Искусство

The Visual Encyclopaedia series provide up to 300 beautiful photographic and artwork images, illustrating subjects of perennial cultural interest. Images are accompanied by narrative providing background, brief criticism, and details on relevant museums, brief biographies and time lines

This beautifully-illustrated book provides a fascinating overview of the great variety of styles, materials and techniques employed in the arts and crafts of the many different cultures of the Americas before Columbus and the Conquistadors..

Included are elaborate examples of Aegean costume, Doric and Ionic styles of dress for women, Greek and Roman armor, graceful and intricately arranged Roman togas, more. Ornate vestments of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine costumes are carefully described and portrayed as are styles of hairdressing, jewelry, and other decorative elements. 315 black-and-white illustrations.

Пролистать книгу Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine Costume

Home is where the colors live. The painting of André Butzer

Fusing European expressionism with American popular culture, André Butzer started painting his way through the artistic and political extremes of the 20th century. With wide-ranging influences including the likes of Friedrich Hölderlin, Edvard Munch, Walt Disney, and Henry Ford, he developed a fictitious universe centered around the space colony NASAHEIM. There dwells the Peace-Siemens, a friendly head-shape that combines utopian ideas with the economical thinking of budding mass-consumerism, while a figure like the Wanderer offers romantic projections, or the Shame-Human reflections of the political past. This universe lends thematic depth to the canvases, with the characters acting as protagonists of paint, surrounding the N-House, home of all colors, in the style the artist has termed “Science-Fiction Expressionism.”

Some years into the new millennium, the colors took on a life of their own and grew into abstract paintings of lines freewheeling across the canvas. Moving closer to the limits of painting, from 2010 on Butzer explored the fundamental dimensions and potentialities of painterly expression in the seemingly black surfaces of his N-Paintings. At this point, Butzer relocated to California in 2018, painting outdoors year-round. The resulting works brim with colorful freshness, an extended family of lines and figurations with new attitudes refined by their experiences at the far edge of abstraction.

This is the first book to span the full range of Butzer’s oeuvre from 1999 to 2021, the works’ progression gaining an almost musical drive of development, return, and new beginnings. The plates are interspersed with contemporary quotes from the artist that illuminate his idiosyncratic stance as a background to the work, as well as photos from his archives. The introductory essay, written by Hans Werner Holzwarth, investigates the different work phases, and places the artist’s ideas in a wider discourse of abstraction and figuration after the end of either genre. And, most importantly, the book’s pristine, huge-format illustrations fully evidence the finesse as a colorist that place this artist among the internationally most recognized painters of his generation.

The artist:

André Butzer was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1973. For more than 25 years he has painted his way through the extremes of the 20th century, exploring art, politics, and pop culture. Paintings for him are “localizations of the greatest despair and the greatest hope,” which is exactly why “they come closest to the very joy and aid we are in dire need of.” After spending several years in California, he now lives in the southwest of Berlin and is one of the most internationally recognized painters of his generation.

Famous First Edition: First printing of 4,000 numbered copies

Before there was Marilyn, there was Norma Jeane. The photos and secret memoirs of Marilyn Monroe's first photographer and lifelong friend

Fashion photographer Andre de Dienes’s life was changed forever one day in 1945 when he met a lovely young aspiring model named Norma Jeane Dougherty. He instantly fell in love with her innocence and charm and the two were briefly engaged. They took many adventurous road trips together in those early years, de Dienes shooting Norma Jeane in every possible natural setting in his original, inspired style. He soon built up a huge portfolio of stunning photographs of the smiling brunette which helped to launch her model career and, a few years later, a film career that was to make her a legend.

His entire relationship with the star, including many private moments, shared only between the two, is detailed in de Dienes’s secret memoirs, which were discovered when Monroe fans ravaged his home after his death in 1988.

The memoirs tell a beautiful story of love and friendship from the point of view of someone who knew Marilyn intimately; describing the transformation from Norma Jeane to Marilyn Monroe — the evolution of a sensitive, ambitious girl into a deeply troubled megastar — from an inside perspective, they shed light on a little-known side of Marilyn. From their trip to see Norma Jeane’s mother in a mental hospital to Marilyn’s visit to his home a few days before her death, de Dienes recounts all of the emotional moments they shared. The combination of de Dienes’s memoirs and an extensive selection of his Monroe photographs (which numbered in the thousands) makes for an unprecedented, personal exploration into the psychology, history, and iconography of the world’s favourite movie star.

The divine sky: history’s most beautiful celestial atlas

This collection of celestial maps by Dutch-German mathematician and cosmographer Andreas Cellarius (c. 1596 – 1665) brings back to life a masterpiece from the Golden Age of celestial cartography. First published in 1660 in the Harmonia Macrocosmica, the complete 29 double-folio maps and dozens of unusual details reproduced here depict the world systems of Claudius Ptolemy, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe, the motions of the sun, the moon, and the planets, and the delineation of the constellations in various views.

Cellarius's atlas, superbly embellished with richly decorated borders depicting cherubs, astronomers, and astronomical instruments, features some of the most spectacular illustration in the history of astronomy. This reprint, made from the beautifully hand-colored and complete copy of the first edition in the Library of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, includes a copiously illustrated introduction by Robert van Gent, one of the leading Cellarius experts, summarizing the history of celestial cartography from antiquity to late 17th/early 18th century and illuminating the life and work of Andreas Cellarius. Van Gent also discusses the historical and cultural context and significance of the atlas and provides detailed descriptions of the astronomical and iconographical content of the plates, allowing modern readers to fully appreciate the masterwork of Andreas Cellarius and his publisher, Johannes Janssonius.

The book’s detailed appendix includes a list of constellation figures with short descriptions of their origin and mythology, a list of star names found on the plates, a glossary of technical words, and a bibliography. Though these sumptuous maps have become famous by being depicted on postcards, calendars, portfolios, and even mouse pads, they have rarely been reproduced in book form and never with such comprehensive descriptions and details as this TASCHEN edition. Cellarius’s exquisite renditions of the constellations will excite the astronomer in anyone.

Andrey Tarkovsky was the most important Russian filmmaker of the post-war era, and one of the world’s most renowned cinematic geniuses.

Tarkovsky’s films are characterized by metaphysical themes, extended takes, an absence of conventional dramatic structure and plot, and a dream-like, visionary style of cinematography. They achieve a spiritual intensity and transcendent beauty that many consider to be without parallel.

He directed the first five of his seven films – Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror and Stalker – in the Soviet Union, but in 1982 defected to Italy, where he made Nostalgia. His final film, The Sacrifice, was produced in Sweden in 1985.

This book presents extended sequences of stills from each of the films alongside synopses and cast and crew listings. It includes reflections on Tarkovsky’s work from fellow artists and writers including Jean-Paul Sartre and Ingmar Bergman, for whom Tarkovsky was ‘the greatest, the one who invented a new language.’

Extracts from Tarkovsky’s own writings and diaries offer a wealth of insights into his poetic and philosophical views on cinematography, which he described as ‘sculpting in time’. The book also reproduces many personal Polaroid photographs that confirm the extraordinary poetic vision of a great artist who died aged only 54, but who remains a potent influence on artists and filmmakers today.

Andres Serrano is one of America's most mythologized contemporary artists. To many, he's the man responsible for Piss Christ and a national scandal over government funding of controversial art. For those who look beyond the headlines, he's a highly accomplished and ever-evolving photographic artist showing us the ordinary in extraordinary ways. With his post-Piss Christ series, Nomads, he made studio portraits of New York's ethnic homeless and juxtaposed them with members of the Ku Klux Klan. In the Morgue series he dissected violent death and found the human thread on the coroner's slab, while A History of Sex explored the human mating urge in its infinite variety.

Andres Serrano considers America his greatest achievement. Three years of work produced over one hundred 50-by-60-inch photographic portraits representing the cultural diversity of this immigrant country, as filtered through the critical lens of Serrano. There are celebrities: Arthur Miller, Snoop Dogg, Anna Nicole Smith, B.B. King, Vanessa del Rio; and ordinary citizens: a pimp, a boy scout, a doctor, a Russian Orthodox Bishop. America is intimate, honest, and demanding of response, like all Serrano's work. The second half of this big volume, Other Work, is a retrospective of Serrano's previous photographic series. Together these two impressive halves create the whole of Andres Serrano's artistic oeuvre.

In 1989 US Senator Jesse Helms accused Andres Serrano of taunting the American people. America and Other Work is the perfect rebuttal.

An extraordinary private collection of watercolours and drawings by Andrew Wyeth depicting the subjects memorialized in his legendary painting Christina's World, one of the best-known works of American art.

This book presents rarely seen watercolours and drawings Andrew Wyeth made of his friend Christina Olson, her brother Alvaro, and the weathered Maine farmstead where they lived. It features moving portraits and serene interior and exterior views of the house and the surrounding land, now memorialized in Wyeth's 1948 tempera painting Christina's World, one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art and now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Some forty-five works from the collection of the Marunuma Art Park in Japan, rarely shown before in the United States, are accompanied by works from the Farnsworth as well as by historical photographs of Wyeth, the Olsons, and the house.

Otoyo Nakamura writes about the history of this collection of Wyeth works, and Michael Komanecky addresses the place of the Olson farm in Wyeth's career over three decades, and how Christina's World and the Olson House have inspired pilgrimages for fans of Wyeth's work. Despite its isolated location and seasonal schedule, Olson House draws thousands of visitors each year from around the world. The Olson House, acquired by the Farnsworth Art Museum in 1991, has been recommended for National Landmark status.

About the Authors:

Michael K. Komanecky is Chief Curator at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and former Chief Curator at the Phoenix Art Museum, and author of and contributor to numerous books, including The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain (2008), Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper, 1575-1775 (1998), The Folding Image: Screens by Western Artists of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1984), and Robert Indiana and The Star of Hope (2009).

Otoyo Nakamura is Wyeth Collection Curator at Marunuma Art Park, Asaka, Japan.

Selected and Arranged by Richard Meryman from Recorded Conversations with the Artist, 1964-2007

Richard Meryman began an enduring friendship with Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) while on the job as a Life magazine editor in 1964. For Meryman, this unique friendship yielded more than four decades of recorded conversations with Wyeth, his family, friends and neighbours in Wyeth’s homes in Pennsylvania and Maine. Meryman notes that, whether during formal interviews, shared meals, car rides or long walks, “Wyeth applied to himself the same sensitive understandings that fueled his art. A lifelong realist who swam against the art world tide of modernism, he showed himself to be fundamentally a painter of emotion – of people and objects that somehow embodied his memories and imagination, triggering feelings inexpressible in words, but recognized by viewers.” In five skillfully crafted monologues composed by Meryman around key themes in Wyeth’s work, we hear the voices of not only the artist but also his subjects, neighbors, relatives and critics. 

The book includes reproductions of the works of art discussed by Wyeth in his own words, as well as previously unpublished photographs of Wyeth’s studio taken in 2009.

Whether you're a casual admirer of Andrew Wyeth's paintings or an ardent fan, this retrospective album of his work from the 1930s to the 90s is both an outstanding introduction to the artist and a highly personal glimpse of his career.

The book presents 133 color reproductions of tempera, drybrush, and watercolor paintings and five black and white pencil sketches, and includes Distant Thunder, Green Room, Barracoon, and several paintings of Helga and of Siri Erickson. For every one of these pieces, Wyeth also offers his commentary describing the model or the scene, his mood or his technique, or all of these. 

One of Andrew Wyeth’s most important paintings, Wind from the Sea, a recent gift to the National Gallery of Art, is also the artist’s first full realization of the window as a recurring subject in his art. 

Wyeth returned to windows over the next sixty years, producing more than 250 works that explore both the formal and conceptual richness of the subject. Spare, elegant and abstract, these paintings are free of the narrative element inevitably associated with Wyeth’s better-known figural compositions. 

In 2014 the Gallery will present an exhibition of a select group of these deceptively ‘realistic’ works, window paintings that are in truth skilfully manipulated constructions engaged with the visual complexities posed by the transparency, beauty and formal structure of windows. In its exclusive focus on paintings without human subjects, this catalogue will offer a new approach to Wyeth’s work, being the first time that his non-figural compositions have been published as a group. 

The authors explore Wyeth’s fascination with windows – their formal structure and metaphorical complexity. In essays that address links with the poetry of Robert Frost and the paintings of Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler and Franz Kline, the authors consider Wyeth’s statement that he was, in truth, an ‘abstract’ painter.

Prior to the 1960s, Andrew Wyeth enjoyed a stellar reputation as a rising star in the art world. Since then, critics and scholars have largely ignored him. Wyeth, however, who is age 88 at the date of publication, has continued to paint, to the delight of his admirers, collectors, and the art-loving public.

Now, in association with the High Museum exhibition, Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic takes a fresh look at the work of one of America's most beloved artists. In examining his entire oeuvre, the book celebrates the artist's ongoing love affair with everyday life-domestic, natural, and architectural. Found throughout Wyeth's work, these objects form patterns that illuminate core themes and reveal the artist wrestling with issues of memory, temporality, embodiment, and the metaphysical. Organized chronologically and thematically, the book explores how the artist's approach to these subjects was formed in his early career and has been revisited in new and surprising ways in recent years.

Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic comprises 150 tempera paintings and 50 drawings and watercolours-including his most-famous works, but also many published here for the first time. 

About the Authors:

Anne Knutson is guest curator for the exhibition Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic. Kathleen A. Foster is the Robert L. McNeill, Jr. Curator of American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Michael R. Taylor is Associate Curator and Acting Head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Christopher Crosman is Director of the William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. John Wilmerding is the Christopher B. Sarofim Professor of American Art at Princeton University.

Goldsworthy's oeuvre is made entirely of natural materials such as leaves, wood, stone or snow, resulting mainly in site-specific installations linked to a certain place. The forms and structures he creates blend in with the landscape, striving to find a balance with their setting and the effects of light and atmosphere. The resulting work interacts with its surroundings, changing and growing as time goes by. This fleeting, variable essence drives him to photograph many of his works in order to record them and their evolution for posterity. The installation Goldsworthy prepared especially for the Crystal Palace is one of the artist's most ambitious wood dome projects so far, enlarging upon the vaulted spaces he used previously in London and Yorkshire. The form of the wooden structures blends in with the architecture of the palace which becomes its glass epidermis.

There is perhaps no artist of the 20th century that is as famous and infamous as Andy Warhol; Andy Warhol "Giant" Size takes its inspiration from the over-the-top quality of Andy Warhol's life, career, and legacy and in a mammoth format and huge extent depicts, in roughly chronological order, the major events, people, works, and moments in the life of an artist who continues to be endlessly fascinating to those inside and outside of the art world. Now available in a new format.

- A spectacular visual biography of the life and career of one of the most colourful and innovative artists of the twentieth century
- A rare, behind-the-scenes look at the New York art world of the 1950s to the 1980s
- Introduction by renegade art critic Dave Hickey, who has his own cult following, and additional texts by Bruno Bischofberger, Ronnie Cutrone, - David Dalton, Kenneth Goldsmith, Ivan Karp and Peggy Phelan
- A must-have for Warhol fans and any pop culture enthusiast is accessible to all at this amazing new price