Written with their cooperation, this fully illustrated informal biography combines rare photographs with 30 removable facsimiles of E Street memorabilia, including Bruce Springsteen's first business card and hand-written set list, and even two fabulous posters. Longtime band intimate Robert Santelli captures the ecstatic highs and devastating lows on the E Street Band's roller coaster ride to stardom. He follows the band from the early days in Asbury Park, New Jersey, to the critical acclaim of Born to Run, the mania of Born in the U.S.A. and international touring, and each member's unique projects. Throughout, the band's signature combination of friendship, humor, and stellar musicianship is revealed in stories, snapshots, and the ephemera of life of the road. Warm and personal, Greetings from E Street is a postcard from the most famous address in rock and roll.

    What is beauty? Umberto Eco, among Italy’s finest and most important contemporary thinkers, explores the nature, the meaning, and the very history of the idea of beauty in Western culture. The profound and subtle text is lavishly illustrated with abundant examples of sublime painting and sculpture and lengthy quotations from writers and philosophers. This is the first paperback edition of History of Beauty, making this intellectual and philosophical journey with one of the world’s most acclaimed thinkers available in a more compact and affordable format.From the Trade Paperback edition

    Describes the principles of wabi-sabi, a Japanese aesthetic associated with Japanese tea ceremonies and based on the belief that true beauty comes from imperfection and incompletion, through text and photographs.

    Inside you'll find guidelines for rendering accurate skin tones in a variety of media, including watercolor, oil and pastel.You'll begin with a review of the five essential painting elements (drawing, value, color, composition and edges), then learn how light and color influence the appearance of skin tones. Artist Chris Saper provides the advice and examples that make every lesson and technique easy to understand--immediately improving the quality of your work. You'll discover how to:Paint the four major skin color groups (Caucasian, African American, Asian and Hispanic)Refine these colors into dozens of possible variations within each groupSelect your palette and mix hues for clean, beautiful colorsDetermine the color and temperature of light that falls on your subjectPaint direct and indirect sunlight, artificial light and highlights of lightMaster the four elements that determine color in shadowUse photographic references when you can't paint directly from lifeYou'll also find seven step-by-step demonstrations and an appendix of sample color charts for each major skin type under a range of lighting variations. It's all you need to bring your portraits to life!

    Two of Ruskin's famous essays: "The Nature of the Gothic" and "The Work of Iron" from his book The Stones of Venice.

    The margins sometimes spill over with hurriedly scrawled shopping lists and phone numbers. The cover may be travel-worn and the pages warped from watercolors. Open the book, and raw creativity seeps from each color and line. The intimacy and freedom on its pages are almost like being inside the artist's mind: You get a direct window into risks, lessons, mistakes, and dreams.The private worlds of these visual journals are exactly what you'll find inside An Illustrated Life. This book offers a sneak peak into the wildly creative imaginations of 50 top illustrators, designers and artists. Included are sketchbook pages from R. Crumb, Chris Ware, James Jean, James Kochalka, and many others. In addition, author Danny Gregory has interviewed each artist and shares their thoughts on living the artistic life through journaling.Watch artists—through words and images—record the world they see and craft the world as they want it to be. The pages of An Illustrated Life are sometimes startling, sometimes endearing, but always inspiring. Whether you're an illustrator, designer, or simply someone searching for inspiration, these pages will open a whole new world to you.

    Before reaching the tender age of thirty, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) had already sculpted David and Pieta, two of the most famous sculptures in the entire history of art. Like fellow Florentine Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was a shining star of the Renaissance and a genius of consummate virtuosity. His achievements as a sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and architect are unique- no artist before or after him has ever produced such a vast, multi-faceted, and wideranging oeuvre. Only a handful of other painters and sculptors have attained a comparable social status and enjoyed a similar artistic freedom. This is demonstrated not only by the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel but also by Michelangelo's monumental sculptures and his unconventional architectural designs, whose forms went far beyond the accepted vocabulary of his day. Such was his talent that Michelangelo was considered a demigod by his contemporaries and was the subject of two biographies during his lifetime. Adoration of this remarkable man's work has only increased on the intervening centuries. Following the success of our XL title Leonardo da Vinci, TASCHEN brings you this massive tome that explores Michelangelo's life and work in more depth and detail then ever before. The first part concentrates on the life of Michelangelo via an extensive and copiously illustrated biographical essay; the main body of the book presents his owrk in four parts providing a complete analytical inventory of Michelangelo's paintings, sculptures, buildings and drawings. Grorgeous, full page reproductions and enlarged details bring readers up close to the works. This sumptuous tome also takes account, to a previously unseen extent, of Michelangelo's more personal traits and circumstances, such as his solitary nature, his thirst for money and commissions, his miserliness, his immense wealth, and his skill as a property investor. In addition, the book tackles the controversial issue of the attribution of Michelangelo drawings, an area in which decisions continue to be steered by the interests of the art market and the major collections. This is the definitive volume about Michelangelo for generations to come.

    Literary journals bound by magnets, or designed to look like junk mail. The sharp wit, gorgeous design, and playful why not invention of independent literary publisher McSweeney's have earned it a large and loyal following and made its journals, books, The Believer magazine, and Wholphin DVDs collectible favorites of readers and graphic designers alike. Created by the McSweeney's staff to commemorate their 11th (or 12th) anniversary, this book showcases their award-winning art and design across all the company's activities. It features hundreds of images, interviews with collaborators such as Chris Ware and Michael Chabon, and dozens of insights into McSweeney's quirky creative process and the visual experience of reading.

    Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his own groundbreaking paintings, this book had a tremendous impact on the development of modern art.Kandinsky's ideas are presented in two parts. The first part, called "About General Aesthetic," issues a call for a spiritual revolution in painting that will let artists express their own inner lives in abstract, non-material terms. Just as musicians do not depend upon the material world for their music, so artists should not have to depend upon the material world for their art. In the second part, "About Painting," Kandinsky discusses the psychology of colors, the language of form and color, and the responsibilities of the artist. An Introduction by the translator, Michael T. H. Sadler, offers additional explanation of Kandinsky's art and theories, while a new Preface by Richard Stratton discusses Kandinsky's career as a whole and the impact of the book. Making the book even more valuable are nine woodcuts by Kandinsky himself that appear at the chapter headings.This English translation of Über das Geistige in der Kunst was a significant contribution to the understanding of nonobjectivism in art. It continues to be a stimulating and necessary reading experience for every artist, art student, and art patron concerned with the direction of 20th-century painting.

    You'll also find character profiles, promotional artwork, rare concept art, and a detailed look at the origins of the "Blue Blur".

    Here, Mary Street Alinder--who collaborated with Adams on his memoir and was his assistant in later life--is not reticent about the major emotional episodes in Adams's life, including his marriage and extramarital affairs, and his not-altogether-successful fatherhood. She explores the major artistic influences on his work and gives in-depth profiles of the significant figures in his circle. She also explains the technique and style Adams developed to obtain his unique vision, as well as his uneasiness at becoming a commodity. Ansel Adams: A Biography is an intimate and provocative portrait of the world's most famous photographer.

    His work shows art at its most light-hearted, sensual and luminous. Renoir never wanted anything ugly in his paintings, nor any dramatic action. "I like pictures which make me want to wander through them when it's a landscape," he said, "or pass my hand over breast or back if it's a woman." Renoir's entire oeuvre is dominated by the depiction of women. Again and again he painted "these faunesses with their pouting lips" (Mallarme) and invented a new image of feminity.

    Now legendary, these men have emerged as the most prominent figures of the famed Mexican mural movement, which lasted from the '20s through the early '70s and was hailed as the most significant achievement in public art of the 20th century. The dramatic story of the movement is told here in a fascinating history of the artists, accompanied by over 100 spectacular color reproductions of the murals. Showcasing popular as well as lesser-known works from around the US and Mexico, this is the first high-quality paperback to do justice to a subject that will captivate every lover of Mexican art and culture, Rivera fan, and art historian, as well as anyone who appreciates a beautiful, intelligent art book.

    The many-pointed star formed from large icicles balances on a rock in a quiet Dumfriesshire valley, a delicate bamboo screen stands on a Japanese beach, a great serpentine ridge of earth extends along a disused railway cutting on Tyneside, four massive snow rings mark the position of the North Pole.

    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.'