«The fifth book in the series, this volume concludes this extraordinary publishing project by analyzing the fascinating and controversial phenomena of contemporary art. This volume presents ten chapters, each written by an international expert. To mention just a few: exhibition curator Nicolas Bourriad discusses installations, video and action art in the post-media age. Gabriella Belli, director of the Mart of Trento and Rovereto, tells of the «meaning» of the contemporary museum. Paco Barragán, cultural broker, describes art fairs and explains what is understood by the term neobiennialism. And ample space is also devoted to the critical definitions of contemporary art, to the art market and the new way of collecting, to the relationship between art and politics, to the new, confusing frontiers of photography. Each of these major chapters is followed, in alphabetical order, by the biographies of dozens of contemporary artists, illustrated through their most significant works.»

Beautifully illustrated and well documented with detailed technical entries, this volume surveys the production of Italian ceramic art through 500 objects. The essays examine the stylistic trends from the brilliant floral decorativism of the Tuscan ceramics by Galileo Chini, the extraordinary period of the 1920s and 1930s, as represented by Gio Ponti, Guido Andloviz, Giovanni Gariboldi, Pietro Meandri and Francesco Nonni, and the contamination by contemporary painting and sculpture, from the Futurists up to the first Informal pieces at the end of the second World War through the early works of Fontana, Leoncillo and Melotti. The book is filled with valuable information including biographical profiles of the artists, detailed descriptions of the manufacturers, a cataloguing of their back stamps, an up-to-date bibliography, and a technical glossary.Comprehensive and engrossing, the book is essential reading for collectors, antique experts, art scholars, students and anyone interested in ceramics.