Jean Haines' World of Watercolour


Jean Haines - 2015
    Jean's loose, expressive paintings are filled with colour and personality, and embrace a range of subjects that includes flowers, animals, people and places, all influenced by the countries and cities she's lived in and the people she's met during her life. This beautiful book contains easy-to-follow and inspiring introductory sections such as ‘an artist’s treasure chest’ and ‘the colour gym’, offering practical guidance and in-depth exercises in an innovative and accessible way, and the numerous examples of Jean’s work will inspire and encourage novice as well as experienced artists. After this introductory section, the book shows the reader how to put the skills they've learned into practice with gorgeous step-by-step projects packed full of expert tips and advice, encouraging them to move forward and develop their own style of working. Like her painting, Jean's writing is filled with passion and enthusiasm, transporting the reader through a world of watercolour that will not fail to excite and inspire.

The Iconic Photographs


Steve McCurry - 2010
    This spectacular book brings together the most beautiful, memorable and evocative pictures of Steve McCurry's extraordinary career.

19th Century Art


H.W. Janson - 1984
    The book reflects the revisionist interpretation of 19th-century art.

The Punjab Story


K.P.S. Gill - 2005
    Called Operation Bluestar, the historic and unprecedented event ended the growing spectre of terrorism perpetrated by the extremist Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers once and for all. But it left in its wake unsolved political questions that continued to threaten Punjab???s stability for years to come. How, in a brief span of three years, did India???s dynamic frontier state become a national problem? Who was to blame: the Central Government for allowing the crisis to drift despite warnings, or the long-drawn-out Akali agitation, or the notorious gang of militants who transformed a holy shrine into a sanctuary for terrorists?First published two months after Operation Bluestar, The Punjab Story pieces together the complex Punjab jigsaw through the eyes of some of India???s most eminent public figures and journalists. Writing with the passion and conviction of those who were involved with the drama, they present a wide-ranging perspective on the past, present and future of the Punjab tangle, and the truth of many of their conclusions having been borne out by time.

An Outline of European Architecture


Nikolaus Pevsner - 1943
    Through several revisions and updates during Pevsner's lifetime, it continued to be a seminal essay on the subject, and even after his death, it remains as stimulating as it was back in the mid-twentieth century. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983) was one of the twentieth century's most learned and stimulating writers on art and architecture. He established his reputation with Pioneers of Modern Design, though he is probably best known for his celebrated series of guides, The Buildings of England, acknowledged as one of the great achievements of twentieth-century scholarship. He was also founding editor of The Pelican History of Art, the most comprehensive and scholarly history of art ever published in English. A revised and updated full-color edition of the classic study of the history of European architecture

The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things


George Kubler - 1962
    George Kubler draws upon new insights in fields such as anthropology and linguistics and replaces the notion of style with the idea of a linked succession of works distributed in time as recognizably early and late versions of the same action. The result is a view of historical sequence aligned on continuous change more than upon the ecstatic concept of style--the usual basis for conventional histories of art.

Granta 130: India: Another Way of Seeing


Ian Jack - 2015
    Biography, memoir, narrative history, reportage, the travel account: all these forms now have their interesting and original practitioners in India. In this Granta issue they tackle questions ranging from rape in village India to scandal in Mumbai clubs. And there is room, as always, for the best of India's fiction.

Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists


Robert Hughes - 1990
    From Holbein to Hockney, from Norman Rockwell to Pablo Picasso, from sixteenth-century Rome to 1980s SoHo, Robert Hughes looks with love, loathing, warmth, wit and authority at a wide range of art and artists, good, bad, past and present.   As art critic for Time magazine, internationally acclaimed for his study of modern art, The Shock of the New, he is perhaps America’s most widely read and admired writer on art.  In this book:  nearly a hundred of his finest essays on the subject.   For the realism of Thomas Eakins to the Soviet satirists Komar and Melamid, from Watteau to Willem de Kooning to Susan Rothenberg, here is Hughes—astute, vivid and uninhibited—on dozens of famous and not-so-famous artists.  He observes that Caravaggio was “one of the hinges of art history; there was art before him and art after him, and they were not the same”; he remarks that Julian Schnabel’s “work is to painting what Stallone’s is to acting”; he calls John Constable’s Wivenhoe Park “almost the last word on Eden-as-Property”; he notes how “distorted traces of [Jackson] Pollock lie like genes in art-world careers that, one might have thought, had nothing to do with his.”  He knows how Norman Rockwell made a chicken stand still long enough to be painted, and what Degas said about success (some kinds are indistinguishable from panic).   Phrasemaker par excellence, Hughes is at the same time an incisive and profound critic, not only of particular artists, but also of the social context in which art exists and is traded.  His fresh perceptions of such figures as Andy Warhol and the French writer Jean Baudrillard are matched in brilliance by his pungent discussions of the art market—its inflated prices and reputations, its damage to the public domain of culture.  There is a superb essay on Bernard Berenson, and another on the strange, tangled case of the Mark Rothko estate.  And as a finale, Hughes gives us “The SoHoiad,” the mock-epic satire that so amused and annoyed the art world in the mid-1980s.   A meteor of a book that enlightens, startles, stimulates and entertains.

Movements in Art since 1945: Issues and Concepts


Edward Lucie-Smith - 1969
    This revised text covers movements in art since 1945.

Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly


Joshua Rivkin - 2018
    Twombly carefully managed his own image, writing almost nothing about his life and work, and giving only a handful of interviews. Through years of scholarship and archival research, first-person interviews, and a sensitive eye to Twombly's art, Joshua Rivkin--who received a Fulbright grant to pursue this story--separates the myth from the reality to bring to life a more complicated and fascinating Twombly than we've ever known.

O'Keeffe and Stieglitz: An Amerian Roman


Benita Eisler - 1991
    Thus began the romance of the most dynamic, productive and famous couple in American art. 8 pages of full-color photographs; 40 black-and-white photographs.

Botanical Portraits with Colored Pencils


Ann Swan - 2010
    This lavishly illustrated volume offers practical, step-by-step instruction for creating professional quality colored pencil illustrations of flowers, foliage, fruits, and other botanical subjects. Colored pencils serve as an excellent alternative to the traditional practice of rendering botanical art in watercolors because pencils are far easier to use and control, yet can produce equally outstanding results. The author instructs in the use of both water-soluble and oil-based colored pencils, and presents progressive illustrations that demonstrate the rendering of an artwork from start to completion. She advises on choosing materials and offers guidelines for getting to know each flower or plant before starting an illustration. All aspects of working with colored pencils are covered, including underpainting, layering and burnishing, mixing and building up color, and adding those finishing touches that bring a botanical subject fully to life. She also presents works by other botanical artists to show students a wide range of styles. The book features approximately 200 beautiful and instructive color illustrations.

Participation


Claire Bishop - 2006
    This tendency can be found in practices and projects ranging from El Lissitzky's exhibition designs to Allan Kaprow's happenings, from minimalist objects to installation art. More recently, this kind of participatory art has gone so far as to encourage and produce new social relationships. Guy Debord's celebrated argument that capitalism fragments the social bond has become the premise for much relational art seeking to challenge and provide alternatives to the discontents of contemporary life. This publication collects texts that place this artistic development in historical and theoretical context.Participation begins with writings that provide a theoretical framework for relational art, with essays by Umberto Eco, Bertolt Brecht, Roland Barthes, Peter B�rger, Jen-Luc Nancy, Edoaurd Glissant, and F�lix Guattari, as well as the first translation into English of Jacques Ranci�re's influential Problems and Transformations in Critical Art. The book also includes central writings by such artists as Lygia Clark and H�lio Oiticica, Joseph Beuys, Augusto Boal, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. And it features recent critical and curatorial debates, with discussions by Lars Bang Larsen, Nicolas Bourriaud, Hal Foster, and Hans-Ulrich Obrist.Copublished with Whitechapel Art Gallery, London

21 Kesaris: The Untold Story of the Battle of Saragarhi


Kiran Nirvan - 2019
    Twenty-one Sikh soldiers. One epic battle. On 12 September 1897, 21 soldiers of 36th Sikh Regiment stood undeterred as they guarded the post of Saragarhi against the onslaught of almost 10,000 Afghan tribesmen a battle for the ages that ended in them laying down their lives in a final hand-to-hand confrontation. The unparalleled heroics of these 21 men have, however, been long forgotten by history. What led to the Battle of Saragarhi? What was the socio-political scenario at the time? Who were these tribesmen and why did they attack an outpost in such great numbers? Who were the 21 soldiers and how were they able to keep the enemy at bay against all odds? Based on colonial era records and information provided by the 4th Sikh Battalion, the legatee unit of 36th Sikhs, 21 Kesaris attempts to answer these questions while paying homage to the brave soldiers who defended the Kesari flag depicting their Khalsa heritage with their last breaths.

Freight Train Graffiti


Roger Gastman - 2006
    Until now there was almost no written insight into this vast subculture, which inspires fascination across America and around the world. As dazzling as the art it celebrates, the book is packed with 1,000 full-color illustrations and features in-depth interviews with more than 125 train artists and "writers." Hundreds of never-before-seen photographs span the style's evolution, while the authoritative text from an all-star team of authors provides unprecedented perspective, including the first-ever written history of "monikers," the precursors of graffiti, developed by hobos and rail workers to communicate en route. Bound to surprise graffiti artists, graphic designers, and urban culture buffs alike, this book will inspire anyone who has ever been interested in graffiti.