Book picks similar to
The 20th Century Art Book by Phaidon Press
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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.
This is Modern Art
Matthew Collings - 1999
A house cast in concrete. The London Underground map with all the station names changes - the Circle Line stations are comedians, the Northern Line stations are philosophers. A tent embroidered with the names of everyone the artist who set up the tent has ever slept with. But what does it all mean? What is Modern Art? Why do we like/hate it? Can anybody do it? Is it always modern? Who started it? In this refreshing and extremely accessible book Matthew Collings tells the story of modern art and our modern attitude to it. It combines hard information on major artists and movements - what really happened - with ordinary reflections: modern art is intimidating and unfathomable to many but Matthew Collings cuts through this barrier by asking all the kinds of questions many of us will have asked and been puzzled by. He will compare Goya to Duchamp and Picasso, Rothko to Yves Klein; he will look at the role of African tribal art in the rise of Modernism and Punk Rock in the rise of Post-Modernism. This will become a classic book of its kind, quirky, culty and great fun.
Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs
Ansel Adams - 2007
Beautifully produced and presented in an attractive landscape trim, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs will appeal to a general gift-book audience as well as Adams' legions of dedicated fans and students. The photographs are arranged chronologically into five major periods, from his first photographs made in Yosemite and the High Sierra in 1916 to his work in the National Parks in the 1940s up to his last important photographs from the 1960s. An introduction and brief essays on selected images provide information about Adams' life, document the evolution of his technique, and give voice to his artistic vision. Few artists of any era can claim to have produced four hundred images of lasting beauty and significance. It is a testament to Adams' vision and lifetime of hard work that a book of this scale can be compiled. Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs is a must-have for anyone who appreciates photography and the allure of the natural world.
The Helga Pictures
Andrew Wyeth - 1987
At first, attention was given to his private project-depicting the same subject in secrecy from 1971 to '85. Away from the publicity that accompanied the debut of these works, they remain a striking, thoughtful study of an individual who evolved as a model from stranger to acquaintance to friend. The works in the Helga Pictures may also be appreciated for their artistic strengths & for their place within his continuing career as a keen observer of the people & places around his residences in Pennsylvania & Maine. Ultimately, The Helga Pictures is a telling tale of a persistence of vision & technique from a perspective that's both objective & personal. From a distinguished artistic family, Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) is a painter & draftsman who developed under the watchful eye of his father, artist/illustrator N.C. Wyeth. One of America's most celebrated artists, Wyeth is famous for his tight style of drybrush painting & recognizable subject matter. Dedicated to a characteristic realism in both style & approach to subject matter, he finds resonance & universal meaning in the most commonplace details of the world around him.
Women, Art, and Society
Whitney Chadwick - 1990
While acknowledging the many women whose contributions to visual culture since the Middle Ages have often been neglected, Whitney Chadwick's survey reexamines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, often in direct reference to gender. In her discussion of feminism and its influence on such a reappraisal, the author also addresses the closely related issues of ethnicity, class, and sexuality.This expanded edition incorporates recent developments in contemporary art. Chadwick addresses the turn toward autobiography in much recent women's art. She considers issues such as the personal versus the political and the private versus the public, and analyzes the differences between women's art today and the seminal feminist work of the 1970s and 1980s.
Art: The Whole Story
Stephen Farthing
It’s a bargain, too – Sunday TimesThis comprehensive, vibrant book leads you through the world’s iconic images – those that we encounter every time we open a newspaper, visit a gallery, or look at the front cover of a novel.Art: The Whole Story traces the development of art period by period, with the illustrated text covering every genre, from painting and sculpture to conceptual art and performance art. Cultural timelines are there too, to help to the reader with historical context.• The most accessible history of world art ever assembled• More than 1,100 colour illustrations of iconic pieces• Covers every genre of art, from painting and sculpture to conceptual art• Designed in an easily navigable and user-friendly fashionWritten by an international team of artists, art historians and curators, this absorbing and beautiful book will give you insight into the world’s most iconic images.Masterpieces that epitomize each period or movement are highlighted and analysed in detail. Everything from use of colour and visual metaphors to technical innovations is explained, enabling you to interpret the meanings of world-famous masterpieces – Mughal miniatures; Japanese prints in the nineteenth century; the colour theories behind Seurat’s remarkable La Grande Jatte; and why Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon was so shocking in its day.
Diane Arbus: Monograph
Diane Arbus - 1972
These landmark images now have a clarity and depth not achievable in earlier editions.
Lonely Heart: The Art of Tara McPherson
Tara McPherson - 2006
Creating art about people and their odd ways, recalling many issues from childhood and adult life experience, McPherson creates images that are thought provoking and seductive. Tara's array of work includes numerous gig posters for rock bands, including Green Day, Modest Mouse, and Death Cab for Cutie, and advertising and editorial illustrations for a diverse group of clients. Her prints and paintings have been exhibited in galleries all over the world. Lonely Heart is the first printed collection of McPherson's work.• Foreword by Frank Kozik!• This collection features full-color illustrations throughout.
Art: A New History
Paul Johnson - 2003
This narrative account, from the earliest cave paintings up to the present day, has new things to say about almost every period of art. Taking account of changing scholarship and shifting opinions, he draws our attention to a number of neglected artists and styles, especially in Scandinavia, Germany, Russia and the Americas.Paul Johnson puts the creative originality of the individual at the heart of his story. He pays particular attention to key periods: the emergence of the artistic personality in the Renaissance, the new realism of the early seventeenth century, the discovery of landscape painting as a separate art form, and the rise of ideological art. He notes the division of 'fashion art' and fine art at the beginning of the twentieth century, and how it has now widened.Though challenging and controversial, Paul Johnson is not primarily a revisionist. He is a passionate lover of beauty who finds creativity in many places. With 300 colour illustrations, this book is vivid, evocative and immensely readable, whether the author is describing the beauty of Egyptian low-relief carving or the medieval cathedrals of Europe, the watercolours of Thomas Girtin or the utility of Roman bridges ('the best bridges in history'), the genius of Andrew Wyeth or the tranquility of the Great Mosque at Damascus, the paintings of Ilya Repin or a carpet-page from the Lindisfarne Gospels. The warmth and enthusiasm of Paul Johnson's descriptions will send readers hurrying off to see these wonders for themselves.
Roy G Biv
Jude Stewart - 2013
We use it to interpret the world-red means stop, blue means water, orange means construction. But it is also written into our metaphors, of speech and thought alike: yellow means cowardice; green means envy-unless you're in Germany, where yellow means envy, and you can be “beat up green and yellow.”Jude Stewart, a design expert and writer, digs into this rich subject with gusto. What color is the universe? We might say it's black, but astrophysicists think it might be turquoise. Unless it's beige. To read about color from Jude Stewart is to unlock a whole different way of looking at the world around us-and bringing it all vividly to life.The book itself is organized around the rainbow and is lavishly designed, with cross-references that liven up each page. (Follow the thread of imperialism, for example, from the pink-colored colonies on maps of the British Empire to the green wallpaper that might have killed Napoleon.) A lovingly packaged, distinctive book, it will be the only one of its kind.ROY G. BIV is a reference and inspiration for designers and artists, as well as a unique, beautiful, and irresistible book for just about anyone.
The Illustrated Dust Jacket, 1920-1970
Martin Salisbury - 2017
The increasing awareness of the jacket’s potential to serve as a marketing tool across various areas of the publishing world—from literary fiction to academic titles, and children’s books—meant a proliferation of illustrative treatments. The book jackets reproduced here reflect the changing visual styles and motifs of the passing century, beginning with the Art Deco period and continuing through Modernism, the playful Thirties, the pre- and postwar Neo-Romantics, the new consumerism and realist subject matter of the Fifties, and the Pop Art of the Sixties.Featuring talent from the US and UK, Cover Up: The Illustrated Book Jacket explores the pictorial dust jacket through a selection of more than 300 key works and artists that influenced the course of book jacket design.
The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images
Ami Ronnberg - 2010
The highly readable texts and over 800 beautiful full-color images come together in a unique way to convey hidden dimensions of meaning. Each of the ca. 350 essays examines a given symbol’s psychic background, and how it evokes psychic processes and dynamics. Etymological roots, the play of opposites, paradox and shadow, the ways in which diverse cultures have engaged a symbolic image—all these factors are taken into consideration.Authored by writers from the fields of psychology, religion, art, literature, and comparative myth, the essays flow into each other in ways that mirror the psyche’s unexpected convergences. There are no pat definitions of the kind that tend to collapse a symbol; a still vital symbol remains partially unknown, compels our attention and unfolds in new meanings and manifestations over time. Rather than merely categorize, The Book of Symbols illuminates how to move from the visual experience of a symbolic image in art, religion, life, or dreams to directly experiencing its personal and psychological resonance.The Book of Symbols sets new standards for thoughtful exploration of symbols and their meanings, and will appeal to a wide range of readers: artists, designers, dreamers and dream interpreters, psychotherapists, self-helpers, gamers, comic book readers, religious and spiritual searchers, writers, students, and anyone curious about the power of archetypal images.
After Modern Art, 1945-2000
David Hopkins - 2000
This book sets out to provide the first concise interpretation of the period as a whole, clarifying the artists and their works along the way. Closely informed by new critical approaches, it concentrates on the relationship between American and European art from the end of the Second World War to the eve of the new millennium.Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and Damien Hirst are among many artists discussed, with careful attention being given to the political and cultural worlds they inhabited. Moving along a clear timeline, the author highlights key movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Postmodernism, and performance art to explain the theoretical and issue-based debates that have provided the engine for the art of this period.
Eva Hesse
Lucy R. Lippard - 1976
In many ways, her works were ”psychic models,” as Robert Smithson has said, of ”a very interior person.” In pioneering the use of ”soft” materials, her sculptures betrayed her awareness of the manner in which her experience as a woman altered her art and career. Although she died before feminism affected the art world to any great extent, her major works have since become talismans for succeeding generations of women artists. Eva Hesse was designed by Hesse's friends and colleagues Sol LeWitt and Pat Stier; her sculptures, drawings, and paintings are reproduced and discussed; and the text includes numerous quotations from her diaries. First published in 1976 but long out-of-print, this classic text is both an insightful critical analysis and a tribute to an artist whose genius has become increasingly apparent with the passage of time.
Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell
Deborah Solomon - 2004
Legends about Cornell abound--as the shy hermit, the devoted family caretaker, the artistic innocent--but never before Utopia Parkway has he been presented for what he was: a brilliant, relentlessly serious artist whose stature has now reached monumental proportions. Cornell was haunted by dreams and visions, yet the site of his imaginings couldn't have been more ordinary: a small house he shared with his mother and invalid brother in Queens, New York. In its cluttered basement, he spent his nights arranging photographs, cut-outs and other humble disjecta into some of the most romantic works to exist in three dimensions. Cornell was no recluse, however: admired by successive generations of vanguard artists, he formed friendships with figures as diverse as Duchamp, de Kooning, and Warhol and had romantically charged encounters with Susan Sontag and Yoko Ono--not to mention unrequited crushes on countless shop girls and waitresses. All this he recorded compulsively in a diary that, along with his shadow boxes, forms one of the oddest and most affecting records ever made of a life. It is from such documents, and from a decade of sustained attention to Cornell, that Deborah Solomon has fashioned the definitive biography of one of America's most powerful and unusual modern artists.