In 1802, at the age of 26, Joseph Mallord William Turner became the youngest ever member of the Royal Academy. A prolific painter and watercolourist, his paintings began by combining great historical themes with the inspired visions of nature, but his experimentation with capturing the effects of light led him swiftly towards an unusual dissolution of forms. Turner was a constant traveller, not only within the British Isles but also throughout Europe, from the Alps to the banks of the Rhine, from northern France to Rome and Venice. His death in 1851 revealed not only his zealously guarded private life but also a will that left both his fortune and more than thirty thousand drawings, watercolours and paintings to the nation. In this profusely illustrated book, Olivier Meslay invites us to follow the development of Turner's incandescent art, a bridge between Romanticism and Impressionism and one of Britain's most remarkable contributions to art history.

Hailed as a brilliant theoretician, Voldemars Matvejs (best known by his pen name Vladimir Markov) was a Latvian artist who spearheaded the Union of Youth, a dynamic group championing artistic change in Russia, 1910-14. His work had a formative impact on Malevich, Tatlin, and the Constructivists before it was censored during the era of Soviet realism. This volume introduces Markov as an innovative and pioneering art photographer and assembles, for the first time, five of his most important essays. The translations of these hard-to-find texts are fresh, unabridged, and authentically poetic. Critical essays by Jeremy Howard and Irena Buzinska situate his work in the larger phenomenon of Russian 'primitivism', i.e. the search for the primal. This book challenges hardening narratives of primitivism by reexamining the enthusiasm for world art in the early modern period from the perspective of Russia rather than Western Europe. Markov composed what may be the first book on African art and Z.S. Strother analyzes both the text and its photographs for their unique interpretation of West African sculpture as a Kantian 'play of masses and weights'. The book will appeal to students of modernism, orientalism, 'primitivism', historiography, African art, and the history of the photography of sculpture.

As a land artist Strijdom van der Merwe uses the materials provided by the chosen site. His sculptural forms take shape in relation to the landscape. It is a process of working with the natural world using sand, water, wood and rocks, he shapes these elements into geometrical forms that participate with their environment, continually changing until their final probable destruction. He observes the fragility of beauty while not lamenting its passing. What remains is a photographic image, a fragment of the imagination. While a visual record is materially all that is left, he also leaves us a reminder of the capacity, however feeble, of an individual to alter the universe by embracing the ceaseless changing of nature, actively contributing to it and in so doing, modulating and beautifying the outcome.

This is a fundamental reassessment of the work of William Holman Hunt, and the first critical text to reproduce his pictures in colour and set him on an international stage. Introducing a new critique of the autobiography and drawing on hundreds of private letters, drawings and paintings, the author depicts a radical man of his times, deeply troubled by the pivotal concerns of the materialist age - the isolation of the individual, the collapse of faith and the status of art - and seeking solutions through a systematic testing of the extremes of painting. A close examination of the pictures, including neglected later works, combined with recent scientific research relate the physical act of painting, and the paint, back to the body of the artist. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, this book answers the longstanding lack of any monograph on Hunt and will make compelling reading for undergraduate and graduate students of History of Art, Victorian Studies, English Literature and Religious Studies, as well as curators, conservators and the artist's many admirers. -- .

What do we see when we observe? What do we see when we observe a photograph? Ghirri's work is distinguished by the tension between the object and its representation, and there is nothing that he loves more than those situations in which boundaries become permeable; his work has taught us a new way of seeing, giving meaning to what is seemingly obvious. This is not the landscape that is normally perceived, but the one that is supposed to be latent, inscribed on the reverse: landscape of memory and fairytale, the landscape of hidden figures and wonders. In this direction, Ghirri has always preferred common and familiar places, already seen, but for the first time 'observed' with different eyes, where everything is suspended between past and future and where, like in the countryside, the world can be imagined as a vision which still arouses wonder. A thought-landscape. Text in English and Italian.

Sung closely examines William Blake's extant engraved copper plates and arrives at a new interpretation of his working process. Sung suggests that Blake revised and corrected his work more than was previously thought. This belies the Romantic ideal that the acts of conception and execution are simultaneous in the creative process.

Covers approximately 250 sales of Old Masters since 1980, with an average of five listings from each sale. There are 2,700 signature examples of 1,700 artists. Three sections following the main body of this volume offer the researcher easy cross-referencing monograms and initials, symbols, and alternate names. The appendix includes supplemental signature information on additional artists whose actual signatures were not available, but whose importance could not be omitted.

The paintings, drawings, and mixed-media works of Joe Roberts are transportive in the cosmic sense. Through their intuitive blend of styles and subjects, they serve as portals into a welcomingly hallucinatory world: a place where gleeful mashups of childhood signifiers (comic book detritus, cartoon mascots) exist cozily alongside countercultural reference points (ouija boards, sci-fi paperbacks, UFOs) and earnest flashes of the personal (diaristic sketches, confessional trip reports). Reissued for the first time since 2015, LSD Worldpeace documents the extraordinary creativity and scrappy methods of Roberts's early career, replete with collages, action figures, and dioramas, in addition to the paintings for which he's become so celebrated. With introductory texts by Myla DalBesio and Matthew Ronay, LSD Worldpeace is the product of a wildly imaginative artist moving freely between modes, guided by a boundless vision.

Vincent van Gogh's story is one of the most ironic in art history. Today, he is celebrated the world over as one of the most important painters of all time, recognized with sell-out shows, feted museums, and record prices of tens of millions of dollars at auction. Yet as he was painting the canvases that would subsequently become these sell-out modern masterpieces, van Gogh was battling not only the disinterest of his contemporary audiences but also devastating bouts of mental illness, with episodes of depression and paralyzing anxiety which would eventually claim his life in 1890, when he committed suicide shortly after his 37th birthday. This comprehensive study of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) pairs a detailed monograph on his life and art with a complete catalogue of his 871 paintings. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

"Looking for Alfred" documents Johan Grimonprez's prize-winning film of the same name, an homage to Alfred Hitchcock in the form of a search for the perfect Hitchcock doppelganger and vignettes starring those multiple would-be Hitchcocks, reenacting his cameos. Casting calls and screen tests in London, Rotterdam, Los Angeles and New York are documented in film stills and photos. (Professional Hitchcock impersonator Rob Burrage says, "I thought I was safe until you guys came along, digging up all those other Hitchcock look-alikes. Now we will have to find ways of disposing of them.") Line-readings from Truffaut's famous 1960s interview with the master and scenes in which Hitchcock acted as an extra are further grist for the mill. Beyond the work's mockumentary structure, Grimonprez evokes the Hitchcockian universe uncannily, and connects back--through the recurring motif of a man in a suit and a bowler hat--to another great modern auteur, Rene Magritte.

John Castagno's Artists' Signatures and Monograms have become the standard reference source for galleries, museums, libraries, and collectors around the world. Whether used to identify, authenticate, or verify signatures and works of both well-known and little-known artists, Castagno's work has no equal. In this new volume, Castagno has collected more than 1,100 signatures and monograms of Jewish artists, as well as signatures of artists whose work reflects Jewish themes. In addition to the standard signature entries found in Castagno's other books, this volume features additional biographical information, providing a more complete profile of the artist and his or her work. All artists are listed with the most updated information on nationality, birth and/or death dates. The entries direct the researcher to many biographical and bibliographical sources not found on web site searches, and many of the resources offer additional references. Several individual listings provide gallery referrals and catalog auction dates, which can be used to buy or sell a particular artist's work. The use of Jewish Artists: Signatures and Monograms provides the researcher a reference tool not duplicated elsewhere: one that will save many hours of research.

This is the first full-length study about the British artist Roy Ascott, one of the first cybernetic artists, with a career spanning seven decades to date. The book focuses on his early career, exploring the evolution of his early interests in communication in the context of the rich overlaps between art, science and engineering in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. The first part of the book looks at Ascott's training and early work. The second park looks solely at Groundcourse, Ascott's extraordinary pedagogical model for visual arts and cybernetics which used an integrative and systems-based model, drawing in behaviourism, analogue machines, performance and games. Using hitherto unpublished photographs and documents, this book will establish a more prominent place for cybernetics in post-war British art.

On June 10, 1935, Dorse Lanpher was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. After he was resuscitated by the doctor, Dorse began living a meaningful life ruled by his vivid imagination, artistic talent, and passion for creating unforgettable special effects environments for the animated characters.

In his memoir, Dorse shares a revealing glimpse into his fascinating life as an artist in the animated film industry. He begins by offering entertaining childhood anecdotes that describe cherished moments like skinny-dipping with his friends, saving his money and buying his family their first television, and constructing a homemade golf course in a field of wild grass. After he graduated from high school in California and entered the Art Center School of Los Angeles, Dorse's talent was recognized by his teachers; after five challenging semesters, however, he left the school. As Dorse embarked on a journey to conquer a new world with nothing but a portfolio of his best art and a desire to live his dream, he soon discovered that, with a little tenacity, he could do anything.

Dorse's captivating story proves that following one's passion is never free from struggle, but staying true to a dream can lead to a life fulfilled.

Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) is one of the leading figures of modern art. His unparalleled cut-outs are among the most significant of any artist's late works. When ill health first prevented Matisse from painting, he began to cut into painted paper with scissors as his primary technique to make maquettes for a number of commissions, from books and stained glass window designs to tapestries and ceramics. Taking the form of a 'studio diary', the catalogue re-examines the cut-outs in terms of the methods and materials that Matisse used, and looks at the tensions in the works between finish and process; fine art and decoration; contemplation and utility; and drawing and colour.