“A tantalizing whodunit” (Boston Globe) and a “riveting, wonderfully vivid account [that] takes you into the underworld of obsessed art detectives, con men, and thieves” (Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting), The Gardner Heist is true crime history at its most spellbinding.

    In this accessible, practical guide, author and instructor Jon Thompson explores more than 200 works, helping readers to unlock each painting's meaning. Beginning with the Barbizon school and the Realist movement of the mid-19th century and continuing through the 1980s avant-garde, artists including Bonnard, Basquiat, Van Gogh, Picasso, Degas, Warhol, and Whistler are featured. Thompson describes each artist's use of media and symbolism and provides insightful biographical information. A natural companion to Abrams' "How to Read a Painting," this book is a vibrant, informative trip through one of art history's most compelling periods.

    Everywhere men are seduced by the fantastic exotic flower. But for wealthy merchant Cornelis Sandvoort, it is his young and beautiful wife, Sophia, who stirs his soul. She is the prize he desires, the woman he hopes will bring him the joy that not even his considerable fortune can buy.Cornelis yearns for an heir, but so far he and Sophia have failed to produce one. In a bid for immortality, he commissions a portrait of them both by the talented young painter Jan van Loos. But as Van Loos begins to capture Sophia's likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist. As the portrait unfolds, so a slow dance is begun among the household's inhabitants. Ambitions, desires, and dreams breed a grand deception--and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax.In this richly imagined international bestseller, Deborah Moggach has created the rarest of novels--a lush, lyrical work of fiction that is also compulsively readable. Seldom has a novel so vividly evoked a time, a place, and a passion.

    The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised.In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Momuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world's great art from the Nazis.

    After risking her life spying on the Nazis, day after day for four long years, Rose lived to fulfill her destiny: locating and returning tens of thousands of works of art stolen by the Nazis during their occupation of France. Yet her remarkable story, like much of her personal life, has remained unknown to the broad public…until now. This book, written by French Senator Corinne Bouchoux, was originally published in France in 2006. Ms. Bouchoux’s interest goes far beyond the wartime service of Rose Valland by delving into her personal life and post-war work to provide important insights about this fascinating and determined woman. Her research also proved helpful in confirming my understanding of the intense relationship between Rose Valland and the man who shared her wartime destiny, Monuments officer Lt. James Rorimer. The absence of books about Rose Valland in the English language has, until now, left us wondering how this ordinary woman mustered such courage to do extraordinary things even when, after the war, many in her own country simply wanted the story of Nazi looting to fade away and with it, Rose Valland’s contribution to history. It has therefore been an honor to translate and publish Corinne Bouchoux’s book and make it available to a much larger audience." - adapted from the book's forward written by Robert M. Edsel, author of The Monuments Men

    Early in his career, Hoving was introduced to the "curator's game." Each week, he and his contemporaries met to examine details of larger museum masterpieces. Whoever correctly identified the detail in context won free coffee: the losers paid. In an imaginative adaptation of this exercise, Hoving introduces us to the challenge and the fun of identifying art, and to the rewards of familiarity with the great works. A section of paintings accompanied by brief essays introduces a range of artists, themes, techniques, and styles, while progressively demanding "clues" are provided to help identify visual details in context. No experience is necessary to play this game. Readers at all levels will discover the fun of identifying and remembering great art.

    Published to accompany the hugely popular Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the V&A, this book is the first in-depth Vivienne Westwood retrospective. It studies her work as a groundbreaking fashion designer and celebrates her visual impact and iconic profile world-wide.

    Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell. New York City, 2004. Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in an elite law firm, is given a difficult, highly sensitive assignment that could make her career: she must find the "perfect plaintiff" to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves. It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine's would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit - if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl's faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina's mother die? And why will he never speak about her? Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice.

    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.

    The collection is based on works acquired directly from the artist by his brother. Among the treasures reproduced here are Potato Eaters, The Bedroom Self Portrait as an Artist, Wheatfield with Crows, and Harvest.

    There she met the legendary couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Welcomed into their home, she immersed herself in their private lives and the cultural and artistic diversity of the country, taking hundreds of photographs. These powerful photographs, among the last taken before Kahlo’s death, bear poignant witness to Frida’s beauty and talent. Showcasing more than 100 of these rare images, many of which have never been published before, the book also includes previously unpublished commentary by Gisèle Freund about Frida Kahlo, texts by Kahlo’s biographer Gérard de Cortanze and art historian Lorraine Audric, as well as a link to a previously unreleased color film, shot by Freund, showing Diego Rivera at work.

    It is simple and clean, and commonly seen in advertising, signage, and literature. The R has a curved leg, and the i and j have square dots. The Q has a straight angled tail, and the counterforms inside the O, Q, and C are oval. It is an all-purpose type design that can deliver practically any message clearly and efficiently. It is one of the most popular typefaces of all time. Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface presents 400 examples of Helvetica in action, selected from two diametrically opposed worlds. Superb applications by renowned designers are juxtaposed with an anonymous collection of ugly, ingenious, charming, and hair-raising samples of its use.

    The trove included massive, multi-volume illustrated manuscripts, double-sided nine-foot-long watercolor murals, photo-enlarged tracings, and hundreds of sketches. Depicting a turbulent world, these works are the product of the fertile yet tormented imagination of a secretive Chicago janitor who has since been recognized as one of the supreme self-taught artists of the 20th century.Cataloguing in full color the American Folk Art Museum's recent acquisition of 37 paintings, among other Darger works, this informative yet affordable volume offers a general introduction to a controversial self-taught artist.

    In 1994, the advent of the Internet as a popular medium catalyzed a global art movement that began to explore the cultural, social, and aesthetic possibilities of such new communication technologies as the Web, video surveillance cameras, wireless phones, hand-held computers, and GPS devices. This book addresses New Media art as a specific art historical movement, focusing not only on technologies and forms but also on thematic content and conceptual strategies. New Media art often involves appropriation, collaboration, and the free sharing of ideas and expressions, and frequently addresses the political ramifications of technology around issues of identity, commercialization, privacy, and the public domain. Many New Media artists are profoundly aware of their art historical antecedents, making reference to Dada, Pop Art, Conceptual art, Performance art, and Fluxus. Artists featured: Cory Arcangel, Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Vuk Cosic, Mary Flanagan, Ken Goldberg, Paul Kaiser and Shelly Eshkar, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Mouchette, MTAA, Keith and Mendi Obadike, Radical Software Group, Raqs Media Collective, RTMark, and John F. Simon Jr.

    The artists gather for a picture at a party in an ancient villa. Bear Bavinsky, creator of vast canvases, larger than life, is at the centre of the picture. His wife, Natalie, edges out of the shot.From the side of the room watches little Pinch—their son. At five years old he loves Bear almost as much as he fears him. After Bear abandons their family, Pinch will still worship him, striving to live up to the Bavinsky name; while Natalie, a ceramicist, cannot hope to be more than a forgotten muse. Trying to burn brightly in his father's shadow, Pinch's attempts flicker and die. Yet by the end of a career of twists and compromises, Pinch will enact an unexpected rebellion that will leave forever his mark upon the Bear Bavinsky legacy.A masterful, original examination of love, duty, art and fame, The Italian Teacher cements Tom Rachman as among this generation's most exciting literary voices.