Best of
Art

1974

The Complete Illuminated Books


William Blake - 1974
    For Blake, religion and politics, intellect and emotion, mind and body were both unified and in conflict with each other: his work is expressive of his personal mythology, and his methods of conveying it were integral to its meaning. There is no comparison with reading books such as Jerusalem, America, and Songs of Innocence and of Experience in Blake's own medium, infused with his sublime and exhilarating colors. Tiny figures and forms dance among the lines of the text, flames appear to burn up the page, and dense passages of Biblical-sounding text are brought to a jarring halt by startling images of death, destruction, and liberation. Blake's hope that his books would obtain wide circulation was unfulfilled: some exist only in unique copies and none was printed in more than very small numbers. Now, for the first time, the plates from the William Blake Trust's Collected Edition have been brought together in a single volume, with transcripts of the texts and an introduction by the noted scholar David Bindman. Includes: Jerusalem; Songs of Innocence and of Experience; All Religions are One; There is No Natural Religion; The Book of Thel; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Visions of the Daughters of Albion; America a Prophecy; Europe a Prophecy; The Song of Los Milton a Poem; The Ghost of Abel; On Homers Poetry and] On Virgil; Laocoon; The First Book of Urizen; The Book of Ahania; The Book of Los.

Georgia O'Keeffe


Georgia O'Keeffe - 1974
    Yet no full colour collection of her work has been available until now. This comprehensive volume consists of 108 colour plates accompanied by text written by the artist.

Film as a Subversive Art


Amos Vogel - 1974
    According to Vogel--founder of Cinema 16, North America's legendary film society--the book details the "accelerating worldwide trend toward a more liberated cinema, in which subjects and forms hitherto considered unthinkable or forbidden are boldly explored." So ahead of his time was Vogel that the ideas that he penned some 30 years ago are still relevant today, and readily accessible in this classic volume. Accompanied by over 300 rare film stills, "Film as a Subversive Art" analyzes how aesthetic, sexual and ideological subversives use one of the most powerful art forms of our day to exchange or manipulate our conscious and unconscious, demystify visual taboos, destroy dated cinematic forms, and undermine existing value systems and institutions. This subversion of form, as well as of content, is placed within the context of the contemporary world view of science, philosophy, and modern art, and is illuminated by a detailed examination of over 500 films, including many banned, rarely seen, or never released works.

Art Forms in Nature


Ernst Haeckel - 1974
    This volume highlights the research and findings of this natural scientist. Powerful modern microscopes have confirmed the accuracy of Haeckel's prints, which even in their day, became world famous. Haeckel's portfolio, first published between 1899 and 1904 in separate installments, is described in the opening essays. The plates illustrate Haeckel's fundamental monistic notion of the -unity of all living things- and the wide variety of forms are executed with utmost delicacy. Incipient microscopic organisms are juxtaposed with highly developed plants and animals. The pages, ordered according to geometric and -constructive- aspects, document the oness of the world in its most diversified forms. This collection of plates was not only well-received by scientists, but by artists and architects as well. Rene Binet, a pioneer of glass and iron constructions, Emile Galle, a renowned Art Nouveau designer, and the photographer Karl Blossfeld all make explicit reference to Haeckel in their work.

Glorious Nosebleed


Edward Gorey - 1974
    The Glorious Nosebleed, an alphabet created with Edward Gorey’s inimitable sense of the weird and the macabre, trips from A to Z with illustrations that are both strikingly funny and a bit weird, all the way from “She wandered among the trees Aimlessly” to “He wrote it all down Zealously.” A classic of Gorey’s imaginative and darkly humorous mind.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard


Ralph Eugene Meatyard - 1974
    Whatever the label, these evocative images of friends and family and the natural world around his home illustrate a delicate psychology of human interaction. Meatyard was trained as an optician, a profession that he maintained all his life in Lexington, Kentucky; he bought a camera in 1950 for the sole purpose of photographing his first-born son. But shortly thereafter, he joined the Lexington Camera Club and developed a friendship with his photography teacher Van Deren Coke, as well as a circle of local writers and photographers, including Guy Davenport, Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry, Jonathan Williams, and Minor White. Family and friends freely participated in Meatyard's staged and mysterious images, which often involve masks and abandoned spaces, and obliquely reference social, political, and cultural issues. A key subject in Meatyard's work is the natural environment, which is featured in his Light on Water series, in which long exposures seem to create calligraphic texts, and his No-Focus series, in which he deliberately photographed stems and twigs out of focus. In one of his last series titled Motion-Sound, the pictures were made by moving the camera gently, creating multiple exposures of the woodland scenes that suggest abstract sound patterns. The book accompanies an exhibition organized by ICP Assistant Curator Cynthia Young with acclaimed writer and Meatyard friend, Guy Davenport, who also wrote the text. Also included are the exhibition history, chronology, and bibliography.

He Was One of Us


Rien Poortvliet - 1974
    

Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper's Bazar, 1867-1898


Stella Blum - 1974
    Visiting European royalty as well as American women returning from the International Exhibition in Paris in 1867 stimulated fashion awareness — and it was in this climate that the magazine Harper's Bazar flowered. Dedicated to being "A repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction," it brought to American women inside glimpses of the very latest European and American fashions, all in carefully detailed engravings. It was much the finest source for high fashion for this period.This book consists of the finest illustrations from Harper's Bazar between the years 1867 and 1898, the period of its peak importance. These illustrations not only show you what apparel appealed to our Victorian ancestors, but give you an idea of the evolutionary nature of fashion as well. You will see bustles come and go, natural forms become the vogue only to be superseded by the constricting hourglass figure. Each look is illustrated with a number of different garments. There are gowns for the morning hours, dinner dresses, sporting costumes, traveling clothes and apparel for special occasions: weddings, communions, funerals, etc. Since no costume was complete without accessories, a full line of hats, fans, parasols, muffs, gloves, handkerchiefs, jewelry, shoes and hair styles is shown as well. A selection of children's attire is also included. An introduction by Stella Blum covers the history of Harper's Bazar and examines the various phases fashion went through between 1867 and 1898.

Native funk & flash; an emerging folk art


Alexandra Jacopetti Hart - 1974
    photos by Jerry Wainwright

America


Ralph Steadman - 1974
    Thompson collaborator Ralph Steadman delivers a heaping helping of anti-American vitriol with trademarked bombast, based on his travels throughout the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

The Book of Kells: Reproductions From the Manuscript in Trinity College Dublin


Françoise Henry - 1974
    It includes all of the full page illustrations in the manuscript and a representative sample of the ornamentation that is to be found on the text pages. In all 93 pages and 6 half pages are reproduced complete. In every case a recto of the original manuscript has been kept as a right-hand page and a verso as a left-hand page. In addition to the reproductions there are 30 plates of greatly enlarged details of the illustrations." "The Book and its Decoration," a study of the manuscript by François Henry, is also included.

Patterns In Nature


Peter S. Stevens - 1974
    IIn a stunning synthesis of art and science, Peter Stevens explores the universal patterns in which nature expresses herself. He provides a fresh way of viewing and understanding the physical world.“When we see how the branching of trees resembles the branching of arteries and the branching of rivers, how crystal grains look like soap bubbles and the plates of a tortoise’s shell, how the fiddleheads of ferns, stellar galaxies, and water emptying from the bathtub spiral in a similar manner, then we cannot help but wonder why nature uses only a few kindred forms in so many contexts…It turns out that those patterns and forms are peculiarly restricted, that the immense variety that nature creates emerges from the working and reworking of only a few formal themes.”In elegant and lucid prose, illuminated by hundreds of extraordinary photographs and geometrical drawings, Stevens examines those themes – spirals, meanders, branching patterns, explosions – and explains how they evolve according to the laws of stress, flow, turbulence, least effort, surface tension, close packing, and most important, the constraints of three-dimensional space. Steven’s insights about space and its limitations enable us to compare a lightning stroke with the tributaries of a river, and a splash of milk with galaxies in the heavens. He explores the spiral of a seashell, the markings of a giraffe, the spikes of an inkblot. His investigation carries him from the evolution of trees to the drifting of the continents, from the packing of billiard balls to black holes in space, and everywhere he rigorously shows us not only the individual beauty of natural objects, but the underlying harmony that they share.PATTERNS IN NATURE is a pleasure to read and to behold, a vivid and original piece of scholarship whose implications will influence scientists, architects and engineers for years to come – and whose aesthetic truth will enrich our appreciation of the natural world.

The Use and Abuse of Art


Jacques Barzun - 1974
    Such is the effect of these essays, a series given as lectures at the National Gallery in 1973. Mr. Barzun examines art as religion, as destroyer, as redeemer, and in relation to what he calls "its temper, science," but never forgets the basic essential. As he says, "the last word on art should indeed be: mystery. But that need not stop any of us from dealing with it as if we understood more than we can." And how good it is to have one's mind stretched to that understanding of "more.""--Virginia Quarterly Review

New Skin for the Old Ceremony


Leonard Cohen - 1974
    On it, he begins to evolve away from the rawer sound of his earlier albums, with violas, mandolins, banjos, guitars, percussion & other instruments giving the album a more orchestrated, but nevertheless spare, sound. A remastered CD was released in 1995. The album is silver in the UK, but never dented the Billboard Top 200. In 2009, it was included in Hallelujah-The Essential Leonard Cohen Album Collection, an 8-CD box set issued by Sony Music in the Netherlands."Is This What You Wanted" – 4:13 "Chelsea Hotel #2" (Cohen, Ron Cornelius)– 3:06 "Lover Lover Lover" – 3:19 "Field Commander Cohen" – 3:59 "Why Don't You Try" – 3:50 "There Is a War" – 2:59 "A Singer Must Die" – 3:17 "I Tried to Leave You" – 2:40 "Who by Fire" – 2:33 "Take This Longing" – 4:06 "Leaving Green Sleeves" – 2:38

The Pencil


Paul Calle - 1974
    In this book, Calle explores pencil drawing as a serious medium, rather than just a preliminary step in painting. He offers a brief history of the development of the pencil and its use and demonstrates various picture projects.

Art and Scholasticism With Other Essays


Jacques Maritain - 1974
    Maritain provides a strong dissenting perspective on the lazy, self-flattering artistic assumptions of the past two centuries.This work contains the essays entitled: Schoolmen and the Theory of Art; Speculative Order and the Practical Order; Making and Action; Art an Intellectual Virtue; Art and Beauty; Rules of Art; Purity of Art; Christian Art; Art and Morality; Frontiers of Poetry; An Essay on Art; Some Reflections Upon Religious Art; also found within is a list of principal notes.

Mandala


José Argüelles - 1974
    92 illustrations, 11 in color.

J. C. Leyendecker


Michael Schau - 1974
    Hardcover: 207 pages Publisher: Watson-Guptill Publications; 1ST edition (1974) Language: English ISBN-10: 0823027570 ISBN-13: 978-0823027576 Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 9.2 x 1 inches Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds

Nietzsche in Shapes and Colors


Halla Dagdromma - 1974
    

A Joseph Cornell Album


Dore Ashton - 1974
    With affection and critical respect, a celebrated art historian has gathered an unprecedented wealth of material about the shy but immensely influential artist who lived on incongruously named Utopia Parkway in Queens, New York.

The Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry


Millard Meiss - 1974
    The Belles Heures (Book of Hours) of the Duke of Berry (southern France), in private possession until 1954, is much less well known that the 'Tres Riches Heures.' Also, painted (illuminated) by three Limbourg Brothers, The Belles Heures contains superlative qualities no longer visible in its famous successor.

The Firesign Theatre's Big mystery joke book


David Ossman - 1974
    Money Song 2. An Invocation from the Book of Punter 3. The Mysterious History of "The Firesign Theatre" 4. The Tale of The Giant Rat of Sumatra 5. The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye 6. Temporarily Humboldt County 7. The Adventures of Mark Time 8. Hundred Dollar Ben 9. Young Guy, Motor Detective 10. The Year Of The Rat 11. Gramps' World 12. Rubbergon Dumn Toyko 13. Le Trente-Huit Cunegonde 14. The Dream Play (for Monkey, Dreamer, Mudhead and Snake)

For the Sake of a Single Verse ...: From the Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge


Ben Shahn - 1974
    

Storyteller Without Words: The Wood Engravings


Lynd Ward - 1974
    

The Wonders of the Seasons


Bertha Morris Parker - 1974
    

The Unknown Leonardo


Ladislao Reti - 1974
    

Chinese Lattice Designs


Daniel Sheets Dye - 1974
    Long recognized as an important folk art, window lattices have been generally neglected as an art form and this book is the first work on the subject since the 17th century. Fortunately, it is also the definitive work on the subject, and though no book can present a complete coverage of Chinese lattice, this book is a great classic study and an incredibly rich source of design for Westerners.More than 1200 designs are shown here, arranged in a clear system of classification that includes 22 areas of related design — borders, brackets, tail pieces, and so on. The lattices are classified according to one basic figure or concept, and the hundreds of beautiful design variations fall into only 26 categories: parallelogram, octagon or octagon square, hexagon, single focus frames, double focus frames, triple focus frames, quintuple focus frames, no focus frames, wedge-lock, presentation, out-lock, in-out bound, the Han line, parallel waves, opposed waves, recurving wave, loop-continued, like swastikas (a Buddhist symbol), unlike swastikas, central Ju I, allover Ju I, S-scroll, U-scroll, rustic ice-ray, symmetrical ice-ray, and square and round. Each category is introduced in sections at the front. In addition, there is usually a short description for each design and every design is designated by name, location, and approximate date of construction.Professor Dye spent over 21 years studying and copying lattices all over China, and because of the ravages of time and changing cultural values, this collection can probably never be duplicated. Balanced, intricate, sometimes asymmetrical, usually harmonious, these lattice designs present a wealth of material for the Western commercial artist, textile designer, pattern-maker, and craftsman. Reflecting their Chinese heritage, these designs are universal and can be used almost anywhere.

Erotic Art of the Masters: The 18th, 19th & 20th Centuries


Bradley Smith - 1974
    

The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline


John Willie - 1974
    It was translated into French, German and Italian, and was also made into a movie, The Perils of Gwendoline (1984, directed by Just Jaeckin).This revised edition was published on December 9, 1999, the birthday of 'John Willie', as well as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the first edition. It's been expanded to 368 pages, which includes a wealth of previously unpublished and uncollected work by the artist. New to this edition are black and white reproductions of drawings and paintings (circa 193550), most from original artwork and never previously published, as well as an equal number of full-color pages also previously unpublished. The biographical introduction has been expanded to include much new information about J.W. including photographs.

The Mystic Spiral: Journey of the Soul


Jill Purce - 1974
    As the spherical vortex, spiraling through its own center, it combines the inward and outward directions of movement.In this original and engrossing book, Jill Purce traces the significance of one man’s central symbols from the double spirals of Stone Age art and the interlocking spirals of the Chinese Yin Yang symbol to the whorls of Celtic crosses, Maori tattoos and the Islamic arabesque. Many of the superb images here were intended as objects of contemplation; for the spiral is a cosmic symbol.Art and Imagination series: These large-format, gloriously-illustrated paperbacks cover Eastern and Western religion and philosophy, including myth and magic, alchemy and astrology. The distinguished authors bring a wealth of knowledge, visionary thinking and accessible writing to each intriguing subject.

The Curves of Life


Theodore Andrea Cook - 1974
    In The Curves of Life, Sir Theodore A. Cook (1867–1928), English author and editor, finds that the spiral or helix may lie at the core of life's first principle — that of growth. The spiral is fundamental to the structure of plants, shells, and the human body; to the periodicity of atomic elements and to an animal's horns; to microscopic DNA (the double helix) and to the Andromeda nebula.The Curves of Life portrays the significance of the spiral in 426 illustrations, from a Narwhal's tusk to Dürer's plan for a cylindrical helix. From the spiral in nature, science, and art, the author suggests ideas on the essence of beauty and man's response to it. "One of the chief beauties of the spiral as an imaginative conception is that it is always growing, yet never covering the same ground, so that it is not merely an explanation of the past, but is also a prophecy of the future."Martin Gardner, mathematician and author, said of The Curves of Life, "This is the classic reference on how the golden ratio applies to spirals and helices in nature."

Fantastic Illustrations of Grandville


Stanley Appelbaum - 1974
    From Un Autre Monde, Les Animaux. 266 illus.

In Wilderness is the Preservation of the World


Henry David Thoreau - 1974
    Eliot Porter, one of America's foremost nature photographers, blends short excerpts from Thoreau's Walden and many other works with 72 full-color photographs that perfectly reproduce the writer's sense of quiet drama.

Soul Music: The Birth Of A Sound In Black America


Michael Haralambos - 1974
    This pioneering study documents the birth of soul music in America during the 1950s and '60s when, in response to the black community's new self-awareness and pride, musicians such as James Brown, The Impressions, Wilson Pickett, King Curtis, Stevie Wonder, and others were discovering in the urban blues, gospel, and r&b a new sound--soul--that expressed fresh musical and social ideals.

Native Funk & Flash: An Emerging Folk Art


Alexandra Jacopetti - 1974
    It comes from my own point of view - as an observer of its emergence and development, as a folk artist, and as a participant in the culture from which it springs. Many of us have hungered for a cultural identity strong enough to produce our own version of the native costumes of Afghanistan or Guatemala, for a community life rich enough for us to need our own totems comparable to African or Native American masks and ritual objects. The native funk and flash in this book tell us something of that hunger and what we are doing to fill it, as well as something of the meaning of those artifacts from other places and times. My hope is to make the consciousness behind these folk expressions more understandable and accessible to others and to stimulate people to experience for themselves the joy and fulfillment of making their own art for themselves."

Handbook in Motion


Simone Forti - 1974
    Simone Forti is a dancer who has always forged her own path. She arrived in New York in the early 60's from California. She brought with her a series of pieces that proved to be of serious influence on the development of "post modern" dance and sculpture in years to come. Her "dance-constructions" were based on a concern with bodies in action, the movement not being stylized or presented for its visual line but rather as a physical fact. The artist traces the development of her work intuitively rather than chronologically, including narratives about a time of participation in the drug culture that sheds light on the changes in her dancing. The book includes drawings, "dance reports" (short descriptions of events whose movement made a deep impression on the author's memory), and documentary materials such as scores, descriptions, and photographic records of performances.

Egon Schiele's Portraits


Alessandra Comini - 1974
    Comini analyzes Schiele's work in the context of Viennese Expressionism, rising existential consciousness, and the unique ambiance of Vienna. The human figure forms the most compelling motif in Schiele's oeuvre, which is comprised of hundreds of oils and thousands of drawings. Numerous self-portraits record emotional states, reflect major stylistic changes, and provide a brilliant focus for this examination of his art and his life.

Frasconi: Against the Grain: The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi


Antonio Frasconi - 1974
    

Science Fiction Anthology


Ken Savee - 1974
    This is a large format coloring book with a synopsis of a famous science fiction story/novel on one page and a large illustration to color on the facing page.

Norwegian Rosemaling: Decorative Painting on Wood


Margaret M. Miller - 1974
    A step by step guide to the process of Rosemaling.

The Flowering of American Folk Art 1776-1876


Jean Lipman - 1974
    View page after page of extraordinary talent, evidenced in weathervanes, ship figureheads, tinware, toys, quilts, painted furniture, and more.

Visionary Film


P. Adams Sitney - 1974
    Critics hailed the first edition of Visionary Film as the most complete work written on the exciting, often puzzling, and always controversial genre of American avant-garde film.

Draw 50 Animals: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Elephants, Tigers, Dogs, Fish, Birds, and Many More


Lee J. Ames - 1974
    Fifty furry, scaly and feathered friends are here for aspiring young artists to draw.

Total Art: Environments, Happenings, and Performance


Adrian Henri - 1974
    Happenings, first seen in New York in the early '60s, use live performers without the logical structure of drama, in an attempt to break down the customary distinctions between life and art.

The Painter's Manual of Dionysius of Fourna


Paul Hetherington - 1974
    A classic hermeneia (literally interpretation or expounding), this oversize, small-print work includes introductary sections on icon painting techniques and describes hundreds of figures of saints, Old and New Testament events, parables, feast days, and decorations of churches.

The World of Atget


Berenice Abbott - 1974
    

The Tradition Of Constructivism


Stephen Bann - 1974
    Since the time of their "Realistic Manifesto," constructivism has spread throughout the world, opposing personal, expressionistic art with abstraction and formal construction. In this book, Stephen Bann has collected the most important constructivist documents, including the writings of EI Lissitzky, Theo Van Doesburg, Hans Richter, Victor Vasarely, and Charles Biederman—many of which have never before been available in English—and supplemented them with a critical introduction, a chronology of constructivism, and an invaluable bibliography of close to four hundred items. This volume is illustrated with thirty-eight constructivist prints, paintings, drawings, and sculptures, some of them are rare and previously unpublished.

The Maxfield Parrish Poster Book


Maxfield Parrish - 1974
    24 posters in full color.

Van Nostrand Reinhold Manual of Rendering with Pen and Ink


Robert W. Gill - 1974
    

Henry David Thoreau, The Poet's Delay: A Collection of Poetry by America's Greatest Observer of Nature


Henry David Thoreau - 1974
    Thoreau considered himself not a maker of poetic verses, but a man of poetic mind. His subject matter--integrity--was what mattered most in his life. Illustrated with magnificent watercolors by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and other masterworks that depict the beauty of nature to equal Thoreau's verse. 55 color illustrations.

Crafts of the North American Indians


Richard C. Schneider - 1974
    

Notations in Passing


Nathan Lyons - 1974
    

A Handbook of Celtic Ornament


John G. Merne - 1974
    Bestselling reference book for a wide range of Celtic design.

Art Nouveau Designs in Color


Alphonse Mucha - 1974
    60 plates in full color. Publisher’s Note.

Views of Rome, Then and Now


Giovanni Battista Piranesi - 1974
    Monuments of ancient, early Christian, Renaissance and Baroque Rome — Colosseum, Forum, fountains, etc. — with auxiliary notes on both the etchings and photographs. 82 plates.

Miro


Jose Maria Faerna - 1974
    Miro studied art in his native Barcelona before joining the Paris art scene in the 1920s. Fantasy, dreams, and myths played an important role in Miro's early works, many of which are included in the more than 70 full-color reproductions of paintings, sculptures, and tapestries in this collection. This is a fine introduction to the monumental works of one of the foremost artists of the 20th century.

Owls of North America


Allan W. Eckert - 1974
    

Italic Way to Beautiful Handwriting, Cursive and Calligraphic


Fred Eager - 1974
    A step-by-step, trace-and-copy manual, it shows how to develop the handwriting you would really prefer---legible and beautiful, yet characteristically your own.What is Italic handwriting? It was developed in early Renaissance as a "speedwriting" technique by the Papal scribes who wanted to combine beauty and legibility with speed. Today, it is occasionally used on diplomas and other special papers.Now, through modern teaching methods developed by Fred Eager, this handwriting can be yours. Mr. Eager's methods have been widely used throughout the U.S., and Italic classes and clubs have sprung up from coast to coast. Indeed, numerous school systems have adopted the Eager system for teaching writing in the primary grades.The foundation of the Eager system is a dual approach: you learn two basic hands simultaneously---calligraphic and cursive---one handsome, the other functional, and then find the happy medium between.

The arts of the Italian Renaissance: painting, sculpture, architecture


Walter Paatz - 1974
    

God Is a Verb!


Marilee Zdenek - 1974
    

Great Western Salt Works: Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art


Jack Burnham - 1974
    A paraphrase from the jacket blurb: This is the expression of Burnham's continuing concern with several essential themes: the death of art as we know it (through the renewal of values), the meaning of art beyond collecting and categorizing, and the interrelationship of art with social existence.