Сборники работ по искусству

Master of the sublime. The essential Impressionist

No other artist, apart from J.M.W. Turner, tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840–1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cézanne called “only an eye, but my God what an eye!” who stayed true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting directly from the object.

It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of colour. Whether it was through his early interest in Japanese prints, his time as a conscript in the dazzling light of Algeria, or his personal acquaintance with the major painters of the late 19th century, the work Monet produced throughout his long life would change forever the way we perceive both the natural world and its attendant phenomena. The high point of his explorations was the late series of waterlilies, painted in his own garden at Giverny, which, in their approach toward almost total formlessness, are really the origin of abstract art.

This biography does full justice to this most remarkable and profoundly influential artist and offers numerous reproductions and archive photos alongside a detailed and insightful commentary.

The author:

Daniel Wildenstein (1917-2001) was an art historian and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts (Paris). From 1939 onwards, he was Director of the Wildenstein Galleries of New York, London and Tokyo. He edited several international journals, e.g. the magazine Arts from 1956-1962 and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts after 1963. He co-founded the Foundation Wildenstein in 1970 (it was renamed the Wildenstein Institute in 1984), and was a prime mover in many exhibitions of international repute. Daniel Wildenstein also edited the catalogues raisonnés of various 18th, 19th and 20th-century artists. He was a world authority on Impressionism and published catalogues of the works of Gauguin, Manet and Monet.

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!

Mighty Morris. The arts and crafts power of designer William Morris

William Morris was a polymath designer, writer, artist, and socialist activist, associated with England’s Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as well as Arts and Crafts movement. His prolific design work included tiles, embroidery, tapestries, wallpaper, and carpets and championed handcraftsmanship, natural dyes, “art for all”, and beautiful patterns of subtly stylized natural forms.

William Morris (1834–1896) was one of the greatest creative figures of the 19th century. As a visionary designer, as well as a manufacturer, writer, artist, and socialist activist, he pioneered the Arts and Crafts movement of the Victorian era, and left an extraordinary influence on architecture, textile, and interior design.

This richly illustrated book offers a suitably beautiful introduction to Morris’s colourful life and all aspects of his design work, including interiors, tiles, embroidery, tapestries, carpets, and calligraphy. Though best known in his lifetime as a poet and author, it is these exquisite designs that secured Morris’s posthumous reputation. As page after page dazzles with their beautiful patterns and forms, we explore the pioneering craftsmanship and natural motifs that inspired them, as well as Morris’s remarkable cultural legacy, through British textiles, Bauhaus, and even modern environmentalism.

The authors:

Charlotte & Peter Fiell have written numerous TASCHEN books, including 1000 Chairs, Design of the 20th Century, Industrial Design A–Z, Scandinavian Design, Designing the 21st Century, Graphic Design for the 21st Century, 1000 Lights, and Contemporary Graphic Design. They have also edited TASCHEN’s Decorative Art series and the 12-volume Domus 1928–1999.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Architecture series features:

- an introduction to the life and work of the architect 
- the major works in chronological order
- information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions
- a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings
- approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts, and plans)

All about the Belle Époque. Delicate illustration that defined an era

Alphonse Mucha gave the Belle Époque its visual character. His work permeated illustration and advertising of the day, most famously in striking posters of star actress Sarah Bernhardt. Compiled in association with the Mucha Foundation, this book introduces the full reach of his work, from patterned decoration to his political ideas.

With his instantly recognizable decorative style, Czech artist and Art Nouveau master Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939) defined the look of the fin-de-siècle. In evocative shades of peach, gold, ochre, and olive, his seductive compositions of patterns, flowers, and beautiful women became paradigms of the Belle Époque years.

Mucha’s work permeated illustration, posters, postcards, and the advertising designs of his day. His striking posters of star actress Sarah Bernhardt were particularly famous. Alongside this delicate decorative work, Mucha also harbored strongly felt political ideas. With his monumental cycle The Slav Epic, he expressed his staunch support for Pan-Slavism, promoting the political independence of the Czech and Slavic nations from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Compiled in association with the Mucha Foundation, this book presents key works and introduces the full reach of Mucha’s œuvre from patterned decoration to his book illustrations, posters, photographs and monumental paintings.

The author:

Tomoko Sato studied History of Art and Architecture at the University of Reading, and Museology at the University of Manchester. Formerly Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, she has been Curator of the Mucha Foundation since 2007. She has curated numerous exhibitions on Alphonse Mucha as well as on modern art, design, and photography.

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

The Scream of self-liberation. Paintings by one of Expressionism's pioneers

For Edvard Munch (1863-1944), painting was an act of self-liberation. His treatments of fear, desperation, and death still exert a powerful visual and psychological effect on modern viewers. Of all Munch’s paintings, "The Scream" (1893), representing a figure tortured by horror, is the most well-known-and certainly one of the most expressive.

The artist reflected his innermost feelings in his work: "In reality, my art is a free confession, an attempt to clarify to myself my own relation to life..." Although Edvard Munch cannot be clearly identified with any single movement, he is deemed a pioneer of Expressionism.

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

Psychodrama. The reverberating power of an Expressionist icon

Take in the dark, compelling visions of Edvard Munch, artist of lurid colors, strange distortions, and a haunting Mona Lisa for modernity: The Scream. This essential introduction surveys Munch’s staggering capacity for psychodrama and the echo of his artistic wail through the work of Andy Warhol, Martin Kippenberger, Tracey Emin, Marlene Dumas, and beyond.

A hairless, ghostly figure on a bridge. The sky orange-red above him. His hands raised to his ears, his mouth wide in a haunting wail. In painting The Scream, Edvard Munch (1863–1944) created Mona Lisa for our times. The shriek of his iconic figure reverberates around the world, its echo resounding in the work of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Martin Kippenberger, Marlene Dumas, and Tracey Emin.

This introductory book surveys Munch’s staggering capacity for psychodrama in The Scream and beyond. With rich illustration, it looks at the lurid, dark, and deeply modern visions that made up the artist’s response to relationships and emotions. These compelling images, regarded by the artist himself as a means of “free confession,” remain as magnetic today as they were on the brink of modernism.

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

Known primarily as a great painter, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) was also one of the best draftsmen of the 17th century. Although his devotional paintings seem to have been created effortlessly, they are the result of careful thought and study, a process that comes alive in the preparatory drawings. Murillo used a variety of techniques, favoring pen and ink and brown wash and red-and-black chalk. Like painters schooled in Italian Renaissance practice, the Spaniard developed his paintings in stages, starting with sketches of the full composition and then focusing on details that posed specific problems. Occasionally, Murillo used drawings as a medium for original compositions; these are highly finished pieces, usually enhanced by the use of wash and unmistakably stamped with the artist's personality.

This sumptuous book is a thoroughly revised edition of the 1976 publication Murillo & His Drawings. Twenty sheets have been added to the catalogue of authentic works, the bibliography has been brought up to date, and the entries have been revised.

150 color illustrations

The rediscovery of one of the most important painters of the Russian avant-garde, in the first comprehensive presentation.

Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962) left behind an extensive, diverse body of work. Starting out as a painter inspired by the folklore and art of her country, she produced colorful, strongly ornamental paintings. Her religious paintings based on icons were highly controversial. During her Moscow period, she began to work with cubism, giving the Russian avant-garde a significant push toward linking the traditional and the modern. Reading her letters and notes, one becomes aware of this non-conformist’s frequently biting, ironic tone.

In 1917 she settled in Paris permanently. There, she designed costumes and sets for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In exile, however, the artist fell on hard times.

This publication illuminates the details of Goncharova’s life and work, and finally acknowledges the importance of this unconventional artist’s oeuvre, which, to this day, has not yet been properly recognized in her own country

Nigel Henderson (1917–1985) has languished in relative obscurity since the mid-1950s. This is the first monograph on a pivotal artist, whose influence on British art in the 1950s and 1960s was immense.

This superbly illustrated volume provides an in-depth account of the artist’s extraordinary life and work, which included close friendships with a number of the Bloomsbury circle (he married Virginia Woolf’s niece) as well as such literary figures as Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, Bertolt Brecht and W. H. Auden.

Adopted by Peggy Guggenheim in the mid-1930s, Henderson also benefited from friendships with a number of key French Surrealists, such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Hans Arp and, later, Fernand Léger, Alberto Giacometti and Jean Dubuffet. Following the war, these friendships and their impact on his work would mark Henderson out from the younger artists with whom he was mixing, among them Eduardo Paolozzi, Francis Bacon, William Turnbull, Richard Hamilton, and architects Colin St. John Wilson and Alison and Peter Smithson, all of whom felt stifled by the post-war British art establishment.

Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art presents a comprehensive selection of Henderson’s work, including his documentary photographs of the East End (which had a significant impact on contemporary urban planning and architecture), and his experimental work with the photographic medium, collage and design. Many of the images are published here for the first time.

150 full-colour illustrations and includes 8-limited edition prints

Originally published by Abrams in 1977, Norman Rockwell's Christmas Book is a holiday classic that has remained a bestselling family treasure for over 30 years. With over 85 images from Norman Rockwell's archive of art, this fully redesigned edition brings a fresh, contemporary appeal to the original vintage volume.

This holiday favourite features timeless art, including images of children sleigh-riding, families carolling, and Santa preparing for his big night, in addition to 15 new images culled from Rockwell's extensive archive and eight ready-to-frame limited-edition prints. Alongside these lush illustrations are Christmas poems and stories from beloved writers such as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Hans Christian Andersen, and Lewis Carroll; as well as Christmas carol music and lyrics and Christmas dinner recipes from Fannie Merritt Farmer's 1896 cooking tome. Norman Rockwell's Christmas Book is the perfect present under the tree for Rockwell fans young and old.

About the Author:

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) was a 20th-century American painter known for his illustrations of everyday life. His most famous images were created for the Saturday Evening Post magazine including Rosie the Riveter, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. The Norman Rockwell Museum holds over 574 original paintings and drawings of the artist and is located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where Norman Rockwell spent the last 25 years of his life.

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

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 1889, Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) organized the independent L’Exposition de Peintures du Groupe Impressionniste et Synthésiste at Café Volpini with his followers on the occasion of the Paris World’s Fair. The French artist presented an extraordinary portfolio of prints in this framework for the first time: the so-called Suite Volpini, an ensemble of eleven lithographs printed on radiant yellow paper.

The publication examines the year 1889 as a defining moment in Gauguin’s development in which his autonomous, revolutionary new painting style and the central motifs of his work were unmistakably formed. It reconstructs the Volpini exhibition in the process, demonstrating the radicality of the works produced by Gauguin’s artistic circle. The Suite Volpini – for Gauguin a visual résumé that was intended to advertize his role as the founder of a new style – will be comprehensively described and seen in the context of the artist’s related paintings, woodcuts, ceramics, prints, and drawings.

A comprehensive, illustrative monograph on the life and work of Paul Klee
All of the masterpieces in one volume

Paul Klee (1879–1940) is one of the most important representatives of modern art. His oeuvre is as universal as it is individual, standing tall among all of the currents and “isms” of his day. His overwhelming body of paintings, drawings, and other visual works; his letters, journal entries, and, last but not least, his teaching notes form the background for this pointed depiction of the life and work of the meditative artist and visual thinker.
This richly illustrated volume traces Klee’s eventful biography, ranging from his artistic beginnings with caricature-like drawings and nudes, his encounter with the avant-garde and the famous watercolors from his journey to Tunisia, the abstract color compositions from the Bauhaus era, to the mysterious, inventive images of his last years in Bern.

Art critic and scholar Philippe Dagen approaches Picasso as a subject through a series of questions. What does it mean to be an artist in the twentieth century? What does it mean to be an artist in the time of newspapers and museums, in a time when the art market has expanded to reach the entire western world? Is modern civilization so different that it gives an artist a new attitude and causes him to redefine his role for the public, the market, and, therefore, to invent entirely new artistic practices?

Picasso is considered here in view of this last, and most probable, hypothesis. He is a product of his situation and time, in the broadest sense of the term. Refusing to confine himself to his studio or the small artistic community in Paris, Picasso responded forcefully to world affairs, giving pictorial and sculptural form to the passions and events he witnessed around him. This is a thoroughly modern Picasso, constantly and consciously confronting the modernity of the world.

Dagen's original exploration of his techniques, materials, and images shows how the artist both allowed modernity to infiltrate his work and at the same time to react against it. Picasso moved between acceptance and rejection, a perpetual confrontation that is, perhaps, the most satisfying explanation of his will to create change that drove him to leave the most varied and diverse body of work in the entire history of art.

About the Author:

Philippe Dagen is an art historian, professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, critic for the newspaper Le Monde, curator, and novelist. He has published and contributed to numerous titles on art history, including George Grosz: Berlin-New York, Otto Dix: The War, and Bettina Rheims: Can You Find Happiness.

"I wanted to be a painter, and I became Picasso," declared Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in an apt survey of a triumphant career. He had good grounds for the confidence palpable in his statement, for in the history of 20th-century art, his name stands out over all the others. In Picasso`s paintings, drawings, lithographs, ceramics, and sculptures, he was tirelessly inventive and innovative, exhibiting an aesthetic bravado that kept him one step ahead of his contemporaries. From subject matter to new forms and techniques to new media, Picasso got there first. The Spanish artist's enormous output, from the eight-year-old beginnings to the late work of a man of ninety-one, is surely one of the most diverse and creatively energetic in the whole history of art, and it is no exaggeration to see him as the genius of the century. Carsten-Peter Warncke's study is a thorough review of Picasso's entire oeuvre, from the early Blue and Rose Periods, through the analytic and synthetic cubism and classicist phase all the way up to the art of the old savage Picasso.

Our study of Picasso, the most exhaustive record of his work to date, contains almost 1500 illustrations - from his earliest drawings to the master's very last painting.