Most of the pictures, even those that seem unprepossessing at first glance, are made riveting by Sister Wendy's quirky, personal narratives, in which the simplest of images is suddenly rendered a dramatic focal point. A perfectly ordinary Dutch scene by Hendrick Avercamp--Frozen River, 1620--shows people going about their business on a lively patch of ice where children play hockey and adults chat and work. Sister Wendy seizes on a fishing hole cut into the ice through which a circle of cold, black water is apparent. "The hole that has been cut in the ice can frighten us when our eye falls into it, and this is the only hint of the inherent danger of the scene," she writes ominously. In Anthony Van Dyck's magnificent portrait of Charles I of England, she observes of his regal hauteur, "In hindsight we can see the tragedy: that a man so remote from common humanity, so superb in his conceit, must be heading for a fall." There are bound to be some infelicitous matches in a book that is arranged alphabetically, such as the pages shared by Robert Mangold's hot, geometric Four Color Frame Painting No. 1, 1983, and Andrea Mantegna's profoundly reverent Dead Christ, 1480. And Rosalba Carriera's portraits look decidedly meretricious across from those of the masterful Mary Cassatt. But all in all, this is a page-turner with brief captions that offer guidance to any reader in search of the telling note that draws one to a work of art, whatever its era, style, size, or subject. --Martha Hardin

    Nonetheless, the artist himself remains tantalisingly an enigma. A notoriously difficult man and an inveterate risk-taker in life and art, Rembrandt's aspirations to a grandiose Amsterdam lifestyle in the heyday of his popularity as a painter of portraits and large-scale historical works bankrupted him and he died in relative poverty. His personal effects and his treasured collection of paintings and natural rarities were sold off and dispersed, leaving the historian with a tantalisingly scant body of fragmentary records around which to build a convincing biography. In Rembrandt's Eyes Simon Schama--the leading historical craftsman of our era, with a career-long commitment to Dutch history--succeeds with consummate skill in bringing the heroic painter of such masterpieces as The Night Watch and Portrait of Jan Six vividly to life again. Returning to the bustling Dutch world with which he first made his reputation in his bestselling The Embarrassment of Riches (1987), Schama recreates Rembrandt's life and times with all the verve and panache of a historical novelist, whilst never for an instant losing his scrupulous grip on recorded fact and detail. The telling surviving fragments of archival information about Rembrandt's personal and professional history are embedded skilfully in a richer and denser tapestry of the commercial whirl and political hurly-burly of the 17th-century Low Countries--a divided territory, split between the Catholic and Protestant faiths and the contested powers of the Spanish Habsburgs and the Dutch Republic--with the tentacles of the tale reaching into the most unexpected shadowy corners of European love and war, aspiration and intrigue.Rembrandt's Eyes is, in fact, two biographies for the price of one. From the outset Schama contrasts the life of Rembrandt with that of his older, equally artistically talented, countryman Peter Paul Rubens, whose meteoric rise and sustained success as a society painter forms a revealing contrast with Rembrandt's unhappier relationship with fame and fortune. The comparison is a telling one. Where Rubens furnishes the wealthy and powerful with glorious reflections of and visual foils for their social and political aspirations and glory, Rembrandt can never resist testing the envelope of taste and stylistic acceptability. His challenge to his clients to rise to embrace the shock of his painterly experiments with technique, texture and composition, ultimately produced his downfall. The Amsterdam Town Council took down his The Oath-swearing of Claudius Civilis, rolled it up and returned his masterpiece to him, to be cut-down in an attempt to sell it to a suitable buyer. This is a gorgeous book to own, too. Rembrandt's Eyes is printed on heavy, high-gloss paper, lavishly illustrated throughout in full colour, with double-page colour spreads of the most memorable of Rembrandt's works, which take one's breath away as one turns the page. But above all, this is narrative history at its very best, a page-turner and an adventure story, which will make the reader laugh and cry by turns, in the time-honoured tradition of masterly writing. --Lisa Jardine

    Initially they were ridiculed in the art world for their pretension and subject matter, but ten years after their foundation no self-respecting Victorian would admit to being ignorant of Pre-Raphaelite art.The movement later began to change direction as new influences were brought to bear on the group; Dante Gabriel Rossetti came to the fore alongside artists such as Walter Howell Deverell and Edward Burne-Jones, as well as William Morris, the founding father of the Arts and Crafts movement. Essential Pre-Raphaelitesexamines the work of the movement, its loosely affiliated personalities, diverse subject matter, and profound effect on nineteenth-and twentieth-century art.

    The originals are in the Riccar Art Museum in Tokyo, the world's largest and most celebrated collection of such prints. On account of their rarity and value, 87 of them have been designated Japanese National Treasures or Major National Cultural Heritage Items. The introductory essay, "Ukiyo-e - Origins and History", by the Curator of the Riccar Art Museum, Mitsunobu Sato, familiarizes the reader with the history of this art form. This is followed by the chapter "Cherry - Wood - Blossom", in which Thomas Zacharias, Professor at the Munich Academy of Art examines the technique, content and style of Japanese prints and their influence on European art at the turn of the century. The major section of the book consists of the 139 reproductions, grouped by artist, each accompanied by a detailed, sensitive commentary. Street scenes, lovers' trysts, festivals, portraits of courtesans and actors, landscapes and travelogues - these are the motifs of the ukiyo-e print. The dominant theme, however, is woman's beauty, the grace of her posture and attitudes, and the decorative aesthetics of her flowing garments. Amongst the most celebrated of the artists featured here are Utamaro, with his beautiful courtesans and geishas; Sharaku, with his portraits of actors on the kabuki stage; Hokusai, with his landscapes, among them the "36 Views of Mount Fuji"; and Hiroshige, with his "53 Stations on the Tokaido" and his "100 Views of Famous Places in and around Edo". The ten-page appendix includes a glossary of technical terms and biographies of all 43 artists.

    Mixing realism and abstraction, Bacon delves deep beneath the surfaces of things, opening up the human body to reveal the chaos that lies within and struggling with all that is inexplicable. Erotic and grotesquely beautiful is the work of this legendary painter whose haunting, distorted figures have inspired entire generations of painters who seek to emulate his highly original style.

    Gothic monuments bear witness to a dynamic age, when old values were being redefined, often with great drama and debate. Here is a richly-illustrated overview of the period's architecture, sculpture, painting, stained glass, and jewelry, from its 12th-century French origins to its early 16th-century conclusion.

    Awed by Tasha's craftsmanship, they offered to build her a new, larger dollhouse. In Tasha Tudor's Dollhouse, this extraordinary house, complete with goat barn and greenhouse, is presented in full detail. It is a one-quarter-human-scale version of Tasha's own early-nineteenth-century-style Vermont home, Corgi Cottage, in which she exhibits astonishing works of miniaturist art, from musical instruments and Shaker boxes to tiny printed books and cakes and cookies that look good enough to eat. There is antique, museum-quality furniture, a gilded birdcage, and even a working stove. Captain Thaddeus Crane and his wife, Emma Birdwhistle, Tasha's handmade dolls, guide us on a tour that culminates in a joyous Christmas celebration in candlelit rooms and with a decorated tree.

    Turner, Winslow Homer, and other masters of this difficult medium. Watercolor was more than a distraction from the portrait and mural commissions Sargent labored over; after 1900, watercolor became central to his artistic vision. His aquarelles are, simply stated, masterworks. Portraits, interiors, landscapes, architectural studies—Sargent's work in watercolor offers a great variety of subject matter, ranging from Arab gypsies to World War I soldiers, to masterful depictions of Venetian churches, to Florida swamp alligators.Sargent carried his watercolors on his travels; They were ideally suited to capturing the scene, the light, the air, wherever he found himself. This book serves as a record of his travels, featuring the paintings he produced in Palestine, Northern Africa, the Canadian Rockies, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Greece. Among specific locales were the islands of Majorca and Corfu; Florence, Venice, Carrara, Lake Garda, and Rome; the Alps; Lake O'Hara; the coast of Maine and the Miami River.Sargent's bold and often experimental use of the medium, which sometimes led to semi-abstract images, compels admiration among contemporary painters as well as museum goers today. In addition to placing Sargent's accomplishments in the context of his life and time, Carl Little discusses the artist's extraordinary watercolor technique.

    This volume studies the astonishing results and gives us a remarkably close look at Diego and his wife, Frida Kahlo.Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals are one of this country’s greatest treasures. In addition to providing full coverage and analysis of the murals, the book includes chapters on the murals’ planning and antecedents, Rivera’s working methods (which can be read as a primer on frescos), Diego and Frida’s lives for their nine months in Detroit, and the public’s dramatic response to the strong socialist/communist themes in the works.

    From Egyptian wall paintings to the Venetian Renaissance, impressionism to digital images, Philip Ball tells the fascinating story of how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted throughout the ages to render the gorgeous hues we admire on our walls and in our museums.Finalist for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award.

    Providing a serious and generous overview of Basquiat's career, this monograph will please novice and fan alike, with its high-quality illustrations, including 50 works on canvas, 40 works on paper, two sculptures and 18 collaborations (15 with Andy Warhol).

    In Where Is Ana Mendieta? art historian Jane Blocker provides an in-depth critical analysis of Mendieta’s diverse body of work. Although her untimely death in 1985 remains shrouded in controversy, her life and artistic legacy provide a unique vantage point from which to consider the history of performance art, installation, and earth works, as well as feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. Taken from banners carried in a 1992 protest outside the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the title phrase “Where is Ana Mendieta?” evokes not only the suspicious and tragic circumstances surrounding her death but also the conspicuous absence of women artists from high-profile exhibitions. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Judith Butler, Joseph Roach, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha, Blocker discusses the power of Mendieta’s earth-and-body art to alter, unsettle, and broaden the terms of identity itself. She shows how Mendieta used exile as a discursive position from which to disrupt dominant categories, analyzing as well Mendieta’s use of mythology and anthropology, the ephemeral nature of her media, and the debates over her ethnic, gender, and national identities. As the first major critical examination of this enigmatic artist’s work, Where Is Ana Mendieta? will interest a broad audience, particularly those involved with the production, criticism, theory, and history of contemporary art.

    Contributors from a wide range of fields -- including leading art historians, cultural critics, a renowned child psychiatrist, and a leading graphic designer -- shed new light on the complexity of Rockwell's art and his place as a shaper of mass-media imagery.Stunning colorplates reproduce Rockwell's paintings in crisp detail, and the essays set them in fresh contexts, discussing such themes as Rockwell's urban scenes; the reaction by both black and white Southerners to Rockwell's historic civil rights painting The Problem We All Live With; and Rockwell's role ill the development of American illustration. Above all, this important volume examines Norman Rockwell's critical place in 20th-century American culture.

    The genre arose from a ferment of activity from which the Pre-Raphaelites emerged along with Leighton's luxurious classical mythologies, as well as a fascinating diversity in other artistic fields. Christopher Wood, a leading expert who has not only studied but also bought, owned, and sold examples of everything he writes about, takes us through the artistry of Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Waterhouse, and others to show the succession of movements characterizing the Victorian period.

    In his own day, he was most celebrated for his Vedute, 137 etchings of ancient and modern Rome; so renowned were these startling and dramatic chiaroscuro images, imbued with Piranesi's romantic feeling for archaeological ruins, that they formed the mental picture of Rome for generations after. Indeed, Piranesi could be said to have shaped a whole strain of contemporary architecture, as well as the wider visualization of antiquity itself. In our time, he has had a direct influence on writers such as Borges and Kafka and on filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam and Peter Greenaway. Anyone who contemplates Piranesi's etchings will confront the existential nightmare of human existence and its infinite mysteries

    In this major book, Griselda Pollock engages boldly in the culture wars over `what is the canon?` and `what difference can feminism make?` Do we simply reject the all-male line-up and satisfy our need for ideal egos with an all women litany of artistic heroines? Or is the question a chance to resist the phallocentric binary and allow the ambiguities and complexities of desire - subjectivity and sexuality - to shape the readings of art that constantly displace the present gender demarcations?

    Yet they share a deeply theatrical obsession that shatters any notion of a unified self. All three try out identities from different social classes and geographic environments, extend their temporal range into the past and future, and transform themselves into heroes and villains, mythological creatures, and sex goddesses. The premise of Inverted Odysseys is that this expanded concept of the self; this playful urge to try on other roles-is more than a feminist or psychological issue. It is central to our global culture, to our definition of human identity in a world where the individual exists in a multicultural and multitemporal environment. This book is an odyssey through historical, theoretical, critical, and literary perspectives on the three artists viewed in the context of these issues.ContributorsLynn Gumpert, Lucy Lippard, Jonas Mekas, Ted Mooney, Shelley Rice, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau.Central to the book is Claude Cahun's Heroines manuscript, a series of fifteen stream-of-consciousness monologues written in the voices of major women of literature and history, such as the Virgin Mary, Sappho, Cinderella, Penelope, Delilah, and Helen of Troy. Translated by Norman MacAfee, these perverse and hilarious vignettes make their English-language debut here. This is also the first time that Cahun's text has appeared in its entirety. The book accompanies an exhibit cocurated by Lynn Gumpert and Shelley Rice at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.Published in cooperation with the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: Grey Art Gallery, New York, New York: November 16, 1999 - January 29, 2000 Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida: March - May 2000

    and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1999, "John Singer Sargent: The Male Nudes" brings to light a fascinating portion of Sargent's work long hidden from the public eye. Beginning in his adolescence, and throughout his distinguished career, John Singer Sargent, the celebrated painter of patricians, produced a superbly rendered, uninhibited book of work that was rarely seen and never exhibited: the male nudes. Models were a significant aspect of the great painter's profession, whether they were commission-producing society "sitters" or professional models used as reference for his three Boston mural projects or works created for his private enjoyment--one young Italian model stayed in the artist's employ for nearly twenty-six years. Sargent's enduring subject was capturing the "human form divine" in portraits of the fashionable and famous and the absolute male. Over the last century, these little-known works have been dispersed to museum archives and private collections throughout the United States and Great Britain. John Esten has unearthed the most extraordinary of these images, ranging from vibrant watercolors and oil paintings to charcoal studies, published here for the first time in a single volume.

    Corn's long-awaited new book proposes a remarkable revisioning of the history of American modern art between the two world wars. Moving away from issues of style and abstraction, she bases her work on a broad examination of culture and on discourses of national identity. Corn argues that the key questions for interwar modernists in New York and Paris were whether or not it was possible to create an art that was both American and modern, and if it was, what such an art would look like. Both European and American artists debated these questions and made art that responded to them.Corn organizes each chapter around a careful reading of a work of art, probing first its peculiar poetry and style and then its connection to its artist and the cultural influences surrounding it. The result is an unfolding of the work's contingent relationships with history, literature, art criticism, music, and popular culture. The works she examines—from those made by the Stieglitz circle to those by European Dadaists—were part of the quest for "the Great American Thing," a quest that was international in scope and that inspired a decade of vibrant cultural exchange between the art capitals of Europe and New York.Passionate and eminently readable, with more than 300 illustrations—drawings, paintings, sculptures, advertisements, cartoons, and documentary photographs—The Great American Thing indelibly alters the way we think about the first decades of American modernism and the legacy it created.

    They were created over the first seven decades of the 19th century and were described by a critic in 1855 as the most faithful image of our epoch. The book brings together a wide range of original-source materials, including letters, critical reviews, biographical documents and photographs. The major portraits are discussed and reproduced, and more than 100 portrait drawings and many preparatory studies are also included.

    Using a nineteenth-century treatise by Manuel Garcia as his point of reference, Stark analyses the many sources that discuss singing techniques and selects a number of primary vocal 'problems' for detailed investigation. He also presents data from a series of laboratory experiments carried out to demonstrate the techniques of bel canto.The discussion deals extensively with such topics as the emergence of virtuoso singing, the castrato phenomenon, national differences in singing styles, controversies regarding the perennial decline in the art of singing, and the so-called secrets of bel canto.Stark offers a new definition of bel canto which reconciles historical and scientific descriptions of good singing. His is a refreshing and profound discussion of issues important to all singers and voice teachers.

    Each of the Rizzoli Quadrifolios features sixteen foldout pages that open into huge poster-sized reproductions of the work, allowing readers to feel as though they have leaped into work itself. The series begins with two artists whose work continually compels audiences: Michelangelo and Van Gogh. Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel focuses on the Italian master's work on this Vatican Chapel, the recent restorations of which have propelled interest in this site even higher.

    Though Raphael painted many important works in his Florence period, including his famous Madonnas, it was his mature work in Rome that cemented his place in history, most notably the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican featuring his School of Athens and Triumph of Religion murals. This overview traces the life's work of this Renaissance master who achieved the height of greatness in only two decades of creation and whose influential work paved the way for the Mannerist and Baroque movements.

    Now, for the first time, her beautiful work -- arguably the most exquisite collection of Victorian flower paintings in existence -- can be appreciated by all.Fanny's exceptional book combines elegant watercolors with evocative poetry that is finely illuminated in the manner of a medieval Book of Hours. Using the symbolic Language of Flowers, she invests each flower grouping with subtle and often highly romantic meanings -- indeed, it is thought that the volume was intended as a lasting tribute to a lost lover.In her fascinating commentary on the paintings, Gill Saunders, a senior curator in the Department of Prints, Drawings and Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, explains the intriguing floral symbolism and takes the reader on a delightful journey into Fanny Robinson's leisured and cultivated world of flower, pen and brush.

    Lee considers it in the context of the art of the 1970s--particularly site-specific, conceptual, and minimalist practices--and its confrontation with issues of community, property, the alienation of urban space, the right to the city, and the ideologies of progress that have defined modern building programs.Although highly regarded during his short life--and honored by artists and architects today--the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78) has been largely ignored within the history of art. Matta-Clark is best remembered for site-specific projects known as building cuts. Sculptural transformations of architecture produced through direct cuts into buildings scheduled for demolition, these works now exist only as sculptural fragments, photographs, and film and video documentations. Matta-Clark is also remembered as a catalytic force in the creation of SoHo in the early 1970s. Through loft activities, site projects at the exhibition space 112 Greene Street, and his work at the restaurant Food, he participated in the production of a new social and artistic space.Have art historians written so little about Matta-Clark's work because of its ephemerality, or, as Pamela M. Lee argues, because of its historiographic, political, and social dimensions? What did the activity of carving up a building-in anticipation of its destruction--suggest about the conditions of art making, architecture, and urbanism in the 1970s? What was one to make of the paradox attendant on its making--that the production of the object was contingent upon its ruination? How do these projects address the very writing of history, a history that imagines itself building toward an ideal work in the service of progress?In this first critical account of Matta-Clark's work, Lee considers it in the context of the art of the 1970s--particularly site-specific, conceptual, and minimalist practices--and its confrontation with issues of community, property, the alienation of urban space, the right to the city, and the ideologies of progress that have defined modern building programs.

    This lack of attention is particularly striking given the tremendous influence of conceptual art on the art of the last fifteen years, on critical discussion surrounding postmodernism, and on the use of theory by artists, curators, critics, and historians.This landmark anthology collects for the first time the key historical documents that helped give definition and purpose to the movement. It also contains more recent memoirs by participants, as well as critical histories of the period by some of today's leading artists and art historians. Many of the essays and artists' statements have been translated into English specifically for this volume. A good portion of the exchange between artists, critics, and theorists took place in difficult-to-find limited-edition catalogs, small journals, and private correspondence. These influential documents are gathered here for the first time, along with a number of previously unpublished essays and interviews.Contributors Alexander Alberro, Art & Language, Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Gregory Battcock, Mel Bochner, Sigmund Bode, Georges Boudaille, Marcel Broodthaers, Benjamin Buchloh, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, Luis Camnitzer, John Chandler, Sarah Charlesworth, Michel Claura, Jean Clay, Michael Corris, Eduardo Costa, Thomas Crow, Hanne Darboven, Ra�l Escari, Piero Gilardi, Dan Graham, Maria Teresa Gramuglio, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Roberto Jacoby, Mary Kelly, Joseph Kosuth, Max Kozloff, Christine Kozlov, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Lee Lozano, Kynaston McShine, Cildo Meireles, Catherine Millet, Olivier Mosset, John Murphy, H�lio Oiticica, Michel Parmentier, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Mari Carmen Ramirez, Nicolas Rosa, Harold Rosenberg, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Jeanne Siegel, Seth Siegelaub, Terry Smith, Robert Smithson, Athena Tacha Spear, Blake Stimson, Niele Toroni, Mierle Ukeles, Jeff Wall, Rolf Wedewer, Ian Wilson

    James Ensor was unusual in many ways. Apart from his training in Brussels, he spent his entire long life in Ostend, seemingly the opposite of cosmopolitan. Later on he was expelled by the group Les XX for a particularly controversial canvas: "The Entry of Christ into Brussels", which he had painted in 1889. An expressionist before the term was coined, he used the iconography of masks and skeletons to point up the essential horrors of life, and often underwrote his images with a sardonic gallows humour. It has been said that he appropriated the subject matter of a Bosch or Bruegel and revisioned them using the techniques of Manet or Rubens. But this is to diminish his own unique take on both art and experience. A genuine maverick in the way that so many Belgian artists are (lest we forget Magritte), James Ensor can claim a dark and distinctive place in the art histories of the last hundred years.

    Clemente's subjects--rooted in both the physical and the surreal, spiritual worlds--create a vast body of work that appeals to diverse audiences. Clemente draws upon a pan-historic web of impulses, mediating among the myriad cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, Byzantium, Europe, India and America. Stylistically his work recalls the Italian Renaissance, Indian miniatures, European Romanticism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Clemente's widespread cultural interests and nomadic lifestyle--New York is his home but he spends part of each year in Italy, India and the New Mexico desert--have deeply affected his art. This lavishly produced catalogue accompanies the first major survey devoted to the painter.

    This text brings together Linda Nochlin's most important and pioneering writings on the subject, as she considers work by Miller, Delacroix, Courbet, Degas, Seurat, Cassatt and Kollwitz, among many others. In her partly autobiographical, extended introduction, she argues for the honest virtues of an art history which rejects methodological assumptions, and for art historians who investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit.

    It was an age in which the splendor of a prince or people could be measured by the d

    His work in both forms was detailed, symbolic, mystical, and sometimes erotic. He was involved with two of the PRB `stunners', first Lizzie Siddal who died of a laudanum overdose, then Jane Morris. Notoriously, DGR buried his poetry manuscripts with Siddal, but later exhumed them. Latterly involved with William Morris's decorative arts firm, DRG died - a near recluse - in 1882, a Romantic Victorian revolutionary.

    This volume, covering the first half of the century, is a history of American art as well as a permanent record of the Whitney show. Here fine arts achievements are seen as part of the larger culture that helped shape them — the art forms of film, dance, music, literature, photography, decorative arts, architecture, fashion, and industrial design. All are described and set in the context of political and social currents of the era in Barbara Haskell's rich and informative text. Essays by noted experts in many fields illuminate developments in different areas of artistic endeavor while over 750 full-color and duotone illustrations give visual testimony to America's dominant role in the arts.

    This is the first book to document the work of this extraordinary artist who has gained major international recognition in the 1990s. The images in Kentridge's films depict political realities, expressed in terms of individual human suffering. The films are composed of patiently reworked drawings; a week's drawing can give rise to just forty seconds of animation. A major touring exhibition of Kentridge's work is presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, during 2000-2001.

    Both in his life and art, he is thought to embody the climate of inebriated hilarity and excess of the fin de siecle. But as David Sweetman, the noted biographer of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, shows in this definitive work, there was another Toulouse-Lautrec, a committed and concerned man who moved in a secret community of anarchist revolutionaries, whose work betrayed a deep concern for human suffering, an artist who etched his sympathy for fallen women and lesbians into his portraits, and who remained loyal to the disgraced Oscar Wilde when the poet was abandoned and reviled by most. Sweetman's enlightening study of Toulouse-Lautrec has uncovered a man whose alliance with radicals and outspoken social critics (such as Felix Feneon) is implicit in his work.Toulouse-Lautrec was also a man on the cutting edge of radical art. He helped design the sets for the play "Ubu Rio," which, with its foul language and politically subversive imagery, stirred up a frenzy of public outrage and condemnation yet changed the course of theatrical history. Toulouse-Lautrec also created seminal works in the field of graphic art; his posters advertising performances and artistic events were often stolen from their public posting places and reappeared in the living rooms of middle-class homes, making his posters "the Trojan Horse of modern aesthetics."Toulouse-Lautrec's seemingly endless capacity for debauched revelry and his larger-than-life persona are undeniable. Yet hisart is as complex as he was, more varied and disturbing than it has been perceived in our century. Sweetman has introduced in "Explosive Acts" an altogether new way of looking at Toulouse-Lautrec, who, along with Oscar Wilde, Felix Feneon, and their cross-Channel cohort of artists, theorists, and writers, was responding to many of the same social issues and political currents we now face at our own turn of the century.

    He developed a reputation as an artistic hermit, committed to a highly personal vision of painting that combined myth, mysticism, history, and a fascination with the bizarre and exotic. Yet Moreau was also a prominent public figure in the Paris art world, winning praise for exhibits at the Salon, becoming a respected teacher at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and exerting a powerful influence on Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and the schools of Symbolism and Surrealism. This book, published to coincide with a spectacular international exhibition that marks the centenary of Moreau's death, presents a wide range of the artist's most famous and beautiful works along with penetrating essays and catalogue entries that explain his unique achievements in all their intellectual complexity and visual richness.The volume reproduces and describes in detail more than 200 of Moreau's works, ranging from such well-known paintings as "Orpheus" and "The Apparition" (one of his many treatments of Salome and the beheaded John the Baptist) to lesser known but revealing watercolors, drawings, and sculptures. Two particularly important paintings-- "Oedipus and the Sphinx" and "Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra" --are the focus of longer descriptions that cast light on Moreau's working methods. Genevieve Lacambre, Director of the Musee Gustave Moreau in Paris, introduces the volume and contributes an essay about Moreau's passionate interest in the "exoticism" of other cultures, particularly those of Persia and India. Marie-Laure de Contenson describes the artist's powerful attraction to medievalart and aesthetics. Larry Feinberg shows that Moreau was deeply influenced by the Italian Renaissance and, in particular, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Douglas Druick writes about Moreau's evocative symbolic language, which drew on unique reinterpretations of mythical figures and events to convey the artist's anxieties about the immorality and materialism of his age.This is a powerfully written and visually stunning record of the creativity and exquisite craftsmanship of Moreau's distinctive contributions to nineteenth-century art.

    J. Clark rewrites the history of modern art. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, he explains, the project called socialism may have come to an end at roughly the same moment as modernism. Did modernism and socialism depend on each other for their vitality—for their sense of the future and their wish to live in a fully material world? Have they died? Aware of modernism’s foibles and blind spots, but passionately attached to the movement’s wildness, Clark poses these fundamental questions in Farewell to an Idea. Modernism, Clark argues, was an extreme answer to an extreme condition—the one Max Weber summed up as “the disenchantment of the world.” Clark focuses on instances of maximum stress, when the movement revealed its true nature. The book begins with Jacques-Louis David, painting at the height of the Terror in 1793, then leaps forward to Pissarro a hundred years later, struggling to picture Two Young Peasant Women ina way that agreed with his anarchist politics. Next the author turns in succession to Cézanne’s paintings of the Grandes Baigneuses and their coincidence in time (and maybe intention) with Freud’s launching of psychoanalysis; to Picasso’s Cubism; and to avant-garde art after the Russian Revolution. Clark concludes with a reading of Jackson Pollock’s tragic version of abstraction and suggests a new set of terms to describe avant-garde art—perhaps in its final flowering—in America after 1945. Shifting between broad, speculative history and intense analysis of specific works, Clark not only transfigures our usual understanding of modern art, he also launches a new set of proposals about modernity itself.

    He thrived on almost daily visits to movie theaters, amassed archives of films and film stills, created short motion pictures, and produced works honoring his favorite females movie stars. This book examines for the first time Cornell's "portrait-homages" to these actresses, Hedy Lamarr, Lauren Bacall, Greta Garbo, and Jennifer Jones, among others.Focusing on Cornell's "cinematic imagination" and the ways he adapted techniques of accumulation, collection, and juxtaposition to the art of portrayal, Jodi Hauptman argues that Cornell's movie star portraits are his most emblematic works. She shows how each portrait is inflicted by the star's personality, roles, and the moment of a particular film's release and how Cornell ultimately transforms each of his subjects. Hauptman also explores the links between collection and desire, contending that Cornell is both a surrealist and a historian: his accumulation of cast-offs echoes surrealism's infatuation with the found object while his attempts to rescue swiftly disappearing pasts reenact the historian's labor in the archive.

    Indeed, the word Dada evokes the idea of the male--both as father and as domineering authority. Thus female colleagues were to be seen not heard, nurturers not usurpers, pleasant not disruptive.This book is the first to make the case that women's changing role in European and American society was critical to Dada. Debates about birth control and suffrage, a declining male population and expanding female workforce, the emergence of the New Woman, and Freudianism were among the forces that contributed to the Dadaist enterprise.Among the female dadaists discussed are the German �migr� Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven; Berlin dadaist Hannah H�ch; French dadaists Juliette Roche and Suzanne Duchamp; Zurich dadaists Sophie Taeuber and Emmy Hennings; expatriate poet and artist Mina Loy; the Queen of Greenwich Village, Clara Tice; Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the lesbian couple who ran The Little Review; and Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at the age of 105. The book also addresses issues of colonialist racism, cross-dressing and dandyism, and the gendering of the machine. The bibliography was compiled by the International Dada Archive (Timothy Shipe and Rudolf E. Kuenzli).ContributorsEleanor S. Apter, Barbara J. Bloemink, Willard Bohn, Carolyn Burke, William A. Camfield, Whitney Chadwick, Dorothea Dietrich, Susan Fillin-Yeh, Paul B. Franklin, Ren�e Riese Hubert, Marisa Januzzi, Amelia Jones, Marie T. Keller, Rudolf E. Kuenzli, Maud Lavin, Margaret A. Morgan, Dickran Tashjian, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Barbara Zabel

    Beuys, the most influential German--and perhaps the most influential European--artist of the postwar period, was born in 1921. He had planned to be a doctor, but following World War II he enrolled in the Dsseldorf Academy of Art. As a professor there in the early 1960s he encountered the influence of Fluxus and began to make and show the multiples--prints and boxes and other objects in editions--that became such a key part of his work. Those highlighted here include sleds, pieces of felt, signed head shots of the artist and texts calligraphed onto bank notes in francs, marks and schillings. Bruno Cora Tea mocks both mass production and boutique cachet by refilling a Coca-Cola bottle with tea, resealing it with flourishes worthy of a Belgian beer, and putting the whole thing in a glass-fronted box. Joseph Beuys: Multiples includes some 600 pieces, annotated lists of the major collections where they can be found, essays from significant curators and scholars and an interview with the artist.

    Aidan Meehan shows how to create a variety of rectangular Celtic borders, based upon a simple square-grid. The borders are proportioned to fit a standard letter-size page, but are equally suited for stationery or illuminated pages, and are readily adaptable to any number of craft applications.

    But while Impressionism today may appear natural and effortless, contemporaries were shocked by the loose handling of paint and the practice of painting out-of-doors. In defiance of the conservative official Salon, the Impressionists - led by Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas - sought to capture the immediacy of experience.

    Barcelona, on the other hand, is not identified by one or two famous buildings as these other European cities, but rather by an entire movement of turn-of-the-century architecture known simply as "Modernisme." Familiar to Americans as art nouveau, its most famous practitioner was the artist and architect Antoni Gaudi. But the city is filled with superb examples of art nouveau in vivid color in "Barcelona Art Nouveau." This book offers a tour of 46 houses, public buildings, and monuments in the art-nouveau style, including brand-new photographs of the work of Gaudi. Visit the famous literary cafe Els Quarte Gats, which was once patronized by Pablo Picasso, who also designed the menu. Lose yourself in the whimsical curves of Casa Josep Batllo, a wonderful example of the combination of artisan tradition and richness that exemplifies art nouveau. These structures, fully restored to pristine condition for the 1992 Olympics, have been rediscovered by both foreigners and Barcelonans alike, and are captured inside and out in this fascinating record of the adventurous, undulating designs of an exciting era.

    From a careful analysis of the written evidence, the archaeological record, and--most importantly--surviving buildings, he concludes that Byzantine architecture was far more innovative than has previously been acknowledged.Following preliminary observations on Byzantine church architecture, Ousterhout examines the textual sources concerning the respective roles of patrons, bureaucrats, and masons in the building process. Narrowing his focus to the masons, or master builders, he clarifies both their theoretical and their very practical concerns in architectural design, suggesting that they relied on geometry and memory, rather than blueprints, to guide their work. Ousterhout explains how masons selected, manufactured, and utilized building materials, ranging from bricks and mortar to roofing tiles. He examines how they built structural elements from the foundation systems to the vaulting. Finally, he situates the richly decorated interiors, sheathed in marble revetments, mosaics, and frescoes, within the purview of the master builder. The study focuses on churches built in the area of Constantinople between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, but it also refers back to earlier works such as Hagia Sophia, and it tracks Byzantine masons as far afield as Russia and Jerusalem. With more than two hundred illustrations--many published for the first time--this is a must read for anyone interested in Byzantine art and architecture.

    During his 15-month stay in Arles, he created almost 200 canvases. This was followed by 12 months at Saint-Rmy, where he created 142 paintings, and his final 70 days in Auvers, where the last 70 canvases were created. This book celebrates these last 30 months of Van Gogh's life, when he poured out his passion into portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. Reproductions of his paintings, photographs of the people and places he painted, Van Gogh's own descriptions of his work, and a detailed text by Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov combine to create a powerful study of these intense, creative months.

    In this text, Leonard Barkan tells the cultural story of the emergence into the daylight of the artworks of antiquity that had lain beneath Roman ground for more than a thousand years.

    With more than 25,000 copies sold in hardcover, Art of the Boot is a must-have guide to the artisans and manufacturers of America's classic footwear.

    In the European colonial past, the dominant view of "difference" represented the culture of the colonized as inferior and inalterable or slow to change. This book discusses perspectives on pre-colonial Indian art expressed in the mid-nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, and the present day. It also considers the effects of imperialist ways of looking even in places without direct European colonial control. European colonizers tended to see their own artistic traditions as continually progressing but the art of colonized or non-European peoples as traditional and incapable of generating its own modernity. And, the studies in the book show, colonizers and their heirs in the twentieth century have doubted that a colonial subject could appropriate European art forms or handle them independently—a view that continues to uphold the notion of modernity as a "Europeans only" enterprise. This is the fifth volume in the series Art and its Histories, created to accompany the Open University undergraduate course by the same title.

    Containing illustrations of the artist's work, the text examines the relationship of his art to the social and artistic discourse of his time.

    Her works, to us, appear to be works of Outsider Art sculpture, except that the notion of sculpture is far beyond her understanding. As well as being mentally disabled, Judith cannot hear or speak, and she hs little concept of language. There is no way of asking her what she is doing, yet her compulsive involvement with the shaping of forms in space seems to imply that at some level she knows. Does serious mental retardation invariably preclude the creation of true works of art? Is it plausible to imagine an artist of stature emerging in the context of massively impaired intellectual development? This lovely hardcover book is illustrated with beautiful color photographs by internationally renowned photographer Leon Borensztein.

    This strikingly original book examines the crucial period of David's artistic career as he struggled both to "save his neck" and to recast his identity in the aftermath of the Reign of Terror. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth examines David's work in the context of the larger cultural and social formations emerging in France and offers a fascinating new perspective on his paintings and on French artistic culture at an important moment in its history.The book begins with a close examination of the work David produced while in prison. Lajer-Burcharth first considers the artist's self-representation focusing on Self-Portrait and Abandoned Psyche, and addresses his crisis of individual identity. She goes on to look at David's effort to redefine himself as a history painter after the Terror and at his engagement with the collective memory of the Revolution. In her analysis of the broader search for a new republican identity, the author frames her discussion around David's Sabine Women, the sketches for which he had prepared in prison, and places special attention on the privileged role of women and femininity as signs that both David and other citizens employed to establish distance and difference from the Terror. The book concludes with a brilliant interpretation of David's unfinished portrait of Juliette Recamier and its complex relation to the process of cultural reinvention of the self as a function of desire.

    One of the most popular of nineteenth-century artists, Degas was fascinated by movement, especially that of dancers. His highly trained eye enabled him to capture the dancer's grace and power as well as subtleties and nuances of pose and execution, making his pictures as true in fact as they are in spirit.This original compilation includes 41 full-page and six half-page black-and-white Degas drawings of dancers. Some are finished works, others are sketches or studies for future works. Singly, in pairs, and in groups, the dancers appear on stage, in the classroom, and at rehearsals — pirouetting, executing grand battements and portes de bras, practicing at the barre, and adjusting their costumes in moments of repose.Art enthusiasts and balletomanes who prize Degas's pictures of dancers will delight in the sublime beauty and mastery of expression of these images. This inexpensive edition allows lovers of art and the dance to savor these enchanting, beautifully reproduced drawings.

    Charles Dickens The golden age of fairy painting lasted between 1840-1870 when fairies found expression in most of the Victorian arts - paintings, illustration, literature, theatre, ballet and music. The Victorians wanted desperately to believe in fairies because they represented a way to escape the intolerable reality of living in an unromantic, materialistic and scientific age. Fairy painting had a strong literary background. The books of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen perfected the Victorian consciousness. Shakespeare was an even more important source in particular with The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Another influence was the Victorian obsession with the supernatural, spiritualism and the unseen world.

    Led by Jackson Pollock, Willem DeKooning, and others, it was the first truly American painting style, and it quickly moved the United States into the forefront of innovation. A succession of other movements followed, including Pop Art, and adherents like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein; the performance art of John Cage and others; video art, led by Nam Juin Paik; and installation art of grand proportions.In this expansive volume Lisa Phillips explains the excitement and inventiveness of American artists in the context of the varied and sometimes turbulent social environment as well as the expanding economy of postwar America. Essays by experts in related fields illuminate parallel and diverse developments in architecture, dance, music, literature, painting, sculpture, cinema, and design.

    

    She published ten inspiring gardening books between 1899 and 1937. It is from these that the excerpts in this anthology have been selected. Trained at art school, Gertrude developed strongly held views on design, form and the use of colour in the garden. These views are reflected throughout the book and take us through the year, season by season. Her observations will entertain those who delight in reading about the heart and soul of gardening as well as educate those with a more practical style. Gertrude Jekyll's desire was to stimulate the reader to action through her straightforward, no nonsense, approach which kept her and her readers from becoming a slave to the garden or its plants. This book is richly illustrated, not only with Gertrude Jekyll's own drawings and

    The colossal dimensions of these cathedrals required not only enormous financial outlay, but also great organisational and technical skills. How, for example, were such long-term projects planned, lasting in some cases for many generations? How was work organised on the building site? Which forms were used, and how were they developed? What were the representational aims of the patrons of churches and secular buildings? And what symbolic significance lies behind these buildings, which were not only architectural masterpieces but also a vehicle for theological content, as part of the liturgy? We can only begin to understand the 'spirit of the Gothic' through an understanding of the historical, sociological, theological, economic and technological background in this time of change. Given this, we can then start to read Gothic cathedrals like the pages of a book.

    The Bauhaus Building, the Marseilles Unite d'Habitation and the Salk Institute are landmark buildings in the history of architecture -- each is the product of great social vision and humanism, and provides an continuing source of inspiration for students and fellow architects. By studying these pivotal buildings together, the student and architecture enthusiast can examine the approaches of three different architects to building for specific communities, and analyse the qualities which have produced such enduring structures.

    Pacht's approach to art history is shaped by his conviction that visual art, like music, can say things in its own medium that cannot be said in any other. He aims to sharpen our perceptions by recreating the social and cultural context in which an object was made, clarifying unfamiliar notions of space and time or significant gestures and symbols which are no longer recognizable. Each part of Pacht's analysis is illustrated by reference to a specific manuscript, painting, building or sculpture, and his examples range from medieval and Renaissance art through to the works of Rembrandt. He explores the theories of major thinkers from Riegl, Wolfflin and Croce to Panofsky and Gombrich. But the emphasis always returns to the activity of looking, and Pacht's greatest achievement is in showing the student and general reader alike how to practise art history in their own encounters with works of art.

    Goya waited until 1799 to publish his celebrated series of drawings, the Caprichos, which offered a personal vision of the "world turned upside down". Victor I. Stoichita and Anna Maria Coderch consider how themes of Revolution and Carnival (both seen as inversions of the established order) were obsessions in Spanish culture in this period, and make provocative connections between the close of the 1700s and the end of the Millennium. Particular emphasis is placed on the artist's links to the underground tradition of the grotesque, the ugly and the violent. Goya's drawings, considered as a personal and secret laboratory, are foregrounded in a study that also reinterprets his paintings and engravings in the cultural context of his time.

     Using a range of examples from artists including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Magritte, Mondrian, and Picasso, Zeki takes the reader on an illuminating tour of the way the brain sees, showing how its visual processing shapes art and our response to it. Vision, he writes, is designed to gather knowledge about the world around us, breaking down visual images into their basic components. He describes in fascinating detail how different areas of the brain respond to the basic visual elements, such as color, form, line, and motion, which are also basic elements of art. He further argues that all visual art is expressed through the brain and, whether the artist realizes it or not, must therefore mirror the workings of the brain. Beauty may not be in the eye of the beholder, strictly speaking, but it most certainly is in the brain of the beholder. And Zeki argues that no theory of aesthetics will be complete unless it is substantially based on the activity of the brain. Beautifully illustrated and vividly written, Inner Vision takes an important first step toward providing a scientific theory of aesthetics.

    Experience the new Janson and re-experience the history of art. Long established as the classic and seminal introduction to art of the Western world, the Seventh Edition of Janson's History of Art is groundbreaking. When Harry Abrams first published the History of Art in 1962, John F. Kennedy occupied the White House, and Andy Warhol was an emerging artist. Janson offered his readers a strong focus on Western art, an important consideration of technique and style, and a clear point of view. The History of Art, said Janson, was not just a stringing together of historically significant objects, but the writing of a story about their interconnections, a history of styles and of stylistic change. Janson’s text focused on the visual and technical characteristics of the objects he discussed, often in extraordinarily eloquent language. Janson’s History of Art helped to establish the canon of art history for many generations of scholars. The new Seventh Edition introduces the authorship of six distinguished specialists narrating the history of art for today’s students. The contribution of multiple authors allows an expert's understanding to permeate each and every part of the text with a currency in art historical thinking and an enhanced discussion of context. The result is a complete rewriting and a weaving together of expert knowledge into a meaningful and powerful presentation of Western art.

    From the Fourteenth Century to the present day, and newly enhanced with the Core Concepts CD-ROM, volume two of Art across Time presents a manageable survey that emphasizes art in its cultural and social context.

    These works include totem poles, argillite sculptures, jewelry in silver and gold, carved and painted boxes, painted drums, and masks. They depict beings of the forest, sea, sky, and spirit worlds: Raven, Thunderbird, Salmon Bringer, Volcano Woman, and many more.Accompanying each work are a retelling of the myth associated with it and comments from the artist on the myth's meaning, as well as stories related to the creation of the work.Gary Wyatt's introduction discusses the evolution of contemporary Northwest Coast art, touching on major international commissions and exhibitions, and landmark pieces. It also discusses the relevance of myth and legend in contemporary Native society, and the changes and interpretations that have been introduced over the past three decades.

    Applying a rigorous methodology, this profusely illustrated study with interpretative text and catalogue raisonn� embeds Gentileschi's pictorially and emotionally compelling pictures within the actual sociocultural contexts in and for which they were created.The interpretive text analyzes key pictures and primary literary evidence to reveal the sweep of Artemisia's oeuvre, chart her travels, define her standing with artists and patrons of the period, investigate the links between her financial situations and the artistic decisions that she made, and assess the validity of proposals regarding her activity as a still-life painter, her access to professional organizations, her level of literacy, and the nature of her subject matter. Exploring the question of the interrelationships among Gentileschi's gender and experiences as a woman, the state of her psyche, and her art, the text also confronts--and often challenges--the widely embraced feminist interpretation of her pictures.Many of the conclusions in the text are supported by an extensive register of archival documents and by the very core of the study: the first and only catalogue raisonn� of Artemisia's autograph works, each of the fifty-seven pictures exhaustively investigated as to basic factual information, condition and color, iconography, history, documentation and dating, existing copies, and bibliography. Catalogues of misattributed and lost paintings complete this comprehensive volume.

    With essays by leading breast cancer authority Susan Love, art critic James Yood, and Sigler herself.

    Never losing sight of the visual evidence before him, Pacht examines the work of Jan and Hubert Van Eyck, the Master of Flemalle and their contemporaries in the context of a changing intellectual world, the passage from medieval thought to a perception that recognizes and embraces all facets of visible reality. 'Pacht's ability to analyse visual data and his capacity to link cause and effect remain a model of art historical discourse.'

    As beautiful and authoritative as the preceding volume, Durer to Veronese examines the finest works of such artists as Holbein, Raphael, Cranach, Titian, Gossaert, and Bronzino -- creators of some of the most important masterpieces of the sixteenth century.The authors look closely at a variety of types of painting -- including large altarpieces, small domestic, devotional images, diplomatic gifts, furniture decorations, and both intimate and full-length portraits -- as well as frescoes, drawings, and prints. They provide fascinating insights into the meanings of individual pictures and into the purposes they were originally intended to serve, and they explore the social position of the artist in the 1500s. In addition, the book provides the fullest and most up-to-date account yet made of the procedures, practices, and materials these artists employed.

    M. Forster or images of artists and intellectuals debating the hot parlor topics of 1910s and 1920s London: literary aesthetics, agnosticism, defining truth and goodness, and the ideas of Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead, and G. E. Moore. But the Bloomsbury Group also played a prominent role in the development of modernist painting in Britain. The work of artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, and their colleagues was often audacious and experimental, and proved to be one of the key influences on twentieth-century British art and design.This catalogue, published to accompany a major international exhibition of the Bloomsbury painters originating at the Tate Gallery in London and traveling to the Yale Center for British Art and the Huntington Art Gallery, provides a new look at the visual side of a movement that is more generally known for its literary production. It traces the artists' development over several decades and assesses their contribution to modernism. Catalogue entries on two hundred works, all illustrated in color, bring out the chief characteristics of Bloomsbury painting--domestic, contemplative, sensuous, and essentially pacific. These are seen in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes set in London, Sussex, and the South of France, as well as in the abstract painting and applied art that placed these artists at the forefront of the avant-garde before the First World War. Portraits of family and friends--from Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes to Aldous Huxley and Edith Sitwell--highlight the cultural and social setting of the group. Essays by leading scholars provide further insights into the works and the changing critical reaction to them, exploring friendships and relationships both within and outside of Bloomsbury, as well as the movement's wider social, economic, and political background.With beautiful illustrations and a highly accessible text, this catalogue represents a unique look at this fascinating artistic enclave. In addition to the editor, the contributors are James Beechey and Richard Morphet. Exhibition Schedule: ? The Tate Gallery, LondonNovember 4, 1999-January 30, 2000 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical GardensSan Marino, California The Yale Center for British ArtNew Haven, ConnecticutMay 20-September 2, 2000

    He used the movement to express his criticism of traditional art, which was characterised by its opposition to change and the refusal to countenance a certain vision of Modernism. Klimt took his inspiration from the slow but unstoppable decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the multitude of cultures from which it was composed.Klimt was an artist of great eroticism and sensuality and together with Kokoschka and Schiele, he is one of the great masters of Expressionism. This book brings together Klimt’s finest paintings, along with a text that demonstrates the extraordinary eclecticism of this great artist.

    In the early 1520s, Giulio made sixteen drawings of couples in various sexual positions. Known as I modi (the positions), the drawings were modeled on classical sources and themselves became a model for erotica in early modern Europe. Bette Talvacchia presents the first comprehensive account of the origins, impact, and context of these drawings, discussing in highly original ways such issues as censorship, religious teachings about sex, and the influence of antique culture.Talvacchia presents evidence that Giulio modeled I modi in part on coinlike ancient Roman medals known as spintriae, which portrayed diverse sexual positions. She reconstructs how the drawings were first circulated privately and then made into engravings that were distributed publicly. She considers what it reveals about Renaissance culture that authorities began to consider I modi obscene and threatening--they went so far as to jail the engraver--only when the images became available to the public. More broadly, Talvacchia explores how sixteenth-century discourse used the terms onesto and disonesto--roughly analogous to the terms natural and unnatural in Catholic teachings about sexual sin--to distinguish between the erotic and the obscene.The book also traces the influence of Giulio's drawings throughout the sixteenth century. Talvacchia looks, in particular, at two related sets of prints: Jacopo Caraglio's Loves of the Gods and a manual of anatomy by the French doctor and printer Charles Estienne. In the former, she shows how explicit sexual representation was legitimized with a cover of ancient mythology. She then examines how Estienne transformed Caraglio's erotic images into strange anatomical figures of the female body and what this transformation shows about the place of women's sexuality in Renaissance medicine.The book is generously illustrated and includes full translations of the infamous sonnets that Pietro Aretino wrote to accompany I modi. Provocative, rigorously researched, and carefully argued, Taking Positions is a major contribution to our understanding of the erotic in Renaissance culture.

    Encompassing European art, architecture and design from the 16th century to the present day, this volume uses case studies to examine the role of gender difference in the production, consumption and interpretation of works of art.

    The highly readable texts give you concentrated information on accessing well and lesser known sites in the world of art. An image of every piece of art that is described is included, allowing readers to easily recognize the original on site. Insets on cultural-historical topics and illustrated glossaries, summaries, and timelines supplement the body text - leaving a deeper, more lasting impression of the material that is covered. Convenient compact format makes these books particularly handy to take along as a guide while viewing the great works featured within.

    to the present day.

    His life and public role is also considered.

    of New York) ranges from the dawn of time to the present and from Europe and North America to China and Australia. He presents and discusses visual images relating to gay men and lesbians, but not always related to sex itself; the Stonewall riot and the AIDS quilt for example are represented.

    His empathetic studies of the great and the grotesque remain seminal works, all surveyed in this study that also shows his enormous influence on later artists including Picasso and Francis Bacon.

    There are 2000 drawings in this book covering the history of Western architecture from Egypt through Wright, Saarinen, and Fuller.

    Ten years of research and the discovery of long-forgotten letters and photos enabled Patricia Albers to bring new recognition to this talented, intelligent, and independent photographer whose life embodied the cultural and political values of many artists of the post-World War I generation.

    As a young man at Oxford he became involved with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, mixing with such artists as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and Edward Coley Burne-Jones.Always a man of innovation, Morris soon tired of the subject matter and philosophy of the Pre-Raphaelites. His desire for social reform was also an important factor in his artistic growth and he moved on from painting to the creation of textiles, wallpapers, stained glass and highly decorative furniture. He also set up the Kelmscott Press as a medium for his writing and elegant book design. With Edward Burne-Jones, he set in motion the highly influential Arts and Crafts Movement - thereby implementing an incredible change in the vision of British art. Essential Morris examines his work and vision in detail, from his earliest sketches to his intricate wallpaper designs and furniture.

    large format overview of the Eternal City features over 500 color photographs, over 40 maps and diagrams, a 4 panel fold-out of the restored ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and a detailed layout of Ancient Rome. The insightful text is handily divided into neighborhoods and details the historical and artistic aspects that make Rome one of the most beautiful and historic cities on earth. The logical and utilitarian organization makes self-guided tours a snap. For traveler, armchair traveler, and art lover alike this book will be treasured for many years to come.

    The actual process and ceremonies involved in tattooing are described and illustrated with over 250 drawings and color illustrations of native people. Included are actual 19th century photographs as well as early exploration art, paintings, drawings, engravings, and artifacts all relating to tattooing.

    It is often the faces shown that communicate most directly in a picture; their expressions may reveal the drama of a story, or the character of a sitter in a portrait. A Closer Look: Faces examines a wide array of fascinating faces found in paintings at the National Gallery. It explains why artists in the past created faces to look as they do, what painters through the ages have considered the "ideal" face, how faces are painted, and the reasons for the development of portrait painting. Illustrated with seventy pictures and beautiful details, this book provides an insider's view of the many faces in Western European art.

    The book revisits process art in terms of the artists who defined the movement, and suggests a transitional moment when many of its practitioners anticipated the postminimalist art of the 1970s. The book, which accompanies an exhibition, contains an essay by the author on the historical ambiguity surrounding processa art and one by Pamela M. Lee on temporality in the work of the late 1960s. The text features such artists as William Anastasi, Richard Artschwager, Mel Bochner, Agnes Denes, Nancy Grossman, Robert Grosvenor, Marcia Hafif, and Nancy Holt.

    

    They are, however, much more than just civic monuments -- they have set new standards, breaking with all precedent in their unique three-dimensional forms. Each building is an enduring source of inspiration for students and fellow architects, and bears witness to the free-ranging imagination and genius of its architect. Together, they provide valuable insights into the role of civic architecture.

    Accompanying a centennial retrospective of her work, this volume contains full-color reproductions of Albers' most important weavings, drapery materials, and wall coverings as well as scores of her highly influential commercial textile designs.Anni Albers had an enormous effect on the design of yard materials worldwide. A comprehensive illustrated chronology details Albers' fascinating life and career in Germany and in the United States where she moved in the 1930s with her husband the famed painter and instructor Josef Albers.

    This is the first book-length study to approach the work of Viollet-le-Duc from the perspective of institutional and social history.Kevin D. Murphy situates the Vezelay restoration project within the government architectural bureaucracy that emerged in the July Monarchy. Drawing on extensive archival records, he describes the controversy that arose from the restoration process, as changes in the physical form of the church, its permitted uses, and its place in history provoked heated exchanges among the Burgundy region and Paris, the Catholic clergy and government officials.Examining in detail the architect's transformation of the church of the Madeleine, the book also draws out the implications of the project for understanding Viollet-le-Duc's theoretical development. Murphy shows how Viollet-le-Duc's rationalist interpretation of medieval architecture informed the decisions that were made about the restoration, but also how that way of thinking was influenced by the architect's experience at Vezelay.

    Reconsidering the traditional definitions of German modernism and its central issues of race politics, eugenics, and the city, Meskimmon explores the structures that marginalized the work of little known artists such as Lotte Laserstein, Jeanne Mammen, Gerta Overbeck and Grete Jurgens. She shows how these women's personal and professional experiences in the 1920s and 1930s relate to the visual imagery produced at that time. She also examines representations of different female roles—prostitute, mother, housewife, the "New Woman" and "garçonne"—that attracted the attention of these artists. Situating her exploration on a strong theoretical base, she ranges deftly over mass visual culture—from film to poster art and advertising—to create a vivid portrait of women living and creating in Weimar Germany.

    Hill House is a unified aesthetic conception -- combining Arts and Crafts honesty with Art Nouveau decoration and distinctly Scottish elements. The Homestead is one of Voysey's finest achievements: a private house but also one built for entertaining. The Gamble House is the enoblement of the California bungalow image, yet a building of striking intimacy. These commissions share similarities -- they were each undertaken for powerful local figures -- but also possess unique characteristics; by looking at them together, one can decipher common Arts and Crafts predilections and examine the different responses of the architects to individual circumstances.

    The cultural links which existed between the Deccan and the Middle East, for example, are clearly discernible in Deccani architecture and paintings and a remarkable collection of photographs, many of which have never been published before, testify to such influences. The book will be a source of inspiration to all those interested in the rich and diverse culture of India.

    In the last fifty years, painstaking research has added a wealth of new information and fresh insight, and Peter Harbison, the acknowledged authority on Medieval Irish archaeology, examines the art of the entire period. This up-to-date account, with over 250 illustrations of illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, architecture, and sculpture, is the most lavish and authoritative survey available on the subject.

    This lavishly illustrated book provides a fresh appraisal of the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their radical departure from artistic conventions. Tim Barringer explores the meanings so richly encoded in Pre-Raphaelite paintings and analyzes key pictures and their significance within the complex social and cultural matrix of nineteenth-century Britain. In chapters devoted to core themes, the author discusses such artists as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Ford Madox Brown and their engagement with medieval revivalism, nature worship, issues of class and gender, and the reconciliation of the religious image and realism.Barringer draws on an imaginative selection of paintings, drawings, and contemporary photographs to suggest that the dynamic energy of Pre-Raphael-ism arose from paradoxes at its heart. Past and present, historicism and modernity, symbolism and realism, as well as tensions between city and country, man and woman, worker and capitalist, colonizer and colonized—all appear within Pre-Raphaelite art. Focusing on these issues, the author casts new light on the Pre-Raphaelites and their innovative work.

    Even today the visitor feels the unique flair, when strolling through the streets, past the Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore, the Piazza della Signoia, and the treasures of the Uffizi.

    These remarkable works of art are the concrete expression of the ancient Egyptians' way of life and their attitudes to religion and the afterlife. In this clear and comprehensive introduction, Jaromir Malek deftly traces Egyptian art from its prehistoric origins, through 3, 000 years of astonishing achievements in the era of the pharaohs, to the conquest of Egypt by the Romans.