The Ricky Gervais Guide to... THE ARTS


Ricky Gervais - 2009
    The third in a new series of authoritative analyses dealing with all aspects of humanity's achievements.Join Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington as they bring enlightenment to THE ARTS in their usual unenlightened manner.In this episode we ask the question, "What is art?"; Karl offers his thoughts on Hirst's oeuvre; Practical considerations regarding art in the home; Karl through the looking glass; Primeval paintings; Gratuitous graffiti; Sculptures in the Square; Karl on political works of art; Karl on film; Outsider art; Whistler's mother-in-law; Music - from Vaughan Williams to Whittaker; Shakespeare's plays on words; Harry the war poet.

Three Novels of Ancient Egypt: River God / The Seventh Scroll / Warlock


Wilbur Smith - 2003
    

Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism


Rudolf Wittkower - 1949
    A brief examination of the theory and practice of Renaissance architecture that draws attention to the values underlying this style

The Life and Works of Vincent Van Gogh


Janice Anderson - 1994
    The quick brushstrokes of the Impressionists suited his temperament, as did his heavy use of impasto. This helpful volume shows many of van Gogh's best loved works, including the famous self-portrait with a Bandaged Ear, painted after he had cut off part of his ear in a fit of madness, Sunflowers, which were to him a symbol of power and beneficence, and The Starry Night, a painting which clearly expresses intensity and mental turbulence.

500 Cups: Ceramic Explorations of Utility and Grace


Suzanne J.E. Tourtillott - 2005
    The exciting pieces come from an international array of artists, each with a unique perspective. The stylishly varied collection has a little bit of everything: the cups range from handbuilt to wheel-thrown, practical to sculptural, round to square. Benjamin Schulman's "Stacked Teacup Set" takes a strictly functional approach, while Heather O'Brien's "Dessert Cups on Stand" focuses on aesthetic form rather than usefulness. Annette Gates' "Espresso Shot Cups with Rubies" has a surface design of simple abstract lines and dots of glaze and jewels. Some are whimsical, others starkly conceptual. Every one is a treat for the eye.

Generative Design: Visualize, Program, and Create with Processing


Hartmut Bohnacker - 2009
    By using accessible programming languages such as Processing, artists and designers are producing extravagant, crystalline structures that can form the basis of anything from patterned textiles and typography to lighting, scientific diagrams, sculptures, films, and even fantastical buildings. Opening with a gallery of thirty-five illustrated case studies, Generative Design takes users through specific, practical instructions on how to create their own visual experiments by combining simple-to-use programming codes with basic design principles. A detailed handbook of advanced strategies provides visual artists with all the tools to achieve proficiency. Both a how-to manual and a showcase for recent work in this exciting new field, Generative Design is the definitive study and reference book that designers have been waiting for.

Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings by Leonardo da Vinci; With a Selection of Documents Relating to his Career as an Artist


Leonardo da Vinci - 1989
    In this anthology the authors have edited material not only from his so-called Treatise on Painting but also from his surviving manuscripts and from other primary sources, some of which were here translated for the first time. The resulting volume is an invaluable reference work for art historians as well as for anyone interested in the mind and methods of one of the world’s greatest creative geniuses.“Highly readable. . . . Also included are documentary sources and letters illuminating Leonardo’s career; the manuscript sources for all of Leonardo’s statements are fully cited in the notes. The volume is skillfully translated and is illustrated with appropriate examples of drawings and paintings by the artist.”—Choice“Certainly easier to read and . . . more convenient than previous compilations.”—Charles Hope, New York Review of Books“A chaotic assemblage of Leonardo da Vinci’s writings appeared in 1651 as Treatise on Painting. . . . [Kemp] successfully applies . . . order to the chaos.”—ArtNews

The Hidden Dimension


Edward T. Hall - 1966
    Introducing the science of "proxemics," Hall demonstrates how man's use of space can affect personal business relations, cross-cultural exchanges, architecture, city planning, and urban renewal.

Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays


Adolf Loos - 1997
    Most deal with questions of design in a wide range of areas, from architecture and furniture, to clothes and jewellery, pottery, plumbing, and printing; others are polemics on craft education and training, and on design in general. Loos, the great cultural reformer and moralist in the history of European architecture and design was always a 'revolutionary against the revolutionaries'. With his assault on Viennese arts and crafts and his conflict with bourgeois morality, he managed to offend the whole country. His 1908 essay 'Ornament and Crime', mocked by an age in love with its accessories, has come to be recognised as a seminal work in combating the aesthetic imperialism of the turn of the century. Today Loos is recognised as one of the great masters of modern architecture.

European Architecture 1750-1890


Barry Bergdoll - 2000
    Never before had the functional requirements and expressive capacities of architecture been tested so thoroughly and with such diversity of invention. Bergdoll traces this experimentation in a broad range of contexts, focusing in particular on the relation of architectural design to new theories of history, new categories of scientific inquiry, and the broadening audience for architecture in this period of transformation. Unlike traditional surveys with long lists of buildings and architects, the themes are elucidated by in-depth coverage of key buildings which in turn are situated in both their local and European context.

Case Study Houses


Elizabeth A.T. Smith - 2002
    The program, which concentrated on the Los Angeles area and oversaw the design of 36 prototype homes, sought to make available plans for modern residences that could be easily and cheaply constructed during the postwar building boom. The program's chief motivating force was Arts Architecture editor John Entenza, a champion of modernism who had all the right connections to attract some of architecture's greatest talents, such as Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen. Highly experimental, the program generated houses that were designed to re-define the modern home, and thus had a pronounced influence on architecture. With comprehensive documentation, brilliant photographs from the period and, for the houses still in existence, contemporary photos, floor plans and sketches.

Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture As Mass Media


Beatriz Colomina - 1994
    Privacy and Publicity boldly questions certain ideological assumptions underlying the received view of modern architecture and reconsiders the methodology of architectural criticism itself. Where conventional criticism portrays modern architecture as a high artistic practice in opposition to mass culture, Colomina sees the emerging systems of communication that have come to define twentieth-century culture--the mass media--as the true site within which modern architecture was produced. She considers architectural discourse as the intersection of a number of systems of representation such as drawings, models, photographs, books, films, and advertisements. This does not mean abandoning the architectural object, the building, but rather looking at it in a different way. The building is understood here in the same way as all the media that frame it, as a mechanism of representation in its own right. With modernity, the site of architectural production literally moved from the street into photographs, films, publications, and exhibitions--a displacement that presupposes a new sense of space, one defined by images rather than walls. This age of publicity corresponds to a transformation in the status of the private, Colomina argues; modernity is actually the publicity of the private. Modern architecture renegotiates the traditional relationship between public and private in a way that profoundly alters the experience of space. In a fascinating intellectual journey, Colomina tracks this shift through the modern incarnations of the archive, the city, fashion, war, sexuality, advertising, the window, and the museum, finally concentrating on the domestic interior that constructs the modern subject it appears merely to house.

Linocut for Artists & Designers


Nick Morley - 2016
    Whether you are printing by hand on your kitchen table or on a press in a print studio, this book gets you started and goes on to explore the myriad creative applications of linocut. It encourages you to experiment with different approaches to image making and explores new ways of thinking about how linocut can be used. Nick Morley shares his experience and specialist knowledge to make this practical guide an essential companion for everyone interested in this addictive and absorbing medium.

Accident Dancing


Keaton Henson - 2020
    accompanied by evocative illustrations, it is an intimate and unapologetically personal journey through a life the way we remember them, as Keaton puts it "chaotic, fragmented and often grammatically incorrect".

Collage City


Colin Rowe - 1978
    The authors, rejecting the grand utopian visions of total planning and total design, propose instead a collage city which can accommodate a whole range of utopias in miniature.