Book picks similar to
What Painting Is by James Elkins
art
non-fiction
art-history
art-books
A Short Guide to Writing About Art (The Short Guide Series)
Sylvan Barnet - 1981
This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.
The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form
Kenneth Clark - 1956
From the art of the Greeks to that of Renoir and Moore, this work surveys the ever-changing fashions in what has constituted the ideal nude as a basis of humanist form.
Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and Creatives
Richard Brereton - 2009
Intimate and often unseen, sketchbooks document the sources of inspiration as well as the journey to final execution. They showcase ideas and how these evolve and change into accomplished works. Fresh and spontaneous, their style connects directly with current illustration trends. The material is complemented by interviews where artists explain how they use their sketchbooks and how these relate to finished works. These, along with the sketchbooks themselves, will give readers a direct and unmediated insight into the process of research and creation.
Manifestoes of Surrealism
André Breton - 1924
Manifestoes of Surrealism is a book by André Breton, describing the aims, meaning, and political position of the Surrealist movement.The translators of this edition were finalists of the 1970 National Book Awards in the category of translation.
Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature
Andy Goldsworthy - 1990
Illustrates outdoor sculptures created with a range of natural materials, including snow, ice, leaves, rock, clay, stones, feathers, and twigs.
The Elements of Drawing
John Ruskin - 1857
The exercises become more difficult, developing greater and greater skills until Ruskin feels his reader is ready for watercolors and finally composition, which he treats in detail as to the laws of principality, repetition, continuity, curvature, radiation, contrast, interchange, consistency, and harmony. All along the way, Ruskin explains, in plain, clear language, the artistic and craftsmanlike reasons behind his practical advice — underlying which, of course, is Ruskin's brilliant philosophy of honest, naturally observed art which has so much affected our aesthetic. Three full-page plates and 48 woodcuts and diagrams (the latter from drawings by the author) show the student what the text describes. An appendix devotes many pages to the art works which may be studied with profit.
Digital Painting Techniques
3DTotal.com Ltd - 2009
Compiled by the team at 3dtotal.com, Digital Painting Techniques, Volume 1 offers digital inspiration with hands-on insight and techniques from professional digital artists. More than just a gallery book - within Digital Painting Techniques each artist has written a breakdown overview, with supporting imagery of how they made their piece of work. Beginner and intermediate digital artists will be inspired by the gallery style collection of the finest examples of digital painting from world renowned digital artists. Start your mentorship into the world of digital painting today with some of the greatest digital artists in the world and delve into professional digital painting techiques, such as speed painting, custom brush creation and matte painting. Develop your digital painting skills beyond the variety of free online digital painting tutorials and apply the most up to date techniques to your digital canvas with Digital Painting Techniques for Animators.
Art History
Marilyn Stokstad - 1995
Balancing both the traditions of art history and the new trends of the present. Art History is the most comprehensive, accessible, and magnificently illustrated work of its kind.
Bernini
Howard Hibbard - 1966
He has left his greatest mark on Rome where Papal patronage provided him with enormous architectural commissions.TABLE OF CONTENTSBerniniList of PlatesList of Text FiguresForewordIntroduction1. The Prodigy2. Bernini in Command3. Disaster and Triumph4. Two Churches and St. Peter’s5. Le Cavalier en France6. The Late WorksBibliographical NoteNotes to the TextIndex
Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque
Rudolf Wittkower - 1997
Inventive and skilled, he virtually created the Baroque style. In his religious sculptures he excelled at capturing movement and extreme emotion, uniting figures with their setting to create a single conception of overwhelming intensity that expressed the fervour of Counter-Reformation Rome. Intensity and drama also characterize his portraits and world-famous Roman fountains.
Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art
Jennifer New - 2005
Still, only a few of us have the discipline to make it past the first few entries, and fewer still manage to create diaries whose insight and visual beauty can inspire anyone but their authors. Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art is an exploration of these exceptionsbooks of obsessive wonder filled to their borders with drawings, sketches, watercolors, graphs, charts, lists, collages, portraits, and photographs. Jennifer New takes readers on a spirited tour into the private worlds of journal keepersan architect, a traveler, a film director, an archeologist, a cancer patient, a songwriter, a quiltmaker, a gardener, an artist, a cyclist, and a scientist, to name just a fewillustrating a broad range of journaling styles and techniques that in the end show how each of us can go about documenting our everyday lives. Excerpts from journals by such artists as Maira Kalman, Steven Holl, David Byrne, and Mike Figgis give us a peek at how creative souls observe, reflect, and explore.For those who already keep a journal, Drawing from Life will be an inspiration. For those who have always wanted toor tried and failedit might just be the motivation needed to get past that first week.
Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters: 100 Great Drawings Analyzed, Figure Drawing Fundamentals Defined
Robert Beverly Hale - 1964
With detailed analytical captions and diagrams, every lesson is clearly delineated and illustrated. Throughout, also, is commentary that sheds light on the creative process of drawing and offers deep insight into the unsurpassed achievements of the masters.
Modern Architecture Since 1900
William J.R. Curtis - 1982
Worldwide in scope, it combines a clear historical outline with masterly analysis and interpretation. Technical, economic, social and intellectual developments are brought together in a comprehensive narrative which provides a setting for the detailed examination of buildings. Throughout the book the author's focus is on the individual architect, and on the qualities that give outstanding buildings their lasting value.For the third edition, the text has been radically revised and expanded, incorporating much new material and a fresh appreciation of regional identity and variety. Seven chapters are entirely new, including expanded coverage of recent world architecture.Described by James Ackerman of Harvard University as "immeasurably the finest work covering this field in existence", this book presents a penetrating analysis of the modern tradition and its origins, tracing the creative interaction between old and new that has generated such an astonishing richness of architectural forms across the world and throughout the century.
The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century
Svetlana Alpers - 1983
Svetlana Alpers's study of 17th-century Dutch painting is a splendid example of this excitement and of the centrality of art history among current disciples. Professor Alpers puts forward a vividly argued thesis. There is, she says, a truly fundamental dichotomy between the art of the Italian Renaissance and that of the Dutch masters. . . . Italian art is the primary expression of a 'textual culture,' this is to say of a culture which seeks emblematic, allegorical or philosophical meanings in a serious painting. Alberti, Vasari and the many other theoreticians of the Italian Renaissance teach us to 'read' a painting, and to read it in depth so as to elicit and construe its several levels of signification. The world of Dutch art, by the contrast, arises from and enacts a truly 'visual culture.' It serves and energises a system of values in which meaning is not 'read' but 'seen,' in which new knowledge is visually recorded."—George Steiner, Sunday Times"There is no doubt that thanks to Alpers's highly original book the study of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century will be thoroughly reformed and rejuvenated. . . . She herself has the verve, the knowledge, and the sensitivity to make us see familiar sights in a new light."—E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books
The Polaroid Book: Selections from the Polaroid Collections of Photography
Steve Crist - 2005
This survey features more than 400 works from the Polaroid Collection along with essays by Hitchcock, who illuminates the beginnings and history of the Polaroid Corporation.