Introducing art in its international context, this accessible book explores core issues about how art is made, interpreted, and displayed, without any of the unnecessary terminology. Divided into themes, A Short Book About Art presents new ways of thinking about the relationship between artists and their work, as well as fresh comparisons between works of art from different periods and places. Thought-provoking and stimulating, it is the ideal companion for anyone who wants to learn about art without a dictionary in their hands.

    A member of the prestigious Magnum agency since 1954, he has photographed all over the world and his images have been the subject of many books and exhibitions.Containing over 500 pictures, over half of which have never been published before, Elliott Erwitt Snaps is a unique and comprehensive survey of his work. From famous images such as Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon arguing in Moscow in 1959 and Marilyn Monroe with the cast of the movie The Misfits, to his many more personal images of places, things, people and animals, Erwitt's unmistakable, often witty, style gives us a snapshot of the famous and the ordinary, the strange and the mundane over a period of more than half a century, through the lens of one of the period's finest image-makers.The book is arranged in nine chapters, each with a one-word title: Look, Move, Play, Read, Rest, Touch, Tell, Point, Stand. For Erwitt, whose photography is a study and celebration of life, these are the basic actions of life - the things people do. The photographs are not intended to illustrate the words, but the words act as a means of grouping and organizing, making broad connections and also playing with pun and ambiguity, in keeping with the visual games Erwitt plays.

    Her instantly recognizable work draws extensively on her life and her extraordinarily personal reflections upon it.   On Kahlo’s death, her husband, Diego Rivera (1886–1957), ordered that her most private possessions be locked away until 15 years after his death. The bathroom in which her belongings were stored in fact remained unopened until 2004. Through this incredible archive, Frida Kahlo’s Wardrobe gives readers a unique window into Kahlo’s life. It will focus on the personal, combining her prosthetics, jewelry, and clothes with self-portraits, diary entries, and letters to build an intimate portrait of the artist through her possessions, setting this in the context of her political and social beliefs.

     Always Looking opens with “The Clarity of Things,” the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 2008. Here, in looking closely at individual works by Copley, Homer, Eakins, Norman Rockwell, and others, the author teases out what is characteristically “American” in American art. This talk is followed by fourteen essays, most of them written for The New York Review of Books, on certain highlights in Western art of the last two hundred years: the iconic portraits of Gilbert Stuart and the sublime landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, the series paintings of Monet and the monotypes of Degas, the richly patterned canvases of Vuillard and the golden extravagances of Klimt, the cryptic triptychs of Beckmann, the personal graffiti of Miró, the verbal-visual puzzles of Magritte, and the monumental Pop of Oldenburg and Lichtenstein. The book ends with a consideration of recent works by a living American master, the steely sculptural environments of Richard Serra. John Updike was a gallery-goer of genius. Always Looking is, like everything else he wrote, an invitation to look, to see, to apprehend the visual world through the eyes of a connoisseur.

    A centuries-old tradition developed in Europe during the Renaissance, cabinets of wonder (also known as curiosity cabinets) are once again in fashion. Shops, restaurants, and private residences echo these cabinets in their interior design, by making use of the eclectic vintage objects commonly featured in such collections. "Cabinets of Wonder "showcases exceptional collections in homes and museums, with more than 180 photographs, while also explaining the history behind the tradition, the best-known collections, and the types of objects typically displayed. Offering both a historical overview and a look into contemporary interior design, this extravagantly illustrated book celebrates the wonderfully odd world of cabinets of wonder.

    It asks what would have happened if Damien Hirst had never arrived? If someone else had become the most notorious and influential young British artist? And what if that someone had been more talented, more provocative, more outrageous? And far, far funnier?Early on in this bravura debut we are informed that Hirst was hit and killed by a train in 1989 (“apparently when drunk”) – and the focus of everyone’s attention falls instead on Randall. Randall – a big, lumbering ape of a man – is a genius of language as much as art, supremely able to baffle, bemuse and amuse the press, public and all around him. He makes a fortune, causes chaos, changes the art world – the whole world – and provides brilliant quips every step of the way: “There’s only two things you can do with art: make it, and buy it. Everything else – talking about it, thinking about it, selling it, looking at it – either comes under one of those two, or doesn’t count.”

    It consists of 143 paintings of small size, rarely larger than 20 x 30 inches, many of them now considered icons of 20th century art, most of them seIf-portraits. The reasons for this ostensible narcissism were closely bound up with Kahlo's biography, with the country and epoch in which she grew up, and with her decidedly eccentric character. It was no coincidence that the major enigmatic minds of the 16th century, namely Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, were among her favorite painters. For Frida Kahlo never displayed her wounds directly--be it the physical wounds caused by accidents and illness, or the psychological inner wounds. Hers is a subtly enciphered symbolic language, rich in metaphors drawn from almost all the world's cultures. Aztec myths of creation. Far Eastern and Classical Greek mythology, and popular Catholic beliefs all mingle in Kahlo's pictures with Mexican folklore and the stuff of quotidian life, with Marx and Freud. Andre Breton, one of her many admirers among the European avant-garde, once described Kahlo's art as a "colored ribbon round a bomb." Exotic and explosive, sensuous and fascinatingly vital in terms of artistic statement. Kahlo's paintings shed a complex and often frightening light on her soul, her "inner reality." as she called it. If the incessant commercial marketing of Kahlo's paintings over the past decade had obscured a clear view of her extraordinary oeuvre, this present monograph attempts to make amends "Frida Kahlo: The Painter and Her Work returns to the heart, to 42 select masterpieces, reproduced in full and in detail. The painterly quality, the beauty, and theimmense wealth of details in Kahlo's paintings is laid out before the reader's eyes, as is the abyss in which the artist found herself.

    Mary Warner Marien has constructed a richer and more kaleidoscopic account of the history of photography than has previously been available. Her comprehensive survey shows compellingly how photography has sharpened, if not altered forever, our perception of the world. The book was written to introduce students to photography. It does not require that students possess any technical know-how and can be taught without referring to techniques in photography. Incorporating the latest research and international uses of photography, the text surveys the history of photography in such a way that students can gauge the medium's long-term multifold developments and see the historical and intellectual contexts in which photographers lived and worked. It also provides a unique focus on contemporary photo-based work and electronic media.

    BOOKS

    Three interrelated essays on the primary colors presents the artistic, aesthetic, emotional, and economic dimensions of each color in an anecdotal format of poetry and humor.

    This gorgeous volume features work from 26 contemporary international artists who are creating images of astonishing intricacy, using little more than paper and blade. Featuring a host of new discoveries and including art by such stars as Nikki McClure, Rob Ryan, and Thomas Allen, as well as a number of emerging practitioners, Paper Cutting is sure to engage art buffs and indie crafters alike. An in-depth introduction by paper art expert Natalie Avella illuminates the rich history of the centuries-old form, and a whimsical preface by beloved artist Rob Ryan rounds out this delightful collection.

    What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities from eras of history utterly remote from ourselves? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief-systems of their age; religious, political and aesthetic.

    For easy use, the lists are organized into ten sections, given here with a sample from each: All About Art ("Elements of Art") ... Art History ("Timelines of Art History") ... For the Art Teacher ("The National Visual Arts Standards") ... Art Materials ("Things to Do with Collage") ... Painting, Drawing & Printmaking ("All About Color Pigment") ... Sculpture ("Master Sculptors & Their Work")... Architecture ("Great Architects of the World")... Fine Arts & Folk Art ("African American Crafts") ... Technology & Art ("The Evolution of Photography") ... Museums ("Museums Devoted to the Work of One Artist").

    Join Sister Wendy on a journey through Lent, and discover the timeless wisdom to be found in some of the world's greatest paintings.Illustrated in full colour with over forty famous and lesser-known masterpieces of Western art, this beautiful book will lead you into a deeply prayerful response to all that these paintings convey to the discerning eye.'For those who want to appreciate the spirituality behind some of the world's greatest works of art, this book will be hugely inspiring - not only during Lent but at any time of the year.'Dr Janina Ramirez, art historian and broadcaster

    She endured a catastrophic set of physical calamities as a child and young woman, was an active member of the Communist Party, and survived a tempestuous marriage to the artist Diego Rivera. This book includes many photographs of her life alongside her extraordinary paintings, and presents commentary by leading Mexican art historians, stunning reproductions of her most seminal works -- some never before reproduced, and nine gate-folds allowing the reader to examine in detail aspects of her larger works.