After Art


David Joselit - 2012
    In this trenchant illustrated essay, David Joselit describes how art and architecture are being transformed in the age of Google. Under the dual pressures of digital technology, which allows images to be reformatted and disseminated effortlessly, and the exponential acceleration of cultural exchange enabled by globalization, artists and architects are emphasizing networks as never before. Some of the most interesting contemporary work in both fields is now based on visualizing patterns of dissemination after objects and structures are produced, and after they enter into, and even establish, diverse networks. Behaving like human search engines, artists and architects sort, capture, and reformat existing content. Works of art crystallize out of populations of images, and buildings emerge out of the dynamics of the circulation patterns they will house.Examining the work of architectural firms such as OMA, Reiser + Umemoto, and Foreign Office, as well as the art of Matthew Barney, Ai Weiwei, Sherrie Levine, and many others, After Art provides a compelling and original theory of art and architecture in the age of global networks.

The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece


Edward Dolnick - 2005
    They snatched one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and fled with their $72 million trophy. The thieves made sure the world was watching: the Winter Olympics, in Lillehammer, began that same morning. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police called on the world's greatest art detective, a half-English, half-American undercover cop named Charley Hill. In this rollicking narrative, Edward Dolnick takes us inside the art underworld. The trail leads high and low, and the cast ranges from titled aristocrats to thick-necked thugs. Lord Bath, resplendent in ponytail and velvet jacket, presides over a 9,000-acre estate. David Duddin, a 300-pound fence who once tried to sell a stolen Rembrandt, spins exuberant tales of his misdeeds. We meet Munch, too, a haunted misfit who spends his evenings drinking in the Black Piglet Café and his nights feverishly trying to capture in paint the visions in his head. The most compelling character of all is Charley Hill, an ex-soldier, a would-be priest, and a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm. The hunt for The Scream will either cap his career and rescue one of the world's best-known paintings or end in a fiasco that will dog him forever.

Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists


Anthony M. Amore - 2011
    And the masterpieces of Rembrandt van Rijn are some of the most frequently targeted.In Stealing Rembrandts, art security expert Anthony M. Amore and award-winning investigative reporter Tom Mashberg reveal the actors behind the major Rembrandt heists in the last century. Through thefts around the world - from Stockholm to Boston, Worcester to Ohio - the authors track daring entries and escapes from the world's most renowned museums. There are robbers who coolly walk off with multimillion dollar paintings; self-styled art experts who fall in love with the Dutch master and desire to own his art at all costs; and international criminal masterminds who don't hesitate to resort to violence. They also show how museums are thwarted in their ability to pursue the thieves - even going so far as to conduct investigations on their own, far away from the maddening crowd of police intervention, sparing no expense to save the priceless masterpieces.Stealing Rembrandts is an exhilarating, one-of-a-kind look at the black market of art theft, and how it compromises some of the greatest treasures the world has ever known.

Cats in the Sun


Hans W. Silvester - 1993
    An international favorite since its original hardcover publication in Spring 1994, this spectacular collection of enthralling, full-color photographs portrays an array of serendipitous and thoroughly charming cats against a backdrop of the beautiful Greek Isles. Combining the romantic beauty of the Mediterranean and the delightful behavior of felines, Cats in the Sun will appeal to cat lovers, travelers, and photographers alike.

Dali


Paul Moorhouse - 1999
    Superb reproductions of paintings by one of the 20th century's most famous artists: The Visage of War, The Enigma of Desire, the well-known Persistence of Memory, 13 others.

Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory


Stephen Quiller - 1989
    First, Quiller demonstrates how to use the wheel to interpret color relationships and mix colors more clearly. Then he explains, step by step, how to develop five structured color schemes, apply underlays and overlays, and use color in striking, unusual ways. This book will bring out every artist's unique sense of color whether he or she works in oil, watercolor, acrylics, gouache, or casein.

Lost Constellations: The Art of Tara McPherson, Volume II


Tara McPherson - 2009
    Altered forms and transfigured ideas. Power and vulnerability. Parallel universes of the heart and mind. Space and time. In a few brief years, the stunning visual oeuvre of Tara McPherson has grown and evolved at thrilling speed. Expanding beyond the limits of rock poster art into the worlds of commercial illustration and fine art, her paintings, drawings, toys, sculptures, and installations have pushed her influence and authority across the breadth of creative expression and helped redefine the boundaries of pop surrealism. Lost Constellations: The Art of Tara McPherson Volume 2 is the compelling road map to the artist's most recent and ambitious journeys in paint, pencil, and vinyl.

Rothko


Jacob Baal-Teshuva - 2003
    An overview of the life and work of artist Mark Rothko, this volume exhibits his mythological content, simple flat shapes, and imagery inspired by primitive art.

El Greco: Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 1541-1614


Michael Scholz-Hänsel - 2004
    Commissioned by the church and local nobility, El Greco produced dramatic paintings marked by distorted figures and vibrant color contrasted with subtle grays. Though his work was appreciated by his contemporaries, especially intellectuals, it wasn't until the 20th century that it was widely embraced and admired, influencing in particular the Expressionist movement.

The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form


Kenneth Clark - 1956
    From the art of the Greeks to that of Renoir and Moore, this work surveys the ever-changing fashions in what has constituted the ideal nude as a basis of humanist form.

The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color


Johannes Itten - 1961
    Subjective feelings and objective color principles are described in detail and clarified by color reproductions.

The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook - Landscapes


Gordon MacKenzie - 2006
    You choose whether to let the sun blaze or the rain pour, to move a maple tree here or make the trail wind over there, to subdue a hillside with quiet greens or make a forest glow with dazzling golds and reds. It's not only a matter of what to paint, but how to go about painting it.This book examines, one at a time, the three major elements of landscape painting: water, sky and land. You will be encouraged to try numerous ways of painting each one. Then you can choose the methods that best express how the outdoors speaks to you.Let this reliable collection of tips, techniques, ideas and lessons be your companion on a sure path to creative fulfillment and better watercolor landscapes.

Northern Renaissance Art


James Snyder - 1985
    Its coverage and color capture the authors' lasting excitement for the period and its artists. A three-part organization covers international currents in the Fourteen Century, Fifteenth-Century Innovations, and Renaissance and Reformation in the Sixteenth Century. For a complete understanding of Northern Renaissance Art--its geography, patronage, and audience expectations.

The Elements of Landscape Oil Painting: Techniques for Rendering Sky, Terrain, Trees, and Water


Suzanne Brooker - 2015
    In The Elements of Landscape Oil Painting, established Watson-Guptill author and noted instructor/painter Suzanne Brooker presents the fundamentals necessary for mastering landscape oil painting, breaking landscapes down into component parts: sky, terrain, trees, and water. Each featured element builds off the previous, with additional lessons on the latest brushes, paints, and other tools used by artists. Key methods like observation, rendering, and color mixing are supported by demonstration paintings and samples from a variety of the best landscape oil painters of all time. With The Elements of Landscape Oil Painting, oil painters looking to break into landscape painting or enhance their work will find all the necessary ingredients for success.

Street Logos


Tristan Manco - 2004
    Fresh coats of paint and newly pasted posters appear overnight in cities across the world. New artists, new ideas, and new tactics displace faded images in a perpetual process of renewal and metamorphosis. From Los Angeles to Barcelona, Stockholm to Tokyo, Melbourne to Milan, wall spaces are a breeding ground for graphic and typographic forms as artists unleash their daily creations.Current graffiti art is reflective of the world around it. Using new materials and techniques, its innovators are creating a language of forms and images infused with contemporary graphic design and illustration. Fluent in branding and graphic imagery, they have been replacing tags with more personal logos and shifting from typographic to iconographic forms of communication.Street Logos is a worldwide celebration of these new developments in twenty-first-century graffiti, an essential sourcebook for all art and design professionals, and a delight to everyone excited by the vitality of the street.