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Impossible Illusions. The enigmatic works of M.C. Escher

Long before the first computer-generated 3-D images, M.C. Escher was a master of the third dimension. His impossible geometry and illusions, bordering between the scientific and psychological, are a homage to the possibilities of the human mind. This collection presents the artist’s key graphic works and illustrations in stunning full-page reproductions, complete with detailed explanations of each mathematical problem.

“A woman once rang me up and said, ‘Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print Reptiles, you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.’ I replied, ‘Madame, if that’s the way you see it, so be it.’” A fittingly sly comment from renowned Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898–1972), whose complex and ambiguous drawings continue to leave hasty interpretations far behind.

Long before the first computer-generated 3-D images, Escher was a master of the third dimension. His lithograph Magic Mirror dates as far back as 1946. By taking such a title for the book, mathematician Bruno Ernst stressed the enrapturing spell Escher’s work invariably casts on those who see it. Ernst visited Escher every week for a year, systematically talking through his entire oeuvre with him. Their discussions resulted in a friendship that gave Ernst intimate access to the life and conceptual world of Escher. Ernst’s account was meticulously scrutinized and made accurate by the artist himself.

Escher’s work refuses to be pigeonholed. Scientific, psychological, or aesthetic criteria alone cannot do it justice. The questions remain: Why did he create the pictures? How did he construct them? What preliminary studies were necessary before achieving the final version? And how are his various creations interrelated? This book, complete with biographical data, 250 illustrations, and a thorough breaking-down of each mathematical problem offers answers to these and many other lingering mysteries and is an authentic source text of the first order.

No artist ever worked harder to render the visions of his mind’s eye than M.C. Escher. A superb draughtsman, he set himself the challenge of portraying other-worldly transformations of space within the familiar boundaries set by a sheet of paper. The resulting images have become the favourite artworks of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

This powerfully original artist has long deserved a book that does justice to his visual invention: this is it. Escher’s works are arranged to form a cinematic journey of discovery, brilliantly interweaving his better-known prints with numerous unpublished working drawings and sketches (including 12 full-colour fold-outs), the artist’s eloquent words, and observations by Escher expert J.L. Locher.

As beautiful and rigorous as an Escher work itself, The Magic of M.C. Escher is destined to become the classic study of a great maverick who so memorably linked the world of image-making with geometry and paradox.

Pierre Bonnard was the leader of a group of Post-Impressionist painters who called themselves the Nabis, from the Hebrew word meaning ‘prophet’. Influenced by Odilon Redon and Puvis de Chavannes, as well as by popular imagery and Japanese etchings, this post-impressionist group was, above all, a close circle of friends who shared the same cultural background and interests. Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel and Denis were the most distinguished of the Nabis, but an increasing individualism in their art often threatened the group’s unity, and although tied together by a common philosophy, their work clearly diverged. This publication lets us compare and put into perspective the artists within this fascinating group.

About the author

Albert Kostenevitch is a graduated with a degree in humanities from the University of Irkutsk. He is an art historian attached to the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and a specialist in the Fauves and Nabis period of French painting.

The Northern Renaissance in Europe was a period of rapid social and religious change. This is reflected in much of the art of the period, which is further characterised by a fascinating range of subject-matter, superb technical skill and an interest in capturing likeness with almost psychological precision. The same period also saw a great rise in the importance of works on paper, especially prints. This book discusses works by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein two of the greatest masters of the Northern Renaissance together with a selection of paintings by Lucas Cranach. Encompassing portraiture, religion, mythology and allegory, these works are examined alongside others by such masters as Francois Clouet, Jan Gossaert and Joos van Cleve. Holbeins superlative drawings of members of the court of King Henry VIII can be seen side-by-side with finished paintings and miniatures of the same sitters; and this rich survey also includes illuminated manuscripts and early printed books.

Auguste Rodin has been called the father of modern sculpture and on the centenary of his death this stunning book presents a fresh examination of his legacy.

Exploring the full range of the work of French artist Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), this book also reveals the deep significance of Rodin’s oeuvre to the history of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, which holds one of the finest collections of Rodin sculpture in the United States. The publication contains examples from his early days as a struggling artist to his mature and most successful works, including “The Age of Bronze” (ca. 1875–1877), “Saint John the Baptist Preaching” (1878), “The Burghers of Calais” (1885–1886), and “The Kiss” (ca. 1884). The majority of the bronzes are lifetime casts by the sculptor, making this collection a rare and significant body of Rodin’s output. A related group of plaster models and fragments augment these major pieces, adding to the scope and breadth of this volume. Showcasing beautiful new photography of more than fifty of Rodin’s most iconic artworks alongside an illuminating essay, this book will delight and surprise readers with its novel insights into one of the greatest sculptors in art history.

About the Author:

Martin Chapman is Curator in Charge of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. His publications include Breguet: Art and Innovation in Watchmaking and Cartier and America (both DelMonico Books•Prestel).

“Ward's women reek of glamour and glitz. The opera-length gloves, the diamond earrings that dangle to the shoulders, the stiletto heels, the tight satin dresses, the pronounced cleavage... it's all there. It's the best eye candy money can buy.”  - Eric Krol

Bill Ward`s long, prolific pin-up career began during World War II when he created a curvy distraction named Torchy for his fellow soldiers. His taste for impossibly buxom blondes - teetering on stiletto heels, legs encased in black nylon, torsos packed into satin gowns - precisely suited America`s collective postwar sex fantasy, and the late 50s men`s magazine boom made him the most popular girlie artist in the country. Through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, Ward broadened his range to embrace a variety of fetish subjects, but he never varied from his template of the Ultimate Woman - except to make her breasts a little bigger, her heels a little higher, or the satin and leather encasing her a little glossier.

The art of Bill Ward (1918-1998) has become so rare and collectible that photographer and veteran TASCHEN editor Eric Kroll has had to trawl through archives across America to assemble this broad selection of Ward`s very best work. Drawn from over 600 illustrations and interviews with family, friends, employers, and even some of the women who inspired him, this 344-page, meticulously researched book is the definitive tribute to the great Bill Ward and the perfect companion piece, in size and scope, to TASCHEN`s The Art Of Eric Stanton.

Traces the extraordinary career of one of Scotland`s (and Britain`s) most fascinating and original artist-designers of the twentieth century. This stunning new book is illustrated with nearly 176 illustrations, designs and paintings which demonstrate Mackintosh`s technique, influences and associations.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. Their art’s romanticism, attention to detail and jewel-like colours have ensured their eternal popularity. This beautifully illustrated reference book is packed with exampes of work by the key proponent Millais, and that of his contemporaries, alongside illuminating information. Beginning with an overview of the movement it goes on to discuss the art in the context of society, place, influences, and styles and techniques. An ideal gift for art lovers or those new to the subject.

Turner, Whistler and Monet were all fascinated by the transience of light and how that alone could affect the atmostphere of a painting. They were also highly experimental for their time, rejecting the use of realism in favour of creating the impression of place instead. This is a perfect gift book for any lover of art and co-incides with the Tate exhibition of the same name.

Since the early 1980s Thomas Ruff has explored the photographic medium, the way it is used and the world of contemporary digital visual culture.

This volume contains and comments a seminal selection of 200 photographic works by this important german artist: including images of domestic interiors, portraits, houses and architecture, starry skies, nocturnal urban scenes and nudes, it focuses on the blurring of the distinction between photography and painting today and predominantly on ruff’s more abstract recent works, particularly his relationship with digital imagery and its production, which he began to investigate in the 1990s.

This book, realized on the occasion of a major retrospective that takes place at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, features new essays by the curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, as well as by Daniel Birnbaum and Giorgio Verzotti.
the volume also includes a detailed chronology of the artist’s exhibitions, a bio-bibliographical appendix, a rich anthology including texts on the artist by Wim Beeren, Per Bj. Boym, Boris Von Brauchitsch, Ian Brunskill, Régis Durand, Marc Freidus, Reinhold Happel, Jacques Herzog, Julian Heynen, Michel Houellebecq, Jörg Johnen, Eva Karcher, Valeria Liebermann, Annelie Pohlen, David Rimanelli, Michael Stoeber, and Matthias Winzen, as well as conversations and interviews by Daniel Birnbaum, Max Dax, Stephan Dillemuth, Isabelle Graw and Friederike Wappler.

“Art nègre? I don’t know it.” With this provocative tone, Picasso tried to deny his relationship with art from outside of Europe. However, through hundreds of archival documents and photographs, this volume illustrates how non-European art from Africa, Oceania, the Americas, and Asia was a recurring source of inspiration for the artist.

Side-by-side comparisons illustrate the links between Picasso’s oeuvre and diverse “primitive” arts. In both, we find the same themes ― nudity, sexuality, impulses, death, and more ― along with parallel artistic expressions of those themes ― such as disfiguration or destruction of the body.

The volume is completed with a chronology of the relevant works and photographs of the artist in his studio.

180 Illustrations

Not only does this book offer a studied and insightful look into the works of one of the most technically gifted of the world's painters, but it also invites the reader to discover the bustling world of the Venetian art scene in which Titian lived and worked. Its compelling narrative will please the general public while its unique cross-analysis of the 16th century Venetian painters will interest art specialists and students.
This study of Titian’s life and works relates the contemporary and historical influences of the style and colours that Titian came to master. The author reveals how Titian’s personal life, his relationships with important Venetian painters and influential European political leaders, is inextricably tied to his artistic career, as he defines style through artistic encounters and his powerful friends become his subjects. The calibre of the story and the quality of the images are rarely accompanied by such a competitively moderate price.

The Author
Writer, critic and art historian, Sir Claude Phillips was a Keeper of the Wallace Collection. He started in life as a solicitor and this occupation took him all over the world. During his numerous travels, he visited museums and art collections building up his knowledge of art. He was appointed Keeper of the Wallace Collection and while working there, he wrote on Reynolds and Titian.

Titian is acknowledged as the greatest of the sixteenth-century Venetian painters, best known for his portraits, mythological pictures and religious subjects. Yet his first great achievement as a painter, schooled in the workshop of Giovanni Bellini, was to refashion the portrayal of nature in his own distinctive style by studying the work of Albrecht Durer, whose naturalistic paintings of plants, animals and landscape - for which northern European artists were renowned - had caused a sensation in Venice in the first decade of the sixteenth century.

In this short, beautifully illustrated book, Antonio Mazzotta presents this experience, together with Titian's native landscape of Pievedi Cadore, as crucial influences in the artist's early representation of nature. The recently restored Flight into Egypt (now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) - probably painted when Titian was still a teenager - is vivid proof of his interest in the depiction of animals, plants and figures in the landscape. The author's carefully chosen comparisons of paintings, prints, drawings and details of works by the young Titian, Durer and their contemporaries (including Sebastiano del Piombo and Giorgione) suggest that Titian was as innovative and as influential in his unique view of nature as he was in portraiture.

In 1998, TASCHEN introduced the world to the masterful art of Touko Laaksonen with The Art of Pleasure. Prior to that, Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, enjoyed an intense cult following in the international gay community but was largely unknown to the broader audience. The Art of Pleasure gave Tom well-deserved recognition and increased his following exponentially; Tom of Finland XXL will fix him forever in the realm of fine art.

At 29 cm x 40.5 cm and 666 pages, Tom of Finland XXL contains over 1,000 images, covering six decades of the artist's career. The work was gathered from collections across the US and Europe with the help of the Tom of Finland Foundation, and features many drawings, paintings and sketches never previously reproduced. Other images have only been seen out of context and are presented here in the sequential order Tom intended for full artistic appreciation and erotic impact. This elegant oversized volume showcases the full range of Tom's talent, from sensitive portraits to frank sexual pleasure to tender expressions of love and haunting tributes to young men struck down by AIDS.

Completing this collector's edition are eight specially commissioned essays on Tom's social and personal impact by Camille Paglia, John Waters, Armistead Maupin, Todd Oldham, and others, plus a scholarly analysis of individual drawings by art historian Edward Lucie-Smith. For the man - or woman - who thinks bigger is better, Tom of Finland XXL is certain to satisfy.

The Prince of Pigalle

In pursuit of pleasure in the Belle Époque

Today, the painter and graphic artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) is considered as one of the most inspired portrayers of human figures. This physically handicapped scion of the old French nobility was fascinated by life around Montmartre, whose cafes, cabarets, dance halls, and bordellos presented him with the "theater of life."

More than any other artist, Toulouse-Lautrec captured the Belle Époque’s pursuit of fleeting pleasure: directly and without flattery, his paintings, lithographs, and posters offer a masterly and timeless image of the age.

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