Искусство

Art inflation. The king of blow-ups, puppies, and pop

The creations of Jeff Koons (born 1955) are at once immediately accessible and eloquently art historical. From basketball tanks to flower puppies, his instantly recognizable work frolics with banal imagery as much as it integrates cultural references such as Surrealism and Pop Art. 

Koons art revels in visual pleasure, but also in the power to affront. He has made his name as much for stainless-steel rabbits as he has with his sinister sculpture of Michael Jackson, or his sexually explicit photographic series with then-wife Cicciolina. The result is mega-artist status. An indisputable king of contemporary visual culture, Koons is lauded by collectors, institutions, and the public alike.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

When Kurt Cobain died at his Seattle home on April 8, 1994 at the age of 27, music lost the idol of an entire generation. Ernesto Assante, renowned music journalist, guides the reader through the personal story of an artist and the discovery of an entire musical genre that symbolises an era. A story of pain, passion, and music. A fascinating and mysterious personal adventure. The story of a troubled boy who became a rock star and that of a band that gave sound to the last great rock season of the 20th century: Nirvana.

_A look at the mysterious and troubled man behind legend and idol, Kurt Cobain, commemorating 30 years since his death
_Insights into the fall and rise of Nirvana - from the '90s Seattle grunge scene to becoming one of the best-selling bands of all time

About the Author:

Ernesto Assante is a renowned journalist, music critic, author and radio and television host. He has written a number of books published by White Star Publishers, including The Legends of Rock, U2. The Story and Images of a Rock Legend, Woodstock ’69. Rock Revolution, The Beatles. 1962-1969 from Liverpool to Abbey Road, Info Rock. The History of Rock Music, Freddie Mercury. A Legendary voice, The Great History of Rock Music. From Elvis Presley to the Present Day, Bruce Springsteen. 50 years of Rock ‘n Roll.

From rural Japan to international icon – Yayoi Kusama has spent her remarkable life immersed in her art.

Follow her incredible journey in this vivid graphic biography which details her bold departure from Japan as a young artist, her embrace of the buzzing New York art scene in the 1960s, and her eventual return home and rise to twenty-first-century super-fame.

About the Authors:

Elisa Macellari is a Thai-Italian illustrator. Her clients include The New York Times, Corriere della Sera, Mondadori, Feltrinelli and Nobrow Press. Her first graphic novel, Papaya Salad (2018), has been published in Italian, French and Spanish.

A practical guide to learn painting in oils, with simple exercises and step-by-step demonstrations.

Bestselling artist and writer Hazel Soan has distilled her art teaching into the things that matter most and can be digested in a short period of time. Learning to paint is one of the life-long aspirations of many of us and the techniques of oil painting can be picked up faster than you think. And, as mistakes can be corrected much more easily in oils than any other painting medium, it is the ideal medium for beginners.

In this concise book, Hazel Soan explains everything you need to know about oils in an accessible way. She advises on the materials you need (keeping things to a minimum), how to mix colours, basic brush techniques and how to use a palette knife. The subjects covered range from still life, flowers, animals, landscapes, figures and portraits.

Filled with easy-to-follow exercises and demonstrations, this is a practical and helpful guide to learning to paint in oils very quickly.

About the Author:

Hazel Soan is a popular and successful artist who divides her time between London and Cape Town, exhibiting her work widely. She has her own gallery in Fulham, London. She is author of several bestselling books and a range of successful DVDs. She was one of the art experts in the popular Channel 4 TV series Watercolour Challenge. The very successful Learn Watercolour Quickly, Essence of Watercolour and Watercolour Rainbow are also by Hazel Soan.

Five years of lies and hypocrisy. Four activists holding power to account. One book showing how they did it – and why they're not done yet

Led By Donkeys are political artists and activists. This book is an adrenalized journey through five years of resistance against the ineptitudes, corruption and greed committed by those in power in Britain.

Their works include:

* Rebranding disgraced Tory peer Michelle Mone’s yacht as the ‘Pandemic Profiteer’
* Painting the road outside the Russian embassy, Ukrainian blue and yellow
* Creating the iconic National Covid Memorial Wall in London
* Exposing politicians’ hypocrisies by printing their tweets and comments on billboards
* Projecting public sentiment on to the Palace of Westminster, the cliffs of Dover and more

The book tracks the major moments from 2019 to 2024 when Led By Donkeys’ activism captured the public mood with high-profile interventions. Within its pages (amongst other things): the Covid crisis of 2020; Boris Johnson’s struggles with truth and decency; Liz Truss’s battles with maths and markets; the climate crisis we are sleepwalking into; burgeoning corruption in Westminster; the war in Ukraine; a crashed economy; the cost-of-living crisis and much more.

And they’re not done yet: a new government means new policies, new vulnerabilities, new areas of accountability. And with the Reform party on the rise, this is no time to be complacent…

Shot from helicopters and drones, from iPhones and hidden cameras, here are over 200 images and text taking you behind the scenes, including footage seized then returned by the police, professional photography, maps, plans, designs and sketches, and of course the results – newspaper front pages, media response and public reaction.

Taken together, they tell the story of an extraordinary time and tactics to hold the powerful to account.

About the Author:

Led By Donkeys was founded in early 2019 when four friends, motivated by the thermonuclear hypocrisy of our political overlords, started going out at night to paste up guerrilla billboards of the leading Brexiters’ historic tweets. The 18 square metre posters were a phenomenon. With its social media following exploding, Led By Donkeys was suddenly reaching millions of people with every intervention and have continued their work addressing everything from the Covid crisis to corruption in Westminster. Led By Donkeys has mixed art and activism to create some of the most memorable images of our political age.

Lee Miller was not only Man Ray’s muse, but above all, a professional in her own right

Model, photographer, muse, the first female war correspondent to report the horrors of the concentration camps liberated by American troops, and a 20th-century icon. Lee Miller was all this and much more. She went through life with passion and determination and life repaid her with love and friends, but also with pain and posthumous, or at least tardy, acknowledgement.

Through approximately 140 photographs by Lee Miller and Man Ray, some objects d’art, and video documents loaned by Lee Miller Archives and Fondazione Marconi, this book intends to do justice to this woman, as beautiful as she was clever and talented, taking her out of Man Ray’s overpowering shadow. It will reveal a deep but complicated relationship more objectively (Man Ray was first her teacher, then lover, and in the end friend), and document the effect they both had on each other and how it inspired their work.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition in Venice, the volume features texts by the curator, Ami Bouhassane (Miller’s granddaughter), and Anthony Penrose (Miller’s son). Moreover, it includes portraits by Man Ray of friends and important protagonists of the period (Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí), as well as surrealist shots of Lee Miller in which she seeks to investigate and reveal her soul and torments.

_________

The exhibition offers a portrait of Surrealism through two of its greatest exponents, with more than 100 photographs, artworks and new relevant documentation.

In 1929, Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, a young American model often seen in Vogue magazine, arrived in Paris with the intention of becoming a photographer. Uninvited and with no prior introduction, she presented herself at the studio of Man Ray, a noted Surrealist artist and photographer specialising in portraits of contemporary society, insisting that she become his apprentice. The encounter marked the beginning of a lifelong relationship. The years 1929-1932 were a time of particularly fertile collaboration, during which the fiercely independent, highly motivated Lee was soon alternating in the roles of apprentice, photography assistant, lover and muse. After that period, Lee opened and successfully managed her own studio. As prominent figures in avant-garde society (Paris, New York and London) and close friends of such leading artists as Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst, and Paul Eluard, Ray and Miller formed part of the early liberal surrealist milieu of the 20s and 30s.

The book, published to complement the Milan exhibition, aims to establish Miller’s remarkable talent as a photographer, setting her on a par with Man Ray, whose work has tended to overshadow hers, and to re-examine the couple’s professional and personal relationship. It also reveals the crucial ways in which Lee Miller inspired Man Ray’s work at that time as well as later, including the discovery of the photographic technique of solarisation, which quickly became Ray’s most widely recognised style. Through a wide selection of their portraits of famous people, their relationship is used as a lens through which to critically re-evaluate and re-interpret the relationship between the two within the Surrealist movement and the broader avant-garde society of Paris between the mid-20s and the late 30s.

About the Author:

Victoria Noel-Johnson is an independent British art historian and curator, specialising in early 20th-century European art.

Improvisation, swing, blue notes, glissando, scat… these and other ingredients have made jazz a unique musical genre, unmistakable and loved in every corner of the globe. Born in the United States at the end of the 19th century, jazz has its roots in Afro-American music, but has succeeded in becoming contaminated owing to contributions from different styles, fragmenting in turn into countless currents and categories. From the first New Orleans bands, passing through the absolute genius of “Satchmo” Armstrong — who became model for all later jazz musicians — to the big bands of Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and Benny Goodman, or to the unsurpassed singing performances of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, this book retraces the history of jazz, lingering on the most outstanding personalities and musical excerpts that have marked this musical genre more than any other. Besides the classics, ample space is reserved also for artists of the second postwar period who succeeded in renewing jazz, restoring its freshness and vitality again for the new generations of artists that today tread the musical scene.

About the Authors:

Bill Milkowski is a New York-based freelance writer who has contributed to several publications since the 1970s, including DownBeat, JazzTimes, JAZZIZ, Bass Player, Guitar Player, Modern Drummer, Absolute Sound, and Jazzthing. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he began his career in music journalism, he relocated to New York City in 1980, moved to New Orleans in 1993, and returned to New York in 1997. Milkowski was named Writer of the Year for 2004 by the Jazz Journalists Association. Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer Joe Lovano is fearless in finding new modes of artistic expression. With 12 Nominations and a Grammy for his 52nd Street Themes, he has won DownBeat magazine's Critics and Readers Polls many times as Tenor Saxophonist, Musician of the Year, and Jazz Album of the Year. Joe has recorded with a long list of jazz greats including Woody Herman, Mel Lewis, Bob Brookmeyer, John Scofield, Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Gunther Schuller, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Ed Blackwell, Dave Holland, Hank Jones, Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, Ravi Coltrane, and many others.

Leonardo da Vinci and Anatomy: all the power and relevance of this great Renaissance mind.

This exhibition catalogue on Leonardo da Vinci the anatomist highlights the mystery of a thought that was both anchored in its time and, combined with a totally new practice (dissection), leading to a new understanding of the nature of life. Da Vinci was not content with a passive description of the human body; he sought to penetrate the secrets of its functioning by first studying the mechanics of humans (bones, muscles, tendons), then the logic of the senses, and finally all the bodily functions (digestion, respiration, blood circulation, reproduction), which made him to use qualitative reasoning.

Contrary to popular belief, Leonardo did not carry out his dissections in secret, but in complete agreement with the political and religious authorities, until his materialistic ideas came into conflict with the pontifical authorities, particularly with regard to embryology.

The originality of the book is to show how Leonardo’s work as an anatomist and his work as a painter are inseparable. The book thus links a work such as the Last Supper in Milan with the knowledge gathered in the medical field.

The book brings together originals or copies of Leonardo’s sheets with objects (anatomical waxes, facsimiles of dissecting instruments), books studied by the artist, interviews with specialists and animated 3D reconstructions.

About the Authors:

Dominique Le Nen is professor at the University of Nantes and orthopedic surgeon.

Pascal Brioist is professor at the University of Tours, historian specialized in Leonardo da Vinci, in la Renaissance and sciences and techniques of the modern era.

Leonardo da Vinci was the epitome of the Renaissance humanist ideal, a logical polymath of epic proportions who excelled and had interests not just in art but in invention, anatomy, architecture, engineering, literature, mathematics, music, science, astronomy and more. His oeuvre is astounding and he is rightly famed for his masterpieces of painting such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and his astonishingly technical and graceful drawings. The phenomenon that was Leonardo would not of course have flourished to such an extent had it not been for the patronage and sponsorship of the Medici family, who commissioned a large proportion of the art and architecture of the era and fostered a fertile climate for creativity.

This sumptuous new book offers a broader view of this master artist in the context of this environment, alongside the work of other key artists who benefited from the Medicis, from Brunelleschi through Donatello to Michelangelo and Raphael.

A one-of-a-kind book of pop-ups based on the works of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a painter, architect, inventor and student of all things scientific. His natural genius crossed so many disciplines that he epitomized the term ‘Renaissance man’. Today he remains best known for his art, including two paintings that remain among the world’s most famous and admired, Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. This book features six meticulously crafted pop-ups of his most famous works: Self portrait; Annunciation; Ornithopter; Virgin & Child; Architecture – an overview of his drawings and designs; and Vitruvian Man.

Contents List:

1. Self portrait 2. Annunciation 3. Ornithopter 4. Virgin & Child 5. Architecture – an overview of his drawings and designs 6. Vitruvian Man

About the Author:

Courtney Watson McCarthy is a noted paper engineer and creator of several pop-up books for Thames & Hudson, including M. C. Escher Pop-Ups, Hokusai Pop-Ups and Dalí Pop-Ups.

A companion volume to 'Lessons in Classical Drawing' that breaks down the foundational skills and techniques of painting in a format that is accessible and manageable for all readers.

With the same direct, easy-to-follow approach of Juliette Aristides's previous books, Lessons in Classical Painting presents aspiring artists with the fundamental skills and tools needed to master painting in the atelier style.

With more than 15 years of experience in ateliers and as an art instructor, Aristides pairs personal examples and insights with theory, assignments and demonstrations for readers, discussions of technical issues and inspirational quotes.

After taking a bird's eye look at painting as a whole, Aristides breaks down painting into big picture topics like:

- grisaille
- temperature
- colour
- composition

Demonstrating how these key subjects can be applied by all painters.

About the Author:

Juliette Aristides studied at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and various private ateliers. She is the author of Classical Painting Atelier, Classical Drawing Atelier, and Lessons in Classical Drawing. She is currently the instructor of the Aristides Classical Atelier at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Washington. In 2003, Aristides was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant.

In this interactive colouring and activity book, Marion Deuchars takes the broad canvas of ART and fills it with drawings and activities that let you discover what art can be, how it can be made, what it can mean for you and what it has meant for people through the ages.

This book is packed with stimulating ideas to spark your creative imagination. You can complete the Mona Lisa’s smile, or design your own Jackson Pollock-inspired work with a marble, a tray, some paint and paper. There are step-by-step instructions for how to draw a bird and how to give it an expression, as well a foolproof method for drawing a bicycle.

Aimed at children aged eight and older, the emphasis is on fun and making the creation of art a big part of the way you express yourself.

About the Authors:

Author of the best-selling Let’s Make Some Great Art series, Marion Deuchars has a globally recognisable illustration style. Her hand-lettering and illustrations have been used on advertising campaigns from Samsung to HP, and her books have won six awards for design and illustration. She is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale.

The Popstar: When art went Whaam!

American painter Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) pioneered a new epoch in American art, bursting onto a scene dominated by Abstract Expressionism in late 1950s New York and defining a new art vocabulary for a new era.

With his groundbreaking use of industrial production techniques and trivial, quotidian imagery such as cartoons, comic strips, and advertising, Lichtenstein joined contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist to reflect and satirize American mass media and consumer culture. Works such as Look, Mickey! (1961), Drowning Girl (1963), and Whaam! (1963), deployed mass production techniques, particularly Ben-Day dots printing, to create a blow-up effect and pixelated dot style, with which Lichtenstein has become synonymous.

This book provides an essential overview of Lichtenstein s career, tracing his earliest Pop statements through to later brushstroke retorts to Abstract Expressionism and reinterpretations of modern masterpieces. We look at his leading position in mid-century modernism, and the ways in which his works both critique and chronicle 20th-century America.

About the series:

Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. 

Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:
- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

What makes a creative life? For an artist like Frances Palmer, it’s knitting all of one’s passions — all of one’s creativity — into the whole of life. And what an inspiration it is.

A renowned potter, an entrepreneur, a gardener, a photographer, a cook, a beekeeper, Palmer has over the course of three decades caught the attention not only of the countless people who collect and use her ceramics but also of designers and design lovers, writers, and fellow artists who marvel at her example. Now, in her first book, she finally tells her story, in her own words and images, distilling from her experiences lessons that will inspire a new generation of makers and entrepreneurs.

Life in the Studio is as beautiful and unexpected as Palmer’s pottery, as breathtakingly colorful as her celebrated dahlias, as intimate as the dinners she hosts in her studio for friends and family. There are insights into making pots — the importance of centering, the discovery that clay has a memory. Strategies for how to turn a passion into a business — the value to be found in collaboration, what it means to persevere, how to develop and stick to a routine that will sustain both enthusiasm and productivity. There are also step-by-step instructions (for throwing her beloved Sabine pot, growing dahlias, building an opulent flower arrangement). Even some of her most tried-and-true recipes.

The result is a portrait of a unique artist and a singularly generous manual on how to live a creative life.

About the Author:

Frances Palmer is a potter known for her handmade functional ceramics. Her pieces have been carried by Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman, Neue Galerie, Takashimaya, and the Philip Johnson Glass House, and featured in T: The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Elle Decor, Martha Stewart Living, The World of Interiors, House & Garden, British House & Garden, and Veranda, among other publications. She lives and works in Weston, Connecticut. 

“Roll-up-your-sleeves advice on throwing pottery, growing dahlias, cooking her tried-and-true recipes, and everything in between.”
—Martha Stewart Living

“Suited to any type of creative, offering up lessons on inspiration and creativity that are sure to bring out your inner talent.”
—House Beautiful, Best New Design Books

The Instant Art of Linda McCartney. Unseen Polaroids of family life and beyond

Following her best-selling TASCHEN monograph Life in Photographs, discover a more intimate and highly personal side of Linda McCartney’s photographic work in The Polaroid Diaries.

The collection focuses on McCartney’s distinctive way of seeing the world and her family, through charming and quirky portraits of Paul McCartney and the couple’s four children. We see them pulling faces and in matching pajamas. We see James pouring water on himself, and Mary and Stella playing dress-up. There’s dancing, eating, horse riding, and countless moments of everyday life on their farm in Southern England.

As Paul says in the introduction: “She would just see things. Many of her photos, it’s just that one click. You’ve got to recognise when a great photo is happening in front of you. And then you’ve got to snap it at exactly the right moment… And she did that so many times that it always impressed me.” The Polaroid Diaries curates more than 200 of these “right” moments from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, along with a foreword by Chrissie Hynde and an essay by art critic Ekow Eshun.

The book also features luminous landscapes across Scotland and Arizona, as well as the odd celebrity, as the likes of Steve McQueen and Adam Ant wander into the frame. Other pictures attest to her love of animals, with compassionate images of cats, lambs, horses, and hens. It’s a pre-Instagram glimpse into the life of an extraordinary family, a celebration of Linda’s legacy as a fiercely committed artist and of the instant magic of Polaroid film.

Also available in a signed Collector’s Edition and in two limited Art Editions, each with a print numbered and signed by Paul McCartney.

The photographer:

Linda McCartney (née Eastman) was born in New York in 1941. She took a photo course with Hazel Archer and studied art history at the University of Arizona before settling in New York City, where she began her photo career shooting rock portraits. Outside of her photography, which has been exhibited in over 50 galleries worldwide including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the International Center of Photography, New York, Linda McCartney is known for her passionate animal rights activism and her staunch vegetarianism. She wrote cookbooks and founded her own brand of frozen vegetarian meals, all the while raising a family, continuing to take photographs, and participating as a Wings band member alongside Paul McCartney. She died in 1998 at the age of 56.

The author:

Ekow Eshun is a London-based writer, critic, and curator. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing the most prestigious public art program in the U.K., and the former Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Granta, Vogue, Aperture, and Wired. He is the author of Black Gold of the Sun, which was nominated for the Orwell Prize, and the editor of Africa Modern: Creating the Contemporary Art of a Continent.

The editor:

Reuel Golden is the former editor of the British Journal of Photography and the Photography editor at TASCHEN. His TASCHEN titles include: Mick Rock: The Rise of David Bowie, both London and New York Portrait of a City books, Andy Warhol. Polaroids, The Rolling Stones, Her Majesty, Football in the 1970s, the National Geographic editions, and The David Bailey SUMO.