More than twenty-four hours passed before museum officials realized she was gone. The prime suspects were as shocking as the crime: Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, young provocateurs of a new art. As French detectives using the latest methods of criminology, including fingerprinting, tried to trace the thieves, a burgeoning international media hyped news of the heist.No story captured the imagination of the world quite like this one. Thousands flocked to the Louvre to see the empty space where the painting had hung. They mourned as if Mona Lisa were a lost loved one, left flowers and notes, and set new attendance records. For more than two years, Mona Lisa’s absence haunted the art world, provoking the question: Was she lost forever? A century later, questions still linger.Part love story, part mystery, Vanished Smile reopens the case of the most audacious and perplexing art theft ever committed. R. A. Scotti’s riveting, ingeniously realized account is itself a masterly portrait of a world in transition. Combining her skills as a historian and a novelist, Scotti turns the tantalizing clues into a story of the painting’s transformation into the most familiar and lasting icon of all time.

    Based on the chic French Tumblr Des Hommes et des Chatons,  Men & Cats  presents an original collection of 50 pairs of sexy men and adorable cats. Each clever match-up shows a heartthrob posing alongside a cat in a similar pose or with a similar expression. Not sure if you want to look at sexy men or cute cats? With this book, you don't have to choose.

    Over the course of his life, Guston’s wide reading in literature and philosophy deepened his commitment to his art—from his early Abstract Expressionist paintings to his later gritty, intense figurative works. This collection, with many pieces appearing in print for the first time, lets us hear Guston’s voice—as the artist delivers a lecture on Renaissance painting, instructs students in a classroom setting, and discusses such artists and writers as Piero della Francesca, de Chirico, Picasso, Kafka, Beckett, and Gogol.

    The little-known story of Pablo Picasso and his lovable dog Lump, who is immortalized in many of Picasso's acclaimed works of art.

    Featuring her twenty-two-pound, ginger-colored cat Zarathustra superimposed onto some of the greatest artworks of all time, Petrova’s paintings are an Internet sensation. Now fans will have the ultimate full-color collection of her work, including several never-before-seen pieces, to savor for themselves or to give as a gift to fellow cat lovers. From competing with Venus’s sexy reclining pose (and almost knocking her off her chaise lounge in the process) in Titian’s Venus of Urbino, to exhibiting complete disdain as he skirts away from God’s pointing finger in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, Zarathustra single-handedly rewrites art history in the way that only an adorable fat cat can.

    Focusing on art before 1520, this edition organizes the material chronologically. It now incorporates considerable new material on the history of music and theatre, and updates scholarship on ancient art.

    For anyone who's considered joining the tribe of the tattooed.This fun, fact-filled, fascinating guide includes information on choosing the perfect tattoo, finding a tattoo artist, staying health-conscious, long-term effects, and much more.

    Brimming with the joy of process and a love of art history, Brian Rutenberg reveals the places, people, and experiences that led to the paint­ings for which he is well known today. This book is packed with ideas, observations, techniques, and career advice all thought­fully arranged into six sections designed to inspire artists of all levels, as well as anyone interested in creativity.Clear Seeing Place is a companion to the artist's popular YouTube series, "Brian Rutenberg Studio Visits," and is a love letter to painting written by a painter.

    From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history.In this book, Kassia St. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colors and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilization. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture.

    Seeing them in museums around the world, viewers are transported by the power of Monet's brush into a peaceful world of harmonious nature. Monet himself intended them to provide “an asylum of peaceful meditation.” Yet, as Ross King reveals in his magisterial chronicle of both artist and masterpiece, these beautiful canvases belie the intense frustration Monet experienced at the difficulties of capturing the fugitive effects of light, water, and color. They also reflect the terrible personal torments Monet suffered in the last dozen years of his life.Mad Enchantment tells the full story behind the creation of the Water Lilies, as the horrors of World War I came ever closer to Paris and Giverny, and a new generation of younger artists, led by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, were challenging the achievements of Impressionism. By early 1914, French newspapers were reporting that Monet, by then 73 and one of the world's wealthiest, most celebrated painters, had retired his brushes. He had lost his beloved wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean. His famously acute vision--what Paul Cezanne called "the most prodigious eye in the history of painting"--was threatened by cataracts. And yet, despite ill health, self-doubt, and advancing age, Monet began painting again on a more ambitious scale than ever before. Linking great artistic achievement to the personal and historical dramas unfolding around it, Ross King presents the most intimate and revealing portrait of an iconic figure in world culture--from his lavish lifestyle and tempestuous personality to his close friendship with the fiery war leader Georges Clemenceau, who regarded the Water Lilies as one of the highest expressions of the human spirit.

    When he and his wife and business partner, Barbara Cushman Rowell, perished in a small-plane crash in 2002, he had just completed a landmark assignment for National Geographic and had begun making stunning new images of his favorite old haunts in the Sierra Nevada.Fortunately for us, his productivity was immense and his photographs eticulously archived, making possible this first and only comprehensive retrospective of his work. It includes more than 175 images representing all phases and dimensions of Rowell’s singular career, chosen by the editors with whom he worked most closely, overseen by his family and studio colleagues, and reproduced to the highest standards of lithography from digital masters of his 35mm frames. Complementing and illuminating the pictures are essays and commentaries by Rowell’s friends and associates from the worlds of mountaineering, conservation, photography, and publishing, along with an in-depth biographical introduction by Robert Roper and an appreciation of his work by photography critic Andy Grundberg.

    As owner of an animal shelter, Barby Keel had seen plenty of abandoned animals. But there was something extra special about this one. With his oversized paws, long legs, and awkward gait, he was bigger than most puppies but a big softie at heart. He was so sweet and cuddly, Barby named him Teddy, like a Teddy bear. But finding this Teddy a home would be no picnic...The first family that adopted Teddy returned him 24 hours later. They said he chewed up everything and cried all night long. The second family returned him after a month. Why? Teddy refused to be housebroken. Over the next few weeks, Barby devoted herself to the unruly pup. Soon, he was settling into the sanctuary, playing with the other animals, even rescuing a baby chick. But every night, Teddy reverted back to being a scared little puppy. With Barby's loving care--and a lot of patience--he slowly began to overcome his fears. And as the two grew closer, Barby began to wonder if Teddy had already found his forever home--with her...Filled with beautiful life lessons in unconditional love, mutual trust, and unshakable devotion, Teddy's story is sure to find a special place in every animal lover's heart.

    When she married Theo van Gogh, Johanna had everything she wanted - a husband who adored her, an exciting life as part of Paris's thriving art scene, and escape from a doting but oppressive father. Her happiness evaporated with Vincent's suicide. Shattered by his brother's death, Theo suffered a mental collapse from which he never recovered. When he died, Johanna was left with an infant son and an art collection most thought worthless. The Impressionist and Independent artists Theo had championed, such as Monet and Gauguin, were considered incompetents by all but the most avant-garde critics. Determined not to live with her parents, Johanna supported herself and her child by opening a boardinghouse, which shortly became a gathering place for the literati and modern artists of Amsterdam, as well as the feminists of that period.

    Her vivid visual vocabulary--sensuous flowers, bleached bones against red sky and earth--had a stunning, profound, and lasting influence on American art. O'Keeffe's personal mystique is as intriguing and enduring as her bold, brilliant canvases. Here is the first full account of her exceptional life-- from her girlhood and early days as a controversial art teacher, to her discovery by the pioneering photographer of the New York avant-garde, Alfred Stieglitz, to her seclusion in the New Mexico desert, where she lived until her death. And here is the story of a great romance between the extraordinary painter and her much older mentor, lover, and husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Renowned for her fierce independence, iron determination, and unique artistic vision, Georgia O'Keeffe is a twentieth-century legend who career spanned the history modern art in America.

    David Hockney has worked in almost every medium - painting, drawing, stage design, photography and printmaking. He has undertaken an ambitious experiment with ways of seeing and ways of representing sight - ranging from his paintings, with their challenges to perspective and brilliant colours, to his vivid multi-dimensional photo-collages and his fax art, computer printings and coloured laser prints.