Книги о музеях мира

This is the perfect guidebook for all artlovers who visit or live in New York, and an essential reference book for anyone interested in the history of art.

Its unique approach draws on the cream of New York’s museums and galleries to create an easily navigable, narrative history of art and allows you to locate your favourite artist or style of art in any museum and follow it throughout the museums of New York.

Do you like, say, French art? This book will show you where to find it in New York, from great masterpieces of the genre on show in world-famous institutions to hidden gems housed in galleries off the beaten track.

Visit the Metropolitan Museum to take in Nicolas Poussin, Jacques-Louis David and Courbet; move on to the Frick Collection to see works by the Rococo painters Boucher and Fragonard, or take off to the Dahesh Museum, the only American institution devoted to the academic tradition in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Art Guide also features concise histories and critical analyses of many important artists as well as key movements, showing you where to see, for example, Jackson Pollock’s iconic works and pinpointing his former New York homes and haunts.

• ‘Short tour’ and ‘also see’ sections allow you to trace your favourite period or style throughout the museums and galleries of New York
• ‘Artist in focus’ sections present a full tour of New York’s holdings of iconic artists
• Extensive reference sections and city maps enable you to use the book as an illustrated guide to every one of New York’s museums and galleries
• Individual chapters guide the reader through a thematic, narrative history of art
• Expert commentary on the movements and artists throughout

The Art Museum is the finest art collection ever assembled between two covers. This revolutionary and unprecedented virtual art museum in a book, features 992 oversized pages of nearly 2,700 works of art. It is the most comprehensive and visually spectacular history of world art ever published. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with a global team of specialists in all fields of art, including museum curators and educators, who have collected together important works as they might be displayed in the ideal museum for the art lover.

Unrestricted by the constraints of physical space, this luxurious book is organized by innovative color-coded "galleries," "rooms," "corridors" and "special exhibitions" which display hundreds of paintings, sculptures, frescos, photographs, tapestries, friezes, installations, performances, videos, woodblock prints, folding screens, ceramics and manuscripts that tell the history of world art.

This is the only museum to house Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, a collection of Rembrandt’s finest self-portraits, Velázquez’s Las Meninas and Picasso’s Guernica, as well as ceramics from China, Hokusai’s woodblock prints, gold artefacts from Peru, and works by Jackson Pollock in one place.

With intelligent in-depth text throughout, explanatory labels for each artwork, a comprehensive glossary and detailed location maps, The Art Museum, is accessible for everyone from casual art fans to experts in the field.

A revolutionary 'virtual' museum with easy-to-navigate, colour-coded galleries and rooms

Housing the finest art collection ever assembled, this revised, reformatted edition offers the museum experience without the boundaries of space and time, taking the reader on a tour around the world and through the ages. Its rooms and galleries display some 1,600 artworks, selected from the original collection, including paintings, sculpture, photographs, textiles, installations, performances, videos, prints, ceramics, manuscripts, metalwork, and jewel-work.

Visit the world's most comprehensive and compelling museum in a book – from pre-historic times to the present, – over 1,600 artworks created with the expertise of 28 art world curators and historians.

"Unprecedented, unique, and vast in scope... a visually spectacular survey of world art. Destined to delight, inspire, and educate, as well as to become an invaluable, classic art-reference resource, it is very highly recommended." ―Library Journal

About the Authors:

Twenty-eight curators, critics, art historians, and artists contributed their expertise to create this art-lover's ideal museum. They come from such institutions as: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the British Museum, London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu; the University of California, Berkeley; La Trobe University, Melbourne; the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London; and The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

What is more common than a pair of shoes? In a world where shoes have become an object of mass consumption, these accessories are now rid of any significance. Industry has accomplished its duty: producing large quantities at low prices. But there was a time when the shoe symbolised the strength of the Roman legion, the power of the medieval lords or the oppression of the Chinese woman. Its history is both vast and enthralling, as revealed by the author Marie-Josephe Bossan. Supporting her analysis with an outstanding iconography, the author gives these commonplace objects a universal quality that sheds light on the whole of civilisation and elevates them to the rank of a work of art.

The Camondos were a family of bankers and philanthropists – ‘the Rothschilds of the East’. Arriving in Paris from Istanbul in 1869, their presence was soon noted in the worlds of business, music, art and the wealthier echelons of Paris society.

One man, Moïse de Camondo, made their mark permanent with the legacy of the Musée Nissim de Camondo, a magnificent Belle Époque mansion built to contain the family’s collection of 18th-century French art, and which became a memorial to his son who did not live to inherit it: Nissim de Camondo, a pilot during the First World War, was killed in aerial combat in 1917.

With Moïse’s death in 1935, and the deaths of remaining members of the family at Auschwitz in 1943–44, the Camondo line came to an end. The house was bequeathed to the French state, and survived the war intact.

The exceptional qualities of the house, its architecture and its beautiful decoration have been captured in superb photographs by Jean-Marie del Moral. Essays by curators and experts associated with the museum explore the splendour of each object and work of art in detail, tracing their history and setting them in context, and bringing to life the deeply moving story of a remarkable collection driven by passion.

The Centre Pompidou in Paris houses one of the greatest collections of twentieth century photography in the world. This book comprises a comprehensive catalogue of the collection, 350 photographs by 283 of the most famous artists and photographers to engage with the medium – from Drtikol, Abbott, Strand, Evans, Brancusi, Rodtchenko and Abbott, via Alvarez Bravo, Man Ray, Boubat and Klein, to Mapplethorpe, Sherman, Struth, Gursky and Goldin. The book is comprised of 6 sections, each introduced by a short essay, and proposes a new history of photography through the collections of the Centre Pompidou.

This spectacular compilation of plates, representing a superb collection of ancient vases, is the fruit of a collaboration between Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), British diplomat and collector, and Pierre-François Hugues d’Hancarville (1719-1805), an adventurous connoisseur and amateur art dealer. As an envoy to the British Embassy in Naples, Hamilton developed a keen interest in both antiquity and volcanology, studying the royal excavations of Pompei and Hercolano and publishing the first scientific essays on mount Vesuvius. During his stay in Naples he built the finest collection of ancient vases of his time, which he sold, in 1772, to the British Museum in London. Before the invaluable pieces were shipped off to England, d´Hancarville was commissioned to document the vases in words and images. Never before have ancient vases been represented with such meticulous detail and sublime beauty. His famous catalogue was published in four volumes, known as "Les Antiquités d´Hancarville." Complete sets of these rare volumes today fetch top prices at auction. We have borrowed a fine copy from the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar to reproduce in exacting detail, so that modern readers can experience the same images that sparked Britain’s, and indeed Europe’s, taste in classical style and inspired reproductions from pottery manufacturers such as Wedgwood.

The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, or Dresden State Art Collections, comprise the oldest, second-largest group of museums inGermany. The eleven museums united under this umbrella organization are among the most famous in the world, and they contain a wealth of unique art treasures that span a variety of themes and epochs, attracting visitors from around the globe. Augustus the Strong and his son, Augustus III - both electors of Saxony and kings of Poland during the eighteenth century - were extraordinary connoisseurs of the arts, and their enthusiastic patronage had a lasting impact on the development of the collections which today are exhibited in world-famous buildings, such as the Zwinger, the Rezidenz, and the Albertinum.

The year 2010 marks the 450th anniversary of the Dresden State Art Collections, and visitors are invited to travel through time - from the days of antiquity to the present. This opulent volume features numerous illustrations of very special highlights from the individual collections and the historical buildings that house them.

This provocative book brings back to life 40 wonders of the art world that will never be seen again.

Spanning centuries and encompassing a variety of masterpieces — from paintings on canvas and cave walls to structures and jewelry — this fascinating compendium of »lost art« takes readers on a historic journey and explores how and why art can disappear from our lives. Some works are simply missing, such as da Vinci’s "Leda and the Swan" or the Romanov jewels. Others were intentionally transformed, such as Robert Smithson’s "Spiral Jetty", or destroyed, like the Buddhas of Bamyan. Some pieces are hidden away, such as the paintings at Lascaux or frescoes from the Pompeiian house of Marcus Lucretius. Others were stolen, including a Stradivarius violin, Jackson Pollock’s "Springs Winter", and Caravaggio’s "Nativity".

However they disappeared from view, these works represent significant gaps in art history. Fortunately for us, many exact replicas or studies for these pieces exist, while others were photographed before their destruction. Working with the latest research and documentation, author Céline Delavaux brings each lost piece back to life through illuminating text and helpful illustrations. Assembled together in this elaborate and informative volume, these works comprise their own unique "museum" — a place readers will be certain to visit again and again.

This Royal Collection contains one of the finest and most varied collections of Old Master paintings in the world. In this major new catalogue Sir Christopher White presents 147 works by a number of Flemish artists who were active principally in the seventeenth century. No catalogue of this area of the Collection has until now been available. The catalogue opens with a detailed account of the growth of the collection from the early Stuarts to the reign of Queen Victoria. Particular attention is given to Charles I's close relations with Rubens, and since later members of the royal family also made important acquisitions, the full range of Rubens' practice is covered by the catalogue: there are works entirely by his hand as well as works carried out with known collaborators or with the help of his studio.An outstandingly good group of genre paintings by David Teniers the Younger many acquired by George IV is examined and illustrated, and paintings by Jan Brueghel, Gonzalez Coques, Frans Francken, Frans Snyders, Karl Philips Spierincks and Jan Wildens round out the collection.

The loggia, or colonnaded porch, on the second story of the Apostolic Palace is one of the Vatican’s most remarkable art treasures; its decoration, designed by Raphael (1483-1520) and executed by his workshop in 1517-19, epitomizes the spirit of the Italian Renaissance in its synthesis of Christian and classical themes. The thirteen square vaults of Raphael’s loggia each contain four frescoes of scenes from the Bible, from the Creation to the Last Supper. Meanwhile, the plasterwork of the other architectural elements is decorated with “grotesques” - fanciful arabesques enlivened with a wide variety of human and animal figures - modeled after ancient Roman wall paintings.

This groundbreaking study of Raphael’s loggia, the first to be published in English, has four parts. The first and second concern the grotesques and the scenes from the Bible, respectively, while the third examines the lives and artistic styles of the members of Raphael’s workshop who worked with him on the loggia. The fourth part traces the loggia’s enduring influence: the grotesque ornamental style elaborated by Raphael has been imitated as far afield as the corridors of the United States Capitol, and the Bible scenes served as influential models for popular prints. Illustrated throughout with newly commissioned color photographs, this book reaffirms the central importance of Raphael’s loggia to the history of art.

• The ideal present for art lovers! Nudity, sensuality and sexuality in the Louvre paintings translated into a fantastic and surprising photographic concept
• The alluring design of the book stems from the wish to create a box suggestive of some artistic secret; covered in black silk, with a ribbon recalling lingerie, it reveals on opening a silky burgundy interior, reminiscent of a boudoir, in which the book is softly resting
• Volume 1 of the Le Louvre Nu/The Louvre Nude series, dealing with the naked body in paintings
• This book won the Golden Pixel Award, the prestigious Austrian award for groundbreaking print products, in the category coffee-table books

The idea for this book was born in the course of a visit through the Louvre, when Catherine Belanger ventured to call the Louvre 'the biggest brothel in the world'. Jointly with author Jean Galard and photographer Lois Lammerhuber, she selected key paintings spanning five centuries to illustrate the fascinating art of depicting nudity and the artists' struggle for acceptance of the nude in art and society. Lois Lammerhuber detaches the nudity, sensuality and sexuality of the paintings from the context of their artistic intention, conceiving them as 'material' in a fictional photography studio and recreating them in his photographs. He resorts to these 'models' to translate them into the language of fashion, nude and advertising photography, reading their body language and interaction in a way reminiscent of artists like Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Horst P. Horst or Herb Ritts - sensual and unexpected.

• One of the best and most important collections of sculpture in the biggest and most famous museum in the world, an exceptional photographic interpretation in 162 sensational pictures, a tribute to sensuality in art
• The ideal gift book for art lovers, a sophisticated and surprising approach to nudity and sensuality in major sculptures of the Louvre
• The sophisticated design of the book, reminiscent of bronze and referring to the haptic character of sculpture, makes the book itself a sculptural work of art
• Volume 2 of the Le Louvre Nu/The Louvre Nude series, dedicated to the naked body in sculpture

The idea for this book was born in the course of a stroll through the Louvre, when Catherine Belanger ventured to call the Louvre 'the biggest brothel in the world'. Key works illustrate the artistic approach and the representation of the nude in the Western world from the 7th century BC to 1897.

Lois Lammerhuber detaches the nudity, sensuality and sexuality of the sculptures from the context of their artistic intention, conceiving them as 'material' in a fictional photography studio and recreating them in his photographs. He resorts to these 'models' to translate them into the language of fashion, nude and advertising photography - sensual and unexpected. The images are accompanied by Jean Galard's reflections on this approach from an art-historical and philosophical angle. In its design the book is reminiscent of bronze and refers to the haptic character of sculpture.

When the Museo del Prado opened to the public on 19 November 1819, a special pass was required to visit the three rooms crammed with over 200 art works. Today, this extraordinary museum, which houses ten times more paintings than it did initially, can be visited from the comfort of your home thanks to this volume, full of masterpieces and details that highlight the often overlooked aspects of the works. Spanish painting features above all El Greco, Velázquez and Goya, as well as Flemish and Dutch painting by Van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Rubens and Van Dyck and the Italian art of Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Tiepolo, Canaletto, Guardi. An index of names and biographies of the main artists conclude the volume.

683 illustrations in colour with 1070 objects, 407 signatures reproduced.

Netsuke, the Japanese male belt ornaments of outstanding craftsmanship, aroused much interest in the Western world already in the late 19th century. They appeal by their variety of shapes and the sheer endless number of motifs and still continue to fascinate a wide audience; they have become coveted collectors’ items worldwide, as the most recent auction results emphatically show.

The attraction of netsuke lies in the expressive power achieved within a small space and the masterly execution in the most varied materials, such as wood, ivory and horn. The subjects illustrate almost all aspects of Japanese culture: Buddhist figures, gods of good luck, animals, plants, fruit and flowers, literary characters, foreigners, children, masks and occupations, down to the prosaic paraphernalia of everyday life. One of the world’s most comprehensive netsuke collections is the Werdelmann Collection at the museum kunst palast Düsseldorf with its almost 1100 objects, the result of more than thirty-five years of committed collecting. The exhibition presents a unique survey of this art form from the 17th to the 20th century.

 All 1070 objects are reproduced in brilliant colour photographs and described according to the most recent scholarly research. An extensive list of signatures with commentary rounds off the publication. Patrizia Jirka-Schmitz, an acknowledged authority on netsuke, has been responsible for the scholarly evaluation and interpretation of the collection. Highly knowledgeable about the stylistic history of netsuke and its artists and regional characteristics, she has produced an important work of reference.
Ideally supplementing our successful book on the Trumpf Collection of netsuke at the Lindenmuseum in Stuttgart, the present publication is bound to prove a sought-after new reference book for collectors, connoisseurs and aficionados of netsuke.