HR Giger


Taschen - 2002
    Born in 1940 in Chur Switzerland, he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich. By 1964 he was producing his first artworks, mostly ink drawings and oils, leading to his first solo exhibition in 1966, followed by the world-wide distribution of his first published posters in 1969. Shortly after, he discovered the airbrush and his own signature freehand style, and created his most well known works, the Biomechanical dreamscapes which formed the cornerstone of his fame. Giger's first book, Necronomicon, published in 1977, servers as the visual inspiration for director Ridley Scott's blockbuster movie Alien, Giger's first film assignment, earning him the 1980 Oscar for "Best Achievement in Visual Effects," for his designs of the film's title character and otherworldly environment. Giger's album covers for Debbie Harry and the band ELP were voted among the 100 best in music history in a survey of rock journalists. Throughout his career, Giger also worked in sculpture and, in 1992, created his first total environment, the Giger Bar in Chur. The Museum H.R. Giger in Chateau Saint-Germain was opened in Gruyeres in 1998. Today, Giger continues to live and work in Zurich with his companion in life Carmen, where his current projects include the realization of his museum bar in Gruyeres.

The Painted Word


Tom Wolfe - 1975
    He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. This is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop


Paul Kingsbury - 2001
    Country musicians and magicians, professional wrestlers and rock stars, all have turned to Nashville's historic Hatch Show Print to create showstopping posters. Established in 1879, Hatch preserves the art of traditional printing that has earned a loyal following to this day (including the likes of Beck, Emmylou Harris, and the Beastie Boys). Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop is the first fully illustrated tour of this iconic print shop and also chronicles the long life and large cast of employees, entertainers, and American legends whose histories are intertwined with it. Complete with 190 illustrations--as well as a special book jacket that unfolds to reveal an original Hatch poster on the reverse--Hatch Show Print is a dazzling document of this legendary institution.

Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs


Sally Mann - 2015
    . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder."In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.

Evolution of a Crazy Artist


Sophie Crumb - 2010
    Sifting through dozens of their daughter's remarkable sketchbooks, our generation's most celebrated graphic artists have, with their only child, Sophie, now selected more than three hundred paintings and drawings that depict her artistic and psychological maturation. Revealing how an original artistic sensibility is both innate and nurtured, the book features six separate developmental stages, including Sophie's earliest drawings, the elaborate fantasy world of her childhood, her late adolescent rebellion, and her coming of age in the milieu of the Paris circus world and New York's "seventh circle of hell." The drawings from her early twenties—of tattoo artists, dangerous men—reflect a personal anguish that finally ends with her becoming a mother and creating a family of her own. Illuminating and intimate, this book is a dramatic yet subtle statement on the evolution of personality as seen through art. This slipcased limited edition is signed by S., R., and A. Crumb, including a signed print.

The Human Figure in Motion


Eadweard Muybridge - 1955
    Containing 4,789 photographs, it illustrates some 163 different types of action: elderly man lifting log, woman sweeping, woman climbing ladder, men boxing and wrestling, child crawling, man lifting weight, man jumping, and 155 other types of action, some of which are illustrated by as many as 62 different photographs. Taken at speeds ranging up to 1/6000th of a second, these photographs show bone and muscle positions against ruled backgrounds. Almost all subjects are undraped, and all actions are shown from three angles: front, rear, and three-quarter view. These historic photographs, one of the great monuments of nineteenth-century photography, are reproduced original size, with all the clarity and detail of the originals. As a complete thesaurus of human action, it has never been superseded. Muybridge was a genius of photography, who had unlimited financial, technical, and scientific backing at the University of Pennsylvania. This volume presents the final selection from more than 100,000 negatives made at an expenditure of more than $50,000. It has never been superseded as a sourcebook for artists, students, animators, and art directors. "An unparalleled dictionary of action for all artists, photographers." — American Artist."Impressive and valuable collection." — Scientific American.

My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator


Katharine Kuh - 2006
    But a courageous and visionary young woman-Katharine Kuh-defied the odds and opened a gallery in Chicago, where she exhibited such relatively unknown artists as Fernand L ger, Paul Klee, Joan Mir, Ansel Adams, Marc Chagall, and Alexander Calder, to name but a few. Not only did Kuh survive these rocky early years but most of the artists became increasingly famous. In 1954, the Art Institute of Chicago named her its first curator of modern painting and sculpture. Kuh's prestigious position at the museum led to friendships with Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, Mies van der Rohe, and Edward Hopper. In writing her memoir, she hoped to offer intimate portraits of these luminaries and contribute to a fuller understanding of their achievements. Her book also reveals how and why America became a major force in the world of contemporary art.After Katharine Kuh's death, Avis Berman-noted art historian and Kuh's close friend and literary executor-selected, edited, and completed her writings for this book.

Heads, Features and Faces


George B. Bridgman - 1936
    This volume, prepared by an expert in the field, is devoted exclusively to just that. With its clear, concise text, its almost 200 excellent illustrations, and its overall life-drawing approach, the book provides valuable guidelines on how best to portray faces, features, and heads. There is probably no better instructor to turn to than George B. Bridgman. He brings to the subject both his expertise as an artist and his fifty years' experience as lecturer and teacher at the Art Students League of New York. Throughout the book, he places as much emphasis on perspective and planes as on anatomy. In this way, you'll develop a more precise understanding of each feature, the head and face in general, the relationship between features, and the relationship between a specific feature and the face or head. Mr. Bridgman's consideration of the head includes such topics as the head at eye level and below eye level; planes of the head; and round and square forms. Four features — eye, nose, mouth, ear — are dealt with in detail. Sections on light and shade, comparative measurements, and principles of cube and oval construction further enhance the scope of the book. The finely executed drawings complement the textual material, illustrating all important concepts.  Of special value is the author's inclusion of the work of famous portrait artists. Vermeer, Hals, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Louise Elisabeth LeBrun — these are the people who made portraiture a master art; and you'll be able to study, up close and at your leisure, the qualities that let their work achieve the status it did.

Lust for Life


Irving Stone - 1934
    "Vincent is not dead. He will never die. His love, his genius, the great beauty he has created will go on forever, enriching the world... He was a colossus... a great painter... a great philosopher... a martyr to his love of art. "Walking down the streets of Paris the young Vincent Van Gogh didn't feel like he belonged. Battling poverty, repeated heartbreak and familial obligation, Van Gogh was a man plagued by his own creative urge but with no outlet to express it. Until the day he picked up a paintbrush.Written with raw insight and emotion, follow the artist through his tormented life, struggling against critical discouragement and mental turmoil and bare witness to his creative journey from a struggling artist to one of the world's most celebrated artists.

Just Looking: Essays on Art


John Updike - 2001
    Originally published in 1989 and until now unavailable in any edition, Just Looking had become one of Updike's rarest and most sought-after titles. It collects the best of the novelist and critic's multifarious musings on art and artists, museums and popular culture, the lives behind the works and the ways in which these works have informed his own life. Included here are pieces on Vermeer, Erastus Field, Modigliani, the major Impressionists, New Yorker cartoonist Ralph Barton, children's book illustrations, Fairfield Porter, and Jean Ipousteguy, among others, as well as extensive reflections on John Singer Sargent and Andrew Wyeth, a critical examination of writers' art, and a long essay on his impressions of the Museum of Modern Art. Featuring a new introduction by the author, this edition of Just Looking -- the first ever in paperback -- brings back into print a key work of art criticism by one of the most respected and accomplished writers of our time and is the first in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's new reprint series.

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture


Marco Livingstone - 2012
    These large, colorful works are the capstone of his engagement with nature, not only in England but also in the American Southwest, through the media of painting and photography. This book, the catalog of the first major Hockney museum exhibition in many years, offers a glorious view of the landscape as seen by the artist, and it includes not only his recent paintings but also his iPhone and iPad drawings. Essays by leading art historians—as well as a more literary piece by novelist Margaret Drabble and Hockney’s own reflections on his recent work—explore Hockney’s art from various perspectives.Praise for David Hockney:"Supplemented with numerous essays by art critics and Hockney himself, this is a mesmerizing volume of an established artist who continues to assert his dynamic relevancy." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "This glorious volume showcases this unique and exhilarating body of work, which celebrates the pulse of life in trees, fields, flowers, and clouds over the great cycle of the seasons . . . The enlightening commentary is merely prelude to a swoon once the reader turns to the 300 resplendent color reproductions." —Booklist, starred review

Mark Rothko


Jeffrey S. Weiss - 1998
    The catalogue for the first major American retrospective of the work of Mark Rothko in 20 years--scheduled to open at the National Gallery in May--this richly illustrated book reproduces 100 of Rothko's paintings, prints, and drawings in full color, and features commentaries by many noted art experts.

The Methodologies Of Art: An Introduction


Laurie Schneider Adams - 1996
    These different ways of describing and interpreting art are the methodologies of artistic analysis, the divining rods of meaning. Regardless of a work’s perceived difficulty, an art object is, in theory, complex. Every work of art is an expression of its culture (time and place) and its maker (the artist) and is dependent on its media (what it’s made of). The methodologies discussed here—formal analysis, iconology and iconography, Marxism, feminism, biography and autobiography, psychoanalysis, and structuralism—reflect the multiplicity of meanings in an artistic image.

Artist's Manual: A Complete Guide to Paintings and Drawing Materials and Techniques


Angela Gair - 1995
    For anyone who has ever had the urge to create art, this easy-to-use manual clearly explains the artist's essential tools and materials -- how to choose them, how to use them, and how to care for them. Packed with information on myriad techniques, from color use and composition to subject choice, and including tips from the professionals, here's everything painters and illustrators need to begin, develop, and perfect their craft. Over 500 color photographs, 200 original works of art, and an extensive list of suppliers complete the most comprehensive, inspirational, and affordable artists' instruction book available today.

Autobiography


Andrew Wyeth - 1995
    The most comprehensive retrospective of the artist's work ever produced.