Egon Schiele


Frank Whitford - 1981
    Rejected by his family, hounded by society for his interest in young girls, he expressed through his art a deep and bewildering loneliness and an obsession with sexuality, death and decay. He was only twenty-eight when he died, yet he left behind him a body of work that sustains a huge public reputation--and a myth. This book sets out to examine both. 151 illus., 20 in color.

The Story of Art


E.H. Gombrich - 1950
    Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject. The Story of Art, one of the most famous and popular books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over four decades. Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject.For the first time in many years the book has been completely redesigned. The illustrations, now in colour throughout, have all been improved and reoriginated, and include six fold-outs. The text has been revised and updated where appropriate, and a number of significant new artists have been incorporated. The bibliographies have been expanded and updated, and the maps and charts redrawn. The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur. The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur.

Gustav Klimt: 1862-1918


Gilles Néret - 1992
    In his own time, Kilmt (1862-1918) was a highly successful painter, draftsman, muralist, and graphic artist; in the intervening years, iconic works such as The Kiss have been elevated to nothing less than cult status. Klimt's unfading popularity attests to the appeal of not only his aesthetic sensibilities but also that of the recurrent universal themes in his work: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death. He once wrote, "I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night...Who ever wants to know something about me...ought to look carefully at my pictures." With this overview of Klimt's work, readers will delight in taking up that challenge.About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Street Logos


Tristan Manco - 2004
    Fresh coats of paint and newly pasted posters appear overnight in cities across the world. New artists, new ideas, and new tactics displace faded images in a perpetual process of renewal and metamorphosis. From Los Angeles to Barcelona, Stockholm to Tokyo, Melbourne to Milan, wall spaces are a breeding ground for graphic and typographic forms as artists unleash their daily creations.Current graffiti art is reflective of the world around it. Using new materials and techniques, its innovators are creating a language of forms and images infused with contemporary graphic design and illustration. Fluent in branding and graphic imagery, they have been replacing tags with more personal logos and shifting from typographic to iconographic forms of communication.Street Logos is a worldwide celebration of these new developments in twenty-first-century graffiti, an essential sourcebook for all art and design professionals, and a delight to everyone excited by the vitality of the street.

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art


Don Thompson - 2008
    5, 1948 sell for $140 million?            Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.            This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on  interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced  auction purchasers do not know.

Modern Art: Art Essentials Series


Amy Dempsey - 2018
    Starting with Impressionism in 1860, art historian Amy Dempsey explains the essentials of Modernism, the postwar New Disorder, and beyond.Carefully arranged material explores seventy essential topics of modern art in a practical and easy-to-navigate structure. Each boldly designed topic feature includes a clear definition; a list of key artists, attributes, media, and collections; and expertly curated illustrations with explanatory captions. A reference section includes a useful glossary of modern art terms.

Ways of Seeing


John Berger - 1972
    First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has."Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation" —Peter Fuller, Arts Review"The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace" —Geoff Dyer in Ways of TellingWinner of the 1972 Booker Prize for his novel, G., John Peter Berger (born November 5th, 1926) is an art critic, painter and author of many novels including A Painter of Our Time, From A to X and Bento’s Sketchbook.

Installation Art


Claire Bishop - 2005
    Installation Art provides the first clear account of the rise of installation as a form while revisiting and, in some cases, reassessing many well-known names of post-1960 art. This lavishly produced volume also introduces the reader to a wider spectrum of younger artists yet to receive serious critical attention. Artists featured include Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Judy Chicago, Olafur Eliasson, Group Material, Isaac Julien, Ilya Kabakov, Yayoi Kusama, Cildo Meireles, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Smithson, Bill Viola, and many others.

Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors


Jane Kallir - 2003
    However, limited access to the fragile works on paper and dispersion among several collections have made for an unbalanced representation of his work as a draftsman.This book assembles drawings and watercolors from public and private collections and reproduces work from every year of the artist's career, beginning with the juvenilia and early academic studies. The focus means that work that is rarely reproduced is represented extensively, providing a unique opportunity to study the rapid artistic development of Schiele over the course of his brief twelve-year career.The book is organized chronologically and divided into year-by-year sections. Each section includes a text that discusses the major events in Schiele's life and the interrelation between the artist's drawing and developments in his oil painting. Features a previously unpublished Schiele watercolor and several works that have never been reproduced in color.

Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory


Lucy R. Lippard - 1983
    Viewed by critics, artists, art historians, and students as the essential text on how prehistoric images have been “overlayed” onto contemporary art by today’s artists, Overlay is for anyone interested in the possibility of reintegrating art into the fabric of society as a whole, as in prehistoric times.From megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge to Richard Long’s minimalism, from the earliest examples of cave drawings to Ana Mendieta’s Cuban site art, from the matriarchal fertility rituals of the ancient Celts to Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, Lippard shows a continuum in the forms, materials, symbols, and imagery that artists have employed for thousands of years.Lavishly illustrated with over 320 black-and-white photographs and 8 pages of color images, Overlay includes the work of artists Carl Andre, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Charles Simonds, Mary Beth Edelson, Anna Sofaer, Michelle Stuart, Sol LeWitt, Ad Reinhardt, Alice Aycock, Nancy Holt, Emily Carr, Dennis Oppenheim, and many others.

Minimalism


James Meyer - 2000
    A beautifully illustrated book, internationally recognized as the definitive survey of Minimalism, now available in paperback

Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings


Yoko Ono - 1970
    Back in print for the first time in nearly thirty years, here is Yoko Ono's whimsical, delightful, subversive, startling book of instructions for art and for life."A dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality.""Burn this book after you've read it." -- Yoko Ono"This is the greatest book I've ever burned." -- John Lennon

Wall and Piece


Banksy - 2005
    Not only did he smuggle his pieces into four of New York City's major art museums, he's also "hung" his work at London's Tate Gallery and adorned Israel's West Bank barrier with satirical images. Banksy's identity remains unknown, but his work is unmistakable with prints selling for as much as $45,000.

The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922 - 1968


William Feaver - 2019
    The result is this a unique, electrifying biography, shot through with Freud's own words.In Youth, the first of two volumes, Feaver conjures Freud's early childhood: Sigmund Freud's grandson, born into a middle-class Jewish family in Weimar Berlin, escaping Nazi Germany in 1934 before being dropped into successive English public schools. Following Freud through art school, his time in the Navy during the war, his post-war adventures in Paris and Greece, and his return to Soho – consorting with duchesses and violent criminals, out on the town with Greta Garbo and Princess Margaret – Feaver traces a brilliant, difficult young man's coming of age.

Read the Beatles: Classic and New Writings on the Beatles, Their Legacy, and Why They Still Matter


June Skinner Sawyers - 2006
    Consisting of more than fifty articles, essays, interviews, record and movie reviews, poems, and book excerpts-many of them rare and hard to find-Read the Beatles is an unprecedented compilation that follows the arc of the Fab Four's iconic and idiosyncratic career, from their early days in Liverpool through their tragic and triumphant histories after the group's split. The book also includes original essays from noted musicians and journalists about the Beatles' lasting influence and why they still matter today.