Lucy Steeds

All Joseph wants is to be let into Tartuffe’s world.

All Ettie wants is to escape it.

PROVENCE, 1920.

Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle’s artistic genius possible.

Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he’ll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe.

But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers. Over that sweltering summer, everyone’s true colours will be revealed.

Because Ettie is ready to be seen. Even if it means setting her world on fire.

The Artist

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2025 LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025 A RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME IN APRIL 'The Artist is a lush, impressive debut; the writing is rich and sensuous, especially in descriptions of food, the landscape and the act of creation. Lucy Steeds is one to watch' The Times 'Dextrous and powerful . . . a hugely accomplished portrait of ambition and self-fulfilment' Guardian 'The year's most lauded debut novelist . . . A sultry, headily perfumed portrait of monstrous male egos and oppressed overlooked women . . . The Artist uncovers its secrets by stealth' Telegraph 'A blaze of a book, poetic, passionate and quietly powerful' Daily Mail 'This compelling, evocative debut will transport you to idyllic, sun-drenched Provence in 1920 . . . An absorbing, poetic read' Mail on Sunday 'Captivating . . . with imagery as lush as an oil painting' Washington Post 'Enthralling . . . the descriptions of the landscape, the meals they eat and the art created are so rich and evocative it's as if you're there' Good Housekeeping **BEST BOOKS FOR 2025 from Stylist and Good Housekeeping** PROVENCE, 1920 Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle's artistic genius possible. Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he'll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe. But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers. Over this sweltering summer, everyone's true colours will be revealed. Because Ettie is ready to be seen. Even if it means setting her world on fire. 'A furiously romantic, sun-drenched mystery . . . The Artist will leave you yearning in every sense of the word' Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep 'Lucy Steeds transports the reader with her sensuous depictions of food, art, and landscape . . . an assured and atmospheric debut' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent 'An intoxicating tale of creativity, possession and freedom. An impressively assured debut which asks questions about all those who are painted over by history' Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre 'I could not love this beautiful novel more . . . the final chapters left me with that delicious heart-bursting feeling, full of hope and delight' Florence Knapp, author of The Names 'Gorgeous . . . Steeped in the heat and atmosphere of 1920s Provence, this novel brims with intrigue, hope and yearning' Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory and The Burial Plot 'Phenomenal . . . beautiful, pacey historical fiction, vividly realised. It drifts with the scent of summer, the land lit up and throbbing, the food piled high and richly painted, the paint as thick and buttery as food. I wanted to eat it. Yes, I even wanted to eat the paint. Read this book!' Seth Insua, author of Human, Animal

Winner of the Waterstones Debut Prize

Paul O'Neill

Mick Wilson

The future of curatorial practice: how education, research, and institutions can adapt to the expansion of the curatorial field. Today curators are sometimes more famous than the artists whose work they curate, and curatorship involves more than choosing objects for an exhibition. The expansion of the curatorial field in recent decades has raised questions about exhibition-making itself and the politics of production, display, and distribution. The Curatorial Conundrum looks at the burgeoning field of curatorship and tries to imagine its future. Indeed, practitioners and theorists consider a variety of futures: the future of curatorial education; the future of curatorial research; the future of curatorial and artistic practice; and the institutions that will make these other futures possible. The contributors examine the proliferation of graduate programs in curatorial studies over the last twenty years, and consider what can be taught without giving up what is precisely curatorial, within the ever-expanding parameters of curatorial practice in recent times. They discuss curating as collaborative research, asking what happens when exhibition operates as a mode of research in its own right. They explore curatorial practice as an exercise in questioning the world around us; and they speculate about what it will take to build new, innovative, and progressive curatorial research institutions. Contributors Nancy Adajania, Mélanie Bouteloup, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Luis Camnitzer, Eddie Chambers, Zasha Cerizza Colah, Galit Eilat, Liam Gillick, Koyo Kouoh, Miguel A. López, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul O'Neill, Tobias Ostrander, João Ribas, Sarah Rifky, Sumesh Sharma, Simon Sheikh, Lucy Steeds, Jeannine Tang, David The, Jelena Vesić & Vladimir Jerić Vlidi, What, How & for Whom/WHW, Mick Wilson, Vivian Ziherl Copublished with the Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College/Luma Foundation

What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice?

The Curatorial Conundrum

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025 • WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE WINNER 2025 The Artist and the Feast is a captivating novel of love, art, food, desire and thwarted ambition, which builds propulsively over one scorching French summer in 1920s Provence. During a scorching summer in 1920s Provence, a young journalist, Joseph Adelaide, turns up at the farmhouse of reclusive artist Edouard Tartuffe, hoping to write an article about him. There, he meets Ettie, Tartuffe’s niece, who appears to do everything for her uncle—from cooking and cleaning to catering to his maniacal moods. Joseph is beguiled by where he finds himself, not just by this foreign place or Tartuffe himself, but by Ettie, who watches everything so quietly from the periphery. Both Joseph and Ettie carry scars from their pasts and it’s as they get to know each other that they start to lay bare those scars to themselves and to each other.​ As the summer wears on, and as new ideas and passions are explored, Joseph, Ettie, and Tartuffe are propelled toward a finale that reveals long-held secrets and sets the world on fire. Fans of Sarah Winman’s Still Life and Paula McClain’s The Paris Wife will be enchanted by this compelling novel.

The Artist and the Feast

'Lucy Steeds transports the reader with her sensuous depictions of food, art, and landscape . . . an assured and atmospheric debut about creativity, female agency, and the legacy of war' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent 'A furiously romantic, sun-drenched mystery about the violent power of good art. The Artist will leave you yearning in every sense of the word' Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep 'An intoxicating tale of creativity, possession and freedom. A compelling, beautifully textured and impressively assured debut which asks questions about all those who are painted over by history' Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre PROVENCE, 1920 Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle's artistic genius possible. Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he'll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe. But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers. Over this sweltering summer, everyone's true colours will be revealed. Because Ettie is ready to be seen. Even if it means setting her world on fire. 'Gorgeous . . . Steeped in the heat and atmosphere of 1920s Provence, this novel brims with intrigue, hope and yearning. The questions it asks will linger with me: about authenticity, about what it means to be an artist and to long to leave a mark on the world' Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory and The Burial Plot 'Phenomenal . . . beautiful, pacey historical fiction, vividly realised. It drifts with the scent of summer, the land lit up and throbbing, the food piled high and richly painted, the paint as thick and buttery as food. I wanted to eat it. Yes, I even wanted to eat the paint. Read this book!' Seth Insua, author of Human, Animal 'I could not love this beautiful novel more . . . the final chapters left me with that delicious heart-bursting feeling, full of hope and delight' Florence Knapp, author of The Names

Luis Camnitzer

Rachel Weiss

"The third edition of the Bienal de La Habana, which took place in 1989, extended the global territory of contemporary art and redegined the biennial model. This book examines the project in its historical and international contexts ... Making art global (part 2) will focus on the Paris exhibition 'Magiciens de la Terre' of 1989."--P. [4] of cover.

Making Art Global

Charles Esche

Bo Choy

David Morris (Lecturer)

"Art and its Worlds offers a possible history of art since 1989 told through the moments when art becomes public. The anthology addresses some of the myriad worlds conjured by art and the telling of their histories. It is guided by three questions: What is the 'global' for art and exhibition-making, or why has it been what it has? How have agents including artists and curators experimented with different forms of exhibition? And how do these exhibitionary moments connect to longer-term and institutional trajectories? Key texts previously published in Afterall journal appear alongside newly commissioned essays, artist contributions, conversations and translations, exploring exhibition as a material, embodied and political practice, while inviting a new location for past art and bringing it into the present for what is to come"--Provided by publisher.

Exhibitions, Institutions and Art Becoming Public

Art and Its Worlds

Reflections on how institutions inform art, curatorial, educational, and research practices while they shape the world around us. Contemporary art and curatorial work, and the institutions that house them, have often been centers of power, hierarchy, control, value, and discipline. Even the most progressive among them face the dilemma of existing as institutionalized anti-institutions. This anthology–taking its title from Mary Douglas's 1986 book, How Institutions Think–reconsiders the practices, habits, models, and rhetoric of the institution and the anti-institution in contemporary art and curating. Contributors reflect upon how institutions inform art, curatorial, educational, and research practices as much as they shape the world around us. They consider the institution as an object ofienquiry across many disciplines, including political theory, organizational science, and sociology. Bringing together an international and multidisciplinary group of writers, How Institutions Think addresses such questions as whether institution building is still possible, feasible, or desirable; if there are emergent institutional models for progressive art and curatorial research practices; and how we can establish ethical principles and build our institutions accordingly. The first part, “Thinking via Institution,” moves from the particular to the general; the second part, “Thinking about Institution,” considers broader questions about the nature of institutional frameworks. Contributors include Nataša Petrešin Bachelez, Dave Beech, Mélanie Bouteloup, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Binna Choi and Annette Kraus, Céline Condorelli, Pip Day, Clémentine Deliss, Keller Easterling and Andrea Phillips, Bassam El Baroni, Charles Esche, Patricia Falguières, Patrick D. Flores, Marina Gržinić, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Alhena Katsof, Emily Pethick, Sarah Pierce, Moses Serubiri, Simon Sheikh, Mick Wilson

Between Contemporary Art and Curatorial Discourse

How Institutions Think

This anthology provides a multivocal critique of exhibitions of contemporary art, bringing together the writings of artists, curators and theorists. Collectively these diverse perspectives are united by the notion that if the focus for modernist discussion was individual works of art, it is the exhibition that is the prime cultural carrier of contemporaneity. The texts encompass exhibition design and form; exhibitions that are object-based, live or discursive; projects that no longer rely on a physical space to be visited in person; artists' responses to being curated, and their reflections on the potential of acting curatorially. Set against the rise of the curator as an influential force in the contemporary art world, this volume underlines the crucial role of artists in questioning and shaping the phenomenon of the exhibition.

Exhibition

Simon Sheikh

What it means to be global—or to be local—in the context of artistic, curatorial, and theoretical knowledge and practice. In this volume, an international, interdisciplinary group of writers discuss what it means to be global—or to be local—in the context of artistic, curatorial and theoretical knowledge and practice. Continuing the discussion begun in The Curatorial Conundrum (2016) and How Institutions Think (2017), Curating After the Global considers curating and questions of locality, geopolitical change, the reassertion of nation-states, and the violent diminishing of citizen and denizen rights across the globe. It has become commonplace to talk of a globalized art world and even to speak of contemporary art as a driver of globalization. This universalization of what art is or can be is often presumed to be at the cost of local traditions and any sense of locality and embeddedness. But need this be the case? The contributors to Curating After the Global explore, among other things, specific curatorial projects that may offer roadmaps for the globalized present; new institutional approaches; and ways of thinking, vocabularies, and strategies for moving forward. Contributors include Lotte Arndt, Marwa Arsanios, Athena Athanasiou and Simon Sheikh, María Berríos and Jakob Jakobsen, Qalandar Bux Memon, Ntone Edjabe and David Morris, Liam Gillick, Alison Greene, Yaiza María Hernández Velázquez, Prem Krishnamurthy and Emily Smith, Nkule Mabaso, Morad Montazami, Paul-Emmanuel Odin, Vijay Prashad, Kristin Ross, Grace Samboh, Sumesh Sharma, Joshua Simon, Hajnalka Somogyi, Lucy Steeds, Françoise Vergès Copublished with the Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College/Luma Foundation

Lucy Steeds

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