Meet the artist whose majestic breaking wave sent ripples across the world. Hokusai (1760-1849) is not only one of the giants of Japanese art and a legend of the Edo period, but also a founding father of Western modernism, whose prolific gamut of prints, illustrations, paintings, and beyond forms one of the most comprehensive oeuvres of ukiyo-e art and a benchmark of japonisme. His influence spread through Impressionism, Art Nouveau, and beyond, enrapturing the likes of Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Vincent van Gogh. Hokusai was always a man on the move. He changed domicile more than 90 times during his lifetime and changed his own name through over 30 pseudonyms. In his art, he adopted the same restlessness, covering the complete spectrum of Japanese ukiyo-e,"pictures of the floating world", from single-sheet prints of landscapes and actors to erotic books. In addition, he created album prints, illustrations for verse anthologies and historical novels, and surimono, which were privately issued prints for special occasions. Hokusai's print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, published between c. 1830 and 1834 is the artist's most renowned work and, with its soaring peak through different seasons and from different vantage points, marked the towering summit of the Japanese landscape print. The series' Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known simply as The Great Wave, is one of the most recognized images of Japanese art in the world. This TASCHEN introduction spans the length and breadth of Hokusai's career with key pieces from his far-reaching portfolio. Through these meticulous, majestic works and series, we trace the variety of Hokusai's subjects, from erotic books to historical novels, and the evolution of his vivid formalism and decisive delineation of space through color and line that would go on to liberate Western art from the constraints of its one-point perspective and unleash the modernist momentum. 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

Published in its entirety, Frida Kahlo's amazing illustrated journal documents the last ten years of her turbulent life. These passionate, often surprising, intimate records, kept under lock and key for some 40 years in Mexico, reveal many new dimensions in the complex personal life of this remarkable Mexican artist. The 170-page journal contains the artist's thoughts, poems, and dreams-many reflecting her stormy relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera-along with 70 mesmerizing watercolor illustrations. The text entries, written in Frida's round, full script in brightly colored inks, make the journal as captivating to look at as it is to read. Her writing reveals the artist's political sensibilities, recollections of her childhood, and her enormous courage in the face of more than 35 operations to correct injuries she had sustained in an accident at the age of 18. This intimate portal into her life is sure to fascinate fans of the artist, art historians, and women's culturalists alike.

Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934), the father of modern neuroscience and a Nobel laureate, was an exceptional artist. He devoted his life to the anatomy of the brain, the body's most complex and mysterious organ. His superhuman feats of visualisation, based on fanatically precise techniques and countless hours at the microscope, resulted in some of the most remarkable illustrations in the history of science. Beautiful Brain presents a selection of his exquisite drawings of brain cells, brain regions and neural circuits with accessible descriptive commentary. An art book at the crossroads of art and science, Beautiful Brain describes Cajal's contributions to neuroscience, explores his artistic roots and achievement and looks at his work in relation to contemporary neuroscience imaging techniques.

Although Max Liebermann (1847-1935) began his career as a realist painter depicting scenes of rural labor, Dutch village life, and the countryside, by the turn of the century, his paintings had evolved into colorful images of bourgeois life and leisure that critics associated with French impressionism. During a time of increasing German nationalism, his paintings and cultural politics sparked numerous aesthetic and political controversies. His eminent career and his reputation intersected with the dramatic and violent events of modern German history from the Empire to the Third Reich. The Nazis' persecution of modern and Jewish artists led to the obliteration of Liebermann from the narratives of modern art, but this volume contributes to the recent wave of scholarly literature that works to recover his role and his oeuvre from an international perspective.

Keren Rosa Hammerschlag's Frederic Leighton: Death, Mortality, Resurrection offers a timely reexamination of the art of the late Victorian period's most institutionally powerful artist, Frederic Lord Leighton (1830-1896). As President of the Royal Academy from 1878 to 1896, Leighton was committed to the pursuit of beauty in art through the depiction of classical subjects, executed according to an academic working-method. But as this book reveals, Leighton's art and discourse were beset by the realisation that academic art would likely die with him. Rather than achieving classical perfection, Hammerschlag argues, Leighton's figures hover in transitional states between realism and idealism, flesh and marble, life and death, as gothic distortions of the classical ideal. The author undertakes close readings of key paintings, sculptures, frescos and drawings in Leighton's oeuvre, and situates them in the context of contemporaneous debates about death and resurrection in theology, archaeology and medicine. The outcome is a pleasurably macabre counter-biography that reconfigures what it meant to be not just a late-Victorian neoclassicist and royal academician, but President of the Victorian Royal Academy.

Examining the literary career of the eighteenth-century Irish painter James Barry, 1741-1806 through an interdisciplinary methodology, The Writings of James Barry and the Genre of History Painting, 1775-1809 is the first full-length study of the artist's writings. Liam Lenihan critically assesses the artist's own aesthetic philosophy about painting and printmaking, and reveals the extent to which Barry wrestles with the significant stylistic transformations of the pre-eminent artistic genre of his age: history painting. Lenihan's book delves into the connections between Barry's writings and art, and the cultural and political issues that dominated the public sphere in London during the American and French Revolutions. Barry's writings are read within the context of the political and aesthetic thought of his distinguished friends and contemporaries, such as Edmund Burke, his first patron; Joshua Reynolds, his sometime friend and rival; Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, with whom he was later friends; and his students and adversaries, William Blake and Henry Fuseli. Ultimately, Lenihan's interdisciplinary reading shows the extent to which Barry's faith in the classical tradition in general, and the genre of history painting in particular, is permeated by the hermeneutics of suspicion. This study explores and contextualizes Barry's attempt to rethink and remake the preeminent art form of his era.

Celebrated pop artist Scott C. continues to captivate audiences around the world with his deceptively simple watercolor paintings and illustrations. Now fans can once again submerge themselves in his fanciful world of dancing skeletons, smiling dinosaurs, playful superheroes, and adorable pop culture icons with an enchanting new collection of the best of his recent work. Handpicked by the artist himself, the images include over one hundred new paintings and illustrations, all created in Scott's trademark cartoon style with his reflections and anecdotes sprinkled throughout. Filled with warmth, sly humor, and surprising insight, this book is a delightful tribute to an artist guaranteed to put a smile on the faces of both the young and the young at heart.

A spectacular book showing life and work of the Finnish icon from an unknown perspective with around 150 illustrations and well researched texts.

Tom of Finland has became the most famous and influential Finnish artist of the 20th century. Born Touko Laaksonen in 1920, his iconic depiction of self-confident and life-affirming gayness gave decisive impulses to the international gay movements from the 1960s onwards. But although we clearly associate his portrayals of sensual and powerful cowboys, farm hands, soldiers and leathermen with the USA, Tom of Finland’s rise to gay icon received the game-changing impetus neither in his native Finland nor in the USA. It was, of all places, the city of Hamburg and Tom’s friendship with key exponents of the local gay scene in the early 1970s that helped him to his first exhibition ever.

He even created a grand mural for the legendary “Tom’s Bar”, until today the only one legitimately named after him. Regular commissions to design posters and ads for gay events in Hamburg allowed him to launch his artistic career after quitting his day job as advertising executive, and led to the creation of the most extensive private collection of his drawings to date. Galerie Judin is now devoting an exhibition and a comprehensive publication to these seminal, but thus far little researched years, the art they generated and the friendships they formed. The book includes texts by Juerg Judin, Pay Matthis Karstens, Kati Mustola and Alice Delage, conversations with Durk Dehner and Michael P. Hartleben - and a facsimile of the artist’s German travel diary from 1955.

Beginning with a dissertation on Raphael's drawings, Oskar Fischel made it his endeavor, with an ever growing knowledge of Raphael, to arrive at a comprehensive representation, and this he has left behind this book. The illustrations gathered together by him over a period of many years are intended, in the selection here provided, to induce the reader to seek out the works of the artist. The book speaks of Raphael's influential manner on society.

Since his death in 1942, St Ives has become marinated in the spirit of the naive painter, Alfred Wallis. Naum Gabo, the Russian Constructivist, felt that Wallis's gift as an artist was that he never knew he was one. His unconventional approach and the innocence of his personal method of making art marked Alfred Wallis, even after his death, as a crucial figure in the modernist movement. The art scene in St Ives during World War II is depicted vividly in The Alfred Wallis Factor which illustrates the birth of modernism in the small fishing port in the far south-west of England. With dominant personalities like Sven Berlin, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Adrian Stokes, Bernard Leach, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Patrick Heron, it was inevitable that personal relationships would both form and fracture. Though causes would range from the banal to the bizarre, David Wilkinson never loses focus on the high stakes for which these characters were playing: the creation of their work, and reputations, of lasting significance. Their passion was strong and their ambition even stronger. The Alfred Wallis Factor tells the story of this extraordinary painter's long-lasting influence on - and beyond - modernism: David Wilkinson expounds the events around and following the artist's death, assessing the roles of friends and rivals in making Alfred Wallis a benchmark of modern British art. The Alfred Wallis Factor is a comprehensive examination of a troubled era, in which life met war and changed the destiny of the art world.

Today we view Cezanne as a monumental figure, but during his lifetime (1839-1906), many did not understand him or his work. With brilliant insight, drawing on a vast range of primary sources, Alex Danchev tells the story of an artist who was never accepted into the official Salon: he was considered a revolutionary at best and a barbarian at worst, whose paintings were unfinished, distorted and strange. His work sold to no one outside his immediate circle until his late thirties, and he maintained that 'to paint from nature is not to copy an object; it is to represent its sensations' - a belief way ahead of his time, with stunning implications that became the obsession of many other artists and writers, from Matisse and Braque to Rilke and Gertrude Stein. Beginning with the restless teenager from Aix who was best friends with Emile Zola at school, Danchev carries us through the trials of a painter tormented by self-doubt, who always remained an outsider, both of society and the bustle of the art world. Cezanne: A life delivers not only the fascinating days and years of the visionary who would 'astonish Paris with an apple', with interludes analysing his self-portraits, but also a complete assessment of Cezanne's ongoing influence through artistic imaginations in our own time. He is, as this life shows, a cultural icon comparable to Monet or Toulouse.

A beautiful and informative gift book devoted to Edward Bawden's representations of England. Edward Bawden (1903-1989) was a printmaker, painter, illustrator and designer. He studied and later taught at the Royal College of art, served as a war artist in WW2 and worked extensively as a commercial artist for companies including London Transport, Fortnum and Mason, Shell-Mex, the Folio Society and Chatto and Windus. Aside from the years he spent in France, the Middle East and North Africa while serving as a war artist, and later visits to Canada and Ireland, Bawden rarely travelled far from home, but found inspiration in the fields and farms of his native Essex, at the seaside, and in classic London scenes: Kew Gardens, the Royal Parks, the Tower of London and St Paul's Cathedral, and the iron-and-glass monuments to Victorian engineering such as Liverpool Street station and the markets in Spitalfields and Smithfield. This book celebrates England as represented by Bawden in 85 works held in the V&A's collection, including prints, posters, drawings, paintings, murals and advertising material. The illustrations include such early pieces as his poster Map of the British Empire for an exhibition in 1924; his mural English Garden Delights, designed for the Orient Line Navigation Company in 1946; illustrations for books including Good Food, The Gardener's Diary and Life in an English Village; advertising work for London Transport, Shell and Fortnum & Mason; the poster Lifeguards, created to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953; and a varied selection of linocuts and watercolours. As this book demonstrates, it was England, with its quiet landscapes, its pleasures and pastimes, its history and ceremonies, its traditions and recreations, that was the source of Bawden's finest and most engaging work.

The book is a study on Dutch painting, drawing and printmaking of the 17th century, focused on interlocking its descriptive realism with the visual strategy of illusion. The author analyzes this relationship as a conjunction rather than an opposition. Illusionistic compositional devices were current not only in mythological, biblical and allegorical images but also in proper realistic representations of the world. At the same time, many visual inventions, which included illusionistic concepts, were presented with persuasive realism of the forms. Thus, different seventeenth-century Dutch artists - such as Hendrick Goltzius, Hendrick Vroom, Rembrandt, Vermeer - attempted to produce "open images" and to conduct a visual game with their beholders.

This title was first published in 1980: Drawing upon released documents, memoirs and party-history works, the process and impact of the political campaigns in China between 1950 and 1965 is documented. Complete with extensive interviews with Chinese scholars and former officials, the book reviews the findings of the first edition.

This major new biography recounts the extraordinary life of one of the most creative figures in Western culture, weaving together the multiple threads of Michelangelo's life and times with a brilliant analysis of his greatest works. The author retraces Michelangelo's journey from Rome to Florence, explores his changing religious views and examines the complicated politics of patronage in Renaissance Italy. The psychological portrait of Michelangelo is constantly foregrounded, depicting with great conviction a tormented man, solitary and avaricious, burdened with repressed homosexuality and a surplus of creative enthusiasm. Michelangelo's acts of self-representation and his pivotal role in constructing his own myth are compellingly unveiled.
Antonio Forcellino is one of the world's leading authorities on Michelangelo and an expert art historian and restorer. He has been involved in the restoration of numerous masterpieces, including Michelangelo's Moses. He combines his firsthand knowledge of Michelangelo's work with a lively literary style to draw the reader into the very heart of Michelangelo's genius.

Following the worldwide success of his Poemotion trilogy, Takahiro Kurashima presents a title that is in no way inferior to the previous ones in terms of surprise and viewing pleasure. On the contrary: here, the motifs are combined to form a visual narrative that is revealed when the static basic image is set in motion by means of the striped foil. Then an astonishing panorama of unseen moires and patterns unfolds. The artist uses the digital tools for his creations in a virtuoso manner. At the same time he continues to catch up with the great models of kinetic art. Moiremotion is a school of vision and offers contemplative recreation for our eyes.

The Sketchbook of Loish offers readers a unique look into Loish's creative processes and idea generation, providing an insight into the role her sketches play in her extremely popular work. Peek inside Loish's sketchbook and discover how she explores gesture, stylization, and sketching for animation. Learn the different techniques she uses when sketching with traditional and digital tools, and follow the book's two detailed tutorials on character construction and sketching digitally to improve your own processes. The book also features handy quick tips for capturing movement, using different line weights, shading, and using textured brushes. Including an insight into Loish's character sketching, development sketches, landscape, and reference studies this book will show you how Loish captures the spirit of her finished artworks in her exquisite preliminary work. In addition to showcasing a comprehensive collection of Loish's sketches, this book features exclusive artwork, and a special chapter exploring Loish's personal concepts to give an in-depth look at how her initial ideas evolve through sketches to culminate in her accomplished concept designs. A truly inspiring and informative book with a high-quality finish and slipcase, The Sketchbook of Loish will have you itching to get sketching!

Join Chris Ayers and his menagerie as they make their Parisian debut on the walls of Galerie Daniel Maghen. Fifty-eight pieces were created especially for the gallery show in year six of The Daily Zoo and they are all captured in this book in their full glory. Do not miss meeting Le Chic Sheep, Le Penseur (The Thinker), Alien Accountant and Rosie On Skates, to name only a few, as they are certain to become close cartoon friends.

A sweeping retrospective exploring the oeuvre of an incandescent artist, revealing the ways that Mitchell expanded painting beyond Abstract Expressionism as well as the transatlantic contexts that shaped her Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) was fearless in her experimentation, creating works of unparalleled beauty, strength, and emotional intensity. This gorgeous book unfolds the story of an artistic master of the highest order, revealing the ways she expanded abstract painting and illuminating the transatlantic contexts that shaped her. Lavish illustrations cover the full arc of her artistic practice, from her exceptional New York paintings of the early 1950s to the majestic multipanel compositions she made in France later in her career. Signature works are represented here along with rarely seen paintings, works on paper, artist's sketchbooks, and photographs of Mitchell's life, social circle, and surroundings. Featuring scholarly texts, in-depth essays, and artistic and literary responses, this book is organized in ten chronological chapters. Each chapter centers on a closely related suite of paintings, illuminating a shifting inner landscape colored by experience, sensation, memory, and a deep sense of place. Presenting groundbreaking research and a variety of perspectives on her art, life, and connections to poetry and music, this unprecedented volume is an essential reference for Mitchell's admirers and those just discovering her work. Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Schedule: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (September 4, 2021-January 17, 2022) Baltimore Museum of Art (March 6-August 14, 2022) Fondation Louis Vuitton (October 5, 2022-February 27, 2023)

In 'Coalescing Geometries' the painter expresses a creative response to her environment and an inner sense of the essence of nature's growth force. The designs intricacy with its prismatic color sensibility springs from a love of nature and its patterns. The ethereal and kinetic sensations reflected in 'Coalescing Geometries' reflect the growth patterns found in living forms. These geometries we recognize and know from our sensorial experience of nature in our immediate environment. The geometries found in this monograph are associated with those seen in plant growth, flowers, waves, spirals in shells, pine cones and also in mineral structures such as crystals. While working with geometrical arrangements, she finds the "movement, universal beauty and symmetry inherent to structures stemming from laws of growth. A shared numerical pattern in nature that permeates the arrangement of parts amongst the whole can be seen in the leaves and branches of a tree or the petals of a flower.

New expanded 248pp 2019 Edition. The single best collection of photography of Banksy's street work that has ever been assembled for print. If that isn't enough there are some words too. You Are An Acceptable Level of Threat covers his entire street art career, spanning the late '90s right up to the 'Seasons Greetings' Christmas 2018 piece in Port Talbot, Wales. This new edition includes his self-destructing 'Love is in the Bin' intervention, which according to Sotheby's is "the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction." The groundbreaking 'Dismaland' show, his Paris '68 revisited works, The Walled Off Hotel, Brexit, Cans Festival, Brookyln and Basquiat, as well as new works from Gaza and New York. Also featuring the controversial 'Cheltenham Spies' as well as 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', 'Art Buff' and the spectacular 'Mobile Lovers' which appeared outside Bristol Boys Boxing Club. 248 pages featuring his greatest works of art in context.