Written by scholars at the forefront of new thinking, many of whom are rising stars in their fields, the Oxford History of Art series offers substantial and innovative texts that clarify, illuminate, and debate the critical issues at the heart of art history today. Providing a fresh new look at art that moves away from traditional elitist approaches, the series makes use of new research and methodologies, as well as newly accessible and non-canonical works to offer comprehensive coverage of the art world from archaic and classical Greek art to twentieth-century design and photography, from the artistry of African-American and Native North Americans to the masterpieces of Europe, Polynesia, and Micronesia. Lavishly illustrated and superbly designed, the Oxford History of Art brings new substance and verve to the exciting and ubiquitous world of art.China boasts a history of art spanning 5,000 years and embracing a wide diversity of images and objects--from jade tablets, painted silk handscrolls and fans to ink and lacquer painting, porcelain-ware, sculpture, and calligraphy. But this rich tradition has not, until now, been fully appreciated in the West where scholars have focused their attention on sculpture, while largely ignoring those art forms most highly prized by the Chinese themselves, such as calligraphy. Now, in Art in China, Craig Clunas marks a breakthrough in the study of the subject. Taking into account all the arts practiced in China, and drawing on recent innovative scholarship, this rich text examines the production and consumption of art in its appropriate contexts. From art found in tombs to the state-controlled art of the Mao Zedong era, Art in China offers a novel look and comprehensive examination of all aspects of Chinese art.

    Recent films such as Lost in Translation and Memoirs of a Geisha seem to have made everyone an expert on Japan, even if they've never been there. But the only way for a Westerner to get to know the real Japan is to become a part of it. Kate T. Williamson did just that, spending a year experiencing, studying, and reflecting on her adopted home. She brings her keen observations to us in A Year in Japan, a dramatically different look at a delightfully different way of life. Avoiding the usual clichés--Japan's polite society, its unusual fashion trends, its crowded subways--Williamson focuses on some lesser-known aspects of the country and culture. In stunning watercolors and piquant texts, she explains the terms used to order various amounts of tofu, the electric rugs found in many Japanese homes, and how to distinguish a maiko from a geisha. She observes sumo wrestlers in traditional garb as they use ATMs, the wonders of "Santaful World" at a Kyoto department store, and the temple carpenters who spend each Sunday dancing to rockabilly. A Year in Japan is a colorful journey to the beauty, poetry, and quirkiness of modern Japana book not just to look at but to experience.

    From his base in Beijing, Bonner has been running tours into North Korea for over twenty years, and along the way collecting graphic ephemera. He has amassed thousands of items that, as a collection, provide an extraordinary and rare insight into North Korea's state-controlled graphic output, and the lives of ordinary North Koreans.

    Coupling in-depth analysis of designers - from Jan Tschichold to Romek Marber - with a broad survey of the range of series and titles published - from early Penguins and Pelicans, to wartime and 1960s Specials, Classics, fiction and reference - this is a distinctive picture of how Penguin has consistently established its identity through its covers, influenced by - and influencing - the wider development of graphic design and the changing fashions in typography, photography, illustration and printing techniques.

    No reporter, who flew in, contacted a few dissidents, and flew out again, could ever match his experience, insight, or personal adventures. His book, For The Love Of Prague, is part love story, part history, part a record of national lunacy, and part terror. It is all true, with real names, real people, and real incidents. The New York Times, in a two-thirds page illustrated story, hailed it as a spicy, funny memoir! About the Author: Gene Deitch is an Oscar-winning animation film director and scenarist. He is a voting member of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Scientists. In the early 1950s he was Creative Director of UPA s New York studio, where among his many gold-medal winning films were the famous Bert & Harry Piels beer commercials. His TV commercials were the first ever shown at the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 1956 CBS purchased the Terrytoons animation studio and named Gene Deitch as its Creative Director. Under his supervision and direction, the studio produced 18 CinemaScope cartoons per year for 20th Century-Fox, and won its very first Oscar nomination. He personally created and directed the Tom Terrific series for the CBS nationwide Captain Kangaroo show. Tom Terrific, with Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog, was the very first animated serial for network television. In 1958 he set up his own studio, Gene Deitch Associates, inc., in New York.

    Writers Tony Scherman and David Dalton disentangle the myths of the great pop artist from the man he truly was, and offer a vivid, entertaining, and provocative look at Warhol’s personal and artistic evolution. Drawing on brand new sources—including extensive new interviews and insight from those who knew him best—Pop offers the most dynamic, comprehensive portrait ever written of the man who changed the way we see the world.

    On the eve of its centennial celebrations in 1969, the Boston MFA announced the acquisition of an unknown and uncatalogued painting attributed to Raphael. Boston's coup made headlines around the world. Soon, an Italian art sleuth began investigating the painting's export from Italy, challenging the museum's ownership. Simultaneously, experts on both sides of the Atlantic lined up to debate its very authenticity. The museums charismatic director, Perry T. Rathbone, faced the most challenging crossroads of his career. The Boston Raphael was a media sensation in its time, but the full story of the forces that converged on the museum and how they intersected with the challenges of the Sixties is now revealed in full detail by the director's daughter.

    A sensitive misfit in the world of his upper middleclass youth, what he longed for wasn't so much the exotic as the raw, unfiltered humanity he had experienced in Japanese theater performances and films, witnessed in Amsterdam and Paris. One particular theater troupe, directed by a poet of runaways, outsiders, and eccentrics, was especially alluring, more than a little frightening, and completely unforgettable. If Tokyo was anything like his plays, Buruma knew that he had to join the circus as soon as possible.Tokyo was an astonishment. Callow and unformed, Buruma found a feverish and surreal metropolis where nothing was understated, and everything shouted for attention--neon lights, crimson lanterns, Japanese pop, advertising jingles, cabarets, and PA systems. He encountered a city in the midst of an economic boom where everything seemed new, aside from the isolated temple or shrine that had survived the firestorms and earthquakes that had levelled the city during the past century. History remained in fragments: the shapes of wounded World War Two veterans in white kimonos, murky old bars that Mishima had cruised in, and the narrow alleys where street girls had once flitted. Buruma's Tokyo, though, was a city engaged in a radical transformation. And through his adventures in the world of avant garde theater, his encounters with carnival acts, fashion photographers, and moments on-set with Akira Kurosawa, Buruma underwent a radical transformation of his own. For an outsider, unattached to the cultural burdens placed on the Japanese, this was a place to be truly free. A Tokyo Romance is a portrait of a young artist and the fantastical city that shaped him. With his signature acuity, Ian Buruma brilliantly captures the historical tensions between east and west, the clash of conflicting cultures, and the dilemma of the gaijin in Japanese society, constantly free, yet always on the outside. The result is a timeless story about the desire to transgress boundaries: cultural, artistic, and sexual.

    The grace and elegance of the Japanese sensibility is reflected in both modern and traditional Japanese homes, from their fluid floor plans to their use of natural materials. In The Japanese House, renowned Japanese photographer Noboru Murata has captured this Eastern spirit with hundreds of vivid color photographs of 15 Japanese homes. As we step behind the lens with Murata, we're witness to the unique Japanese aesthetic, to the simple proportions modeled after the square of the tatami mat; to refined, rustic decor; to earthy materials like wood, paper, straw, ceramics, and textiles. This is a glorious house-tour readers can return to again and again, for ideas, inspiration, or simply admiration.

    1450–1516) was more than an anomaly. Bosch’s paintings are populated with grotesque scenes of fantastical creatures succumbing to all manner of human desire, fantasy, and angst. One of his greatest inventions was to take the figural and scenic representations known as drolleries, which use the monstrous and the grotesque to illustrate sin and evil, and to transfer them from the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts into large-format panel paintings. Alongside traditional hybrids of man and beast, such as centaurs, and mythological creatures such as unicorns, devils, dragons, and griffins, we also encounter countless mixed creatures freely invented by the artist. Many subsidiary scenes illustrate proverbs and figures of speech in common use in Bosch’s day. In his Temptation of St Anthony triptych, for example, the artist shows a messenger devil wearing ice skates, evoking the popular expression that the world was “skating on ice”—meaning it had gone astray. In his pictorial translation of proverbs, in particular, Bosch was very much an innovator. Bosch—whose real name was Jheronimus van Aken—was widely copied and imitated: the number of surviving works by Bosch’s followers exceeds the master’s own production by more than tenfold. Today only 20 paintings and eight drawings are confidently assigned to Bosch’s oeuvre. He continues to be seen as a visionary, a portrayer of dreams and nightmares, and the painter par excellence of hell and its demons. Featuring brand new photography of recently restored paintings, this exhaustive book, published in view of the upcoming 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death, covers the artist’s complete works. Discover Bosch’s pictorial inventions in splendid reproductions with copious details and a huge fold-out spread, over 110 cm (43 in.) long, of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Art historian and acknowledged Bosch expert Stefan Fischer examines just what it was about Bosch and his painting that proved so immensely influential.

    Charley Harper (1922 2007), with his masterly use of simple geometric shapes, patterns, and vivid colors, distilled the essence of each bird, bug, otter, raccoon, or elephant he painted to its most important details. He called his style of painting "minimal realism. . . . Instead of trying to put everything in when I paint, I try to leave everything out. . . . I reduce the subject to the simplest possible visual terms without losing identity, thereby enhancing identity." Harper's approach to depicting the natural world is both sophisticated and fun. This edition of Beguiled by the Wild comprises all of Harper's serigraphs produced from 1968 to 2007. The original text by Roger Caras and Charley Harper is joined by a new commentary from the artist's son, Brett Harper.

    The legendary Jay Ward and Bill Scott produced the gleeful wonder and cumulative joy that transcended the crude drawings and occasionally muddy sound. Jay Ward was the magnificent visionary, the outrageous showman, while Bill Scott was the genial, brilliant head writer, coproducer, and all-purpose creative whirlwind. With exclusive interviews, original scripts, artwork, story notes, letters and memos, Keith Scott has written the definitive history of Jay Ward Productions.The Moose That Roared tells the story of a rare and magical relationship between two artists wildly, exuberantly ahead of their time, and a fascinating account of the struggle to bring their vision of bad puns and talking animals to unforgettable life.

    The book provides not only amusement, but a commentary on how America has changed, and a celebration of those places that have been forgotten by conventional history.

    "Eric Sloane's An Age of Barns" is filled with fabulous black-and-white illustrations from this great American artist. Covering all types of American and Canadian barns and everything associated with them-implements and tools, hex signs, silos, out buildings, hinges, barn raising, and more-"Eric Sloane's An Age of Barns" is a spectacular album tribute to this important facet of our architecture and agriculture. This book is sure to once again become a collector's item.

    Pater was shocked at the reaction his book inspired: 'I wish they would not call me a hedonist, it gives such a wrong impression to those who do not know Greek.'.The book had begun as a series of idiosyncratic, impressionistic critical essays on those artists that embodied for him the spirit of the Renaissance; by collecting them and adding his infamous Conclusion, Pater gained a reputation as a daring modern philosopher. But The Renaissance survives as one of the most innovative pieces of cultural criticism to emerge from the nineteenth century.