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Pigments of the Imagination: Art & Archaeology from Across the Colour Spectrum

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What better way to liven up a dull January than with a celebration of colour – especially when the Art Library has so many bright and brilliant resources to offer!

Colour is an endlessly fascinating subject because of the way that it combines both science and creativity, and this connection is explored in several of the books on display. Some, like An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour or Koekboya focus on pigments and dyes. Both include information on a dizzying array of colours, used in art and textiles, but the former would be of great interest to anyone who wants to learn more about art conservation or museum studies too, as the curators of the Forbes Collection share stories of when they have used their expertise for art conservation, painting dating and verification, and for discovery of new pigments or rediscovery of lost ones.

The book covers for An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour and Koekboya

Other books in this display, such as Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980 and Colour Mania: Photographing the World in Autochrome look at the evolution of colour photography in different settings and time periods, with the former detailing colour photography’s initial struggle to gain acceptance in the world of US high art, while the latter examines a relatively fleeting period of photographic history, but one that nonetheless represents an impressive technological achievement

Starburst

The book covers for Starburst and Colour Mania

However, the Ashmolean Museum exhibition catalogue for Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design is a particularly interesting text for looking at the connection between the science and culture of colour due to its broad-ranging and interdisciplinary approach. In this book, the authors of the various essays weave together the history of Victorian manufacturing, archaeology, art movements, photography, and of the British Empire to tell the story of an oft-forgotten side of a period that is generally viewed in black and white.

Poster for Colour Revolution exhibition

The poster image for the Ashmolean Colour Revolution exhibition

Another important scientific dimension of colour is psychology, and, while this subject is touched upon in the previous titles, the display features two books that focus on it heavily: Colour Ordered and Materiality as a Window into the Cognitive Past. In the former, the authors discuss how scientists have been thwarted throughout history in their attempts to find purely physical explanations for people’s reactions to colour – such as how the eye’s cone cells react to light – as there is no consistency across cultures. Then, in Materiality as a Window into the Cognitive Past, David Warburton attempts to understand specifically how the cultures of Ancient Egypt understood and used various hues by analysing their colour terminologies. In doing so, he points out interesting examples of how colour words are far less universal than one might think (‘the colour word for “orange” was only invented around five centuries ago [even though] oranges themselves have been known for thousands of years’)[1] and how Old Kingdom Egyptians used colour symbolism in art (using blue to depict copper vessels).[2] He points out that Ancient Egyptian texts are one of the best sources for this sort of study because they represent the ‘oldest existing continuous long-range data-set for colour terminology from a single language’.[3]

[1] D. Warburton, Materiality as a Window into the Cognitive Past: Ancient Egyptian Colour

Terminology in its Historical Context, Wallasey, Abercrombie Press, 2025, p.xxiv

[2] Ibid., p.ix

[3] Ibid., p.1

However, the history of polychromy in sculpture as detailed in Gods in Color provides a vivid example of how art historians have taken a far less thorough approach in the past and misinterpreted ancient artistic visions. Two of the minds behind the exhibition – Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann – are cited by Margaret Talbot in her article on this subject for the New Yorker. In that article, she provides a timeline of how the misapprehension that classical sculpture has always been and should always be white came about, the different justifications that have been made, and the research that has attempted to correct this notion. Talbot points out how the idea that ‘that Greek and Roman artists had left their buildings and sculptures bare as a pointed gesture [that] confirmed their superior rationality’ has been reinforced by and served European imperialist mores. Another researcher whom she cites, David Batchelor, is also present in the display through his book Chromophobia, which goes into far more depth on this topic.

The book covers for Gods in Color and Chromophobia

It has been fascinating to uncover the shades of meaning that colour in art and archaeology can convey and I hope that you feel inspired to explore some of these titles further, as well as the many, many colourful titles that the Art Library has on its shelves.

Bibliography

D. Batchelor, Chromophobia, London, Reaktion, 2000.

P. Baty, Nature’s Palette: A Colour Reference System from the Natural World, London, Thames & Hudson, 2021.

C. Blackman, The Colour of Clothes: Fashion and Dress in Autochromes 1907-1930, London, New York, Thames & Hudson, 2025.

H. Böhmer et al., Koekboya: Natural Dyes and Textiles: A Colour Journey from Turkey to India and Beyond, Ganderkesee, Remhöb, 2002.

V. Brinkmann, R. Dreyfus, and U. Koch-Brinkmann (eds.), Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World, San Francisco CA, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, 2017.

V. Brinkmann, S. Hemingway, and S. Lepinski, Chroma: Sculpture in Color from Antiquity to Today, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025.

K. A. Bussard and L. Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman, New York, Aperture, 2013.

J. Crump, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980, Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2010.

H. Hägele, Colour in Sculpture: A Survey from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Present, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013.

Y. Hayakawa and S. Shirono, Color & Material: Nihon Kaiga no Iro to Zairyō, Ōsaka-shi : Raibu Āto Bukkusu, 2018.

M. Hewitson, C. Ribeyrol, and M. Winterbottom (eds.), Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 2023.

M. Hoecherl, Controlling Colours: Function and Meaning of Colour in the British Iron Age, Oxford, Archaeopress, 2015.

L. A. Kalba, Color in the Age of Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017.

R. G. Kuehni and A. Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

A. Loske, Colour: A Visual History, Lewes, Ilex, 2019.

A. Loske, The Artist’s Palette: The Palettes Behind the Paintings of 50 Great Artists, London, Thames & Hudson, 2024.

R. Nath, Colour Decoration in Mughal Architecture, Bombay : D. B. Taraporevala Sons, 1970.

S. Pénichon and J. Rohrbach, Color: American Photography Transformed, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2013.

C. Purnell, ‘There’s Nothing Neutral about Neutral Colors: The vivid history of colonialism and chromophobia.’, Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/making-sense/202006/there-s-nothing-neutral-about-neutral-colors, (accessed 15 January 2025).

M. Talbot, ‘Color Blind’, The New Yorker, vol. XCIV; no. 34, October 29 2018, p.44.

A. Temkin, Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 2008.

A. Varichon, Color Charts: A History, trans. K. Deimling, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2024.

D. Warburton, Materiality as a Window into the Cognitive Past: Ancient Egyptian Colour Terminology in its Historical Context, Wallasey, Abercrombie Press, 2025.

The Art and Archaeology of Eating Drinking and Being Merry

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by Ashley Parry

As we now enter the time of year where many people in the UK are preparing to indulge in feasting and partying, what better way to mark this festive season than to explore how food and drink have been enjoyed and represented throughout history and across the globe. Thankfully, the Art Library and Bodleian collections contain a wide range of books on the subject – hopefully with something to tempt any palate!

Eating, Drinking and being Merry
Image of the display for The Art and archaeology of Eating Drinking and Being Merry

Food is deeply embedded in many cultures around the world and the way that artists depict their national cuisines has a lot to say about not only diets, but also politics and the way that these artists want their culture and its food to be seen. For example, the book Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism explores how attitudes to food – long a source of French soft power – were shaped by the turbulent period at the end of the nineteenth-century, and how impressionist painters sought to both stabilise and question pre-existing ideals. Then, in Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, each essay by the book’s various authors explores a different period of US painting, and how depictions of food also represented trends of anxiety, nationalism, and consumerism.

Farm to Table & Art and Appetite covers
Left: The cover for the book Farm to Table; Right: Book cover for Art and Appetite

The way that food loaded with meaning can be used to tell national and cultural stories can also be seen in ancient literature. As John Wilkins argues in The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy, for Greek poetry and drama, the consumption of food, is usually associated with successful sacrifices to the gods, and therefore, a world running as it should. Because these sacrifices are so often unsuccessful in tragedy and epic, it is only comedy that is allowed to return to the subject of food repeatedly. Wilkins furthermore notes that comedy, above all other Greek genres available to us, includes enough variety of people and life experiences that the authors are able to explore the cultural significance of food in a wide-ranging way. Similarly, in Fillets of Fatling and Goblets of Gold, Dan Belnap examines Ugaritic literature to find evidence of the ritual significance of feasts and other meals in the Ancient Near East.

However, visual art and literary depictions can only tell half the story. To learn more, it really helps to examine archaeology and material culture, and this is part of what I have found so fascinating about exploring this topic at the Art Library: food and drink is a great medium for exploring the intersection between art and archaeology and for showing just how much they’re linked! It can be difficult, though, to find direct evidence of food and its consumption, due to the biodegradable nature of foodstuffs – outside of famous outliers like the carbonised bread uncovered in Pompeii (pictured below). Even though, as shown in the book Ancient Starch Research, there are methods available to archaeologists for looking at ancient food directly, these are very specific and reliant on chance.

Left: Carbonised bread excavated from Pompeii. Source: Wikimedia Commons; Right: The Book Cover for Ancient Starch Research

The information from such methods can be supplemented by looking at the tools that people used to prepare and eat their food. For instance, in Dining with the Sultan, Jessica Hallett details how Persian turquoise jars found as far afield as Japan and Chinese tableware found at Iranian sites from the same period attest to the connectedness of the Abbasid world. It was this connectedness that allowed the Abbasid empire access to commodities such as cinnamon and rhubarb. Then, in Elegant Eating: Four Hundred Years of Dining in Style and Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500-2005, there are many examples of more modern, but no less fascinating historical utensils. Have you ever heard of a macaroni knife? What about an ice cream hatchet? I certainly hadn’t before this book.

Left: Book cover for Dining With the Sultan; Right: Cover for Feeding Desire.
Left: Book cover for Dining With the Sultan; Right: Cover for Feeding Desire.

Then again, the beautiful designs of the cutlery and ceramics in the last two books show how it’s not always easy to draw a line between visual and material culture. For example, the exhibition recorded in Feast & Fast: The Art of Food in Europe 1500-1800 relies on a mixture of both objects and artworks, and sometimes a blending of the two, as utensils for serving consumables, are often adorned with images of them too, such as the pineapple-inspired Staffordshire porcelain teapot shown below. A very similar Staffordshire teapot is also featured in Feast & Fast.

Tea pot designed to resemble a pineapple.
A Staffordshire porcelain teapot decorated with a pineapple inspired design with spiked leaves from the base, and a yellow textured design over the rest of the main body. Source: Wikimedia Commons

However, Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art goes a step further than this and asks what if the act of eating and serving food can be art. These range from Tom Marioni’s The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends is the Highest Form of Art to Marina Abramović’s Communist Body/Fascist Body.

I was particularly inspired by Los Angeles-based art collective Fallen Fruit, and I especially enjoyed reading about their Public Fruit Jam projects. During these events, members of the public are invited to bring fruit and to work with strangers to make jam. I love this concept because of the way it encourages community collaboration and new approaches to cooking and ingredients.

Fallen Fruit event
People taking part in one of Fallen Fruit’s Public Fruit Jam events. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

On that note, we hope that you too find something that inspires you in this collection of books – or perhaps just something new. From all of us at the Art Library, have a satisfying and fun-filled holiday season!

Bibliography

P. Arbiter, Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975.

V. Avery and M. Calaresu (eds.), Feast & Fast: The Art of Food in Europe 1500-1800, London : Philip Wilson Publishers, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2019.

J. A. Barter (ed.), Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.

H. Barton and R. Torrence, Ancient Starch Research, Walnut Creek CA, Left Coast Press, 2006.

D. Belnap, Fillets of Fatling and Goblets of Gold: The Use of Meal Events in the Ritual Imagery in the Ugaritic Mythological and Epic Texts, Piscataway NJ, Gorgias Press, 2008.

K. Bendiner, Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present, London, Reaktion, 2004.

A. Briers, Eat, Drink and Be Merry, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1990.

S. Coffin, Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500-2005, New York, Assouline, 2006.

G. E. Cummins, Antique Boxes – Inside and Out: For Eating, Drinking and Being Merry, Work, Play and the Boudoir, Easthampton MA, Antique Collectors’ Club, 2006.

A. Dalby, Food in the Ancient World from A-Z, London, Routledge, 2003.

A. Dalby, Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece, London, Routledge, 1996.

J. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, London, HarperCollins, 1997.

L. DeWitt and A. J. Eschelbacher (eds.), Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2024.

P. Glanville and H. Young (eds.), Elegant Eating: Four Hundred Years of Dining in Style, London, V&A Publications, 2002.

K. J. Gremillion, Ancestral Appetites: Food in Prehistory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

J. Hallett, ‘Abbasid Tableware and Changing Food Culture’ in L. Komaroff (ed.), Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023, pp.41-45.

S. Hill and J. M. Wilkins, Food in the Ancient World, Malden MA., Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

P. S. Kindstedt, Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization, White River Junction VT., Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012.

L. Komaroff (ed.), Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023.

F. Lissarrague, The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and Ritual (Un Flot D’Images), trans. A. Szegedy-Maszak, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990.

P. E. McGovern, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 2009.

D. Newman, ‘Gourmet Pleasures: Gastronomic Culture in Islamic Lands in the Middle Ages’, in L. Komaroff (ed.), Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023, pp. 21-25.

H. S. Nielsen and I. Nielsen (eds.), Meals in a Social Context: Aspects of the Communal Meal in the Hellenistic and Roman World, Aarhus, Aarhus University Press, 1998.

K. O’Connor, The Never-Ending Feast: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Feasting, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

J. Paul, Food Provisions for Ancient Rome: A Supply Chain Approach, London, Routledge, 2021.

G. Riley, Food in Art: From Prehistory to the Renaissance, London, Reaktion Books, 2014.

S. Smith (ed.), Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, Chicago, Smart Museum of Art, 2013.

U. Söderlind, Ancient Foodways: Gastronomy in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Luristan and the Muslim World, Malmö : Universus Academic Press, 2015.

W. J. Strachan, ‘French Bibliophile Society Banquet Menus: Avati, Picasso, Aïzpiri, Minaux, and Jobert’, Private Library, Quarterly Journal of the Private Libraries Association, 4th series, vol. 4, no. 3, Autumn 1991, pp. 81-99.

D. L. Thurmond, A Handbook of Food Processing in Classical Rome: For Her Bounty No Winter, Leiden, Brill, 2006.

F. Whitlum-Cooper, Discover Liotard & the Lavergne Family Breakfast, London, National Gallery Global, 2023.

Wikimedia Commons, ‘File:15 FallenFruit PublicFruitJam MachineProject.jpg’, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:15_FallenFruit_PublicFruitJam_MachineProject.jpg, (accessed 28 November 2025)

Wikimedia Commons, ‘File:Ancient roman bread Pompeii Museum Boscoreale.jpg’, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ancient_roman_bread_Pompeii_Museum_Boscoreale.jpg, (accessed 28 November 2025)

J. Wilkins, The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.

H. Wilson, Egyptian Food and Drink, Princes Risborough, Shire, 1988.

Decks and Wrecks: A Voyage Through Maritime Art & Archaeology

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by Ashley Parry

Decks & Wrecks Display

At this time of year, while the weather for spending time by the seaside may truly be behind us, humanity’s relationship with the waves continues to be an important and fascinating subject. So, we at the Art Library decided to take a moment to appreciate it and hopefully you’ll be able to make some discoveries of your own!

I was first inspired to pursue this topic by the arrival of three beautiful, newly-donated books from the National Maritime Museum of Korea. Some of the text is only available in Korean, but regardless, the artefacts and accompanying captions are still a fantastic starting point for research into ships and trade goods for the periods and regions covered – particularly ceramics in a variety of forms and sporting a range of motifs.

Covers of the books (from left to right) National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage National Maritime Museum and Nanao no. 1, a trade ship of the Ming dynasty

I was particularly interested in the selection of model ships in the third and fourth sections of the museum’s catalogue published to celebrate 40 years of the National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage. These models included a wide array of types from kayaks (spelt in a way closer to the Inuktitut qajaq from which the English word derives) reminded me of other model ships I had seen on my travels throughout the library – from the Curious Model of the Britannia: A Ship of 100 Guns to Ship and Boat Models in Ancient Greece and Egyptian Watercraft Models from the Predynastic to Third Intermediate Periods.

Image of 'Britannia' model.
Image from ‘A Curious Model of the Britannia’ by Martyn Downer

It helped me to consider the comparison and contrasts between different cultures’ approaches to shipbuilding throughout history, that have varied depending on their needs and materials available. I had a similar reaction to the book Two Ancient Egyptian Ships’ Logs, also featured in the display. It was wonderful to consider how the ship’s log – still a vital tool for sailors today – was used in and speaks to us from the Egyptian New Kingdom period 3000 years ago.

I was also interested in the variety of finds from shipwrecks that can be found throughout the library. Of course, I could only include a few here, as the library has many, many examples of books on and including shipwrecks – almost too many to fathom! However, I hope the ones displayed illustrate what I found so intriguing – the fact that so much of human history and culture is bound up with and submerged in this environment which humans cannot inhabit. For evidence of this cultural relationship, one can also look to how naval subjects have influenced arts and crafts on land, as demonstrated by the books Turner & the Sea, Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art, The Art of Naval Portraiture, and British and Foreign Medals Relating to Naval and Maritime Affairs.

Covers of the books (from left to right) Turner & the Sea, Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art, and The Art of Naval Portraiture.

The fact of humanity’s relationship to the sea is a testament to our ingenuity. It can be easy to forget in this age of commonplace air travel, but, journeys by sea have been absolutely necessary to allow humans to trade and communicate with one another – even if it has always been a dangerous endeavour. This was memorably and absurdly illustrated by the Ever Given incident in 2021, but also, I would argue, by the transatlantic voyages of Greta Thunberg. Her efforts convey a more hopeful message about how replacing some air travel with seafaring could contribute to reducing global carbon emissions in future.

;Ever Given'
Image of Container Ship ‘Ever Given’ stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt – March 24th, 2021 sourced from Wikimedia Commons

Of course, this ingenuity has a darker side, as it has also been used for violent ends throughout history, such as piracy, colonial expansion, and the transatlantic slave trade. These aspects can be found represented in the collections and in the display through The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World, c. 1750–1820, The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade: British Policies, Practices and Representations of Naval Coercion, and X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy as well as many other texts. I was particularly fascinated by the e-book The Royal Navy in Indigenous Australia, 1795–1855 which is accessible on SOLO via SSO or on Bodleian Library PCs. This book explores the stories of how 135 objects created by Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples were made part of the British Museum’s collections. I enjoyed the way that the authors both focused on the voices and agency of indigenous people and also embedded their stories in wider contexts. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander histories, British naval history and museum studies.

Cover of The Royal Navy in Indigenous Australia, 1795-1820
Images of covers for the books (from left to right) ‘The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World, c. 1750-1820’, ‘The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade’, ‘X Marks the Spot’, and ‘The Royal Navy in Indigenous Australia, 1795-1820’.

But, all of this means that an ability to access underwater archaeology is absolutely vital to a full understanding of the human story, and for that, the Art Library also has access to many books on the theoretical and practical challenges of this important work, a few of which are pictured below.

Cover images for WreckProtect, Conservation of Archaeological Ships and Boats, and Fishing and Shipwreck Heritage.

We at the Art Library hope that you’ve enjoyed joining us for this exploration of humanity’s ever-evolving relationship with the sea. I’ll just leave you with a reminder that the titles listed here are only a drop in the ocean and that there’s much more to discover via SOLO!

Bibliography

C. G. Björdal and D. Gregory, WreckProtect: Decay and Protection of Archaeological Wooden Shipwrecks, Oxford, Archaeopress, 2011.

L. K Blue et al. (eds.), People and the Sea: a Maritime Archaeological Research Agenda for England, York, Council for British Archaeology, 2013.

I. Bojeson-Koefoed et. al, Conservation of Archaeological Ships and Boats: Personal Experiences, London, Archetype Publications in association with Deutsches SchiffahrtsMuseum, 2013.

R. Burroughs and R. Huzzey (eds.), The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade: British Policies, Practices and Representations of Naval Coercion, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2017.

M. Downer, Curious Model of the Britannia: A Ship of 100 Guns, Cambridge, Martyn Downer Works of Art Ltd, 2025.

A. Englert and A. Trakadas, Wulfstan’s Voyage : the Baltic Sea Region in the Early Viking Age as Seen from Shipboard, Roskilde Denmark, Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, 2009.

C. R. Ewen and R. K. Skowronek (eds.), X Marks the Spot: the Archaeology of Piracy, Gainesville Fla., University of Florida Press, 2006.

France 24, ‘Greta Thunberg to sail the Atlantic for UN summit’,, France 24, 29/07/2019, https://www.france24.com/en/20190729-greta-thunberg-sail-atlantic-un-summit (accessed 17 September 2025)

K. Gazzard, The Art of Naval Portraiture, Greenwich London, Royal Museums Greenwich, 2024.

G. Glevaert, M. Pieters, and F. Verhaeghe, Fishery, trade and piracy : fishermen and fishermen’s settlements in and around the North Sea area in the Middle Ages and later = Visserij, handel en piraterij: vissers en vissersnederzettingen in en rond de Noordzee in de Middeleeuwen en later, Brussel, Vlaams Instituut voor het Onreorend Erfgoed, 2006.

L. O. Goedde, Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art: Convention, Rhetoric, and Interpretation, London, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989.

J. J. Janssen, Two Ancient Egyptian Ship’s Logs: Papyrus Leiden I 350 verso and Papyrus Turin 2008+2016, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1961.

R. Johns and C. Riding, Turner & the Sea, London, Thames & Hudson, 2013.

P. F. Johnston, Ship and Boat Models in Ancient Greece, Annapolis, Md, Naval Institute Press, 1985.

S. Kingsley and G. Stemm, Oceans Odyssey: Deep-Sea Shipwrecks in the English Channel, Straits of Gibraltar & Atalantic Ocean, Oxford, Oxbow Books, 2010.

S. A. Kingsley, Fishing and Shipwreck Heritage: Marine Archaeology’s Greatest Threat?, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Kungnip Haeyang Munhwajae Yŏn’guso (Korea), 명 나라 무역선, 나나오 1호 = 明代 貿易船, 南澳 1號 = Nanao No. 1, a trade ship of the Ming Dynasty, Chŏlla-namdo Mokp’o-si, Kungnip Haeyang Munhwajae Yŏn’guso, 2016.

Kungnip Haeyang Munhwajae Yŏn’guso (Korea), 국립 해양 문화재 연구소 해양 유물 전시관 = National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage National Maritime Museum, Chŏlla-namdo Mokp’o-si, Kungnip Haeyang Munhwajae Yŏn’guso, 2016.

T. Law, ‘Climate Activist Greta Thunberg, 16, Arrives in New York After Sailing Across the Atlantic’, Time, August 28 2019, https://time.com/5663534/greta-thunberg-arrives-sail-atlantic/ (accessed 17 September 2025)

J. McAleer and C. Petley (eds.), The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World, c. 1750-1820, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

A. M. Merriman, Egyptian Watercraft Models from the Predynastic to Third Intermediate Periods, Oxford, Archaeopress, 2011.

D. Robinson, Maritime Archaeology and Ancient Trade in the Mediterranean, Oxford, Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, 2011.

D. Simpson, The Royal Navy in Indigenous Australia, 1795-1855: Maritime Encounters and British Museum Collections, Cham, Springer International Publishing, Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Wikimedia Commons, ‘File:Container Ship ‘Ever Given’ stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt – March 24th, 2021 (51070311183).jpg’, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Container_Ship_%27Ever_Given%27_stuck_in_the_Suez_Canal,_Egypt_-_March_24th,_2021_(51070311183).jpg, (accessed 17 September 2025)

Superfine: Tailoring Black Style

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by Ashley Parry

Monday 5th May saw the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest Costume Institute exhibition – Superfine: Tailoring Black Style – and with it, another Met Gala! Like the Met, we at the Art Library have decided to celebrate Black fashion with a display of items from across the Bodleian’s collections.

Superfine: Tailoring Black Style book display. Image Credit: Iona Spark

As a topic, this is extremely fertile ground for exploration, combining history of fashion, decorative arts, fine art, social history, philosophy, and literature. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity by Monica L. Miller. This book – which serves as the main inspiration for the Met’s exhibition – is a rich, nuanced and fascinating examination of key moments in the development of the Black dandy as a popular cultural figure and explores the tensions that this figure evokes. As Miller states, ‘the dandy is a figure who exists in the space between masculine and feminine, homosexual and heterosexual, seeming and being, even when not specifically racialized’.1

Book cover for Slaves to Fashion, depicting Iké Udé posing in profile upon a chaise, wearing a dark frock coat with light gloves and a buttonhole

One person who consciously plays with these boundaries and who is intimately tied up with the Met’s exhibition is Nigerian artist, Iké Udé. Not only is his work featured in the exhibition and not only did he contribute an epilogue to the exhibition catalogue, but one of his photographic self-portraits graces the cover of Miller’s book. This photo provides an excellent example of how Udé practices the ‘discipline’ of dandyism – as he calls it2 – in both his art and his appearance. He is further represented in the display through the sartorial photography catalogue Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Iké Udé. In this collection, Udé explores the boundaries between his subjects’ outward seeming and inner worlds as deep, dark secrets are stitched to the insides of their clothes.

Furthermore, as a Nigerian artist who largely resides and practices in the US, Udé is in some ways representative of another ‘thread’ of Miller’s exploration – namely, the complex relationship between blackness and Africa as cultural constructs. She discusses how racialised colonialism can lead to a perceived collapsing of many African diasporic experiences, but how, at the same time, Black people in the diaspora have been able to use these constructs in order to build their own styles and identities. This could be seen at the Met Gala through the inclusion of subtle cowrie detailing on Lewis Hamilton’s outfit, and in the books of the display through Mickaël Kra: Jewellery Between Paris Glamour and African Tradition, for which Kra takes inspiration from the jewellery-making practices of various hunter-gatherer peoples of southern Africa.

Then, in African Dress: Fashion, Agency and Performance, the opposite side of this exchange is presented through essays detailing the style experiences of a variety of communities throughout the African continent, and in the issue of African Arts on the display, including an article about the Sapeuses – the feminine equivalent of the more famous, besuited Sapeur Congolese subculture. Also, I have included here a photo by Kinshasa-based photographer Justin Makangara of a man whose striking combination of Congolese adornment with western-style garments and accessories illustrates the ways that some African communities are forging their own style paths.

Photo of a Congolese Sapeur wearing a suit jacket, cap and sunglasses, decorated heavily with beads and shells. Image Credit: Justin Mkangara. Via Wikimedia Commons

Yinka Shonibare – represented here through catalogues for his Fabric-ation and Double Dutch exhibitions – similarly uses his sculptural dioramas, sumptuously dressed in African wax prints and often recreating the silhouettes and poses of famous white historical figures and events, to push past the boundaries and stereotypes created by colonialist narratives. Shonibare’s use of wax prints is a symbolically loaded one, not only because of the contrast between the stereotypically African patterns and the Europeanness of the clothing, but because that fabric contains within it a complex but often overlooked story of colonial appropriation and adoption. Wax prints originated in Indonesia, were then mass-produced first by the Dutch and then even more prolifically by the British, and finally sold to West African buyers.

Photo of Shonibare’s sculpture Big Boy from Double Dutch, page 62

Through these works he makes statements about identity construction, cultural appropriation and consumerism in ways that play out interestingly with Miller’s work on Black dandyism. For example, her exploration of the fraught nature of using extravagance for defiance is echoed by Shonibare when discussing his work: ‘In order to have aristocratic freedom to indulge, others need to be colonised. Fine art is excess par excellence. It is not going to emancipate you in any direct way.3 He also addresses the interplay of dandyism, race and class directly in Double Dutch through the photograph series ‘Diary of Victorian Dandy’.

In Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life by Tavia Nyong’o– available as an ebook via SOLO and via the QR code in the display – the author discusses the same problem of high art, but with a fashionable twist. In the chapter ‘Critical Shade: The Angular Logics of Black Appearance’, Nyong’o dissects Trajal Harrell’s solo dance piece Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church, Size Small. Harrell, in this piece, incorporates and dissects elements of both high fashion catwalks and the New York ballroom culture inspired by the same. Nyong’o in turn highlights the tensions of Harrell ‘performing in the avant-garde milieu that was once the stuff of vogueing fantasy4’ and explores possible interpretations of this tension.

Online book cover for Afro-Fabulations

In The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism, Lindsey Stewart similarly examines the trials and limits of liberation – for example, how both Black joy and Black tragedy can be weaponised by white institutions to simplify African-American narratives into either abject tragedies or enchanting fables. Stewart uses the works of Zora Neale Hurston, blended with the art of famous contemporary figures such as Beyoncé and stories from her own experience as jumping-off points, and I thought this a fitting addition to this display as the 1934 Zora Neale Hurston essay, “The Characteristics of Negro Expression” was one of the inspirations for the Met’s exhibition. As Stewart details, one of Hurston’s key preoccupations was, in ways sometimes controversial, challenging the ‘tradition of tragic southern Black representation’5

Saint Adeline by Kehinde Wiley, a stained-glass work depicting a haloed young black man in light-coloured denim, on a dark blue background.

Kehinde Wiley likewise challenges pervading narratives applied to African Americans – especially their exclusion from the canon of western art. In his portraits, he poses his black subjects in imitation of a variety of famous ‘Old Master’ paintings and stained-glass windows, constructing new meanings from their symbolic resonances. However, I thought Wiley’s art particularly works in a display on Black style and especially dandyism because of his keen interest in Black masculine identity – and especially how young Black men construct themselves. This can be seen in the participatory nature of some of his paintings and glassworks, in which he invited his models to choose their own outfits and which paintings they would like to copy. In this way, while the streetwear of these men might seem completely divorced from the flamboyance of a dandy, the two can be brought into conversation in Wiley’s art through a mediated process of self-fashioning and evidence of assertive masculine vanity. Furthermore, Wiley’s paintings also evoke connection with dandyism through his use of floral designs for his backgrounds, inspired by the prints of William Morris, a key contributor to the English Aesthetic movement.

The cover of Fashioning Masculinities with a photo of Omar Victor Diop in Regency era clothing.

Unfortunately, there isn’t space to write in-depth about every book in a single blog post, and I wish I could do so to recommend these fantastic books even further, but here I will quickly emphasise just a few. The exhibition catalogue for the V+A’s Fashioning Masculinities exhibition, while its focus is menswear more generally, pays tribute to the indispensability of Black male style, and features black men literally front and centre with a portrait of Omar Victor Diop on the front cover and other famous figures such as Marcus Rashford and Prince inside. Then, in The Birth of Cool, Carol Tulloch, like Monica Miller uses a key central idea – in this case, the concept of “cool” –to organise a tracing of Black style narratives through time, and, like Lindsey Stewart, she also draws upon personal experience in examining these narratives.

The cover of The Woman in the Zoot Suit, depicting three Pachuca women being arrested.

Finally, no display on Black style would be complete without the iconic zoot suit, represented here not only through Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style, but also through The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory which focuses specifically on the style’s proliferation into the Pachuco subculture and specifically among Pachuca women.

I hope you have enjoyed this exploration of Black fashion inspired by these books and by the Met Gala as much as I enjoyed researching them. These are just a selection of the books available on Black history, art, and style in the Bodleian Libraries and I hope you will use it as a launch pad for further research on the subject.

Bibliography

A. Braun, M. Kra, and F. Vormese, Mickaël Kra: Jewellery Between Paris Glamour and African Tradition (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche, 2006).

S. Coulson, Lilley, C., and Y. Shonibare, Yinka Shonibare MBE: Fabric-ation Exhibition Guide (Wakefield: Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2013).

N. Gainer, Vintage Black Glamour: Gentlemen’s Quarters (London: Rocket 88, 2016).

T. Garrard, African Gold: Jewellery and Ornaments From Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali and Senegal in the Collection of the Gold of Africa Barbier-Mueller Museum in Cape Town (Munich: Prestel, 2011).

R. Garelick, ‘America’s Premier Dandy Doesn’t Want the Title’, The New York Times, New York, The New York Times Company, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/style/met-gala-ike-ude-black-dandyism.html (Accessed: 07 May 2025).

T. Golden, Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994)

K. Hansen and M. Soyini (eds.), African Dress: Fashion, Agency and Performance (Oxford: Berg, 2013)

J. King, ‘The Art of Masculinity’, Colorlines, Oakland, CA; New York City, Race Forward, 2015, https://colorlines.com/article/art-masculinity/ (Accessed: 07 May 2025).

K. Laciste, ‘Practical Work: Sapeuses (Women Sapeurs) in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo’, African Arts, vol. 56, no. 4, 2023, pp.62-79.

G. Lamia (ed.), Kehinde Wiley: Peintre de L’Épopée (Gand: Snoeck, 2020).

J. Makangara, ‘Justin Makangara’, Congo in Conversation, Hyères, Fondation Carmignac  2021 https://congoinconversation.fondationcarmignac.com/en/journalists/justin-makangara (Accessed: 08 May 2025).

J. Marsh, Black Victorians: Black People in British Art, 1800-1900 (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2005).

M. McCollom, The Way We Wore: Black Style Then (New York: Glitterati Incorporated, 2006).

M. McCurdy, Kehinde Wiley: A Portrait of a Young Gentleman (San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 2022).

R. McKever and C. Wilcox (eds.), Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear (London: V&A Publishing, 2022).

K. Mercer, ‘Art That is Ethnic in Inverted Commas’, Frieze, London, Frieze Publishing Ltd., 1995, https://www.frieze.com/article/art-ethnic-inverted-commas (Accessed: 07 May 2025).

T. Muriu, Camo (Los Angeles, California: Chronicle Chroma, 2024).

T. Nyong’o, Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (New York: New York University Press, 2019)

K. Peiss, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

R. Powell, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (Chicago, Ill.; London: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

C. Ramírez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory, Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2009).

L. Roach, How to Build a Fashion Icon: Notes on Confidence From the World’s Only Image Architect (New York: Abrams Image, 2024).

D. Rodgers, ‘Everything You Need To Know About The Met Gala 2025’, Vogue, Condé Nast, New York, 2025 https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/met-gala (Accessed: 07 May 2025).

Y. Shonibare and others, Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch (Rotterdam : Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen ; [Vienna] : Kunsthalle Wien ; Rotterdam : NAi Publishers ; New York : D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2004).

L. Stewart, The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism, (Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2021).

E. Tsai, C. Choi, and K. Wiley, Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic (Munich: DelMonico, 2015).

C. Tulloch, Black Style (London: V&A Publications, 2004).

C. Tulloch, The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora, Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).

Victoria and Albert Museum, An introduction to the Aesthetic Movement, https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/an-introduction-to-the-aesthetic-movement?srsltid=AfmBOop4qQvK1h4Jr7J5AGtwvgeHxKr_XFZjWxmsxcVbtyl-5WvKEGdF (Accessed: 07 May 2025).

S. White and G. White, Stylin’: African American Expressive Culture From its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, 1998).

K. Wiley, Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis, (Culver City, California: Roberts Projects, 2019).

  1. Miller, Monica L., Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham ; London: Duke University Press, 2009), p. 6.
    ↩︎
  2. R. Garelick, ‘America’s Premier Dandy Doesn’t Want the Title’, The New York Times, New York, The New York Times Company, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/style/met-gala-ike-ude-black-dandyism.html (Accessed: 07 May 2025). ↩︎
  3. K. Mercer, Art That is Ethnic in Inverted Commas, Frieze, London, Frieze Publishing Ltd., 1995, https://www.frieze.com/article/art-ethnic-inverted-commas (Accessed: 07 May 2025). ↩︎
  4. T. Nyong’o, Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (New York: New York University Press, 2019), p.30 ↩︎
  5. L. Stewart, The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism, (Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2021), p.47 ↩︎

Ukraine: Three Years On (22/02/2025)

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Ukraine Book Display

By Jamie Copeland

As the third anniversary of the Russian invasion has arrived I have arranged a new display of some of the books held by the Bodleian Libraries regarding Ukraine, with a particular focus on the subject areas held by the Art, Architecture and Ancient World Library. Previous displays initially covered a general overview of material, from Scythian golden artifacts, medieval church architecture, and modernist artists. A second display concerned questions raised by competing narratives of Ukrainian history, and the effect of this on Ukrainian people and cultural traditions. This issue was particularly problematised by the shifting aims of Russian Imperialism and the interactions of the state with both it’s subjects and a wider diaspora of artists with a Ukrainian heritage. A third attempted to highlight contemporary artists and promote the recent acquisitions of the library.

The main aim of the current display is, in light of recent events, in an attempt to use the material to look back over the contemporary period since the Russian invasion of the Donbas and Crimea and to centre the experience of the Ukrainian people, while contesting attempts to recreate a narrative of the last few years by providing a source of context.

The initial part of the display is focused upon recent acquisitons to the ART Library’s collections and an attempt to use the periodical collections to give an indication of the reaction to them.  The increasing prominence of the Odessa born Sonia Delauney is indicated by the recently published ‘Sonia Delaunay : living art’ by Waleria Dorogova and Laura Microulis.

The recently published Ukraine addition to the ‘World of Art’ series shares its cover image with a review of the exhibition on the artists linked to the communities formed by the art schools of Kyiv, Kharkov, and Odessa in the early 20th century. The accompanying book, although part of a previous display has also been included.

An article from the Burlington Magazine on the deliberate theft and destruction of Ukraine’s cultural heritage acts as a form of bridge between the new Art books and the books documenting, and to some degree, aestheticizing the impact of Russian aggression.  Forming a kind of core are a series of books describing both the resistance to the Donbas occupation, with journals and letters from the Ukrainian forces opposing the Russian occupation in the face of international resignation while establishing an artistic link, both to their past as a culture, and their present as a nation. As mentioned above, the second Ukraine display had attempted to examine, through the work and biography of a variety of artists some of the problems raised by the competing claims of Ukrainian nationhood.

An artist such as the ex-serf Taras Shevchenko, born near Kiev and dying in St Petersburg, living in the Russian Empire period; could be contrasted with a figure such as the avant-garde painter Kazimir Malevich who shared his place of birth and death. Although one died just before the liberation of the serfs and the other near the advent of the Stalinist purges, they had a common history, both alternately feted and repressed, establishing connections and a range of influences in the face of a system determined to establish a coercive process of control.

Supplementing these personal histories was the inclusion of material discussing the geographies affecting Ukrainian people. Whether artists influenced by a change of borders or the establishment of institutions, such as the art schools and movements founded in Ukrainian cities, or their experiences as part of an exiled diaspora whose work echoed memories of alienated childhood landscapes and separated families.

Part of the criteria for the selection of the material in the display was to show the record of responses to ongoing events, no longer part of an established trauma such as the Holodomor or the Executed Renaissance, but as a contested narrative of unknown outcome, contextualised by the artistic narratives of both direct experience and processed works.

During the breakup of the Soviet Union, following an attempted coup by the Communists, a referendum was called by the Ukrainian Rada in order to approve the Act of Declaration of Independence on the 1st December 1991. After winning by 92% Ukraine’s independence was recognised both globally and by the USSR which officially dissolved itself days later. As Putin succeeded to the presidency various methods from political pressure to financial coercion were used to exert Russian control. Various political scandals, including the collusion of President Kuchma in the murder of a journalist and repeated vote-rigging allegations culminated in the 2004 Orange Revolution. After the Ukrainian president Yanukovych refused to sign an Association Agreement with the EU large protests erupted in several cities, the largest being in the Maidan in Kyiv. Despite attempts to suppress the demonstrations by denouncing them as the result of Western interference and the use of increasing violence from security services and militias the demonstrations ended with the flight and deposition of the president. Russia responded by annexing Crimea and sending troops and equipment over the Ukraine border in support of ‘separatists’ such as the Russian Nationalist Igor Girkin, later charged with the shooting down of Flight MH17. Ukraine, under the new President Poroshenko, reacted by strengthening their armed forces, calling for international mediation, and the introduction of legislation intended to decentralise political authority, part of which established Ukrainian as the sole national language whilst leaving the status of Russian and minority languages up to their districts administrations.

The Donbas war continued more or less at a stalemate while various peace plans were mooted. Russia complained about Ukrainian ‘Russo-phobia’ citing attacks on Russian speaking civilians, the use of Nationalist forces such as the Azov Brigade, and the removal and renaming of monuments commemorating Russian and Soviet figures. In 2019 President Zelensky was elected, and began efforts to incorporate Nationalist fighters into the regular army and remove restrictions on the official use of the Russian language. In late 2021, as the Covid crisis receded and supply chains were rebuilt Russia began a large-scale deployment on Ukraine’s border.

On the 22nd of February 2022 Russia initiated a full invasion, bombarding cities and infrastructure throughout Ukraine, and launching attacks intended to surround and seize the capital. The invasion was accompanied by a variety of claims, headed by Putin’s “Address concerning the events in Ukraine”, denying the nationhood of Ukraine and the concept of a culture separate from Russia.

Sketch of abandoned miliatry vehicles.
Ukraine, remember also me , Illustration
Sky Above Kharkiv

A large part of this display has focused on the response of Ukrainians to these actions, either in written narratives and journals, or documented in photography and art produced to record the reaction of people under physical and existential assault.  Images, such as the flight of refugees, the rubble of cities, and the day to day lives of civilians and soldiers has been mixed with longer narratives such as the struggle between workers at the Chernobyl power plant and the occupying forces, or the struggle over Bakhmut.

The girlfriend of a Ukrainian soldier trapped in the Avozstahl Steelworks protests in Kyiv.
Chernobyl Maternity Hospital. Points Between…Up Till Now

The question over the ‘truth’ of a photograph has existed since the invention of the medium. One of the earliest practitioners of war photography was Roger Fenton, whose work in the Crimean War was used in a prior display. Contemporary images, such as the protestor holding an English language sign against a background of rubble, have elements of staging and selection even without requiring lengthy exposure times or expensive equipment. The use of such products is inextricably a contested territory. The hand-coloured panoramic photographs of non-staged scenes in the work of Viktor and Sergiy Kochetov is an alternative approach to the question.

That ‘all art is propaganda’ may be almost a truism but the necessity of promoting an idea, whether of a self-hood or of an experience, is a right I have tried to use this display to centre. That a diversity of permitted speech can exist is as much of a conflict as any struggle over territory. The inclusion of scholarly works by Ukrainian authors donated to the AAWL collections on subjects unrelated to the war are intended to represent this, by highlighting a cultural life beyond the mere present and include material outside of the art collection.

There were also several books that were not available in time for the creation of the display but the content was too relevant to the themes of the display to be left out. The first of these, ‘Lviv-God’s Will’,
is a collection of photographs of mundane objects that have been aesthetically altered by by Ukrainian citizens. The objects, painted street debris. have been altered by unknown people but otherwise left untouched by the photographer. The only alteration, other than the standards of photographic composition has been the removal of the street setting which has been replaced with a gallery style background. Complementing this are two other books, one ‘Invicta: Unconquered’ is a selection of the works of Urainian artists that were made in the first months of the war, accompanied by short narratives of the artists experience of the invasion. The second, ‘”ARTBOOK CRYONES’ is a collection of works created at a therapeutic camp for child survivors. The entries, designed by the children assisted by the counsellors, contain a variety of pieces created by the children as they process the war and the common experiences of enduring shelling and the loss of relatives. They vary in media, from military badge collections, to drawings and journal entries but have a repeated aim of interactivity with the reader, who is encouraged to physically engage with the book..


‘Lviv-God’s Will’ cover
Introduction

Finally, one of the challenges presented by collecting this is the difficulty in presenting work that is absent. There are several books that have been purchased by the Bodleian Libraries that were ordered to strengthen the Bodleian collections regarding Ukraine. That works such as ‘Off the beaten track: urban regeneration of hidden world heritage in L’viv’ or ‘Decommunized, Ukrainian Soviet mosaics’ are absent is an invisible loss. Paper shortages, the economic stresses and the diversion of efforts may not be as visible as a shattered museum but still has lasting consequences on the production and dissemination of cultural works. Donations to the Bodleian of books to complement our collections can be made, and reader.services@bodleian.ox.ac.uk can be contacted who can provide the details of the relevant Subject Librarian. Conversely if you are aware of a publication that the library should obtain you can use https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections-and-resources/recommend-a-purchase to provide us with details.

There is also the ongoing attempt to present work by Ukrainian artists outside of the published form. As with previous displays I have used the publicity material to promote their work, this time an image by Maxim Dondyuk whose work as a visual artist explores subjects such as Chernobyl, the Maidan protests, and the aftermath of armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. Their website can be found at https://maximdondyuk.com/.

A list of the publications used in the display may be found in the bibliography at the end of this post.

Bibliography

Apollo (2024 Apr)

Artforum International (2024 Dec)

Artforum International (2025 Feb)

Bakhmut / Myroslav Lai︠u︡k.

Chernobyl : a stalkers’ guide / Darmon Richter

Chernobyl roulette : a war story / Serhii Plokhy.

Cryones : zbirka zovsim nedytiachykh dytiachykh istoriĭ = a collection of not-at-all childish children’s stories / Oksana Lebedieva, Ivan Holub, Polina Klibus [editors]

Icons on ammo boxes : painting life on the remnants of Russia’s war in Donbas, 2014-2021 / Sonya Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko

Ikonohrafii︠a︡ skifsʹkoï eskhatolohiï = Iconography of Scythian Eschatology / Hanna Vertii︠e︡nko

In isolation : dispatches from occupied Donbas / Stanislav Aseyev ; translated by Lidia Wolanskyj.

In the eye of the storm : modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s / edited by Konstantin Akinsha

Invicta : unconquered : stories of Ukrainian artists and their paintings created in the first 111 days of the war against Russia 24.02.22 to 14.06.22 / Timonti︠e︡i︠e︡va, O. (Olʹha), editor.

 Istorii͡a ukrainskoĭ fotografii XIX-XXI veka / avtor Oleksandr Trachun

Lviv-God’s Will / Poliakov, Viacheslav

Papirusnyĭ svitok na vinʹetkakh drevneegipetskoĭ Knigi mërtvykh / N.A. Tarasenko.

Points between … up till now / [Robert Polidori

Relentless courage : Ukraine and the world at war.

Sky Above Kharkiv : dispatches from the Ukrainian front / Serhiy Zhadan.

Sonia Delaunay : living art / Waleria Dorogova and Laura Microulis, editors.

Studies on the vignettes from chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead. I, The image of MS.W Bdšt in ancient Egyptian mythology / Mykola Tarasenko.

Take my grief away : voices from the war in Ukraine / edited by Katerina Gordeeva.

The art of Ukraine / Alisa Lozhkina.

The art of Ukrainian sixties / editors, Olha Balashova

The Burlington magazine. (2022 July)

Ukraine rising : contemporary creative culture from Ukraine / co-creator: Lucia Bondar

Ukraine, remember also me : testimonies from the war / George Butler.

Viktor Kochetov = Kochetov / photography  Victor and Sergey Kochetov ; editor Sergiy Lededynskyy ; text Victor Kochetov

‘Ode to Independence’ from Istorii͡a ukrainskoĭ fotografii XIX-XXI veka / avtor Oleksandr Trachun