published in 2004 by Violette Editions (and in North American by The MIT Press in association with Violette Editions)

‘This terrific book can hardly be called a set of sketches. It brings together drawings architect Gehry has done for 29 recent projects; to look at them in series is to watch a genius think out loud, so close does the link between thought and line seem here.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘This massive book is clearly a must for every serious student of architecture.’ – The Globe and Mail

Edited by Mark Rappolt and Robert Violette, with text contributions from Horst Bredekamp, Frank O Gehry, Edwin Chan and Craig Webb.

Frank O Gehry (b. 1929) has described drawing as his way of ‘thinking aloud’. Gehry Draws traces that thinking through 32 major projects, built and unbuilt, with more than 500 drawings (the vast majority of which have never previously been published) and more than 400 additional illustrations of models, references and finished buildings – providing a privileged view of the creative practice of a master architect.

Horst Bredekamp’s introduction relates Gehry’s drawing methods to the concept of disegno, as practised by Leonardo and Dürer – not only the act of drawing and modelling but also the dynamics of creative thinking – and shows how Gehry thinks through the curving movements of his hand on paper. Gehry himself describes for Bredekamp his method in several explanatory sketches, and Bredekamp applies this to a study of drawings made for specific Gehry commissions.

Project synopses and commentary on each commission by Gehry and two of his Partners and Project Designers, Edwin Chan and Craig Webb, guide us through the full range of Gehry production, from the small details of furniture design to famous large-scale undertakings such as the Disney Concert Hall and Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The drawings, illustrations and text in Gehry Draws definitively place drawing at the heart of Frank Gehry's creative process.

Frank O Gehry was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1929. He first established his architectural practice in Los Angeles in 1962 and is now one of the world’s most highly acclaimed architects. His iconic work, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, has earned Gehry numerous prestigious international awards, including the Pritzker Prize in 1989 and the Praemium Imperiale in 1992.

Mark Rappolt is a freelance writer, curator, and editor of Art Review. He was also formerly the editor of AA Files, the journal of the Architectural Association in London. Rappolt is also the editor of Greg Lynn: FORM (2007).

Horst Bredekamp is Professor of Art History at the University of Humboldt (University of Berlin) and a Permanent Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Bredekamp was also a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1991), at the Getty Center, Los Angeles (1995 and 1998), and at the Collegium Budapest (1999).

Rene Daalder is a Dutch-born virtual-reality filmmaker based in Los Angeles. He wrote and directed six feature films and has collaborated with numerous musicians, architects and digital pioneers throughout his career..

Edited by Mark Rappolt and Robert Violette
Designed by Peter B Willberg
Hardback with die-cut dustjacket
544 pages, 950 illustrations
25.4 x 19.6 cm (h x w)
ISBN: 978-1-900828-10-9

Published in 2002 in hardback and in 2004 in paperback by Violette Editions

‘Leigh Bowery was clearly one of the most eye-poppingly extraordinary figures of our times’ – Martin Gayford, The Daily Telegraph

’Aghast at what first appears to be ugly and crude, we are finally overwhelmed by Bowery's innate beauty.’ – Richard Martin, Metropolitan Museum of Art

This book is the definitive guide to the unique looks designed and worn by the late Leigh Bowery. One of Britain’s heroically ambitious yet underappreciated designers and performance artists, Bowery remains an inspiration to many contemporary artists and fashion designers, though few are willing to admit it. In Leigh Bowery Looks you can easily see why: it contains more than 250 previously unpublished photographs of Bowery, an extraordinary body of work that was the outcome of his collaboration with British photographer Fergus Greer between 1988 and 1994, the year of Bowery’s death.

Fergus Greer was born and lives in England. His photographic work has been published in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine and The New York Times Magazine. His portraits of Leigh Bowery have been exhibited in group shows at The Hayward Gallery, London, and the Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg. In 2006 the National Portrait Gallery, London, displayed 20 of his photographs in Fergus Greer: Photographer in Focus, marking the Gallery‘s acquisition of ‘an important archive’ of 50 of his portraits.

Leigh Bowery (1961–1994) was a performance artist, fashion designer, night-club sensation, art object, aspiring pop-star and, above all, an alternative icon whose influence traversed the music, art, film and fashion worlds. Perhaps he is best-known for his role as the muse and nude model for some of Lucian Freud’s most famous paintings; ironic for the man who was infamous for his costumes. Bowery arrived in London in 1980 from Sunshine, Australia, collaborated notoriously with the dancer Michael Clark, as well as being proprietor of the infamous 1980s nightclub Taboo. In the 1990s, Leigh Bowery created performances that both delighted and outraged audiences in New York, London and Tokyo.

Leigh Bowery has already been the subject of a major monograph, published in 1998 by Violette Editions, a biography by author Sue Tilley published by Hodder & Stoughton (agented by Robert Violette), as well as a documentary film by New York director Charles Atlas, available on DVD.

Foreword by Mariuccia Casadio
Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Peter B Willberg
176 pages, 100 colour/100 duotone illustrations
20 x 15 cm (8 x 6 in, h x w)
HB ISBN: 978-1-900828-19-2
PB ISBN: 978-1-900828-27-7

The 1941 classic, brought back into print in 2001 by Violette Editions

‘A great book ... the most realistic and most important moral effort of our American generation.’ – Lionel Trilling

’Masterpiece.’ – Newsweek

One of the New York Public Library’s Books of the 20th Century

First published nearly a century ago – and, until this hardback edition from Violette Editions, out of print in the UK for more than 40 years – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men stands as an undisputed American Masterpiece, taking its place alongside works by Thoreau, Melville and Whitman. A stunning blend of prose and images, this classic offers at once an unforgettable portrait of three tenant families in the Deep South and a larger meditation on human dignity and the American soul.

In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on an assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. The result was an unsparing record of place, of the people who shaped the land, and the rhythm of their lives. Upon its first book publication in 1941, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was called intensely moving, unrelentingly honest.
It described a mode of life – and rural poverty – that was unthinkably remote and tragic to most Americans. Today it stands as a poetic tract for its time.

With the famous 64-page photographic prologue of Evans’s stunning images, reproduced from archival negatives, this new British edition introduces the legendary author and photographer
to a new generation.

James Agee (1909–55) won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel A Death in the Family. He worked as a reporter and critic for Fortune, Time and The Nation and wrote for film and television. Agee‘s other books include a volume of poems, Permit Me Voyage, the novel The Morning Watch, and several collections of correspondence, film reviews and film scripts.

Walker Evans (1903–75) is best known for his striking Depression-era photographs. He served as editor for both Time and Fortune magazines and was a professor of graphic arts at Yale. His other well-known books include American Photographs and Message
from the Interior. The first major retrospective of Evans’s work was organised by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2000.

Designed by Peter B Willberg
Hardback with dustjacket, 432 pages plus 64-page photographic prologue
22.8 x 19 cm (9 x 7 ½ in, h x w)
ISBN 978-1-900828-15-4

Published in 2001 by Violette Editions

‘A ripe blend of master craftsmanship and Monty Pythonesque lunacy.‘ – Monument

’Pure inspiration ... superbly designed.’ – Ink

Introduction by William Gibson (in English, French, German, Italian and Japanese). Collaborations with and/or writings by Richard Williams, James Flint, Glen Baxter, Paul Slater, Mick Brownfield, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Semir Zeki, Jim Davies and others.

Sir Paul Smith has combined a flair for eccentric, subversive detail,a dedication to the highest standards of craftmanship, and a business and marketing sense that has enabled him to become perhaps the most successful fashion designer in British history. However, this particular book – Smith’s first major publication – is not a fashion monograph. Rather, imagine Paul Smith's brain on a page, a book that explores his universe and creative process in novel and surprising ways.

Sir Paul Smith (b. 1946) is a multi-award-winning designer who works in a variety of media and is best known for his menswear collections. He was knighted in 2000 for services to fashion design and in 2007 he was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Forty years after opening his first shop, Paul Smith has expanded to a global brand with stores in New York, Tokyo, Cape Town, Moscow, Dubai and throughout Europe, each of which is inspired by his original Covent Garden premises in Floral Street but individually designed to suit its locality. Smith’s designs have been the subject of exhibitions including True Brit at the Design Museum, London, which toured to Europe and Japan, and Observations at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

William Gibson, acclaimed writer and psychogeographer, is perhaps best known for coining the term 'cyberspace' in his Sprawl trilogy – Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Later novels include Pattern Recognition, which reached number four on The New York Times Bestseller list, and Spook Country.

Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Alan Aboud
Bespoke polystyrene case designed by Sir Jonathan Ive
Clothbound in 25 varied styles of original Paul Smith fabrics
296 pages, over 1000 illustrations with two posters, a magnifying glass and a comic book
25.4 x 21.6 cm (10 x 8.5 in, h x w)
ISBN 978-1-900828-18-5

Eleven interior papers generously sponsored by Scheufelen GMBH

Recylable case sponsored by the UK Expanded-Polystyrene Guild

Comic book paper sponsored by Tyvek

Published in 1999 by Violette Editions

‘By all means untie the maroon satin ribbon holding Double Game closed and open the floodgate of Calle's images, ideas, stories, memories. The book Calle has created ... is rich and true and completely satisfying. But like a great French meal, it leaves us wanting more.’ – Julie Martin, New York Times Book Review

‘A hefty, luxurious, compendium, Double Game is a hall of mirrors.’ – Yves Alain Bois, Artforum

‘A fine book ... we come to know Sophie Calle as we know a character in a work of fiction – and a truly fascinating and eccentric character she is.’ – William Boyd, The Daily Telegraph

Double Game is the first major publication in English by French artist Sophie Calle. Taking the form of a double jeu, between the work of Sophie Calle and the fiction of Paul Auster, this title is reprinted in a smaller format – reprising all the qualities of the first edition, including its ribbon – to coincide with the 52nd Venice Biennale, at which Calle represented France.

The story begins with Maria, the fictional character in Paul Auster’s novel, Leviathan. Most of Maria’s works are, in fact, based on those of Sophie Calle. The first section of Double Game takes us through the few original works by Maria that Sophie makes her own, presented both in their fictional context and illustrated by Calle’s actual reproduction of them. In the second section, the story delves deeper into the crux of Calle’s world, with a sequence of Calle’s seminal narrative and abstract works in texts and images that were appropriated by Maria in Leviathan. The third section of Double Game takes the dialogue straight to Maria’s original creator, Paul Auster, who in turn takes Calle as his subject, formulating for her the Gotham Handbook, which offers ‘Personal Instructions for SC on How to Improve Life in New York City (Because she asked...)’.

Sophie Calle works with photography, performance and literature. Born in Paris in 1953, since the 1980s her work has been shown at galleries and museums throughout the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou, which hosted a major retrospective in 2005. In 2007, Calle represented France in a critically acclaimed show at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Paul Auster is known for his writing about identity and personal meaning. He was born in New Jersey in 1947. After attending Columbia University he lived in France for four years. Since 1974 he has published poems, essays, novels and translations. His novels include The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and Mr Vertigo.

With the participation of Paul Auster
Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Frost Design (Vince Frost and Melanie Mues)
Large-format hardback, 296 pages, over 400 illustrations
29.2 x 20.7 cm (11 ½ x 8 in)
ISBN: 978-1-900828-06-2

Published in 1998 by Violette Editions

‘Biography means more than just a personal thing. It means
the interrelationship of all processes and not the splitting of
life into separate compartments: a wholeness. By biography I understand the development of everything. My personal history is of interest only in so far as I have attempted to use my life and person as a tool, and I think this was from a very early age.’ – Joseph Beuys, from a conversation with Caroline Tisdall, 1978

The working partnership of writer Caroline Tisdall and artist Joseph Beuys was among the twentieth century’s most productive relationships between artist and amanuensis. This photographic record documents their wide-ranging travels for Beuys’s performances, installations and lectures from the early 1970s
until his death in 1986. It is also the long-awaited follow-up to Tisdall’s seminal 1979 book on the artist, which accompanied the exhibition of Beuys’s work that she curated for the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

This book’s title, We Go This Way, refers to a phrase used by Beuys in his work with Tisdall and suggests a way forward through the often daunting complexity of Beuys’s philosophy and art. More than 300 of Tisdall’s own photographs, most of which are previously unpublished, are accompanied throughout by a text in which Tisdall leads the reader through such diverse topics as Beuys’s relationship to ecology, politics, shamanism, alchemy, botany, literature, economics, philosophy and psychology. Her observations on Beuys’s art reach a poetic simplicity rarely achieved in art writing – all the more remarkable given the multi-layered nature of his work.

Joseph Beuys (1921–86) was one of the most important German artists of the twentieth century and a pioneer of performance and conceptual art. In 2005 Tate Modern held a major retrospective of his work.

Caroline Tisdall (b. 1946) has written numerous books on Joseph Beuys. Previously a feature writer for The Guardian, she has also written and directed films ‘Joseph Beuys’ for BBC2 and ‘The Last Post Run'‘ for Channel 4. Tisdall curated the landmark Joseph Beuys retrospective in 1979 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Peter B Willberg
416 pages, over 400 b/w illustrations
29.7 x 21 cm (11¾ x 8½ in, h x w)
HB ISBN: 978-1-900828-13-0
PB ISBN: 978-1-900828-12-3

Published in 1998 by Violette Editions, and translated into five additional languages

‘The role of rage in female artistic creation rings out with a special resonance in Bourgeois's writings. Bourgeois says what she feels, without fear that her statements won't add up to a seamless whole. She has succeeded in fashioning a creative self, as richly ambiguous as her sculpture.’ – Linda Nochlin, Lingua Franca

From the age of 12 and throughout her life, the internationally renowned sculptor Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) made written notes and drawings: first a diary precisely recounting the everyday events of her family life, then observations and reflections. Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father – this title’s importance was vehemently emphasised to Robert Violette over tea at her kitchen table and comes from the name of a sculpture she made following the death of her husband in 1973 – contains both formal texts and what the artist called ‘pen-thoughts’: drawing-texts often connected to her sculptures, with stories or poems inscribed alongside the images.

For Bourgeois, writing was a means of expression that gained increasing importance over the years, particularly during her periods of insomnia. The writing is compulsive, but it can also be perfectly controlled, informed by her intellectual background, knowledge of art history and sense of literary form (she frequently published articles on artists, exhibitions and art events). Bourgeois, a private woman ‘without secrets’, gave numerous interviews to journalists, artists and writers, expressing her views on her oeuvre, revealing its hidden meanings and relating the connection of certain works to the traumas of her childhood. This book collects both her writings and her spoken remarks on art, confirming the deep links between her work and her biography and offering new insights into her creative thinking and process.

Marie-Laure Bernadac is chief curator in charge of contemporary
art projects at the Louvre. She previously worked at the Picasso Museum, at the Centre Georges Pompidou, and at the Capc Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux. Bernadac has
published numerous books on artist’s writings, including those
of Picasso, Annette Messager (published by Violette Editions)
and Jenny Holzer.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist is Co-Director of the Serpentine Gallery in London and was formerly a curator at ARC Musée d'art moderne
de la Ville de Paris and at the Museum-in-Progress, Vienna. With Robert Violette, he edited The Words of Gilbert & George, also published by Violette Editions.

Edited and introduced by Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist
Designed by Peter B Willberg
Paperback, 384 pages, 140 b/w illustrations
20 x 15 cm (8 x 6 in, h x w)
ISBN: 978-1-900828-07-9

The first major book on this great artist, published in 1998 by Violette Editions

‘Any appraisal of Leigh as a performer tends to involve words like punk, kink, drag, camp, schlock. To my mind he transcends those concepts. Thanks to his twisted imagination and wit, he was able to soar above modish trashiness and establish himself as a subversive artist.’ – John Richardson, The New Yorker

Texts, interviews, photographs and other contributions by Leigh Bowery, Nicola Bowery, Tom Bowery, Cerith Wyn Evans, Charles Atlas, Lucian Freud, Bruce Bernard, Michael Clark, Nick Knight,
Rifat Ozbek, Fergus Greer, Sue Tilley, Richard Torry, John Maybury, Annie Leibovitz and others.

Leigh Bowery (1961–94) was a performance artist, fashion designer, nightclub sensation, art object, trained pianist, aspiring pop-star and above all an icon whose influence traversed the music, art, film and fashion worlds. Perhaps his best-known role was as the nude model for some of Lucian Freud's most famous and powerful paintings – ironic for the man whose costumes were legendary and which famously frightened taxi drivers, persuaded Japanese tourists to queue for hours and inspired fashion gurus from Vivienne Westwood to John Galliano.

This highly illustrated book is the first and only complete monograph on the artist and includes previously unpublished photographs and ephemera from Bowery's personal archive. It documents his life and work from his arrival in London in 1980 from Sunshine, Australia, through his collaborations with the dancer Michael Clark, his proprietorship of the infamous 1980s nightclub Taboo, his outrageous performances in New York, London and Tokyo, to his formation of the pop group Minty and in the 1990s his most famous incarnation as muse for the painter Lucian Freud, whose portraits of Bowery hang in the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums around the world.

Hilton Als, a staff writer and theatre critic for The New Yorker, also writes for American Vogue and Artforum and is the author of The Women (1997). He is a Guggenheim Fellow and in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In addition to his writing and academic roles, such as his position as inaugural Presidential Visiting Scholar at Princeton University in 2020, Als has also curated exhibitions by Alice Neel, Celia Paul and the group show Forces of Nature.

Introduction by Hilton Als, afterword by Boy George
Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Alan Aboud
Printed cloth binding, 240 pages
Over 300 colour illustrations
35 x 33.3 cm (13 ¾ x 13 in, h x w)
ISBN: 978-1-900828-04-8

Published in 1997 by Violette Editions

‘Gilbert and George continue a tradition in England of visionaries who are both remarkable artists and remarkable poets.’ – David Sylvester

‘I urge anyone interested in contemporary art and contemporary London to read The Words of Gilbert & George.’ – Lisa Liebmann in Bookforum

‘Gilbert & George are among the most original, forceful and profound artists of their generation ... in the line of Spencer and Bacon as artists who are prepared to square up to the great issues of the human condition.’ – The Burlington Magazine

Notoriously controversial statements, writings, interviews and manifesto art works from 1969 to 1997 by Gilbert and George are collected here for the first time. This important anthology includes previously unpublished material as well as the complete text of the artists’ rare book Side by Side (1971), passages from Dark Shadow (1974) and the complete unedited transcript of the artists’ film The World of Gilbert & George (1980). Illustrated with almost 30 years of portraits of the artists by photographers such as Cecil Beaton, David Bailey and Wolfgang Tillmans, this book also includes conversations with Anne Seymour, Gordon Burn, Shere Hite,
Wolf Jahn, Dave Stewart and many others. This is a delightful compendium, revealing these artists’ prodigious talent for creating paradoxes which, surprisingly, bring hope and passion out from the midst of the neon rush of post-war culture.

Gilbert and George (b. 1943 and 1942) are two of the most important living British artists on the international scene. Immensely popular and instantly recognisable by their inscrutable manner and formal dress, their work has been the subject of major exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and America, including a retrospective at Tate Modern in 2007.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist is Co-Director of the Serpentine Gallery in London and was formerly a curator at ARC Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris and at the Museum-in-Progress, Vienna. With Marie-Laure Bernadac, he has also edited the collected writings and interviews of Louise Bourgeois, also published by Violette Editions.

Edited by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Robert Violette
Designed by Peter B Willberg
Paperback, 376 pages, 230 illustrations
23.4 x 16.2 cm (9 x 6 ½ in, h x w)
ISBN: 978-1-900828-00-0

Published in 1997 by Violette Editions

‘These photographs are perceptive for being ordinary, unstaged documents of a particular moment in time. John Deakin did this in Soho in the 1950s with his photographs of Freud, Auerbach, Bacon and Andrews; Johnnie Shand Kydd has done it for the new generation of artists who have come to prominence alongside Damien Hirst.’ – The Independent on Sunday

‘Unpretentious photographs by an absolute insider: Shand Kydd may well be the Billy Name of the ‘90s, so this book is an absolute must.‘ – Elle Decoration

In the 1990s a wave of new talent crashed upon a complacent London art scene. Distinguished artists, who for decades had enjoyed uncontested positions at the forefront of the avant garde, overnight had to pack their bags and join the ranks of the establishment while new arrivals revelled in the limelight and earned international recognition.

Such moments of change visit a city rarely. In 1996 Johnnie Shand Kydd began to photograph, spontaneously and without an agenda, moments shared with artists in their studios and homes, at exhibition openings and favourite watering holes. The resulting collection of portraits captures the energy and sense of community generated by this renowned group of artists, including Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, John Maybury, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gavin Turk, Marc Quinn, Gillian Wearing, Rachel Whiteread, Cerith Wyn Evans and many others.

Johnnie Shand Kydd (b. 1959) worked at a Bond Street Gallery selling 19th-century paintings for a number of years before beginning to take photographs of his artist friends and those in his social sphere. As a participant rather than solely an observer, he captured a community of YBAs (Young British Artists) before they became household names, including artists featured in the Sensation show at the Royal Academy in 1997. His work was subsequently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. Other publications of his photography include Hydra (2015), Crash (2011) and Siren City (2009).

Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Peter B Willberg
Paperback, 208 pages, 204 b/w illustrations
9 x 7 1/2 in (23.5 x 18 cm, h x w)
ISBN 1-900828-01-7