Banner Message
Please note that online availability does not reflect stock in store!
Please contact us via email or phone for immediate stock information.
Art
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.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.
This massive monograph on seminal designer Alexander Girard covers virtually every aspect of his distinctive career. One of the most prolific mid-20th century designers, Girard's work spanned many disciplines, including textile design, graphic design, typography, illustration, furniture design, interior design, product design, exhibit design, and architecture. Exhaustively researched and lovingly assembled by designer Todd Oldham, this tome is the definitive must-have book on Girard's oeuvre.Many of the designs featured here have never before been published. Oldham carefully went through the entire Girard archive to uncover many treasures as well as all of the most recognizable works by Girard.
Girard is well known for his bold, colorful, and iconic textile designs for Herman Miller (1952-1975), which are extensively featured. These were often featured in conjunction with furniture designs by his contemporaries: Charles and Ray Eames, and George Nelson. His designs for La Fonda del Sol restaurant (1960) are an experiment with typography as a communication tool and large-scale environmental graphic. Textiles and Objects (1961) was a very influential New York store sponsored by Herman Miller that featured Girard's designs inspired by his travels and folk art collection. The Girard Foundation (1962) houses his own personal and extensive collection of folk art, textiles, toys, and objects from around the world. His complete environmental design for Braniff International Airways (1965) gave him the opportunity to work at all scales with color, graphics, textiles, and furniture design. He designed every aspect of the project himself, from the minute-sized sugar packets and the ticket counters to the graphic colors of the planes themselves. Alexander Girard's playful yet sophisticated designs continue to inspire new generations of artists and designers. The breadth and scope of his work is truly remarkable. This highly anticipated tome is the first major retrospective of this very accomplished and prolific designer, and has been painstakingly edited by renowned New York-based designer Todd Oldham.Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:
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.
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.
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