His monumental, unsettling images have an extraordinary power to disturb, shock, and haunt the spectator, "to unlock the valves of feeling and therefore return the onlooker to life more violently".Eminent writer and curator David Sylvester provides the definitive account of the career of an artist whose friend and collaborator he was for more than forty years. Drawing on his unparalleled personal knowledge of Bacon's inspirations and intentions, he first offers a critical overview of the development of Bacon's work from 1933 to the early 1990s, and then addresses its crucial aspects. Sylvester also reproduces previously unpublished extracts from his celebrated conversations with Bacon in which the artist speaks about himself, modern painters, and the art of the past. Finally, he gives a brief account of Bacon's life, correcting errors that elsewhere have been presented as facts.Accompanying the incisive and revealing text are reproductions of almost every Bacon work discussed, including twelve triptych fold-outs. The most complete work on Bacon yet, this book constitutes a portrait of one of the creative geniuses of our age by a writer of comparable distinction.

    How ever to explain it all? How ever to explain Salvador Dali? This monograph on Dali, originally published in 1975, was without doubt a landmark in the extensive bibliography on the artist. Two factors aided author Luis Romero in his endeavor: firstly, the active support of Dali himself, who helped in selecting the materials and who produced the series of original calligraphic texts that precede each of the sections in the book. And secondly, Romero's decades of long talks and conversations with the artist, a wealth of invaluable information without which this book could not have been composed. This revised edition features a new design grid, an updated index of works by Dali, digitalized and color-corrected images made from new transparencies, and an up-to-date biography and bibliography. The entire text by Luis Romero and the sequence of images that he and Dali established remain unaltered.

    Special care has been taken with the color illustration to reproduce the artist's uniquely sumptuous palette.

    A lavishly illustrated study of the construction materials and techniques and the significant architectural achievements of the Byzantine Empire.

    His uncompromising reviews avoid the familiar generalizations so often associated with artistic styles emerging during the 1950s and 60s. Here, Judd discusses in detail the work of more than 500 artists showing in New York at that time, and provides a critical account of this significant era in American art. While addressing the social and political ramifications of art production, the writings focus on the work of Jackson Pollock, Kazimir Malevich, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, John Chamberlain, Larry Poons, Kenneth Noland and Claes Oldenburg. His 1965 "Specific Objects" essay, a discussion of sculptural thought in the 60s, is included alongside the notorious polemical essay "Imperialism, Nationalism, Regionalism" and much else.

    with 39 illustrations in color and 165 in black and white

    Their works at first shocked a conservative public, but their successive exhibitions, their magazine Ver Sacrum and their dedication to the applied arts and architecture soon brought them an enthusiastic following and wealthy patronage. With 60 new colour illustrations, this classic book, now in its third edition, brilliantly traces the course of this development, of the Wiener Werkstätte that followed, and the individual works of the artists concerned. The result is a fascinating documentary study of the successes and failures, hopes and fears of the members of an artistic movement that is so much admired today.

    "This book is based on two beliefs," says John Russell in his preface "One is that in art, as in the sciences, ours is one of the big centuries. The other is that the history of art, if properly set out, is the history of everything." It is in this spirit that the book deals with the major movements in art and the major artists since the 1860s, and it also interweaves the central historical and cultural events and themes of the modern period. The Meanings of Modern Art is the work of a critic who has lived with modern art for almost half a century and has been close to many of those who have created the masterworks of our time. The book contains a choice of illustrations as exacting as it is generous, and the 367 illustrations in color and in black and white are integrated with the text. The history of art as presented here is truly "the history of everything." In the words of the College Art Association, which in 1978 gave John Russell its Mather Award for art criticism, "John Russell can illuminate everything from the stones of Egypt to the bricks of Carl Andre."

    

    Rose in the introduction suggests that Reinhardt's ultimate value is as 'a prophet of the realization that high art can only endure as spiritual art.' Well, maybe, but his copious writings are also exuberant, ironic, rancorous and parodistic and, as such, a marvelous commentary of the recent art world.