Grounded!

Volcanic ash over Europe means no jet-setting to Paris to see the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective, Chicago to admire the Matisse show or New York to see the Picassos at the Met.

Forget the delays and invest in the lavish publications instead.
Enjoy the sunshine and the silent London skies and spend the day travelling vicariously from haute couture to the experimental, abstracted works that Matisse made in the early decade of the twentieth century.


Ah the bliss of island life!


The exhibition catalogues ‘Yves Saint Laurent’ ed. Florence Muller and Farin Chenoune (£35.00) and ‘Matisse: Radical Invention 1913-1917’ ed. Stephanie Alessandro and John Elderfield and ‘Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’, ed. Gary Tinterow and Susan Alyson Stein are all available at Potterton Books, London.

A fond farewell - and some great photography books..!

This is my last Sunday which is sad, but I was cheered up by the fact there are lots of lovely new books in at the moment! I'm a paticular fan of the new photography books we have in - a great one on the great unknown German photographer, Arno Fischer has some great portraiture in, especially one of Marlene Dietrich (also captured by Irving Penn in the new National Gallery exhibition book, Irving Penn: Portraits). The Patrick Demarchelier book is also simply stunning with every famous face you can think of staring back at you - from Kate Moss as standard, to Julian Schnabel! Others to mention are the Herbert List: Junge Manner out of print book - List's beautiful depiction of modern, male model offers a take on Greek classical sculpture, and the new Visconti picture biography traces the life and work of one of Italy's greatest and most passionate theatre and movie directors with fabulous stills from various productions and films.