In the 19th century an African possession cult called zār arrived in Egypt and became hugely popular. Jewellery formed an integral part of this cult, and silver pendants with images of spirits started to appear in the early 20th century. And there is more: zār also used beaded jewellery as well as a wide range of other jewels.

Currently, jewellery items with spirit images are sought-after collectors’ items, present in collections of both private collectors and museums. These collections a...

History of Japanese Art after 1945 is a compilation of essays that surveys the development of art in Japan since WWII. The original Japanese work, which has become essential reading for those with an interest in modern contemporary Japanese art and is a foundational resource for students and researchers, spans the 150 years from the 1850s to the 2010s. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific period and written by a specialist on the subject matter.

For this English edition, overseen by Art Pl...

In Anarchy of the Body, art historian KuroDalaiJee (a.k.a. Kuroda Raiji) sheds light on vital pieces of postwar Japanese avant-garde history by contextualizing the social, cultural, and political trajectories of artists across Japan in the 1960s. A culmination of years of research, Anarchy of the Body draws on an extensive breadth of source material to reveal how the practice of performance by individual artists and art groups during this period formed a legacy of resistance against instituti...

What happens when two art forms – the literary and the visual arts – come together? For its bicentenary, the Mauritshuis asked 200 writers to draw inspiration from the museum’s collection. The crème de la crème of today's literary community, from at home and abroad, participated in this remarkable book. One writer; one work of art from the Mauritshuis; 200 words per contribution – never before have so many authors appeared together in a single publication. To name just a few of the ...