Joe took toy soldiers to a whole new level by giving them the ability to pose via moveable parts, as well as interchangeable clothing and accessories, the business of creating pop sculpture icons for the mass market was off and running. Superheroes came next, followed by TV show and movie characters, most notably those from Star Wars. Today, action figures exist for sports stars, rock stars, even presidents.With today's blockbuster success of animated films, action figures and collectibles have become a behemoth industry--with a growing need for skilled artists who can bring these characters to life. So how do you get started?The trio of veteran industry insiders who authored this book take you on an incredibly thorough journey that begins with drawing conceptual drafts and continues through rough sculpting and honing the final product. Along the way, you'll learn how to research your character, shape casts from a variety of materials including wax and resin, make accessories, articulate characters so that they are poseable, paint them, and ultimately convince an art director to buy and manufacture them. Whether you want to make small PVC toys, collectible statues, or larger high-end collectibles, Pop Sculpture offers step-by-step demos and words of wisdom from the pros.

    Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art that documents approximately 50 of the artist's ephemeral time- and media-based works from throughout her career. The book also discusses a unique element of the Museum's retrospective, live performance: a new work created for the occasion, and performed by Abramovic herself; and re-creations of the artist's works by other performers-the first such to be undertaken in a museum setting. The book spans over four decades of Abramovic's early interventions and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances and collaborative performances made with the Dutch artist Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). Essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator of Media and performance art at MoMA, and four distinguished scholars examine Abramovic's ideas of time, duration and the reperformance of performance art as a way to extend it into posterity. The Artist Is Present also includes a CD with audio commentary by the artist that guides the reader through the publication. The artist is present not only in the exhibition but also in the experience of the book.Born in Belgrade just after the end of the Second World War, Marina Abramovic was raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church (her great uncle was a Patriarch and a canonized saint in the Church) and left Yugoslavia in 1976, having already established herself as a performance artist, living in Amsterdam and eventually New York, where she presently lives.

     Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novel, The Goldfinch, introduced millions of readers to a painting that becomes a lifelong obsession. Painted in 1654 by Carel Fabritius, the work is of a small bird, chained to its perch. This mysterious portrait, a masterpiece of the Dutch Golden Age, has been lost and found, adored and abandoned, for nearly four centuries. Now more famous than ever, this painting is the subject of its own book—a look behind the scenes at its creation and the tumultuous life of its creator. This gripping, true story of adventure, romance, and artistic fervor has never before been told and will enthrall readers of the now famous novel. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Holland in the seventeenth century, when it was the economic capital of the world, the book is populated by a glittering crowd of the wealthy and young, high society with appetites for success and excess. Holland was the center of the art world as well, boasting both Rembrandt, (Fabritius' mentor), and Vermeer (his rival). And there is Carel Fabritius himself—handsome, talented, hell-bent on greatness, but unable to escape tragedy. Yet through The Goldfinch, he achieves immortality. Deborah Davis is the author of the best-selling Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X, Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball, Gilded: How Newport Became the Richest Resort in America, and the prize-winning Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner that Shocked a Nation. Cover design by Adil Dara

    Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Prima Official Game Guide includes:    • Gain access to the Gold Hurley Familiar DLC with the purchase of the guide   • Detailed spoiler-free walkthrough for the entire game, including all errands and bounty hunts    • Complete charts showing all information and metamorphous of each familiar    • Breakdown for all spells, alchemy formulas, and items    • Solve every puzzle, defeat every boss, and find all hidden treasures    • Features a hard cover with unique treatments for collectability.

    This significantly expanded edition is a full-color, lavishly illustrated, comprehensive resource that explores every aspect of alternative process image making. With his highly conversational writing style, James explores the techniques, processes, idiosyncrasies, history, and cultural connections that are such a significant part of the genre. Best of all, James makes it extremely accessible, providing clear instructions and practical workflow advice. The book delves into a vast menu of alternative and traditional options, among them: calotype, salted paper, cyanotype, argyrotype, chrysotype, POP, kallitype, ambrotype/wet collodion, Van Dyke, platinum/palladium, Ziatype, gelatin dry plate emulsions, carbon, gum bichromate, albumen, hand-applied emulsions, paper, alternative imaging systems, and digital negative production for alternative process image making. This book has become the unanimous standard reference text for alternative process photography, one that students love to read and work from. Not only does this definitive work make the most complex ideas easy to understand, it is conversational, comfortable, inspirational, and fun to read- a tremendous resource and a treasure trove of alternative process images. "The first edition was a stunning achievement, and one I felt that was not likely to be superceded. Five short years later Christopher James has created a very new work and a new standard. The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes: 2nd Edition is, by far, the best alternative photographic process book ever!" - Richard Sullivan, Founder and Co-Owner, Bostick & Sullivan "If I could only have one photography book this would be it." -Timothy Whelan, Photographic Books

    Twombly carefully managed his own image, writing almost nothing about his life and work, and giving only a handful of interviews. Through years of scholarship and archival research, first-person interviews, and a sensitive eye to Twombly's art, Joshua Rivkin--who received a Fulbright grant to pursue this story--separates the myth from the reality to bring to life a more complicated and fascinating Twombly than we've ever known.

    Juried by distinguished artist and educator Joe Bova, this magnificent gallery includes pieces from an international group of artists; the beautifully crafted works range from the representational to the abstract, from artful realism to provocative surrealism (including animal-human hybrids). Ann Marais’ image of a waterfowl painted onto a porcelain dish has a restrained, Asian quality. Sharkus’ painted and smoke-fired stoneware turtle could easily be mistaken for the living creature. Bova provides astute and illuminating commentary overall, with selected artists’ notes.

    Oriented toward traditional black and white photography, the book also explores digital techniques and web photography resources, equipment, the exposure and development of film, and the making and finishing of prints.

    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.

    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.

    Made in Russia presents fifty such masterpieces, from pioneers of Soviet technology such as the Sputnik, the Buran snowmobile, and the LOMO camera to icons of quotidian culture such as the fishnet shopping bag, the beveled glass, a Cold War-inspired arcade game, and Misha the Olympic bear. Edited by the journalist and author Michael Idov - a Soviet product himself - and including essays from Boris Kachka, Vitaly Komar, Gary Shteyngart, and Lara Vapnyar, the collection explores the provenance of these objects in the forgotten Soviet culture and the unique climate for design from which they could only have emerged.

    They have become cultural icons, standing not only for different kinds of art but also for different ways of living. Matisse, known for his restraint and intense sense of privacy, for his decorum and discretion, created an art that transcended daily life and conveyed a sensuality that inhabited an abstract and ethereal realm of being. In contrast, Picasso became the exemplar of intense emotionality, of theatricality, of art as a kind of autobiographical confession that was often charged with violence and explosive eroticism. In Matisse and Picasso , Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death.

     A review of contemporary theory of art history provides readers with lucid prose and concrete examples. Discussion of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century theories that are important to art history offers readers a review of historically important issues in philosophy. Illustrations of well-known works of art show readers how theory has application to images. Art historians and educators.

    The trove included massive, multi-volume illustrated manuscripts, double-sided nine-foot-long watercolor murals, photo-enlarged tracings, and hundreds of sketches. Depicting a turbulent world, these works are the product of the fertile yet tormented imagination of a secretive Chicago janitor who has since been recognized as one of the supreme self-taught artists of the 20th century.Cataloguing in full color the American Folk Art Museum's recent acquisition of 37 paintings, among other Darger works, this informative yet affordable volume offers a general introduction to a controversial self-taught artist.

    Discusses the terms, movements, and major artists in the modern American and European art world.