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Art Instruction
Recent work of one of China's most important and outspoken contemporary artists is featured in this book. One of China's most controversial artists, Ai Weiwei is also one of the world's most prominent critics of the Chinese government. A critic of China's handling of such matters as the 2008 Olympic Games, and the tragedy of the 2008 earthquake, Ai Weiwei brings questions about tradition, history, modernity, and change to his works of sculpture, architecture, photography and his blog texts. This attractive volume includes images of Ai Weiwei's acclaimed Fairytale installation for the 2007 Documenta in Kassel, German, as well as illustrations of his furniture and woodwork, teapots and vases, video stills and his recent works for the exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. These include Remembering, an installation at the front facade at the Haus der Kunst with backpacks, which commemorates the Sichuan Earthquake and the thousands of children who died in their schools then. Other works are Soft Ground and Rooted Upon. In addition to illustrations of Ai Weiwei's three-dimensional work, there are numerous photographs, images of installations in situ, and blog entries and poems by the artist.
While best-known for his spindly, attenuated figures, Giacometti also created brilant work in two dimensions. This book offers a scholarly assessment of his entire oeuvre and underscores the continity between the two phases of his career: the pre-1935 works, which included his Surrealist scupltures, and his post-war masterpieces. It details Giacometti's artistic crisis, when he returned to working from the model and broke with the Surrealists, and reveals how he began tackling the problem of situating figures in space in an entirely new way. This book discusses the relationship between his two- and three-dimensional works, showing Giacometti to have been as great a painter as he was a sculptor. Featuring extraordinary images of the artist at work, this book includes photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ugo Mulas, and Man Ray.
The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities of Albertus Seba (1665-1736) is one of the 18th century's greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time.
Though scientists of Seba's era often collected natural specimens for research purposes, the Amsterdam-based pharmacist was unrivaled in his passion. His amazing collection of animals, plants, and insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime. In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned illustrations of every specimen and arranged the publication of a four-volume catalogue. The nature Wunderkammer featured everything from strange and exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, birds, and butterflies, as well as fantastic beasts, such as a hydra and a dragon. Many illustrations mixed plants and animals into a single scenic plate.
This reproduction is taken from a rare hand-colored original and features an introduction to the natural history and collecting traditions in which Seba played such an important role.
Millions buy albums and cds, and millions adore their albums not just for the music, but also for the sleeve artwork which becomes by association the visual representation of everything the album represents for the listener. Album is unique - the first visual history of this phenomenon and of the designers, art directors, recording artists, and record companies associated with the greatest music graphics of all time. Structured chronologically, the book focuses on individuals, music scenes, and subcultures, including: Punk, Surfers, Psychedelia in London, Tamla Motown, Disco Divas, and DJ Culture.
The nearly 400 WWII photographs in this book were taken primarily by German soldiers; some by civilians; some by professionals embedded with the troops. Consequently, many of them depict everyday life: jobs, weddings, dinners, musical and other social events--men and women at work and play as well as at war, a war that nearly consumed Europe. It is precisely the seemingly ordinary aspect of these snapshots--taken for family albums and for friends--that makes them so disturbing, because some of the subjects who smile benignly at the camera are the very same people who participated in the murder of millions of European civilians: Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Roma, intellectuals, homosexuals, clergy, adults, children, and infants. And they killed with apparent equanimity, without hesitation, without doubt, without regret. Album of the Damned contains pictures mostly never seen before, the majority of which were once in family albums and are pictured here with their original paper frames. Their impact is deeply disturbing precisely because they are so pedestrian. Thus, in this book, the questions once again arise as they have for so many decades: How could such ordinary people commit such brutal acts? How was it possible? The questions remain unanswerable, as they ever will be. The author acquired these photographs from some fifteen countries during a five-year research effort, reviewing more than 100,000 images from which he made his selection. He bid in auctions against museums and private collectors to create a WWII photo history unlike perhaps any other.
A fantastical journey through the pictorial world of alchemy and mysticism, the Cabbala and magic, freemasons and Rosicrusians. This unique selection of illustrations with commentaries and source texts guides us on a fascinating journey through the representations of the secret arts.
For decades, painter Alex Katz has split his time between New York and Maine, and the two very different locales have left their marks on his work. This collection, drawing on the large collection of Katz's paintings held by the Colby College Museum of Art, is the first to highlight the distinctions between the works created in each place. After attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 1949, Katz bought a studio in the rural town of Lincolnville, Maine in 1954 and began to spend his summers there. The effect on his work was immediately apparent. While he continued to produce striking New York cityscapes, he also began to paint the quieter landscape he saw in Maine. The elegance of New York interiors, meanwhile, gave way in the Maine months to paintings of outdoor leisure activities. And close-up portraits of urban faces--of which Katz was a master--were replaced with "portraits" of memorable trees, thickets against late-evening light, and flower-strewn meadows. A fully comprehensive survey of Katz's work, this beautifully produced volume offers a new way to understand the whole of his remarkable career.
The man who launched the Golden Age of album cover design
"I love music so much and I had such ambition that I was willing to go way beyond what the hell they paid me for. I wanted people to look at the artwork and hear the music." --Alex Steinweiss Alex Steinweiss invented the album cover as we know it, and created a new graphic art form. In 1940, as Columbia Records' young new art director, he pitched an idea: Why not replace the standard plain brown wrapper with an eye-catching illustration? The company took a chance, and within months its record sales increased by over 800 per cent. His covers for Columbia--combining bold typography with modern, elegant illustrations--took the industry by storm and revolutionized the way records were sold. Over three decades, Steinweiss made thousands of original artworks for classical, jazz, and popular record covers for Columbia, Decca, London, and Everest; as well as logos, labels, advertising material, even his own typeface, the Steinweiss Scrawl. He launched the golden age of album cover design and influenced generations of designers to follow. Less well known--but included here--are his posters for the U.S. Navy; packaging and label design for liquor companies; film title sequences; as well as his fine art. Includes essays by three-time Grammy Award-winning art director/designer Kevin Reagan and graphic design historian Steven Heller; Steinweiss' personal recollections from an epic career; and extensive ephemera from the Steinweiss archive. Record collectors and graphic designers rejoice! Previously available in a limited edition, the book is finally available in an affordable trade version.
Alexander Calder is one of the most important--and most popular--American artists of the twentieth century. This lavishly illustrated volume accompanies an exhibit at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf that focuses on Calder's works of the 1930s and '40s, a period in which the sculptor experimented with a number of wildly different artistic directions. In addition to showcasing a large number of Calder's early abstract sculptures, this book also presents key works by his contemporaries, artists such as Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, and Jean Arp. By setting Calder's work alongside that of other artists, the volume establishes not only lines of influence and differentiation, but also the larger context in which he created his sculptures. Beautiful full-page images of Calder's iconic mobiles and stabiles give a rare sense of Calder's often playful use of space, and enable readers to study his work in detail. An accompanying DVD includes historical and experimental films, avant-garde music, interviews, and a walk through the exhibition, bringing the whole of Calder's achievement to life in unprecedented fashion.
Alexander Calder, a legendary and beloved figure in American art, has not generally been considered a major influence on contemporary artists. Yet as the twenty-first century unfolds, many artists are taking cues from Calder's hands-on investigations of form, balance, color, and movement as well as from his foresight in what we now refer to as the creative reuse of materials. These artists are returning to explorations of structure and balance, creating expressive artworks that celebrate the visual over the intellectual experience.
Drawn from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago's in-depth holdings of Calder's work and augmented by the artist's classic mobiles, standing mobiles, and stabiles from private and public collections, this pioneering consideration of Calder's influence includes works by some of today's most interesting and engaging sculptors: Martin Boyce, Nathan Carter, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Aaron Curry, Kristi Lippire, Jason Meadows, and Jason Middlebrook.
The book features new scholarship on Calder's creative reuse of materials by noted expert Brooke Kamin Rapaport. Scholar George Baker evaluates how the modern era in general and Calder in particular have influenced young sculptors. Exhibition organizer Lynne Warren contributes an overview of current sculptural practices in relation to Calder's work.There are also contributions by Bryan Granger, Dominic Molon, Diana Nawi, and Julie Rodrigues Wildholm.
Drawn from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago's in-depth holdings of Calder's work and augmented by the artist's classic mobiles, standing mobiles, and stabiles from private and public collections, this pioneering consideration of Calder's influence includes works by some of today's most interesting and engaging sculptors: Martin Boyce, Nathan Carter, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Aaron Curry, Kristi Lippire, Jason Meadows, and Jason Middlebrook.
The book features new scholarship on Calder's creative reuse of materials by noted expert Brooke Kamin Rapaport. Scholar George Baker evaluates how the modern era in general and Calder in particular have influenced young sculptors. Exhibition organizer Lynne Warren contributes an overview of current sculptural practices in relation to Calder's work.There are also contributions by Bryan Granger, Dominic Molon, Diana Nawi, and Julie Rodrigues Wildholm.
Celebrating the astounding creativity and originality of designer Alexander McQueen, who relentlessly questioned and confronted the requisites of fashion "An authoritative and moving insight into the legacy of the British designer."--Carola Long, Financial Times "McQueen's brilliance is celebrated in this sumptuous tome."--Harper's Bazaar "Excellent."--Huffington Post Arguably the most influential, imaginative, and provocative designer of his generation, Alexander McQueen both challenged and expanded fashion conventions to express ideas about race, class, sexuality, religion, and the environment. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the full breadth of the designer's career, from the start of his fledgling label to the triumphs of his own world-renowned London house. It features his most iconic and radical designs, revealing how McQueen adapted and combined the fundamentals of Savile Row tailoring, the specialized techniques of haute couture, and technological innovation to achieve his distinctive aesthetic. It also focuses on the highly sophisticated narrative structures underpinning his collections and extravagant runway presentations, with their echoes of avant-garde installation and performance art. Published to coincide with an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by The Costume Institute, this stunning book includes a preface by Andrew Bolton; an introduction by Susannah Frankel; an interview by Tim Blanks with Sarah Burton, creative director of the house of Alexander McQueen; illuminating quotes from the designer himself; provocative and captivating new photography by renowned photographer Sølve Sundsbø; and a lenticular cover by Gary James McQueen.
The creator of Art Nouveau's greatest beauties Alfons Mucha's is an art of seduction. His graceful women, delicate colors, and decorative style add up to an unashamed act of temptation. Mucha (1860-1939), whose work is indissolubly linked with the Art Nouveau style, was one of the most fascinating artistic personalities of the turn of the 20th century. He was not only a painter and graphic artist, but also took an interest in sculpture, jewelry, interior decorating, and utilitarian art. His particular talents, however, lay in decorative graphics, which was the basis of his fame and remains so today. This book traces all aspects of his career via biographical and descriptive texts and a wide selection of images. About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions
Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:
The perfect panic attack: A look back at the career of the master of suspense Hitchcock's name is synonymous with suspense--that is to say, masterful, spine-tingling, thrilling, shocking, excruciating, eye-boggling suspense. With masterpieces such as Rebecca, Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) fashioned an extremely original approach to filmmaking that is oft imitated though never equaled; his ability to enthrall and frighten with careful pacing, subtlety, and suggestiveness earned him a prestigious reputation which grows more powerful as time goes by. He is and will always remain the master of cinematic suspense. This book, which traces his life and career, from his earliest silent films to his last picture in 1976, also includes a special bonus that Hitch fans will especially enjoy: an illustrated and annotated list of each of his cameos.
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was a key figure in America's acceptance of photography as a serious form of artistic expression. His work bridges the gap between the self-consciously aesthetic Pictorialist photography at the turn of the century, and the more precisely descriptive 'straight' photography of the 1920s and 1930s. This monograph covers Stieglitz's career and provides the perfect introduction to the work of a major force in the American modernist movement.
An iconic English painter, Alfred Wallis (1855-1942), did not begin his artistic career until the age of seventy--truly proving that the joy of art can be experienced at any time in one's life. With Alfred Wallis Colouring Book, art lovers of all ages can enjoy hours of coloring pleasure while simultaneously experiencing the work of an influential painter in a new, personal way. This fun book is a wonderful introduction to Alfred Wallis, for those wanting to experience the elderly genius's idiosyncrasies and creative life. Twenty-two perfectly rendered line drawings of Wallis's iconic boats, landscapes, and harbor scenes await anyone looking for an exciting journey into the work and mind of a distinctive, celebrated artist.
Spanning nearly seven decades, a comprehensive consideration of the psychologically acute and surprisingly honest portraits of Alice Neel
Widely regarded as one of the most important American painters of the 20th century, Alice Neel is internationally recognized for her contributions to Abstract Expressionism, especially her perceptive portraiture. Neel (1900-1984) was a portrait painter at a time when this was traditionally the role of a male artist. After ascending to prominence in the 1960s as the feminist movement gained momentum, she has remained an iconic figure in the history of American painting.A self-proclaimed "collector of souls," Neel often painted friends and family, as well as the celebrated artists and writers of her day, such as Andy Warhol, Frank O'Hara, and Meyer Shapiro, delving into personalities and idiosyncrasies with a rare frankness. Alice Neel: Painted Truths brings together paintings that demonstrate Neel's range and ability, along with insightful commentary from four leading art historians. Although the book focuses on her portraits, it also covers the artist's early social realist paintings and cityscapes, tracing the evolution of Neel's style and examining themes that she revisited throughout her career.
Daring doppelgängers: What you see in this book is not "real" Alison Jackson has photographed the Queen of England on the toilet, George Bush and Tony Blair chatting in the sauna, Mick Jagger doing gymnastics, and Monica Lewinsky lighting Bill Clinton's cigar. Or has she? The likenesses are uncanny, but of course, her subjects are look-alikes. Her photos demonstrate that while seeing is believing, the truth is another story entirely. In her work, Jackson says, "Likeness becomes real and fantasy touches on the believable. The viewer is suspended in disbelief. I try to highlight the psychological relationship between what we see and what we imagine. This is bound up in our need to look--our voyeurism--and our need to believe." Indeed, by showing "celebrities" ostensibly caught unawares, Jackson's pictures show us what we imagine might go on behind closed doors. Jackson's work causes controversy, because it threatens to cross the line between the private and public life of our contemporary icons. Because we unquestioningly accept the authenticity of the photograph, it would appear that we are being given a glimpse of something confidential, a private moment. It is only upon closer examination that we question the reality of the image, and hopefully this makes us question our unwitting tendency to believe everything we see in the media today.
For this edition, Jackson has been commissioned to shoot a broad selection of new portraits of dead-ringers for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, George Bush, J. Lo, Eminem, Britney Spears, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, and many more. Expect the unexpected!
With essays by Will Self, Charles Glass, and William Ewing. All photographs (c) Alison Jackson
All well-known individuals depicted in this book are not "real." The photographs have been created using look-alikes. The well-known individuals have not had any involvement in the creation of the photographs and they have not approved them, nor has their approval been sought for the publication of these photographs. Text in English, French, and German
For this edition, Jackson has been commissioned to shoot a broad selection of new portraits of dead-ringers for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, George Bush, J. Lo, Eminem, Britney Spears, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, and many more. Expect the unexpected!
With essays by Will Self, Charles Glass, and William Ewing. All photographs (c) Alison Jackson
All well-known individuals depicted in this book are not "real." The photographs have been created using look-alikes. The well-known individuals have not had any involvement in the creation of the photographs and they have not approved them, nor has their approval been sought for the publication of these photographs. Text in English, French, and German