Book picks similar to
The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting by Gervase Jackson-Stops
art
non-fiction
history
antiques-collectibles
Greek Art and Archaeology
John Griffiths Pedley - 1992
3000 to ca. 30 BC) -- and by medium. Throughout, it blends factual information with stimulating interpretation and juxtaposes long-standing notions with the latest archaeological discoveries and hypotheses.
The Art Spirit
Robert Henri - 1929
While it embodies the entire system of his teaching, with much technical advice and critical comment for the student, it also contains inspiration for those to whom the happiness to be found through all the arts is important.No other American painter attracted such a large, intensely personal group of followers as Henri, whose death in 1929 brought to an end a life that has been completely devoted to art. He was an inspired artist and teacher who believed that everyone is vitally concerned in the happiness and wisdom to be found through the arts. Many of his paintings have been acquired by museums and private collectors. Among them are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wichita Art Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery.
Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand - 2013
But Winogrand was also an avid traveler and roamed extensively around the United States, bringing exquisite work out of nearly every region of the country.This landmark retrospective catalogue looks at the full sweep of Winogrand’s exceptional career. Drawing from his enormous output, which at the time of his death included thousands of rolls of undeveloped film and unpublished contact sheets, the book will serve as the most substantial compendium of Winogrand’s work to date. Lavishly illustrated with both iconic images and photographs that have never been seen before now, and featuring essays by leading scholars of American photography, Garry Winogrand presents a vivid portrait of an artist who unflinchingly captured America’s swings between optimism and upheaval in the postwar era.
Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art
Carlo McCormick - 2010
Yet unsanctioned public art remains the problem child of cultural expression, the last outlaw of visual disciplines. It has also become a global phenomenon of the 21st century. Made in collaboration with featured artists, Trespass examines the rise and global reach of graffiti and urban art, tracing key figures, events and movements of self-expression in the city's social space, and the history of urban reclamation, protest, and illicit performance. The first book to present the full historical sweep, global reach and technical developments of the street art movement, Trespass features key works by 150 artists, and connects four generations of visionary outlaws including Jean Tinguely, Spencer Tunick, Keith Haring, Os Gemeos, Jenny Holzer, Barry McGee, Gordon Matta-Clark, Shepard Fairey, Blu, Billboard Liberation Front, Guerrilla Girls and Banksy, among others. It also includes dozens of previously unpublished photographs of long-lost works and legendary, ephemeral urban artworks. Also includes: • Unpublished images of street art by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat • Unpublished photographs by Subway Art luminary Martha Cooper • Unpublished photos from the personal archives of selected artists • Incisive essays by Anne Pasternak (director of public arts fund Creative Time) and civil rights lawyer Tony Serra • Special feature: exclusive preface by Banksy
What Painting Is
James Elkins - 1998
Alchemy provides a magical language to explore what it is a painter really does in her or his studio - the smells, the mess, the struggle to control the uncontrollable, the special knowledge only painters hold of how colours will mix, and how they will look.Written from the perspective of a painter-turned-art historian, What Painting Is is like nothing you have ever read about art.
Leonardo's Notebooks
Leonardo da Vinci
During his life he created numerous works of art and kept voluminous notebooks that detailed his artistic and intellectual pursuits.The collection of writings and art in this magnificent book are drawn from his notebooks. The book organizes his wide range of interests into subjects such as human figures, light and shade, perspective and visual perception, anatomy, botany and landscape, geography, the physical sciences and astronomy, architecture, sculpture, and inventions. Nearly every piece of writing throughout the book is keyed to the piece of artwork it describes.The writing and art is selected by art historian H. Anna Suh, who provides fascinating commentary and insight into the material, making Leonardo's Notebooks an exquisite single-volume compendium celebrating his enduring genius.
Magnum Stories
Chris Boot - 2004
The book explores the influences that have affected the photo story, such as key twentieth century events and the life of photographic magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and Paris Match, all of which have helped to define the genre.
Ghostly Ruins: America's Forgotten Architecture
Harry Skrdla - 2006
These are the ruins of America, filled with the echoes of the voices and footfalls of our grandparents, or their parents, or our own youth. Where once these structures were teeming with life--commuters, workers, vacationers--now they are disused and dilapidated.Ghostly Ruins shows the life and death of thirty such structures, from transportation depots, factories, and jails to amusement parks, mansions, hotels, and entire towns. Author Harry Skrdla gives a guided tour of these marvelous structures at their peak of popularity juxtaposed with their current state of haunted decrepitude. Like a seasoned teller of ghost stories, Skrdla's words and images reveal what lies beyond the gates and beneath the floorboards. There are the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary and Bethlehem Steel factory in Pennsylvania, the Packard Motors Plant and Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, and Philip Johnson's New York State Pavilion from the 1964/65 World's Fair. There is the entire town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, where a trash fire set inside an old mine in 1962 morphed into an underground inferno that incinerated the town from underneath; more than forty years later, the subterranean fire still rages. The town is empty now, just as the many other abandoned places in this chronicle. Ghostly Ruins is a record of the souls of yesteryear and a chronicle of America's haunted past.
Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper's Bazar, 1867-1898
Stella Blum - 1974
Visiting European royalty as well as American women returning from the International Exhibition in Paris in 1867 stimulated fashion awareness — and it was in this climate that the magazine Harper's Bazar flowered. Dedicated to being "A repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction," it brought to American women inside glimpses of the very latest European and American fashions, all in carefully detailed engravings. It was much the finest source for high fashion for this period.This book consists of the finest illustrations from Harper's Bazar between the years 1867 and 1898, the period of its peak importance. These illustrations not only show you what apparel appealed to our Victorian ancestors, but give you an idea of the evolutionary nature of fashion as well. You will see bustles come and go, natural forms become the vogue only to be superseded by the constricting hourglass figure. Each look is illustrated with a number of different garments. There are gowns for the morning hours, dinner dresses, sporting costumes, traveling clothes and apparel for special occasions: weddings, communions, funerals, etc. Since no costume was complete without accessories, a full line of hats, fans, parasols, muffs, gloves, handkerchiefs, jewelry, shoes and hair styles is shown as well. A selection of children's attire is also included. An introduction by Stella Blum covers the history of Harper's Bazar and examines the various phases fashion went through between 1867 and 1898.
From Bauhaus to Our House
Tom Wolfe - 1981
The strange saga of American architecture in the twentieth century makes for both high comedy and intellectual excitement as Wolfe debunks the European gods of modern and postmodern architecture and their American counterparts.
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.
Gig Posters Volume I: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century
Clay Hayes - 2009
With the rising popularity of MP3 files and streaming digital music--and the near-extinction of traditional album art--concert posters have become the most important visual representation of contemporary music.Gig Posters Volume I celebrates this dynamic medium with contributions from 101 top designers--including Rob Jones of Animal Rummy, Steve Walters, Jay Ryan, Gary Houston, Aesthetic Apparatus, Patent Pending Industries, and many more. Throughout the book, their voices offer fascinating commentary and behind-the-scenes information about the creation of gig posters.Readers will also discover 101 perforated and ready-to-frame posters promoting today's most innovative and original bands--including Radiohead, the White Stripes, Modest Mouse, Girl Talk, Queens of the Stone Age, Wilco, and many, many more.Complete with an introduction by founder and curator Clay Hayes, Gig Posters Volume I celebrates the most talented designers, artists, bands, and performers of the twenty-first century.
Mind Over Matter, Revised Edition: The Images of Pink Floyd
Storm Thorgerson - 1997
The images of Pink Floyd album sleeves and the artwork they contain are the subject of Mind over Matter, a first-hand look at the music business and a consideration of where art ends and commerce begins.'
Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture
Michael Kammen - 2006
Now one of our most respected cultural historians chronicles these clamorous debates about the public appropriateness of paintings, sculpture, memorials, and monuments.Michael Kammen examines the nature, diversity, and persistence of major disputes generated by art and artists and shows what has changed since the 1830s and why. He looks at the role of artists and patrons, local and national governments, conservatives and liberals, and the media in creating and sustaining heated controversies. We see the notable acceleration of such episodes since the 1960s; the effect of the democratization of American museums; the quest for provocative shows to attract crowds; the increased visibility resulting from the public art movement that has stirred anger and created some of our stormiest battles; the desire of many artists and galleries to shock, provoke, and contest, engendering the perplexity, if not outright hostility, of audiences; the use of art as social criticism; the effort to include and appeal to minorities; the threat of litigation and the role of courts; and the commercialization stemming from dependence on corporate sponsorship.Kammen’s central themes include such questions as, What kind of art is most appropriate for a democratic society? What should our relationship be to Old World criteria of excellence in the arts? How can we achieve a distinctively American art? Why have so many controversies hinged upon issues of nudity, decency, and sexuality? Why has public art (most notably sculpture) become so politicized that began in the late 1960s? He explores the “death-of-art” debate since the 1970s and issues of censorship that have arisen over time. Finally, he asks whether art controversies have invariably had a negative effect—noticing the interesting ways in which minds have been changed and museums have overcome difficult episodes. He also reminds us that when New York’s Museum of Modern Art celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, President Dwight Eisenhower declared “as long as artists are at liberty to feel with high personal intensity, as long as our artists are free to create with sincerity and conviction, there will be healthy controversy and progress in art.” Kammen agrees.
The Unknown Matisse, 1869-1908
Hilary Spurling - 1998
Now, in the hands of the superb biographer Hilary Spurling, the unknown Matisse becomes visible at last.Matisse was born into a family of shopkeepers in 1869, in a gloomy textile town in the north of France. His environment was brightened only by the sumptuous fabrics produced by the local weavers--magnificent brocades and silks that offered Matisse his first vision of light and color, and which later became a familiar motif in his paintings. He did not find his artistic vocation until after leaving school, when he struggled for years with his father, who wanted him to take over the family seed-store. Escaping to Paris, where he was scorned by the French art establishment, Matisse lived for fifteen years in great poverty--an ordeal he shared with other young artists and with Camille Joblaud, the mother of his daughter, Marguerite. But Matisse never gave up. Painting by painting, he struggled toward the revelation that beckoned to him, learning about color, light, and form from such mentors as Signac, Pissarro, and the Australian painter John Peter Russell, who ruled his own art colony on an island off the coast of Brittany. In 1898, after a dramatic parting from Joblaud, Matisse met and married Amélie Parayre, who became his staunchest ally. She and their two sons, Jean and Pierre, formed with Marguerite his indispensable intimate circle.From the first day of his wedding trip to Ajaccio in Corsica, Matisse realized that he had found his spiritual home: the south, with its heat, color, and clear light. For years he worked unceasingly toward the style by which we know him now. But in 1902, just as he was on the point of achieving his goals as a painter, he suddenly left Paris with his family for the hometown he detested, and returned to the somber, muted palette he had so recently discarded.Why did this happen? Art historians have called this regression Matisse's "dark period," but none have ever guessed the reason for it. What Hilary Spurling has uncovered is nothing less than the involvement of Matisse's in-laws, the Parayres, in a monumental scandal which threatened to topple the banking system and government of France. The authorities, reeling from the divisive Dreyfus case, smoothed over the so-called Humbert Affair, and did it so well that the story of this twenty-year scam--and the humiliation and ruin its climax brought down on the unsuspecting Matisse and his family--have been erased from memory until now.It took many months for Matisse to come to terms with this disgrace, and nearly as long to return to the bold course he had been pursuing before the interruption. What lay ahead were the summers in St-Tropez and Collioure; the outpouring of "Fauve" paintings; Matisse's experiments with sculpture; and the beginnings of acceptance by dealers and collectors, which, by 1908, put his life on a more secure footing.Hilary Spurling's discovery of the Humbert Affair and its effects on Matisse's health and work is an extraordinary revelation, but it is only one aspect of her achievement. She enters into Matisse's struggle for expression and his tenacious progress from his northern origins to the life-giving light of the Mediterranean with rare sensitivity. She brings to her task an astonishing breadth of knowledge about his family, about fin-de-siècle Paris, the conventional Salon painters who shut their doors on him, his artistic comrades, his early patrons, and his incipient rivalry with Picasso.In Hilary Spurling, Matisse has found a biographer with a detective's ability to unearth crucial facts, the narrative power of a novelist, and profound empathy for her subject.From the Hardcover edition.