From men in bowler hats, floating in the sky, to a painting of a pipe above the caption "this is not a pipe", Rene Magritte (1898-1967) created an echo chamber of object and image, name and thing, reality and representation. Like other Surrealist works, Magritte's paintings combine a precise, mimetic technique with abnormal, alienating configurations which defy the laws of scale, logic, and science: a comb the size of a wardrobe, rocks that float in the sky, clouds that drift through an open door. The result is a direct yet disorientating realm, often witty, often unsettling, and always prompting us to look beyond the visible, to "what is hidden by what we see." This introductory book explores Magritte's vast repertoire of visual humor, paradox, and surprise which to this day makes us look and look again, not only at the painting, but at our sense of self and the world. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. 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 accompanies the largest exhibition of contemporary art from Australia to be presented outside the continent. It's characterised by a surprising richness and variety, offering a combination of personal stories, languages, ethnic origins, religions and traditions. The artists belong to many Aboriginal cultures and First Nations and those that arrived from the Pacific, Europe, Asian countries and America. Curated by Eugenio Viola, this project encompasses a broad constellation of cultural, political and social practices and perspectives, and takes into consideration different means of expression such as painting, performance, installation, sculpture, video, drawings and photography. Artists: Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Khadim Ali, Brook Andrew, Richard Bell, Daniel Boyd, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Barbara Cleveland, Destiny Deacon, Hayden Fowler, Marco Fusinato, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Julie Gough, Fiona Hall, Dale Harding, Nicholas Mangan, Angelica Mesiti, Archie Moore, Callum Morton, Tom Nicholson (with Greg Lehman), Jill Orr, Mike Parr, Patricia Piccinini, Stuart Ringholt, Khaled Sabsabi, Yhonnie Scarce, Soda Jerk, Dr Christian Thompson AO, James Tylor, Judy Watson, Jason Wing and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. Text in English and Italian.

How do you rationally connect the diverse literature, music, and painting of an age? Throughout the modernist era-which began roughly in 1872 with the Franco-Prussian War, climaxed with the Great War, and ended with a third catastrophe, the Great Depression-there was a special belligerence to this question. It was a cultural period that envisioned many different models of itself: to the Cubists, it looked like a vast jigsaw puzzle; to the Expressionists, it resembled a convulsive body; to the Dadaists, it brought to mind a heap of junk following an explosion. In Putting Modernism Together, Daniel Albright searches for the center of the modernist movement by assessing these various artistic models, exploring how they generated a stunning range of creative work that was nonetheless wound together aesthetically, and sorting out the cultural assumptions that made each philosophical system attractive. Emerging from Albright's lectures for a popular Harvard University course of the same name, the book investigates different methodologies for comparing the evolution and congruence of artistic movements by studying simultaneous developments that occurred during particularly key modernist years. What does it mean, Albright asks, that Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, appeared at the same time as Claude Debussy's Nocturnes-beyond the fact that the word "Impressionist" has been used to describe each work? Why, in 1912, did the composer Arnold Schoenberg and the painter Vassily Kandinsky feel such striking artistic kinship? And how can we make sense of a movement, fragmented by isms, that looked for value in all sorts of under- or ill-valued places, including evil (Baudelaire), dung heaps (Chekhov), noise (Russolo), obscenity (Lawrence), and triviality (Satie)? Throughout Putting Modernism Together, Albright argues that human culture can best be understood as a growth-pattern or ramifying of artistic, intellectual, and political action. Going beyond merely explaining how the artists in these genres achieved their peculiar effects, he presents challenging new analyses of telling craft details which help students and scholars come to know more fully this bold age of aesthetic extremism.

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year.

BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table.

PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy.

THE ART. Robert John Thornton’s New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus (1799–1807) was comprised of three parts: a dissertation on the reproductive cycle of plants, an explanation of Linnaeus’ plant system, and ‘The Temple of Flora’. This third and final part was the most ambitious and has become instantly recognizable.

THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Exploring the rich variety of pictorial rhetoric in early modern northern European genre images, this volume deepens our understanding of genre's place in early modern visual culture. From 1500 to 1700, artists in northern Europe pioneered the category of pictures now known as genre, portrayals of people in ostensibly quotidian situations. Critical approaches to genre images have moved past the antiquated notion that they portray uncomplicated 'slices of life,' describing them instead as heavily encoded pictorial essays, laden with symbols that only the most erudite contemporary viewers and modern iconographers could fully comprehend. These essays challenge that limiting binary, revealing a more expansive array of accessible meanings in genre's deft grafting of everyday scenarios with a rich complex of experiential, cultural, political, and religious references. Authors deploy a variety of approaches to detail genre's multivalent relations to older, more established pictorial and literary categories, the interplay between the meaning of the everyday and its translation into images, and the multifaceted concerns genre addressed for its rapidly expanding, unprecedentedly diverse audience.

This issue examines the legacy of Nazi-looted art in light of the 2012 discovery of the famous Hildebrand Gurlitt collection of stolen artwork in Germany. When the German government declassified the case almost two years later, the resulting scandal raised fundamental questions about the role of art dealers in the Third Reich, the mechanics of the Nazi black market for artwork, the shortcomings of postwar denazification, the failure of courts and governments to adjudicate stolen artwork claims, and the unwillingness of museums to determine the provenance of thousands of looted pieces of art. The contributors to this issue explore the continuities of art dealerships and auction houses from the Nazi period to the Federal Republic and take stock of the present political and cultural debate over the handling of this artwork. Special topic contributors. Konstantin Akinsha, Meike Hoffmann, Andreas Huyssen, Lawrence M. Kaye, Olaf Peters, Jonathan Petropoulos, Anson Rabinbach, Avinoam Shalem, Julia Voss, Amy Walsh

Known as the "Audubon of Botany," Philadelphia, Quaker Mary Morris Vaux Walcott (1860-1940) was a gifted artist whose stunning watercolors comprise a catalog of North American wildflowers. Walcott was catapulted to the highest levels of society and national politics by a late and bold marriage to the secretary of the Smithsonian. Along with an early (1887) transcontinental travelogue, never-before published correspondence with fellow Quaker and First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, and Commissioner Mary Walcott's reports for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, this biography reveals rich intersections of history, religion, politics, women's studies, science, and art during the transformative times in which she lived. Walcott, and other intrepid women like her, who sought escape from Victorian social conventions and opportunity for adventure and self-expression in the American West, were gifted artists, writers, and historians.

Over thousands of years, the art of Chinese painting has evolved, while also staying loyal to its traditional roots. Despite various schools of thought, styles and techniques, three primary categories have emerged across the discipline: landscape, figure and bird-and-flower. Using fine ink and water brush strokes on paper or silk, Chinese artists have developed a unique style-one that's famous throughout the world. This book highlights 50 Chinese paintings, pulled from museum collections in China and around the world, including: British Museum, London Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas Osaka City Museum of Art, Osaka Palace Museum, Beijing Palace Museum, Taipei Shanghai Museum, Shanghai The paintings shown are representative of the categories, historical periods and styles of this artistic tradition. Detailed professional interpretations and notes allow readers to learn more about the pieces themselves, the artists and the context in which they were created. Plus, photo enlargements of key details get readers up close to these masterpieces. As one of the world's oldest continuous art forms, Chinese painting has a truly special history. This comprehensive guide allows modern readers to travel through time, experiencing important moments in Chinese history and society through beautiful pieces of artwork.

This is the first full-length monograph on the paintings of Bernard Frize (b.1949), an artist whose work straddles movements and styles from Colour Field to Minimalism, Fluxus, and Conceptual Art. Frize's works utilise a carefully constructed range of tools, processes, choreography and collaboration to catalogue, in complex and unexpected abstract form and colour, the possibilities of his chosen materials. Emerging from the politicised 1970s onwards, Frize swam against the tide of opinion regarding painting's apparent obsolescence to develop a painting practice that could express political commitment and social concerns, while avoiding both overt statement and pure decoration. David Rhodes' text provides a detailed consideration of Frize's development, from the earliest works onwards. Placing his paintings in a broader art-historical and philosophical context, a wider conversation about painting itself is presented alongside Frize's significant place within the medium's history.

This is an authoritative account of the Italian painter, architect and draughtsman, Raphael, one of the most influential artists of the High Renaissance. It is a lively study that examines his life, the areas of Italy that shaped his work and the historical context of the times. It explores his innovative style and his compassionate depictions of Madonna and child groups, his portraits and his works based on Bible stories and myths. It features a wonderful gallery of his paintings and drawings with expert analysis, and descriptions of his style and technique. It includes beautiful illustrations of Raphael's great works, those of the painters who influenced him, as well as artists who were inspired by him in turn. Artist, architect and draughtsman, one of the great masters and one of the most influential painters of the High Renaissance, Raphael produced a huge body of work during his short working life. His artistic development took place in Umbria, Rome and Florence, where he met Michelangelo and Leonardo, and was influenced by their dynamic and evocative images. Some of his subsequent work reflected his admiration for them. In Rome, he painted The School of Athens, a major fresco depicting the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the past and present. His beautiful style is reflected in the second part of the book in a gallery of around 300 of Raphael's major paintings and drawings, with an analysis of each in the context of his life, his technique and oeuvre. Raphael was one of the greatest artists of all time; his death in 1520 marked the end of the 16th century.

The late Cecil Collins was 20th century English artist originally associated with the Surrealist movement.

Abstraction shook Western art to its core. In the early part of the 20th century, it refuted the reign of clear, indisputable forms and confronted audiences instead with vivid visual poems devoid of conventional representational imagery and characterized by allegories of emotion and sensation. This radical artistic adventure established new artistic means, as much as narratives. Expression became characterized by shocking juxtapositions of color, light, and line. Artists abandoned the conventions of brush and easel and played with new materials and methods of artistic gesture: commercial paints and housepainter's brushes, working on unstretched and unprimed canvases, moving the canvas to the floor, and applying paint with hands. This essential introduction spans the international breadth, conceptual depth, and seismic impact of abstract art with a thorough survey not only of the big names such as Picasso, Klee, Kline, Rothko, and Pollock, but also lesser-known figures who made equally significant contributions, including Antoni Tapies, K. O. Goetz, Ad Reinhardt, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

In this book, Henrike Lange takes the reader on a tour through one of the most beloved and celebrated monuments in the world - Giotto's Arena Chapel. Paying close attention to previously overlooked details, Lange offers an entirely new reading of the stunning frescoes in their spatial configuration. The author also asks fundamental questions that define the chapel's place in Western art history. Why did Giotto choose an ancient Roman architectural frame for his vision of Salvation? What is the role of painted reliefs in the representation of personal integrity, passion, and the human struggle between pride and humility familiar from Dante's Divine Comedy? How can a new interpretation regarding the influence of ancient reliefs and architecture inform the famous "Assisi controversy" and cast new light on the debate around Giotto's authorship of the Saint Francis cycle? Illustrated with almost 200 color plates, this volume invites scholars and students to rediscover a key monument of art and architecture history and to see it with new eyes.

Accessible, informative guide to one of Te Papa's most popular permanent art exhibitions. The portrait wall in Toi Art, the art gallery within New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa, is the most popular art exhibition for museum visitors. Hung salon-style on dark red walls, its 36 arresting portraits span historical portraiture to contemporary practice, and represent mana. Some trumpet the status of European royalty, Maori leaders, or prosperous colonial settlers in New Zealand. Others advertise the skills of the artist. All carry stories from the past into the present. This handy book details each work in both English and te reo Maori and is the perfect souvenir of a visit to Te Papa and an ideal starting point for exploring questions of art, identity, and cross-cultural exchange.

Painting on silk, in its millennia-old traditional form and also in contemporary form, has become increasingly popular. With this guide, be inspired by the nearly 500 images, the visual demos, and the aspects not covered in other books. Starting with the basic skills and techniques, here is guidance on every element of the art, including setting up your studio space, painting on preconstructed clothing, and framing your art. Most importantly, enjoy learning unusual, innovative frames of mind to intensify your creative freedom, bringing new energy to your work. A special chapter, "Color: The Workshop Experience," offers exercises for harnessing the variety of silk dye hues. Complex layered looks, plein air painting and landscapes, critiquing, seeking authenticity, intuitive improvisation, and much more are included. The authors, founders of Silk Painters International, give thorough guidance on how to push yourself out of your comfort zone to evoke emotions in your art.

Roy Cross RSMA GAvA began work as an illustrator in Fairey Aviation during World War II. Over the next thirty years, he progressed from line illustration, via colour artwork, to top-class advertising art for the aircraft industry and other companies, including Airfix, for whom he produced many hundreds of artworks to adorn model kit boxes over a ten-year period. His illustrations for Airfix included superb depictions of aircraft, cars, ships, spacecraft, armoured vehicles and dioramas. Though Roy is perhaps most famous for his Airfix box art, his work has encompassed book and magazine illustrations, including highly detailed cutaways and other technical drawings. In more recent years, Roy has concentrated on the production of his magnificent maritime paintings.

Rene Magritte (1898-1967) was a surrealist artist whose thought-provoking works used ordinary objects to challenge how viewers perceived reality. His extensive oeuvre was documented in a comprehensive five-volume project, led by distinguished art critic and writer David Sylvester. In the years that followed the publication of the final volume in 1997, numerous works purporting to be by Magritte appeared on the art market. Under the auspices of the Fondation Magritte, a committee was established to verify the authenticity of newly discovered works as well as those previously recorded as "whereabouts unknown" or listed as appendix items in the original volumes of the Rene Magritte Catalogue Raisonne. Rene Magritte: Newly Discovered Works includes color illustrations of 130 previously unpublished or unknown works authenticated by the committee between September 2000 and March 2010. Like its predecessors, this volume is the culmination of years of research, which synthesizes new discoveries about the artworks and details of the life of Magritte himself. Accompanying text and comparative documentation provide a wealth of complementary information, including the circumstances of a work's discovery, references to letters, quotations in their original languages, and citations from previous volumes. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

Portrait Miniatures from the Merchistion Collection is the fifth in a series of titles which examines the portrait miniature. This collection, which has never been on public display, was assembled on the London art market during the 1970s and 1980s. Scottish miniaturists from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are particularly well represented with fine works by Scouler, Bogle, and Skirving and Sir William Charles Ross. Of outstanding interest is Nicholas Hilliard's matching pair of tiny lockets of Queen Elizabeth and her admirer Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Stephen Lloyd's essay discusses the formation of the collection and the impact of the invention of photography on the art of miniature painting. It also explores the social history of the miniature. Twenty of the key works are illustrated in colour, with extended captions, and a complete list of the collection is also included.

At the time of his death in 1820, Benjamin West was the most famous artist in the English-speaking world, and much admired throughout Europe. From humble beginnings in Pennsylvania, he had become the first American artist to study in Italy, and within a few short years of his arrival in London, was instrumental in the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts (he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds to become its second President) and became history painter to King George III. In his lifetime, West's meteoric rise to prominence and the great pleasure he took in his success attracted criticism, and his posthumous reputation took a savage mauling from Victorian critics, one of whom dubbed him 'The Monarch of Mediocrity'. But even at his critical nadir, West's most celebrated work, The Death of General Wolfe, commemorating the British victory at the Battle of Quebec in 1759 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1771, continued to fascinate. Although it was not, as is sometimes claimed, the first history painting to feature contemporary costume, it was the first picture in such a vein to become a critical and popular success in Britain. West remains today the most neglected and misunderstood of Britain's great eighteenth-century artists, lacking the social bite of Hogarth, the bravura of Reynolds or the easy elegance of Gainsborough. Nor was he a forceful writer (unlike Hogarth and Reynolds), and he did not possess the intellectual credentials to which so many of his fellow artists aspired. And yet, as Loyd Grossman asserts in his new book, West was extraordinarily in tune with the artistic and intellectual currents that swirled through his turbulent times. He was in the vanguard of both Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and among the very first artists to give visual expression to the exciting and heroic qualities of contemporary events, as opposed to episodes dredged up from the biblical, classical or mythological past, which had long enjoyed the highest artistic status. West's Wolfe was painted at a time when Europeans were just beginning to abandon the tendency to look backwards. Men and women of letters, philosophers and historians were increasingly convinced that modernity could equal and even surpass the achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This new-found ability to believe in the value of the present and to look forward to a progressive future is very much the foundation of the 'modern' attitude that has affected the way we live and think ever since. While acknowledging that West's reputation is still precarious, Grossman explains why Wolfe was such an instant success and why this thrilling work of art continues to exercise such a strong grip on our imaginations nearly 250 years after it was first shown to the public. He situates West in the midst of Enlightenment thinking about history and modernity, and seeks to demolish some of the prejudices about the talent and intentions of the young man from the Pennsylvania frontier who attained such eminence at the British court.

Lim Cheng Hoe's ardour and discipline as a painter merge in his evocative portrayals of light and life in developing Singapore. This catalogue examines his contribution to the watercolour tradition and plein-air painting in Singapore, and republishes essays from previous exhibition catalogues which are now out of print, serving as a comprehensive repository of research around this significant Singapore artist.

Memoir of a provocative Parisian art dealer at the heart of the 20th-century art world, available in English for the first time. Berthe Weill, a formidable Parisian dealer, was born into a Jewish family of very modest means. One of the first female gallerists in the business, she first opened the Galerie B. Weill in the heart of Paris's art gallery district in 1901, holding innumerable exhibitions over nearly forty years. Written out of art history for decades, Weill has only recently regained the recognition she deserves. Under five feet tall and bespectacled, Weill was beloved by the artists she supported, and she rejected the exploitative business practices common among art dealers. Despite being a self-proclaimed "terrible businesswoman," Weill kept her gallery open for four decades, defying the rising tide of antisemitism before Germany's occupation of France. By the time of her death in 1951, Weill had promoted more than three hundred artists-including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, and Suzanne Valadon-many of whom were women and nearly all young and unknown when she first exhibited them. Pow! Right in the Eye! makes Weill's provocative 1933 memoir finally available to English readers, offering rare insights into the Parisian avant-garde and a lively inside account of the development of the modern art market.

Portraying people is undoubtedly one of the most difficult aspects of drawing. Expressions, movements, emotions and gazes add a series of challenges not present when drawing still lifes or landscapes. In addition, the scant number of books specifically about drawing children leave many of the particularities related to the portrayal of childhood unresolved. This book, now in paperback, fills this void. Using live models, either posing or simply naturally, photographs, videos, drawings of faces, it contains a step-by-step, detailed explanation on how to draw children. Through an introduction to proportions, and by training in observing the changes children experience over the years, the reader learns how to capture both children's physical and psychological transformations. Portraying Children is intended for illustrators and those who love to draw, and anyone else who wants to capture the memorable and fleeting moments associated with childhood.

The reception of Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy from its origins to its appearances in contemporary visual culture reveals how its popularity was achieved and maintained by diverse audiences and in varied venues. Performative manifestations resulted in contradictory characterizations of the painted youth as an aristocrat or a "regular fellow," as masculine or feminine, or as heterosexual or gay. In private and public spaces where viewers saw the actual painting and where living and rendered replicas circulated, Gainsborough's painting was often the centerpiece where dominant and subordinate classes met, gender identities were enacted, and sexuality was implicitly or overtly expressed.