Bill Viola - Thames & Hudson book

Bill Viola began experimenting with video art in the early seventies; today he is regarded as one of the leading proponents of this medium, captivating audiences worldwide with his profound and beautifully crafted explorations of the human condition. Bill Viola is the first monograph to fully describe the artist's career, from his education in Syracuse, New York, to the 2014 inauguration of Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), a work specially commissioned for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. John G. Hanhardt presents the key visual, literary, and spiritual influences on Viola’s work, along with the evolving approach to moving images in response to technological advancements.

The discussion is interwoven with numerous illustrations of Viola’s most important works, including Information (1973), The Greeting (1995), and Going Forth By Day (2002), as well as reproductions of his sketches and notebooks that reveal his working methods. Supplemented with an extensive information section, Bill Viola offers rare and fascinating insights into one of the most powerful creative minds of contemporary art.

The Thames & Hudson publishing house was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their greatest passion and mission was to create a “museum without walls” and to make the world of art, as well as leading scientific research, accessible to a broad audience. To reflect international perspectives, the company’s name combined the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, the other west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New.

Today, still an independent, family-owned publisher, Thames & Hudson is one of the world’s leading publishers of illustrated books, with over 2000 titles in print. It publishes high-quality collectible books across all areas of visual creativity: fine arts, applied arts, decorative arts, performing arts, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and music, as well as archaeology, history, and popular culture. The list of children’s books is also expanding. Headquartered in London with a sister company in New York and branches in Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Paris, another subsidiary, Interart, distributes English-language books in France.

History of the Thames & Hudson brand

Walter Neurath was born in Vienna in 1903. In 1938, he left his hometown—where he ran an art gallery and published illustrated books—for London. Initially, he worked as a production director at Adprint, a brand founded by Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foges. Neurath and Foges developed an innovative concept now known as book packaging (or co-publishing), where ideas for books are developed, commissioned, produced, and sold to publishers operating in different markets and languages to create large editions and reduce unit production costs. Neurath’s concept was the first of many innovations introduced to the publishing world through Thames & Hudson.

Seeking to continue the packaging of collectible books in a second edition and recognizing the need to amortize the high costs of producing illustrated books, Neurath established his own publishing house with offices in London and New York in the fall of 1949. Eva Neurath, who arrived in London from Berlin in 1939, was a co-founder.

Of the ten titles published on Thames & Hudson’s first list in 1950, English Cathedrals, with photographs by Martin Hürlimann, was the first and most successful. The company’s strong belief in the longevity of books remained evident, as it remained in print until 1971. Also in the first year of publication was Albert Einstein’s “Out of My Later Years,” an early indicator of the program’s scope. As the list gradually expanded from ten titles in 1950 to 144 in 1955, the company moved its offices from High Holborn and, in 1956, relocated to a Georgian townhouse at 30 Bloomsbury Street, near Bedford Square, becoming the epicenter of book publishing in London. The publisher remained at this address, eventually expanding to five buildings, until 1999, when it returned to High Holborn.

Other important series that added depth and prestige to the list include Ancient People and Places, edited by Glyn Daniel, who since the 1950s contributed to pioneering interest in archaeology, both in book form and television. Over 34 titles have been published in the series over 34 years. The large-format series Great Civilizations, published in 1961, featured contributions from renowned scholars such as Alan Bullock, Asa Briggs, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A. J. P. Taylor, and John Julius Norwich.
After building one of the most important publishing houses in Europe in less than two decades, Walter Neurath died in 1967 at the age of 63. Sculptor Henry Moore wrote that “his death was a loss to our cultural life.” Sir Herbert Read noted that Neurath “more than anyone else was responsible for the revolution in art publishing” and was “one of those rare entrepreneurs who successfully combine business acumen with idealism.” Eva Neurath became chairwoman. Walter’s son, Thomas, who joined the company in 1961 along with his sister Constance, became managing director; Constance later served as artistic director for several decades. Both Thomas and Constance remain on the Thames & Hudson board, as do Thomas’s daughters, Johanna and Susanna.
From producing the first commercial edition of The Book of Kells to the triumphant publication of the six-volume Vincent van Gogh - Letters, from technical innovations like “French folds” to the controversial documentation of graffiti art in Subway Art, Thames and Hudson has always been at the forefront, both culturally and in production techniques.

2016 marked the beginning of an extraordinary new chapter for the company, announcing publishing partnerships with two of the world’s most important museums: the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The world of art and scholarship remains at the heart of Thames & Hudson’s publishing program, which remains true to its core principle: providing a “museum without walls.”
Today, Thames & Hudson is a recognizable international brand, a symbol of British publishing. Its catalog includes thousands of interesting titles. Many of these are prestigious collectible books.