RB Kitaj started painting The Architects in August of 1979 to celebrate the remodelling of his home by MJ Long. Painted largely without the models themselves present, this portrait of his friends against the backdrop of the stepped bookcase designed for him by MJ marks a transition in Kitaj's development as an artist.

A personal account of various studio projects from the 1970s to the present day.

Kataj is a major figure on the post-war international art scene. His retrospective at the Tate in 1994 generated argument and discussion. In over 30 years as a successful artist, he has explored the relationship between the visual and the poetic, taken references from high literature and popular culture, represented heroic figures and struggled to develop an iconography of post-Holocaust Jewish identity.

First published in 2005, An Architecture of invitation: Colin St John Wilson is a distinctive study of the life and architectural career of one of the most significant makers, theorists and teachers of architecture to have emerged in England in the second half of the twentieth century. Exceptionally in an architectural study, this book interweaves biography, critical analysis of the projects, and theory, in its aims of explicating the richness of Wilson’s body of work, thought and teaching. Drawing on the specialisms of its authors, it also examines the creative and psychological impulses that have informed the making of the work – an oeuvre whose experiential depth is recognised by both users and critics.

Why Mahler? Why does his music affect us in the way it does? Norman Lebrecht, one of the world’s most widely read cultural commentators, has been wrestling obsessively with Mahler for half his life. Following Mahler’s every footstep from birthplace to grave, scrutinizing his manuscripts, talking to those who knew him, Lebrecht constructs a compelling new portrait of Mahler as a man who lived determinedly outside his own times. Mahler was—along with Picasso, Einstein, Freud, Kafka, and Joyce—a maker of our modern world. Why Mahler? is a book that shows how music can change our lives.

R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007) is one of the most intriguing 20th century artists. Kitaj left behind a manuscript unmatched among 20th-century artist autobiographies -- Confessions of an Old Jewish Painter. Eloquently describing his vices and sufferings, it stands in the traditions of both St. Augustine and Thomas de Quincey.

A unique opportunity to learn about the lives and creativity of the world's leading artists Hans Ulrich Obrist has been conducting ongoing conversations with the world's greatest living artists since he began in Switzerland, aged 19, with Fischli and Weiss. Here he chooses nineteen of the greatest figures and presents their conversations, offering the reader intimacy with the artists and insight into their creative processes. Inspired by the great Vasari, Lives of the Artists explores the meaning of art and artists today, their varying approaches to creating, and a sense of how their thinking evolves over time. Including David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Gerhard Richter, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois, Rem Koolhaas, Jeff Koons and Oscar Niemayer, this is a wonderful and unique book for those interested in modern art. Hans Ulrich Obrist is a curator and writer. Since 2006 he has been co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, London. He is the author, with Ai Wei Wei, of Ai Wei Wei Speaks.