Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value, a painting lost for almost two centuries.The artist was Caravaggio, a master of the Italian Baroque. He was a genius, a revolutionary painter, and a man beset by personal demons. Four hundred years ago, he drank and brawled in the taverns and streets of Rome, moving from one rooming house to another, constantly in and out of jail, all the while painting works of transcendent emotional and visual power. He rose from obscurity to fame and wealth, but success didn't alter his violent temperament. His rage finally led him to commit murder, forcing him to flee Rome a hunted man. He died young, alone, and under strange circumstances.Caravaggio scholars estimate that between sixty and eighty of his works are in existence today. Many others -- no one knows the precise number -- have been lost to time. Somewhere, surely, a masterpiece lies forgotten in a storeroom, or in a small parish church, or hanging above a fireplace, mistaken for a mere copy.Jonathan Harr embarks on a journey to discover the long-lost painting known as The Taking of Christ -- its mysterious fate and the circumstances of its disappearance have captivated Caravaggio devotees for years. After Francesca Cappelletti stumbles across a clue in that dusty archive, she tracks the painting across a continent and hundreds of years of history. But it is not until she meets Sergio Benedetti, an art restorer working in Ireland, that she finally manages to assemble all the pieces of the puzzle.

    Even his contemporaries found the Dutch painter’s work difficult to decipher—and it still presents riddles to contemporary art historians. Part of the problem in analyzing his shocking and richly allegorical paintings is that virtually nothing is known of the artist himself, apart from his birthplace. There is no record of his life or training, no personal letters, diaries or notebooks, and no contemporary insights into his personality or his thoughts on the meaning of his art. Even his date of birth can only be guessed at, and that based on a drawing assumed to be a self-portrait, made shortly before his death in 1516, which supposedly shows the artist in his late sixties. Bosch remains as mysterious as the worlds he painted. Although rooted in the Old Dutch tradition, Bosch developed a highly subjective, richly suggestive formal language. With a mixture of religious humility and satanic wit, he illustrated both the joys of heaven and the cruelly imaginative tortures of hell. In his pictorial world teeming with surrealistic nightmares, the medieval imagination catches fire in a moment of final brilliance before succumbing to humanism and modern rationalism. Though the man himself remains a mystery, this book pulls together the elusive threads of Bosch’s work into a cohesive and comprehensive analysis of his work and methods.

    This apotheosis of banal, everyday objects simultaneously constituted a criticism of the traditional elitist understanding of art. Almost alone among artists, Lichtenstein pursued the question of how an image becomes a work of art. Wholly in keeping with the spirit of the Classical Modern, he held that it was not the "rank" of the picture's subject that lends the picture its artistic character, but rather the artist's formal treatment of it. To Lichtenstein, however, this position seemed far too broad to be seriously pursued. Developed in the early 60s, Lichtenstein's grid technique, with its allusion to the mass-production of graphic art, allowed the painter to give vent to his own artistic scepticism. In the 60s and 70s, Lichtenstein expanded his formal repertoire of techniques for creating distance and irony by means of an idiosyncratic process of abstraction and especially by his use of his numerous art quotations.

    "Babe" includes work by Collins as well as over 30 artists who have been part of her online collective "The Ardorous". Though their work is aesthetically varied, it all represents a current zeitgeist characterized by explorations of female identity, scrutinization of the role of the Internet and social media, and a penchant for pastel colors. The artists in the book, such as Arvida Bystrom, Sandy Kim, Harley Weir, Jeanette Hayes, and Kristie Muller, hail from a variety of places, including New York, London, Moscow, Stockholm, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Toronto. Together they reflect an all-accepting, affirming, distinctly female point of view that teens and young women everywhere can respond to. With a Foreword by Tavi Gevinson, writer, actress, fashion blogger, and creator of the online magazine Rookie, this is an inspiring collection for a new generation of creative, forward thinking women.

    Now legendary, these men have emerged as the most prominent figures of the famed Mexican mural movement, which lasted from the '20s through the early '70s and was hailed as the most significant achievement in public art of the 20th century. The dramatic story of the movement is told here in a fascinating history of the artists, accompanied by over 100 spectacular color reproductions of the murals. Showcasing popular as well as lesser-known works from around the US and Mexico, this is the first high-quality paperback to do justice to a subject that will captivate every lover of Mexican art and culture, Rivera fan, and art historian, as well as anyone who appreciates a beautiful, intelligent art book.

    The phantasmagoric imagery of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) has been the source of widespread interest ever since the painter's lifetime, and is still so enigmatic that scholars have theorized that it contains hidden astrological, alchemical, or even heretical meanings. Yet none of these theories has ever seemed to provide an adequate understanding of Bosch's work. Moreover, the considerable professional success that the artist enjoyed in his native Hertogenbosch, not to mention his membership in a traditional religious organization, suggests that he pursued not a sinister secret agenda but simply his personal artistic vision.This intriguing new monograph by noted art historian Larry Silver interprets that artistic vision with admirable lucidity: it explains how Bosch's understanding of human sin, morality, and punishment, which was conceived in an era of powerful apocalyptic expectation, shaped his dramatic visualizations of hell and of the temptations of even the most steadfast saints. Silver's account of Bosch's artistic development is one of the first to benefit from recent technical investigations of the paintings, as well as from the reexamination of the artistGÇÖs drawings in relation to his paintings. Hieronymus Bosch is also unique in how securely it places its subject's work in the broader history of painting in the Low Countries: Silver identifies sources of BoschGÇÖs iconography in a wide range of fifteenth-century panel paintings, manuscript illuminations, and prints, and describes how, despite their own religiousness, Bosch's pictures helped inspire the secular landscape and genre scenes of later Netherlandish painters. Augmented by 310 illustrations, most in color, including many dramatic close-ups of BoschGÇÖs intricately imagined nightmare scenes, this is the definitive book on a perennially fascinating artist.

    Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed—street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged—was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, made him an artist who speaks across the centuries to modern day.Called “racy, intensely imagined, and highly readable” by the New York Times Book Review, Caravaggio includes eight pages of color illustrations, and is sure to appeal to art enthusiasts interested in one of history’s true innovators. Caravaggio is part of the “Eminent Lives” series from HarperCollins, a selection of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures.

    This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.

    Great for the beginner and the expert, this book offers readers exercises to improve their work.

    Country musicians and magicians, professional wrestlers and rock stars, all have turned to Nashville's historic Hatch Show Print to create showstopping posters. Established in 1879, Hatch preserves the art of traditional printing that has earned a loyal following to this day (including the likes of Beck, Emmylou Harris, and the Beastie Boys). Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop is the first fully illustrated tour of this iconic print shop and also chronicles the long life and large cast of employees, entertainers, and American legends whose histories are intertwined with it. Complete with 190 illustrations--as well as a special book jacket that unfolds to reveal an original Hatch poster on the reverse--Hatch Show Print is a dazzling document of this legendary institution.

    This superb drawing guide helps you unravel its complexity and capture its aesthetic on paper. Packed with instructive illustrations and specially-commissioned photographs of male and female models, Anatomy for the Artist unveils the extraordinary construction of the human body and celebrates its continuing prominence in Western Art today. Through her detailed sketches, acclaimed artist Sarah Simblet shows you how to look inside the human frame to map its muscle groups, skeletal strength, balance, poise, and grace.Selected drawings superimposed over photographs reveal fascinating relationships between external appearance and internal structure. Six drawing classes guide you through human anatomy afresh, offering techniques for observing and drawing the skeleton, including the head, ribcage, pelvis, hands, and feet. By investigating a series of masterworks juxtaposed against photographs of real-life models, Dr. Simblet also traces the visions of different artists across time, from Holbein's Christ Entombed to Edward Hopper's Hotel Room.For any artist, learning about the human body is always a palpable delight. This imaginative reference guide will enhance your anatomical drawing and painting techniques at every level.

    Much like Banksy's early graffiti work, Slinkachu's creations mix the bustle, humor, and melancholy of city life, and lie quietly in the darker corners of London's streets, waiting to be discovered. And if you’re lucky enough to find one, to quote The Times: "Oddly enough, even when you know they are just hand-painted figurines, you can't help but feel that their plights convey something of our own fears about being lost and vulnerable in a big, bad city." This volume also includes a forward from acclaimed novelist Will Self.

    12 color and 175 black-and-white photos and reproductions.

    . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder."In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.

    He stood for Modernism but he also embodied tradition. His pictures polarized and divided the art-loving world. The press and general public alike were split over the question: For or against Klimt? This monograph explores Klimt’s oeuvre with particular emphasis upon such contemporary voices. With a complete catalogue of his paintings, including new photographs of the Stoclet Frieze commissioned exclusively for this book, it examines the reactions to Klimt’s work throughout his career. Subjects range from Klimt’s portrayal of women to his adoption of landscape painting. The theory that Klimt was a man of few words who rarely put pen to paper is also dispelled with the inclusion of 179 letters, cards, writings, and other documents from the artist.Contributing authors: Evelyn Benesch, Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Rainald Franz, Anette Freytag, Christoph Grunenberg, Hansjörg Krug, Susanna Partsch, Angelina Pötschner, and Michaela ReichelThe Editor and Author:Tobias G. Natter is an internationally acknowledged expert on art in “Vienna around 1900.” For many years he worked at the Austrian Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, latterly as head curator. He also worked as guest curator at the Tate Liverpool, the Neue Galerie New York, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Schirn in Frankfurt am Main, and the Jewish Museum in Vienna. From 2006 to 2011, he directed the Vorarlberg Museum in Bregenz, and from 2011 to 2013 was director of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. In 2014 he founded Natter Fine Arts, which specializes in assessing works of art and developing exhibition concepts. He is the author of TASCHEN’s Gustav Klimt: The Complete Paintings; Art for All: The Colour Woodcut in Vienna around 1900; and Egon Schiele: The Complete Paintings, 1909–1918.Details:Gustav Klimt: The Complete PaintingsTobias G. NatterHardcover with fold-outs, 29 x 39.5 cm, 676 pagesISBN 978-3-8365-2795-8Edition: EnglishSUZY MENKES:“Surely TASCHEN’s Klimt: The Complete Paintings. Each unfolding page — with its strokeable surface of intense paintwork and its meld of Byzantine imagery and Venetian mosaics — brings to life the exotic eroticism of an exceptional artist.”