Design of the 20th Century


Charlotte Fiell - 1999
    Aesthetics entered into everyday life with often staggering results. Our homes and workplaces turned into veritable galleries of style and innovation. From furniture to graphics, it's all here?the work of artists who have shaped and recreated the modern world with a dizzying variety of materials. From the organic to the geometric, from Art Deco, through to Pop and High-Tech, this book contains all the great names - Bernhard, Bertoia, De Stijl, Dieter Rams, Starck, Charles and Ray Eames, to name only a very few. This essential book is a comprehensive journey through the shapes and colours, forms and functions of design history in the 20th century. An A-Z of designers and design schools, which builds into a complete picture of contemporary living.

Body Type: Intimate Messages Etched in Flesh


Ina Saltz - 2006
    This title will greatly appeal to graphic designers, typographers, the tattoo community, and a hip, pop-culturally savvy audience. The book has the written messages divided up into the following categories: Literature, poetry, lyrics; Typography; self-expression; self love; love; politics; religion; belief systems; and homage. This book captures the trend of message tattoos and explores the idealogy behind the letters involved in this indelible committment.

Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents


Nicholas Ganz - 2004
    Offering a unique insight into the very essence of graffiti and its creative explosion over the past thirty-five years, it takes us on an adventure throughout the Americas and Europe to almost every corner of the globe." With over 2,000 pictures of artworks from more than 180 international artists, no other book is remotely so comprehensive or up to date. Nicholas Ganz combines his own first-hand experiences with quotes from the artists themselves to offer a true insider's perspective to the key trends and style developments that have made graffiti what it is today: a global phenomenon.

The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide


Eva Talmadge - 2010
    Packed with beloved lines of verse, literary portraits, and illustrations — and statements from the bearers on their tattoos’ history and the personal significance of the chosen literary work — The Word Made Flesh is part photo collection, part literary anthology written on skin.

Dream Home: The Property Brothers’ Ultimate Guide to Finding & Fixing Your Perfect House


Jonathan Scott - 2016
    Brother. The talented duo’s good-natured rivalry, playful banter, and no-nonsense strategies have earned the popular twins millions of devoted fans who have been anxiously waiting for a Scott Brothers book. Dream Home is a comprehensive source, covering the ins and outs of buying, selling, and renovating a house, with hundreds of full-color photos throughout. The brothers cover numerous topics including the hidden costs of moving, savvy negotiating tactics, and determining your home must-haves. Other handy features include a calendar of key dates for finding the best deals on home products and a cheat sheet of worth-it fix-its. Look inside for a wealth of information on attaining what you want—on time and on budget. Dream Home also includes all the tips and tricks you won’t see on TV, making it a must-have resource not just for fans but for any current or aspiring homeowner.

Brian Eno: Visual Music


Christopher Scoates - 2013
    Spanning more than 40 years, Brian Eno: Visual Music weaves a dialogue between Eno's museum and gallery installations and his musical endeavors—all illustrated with never-before-published archival materials such as sketchbook pages, installation views, screenshots, and more. Steve Dietz, Brian Dillon, Roy Ascott, and William R. Wright contextualize Eno's contribution to new media art, while Eno himself shares insights into his process. Every copy includes a download code for a previously unreleased piece of music created by Eno, making this collection a requisite for fans and collectors.

The Ten Books on Architecture


Vitruvius
    

SuicideGirls: Beauty Redefined


Missy Suicide - 2008
    This giant tome provides a timely look at the fascinating women who created and inhabit the SG community. With an introduction by SG founder, Missy Suicide and images of hundreds of SuicideGirls world-wide, this title shines a light on a new female aesthetic - a look reminiscent of vintage Betty Page and Bunny Yeager photos, but with a decisively 21st century edge. "There's no other place in the media to see girls (like these) who are tremendously smart and beautiful in their own way" says Missy, "Everywhere you look you just see the super-thin, super-tall, bleach blonde Baywatch babe. There are a lot of people out there who want to see a different kind of beauty."

Claude Monet: 1840-1926 (Big Art Series)


Karin Sagner-Düchting - 1990
    Having finally earned the money and gained the respect he sought in his early days as a struggling painter, Monet designed and built the home and gardens in the village on the Seine that would be the site of the famous "Grain Stacks" and "Water Lilies" paintings that would secure his reputation. A good, affordable introductory study of the pioneer of modern art.

Humans of New York


Brandon Stanton - 2013
    With four hundred color photos, including exclusive portraits and all-new stories, Humans of New York is a stunning collection of images that showcases the outsized personalities of New York.Surprising and moving, Humans of New York is a celebration of individuality and a tribute to the spirit of the city.

History of Modern Art: Painting Sculpture Architecture Photography


H. Harvard Arnason - 1968
    Long considered the survey of modern art, this engrossing and liberally illustrated text traces the development of trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Retaining its comprehensive nature and chronological approach, it now comes thoroughly reworked by Michael Bird, an experienced art history editor and writer, with refreshing new analyses, a considerably expanded picture program, and a more absorbing and unified narrative.

Hokusai


Rhiannon Paget - 2018
    Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is not only one of the giants of Japanese art and a legend of the Edo period, but also a founding father of Western modernism, whose prolific gamut of prints, illustrations, paintings, and beyond forms one of the most comprehensive oeuvres of ukiyo-e art and a benchmark of japonisme. His influence spread through Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, and beyond, enrapturing the likes of Claude Monet (who bought 23 of his prints), Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Vincent van Gogh. Hokusai was always a man on the move. He changed domicile more than 90 times during his lifetime and changed his own name through at least seven professional pseudonyms. In his art, he adopted the same restlessness, covering the complete spectrum of Japanese ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") practice in painting and woodblock, from single-sheet prints of landscapes and actors to erotic books, album prints, illustrations for verse anthologies and historical novels, and surimono, which were privately issued prints for special occasions. Hokusai's print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, published between 1826 and 1833 is the artist's most renowned work and, with its soaring peak through different seasons and from different vantage points, marked the towering summit of the Japanese landscape print. The series' The Great Wave off Kanagawa, also known simply as The Great Wave , is one of the most recognized images of Japanese art in the world. This TASCHEN introduction spans the length and breadth of Hokusai's career with key pieces from his far-reaching portfolio. Through these meticulous, majestic works and series, we trace the variety of Hokusai's subjects, from erotic books to historical novels, and the evolution of his vivid formalism and decisive delineation of space through color and line that would go on to liberate Western art from the constraints of its one-point perspective and unleash the modernist momentum.

Soviet Ghosts: The Soviet Union Abandoned: A Communist Empire in Decay


Rebecca Litchfield - 2014
    Rebecca Litchfield is one who couldn t resist the haunting allure of the ruins of the Soviet Union. Time and again she risked radiation exposure, experienced arrest and interrogation, and was accused of espionage while collecting the stunning photography in Soviet Ghosts. Join her on an adventure through the ruins of soviet bloc, never before seen by western eyes. The emotional affect of this poetic collection will keep you coming back for more, while a series of expert articles offer in-depth analysis of the historical context. Contemplate the uncanny and disturbing emotional power of the imagery. Discover the story of the rise and fall of the USSR, the empire whose ghost continues to haunt Europe even today... Features A breathtaking collection of images from Pripyat, Chernobyl Stunning imagery of a vast, ruined Bulgarian communist monument. A road trip through the ruined abandonment in East Germany, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Croatia and Russia featuring decaying hospitals, military barracks, prisons, spy stations and sports halls and more. Photographer Rebecca Litchfield captures many abandoned locations, which were either part of the Soviet Union or occupied satellite states during this period of history, including forgotten towns, factories, prisons, schools, monuments, hospitals, theatres, military complexes, asylums & death camps across the former communist states. These photographs deliver a compelling narrative of both moral bankruptcy and flawed ideology. Featuring stunning imagery throughout, this compelling road-trip through the old USSR, breathes new life into these forgotten places, finding both beauty and meaning in their post-apocalyptic decay. Extended essays by Tristi Brownett, Neill Cockwill and Professor Owen Evans, offer considerable contextual depth to the locations imbuing them with a wealth of connection and wonder. By virtue of its holistic approach, the book also explores how and why these once thriving communities became abandoned, whether by natural disaster, man-made catastrophe or simply through the march of time."

Dictator Style: Lifestyles of the World's Most Colorful Despots


Peter York - 2005
    Running with the idea that our homes are where we are truly ourselves, Peter York's wildly original and scathingly funny look at the interior decorating tastes of some of history's most alarming dictators proves that absolute power corrupts absolutely, right down to the drapes. Mining rare, jaw-dropping photographs of interiors now mostly (thankfully) destroyed, York's hilarious profiles of 16 inner sanctums of the scary leaves no endangered tiger pelt unturned, from Saddam Hussein's creepy private art collection to General Noriega's Christmas tree to the strange tube and knob contraption in the Ceausescu bathroom. All your favorite dictators are here: Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Tito, Mussolini, Mobutu, Idi Amin, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos—each with their own uniquely frightful chic. An interior decorating book like no other, Dictator Style is a welcome tonic for a world in need of a good laugh at the expense of the all-powerful.

The Designer's Dictionary of Color


Sean Adams - 2017
    Organized by spectrum, in color-by-color sections for easy navigation, this book documents each hue with charts showing color range and palette variations. Chapters detail each color’s creative history and cultural associations, with examples of color use that extend from the artistic to the utilitarian—whether the turquoise on a Reid Miles album cover or the avocado paint job on a 1970s Dodge station wagon. A practical and inspirational resource for designers and students alike, The Designer’s Dictionary of Color opens up the world of color for all those who seek to harness its incredible power.