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The human form has inspired some of the finest sculpture in art history. It also evokes in the viewer complex reactions.

Looking at magnificent nude sculptures by Michelangelo, Rodin, Henry Moore, and other great artists, we are in awe of the beauty and power of the art, as well as of the nude figure. But we may also experience other emotions, perhaps uncomfortably close to those we feel when we see an unclothed human body. This astonishing work provides a visual survey of nude sculpture throughout the ages, enhanced by an illuminating essay by noted critic Vicki Goldberg probing our various responses to this most realistic art form. While photographs distance us from the art works they depict, they also offer close-up details that permit us to see nude sculptures in new and surprising ways. Photographer David Finn, who has expanded the way we look at art in Abrams' How-to-Look-at titles, enables us — through his remarkable photographs — to glimpse the sculptor's creative process as well as the qualities of presence, texture, and detail that give the finest sculpture its grace and majesty.

About the Authors:

David Finn is a writer and photographer whose acclaimed images have illustrated several books on Italian Renaissance and contemporary sculpture. His Abrams books How to Look at Photographs, How to Visit a Museum, How to Look at Sculpture, and How to Look at Everything have delighted readers looking for an introduction to the appreciation of fine art. He lives in Westchester County, New York.

Vicki Goldberg has written extensively on art and photography for the New York Times, American Photo, and Vanity Fair. She lives in New York City.

The art of American painter Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) is splendid with colour and laden with hidden sensuality. O'Keeffe's name rests mainly on the large-format flower pictures that have assured her an unusual place in the annals of art, between realist and abstract.

Our Basic Art Series study traces the idiosyncratic of O'Keeffe's career, and numerous illustrations document the most important periods in her lengthy life in art.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

• a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
• approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
• a concise biography

Flowers in the desert. Sensuality and color fuse with nature

The art of American painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) is splendid with color and laden with hidden sensuality. O’Keeffe’s fame was largely earned by her large-format flower pictures that have assured her an unusual place in the annals of art, between realist and abstract.

Our Basic Art Series study traces the idiosyncratic of O’Keeffe’s career, and numerous illustrations document the most important periods in her lengthy life in art.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

• a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
• approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
• a concise biography

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

The immense expanse that opens up between Asia and the coast of America represents an ancient and faascinating world. In the routes traced by the winds and currents, poluplations and cultures appeared, integrated and split up over the course of the centuries, adapting themselves to a poweful nature that generated unique religious practices that also became part of artistic manifestation.

The oeuvre of Odilon Redon (1840-1916) marks the threshold between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and thus represents the interplay between tradition and innovation.

Fractures and contrasts characterize his artistic development from the black and white of his early, dark lithographs and works in charcoal to the downright explosions of color in his bright pastels and oils. Bizarre monsters appear alongside heavenly creatures in a blend of dream and nightmare, nature and vision. Inclined to internalization, the mythic, sacred, and biological motifs in Redon s works take on a sense of the mystical, owing to both the subject and the aesthetic aspects of color and form. Greatly admired by contemporaries such as Paul Cézanne and Paul gauguin, Redon influenced artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Marcel Duchamp as well as the Surrealists.

The catalogue presents the artist s brilliant ideas and his body of work in all of its artistic heterogeneity.

Published on the occasion of the largest ever Odilon Redon retrospective, held at the Grand Palais in Paris in the spring of 2011, this chunky but pocketbook-size paperback volume reproduces all 256 artworks included in the landmark exhibition. It begins with Redon's "Self-Portrait" of 1867 and then examines his famous suites of lithographs, including Dans le Rêve and the classic illustrations to Poe, Huysmans and Flaubert.

All of the great pastels and oils are here, in full color, as well as lesser-known works like painted screens; throughout, each of the works is accompanied by the captions used in the exhibition, which provide details of provenance and, where relevant, edition size.

A perfect gift for art lovers! Old Masters Memory Game collects the most famous and beloved portrait painters from the 16th and 17th centuries in one fun game. Find the portraits by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and many more.

Old Masters Memory Game collects the most famous and beloved portrait painters from the 16th and 17th centuries in one game that is fun to play, educational, and a feast for the eyes.

The task, as always, is to collect two cards that make one set: in this case, two portrait paintings by the same painter. The sets are clearly recognizable by the posture of the figure, facial expression, the style of painting, and attributes like clothes and hairstyle. To help, there is always the brochure with all the paintings in pairs and a little explanation on the painters.

This is a wonderful gift item for gift shops and all museums that collect the old masters. The game consists of 50 cards of 25 sets featuring world-famous portraits by the likes of Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticello, Titian, Frans Hals, Albrecht Durer, Goya, and many
others.

About the author:

Mieke Gerritzen is a designer, producer and director of the Dutch Museum of the Image (MOTI). The design is done by her, so be assured that it carries her signature style of highly energetic visual typography.

Stained glass has long been a part of domestic architecture, but in the late 1800s its popularity soared. In part, this was due to new manufacturing techniques and distribution networks, but also it caught the imagination of Victorian, Art Nouveau, and Arts and Crafts designers around the world.

Here over 350 examples of architectural stained glass span several countries and many years. The styles range from Victorian intricacy to the geometry of the Prairie School. This second edition includes etched glass and beveled constructions, in addition to leaded windows.

Each piece is illustrated in color, with dimensions and current market values. Today, stained glass, both old and new, is again finding its way into the home. It makes a delightful accent in a transom or a glorious complete wall.

This book will help readers understand and appreciate many varieties of old stained glass, and will inspire new work by artists.

On Beauty is neither a history of art, nor a history of aesthetics, but Umberto Eco draws on both these disciplines to define the ideas of beauty that have informed us from the classical world to modern times. In terms of form and style, On Beauty has been conceived for a vast and diverse readership. Packed with examples from painting, sculpture, architecture, film, photography, the decorative arts and literature, it offers a rich and intelligent panorama of this huge subject. In On Beauty Eco is at his most captivating and eclectic: we read not only of Botticelli and Michelangelo but of how much the fashion of the 1960s owes to ancient Egyptian dress, and how ancient Roman and eighteenth-century hairstyles have much in common. It makes the familiar new, and sheds a brilliant light on the unfamiliar. On Beauty is illustrated in full colour throughout and produced to the highest standards.

About the Author:

Umberto Eco's first novel, The Name of the Rose (1982), was a huge bestseller which brought him worldwide acclaim. With his subsequent works of fiction, philosophy, literary criticism and semiotics, he has been recognised as one of Europe's finest thinkers. He is currently President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Humanistici and the University of Bologna. He is also known for his lavishly illustrated anthologies, On Beauty, On Ugliness, The Infinity of Lists and The Book of Legendary Lands.

Beauty and ugliness are two sides of the same coin; by ugliness we usually mean the opposite of beauty and we often define the first in order to understand the nature of the second. But the various depictions of ugliness over the centuries are richer and more unpredictable than is commonly thought. The striking images and anthological quotations in On Ugliness lead us on an extraordinary journey through the passions, terrors and nightmares of almost three thousand years, where acts of rejection go hand in hand with touching instances of empathy, and seductive violations of all classical canons accompany an aversion to deformity. With his characteristic wit and erudition, Umberto Eco draws on examples in art and literature from ancient times to the present day. Abundantly illustrated with demons, madmen, vile enemies and disquieting presences, with freaks and the living dead, On Ugliness is conceived for a vast and diverse readership, and is an invaluable companion volume to On Beauty.

About the Author:

Umberto Eco's first novel, The Name of the Rose (1982), was a huge bestseller which brought him worldwide acclaim. With his subsequent works of fiction, philosophy, literary criticism and semiotics, he has been recognised as one of Europe's finest thinkers. He is currently President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Humanistici and the University of Bologna. He is also known for his lavishly illustrated anthologies, On Beauty, On Ugliness, The Infinity of Lists and The Book of Legendary Lands.

With One Million Tattoos: Designs to Create and Colour you can print out unique combinations of original tattoo designs from the CD-ROM to colour and incorporate into your own artwork, or adapt and create your own designs to take to a tattooist. Over a million combinations are possible! There are classic Sailor Jerry-style banners, anchors, hearts, and birds, along with popular tribal designs, motifs and animals, that can be mixed-and-matched. The book explains how to colour the tattoos using professional techniques and how to insert them into existing art, while also acting as a visual catalogue of the tattoo designs that are on the disc.

Пролистать книгу можно на сайте издательства.

Tracey Emin has stirred controversy as well as acclaim since she rose to fame as the most highly publicized of the infamous Young British Artists.

Though denounced by conservative critics at the outset, Emin’s work has attracted serious critical attention since the early 1990s for being consistently engaging, original, and startlingly direct. Her work has succeeded over the years in many media - from films to appliqués, embroideries, and installations - but it is in her works on paper that the honesty and frankness that have come to characterize her work are most fully realized.

Edited by the artist herself from an archive of work stretching back before the beginnings of her career in the late 1980s, A Thousand Drawings is at once a collection of Emin’s works on paper, an exposé of her life as an artist, and a collectible artifact in itself. Many of these works on paper shed light on well-known multimedia pieces, previously studied in Works 1963–2006, published by Rizzoli in 2006. Stripped of the distractions of form and context, her bare and enigmatic drawings are presented on bible-thin paper in a uniquely beautiful slipcased volume, with an introduction by the artist.

From considered self-portraits to pen-and-ink drawings and informal studies on lined notebook paper, this remarkable collection is as much a catalogue of Emin’s preoccupations as it is a monument to her raw and evocative talents as an artist.

About the Author:

Tracey Emin was born in London in 1963. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999 and chosen to represent Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, Emin is also a member of the Royal Academy of Arts. The author of several books, including Strangeland, her memoir, she contributes regularly to The Independent newspaper and lives and works in London.

In recent years, Manga has seen phenomenal success, not only in Japan, where it dominates the publishing industry, but also in the West, where it is steadily growing in popularity and influence. As swift and sudden as the popularity of this graphic art form may seem, Manga has, in fact, deep roots in Japanese culture, drawing on centuries-old artistic traditions. As early as the twelfth century, Emakimono scrolls existed, a narrative form in which stories of all kinds - romantic, fantastic, even comic - were told through the combined use of text and illustration. Japanese art continued to change as profound political, social, and economic transformations remade the country in the centuries to follow. Today there is little doubt as to the meaning of the term Manga - nor to the astonishing popularity of the form - but few in the West understand the long artistic history that gave birth to this phenomenon and the social factors that continue to shape it today. One Thousand Years of Manga is both an informative account of the genesis of the form and a visual delight. Through its captivating illustrations and enlightening text, the book situates Manga in its proper context, appreciating it for what it truly is: an integral part of Japanese art and culture that is as rich and revealing as it is popular.

Birds and flowers are important subjects in classical Chinese painting. While western paintings of birds and flowers put emphasis on form, structure, colour and perspective to create vivid images, Chinese bird-and-flower paintings aim to deliver the essence of the subject and the spirit of the artist, demonstrating a unique oriental beauty. 

Featuring both the classical style of Qing Dynasty masters such as Yung Shouping and Yu Zhi, and the oriental style of Japanese woodblock prints (or Ukiyo-e) of the 17th and 18th century, these exquisite paintings present a strong decorative sense.

Nineteenth-century Europe was fascinated by the Orient. Napoleon's Egyptian campaign of 1798 initiated this phenomenon, and its history included the Greek uprising against the Turks in 1821 and the French taking of Algiers in 1830. Artists of the period, too, were captivated by these events, and the rich body of imagery they produced is the subject of this volume.

Author Christine Peltre's elegant text retraces Orientalism's artistic history, in which the French and British schools predominated. The "high poetry" of the Romantics' Orient strove for dramatic effect, as the works of David Roberts, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, and Eugene Delacroix attest. A different brand of imagery was produced by the "ethnographic gaze" of the century's middle years, practiced by artists such as John Frederick Lewis, Eugene Fromentin, Jean-Leon Gerome, A. D. Ingres, and Adolphe Monticelli. Work of this kind was eventually superseded by a "third style", a fusion of European and Eastern elements, as seen in the work of August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Henri Matisse.

Witnesses to a history that they influenced in subtle ways through their imagery, the Orientalist painters also produced a history of their own, that of a spiritual and formal quest to find in the "East" the ideal of "primitive" purity. Orientalism in Art covers all these facets, making it an indispensable volume for art historians and anyone with a passion for Orientalist art.