Разные книги об искусстве

Spectacular Specimens. Albertus Seba’s unrivaled catalog of animals, insects and plants

Exotic plants, corals and crocodiles, birds and butterflies. Albertus Seba’s extraordinary catalog of natural specimens is not only one of the 18th century’s greatest natural history achievements, but also one of the most prized natural history books of all time. It is a beautiful tribute to the breadth and the detail of creatures great and small, as well as to some now-extinct animals.

The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is one of the 18th century’s greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time. Though scientists of his era often collected natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Albertus Seba (1665–1736) was unrivaled in his passion. His amazing collection of animals, plants and insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime.

In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned careful and often scenic illustrations of every specimen. With these meticulous drawings, he arranged for the publication of a four-volume catalog, covering the entire collection from strange and exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, birds, and butterflies, as well as now extinct creatures.

This reproduction is taken from a rare, hand-colored original. The introduction supplies background information about the fascinating tradition of natural collections to which Seba’s curiosities belonged.

The authors:

Irmgard Müsch, born in 1967, studied art history, history, and classical archaeology in Mainz and Berlin. Her PhD thesis from 1999 examines Johann Jakob Scheuchzer’s Kupfer-Bibel, a richly illustrated scientific commentary on the Bible from the early 18th century. She has published on art of the 18th and 20th centuries, scientific illustrations, and Kunstkammer pieces.

Jes Rust, born 1963, completed his studies in geology, paleontology, and zoology at Göttingen and Kiel. His thesis dealt with the evolution of fossil snails living in the fresh and brackish waters of prehistoric Greece. His assistantship at the Institute of Zoology in Göttingen between 1993 and 1999 was followed by his appointment in 2001 as professor of invertebrate paleontology and insect phylogeny at the University of Bonn.

Rainer Willmann holds a chair in zoology at Göttingen University, is director of its Zoological Museum, and is cofounder of its Centre for Biodiversity and Ecology Research. A specialist in phylogenetics and evolution, he conducts research into biodiversity and its history.

About the series:

Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!

Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together more than 100 of our all-time favourite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.

Bookworm’s delight — never bore, always excite!

Curious Creatures. Albertus Seba’s unrivaled catalog of animals, insects, and “freaks of nature”

The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is one of the 18th century’s greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time. Though scientists of his era often collected natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Albertus Seba (1665–1736) was unrivaled in his passion. His amazing collection of animals, plants, and insects from all around the world earned him international fame.

In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned careful and often scenic illustrations of every specimen. With these meticulous drawings, he arranged for the publication of a four-volume catalog, covering the entire collection from strange and exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, birds, and butterflies, as well as creatures that are now extinct.

Taken from a rare hand-colored original, the best-selling collection features an introduction that contextualizes the fascinating tradition of natural collections to which Seba’s curiosities belonged.

The authors:

Irmgard Müsch, born in 1967, studied art history, history, and classical archaeology in Mainz and Berlin. Her PhD thesis from 1999 examines Johann Jakob Scheuchzer’s Kupfer-Bibel, a richly illustrated scientific commentary on the Bible from the early 18th century. She has published on art of the 18th and 20th centuries, scientific illustrations, and Kunstkammer pieces.

Jes Rust, born 1963, completed his studies in geology, paleontology, and zoology at Göttingen and Kiel. His thesis dealt with the evolution of fossil snails living in the fresh and brackish waters of prehistoric Greece. His assistantship at the Institute of Zoology in Göttingen between 1993 and 1999 was followed by his appointment in 2001 as professor of invertebrate paleontology and insect phylogeny at the University of Bonn.

Rainer Willmann holds a chair in zoology at Göttingen University, is director of its Zoological Museum, and is cofounder of its Centre for Biodiversity and Ecology Research. A specialist in phylogenetics and evolution, he conducts research into biodiversity and its history.

Daring sexual humor from the irreverent magazine Sex to Sexty

Some call it the most vulgar magazine ever made; others see it as the last honest compendium of American sexual humor, starting just as the sexual revolution was expanding minds and stomping taboos, and ending when political correctness made all such humor socially unacceptable. Whatever your stance, the magazine Sex to Sexty was and is an outrageous collection of dirty jokes and cartoons published from 1965 to 1983 by Texas entrepreneur John Newbern, whose life was lifted straight from the pages of his publication. His partner in crime against good taste was hillbilly artist Pierre Davis, who created elaborate oil painted covers for each issue that celebrate every permutation of manly humor. No topic was safe from the lowbrow wit of these two men and the cartoonists they recruited to preserve what they called the "True Jokelore of America".

Sex to Sexty reproduces all 198 covers of the magazine and many of the original paintings that adorned them. Then, in the first in-depth analysis of American sexual humor, author and editor Dian Hanson categorizes the great themes revealed by the thousands of cartoons and jokes into spreads with titles like "Stinkfinger," "Incest on the Best," "Cannibal Cuisine," and "I Love Ewe!" Raw, irreverent, uncensored and all-American, Sex to Sexty spares no gender, sexual preference, ethnic orientation, or hygienic dysfunction in bringing you what the magazine's original publisher called the "World's Largest Accumulation of He-Man Robust Humor in the World." Special fold-out dust jacket shows every cover image and unfolds to reveal a poster of a never before seen, unreleased Sex to Sexty cover originally deemed "too tasteless" by the magazine's publisher, but definitely "suitable for framing in your bar, rumpus room or bathroom".

Michael Wesely caught attention with his Open Shutter project documenting the New York MoMA renovation with exposure times of up to two years. For his flower Still Lifes 7-day exposures sufficed to invoke the transitoriness of all flesh in pictures that seem to live a life of their own.

Graffiti art is constantly changing. Fresh coats of paint and newly pasted posters appear overnight in cities across the world. New artists, new ideas and new tactics displace faded images in a perpetual process of renewal and metamorphosis. From Stockholm to Tokyo, Barcelona to Los Angeles, Melbourne to Milan, wall spaces are a breeding ground for graphic and typographic forms as artists unleash their daily creations.

Using new materials and techniques, its innovators are creating an original language of forms and images infused with contemporary graphic design and illustration. Fluent in branding and graphic imagery, they have been replacing tags with more personal logos and shifting from typographic to iconographic forms of communication. Subverted signs, spontaneous drawings, powerful symbols and curious characters represent an unstoppable worldwide outdoor gallery of free art.

Street Logos is an international celebration of these developments in 21st-century graffiti, an essential sourcebook for all art and design professionals and a delight to everyone excited by the vitality of the street.

The experimental art of Olafur Eliasson

Studio Olafur Eliasson is an experimental laboratory located in Berlin. Led by renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, it functions as an interdisciplinary space, generating fresh dialogues between art and its surroundings.

This rich sourcebook enables the reader to delve into the corners and crevices of the Studio’s diverse projects. The key concepts behind the works are presented alphabetically, and unfold in the course of short conversations with the artist.

The majority of Eliasson’s thought-provoking installations, photographs, sculptures, and architectural projects to date is included, with additional material focusing on the research processes at Studio Olafur Eliasson. The introduction is provided by the noted art historian Philip Ursprung, who also participates in the conversations.

Covering the 1920s to the 1960s, this book brings together vintage ads, postcards, brochures, and photographs as well as period "Top 10" lists covering surf superstars, songs, and surfing spots. If you`ve ever found yourself waxing nostalgic for bygone beach culture, this is the book for you.

For 'Tales of the Brothers Grimm' thirty-six celebrated and lesserknown of the unsanitized fairy tales collected by the illustrious brothers were carefully chosen by artist Natalie Frank, re-interpret- ed in seventy-five gouache and chalk pastel drawings, and cast in a Surrealist dreamscape. This will be the largest collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales ever illustrated by a fine artist. Frank’s irreverent palette, sophisticated use of color, and inventive depiction of these dark, far from storybook narratives, capture the original stories with a contemporary and unflinching eye. Each of the tales opens with a handdrawn title page, is framed by a unique border, and small drawings punctuate each story, all in the tradition of classic fairy tale editions.

The foremost Grimm scholar, Jack Zipes, introduces the book and contextualizes these stories and drawings within a history of the Brothers Grimm, its illustrations, and the tradition of the fairy tale. A complex and unique world of the imagination emerges from the pairing of these tales with Frank’s drawings, assembled by the celebrated designer, Marian Bantjes. Additional texts include a conversation between the artist and director Julie Taymor, as well as essays by Feminist art historian Linda Nochlin and curator Claire Gilman. This book marks Frank’s exhibitions of drawings based on the Brothers Grimm at The Drawing Center, New York, and Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, in 2015.

The tango is not a dance but an obsession. Erotic and passionate, haunting and melancholy, it involves not only the body but also the soul.

How did a dance born in the slums of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires remain spectacularly alive for more than a hundred years to become an international cult? Tango! tells the rags-to-riches story of this extraordinary dance, drawing on the expertise of four well-known tango authorities.

• Simon Collier traces the tango’s roots in Buenos Aires and discusses its earliest dancers and musicians.
• Artemis Cooper recounts the astonishing upsurge of tangomania in Europe and North America before the First World War.
• The Golden Age of the tango in Argentina, from 1920 to 1950, is covered by Maria Susana Azzi.
• Richard Martin tackles the question of the tango and machismo, and discusses the immensely popular tango shows of recent years.

Illustrated with more than 250 photographs and including the sensational colour photography of Ken Haas, this book will delight tango enthusiasts, students of dance and all those who are fascinated by this seemingly unstoppable phenomenon.

Divine Decks. A visual history of Tarot

To explore the Tarot is to explore ourselves, to be reminded of the universality of our longing for meaning, for purpose and for a connection to the divine. This 600-year-old tradition reflects not only a history of seekers, but our journey of artistic expression and the ways we communicate our collective human story.

For many in the West, Tarot exists in the shadow place of our cultural consciousness, a metaphysical tradition assigned to the dusty glass cabinets of the arcane. Its history, long and obscure, has been passed down through secret writing, oral tradition, and the scholarly tomes of philosophers and sages. Hundreds of years and hundreds of creative hands — mystics and artists often working in collaboration—have transformed what was essentially a parlor game into a source of divination and system of self-exploration, as each new generation has sought to evolve the form and reinterpret the medium.

Author Jessica Hundley traces this fascinating history in Tarot, the debut volume in TASCHEN’s Library of Esoterica series. The book explores the symbolic meaning behind more than 500 cards and works of original art, two thirds of which have never been published outside of the decks themselves. It's the first ever visual compendium of its kind, spanning from Medieval to modern, and artfully arranged according to the sequencing of the 78 cards of the Major and Minor Arcana. It explores the powerful influence of Tarot as muse to artists like Salvador Dalí and Niki de Saint Phalle and includes the decks of nearly 100 diverse contemporary artists from around the world, all of whom have embraced the medium for its capacity to push cultural identity forward. Rounding out the volume are excerpts from thinkers such as Éliphas Lévi, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell; a foreword by artist Penny Slinger; a guide to reading the cards by Johannes Fiebig; and an essay on oracle decks by Marcella Kroll.

The editor and author:

Jessica Hundley is an author, filmmaker and journalist. She has written for the likes of Vogue, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times, and has authored books on artists including Dennis Hopper, David Lynch, and Gram Parsons. Hundley often explores the counterculture in her work, with a focus on metaphysics, psychedelia, and magic.

The designer:

Thunderwing is a Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary studio co-founded in 2007 by Nic & J. B. Taylor. Collaborating on a diverse array of projects, Thunderwing creates branding and design for film, publishing, fashion, food, music, and interior design.

The contributing authors

Johannes Fiebig, born in Cologne in 1953, is one of the most successful authors on Tarot and a leading expert of the psychological interpretation of symbols and oracles. His main field of interest focuses on the use of Tarot and other symbolic languages as humanistic, psychological tools.

Marcella Kroll is an artist, tarot reader, metaphysical teacher, and host of the podcast Saved by the Spell. She is a program director for the Los Angeles Public Library, leading public classes for teens on Tarot and other divination subjects, and is the creator of two popular oracle decks.

This specially designed card box with sliding tray contains 25 greeting cards and envelopes.

This specially designed card box with sliding tray contains artwork from Phaidon’s hugely successful iconic best-seller, The Art Book: New Edition. 

On the front of each card is an image from The Art Book; on the back the accompanying text from the book gives information both about the work of art and its creator (each of the greeting cards is blank inside). 

Blue selection includes works by Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Brancusi, Carracci, Chagall, Derain, Gauguin, Hopper, Ingres, Klee, La Tour, Marc, Millet, Miro, Monet, Nauman, Oldenburg, Pontormo, Rego and Rossetti among others. 

Red selection includes works by Alma Tadema, Audubon, Basquiat, Bonnard, Caravaggio, Degas, Van Eyck, Gilbert and George, Goya, Heron, Klimt, Morisot, Pisarro, Richter, Seurat, Thiebaud, Tissot, Turner and Waterhouse among others. 

A perfect gift for every occasion, The Art Box allows you to share your favourite artworks with friends and family. 

This specially designed card box with sliding tray contains 25 greeting cards and envelopes.

This specially designed card box with sliding tray contains artwork from Phaidon’s hugely successful iconic best-seller, The Art Book: New Edition. 

On the front of each card is an image from The Art Book; on the back the accompanying text from the book gives information both about the work of art and its creator (each of the greeting cards is blank inside). 

Blue selection includes works by Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Brancusi, Carracci, Chagall, Derain, Gauguin, Hopper, Ingres, Klee, La Tour, Marc, Millet, Miro, Monet, Nauman, Oldenburg, Pontormo, Rego and Rossetti among others. 

Red selection includes works by Alma Tadema, Audubon, Basquiat, Bonnard, Caravaggio, Degas, Van Eyck, Gilbert and George, Goya, Heron, Klimt, Morisot, Pisarro, Richter, Seurat, Thiebaud, Tissot, Turner and Waterhouse among others. 

A perfect gift for every occasion, The Art Box allows you to share your favourite artworks with friends and family. 

Piet Mondrian or Andy Warhol – Damien Hirst or Banksy – whose artworks have been the most influential? The most shocking? The most expensive? How about their versatility or critical reception? These playing cards allow art lovers of all ages to play their favourite artists against each other to discover who rules the art world.

About the authors:

James Cahill is an art writer based in London, who contributes to Elephant, Apollo, The Burlington Magazine and frieze. He is researching a PhD on classical mythology in contemporary visual art.
Mikkel Sommer was born in 1987 and grew up in Copenhagen. He started freelancing in 2009, working in illustration, design for animation and comic books. He lives in Berlin with his wife and daughter.

Carefully curated and beautifully packaged erotic art through the ages – 170 works from the world's most important artists

This carefully curated and beautifully packaged book spotlights nearly 170 works from the world's most important artists, including Titian, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Lucian Freud, Louise Bourgeois, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter, Cecily Brown, Anselm Kiefer, George Condo, and Anish Kapoor.

With its chronological organization, The Art of the Erotic provides insights into human sexuality throughout the ages.

About the Author:

Rowan Pelling is a journalist, broadcaster and commentator on the arts. She has just launched a new middle-shelf magazine, The Amorist, intended for devotees of love and passion. She first rose to prominence as the editor of the monthly literary/erotic magazine, Erotic Review, and has written for a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Independent on Sunday, Daily Mail, GQ and The Spectator. Pelling lives in Cambridge, England.

Let there be light. Medieval bible manuscripts in impeccable reproduction

In the beginning, was the word, and in the Middle Ages were kings, princes, and high-ranking religious members whose wealth and influence produced illustrated bibles of extraordinary craftsmanship.

This Bibliotheca Universalis edition brings together 50 of the finest medieval bible manuscripts from the Austrian National Library. With examples from every epoch of the Middle Ages, the collection explores visualizations of the bible in various theological and historical contexts. In impeccable reproduction quality, these stunning images may be appreciated as much as art historical treasures as they are important religious artefacts.

Texts by Andreas Fingernagel, Stephan Füssel, Christian Gastgeber, and a team of 15 scientific authors describe each manuscript in detail, exploring both the evolution of the Bible and the medieval understanding of history. A glossary of important terms is also included so that those not versed in bible history can enjoy the texts as well.

About the series:

Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!

Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, the name TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together nearly 100 of our all-time favourite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisiac.

Bookworm’s delight — never bore, always excite!