TOOLS FOR THINKINGSummer 2015

Drawing as Therapy Sketchbook; Colouring as Therapy colour-ing posters in four designs; Four new School of Thought Note-books sets: Artistic Movements; A new Family edition in the 100 Questions series; Memento Mori, five glass paperweights.

Good thinking requires good tools. To complement their classes, books and therapies, The School of Life offers a range of products that are both highly useful and stimulating for the eye and mind.

4New Products Artistic Movements

History is filled with some fascinating ‘schools of thought’ dedicated to tackling life’s big problems in distinctive ways. The School of Life have created a series of exqui-site notebook sets in honour of these think-ers, and the latest focus on four Artistis Move-ments: The English Modernists, The Bauhaus, The Mimimalists and The Pop Artist.

Each notebook carries an introduction to a thinker on the inside front page, their name beautifully printed on the cover - and is oth-erwise empty for your own projects.

When artists like Henry Moore, Barbara Hep-worth and Ben Nicholson were starting out – in the 1920s and 1930s – English Modernism seemed like a contradiction. You could make traditional English art or you could embrace the Modernism coming from Paris, Berlin and Vienna. But you couldn’t be loyal to both. Either you were fond of villages, fields and family life or you were attracted to abstract forms and adventurous materials.

One of the things art can do for us is reveal false dichotomies. That is, show us when we are really faced with a failure of imagination, rather than a real impossibility. It was possible to love the simpler, authentic habits of pro-vincial English life and be a modernist. But it took the imagination and determination of some pioneer artists to show how.

Pop Art emerged in Britain and the UK at the end of the 1950s. It wanted to connect art to the ordinary objects of everyday life and with the images of commercial culture. Com-ics, adverts, mainstream films and television shows were – traditionally – regarded as vul-gar and as unworthy of notice by serious, elite artists. Pop Art recognised that they could be charming, beautiful or even quite moving.

It started from the generous, democratic in-sight that the ideas we need might turn up in surprising places. Contemplating the label of

a tin of soup can be a profound experience. An image in a comic book might touch us as deeply as the most prestigious works of litera-ture. The ordinary is honoured, as it always should be.

The Bauhaus (or literally, ‘the house of con-struction’) was founded in Weimar, shortly after the end of World War One. Its founder Walter Gropius wanted to remove ‘the class barriers’ between art and craft, or between en-gineering, urban planning and architecture. Gropius recognised that industrial produc-tion would overwhelmingly dominate, and his aim was to guide high-quality design for mass production consumer goods: chairs, lamps etc.

After being relocated to Dessau and then Ber-lin, the Bauhaus was closed in 1933, as it was perceived as ‘communist’ by the Nazi party, which had just come to power. Although, by driving the leading figures overseas, it in fact massively increased the influence of their ide-as. Although primarily celebrated for its con-tribution to architecture – the artists Joseph Albers, Johannes Itten and Paul Klee were all on the teaching staff.

A large empty white canvas with a solitary deep black line down the middle. A splodge of purple paint against a yellow background. Ten steel beams arranged in a neat pile. What does it mean? Is someone making fun of us? How can they get away with doing so little?

Emerging initially in the US in the 1960s, Minimalism is a strategic rejection of excess. (It’s not that the artists were too lazy to do more.) Rather than simply show us the chaos, clutter and frenetic demands of modern exist-ence, minimalism offers us a cure. Simplify, reduce, concentrate on one thing at a time. Minimalism is an approach to economics and daily life presented to us in the guise of an art movement.

ARTISTIC MOVEMENTS

School of Thought notebook sets |A set of three paper-bound notebooks | 4 x Designs | 125 x 178mm with yellow contrast stitch | plain, grid and lined paper (one of each) | 64pp

5 New ProductsArtistic Movements

7 New ProductsArtistic Movements

8New Products Colouring as Therapy

Colouring is not just for children, but an en-joyable and therapeutic pastime for adults too. We work hard to juggle the many challenges and complexities of modern life, and we need time to relax and recharge. The simple, medi-tative act of colouring can help to alleviate anxiety, sharpen our concentration, and cul-tivate a deep sense of calm.This new set of colouring posters from The School of Life, has been designed in collabo-ration with four up-and-coming illustrators. From a clever subversion of a traditional still life of fruit, to a crashing wave created with philosophical quotations, they are playful, thought-provoking, and encourage you to exer-cise your imagination as you select your colours and fill in between – and outside – the lines.

Still life with Fruit – Atelier Deux-Mille (Toulouse)

Walden Pond – Michael Kirkham (Edinburgh)

Meditations – Sarah A. King (Whistler)

Know Yourself – Jeffrey Bowman (Lake District)

COLOURING AS THERAPY

A1 Colouring Posters |4 x Designs |Folded to A4

9 New ProductsColouring as Therapy

10New Products Drawing as Therapy

We often get inhibited around drawing. After years of representing exploding spaceships and happy cows, at a certain age – maybe seven, or thirteen – we come to the forlorn conclusion that we can’t draw. Our anxiety-stems from the deeply natural – but ultimately misguided – idea that we can’t enjoy drawing privately, just for ourselves. We judge our achievements by some external, and actually irrelevant, standard. We glance longingly atart materials; we like the weight of a particular pencil; we are charmed by the heavier texture of the paper. But often we lack the courage to start again and let ourselves draw. There’s such a lot of anxiety around failure. The act of drawing – if you are like this – is in itself a therapeutic move. It is a demonstration that fears can be tamed and that inhibitions can yield to fun.

One thing drawing helps us with is the bizarre

fact that we generally don’t actually notice very much of what is around us in the world. Of course we know that a person’s ear is stuck to the side of their head – but it’s only when we try to sketch an actual person’s head that we start to notice where and how. It’s a huge, unendingly valuable lesson: there’s so much going on around us all the time that we don’t really see until we make ourselves look at it.

Or you might want to flesh out a daydream. What would the perfect beach house look like? Or a tower a thousand storeys high? Map out a fantasy island.

We rely too much on words. It can be won-derfully meditative and soothing to forget the world and concentrate for a while on the process of marking the page: making a line, spreading a colour, seeing what happens, without worrying what the result will be.

DRAWING AS THERAPY

Hardback sketchbook | A4 with multi coloured stitching |Plain sketch paper | 132pp

100 QUESTIONSFamily Edition

11 New ProductsDrawing as Therapy

12New Products 100 Quations

It isn’t always easy for families to relate, but good conversation can play a part in building a strong connection between generations.

In this box you will find 100 carefully com-posed questions designed to spark imagina-tive, thought-provoking conversations be-tween children and adults. Use them as a tool for learning more about one another, building confidence and communication skills – and to liven up time spent together as a family.

Topics Include: Family | Life | Personality | School & Education | Careers | Friendship & Hobbies | Technology, The World & Space

How to use the cards: 1–These cards are ide-ally suited to families, and are perfect for use at the dinner table, at bed time or on road trips or other family occasions. 2–Pick a card, read it out and take turns answering the question. 3–The questions are designed to be answered by everyone eg. What do you/ did you like most about school? should also be answered by adults remember-ing their school days; likewise When you were little, what job did you want to do? can also be answered by a child (remembering when they were younger).4–Have fun – see where the conversation takes you! 5–Repeat often.

100 QUESTIONSFAMILY EDITION

100 question cards with box | 150 x 115 x 50mm

MEMENTO MORIGlass Paperweights

13 New Products100 Questions

14New Products Memento Mori

For centuries, artists produced ‘memento mori’, works of art that would remind their viewers of death and usually featured a skull or an hourglass. The point of these works wasn’t to make people despair, but to help them use the thought of death to focus on the real priorities.

Vivid reminders of mortality and the tran-sient nature of life put our prosaic obsessions into question. When measured against the fi-nality of death, the true insignificance of some of our worries is emphasised and we’re given an opportunity to feel a little braver about what we really want and feel.

The School of Life have created a collection of glass paperweights to serve as our own, modern versions of a ‘memento mori’. These objects are both pleasing to look at and should serve as daily inspirations to tackle our most important task: to live in accordance with our true talents and interests and to make the most of whatever precious moments we may have left.

MEMENTO MORIPAPERWEIGHTGlass Paperweight | 5 x Designs | 60 / 70 / 80mmPaper covered box |Booklet

15 New ProductsMemento Mori

16New Products Memento Mori Paperweights

AlgaeThis is a highly magnified image of a single-celled diatom algae. It is one of the tiniest and oldest living things on the planet. The naturalist Charles Darwin wrote about it to emphasise an idea that remains mo-mentous: that we humans evolved from other, simpler species. At the time, this was taken to be dangerously demeaning. But it’s a hugely liberating lesson. Often we expect too much from ourselves and others. We forget our origins as smaller, hairier primates and (before that) simple clusters of cells, like these algae. We need to climb down, and recall our mortality, our frailty, our terrible limitations and our weaknesses – which are tied to our deep ancestry as tiny things at the bottom of the sea.

Sand There are (very roughly) seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains of sand on the earth. The most common constituent of sand is silica, the second is aragonite, which has been created, over the past half billion years, from the crushed remains of various forms of life, like coral and shellfish. Pick up some grains, put them under a micro-scope and whole worlds appear. In certain strands of Zen Buddhism, sages train themselves to be content to stare for many hours at only a few grains, a symbol of their capacity to pay due attention to the ne-glected wonders of existence. We too should be content to look closely at grains in a spirit of modesty and humility – and acknowledge that we are, from a sufficient perspective, nothing more substantial than such grains and yet no less interesting or complex for that.

MothEubaphe mendica, also known as the Beggar, is a small yellow moth of fragile appearance and almost translucent wings. In her famous essay,

‘The Death of the Moth’, the English writer Virginia Woolf describes the final moments of just such a moth. It is trapped against a pane of glass. It cannot understand its predicament. It keeps trying to get through, but its energies are limited, its knowledge is too small and its lifespan is desperately short. To be touched by this is to be touched

– ultimately – by our own similar fate. We too have brief existences which we risk (so very easily) in hopeless, mistaken efforts; we too are misled, fatally, by things that we think are attractive, and for us as well, death comes far sooner than we would like.

SeaMany of the obstacles we face in our lives are rather like the waves of the sea: relentless, bleak, repetitive and, ultimately, not responsive to our wishes or longings. This is not a cruel fact about one’s own predicament; it is a basic premise of the human condition. Therefore, one should not bring unreasonable expectations and be continually shocked and dismayed when life does not answer to our demands. We should learn to accept all we cannot change and face it with a degree of heroism and Stoic strength, as a sailor battling the waves might. We can also, in the midst of our struggles, appreciate the beauty and grandeur of what we’re up against.

StarsGlobular clusters like this one are dense bunches of hundreds of thousands of stars formed over 13 billion years ago. This image, taken by the Hubble telescope, says nothing directly about what happened today at work or in our relationships. Its function is to make us feel small. That’s normally unpleasant, but to be made to feel small by something so much more majestic and powerful than we are has something redeeming and enhancing about it. The image is som-bre, rather than sad: calming, but not despair inducing. And in that condition of mind, we are left better equipped to deal with the intense, intractable and particular problems and griefs we have to deal with in our few years on this planet.

DIRECTORY

20Directory

100 QUESTIONSCONVERSATION EDITION

TSOL01 5060102746058RRP £20

MOODBOOK PRODUCTIVE

TSOL07 5060102746119RRP £15

20 APHORISMS

TSOL02 5060102746065RRP £18

MOODBOOK SCEPTICAL

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SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THE STOICS

TSOL03 5060102746072RRP £15

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THE EXISTENTIALISTS

TSOL04 5060102746089RRP £15

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THE PESSIMISTS

TSOL05 5060102746096RRP £15

MOODBOOK DARING

TSOL06 5060102746102RRP £20 | $32 | €26

KEYWORD PENCIL SETVISUAL ARTS

TSOL10 5060102746140RRP £12

KEYWORD PENCIL SETLITERARY

TSOL11 5060102747161RRP £12

UTOPIA CANDLECITY OF TOMORROW

TSOL13 5060102747192RRP £35

EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE TOTEKHAKI

TSOL19 5060102747253RRP £35

UTOPIA CANDLEWALDEN

TSOL14 5060102747208 RRP £35

100 QUESTIONSLOVE EDITION

TSOL22 5060102747413RRP £20

UTOPIA CANDLETHE REPUBLIC

TSOL15 5060102747215RRP £35

KEYWORD PENCIL SETPSYCHOANALYTIC

TSOL09 5060102746133RRP £12

21 Directory

20 PEOMS

TSOL24 5060102747444RRP £18

SCHOOL Of THOUGHTTHE ANTI-CAPITALISTS

TSOL29 5060102747482RRP £12

VIRTUE DOLLCALM

SOLD OUTRRP £20 | $32 | €26

EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE TOTENAVY

TSOL33 5060102747529RRP £35

100 QUESTIONSCAREER EDITION

TSOL23 5060102747420RRP £20

SCHOOL Of THOUGHTTHE FEMINISTS

TSOL30 5060102747499RRP £15

VIRTUE DOLLBRAVERY

SOLD OUTRRP £20 | $32 | €26

BIG THINKERSDARWIN & WOOLFE

TSOL34 5060102747536RRP £15

PLACES/IDEASPOSTCARD BOOK

TSOL26 5060102747451RRP £12

KEYWORD PENCIL SETPHILOSOPHICAL

TSOL31 5060102747505RRP £12

15 MINUTES HOURGLASS

TSOL20 5060102747260RRP £20

BIG THINKERSNIETZSCHE & FREUD

TSOL35 5060102747543RRP £15

VIRTUE DOLLKINDNESS

TSOL16 5060102747222RRP £22

PSYCHOLOGY OF COLOURCOLOURING PENCIL SET

TSOL32 5060102747512RRP £18

SCHOOL Of THOUGHT NOTEBOOKSTHE BUDDHISTS

TSOL28 5060102747475RRP £15

IMPERFECTION POT

TSOL36 5060102747550RRP £50

22Directory

COLOURING AS THERAPYFRUIT

TSOL47 5060102747666RRP £12

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THE MINILMALIST

TSOL54 5060102747734RRP £15

COLOURING AS THERAPYWALDEN

TSOL48 5060102747673RRP £12

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THE POP ARTISTS

TSOL53 5060102747727RRP £15

COLOURING AS THERAPYMEDITATIONS

TSOL49 5060102747680RRP £12

COLOURING AS THERAPYKNOW YOURSELF

TSOL50 5060102747697RRP £12

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THE BAUHAUS

TSOL51 5060102747703 RRP £15

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THE ENGLISH MODERNISTS

TSOL52 5060102746072RRP £15

DRAWING AS THERAPYSKETCHBOOK

TSOL56 5060102747758RRP £15

MEMENTO MORISPACE

TSOL58 5060102747772RRP £25

MEMENTO MORISAND

TSOL59 5060102747789RRP £25

MEMENTO MORIWAVE

TSOL62 5060102747819RRP £35

MEMENTO MORIALGAE

TSOL60 5060102747796RRP £30

MEMENTO MORIMOTH

TSOL61 5060102747802RRP £30

100 QUESTIONSFAMILY EDITION

TSOL55 5060102747741RRP £20

ABOUT THE SCHOOL OF LIFE

The School of Life is dedicated to exploring life’s big questions. How can we fulfill our potential? Can work be inspiring? Why does community matter? Should relationships last a life time? We don’t have all the answers, but we’ll direct you towards a variety of useful ideas – from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts – that are guaranteed to stimulate, provoke, nourish and console.

www.theschooloflife.comTwitter: @theschooloflifeFacebook: theschooloflifelondonPinterest: theschooloflife

WHOLESALE ENQUIRIES:

Polite (retail products): Jack Jacksonjack@politecompany.co.ukwww.politecompany.co.uk+44 (0) 1625 560055

PanMacmillan (How To and Life Lessons series):Toby WatsonKey Account Manager+ 44 (0)7990 887282t.watson@macmillan.co.uk

Phaidon (Art as Therapy):Dan Groenewald dgroenewald@phaidon.com+ 44 (0) 20 7843 1206

PRESS ENQUIRIES:

Laura Brownpress@theschooloflife.com+44 (0) 20 7833 1010

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