BELLAS ARTES

In spaces that forgo easy categorization of traditional or contemporary, Hallberg uses art and objects from every genre and era—eighteenth-century gilt consoles, African baskets, selenite-slab tables—in a seductive interpretation of modernity that embodies the multifaceted, multicultural way we live today. Wrought by a native Californian with the heart of a classicist, these rooms reserve space for sunlight, foliage, and the sound of trickling water, which make the exalted approachable and revere the perfectly imperfect. Hallberg incorporates the finest natural and artisanal materials—reclaimed wood, hand-troweled plaster, marble, limestone, crisp linen, and sumptuous wool—but understands that the greatest luxury of all is comfort. This volume chronicles the instinctual process of a designer who eschews hard-and-fast rules for the wonder of breaking them, who leaves no stone unturned in his uncompromising search for beauty, and whose lifelong pursuit of the magical, ineffable, and gorgeous has yielded an incomparable oeuvre.

The House of Chanel offers rare access behind the scenes to three haute couture runway shows designed in dialogue with contemporary artist Xavier Veilhan. Virginie Viard, artistic director for Chanel’s fashion collections, entrusted Xavier Veilhan with the set design for three consecutive haute couture shows: Spring‒Summer 2022, Fall‒Winter 2022/23, and Spring‒Summer 2023. This unusually long dialogue resulted in an original visual universe, blending Veilhan’s poetic imagination, his reinterpretation of the Chanel world, and the infinite delicacy of Virginie Viard’s haute couture creations.

The Kisokaido route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country’s then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travelers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaido journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838.

At the age of six, Hokusai was said to have painted his first picture, and a year after his death aged 89, his designs for illustrated books were posthumously published. Tracing a long, prolific career, this edition spans each of the artist’s creative phases: from the actor portraits with which Hokusai started out to the 1,300 designs carried out in his final years under the name Manji.Reproducing 746 woodblock prints, paintings, sketches, and book illustrations, many of them in granular detail, this volume is comfortably the most complete publication on perhaps Japan’s most famous artist. Hokusai’s wide appeal as the recognizable figure of Japan’s Edo period endures to this day: in March 2023, a version of his iconic woodblock print Under the Wave off Kanagawa (or The Great Wave), from his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, was auctioned for 2.76 million US dollars.

La nueva biografía de Sheff sobre Yoko Ono, la artista de 92 años y viuda de John Lennon, argumenta convincentemente su relevancia como feminista, activista, innovadora vanguardista y una descarada de clase mundial. Sheff—prolífico periodista y autor que realizó una de las últimas entrevistas significativas con John y Yoko para Playboy, y posteriormente se hizo amigo de ella—ha escrito lo más cercano a una biografía autorizada que el mundo puede encontrar. El libro es sustancioso y, como era previsible, compasivo pero no adulador, escrito principalmente con una prosa directa que sugiere que la compasión está plenamente justificada por una figura que no solo fue desestimada sino demonizada.

Ese azul… El artista a quien se le debe el azul de ultramar A mediados de la década de 1950, Yves Klein (1928-1962) declaró que “un mundo nuevo exige un hombre nuevo”. Su peculiar estilo idiosincrático y su gran carisma llevaron a este audaz artista a desarrollar una breve pero fructífera carrera, pues pintó más de mil cuadros en un periodo de siete años, cuadros que hoy se consideran clásicos del arte moderno de posguerra. Klein se labró un nombre sobre todo con sus lienzos monocromos de gran formato pintados con el tono de azul que él mismo patentó. El International Klein Blue (IKB), compuesto de pigmento puro y un aglutinante, es a un tiempo denso y luminoso, evocador y decorativo, y Klein lo concibió para evocar la cualidad inmaterial e infinita del mundo. Las obras de esta revolución azul parecen transportarnos a otra dimensión, como si cayéramos hipnotizados por un cielo de verano perfecto.