The Short Story of Modern Art explains the how, why and when of modern art – who introduced certain things, what they were, where they were produced, and why they matter.

Simply constructed, the book explores 50 key works – from the realist painting of Courbet to a contemporary installation by Yayoi Kusama – and then links them to the most important movements, themes and techniques. Accessible, concise and richly illustrated, the book reveals the connections between different periods, ...

After the death of Stalin, a small group of art enthusiasts in the Soviet Union started to collect modernist artworks that were considered formalist or anti-revolutionary, and were therefore ignored by official art institutions.

By doing so, these collectors played a pivotal role in the preservation of a crucial and now globally celebrated period of Russian cultural history.

The Paleev collection is the last of these private art collections to remain intact and in the hands of the family. It...

Male bonds were omnipresent in nineteenth-century European artistic scenes, impacting the creation, presentation, and reception of art in decisive ways. Men’s lives and careers bore the marks of their relations with other men. Yet, such male bonds are seldom acknowledged for what they are: gendered and historically determined social constructs. This volume shines a critical light on male homosociality in the arts of the long nineteenth century by combining art history with the insights of g...

Rather than centring on the well-known collections in Western European and North American museums, Collecting Asian Art turn to museum collections of Asian art in Central Europe which emerged from the late 19th century onwards. Highlighting the dimensions of Central European connectedness, this volume explores how these collections evolved and changed under changing cultural and political conditions from the pre-World War I to the post-World War II periods. With a primary focus on collections...