The spectacular beauty of Raphael’s tapestries as you have never seen it before

In 1515, Pope Leo X commissioned the Italian painter Raffaello Sanzio (1483–1520), now generally known as Raphael in English, to make the cartoons for a series of ten tapestries with scenes from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul. This commission played an instrumental part in the stylistic development of the Flemish tapestries, a marvellous illustration of princely splendour in the sixteenth century. Under Habsburg rule, Brussels soon emerged as a leading manufactory for exquisite products. Raphael’s designs are among the most successful series in the history of tapestry production.

This publication shows the enormous richness of the tapestries through dozens of details. It accompanies a collection exhibition of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, home to the former imperial tapestry collection, from 26 September 2023 to 14 January 2024.

About the Author:

Curator of the Kunstkammer and Tapestries, Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) in Vienna (Wien), Austria.
 

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, this spectacular volume of the artist’s early paintings and sculptures is being reissued.

The paintings from his so-called Blue and Rose periods to early Cubism, created between 1901 and 1907, are milestones on Picasso’s path to becoming the most famous artist of the twentieth century. In 2019, the Fondation Beyeler presented some 80 masterpieces from renowned museums and private collections in its most prestigious exhibition to this date. They are not only among the most valuable works of art ever to exist, but are widely viewed as some of modernism’s most beautiful and emotive artworks. This volume brings the early work of this exceptional artist to life in a unique way.

About the Artist:

Pablo Picasso is regarded as the epitome of the twentieth-century artist. In addition to his paintings and sculptures, his graphic works also enjoy special fame.

Crowned the “Prince of Painters” by Giorgio Vasari, Raphael (1483–1520) was one of the most popular artists of the Italian Renaissance. Famous for his serene and harmonious series of Madonnas and his work at the Vatican Palace, he was an extremely influential painter, both during and after his own lifetime. Pope Julius II hired Raphael as his chief architect and his first commission charged him with the task of decorating the papal apartments at the Vatican in 1509. Now known as the Raphael Rooms, these astonishing displays continue to attract visitors from all over the world.

Raphael in Detail shows his beautiful masterpieces in unprecedented, large-format details. The art historian and specialist of the Italian Renaissance, Stefano Zuffi, takes the reader on a surprising voyage into Raphael’s life and work. The book is organized thematically and includes a biography and a list of works.

Italian art historian Stefano Zuffi specializes in the period from the Renaissance to the Baroque. He has over sixty publications to his credit, notably on Dürer, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian and Caravaggio. For Ludion, he has written about Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael.

In art history, we tend to be on first-name terms only with the most revered of masters. The Renaissance painter and architect Raphael Santi (1483–1520) is one such star. The man we call simply Raphael has for centuries been hailed as a supreme Renaissance artist. For some, he even outstrips his equally famous, equally first-named, contemporaries, Leonardo and Michelangelo.

From 1500 to 1508, Raphael worked throughout central Italy, particularly in Florence where he secured his reputation as a painter of portraits and beautifully rendered Madonnas, archetypical icons within the Catholic faith. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II and later embarked on an ambitious mural scheme for the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. Within this room, Raphael’s The School of Athens is considered a paradigm of the High Renaissance, merging Classical philosophy with perfected perspectival space, animated figures, and a composition of majestic balance.

This essential introduction explores how in just two decades of work, Raphael painted his way to legendary greatness. With highlights from his prolific output, it presents the mastery of figures and forms that secured his place not only in the trinity of Renaissance luminaries but also among the most esteemed artists of all time.

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

This volume is considered the most comprehensive monograph about the life and career of the female pioneer who integrated abstract painting, music, and dance, Lalan.

Born in Guizhou, Xie Jinglan (nicknamed “Lalan”) was a multidisciplinary artist trained across various art forms, including painting, music, and dance. Excelling in all such categories, Lalan united these fields in her artistic practice to create an oeuvre that epitomized “synthesized art.” Her lifelong explorations resulted in an unusual kind of exhibition/performance named Spectacle, which assimilates dance and music within her artworks. Her works can be found in important Western and Asian museums, such as the Centre Pompidou Musée National d’Art Moderne, and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Shanghai Art Museum, and others.

This book reviews her entire career by selecting her most representative masterpieces and celebrating her life journey as the backdrop, between dream and drama. The materials in this book have been collected by a dedicated research team through a painstaking process lasting more than two years.

Lalan’s paintings are a melting pot of many important features inspired by traditional Chinese culture on the one hand (including the spirit of Taoism, the practice of qigong, and the essence of ink landscapes during the Song Dynasty), and Western abstract painting on the other.

About the Author:

Lalan studied music, dance, and art and produced works combining all three disciplines from the 1960s onward. Véronique Bergen is a philosopher, novelist, poet, and author of monographs and articles on contemporary artists.

The most comprehensive volume devoted to the life and work of pioneering African American artist Robert Colescott, accompanying the largest traveling exhibition of his work ever mounted.

Robert Colescott (1925-2009) was a trailblazing artist, whose august career was as unique as his singular artistic style. Known for figurative satirical paintings that exposed the ugly ironies of race in America from the 1970s through the late 1990s, his work was profoundly influential to the generations of artists that have followed him, such as Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, and Henry Taylor, among many others.

This volume surveys the entirety of Colescott's body of work, with contributions by more than ten curators and writers, including a substantive essay by the show's cocurator, the renowned Lowery Stokes Sims. It provides a detailed stylistic analysis of his politically inflected oeuvre, focusing on Colescott's own consideration of his work in the context of the grand traditions of European painting and contemporary polemic. In addition, the book features reminiscences and thought pieces by a variety of family, friends, students, curators, dealers, and scholars on his work as well as a selection of writings by the artist himself. Relying on previously unpublished transcripts of lectures, reviews, and archival materials provided by institutions and individuals, the book will provide a fuller story of the artist's life and career.

About the Authors:

Raphaela Platow is the Alice & Harris Weston Director and Chief Curator of the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. Lowery Stokes Sims is a dedicated advocate for diversity and inclusion in the art world. She is an independant curator after working for the Museum of Arts and Design, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Matthew Weseley is an independent art historian. He is currently working on an academic monograph on the work of Robert Colescott.

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Пролистать книгу Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott

In its most prestigious exhibition to date, the Fondation Beyeler has devoted itself to the early paintings and sculptures of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) that date from his so-called Blue and Pink periods to early Cubism. The paintings from this stage of his career, all produced between 1901 and 1907, are milestones on the road Picasso took to becoming the most famous artist of the twentieth century. They can be counted among modernism’s most beautiful and most emotional works, and are also some of the most precious works of art ever to exist.

This comprehensive exhibition and its companion catalogue feature around eighty masterpieces, most of which are only rarely loaned out by famous museums and private collections around the world.EXHIBITIONFebruary 3 – May 26, 2019 Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel

Founded in 1848 as a secret society, the Pre-Raphaelites rejected classical ideals and the dominant artistic genre painting of their era for what they saw as a more spiritual, sincere, and naturalistic approach. Founded by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, they evolved into a seven-member “brotherhood” that included poets and critics as well as painters.

Moving away from the classical compositions exemplified by Raphael (hence the group’s name), the Pre-Raphaelites rather turned to medieval culture and the jewel-like colors of Quattrocento art for inspiration. Their principal themes were initially religious, but also included subjects from literature and poetry, as exemplified by Sir John Everett Millais’s famous Ophelia, drawn from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Inspired by the theories of John Ruskin, they were also committed to the close study of nature.

This book presents key works from the Pre-Raphaelite group to introduce their reactionary principles, their dazzling colors, their interest in love, death, and nature, and their extensive influence on latter-day Symbolism and beyond.

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

A visual history of the world’s most popular and versatile streetwear, 1000 T-Shirts celebrates the evolution of the T-shirt into a fashion statement and urban design icon in hundreds of examples.

This definitive compilation is an encyclopedic celebration of the most popular, style-setting T-shirts from the 1950s to the present. Included in this collection are every type of T-shirt, from counterculture slogans of the sixties and the heyday of the rock-band -tour commemorative T-shirt to today’s tees, which run the gamut from high-fashion branding to innovative graphic designs.

This book showcases the rich graphic design culture and features photographs of T-shirts worn on the street, specially commissioned T-shirt graphics, T-shirt collections, and a survey of the best and coolest contemporary graphics from around the world.

1000 T-Shirts is sure to appeal to designers, illustrators, art directors, fashion buffs, and pop-culture junkies, as well as a general market of T-shirt enthusiasts and collectors.

About the Author:

Raphaëlle Orsini is the fashion editor for the online magazine of Paris’s famed department store Galeries Lafayette. Previously, she was fashion editor for the website of the leading French fashion magazine Grazia.

The legendary and complex relationship between humans and horses is an enduring one.

The horse’s distinctive blend of grace and strength and its sleek beauty has long been analyzed, admired and represented in artistic form — whether through painting, sculpture or photography.

Raphael Macek’s inspiring images of equine majesty feature both close-ups and complete figures against the backdrops of artful landscapes. His balanced composition and exquisite lighting highlight the form, texture and muscularity of each unique creature. There’s a liveliness and immediacy to this collection. So much so, that at times, it’s as if these compelling portraits might just come to life at any second.

- A must-have for all horse lovers
- Fine-art photography that does true justice to equine nobility

The oeuvre of Odilon Redon (1840-1916) marks the threshold between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and thus represents the interplay between tradition and innovation.

Fractures and contrasts characterize his artistic development from the black and white of his early, dark lithographs and works in charcoal to the downright explosions of color in his bright pastels and oils. Bizarre monsters appear alongside heavenly creatures in a blend of dream and nightmare, nature and vision. Inclined to internalization, the mythic, sacred, and biological motifs in Redon s works take on a sense of the mystical, owing to both the subject and the aesthetic aspects of color and form. Greatly admired by contemporaries such as Paul Cézanne and Paul gauguin, Redon influenced artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Marcel Duchamp as well as the Surrealists.

The catalogue presents the artist s brilliant ideas and his body of work in all of its artistic heterogeneity.

This comprehensive study of Gothic architecture traces the distinctively beautiful elements of Gothic style through the medieval churches of Europe. Gathered from a rare two-volume Victorian classic, over 700 meticulously rendered details and illustrations display every intricate aspect of Western culture's most magnificent ecclesiastical structures, including London's Westminster Abbey Church. The only edition of these antique architectural plates in print, this splendid book is a one-of-a-kind source of authentic Gothic design.

In page after fascinating page, this rich retrospective features the finest examples of medieval masonwork, woodwork, and metalwork dating back to the thirteenth century. Explore the soaring Gothic characteristics of vaulted ceilings, arched windows, flying buttresses, pointed spires, ornamental filials, and decorative panels, plus doorways, moldings, roofing, porches, door hinges, and other elaborate architectural elements.

Filled with fascinating insights into the creation of Gothic-style churches and cathedrals, this sweeping survey also provides lively observations of the medieval period.

Painting the divine

Heavenly grace and human grandeur

Influenced by his contemporaries Michelangelo and Leonardo, Raphael Santi (1483-1520) became, in his own right, one of the most important artists of the High Renaissance. Though Raphael painted many important works in his Florence period, including his famous Madonnas, it was his mature work in Rome that cemented his place in history, most notably the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican featuring his School of Athens and Triumph of Religion murals.

This overview traces the life’s work of this Renaissance master who achieved the height of greatness in only two decades of creation and whose influential work paved the way for the Mannerist and Baroque movements.

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

Now available in a lovely new gift edition, this stunning bouquet of romantic paintings brings together two important aspects of Victorian culture - the Pre-Raphaelite movement and the language of flowers - in one exquisite volume.

Few artistic movements capture classic notions of beauty as romantically as the Pre-Raphaelites - a group of 19th-century painters and poets who aimed to revive the purer art of the late medieval period. In this beautiful volume, Debra N. Mancoff, an expert on Pre-Raphaelite art and the floral lexicon, presents breathtaking examples, which illuminate the meaning of flowers in all aspects of Victorian culture. She offers brief commentaries on individual paintings as well as biographies of the period's leading artists and their models. A captivating introduction to an artistic movement, this exquisitely produced book is also a romantic keepsake of an artistic sensibility that speaks volumes.

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.