Now back in print, this classic book (originally published in 1996) examines the country’s rich artistic culture in the seventeenth century, providing a full account of Dutch artists and patrons; artistic themes and techniques; and the political and social world in which artists worked.Distinguished art historian Mariët Westermann examines the “worldly art” of this time in the context of the unique society that produced it, analyzing artists’ choices and demonstrating how their pictures tell particular stories about the Dutch Republic, its people, and its past. More than 100 color illustrations complement this engaging discussion of an extraordinary moment in the history of art.

    This text presents a new reading of the Bayeux tapestry that radically alters our understanding of the events of 1066 and reveals the astonishing story of early Medieval Europe's greatest treasure.

    Full page B&W photos

    This honor catapulted her into contact with both high society and the greatest artists and writers of the day. Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great, Benjamin Franklin, and Lord Byron were only a few of her vast and prestigious clientele. While describing her life as an artist, Vigee Lebrun also provides an exciting account of the dramatic events of her day, particularly the French Revolution and the Terror, from which she barely escaped.

    With imagination and insight, the author brings Impressionism into focus by showing it through the eyes of the artists and their contemporaries, using letters, critical reviews and reminiscences of the people who were part of the story. As we see in Bernard Denvir's compelling survey, the Impressionists had new ways of painting, but they also had a new world to paint: a world of stream tricycles, emergent photography, and modern ideas about perception. 195 illus., 17 in color.

    Fresh, unstaged, and full of poetry and humor, his photographs portray everyday people (in everyday places, doing everyday things) frozen in time, unwittingly revealing fleeting personal emotions in a public context. Doisneau's gift was the ability to seek out and capture, with humanity and grace, those little epiphanies of everyday Parisian life. This book traces Doisneau's life and career, providing a wonderful introduction to the work of this seminal photographer.

    Art

    Including more than 300 illustrations, accompanied by quotes from the artist that illuminate the passionate thinking behind the work, Hockney’s Pictures shows the evolution and diversity of Hockney’s paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints, and photography, confirming and reinforcing his position as one of the world’s most popular living artists.

    The grandness of that history no longer fit into the framework of the present, and artists felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of past heroic accomplishment. This was soon reflected in artistic representation, from Fuseli on. The partial image, the "crop," fragmentation, ruin, and mutilationall expressed grief and nostalgia for the loss of a vanished totality, a utopian wholeness. Often such feelings were expressed in deliberate destructiveness, which became the new way of seeing: the notion of the modern. In The Body in Pieces, the noted critic and art historian Linda Nochlin traces these developments by looking at work produced by artists from Neoclassicism and Romanticism to Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Surrealism, and beyond. 59 illustrations.

    Pablo explores Picasso’s early life among the bohemians of Montmartre, his turbulent relationship with artist/model Fernande Olivier, and how his art developed through friendshipswith poets Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, the painter Georges Braque, and his great rival Henri Matisse. Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie depict a career that began in poverty and reached its climax with the advent of cubism and modern art.

    Here, she offers her best guidance, methods, and DIY projects for organizing in and around your home. Topics include room-by-room strategies (how to sort office paperwork, when to purge the garage or attic), seasonal advice (when to swap out bedding and clothing, how to put away holiday decorations), and day-by-day or week-by-week plans for projects such as de-cluttering, house cleaning, creating a filing system, overhauling the closet, and more. Martha’s indispensable expertise walks you through goal-setting, principles of organizing, useful supplies, and creating systems for ongoing success. A look into Martha’s own personal calendars offers a template for scheduling essential tasks. Last, plenty of strategies, how-tos, timelines, and checklists will help you stay organized all year long.

    He takes us with him on his own journey of discovery, making us see the astonishing sophistication and power of the paintings, telling us what is known about their creators, the Cro-Magnon people who settled the area some 40,000 years ago.Beginning in 1879 with Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, who found the astonishing paintings on the ceiling of a cave at Altamira, Curtis takes us among the scholars of prehistory, the archaeologists, the art historians who devoted their lives to studying and writing about the paintings. Among them: the famous Abbé Henri Breuil, who lay on his back in damp caves lit only by a lantern held patiently aloft by his faithful—and silent—female assistant, to produce the exquisite tracings that are the most reproduced renderings of the art; Max Raphael, the art historian who first understood that the animals on the walls were not single portraits but part of larger compositions; the beautiful Annette Lamming-Emperaire, resistance fighter turned archaeologist, whose doctoral thesis was so important that all theory since has flowed from her work; Jean Clottes and others still working as new caves and information come to light. In his own search for the caves’ meaning, Curtis takes us through the major theories—that the art was part of fertility or hunting rituals, or used for religious or shamanistic purposes, or was clan mythology—examining the ways in which ethnography, archaeology, and religion have influenced the thinking about the cave paintings over time.The Cave Painters is rich in detail, personalities, and history—and permeated with the mystery at the core of this art created so many thousands of years ago by human beings who had developed, perhaps for the first time, both the ability for abstract thought and a profound and beautiful way to express it.

    Yarn-shop owners Sara Lucas and Allison Isaacs know firsthand what the holiday knitter needs. Unique patterns, clear instructions, how-to illustrations, and beautiful photographs are sure to get those needles clicking. The 25 projects are organized by the length of time required to complete them (from quick and easy weekend projects to rewarding long-term luxuries) to make for stress-free holiday knitting. From stylish scarves and hats, and exciting updates on holiday favorites, to chic and contemporary wearables, and beautifully designed home accents, Holiday Knits is the knitter's answer to Santa's workshop.

    Exquisitely designed and produced, Patti Smith: Camera Solo accompanies the first museum exhibition of the artist's photography in the United States.Using either a vintage Land 100 or a Land 250 Polaroid camera, Smith photographs subjects inspired by her connections to poetry and literature as well as pictures that honor the personal effects of those she admires or loves. In the catalogue's interview, conducted by Susan Lubowsky Talbott, the artist talks about her "respect for the inanimate object" as well as the talismanic qualities of things in her life. We see, for instance, a picture of Mapplethorpe's slippers or a porcelain cup that belonged to her father, and are drawn into their intimacy and quiet power. Moreover, these images reveal how the camera has proven to be a means for Smith to retreat—undisturbed—to "a room of my own."From her explorations as a visual artist in the 1960s and 70s and her profound influence on the nascent punk rock scene in the late 1970s and 80s, to Just Kids, her National Book Award-winning memoir of life with her beloved friend Robert Mapplethorpe, Smith continues to make an indelible mark on the American cultural landscape.

    Through his street roots in graffiti, Basquiat helped to establish new possibilities for figurative and expressionistic painting, breaking the white male stranglehold of Conceptual and Minimal art, and foreshadowing, among other tendencies, Germany's Junge Wilde movement. It was not only Basquiat's art but also the details of his biography that made his name legendary--his early years as "Samo" (his graffiti artist moniker), his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Madonna and his tragically early death from a heroin overdose. This superbly produced retrospective publication assesses Basquiat's luminous career with commentary by, among others, Glenn O'Brien, and 160 color reproductions of the work.Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father--an ethnic mix that meant young Jean-Michel was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of 11. In 1977, at the age of 17, Basquiat took up graffiti, inscribing the landscape of downtown Manhattan with his signature "Samo." In 1980 he was included in the landmark group exhibition The Times Square Show; the following year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist ever to be invited to Documenta. By 1982, Basquiat had befriended Andy Warhol, later collaborating with him; Basquiat was much affected by Warhol's death in 1987. He died of a heroin overdose on August 22, 1988, at the age of 27.