The Short Story of Modern Art: A Pocket Guide to Key Movements, Works, Themes, and Techniques


Susie Hodge - 2019
    Simply constructed, the book explores 50 key works – from the realist painting of Courbet to a contemporary installation by Yayoi Kusama – and then links them to the most important movements, themes and techniques. Accessible, concise and richly illustrated, the book reveals the connections between different periods, artists and styles, giving readers a thorough understanding and broad enjoyment of modern art.

Rothko: The Color Field Paintings


Christopher Rothko - 2017
    This collection presents fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's color field period (1949–1970) alongside essays by Rothko's son, Christopher Rothko, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator of painting and sculpture Janet Bishop. Featuring illuminating details about Rothko's life, influences, and legacy, and brimming with the emotional power and expressive color of his groundbreaking canvases, this essential volume brings the renowned artist's luminous work to light for both longtime Rothko fans and those discovering his work for the very first time. A textured case and large-scale tip-on on the front cover round out this sumptious package.

Annotated Art: The World's Greatest Paintings Explored and Explained


Robert Cumming - 1995
    Using detailed annotation of 45 works from the world's greatest artists, Art provides a deeper understanding and richer enjoyment of the masterpieces of painting.Great Art Made Accessible. This fascinating book takes an original approach to interpreting the lost language of art, using annotation to highlight everything you need to know to appreciate the world's favorite paintings, from Botticelli's The Birth of Venus to Picasso's Guernica. Art explains the artist's techniques and intentions and clarifies the meaning of obscure subjects, decoding the mysterious symbolism that can make even the most familiar painting elusive.Art is like a gallery full of the world's most spectacular paintings, including the devotional icons of the Gothic period and early Renaissance and the awe-inspiring achievements of the High Renaissance. It shows the splendor of the Baroque and Rococo, and scrutinizes the drama of the Neoclassicists and the Romantics. The enchantment of the Impressionist school and the complexities of the Cubist movement are also revealed in glowing color. Biographical notes on the artist place each work in its true personal and historical context.The book's generous size and faithful color reproduction allow every painting to be displayed accurately and in detail. At last, art lovers can truly enter the world of their favorite paintings.

Vivienne Westwood


Claire Wilcox - 2005
    Published to accompany the hugely popular Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the V&A, this book is the first in-depth Vivienne Westwood retrospective. It studies her work as a groundbreaking fashion designer and celebrates her visual impact and iconic profile world-wide.

Sandro Botticelli 1444/45 - 1510


Barbara Deimling - 1981
    This book explores his work.

The Art Forger's Handbook


Eric Hebborn - 1997
    Packed with wonderfully entertaining and often outrageous speculations about the nature of art, truth, and value, the world-renowned art forger--who died mysteriously before this book was published--details secrets of his techniques.

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1763


Albertus Seba - 1765
    His amazing, unprecedented collection of animals, plants and insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime. In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned illustrations of each and every specimen and arranged the publication of a four-volume catalog detailing his entire collection?from strange and exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, insects, butterflies and more, as well as fantastic beasts, such as a hydra and a dragon. Seba's scenic illustrations, often mixing plants and animals in a single plate, were unusual even for the time. Many of the stranger and more peculiar creatures from Seba's collection, some of which are now extinct, were as curious to those in Seba's day as they are to us now. This reproduction is taken from a rare, hand-colored original. The introduction offers background information about the fascinating tradition of the cabinet of curiosities to which Seba's curiosities belonged.

Zentangle


Jane Marbaix - 2015
    Accredited Zentangle teacher Jane Marbaix demonstrates a range of patterns one step at a time and offers a sourcebook of her own designs to inspire tanglers to try something different. Proven to reduce stress and enhance creativity in people of all ages, Zentangle does not require a background in practical art or expensive materials to produce pleasing results.

Keith Haring


Jeffrey Deitch - 2008
    This is the book Haring wanted to make, based on the outline of a monograph that was never completed due to his untimely death in 1989.

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism


Ross King - 2006
    Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas and against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, would at times resemble a battlefield; and as Ross King reveals, it would reorder both history and culture, and resonate around the world.

Dynamic Light and Shade


Burne Hogarth - 1958
    Here is the first book on this essential subject, the product of years of study by one of the world's great teachers of drawing and an artist of international renown, Burne Hogarth.Hogarth begins with the simplist kind of light and shade, showing how a dark silhouette on white paper can communicate form and space. He then shows how the silhouette is transformed into three dimensions with the addition of minimal light - the highlight.Following these instructory chapters, Hogarth devotes a separate chapter to each of the given basic categories of light and shade: single-source light; double-source light; flat, diffused light; moonlight; and sculptural light. In these chapters Hogarth illustrates the effects of these different kinds of light on a variety of subjects and examines both natural and artificial light sources.Moving on to more complex lighting effects, Hogarth explains spatial light - how light and shade can create a sense of "near and far"; environmental light - the effects of weather, time of day, and the changing of seasons; textural light - how light reveals the surface qualities of forms that range from rough stone to silk and satin draperies; transparent light - the effects passing through transparent materials like glass and water, and translucent substances like moving water or sailcloth; fragmentation light - the disrupted light we see in such subjects as fire, rain, and flying snow; radiant light - the intense light we see when we look into the light source itself, which may range from the sun to a candle flame; and finally the various kinds of expressive light invented by the artist - such as the symbolic and mystic light of religious art, or the paterns of light and shade that convey a mood or a psychological state.Burne Hogarth illustrates every effect of light and shade with brilliant drawings in pencil, charcoal, carbon, pen and ink, and brush and ink, encouraging the reader to experiment with diverse drawing media.Dynamic Light and Shade is an essential volume for everyone who draws and paints.

The Animation Book: A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking--From Flip-Books to Sound Cartoons to 3- D Animation


Kit Laybourne - 1979
    Now, as we enter the twenty-first century, the explosion in computer technology has created a corresponding boom in animation. Using desktop hardware and software, animators can easily produce high-quality, high-artistry animation and mix the aesthetics of traditional cel animation with dazzling 3-D effects. Kit Laybourne's digital revision to The Animation Book brings you to the cutting edge of animation technology. Richly illustrated with frame-grabs, production stills, and diagrams, this volume shares Kit's infectious enthusiasm for the limitless possibilities of today's hybrid techniques, and it provides beginning animators with all the information they need to jump in and start their own animation projects. More advanced animators will find The Animation Book to be an invaluable resource with detailed descriptions of filmmaking gear, computer hardware and software, art supplies, plus Internet and other resources.Using an innovative case-study approach, Kit deconstructs how a range of digital projects were carried out at some of today's hottest animation studios, including Wildbrain, Blue Sky, Protozoa, Fantome, Broderbund, Nicktoons, and Klasky Csupo. These step-by-step studies show how desktop animators can follow the same creative process in their own films.

Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color


Philip Ball - 1999
    From Egyptian wall paintings to the Venetian Renaissance, impressionism to digital images, Philip Ball tells the fascinating story of how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted throughout the ages to render the gorgeous hues we admire on our walls and in our museums.Finalist for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award.

How to Be President


Stephen P. Williams - 2004
    You wake up on your first day in the White House—now what do you do? Where's the bathroom? How do you get breakfast? What time is your first meeting? When can you use Air Force One? Can you order a pizza from the Oval Office? What line do you use for personal phone calls? This fully illustrated, how-to, hands-on handbook explains the nuts and bolts of being the President of the United States. Discover how to read a teleprompter, greet foreign dignitaries, and light the White House Christmas tree. Learn where to sit at Cabinet meetings and whether you need to bring your own ball to the White House bowling alley. Your job benefits, vacation schedule, and all the other perks and duties are clearly explained in this indispensable manual. It's a tough job, and somebody's got to do it.

Art as Therapy


Alain de Botton - 2013
    Art as Therapy is packed with 150 examples of outstanding art, with chapters on Love, Nature, Money, and Politics outlining how these works can help with common difficulties. For example, Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter helps us focus on what we want to be loved for; Serra's Fernando Passoa reminds us of the importance of dignity in suffering; and Manet's Bunch of Asparagus teaches us how to preserve and value our long-term partners.De Botton demonstrates how art can guide and console us, and along the way, help us to better understand both art and ourselves.