It’s a bargain, too – Sunday TimesThis comprehensive, vibrant book leads you through the world’s iconic images – those that we encounter every time we open a newspaper, visit a gallery, or look at the front cover of a novel.Art: The Whole Story traces the development of art period by period, with the illustrated text covering every genre, from painting and sculpture to conceptual art and performance art. Cultural timelines are there too, to help to the reader with historical context.• The most accessible history of world art ever assembled• More than 1,100 colour illustrations of iconic pieces• Covers every genre of art, from painting and sculpture to conceptual art• Designed in an easily navigable and user-friendly fashionWritten by an international team of artists, art historians and curators, this absorbing and beautiful book will give you insight into the world’s most iconic images.Masterpieces that epitomize each period or movement are highlighted and analysed in detail. Everything from use of colour and visual metaphors to technical innovations is explained, enabling you to interpret the meanings of world-famous masterpieces – Mughal miniatures; Japanese prints in the nineteenth century; the colour theories behind Seurat’s remarkable La Grande Jatte; and why Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon was so shocking in its day.

    Her new preface considers the geisha today as a vestige of tradition as Japan heads into the 21st century.

    A preeminent scholar, writer, and teacher, he has had a profound influence on millions of people. To him, mythology was the "song of the universe, the music of the spheres." With Bill Moyers, one of America's most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power Of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit.

    Artists' manifestos are nothing if not revolutionary. They are outlandish, outrageous, and frequently offensive. They combine wit, wisdom, and world-shaking demands. This collection gathers together an international array of artists of every stripe, including Kandinsky, Mayakovsky, Rodchenko, Le Corbusier, Picabia, Dali, Oldenburg, Vertov, Baselitz, Kitaj, Murakami, Gilbert and George, together with their allies and collaborators - such figures as Marinetti, Apollinaire, Breton, Trotsky, Guy Debord and Rem Koolhaas. This title is edited with an Introduction by Alex Danchev.

    What is the value of things made by an anonymous craftsman working in a set tradition for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even the roughly lacquered rice bowl of a Japanese farmer be thought beautiful? The late Soetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for objects born, not made.Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which art, philosophy, and religion arise and in which the barriers between them disappear. The implications of the author's ideas are both far-reaching and practical.Soetsu Yanagi is often mentioned in books on Japanese art, but this is the first translation in any Western language of a selection of his major writings. The late Bernard Leach, renowned British potter and friend of Mr. Yanagi for fifty years, has clearly transmitted the insights of one of Japan's most important thinkers. The seventy-six plates illustrate objects that underscore the universality of his concepts. The author's profound view of the creative process and his plea for a new artistic freedom within tradition are especially timely now when the importance of craft and the handmade object is being rediscovered.

    • A Who's Who of contemporary teachers, writers, and practitioners. • Provides thorough summaries of all major Buddhist traditions around the world. • An excellent introduction to the fastest-growing religion in the West.Newly revised and updated, The Buddhist Handbook is the definitive guide to the complete panorama of Buddhist teaching, practice, schools, and history. The fastest-growing religion in the West, Buddhism includes numerous traditions within its scope. The Buddhist Handbook provides a comprehensive and nonsectarian survey of these traditions and their contemporary exponents throughout the world, providing necessary information for those who wish to explore the various traditions thoroughly and find the one best-suited to their needs. For those already practicing in a particular school of Buddhism, it offers illuminating insight into the teachings of other schools, as well as a Who's Who of contemporary teachers, writers, and practitioners. The far-reaching range of this book includes chapters on the westward migration of Buddhist thought, contemporary Buddhist activities in North America and around the world, the relationship between Buddhism and psychotherapy, Buddhism and social action, and the role of women in Buddhism. Updated to include the most recent information about developments in Buddhism throughout the world, The Buddhist Handbook remains an essential work for the library of every aspiring Buddhist.

    He taught that Zen is not about achieving a goal, but about acting spontaneously from "don't-know mind." It is from this "before-thinking" nature, he taught, that true compassion and the desire to serve others naturally arises. This collection of teaching stories, talks, and spontaneous dialogues with students offers readers a fresh and immediate encounter with one of the great Zen masters of the twentieth century.

    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.

    "It can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend." In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful. This compact volume is filled with insight and Scruton has something interesting and original to say on almost every page. Can there be dangerous beauties, corrupting beauties, and immoral beauties? Perhaps so. The prose of Flaubert, the imagery of Baudelaire, the harmonies of Wagner, Scruton points out, have all been accused of immorality, by those who believe that they paint wickedness in alluring colors. Is it right to say there is more beauty in a classical temple than a concrete office block, more beauty in a Rembrandt than in an Andy Warhol Campbell Soup Can? Can we even say, of certain works of art, that they are too beautiful: that they ravish when they should disturb. But while we may argue about what is or is not beautiful, Scruton insists that beauty is a real and universal value, one anchored in our rational nature, and that the sense of beauty has an indispensable part to play in shaping the human world. Forthright and thought-provoking, and as accessible as it is stimulating, this fascinating meditation on beauty draws conclusions that some may find controversial, but, as Scruton shows, help us to find greater meaning in the beautiful objects that fill our lives.

    It is a collection of essays by Eihei Dogen (1200–1253), founder of Zen’s Soto school. Kazuaki Tanahashi and a team of translators that represent a Who’s Who of American Zen have produced a translation of the great work that combines accuracy with a deep understanding of Dogen’s voice and literary gifts. The finely produced, two-volume boxed set includes a wealth of materials to aid understanding, including maps, lineage charts, a bibliography, and an exhaustive glossary of names and terms—and, as a bonus, the most renowned of all Dogen’s essays, “Recommending Zazen to All People.”

    . . A prison warder from Kerala is worshipped as an incarnate deity for two months of every year . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment watching her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . The twenty-third in a centuries-old line of idol makers struggles to reconcile with his son’s wish to study computer engineering . . . An illiterate goatherd keeps alive in his memory an ancient 200,000-stanza sacred epic . . . A temple prostitute, who resisted her own initiation into sex work, pushes her daughters into the trade she nonetheless regards as a sacred calling.William Dalrymple tells these stories, among others, with expansive insight and a spellbinding evocation of remarkable circumstance, giving us a dazzling travelogue of both place and spirit

    This approach does not neglect one dimension of the religion in favor of another and allows instructors to choose what they wish to emphasize in the classroom. The book also covers the development of Buddhism in a wide variety of geographical and cultural areas (India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, and Japan), and gives a sense of the historical evolution of the tradition in these areas.

    At turns hilarious and moving, his quest features a cast of amazing characters—from a passionate palmist to a flying lama —who provide unforgettable glimpses into the daily life and culture of the former kingdom (including a wild rise on Kathmandu’s very first escalator).Nor does Greenwald shy away from Shangri-la’s darker side. Along with colorful descriptions of Hindu and Buddhist mythology, the book tells of the rampant corruption, art smuggling , assassination attempts and human right abuses that would ignite Nepal’s violent "People Power" Revolution in April 1990. (The subject of Greenwald’s most recent book, Snake Lake.)A new Afterword by the author recounts Nepal's tumultuous recent history—including the massacre of the Royal Family—in vivid detail. And a new Preface introduces this 25th Anniversary Edition with some thoughts about how Nepal, and travel writing, have evolved since the book’s first publication.Winner of the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Best Travel Book, Shopping for Buddhas remains a must-read for anyone who has visited, or plans to visit, Nepal.

    T. Suzuki was the author of more than a hundred works on the subject in both Japanese and English, and was most instrumental in bringing the teachings of Zen Buddhism to the attention of the Western world. Written in a lively, accessible, and straightforward manner, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism is illuminating for the serious student and layperson alike. Suzuki provides a complete vision of Zen, which emphasizes self-understanding and enlightenment through many systems of philosophy, psychology, and ethics. With a foreword by the renowned psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung, this volume has been generally acknowledged a classic introduction to the subject for many years. It provides, along with Suzuki’s Essays and Manual of Zen Buddhism, a framework for living a balanced and fulfilled existence through Zen.

    Two decades later, he sets out in search of this man. Sorcerer's Apprentice is the story of his apprenticeship to one of India's master conjurors and his initiation into the brotherhood of godmen. Learning to unmask illusion as well as practice it, he goes on a journey across the subcontinent, seeking out its miraculous and bizarre underbelly, traveling from Calcutta to Madras, from Bangalore to Bombay, meeting sadhus, sages, sorcerers, hypnotists, and humbugs. His quest is utterly unforgettable.-- An extraordinary account of how illusion works and an astonishing portrait of a great illusionist.