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Selfies with Rembrandt. The complete self-portraiture in an XL collection

Few devotees of the form can approach Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn’s radical contributions to the art of the self-portrait. Challenging the conventions enshrined by his predecessors, Rembrandt transformed self-portraiture into a fully realized medium capable of communicating emotional depth rather than favorably immortalizing one’s likeness in the finest trappings of luxury.

With more than 80 works spanning paintings, etchings, and drawings, the Dutchman’s lifelong practice of self-portraiture functions as a means of concretizing that which is fleeting, be it individual moments of development set against the inexorable passage of time, or the facial contortions of emotion that are gone, without a trace, as swiftly as they arrive. Across the four decades in which they were painted, one constant is particularly striking across media and styles — Rembrandt’s dedication to presenting himself from multiple perspectives, celebrating the multiplicity of the individual and championing the unfiltered portrayal of emotional expression.

Apart from the thematic concerns present within Rembrandt’s suite of self-portraits, the works themselves are rich with technical innovation and experimentation. Glints of light bathe a shoulder while whole swathes of his face blend, obscured, into darkened backdrops. Carved through a wet patina of earth-toned paint with a rough reed pen, unruly curls seem to reflect the light cast down upon them, swirling with boisterous energy befitting the surprise so often plastered across Rembrandt’s face. There is an unmistakable humanity present across the entirety of this oeuvre, each expressive brushstroke and obfuscated feature amounting to an unflinchingly honest characterization of himself, in all his foibles, contrasting states of feeling, and stages of life.

Commemorating the 350th anniversary of the artist’s death, this comprehensive monograph renders all of Rembrandt’s self-portraits in breathtaking XL resolution. From his first experimentations at age twenty-two to his final self-portrait painted a year before his death, this stunning collection stands testament to a life committed to revolutionizing painterly practice both in content and form.

The authors:

Volker Manuth studied art history, philosophy and classical archaeology in Kiel, Bonn, and Berlin. In 1987 he completed his PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin with a thesis on the iconography of Rembrandt’s Old Testament subjects. From 1988 to 1995 he was an assistant and associate Professor at the FU Berlin, and from 1995 to 2003, he held the A. Bader Chair of Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario (Canada). Since 2003, he has been Professor of Art History at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Marieke de Winkel studied art history and classical archaeology at the University of Amsterdam and history of dress at the Courtauld Institute in London. From 1993 to 2003, she was a research assistant with the Rembrandt Research Project. Her PhD thesis at the University of Amsterdam focused on dress in the works of Rembrandt.

Art as we know it today could not exist had not the revolutionary work of the Renaissance artists paved the way. Widely considered the most important and influential movement in the history of fine arts, literature, architecture, and science, the Renaissance marked the emergence of Western civilization from the Middle Ages into the modern era. Beginning in the 14th century in Italy, the movement spread throughout Europe by the late 15th century, the main centers of fine art activity being in Florence, the Low Countries, and Germany. For the first time, art became intellectual; influenced by humanism, artists experimented with secular subjects and revived classical antiquity. Advances in anatomy and geometry produced more realistic depictions in terms of space and perspective for the Italians, while new oil painting techniques made their mark in Flemish painting and woodcuts and engravings were the specialties of the Germans.

Artists featured: Albrecht Altdorfer, Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, Hieronymus Bosch, Sandro Botticelli, Pieter Breughel, Agnolo Bronzino, Vittore Carpaccio, François Clouet, Correggio, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, El Greco, School of Fontainebleau, Piero della Francesca, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Giorgione, Matthias Grünewald, Maerten van Heemskerck, Hans Holbein the Younger, Fra Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Lotto, Andrea Mantegna, Masaccio, Antonello da Messina, Michelangelo, Parmigianino, Pontormo, Raphael, Luca Signorelli, Tintoretto, Titian, Paolo Uccello, Veronese, Leonardo da Vinci

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre Series features:

* a detailed introduction with approximately 35 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, etc.) that took place during the time period
* a selection of the most important works of the epoch; each is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and, on the facing page, a description/interpretation of the work and brief biography of the artist as well as additional information such as a reference work, portrait of the artist, and/or citations

Art as we know it today would not exist without the Renaissance. Widely considered the most influential phenomenon in European art, architecture, literature, and science, the movement revolutionized the Western conception of reality and heralded the emergence of modernity out of the Middle Ages.

The Renaissance first gained momentum in Italy, at the end of the 14th century, spreading across Europe over the course of the next centuries, with dynamic epicenters in Florence, the Low Countries, and Germany. The movement found its intellectual basis in humanism, derived from classical Greek philosophy. Across art, science, literature, and politics, proponents of the Renaissance avowed that man was the “measure of all things” and determined to replace scholastic medieval confines with a revival of antiquity.

Under the influence of humanism, artists advanced anatomy and geometry to reach new feats of figurative accuracy and revolutionize renderings of perspective to reflect the human experience of place in space. In Flemish painting, artists such as Bruegel brought new techniques and an everyday sensibility to landscapes and still lifes while in Germany, Dürer and Cranach pioneered an unprecedented drama and psychology in woodcut and engraving.

From Florence to Nuremberg, Venice to Bruges, this essential introduction in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series provide a dependable foundation to the transformative reach and sweep of the Renaissance era. Through the movement’s famed luminaries and lesser-known proponents, its social and political circumstances, and its diversions and developments over time and geography, we take in an extraordinary phenomenon, transformative centuries of change that proffered individual genius, regional variety, and a wholesale reconfiguration of seeing and representing the world.

Featured artists include: Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, Hieronymus Bosch, Sandro Botticelli, Pieter Brueghel, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, El Greco, Matthias Grünewald, Hans Holbein the Younger, Fra Filippo Lippi, Masaccio, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Raphael, Tintoretto, Titian, Paolo Uccello, Veronese, and Leonardo da Vinci.

About the series:

- Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre series features:
- approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions
- a detailed illustrated introduction plus a timeline of the most important political, cultural, and social events that took place during that period
- a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

It seems that ever since ancient times, the basis for the great success of portraiture as a genre has been that entirely human aspiration to leave a tangible sign of one's life on earth, the desire to immortalise an image of oneself in an attempt to defeat the inevitable passage of time.

This fascinating and complex subject acquired status as an art form during the 15th century as the concept of Humanism became more diffuse and greater importance was given to the dignity of a person and his capacity to be in control of his own destiny.

The selection of portraits by great European artists contained in this book begins with those of an official nature in which the subject is shown in profile — a deliberate reminder of the classic world — and continues with those offering a realistic image of the subject and an extremely detailed landscape. It ends with portraits from the late Renaissance when it was a psychological characterisation of the subject that prevailed.

René Magritte (1898–1967) was one of the most intriguing painters associated with Surrealism, but he did not fully find his voice until after breaking ties with the movement. This book, the first to look exclusively at Magritte’s late career, examines his most important bodies of work from the 1940s through the 1960s, and shows how they marked a fundamental shift in painting from Modernism to our own time.

Featuring more than sixty artworks, René Magritte: The Fifth Season explores how Magritte balanced irony and conviction, philosophy and fantasy, to illuminate the gaps between what we see and what we know. Subjects explored in this volume include the artist’s Renoir period; the période vache, with its Fauvist- and Expressionist-style paintings that are little known to American audiences; the ‘hypertrophy of objects’ paintings, a series that plays with the scale of familiar objects; and the enigmatic Dominion of Light suite, paintings that suggest the simultaneous experience of day and night. Together, the works reveal Magritte as an artist acutely attuned to the paradoxes at work within reality, and an enduring champion of the role of mystery in life and art.

La belle vie

Impressionism’s most joyful paintings

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is universally acclaimed and celebrated: museums pride themselves on his paintings, crowds flock to his retrospectives. His work shows art at its most light-hearted, sensual and luminous. Renoir never wanted anything ugly in his paintings, nor any dramatic action. “I like pictures which make me want to wander through them when it’s a landscape,” he said, “or pass my hand over breast or back if it’s a woman.” Renoir’s entire oeuvre is dominated by the depiction of women - again and again he painted “these faunesses with their pouting lips” (Mallarmé) and invented a new image of feminine beauty and sensuality. A prolific painter - he made several thousand works in his lifetime - he is perhaps the most beloved of the Impressionists.

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

La belle vie

Impressionism's most joyful paintings

Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is now universally acclaimed: museums pride themselves on his paintings, crowds flock to his retrospectives. His work shows art at its most light-hearted, sensual and luminous. Renoir never wanted anything ugly in his paintings, nor any dramatic action. "I like pictures which make me want to wander through them when it’s a landscape," he said, "or pass my hand over breast or back if it’s a woman."

Renoir’s entire oeuvre is dominated by the depiction of women. Again and again he painted "these faunesses with their pouting lips" (Mallarmé) and invented a new image of feminity.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Peter H. Feist studied art history, history and archaeology in Halle, where he was assistant lecturer from 1952-1958, receiving his doctorate in 1958. From 1958-1981 he worked at the Humboldt University, Berlin, from 1982-1990 he was the director of the Institute for Aesthetics and Art Studies of the GDR Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. Feist has published numerous books on the history and theory of art, including TASCHEN's Pierre-Auguste Renoir and, as co-author, Impressionism. He lives and works in Berlin.

Посмотреть русскоязычное издание книги Renoir - Ренуар

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) is so closely associated with Impressionist painting that the surprising diversity of his early work is frequently forgotten. His most important model during these early years was the artist’s mistress, Lise Tréhot, with whom he had a relationship between 1865 and 1872. After posing for a large group of prominent early works, including Woman in a Garden and En été (both 1868), Lise turned her back on the Bohemian lifestyle in favor of a bourgeois marriage. The paintings created between 1864 and the end of the following decade show the broad spectrum of Renoir’s art and the development of his artistic vocabulary, including the Impressionist phase. This is the first extensive examination of the painter’s early oeuvre and the strong influence of his close friendships with other artists, such as Éd0uard Manet, Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley.

La Vie en Rose. The most comprehensive retrospective of Renoir’s work

Often misunderstood, Pierre-Auguste Renoir remains one of history’s most-loved painters — undoubtedly because his work exudes such warmth, tenderness, and good cheer. Gathering brilliant reproductions and sketches, as well as photos and a complete chronology illustrating his life and work, this is the essential work of reference on Renoir.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (1841–1919) timelessly charming paintings still reflect our ideals of happiness, love, and beauty. Derived from our large-format volume, the most comprehensive retrospective of his work published to date, this compact edition examines the personal history and motivation behind the legend. Though he began by painting landscapes in the Impressionist style, Renoir found his true affinity in portraits, after which he abandoned the Impressionists altogether. Though often misunderstood, Renoir remains one of history’s most well-loved painters — undoubtedly because his works exude such warmth, tenderness, and good spirit.

In an incisive text tracing the artist’s career and stylistic evolution, Gilles Néret shows how Renoir reinvented the painted female form, with his everyday goddesses and their plump forms, rounded hips and breasts. Renoir’s later phase, marked by his return to the simple pleasure of the female nude in his baigneuses series, was his most innovative and stylistically influential, and would inspire such masters as Matisse and Picasso.

With a complete chronology, bibliography, photos, sketches, and brilliant reproductions, this is the essential work of reference on this enduring master artist.

The author:

Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer, and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU Museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Élie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. His TASCHEN titles include Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, Matisse, and Erotica Universalis.

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!

American beauty. Painting life as it would like to be

An extraordinarily prolific artist, Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) produced some 4,000 paintings in his lifetime, not including a prodigious quantity of commissioned editorial, commercial, and advertising work. His death in 1978 was regarded the loss of a national icon, an artist who, like no other, celebrated the American Dream.

Shunning experimentation and avant-garde techniques in favour of effective composition and relatable subject matter, Rockwell created wholesome, homely paintings with accessible and aspirational appeal. Neat, quaint, and typically jovial, his subjects included classrooms, prom scenes, and Thanksgiving feasts, while his most long-standing projects were covers for The Saturday Evening Post magazine and calendars and covers for the Boys’ Life publication of the Boy Scouts of America. Imbued with optimism and patriotism, the work foregrounds classic professions such as doctor and teacher, as much as the conservative stalwarts of military, family, and faith.

Hailed by President Gerald Ford as a “beloved part of the American tradition,” Rockwell’s works reveal as much about his own talents as they do about the story of 20th-century America. This fresh artist introduction from TASCHEN brings together key paintings and illustrations from his celebratory and sunny portfolio, as well as some more unusual works tackling the underside of the United States, to understand an integrally American artist and the values and ideals that shaped his success.

About the Author:

Karal Ann Marling is professor of art history and American studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of numerous books on topics including American mural painting of the Depression era, illustration of the 1940s, the architecture of theme parks, and the influence of television on visual culture in the 1950s.

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

About the Series:

TASCHEN portfolios feature high-quality prints that beg to be framed. Tucked in each portfolio are 14 large-format reproductions, each with a brief description. Guaranteed to brighten any day, they also make great gifts for art lovers!

Emerging out of Baroque as a more relaxed style, Rococo was dominant in interiors, decorative art, and painting throughout Europe in the 18th century. With sentiment and emotion prevailing over reason, Rococo was a dramatic and theatrical style. In the Parisian art world, gallant scenes by Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard predominated, along with the delicate still lifes and genre paintings of Chardin. In Venice, we find the magnificent cityscapes and veduta of Canaletto and Guardi, along with Tiepolo's brilliantly illuminated ceiling frescos. London society celebrated portraitists of stature such as Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Reynolds, while in Southern Germany and Austria, pious images of celestial serenity created by Asam and Troger spanned the church ceilings.

Artists featured among others: François Boucher, Canaletto, Rosalba Carriera, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, John Singleton Copley, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Gainsborough, Francisco de Goya, Francesco Guardi, William Hogarth, Angelika Kauffmann, Nicolas Lancret, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Thomas Lawrence, Jean-Marc Nattier the Younger, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Joshua Reynolds, Johann Heinrich Tischbein, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Joseph Wright

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre Series features:

* a detailed introduction with approximately 35 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, etc.) that took place during the time period
* a selection of the most important works of the epoch; each is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and, on the facing page, a description/interpretation of the work and brief biography of the artist as well as additional information such as a reference work, portrait of the artist, and/or citations

For a long time, Roman art was somewhat overshadowed by the art of ancient Greece. It was only in about 1900 that a search began for ancient Roman art and architecture. The foundations of Roman imagery were laid in the early days of the Empire under Emperor Augustus. The imperial court and the imperial family were role models for artistic style, taste and fashion - trendsetters, so to speak, which imperial society was obliged to follow. It was at court that the "new" took shape, pieced together from the vocabulary of Greek originals, copies and imitations as well as new creations, but fulfilling entirely new functions and expressing new meanings. The portrait of the ruler and the so-called state reliefs, which enhanced and embroidered real events, by depicting gods for example, had a particular influence in the shaping of the imagery. Using classical stylistic means, Roman art was able to fulfill all the desires and ideas of its patrons for more than two centuries.

Featured works include: Augustus of Primaporta; Gemma Augustea; Lycurgus beaker; funerary relief of the Roman couple Publius Aiedius and Publia Aiedia; Constantine I in a helmet with the christogram; the portrait of a man, the so-called Brutus; equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius; colossal portrait of Emperor Constantine I; group statue of the Emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius and Constantine I, the "tetrarch group"; personifications of Macedonia and Persia

Reaching its peak in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Romanesque movement was marked by a peculiar, vivid, and often monumental expressiveness in architecture and fine arts. The main centres were located in Italy, France, the German-language countries, Spain, and England, though the voices of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe expressed themselves distinctly in the genre, which patterned itself on antique and Byzantine art. Despite untold losses, countless Romanesque masterpieces remain preserved today.

Highlights include: Frescoes in Galliano near Cantù, Sant`Angelo in Formis, Saint Chef, Saint-Savin-sur Gartempe, Lambach, San Pietro al Monte near Civate, San Clemente in Rome, from San Maria de Tahull, Berzé-la-Ville, Tavant, Panteón de los Reyes in León, Castel Appiano, from Sigena; the golden Altar-Piece from Lisbjerg; the Bayeux Tapestry; stained glass in the Cathedral of Augsburg and Le Mans, mosaics in San Clemete, Rome, and in San Marco, Venice; colored panels and crosses from La Seo de Urgel, Sarzana, and the painted ceiling in St. Michael, Hildesheim; sculptures in Souillac, Autun, and Santiago de Compostela; examples of metalwork, of manuscripts and enamels.

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre Series features:

* a detailed introduction with approximately 35 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, etc.) that took place during the time period
* a selection of the most important works of the epoch; each is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and, on the facing page, a description/interpretation of the work and brief biography of the artist as well as additional information such as a reference work, portrait of the artist, and/or citations