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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Art treatments & subjects > Individual artists > General
A lavishly illustrated look at the sources behind the paintings of
Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon famously found inspiration in
photographs, film-stills and mass-media imagery. In this new,
updated edition of In Camera, Martin Harrison reveals how these
sources informed some of Bacon's most important paintings and
triggered decisive turning points in the artist's stylistic
development. Key influences, including the masters Velazquez,
Poussin and Rodin, the photographer Eadweard Muybridge and the film
director Sergei Eisenstein, are given close consideration. Bacon's
work is examined in relation to the precedents set by other artists
working in the tradition of making use of mechanical reproductions,
including Pablo Picasso and Walter Sickert, and in the context of
his contemporaries Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko, Graham Sutherland and
Patrick Heron. With the aid of over 270 illustrations, including
valuable source images and documents, In Camera is a bravura
accomplishment of original research, addressing important questions
about Bacon's painting practice and shedding fresh light on his
life and work.
Steve Gerber (1947-2008) is among the most significant comics
writers of the modern era. Best known for his magnum opus Howard
the Duck, he also wrote influential series such as Man-Thing, Omega
the Unknown, The Phantom Zone, and Hard Time, expressing a
combination of intelligence and empathy rare in American comics.
Gerber rose to prominence during the 1970s. His work for Marvel
Comics during that era helped revitalize several increasingly
cliched generic conventions of superhero, horror, and funny animal
comics by inserting satire, psychological complexity, and
existential absurdism. Gerber's scripts were also often socially
conscious, confronting, among other things, capitalism,
environmentalism, political corruption, and censorship. His
critique also extended into the personal sphere, addressing such
taboo topics as domestic violence, racism, inequality, and poverty.
This volume follows Gerber's career through a range of interviews,
beginning with his height during the 1970s and ending with an
interview with Michael Eury just before Gerber's death in 2008.
Among the pieces featured is a 1976 interview with Mark Lerer,
originally published in the low-circulation fanzine Pittsburgh Fan
Forum, where Gerber looks back on his work for Marvel during the
early to mid-1970s, his most prolific period. This volume concludes
with selections from Gerber's dialogue with his readers and
admirers in online forums and a Gerber-based Yahoo Group, wherein
he candidly discusses his many projects over the years. Gerber's
unique voice in comics has established his legacy. Indeed, his
contribution earned him a posthumous induction into the Will Eisner
Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Address book companion to the exciting and luxurious Flame Tree
Notebooks. Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine
art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed, then
foil stamped. And they're powerfully practical: a pocket at the
back for receipts and scraps, two bookmarks and a solid magnetic
side flap. These are perfect for personal use and make a dazzling
gift. This example features Hokusai's The Great Wave. The most
notable period in Hokusai's artistic life was the latter part of
his career, beginning in 1830 when he was 70 years old. He began
the series of landscapes he is most famous for: 'Thirty-six Views
of Mount Fuji', which included The Great Wave, off Kanagawa,
probably his most iconic image.
This is a story about rivalry among artists. Not the kind of
rivalry that grows out of hatred and dislike, but rather, rivalry
that emerges from admiration, friendship, love. The kind of rivalry
that existed between Degas and Manet, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock
and de Kooning, and Freud and Bacon. These were some of the most
famous and creative relationships in the history of art, driving
each individual to heights of creativity and inspiration - and
provoking them to despair, jealousy and betrayal. Matisse's success
threatened Picasso so much that his friends would throw darts at a
portrait of his rival's beloved daughter Marguerite, shouting
'there's one in the eye for Matisse!' And Willem de Kooning's
twisted friendship with Jackson Pollock didn't stop him taking up
with his friend's lover barely a year after Pollock's fatal car
crash. In The Art of Rivalry, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic
Sebastian Smee explores how, as both artists struggled to come into
their own, they each played vital roles in provoking the other's
creative breakthroughs - ultimately determining the course of
modern art itself.
Pettibon is known for his characteristically youthful aesthetic and
sharply satirical critique of American culture. Though drenched in
cynicism, his work empathizes with the dizzying madness of our own
humanity as it engages both so-called high and low culture. Perhaps
most poetic of the many motifs present in Pettibon's oeuvre is the
surfer. In 1985 Pettibon began Surfers--a series he continues to
work on to this day--popular for its depiction of the lone surfer
silently carving "a line of beauty," along an impossibly large
wave. This publication traces a selection of one hundred surfers
from the series, from smaller monochromatic works on paper to
colorful large-scale paintings applied directly to the wall. For
Pettibon's protagonist in these works-his countercultural
hero-surfing exists apart from all else. Momentarily he achieves
sublimity on the wave, distant yet synced with turbulent reality.
We are forced to confront our own scale: small and feeble in the
face of so much sublime power. Pettibon's lyrical writings on these
painted surfaces-both his own and taken from literature-reference
his own philosophies and the confusions of reality-he critiques the
hypocrisies and vanities of the world he engages. To help navigate,
the renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan, perfectly
distills the transcendent nature and lack thereof in Pettibon's
work.
William Morris's interests were wide-ranging: he was a poet,
writer, political and social activist, conservationist and
businessman, as well as a brilliant and original designer and
manufacturer. This book explores the balance between Morris's
various spheres of activity and influence, places his art in the
context of its time and explores his ongoing and far-reaching
legacy. A pioneer of the Arts & Crafts Movement, William Morris
(1834-1896) is one of the most influential designers of all time.
Morris turned the tide of Victorian England against an increasingly
industrialized manufacturing process towards a rediscovered respect
for the skill of the maker. Morris's whole approach still resonates
today, and his designs are popular and much admired. Published to
mark the 125th anniversary of Morris's death, this book includes
contributions from a wide range of Morris experts, with chapters on
painting, church decoration and stained glass, interior decoration,
furniture, tiles and tableware, wallpaper, textiles, calligraphy
and publishing. Additional materials include a contextualized
chronology of Morris's life and a list of public collections around
the world where examples of Morris's work may be seen today. This
study is a comprehensive, fully illustrated exploration of a great
thinker and artist, and essential reading for anyone interested in
the history of design. With 668 illustrations in colour
Isaac Cordal ...is a sculpture artist from London. His sculptures
take the form of little people sculpted from concrete in 'real'
situations. Cordal manages to capture a lot of emotion in his
vignettes, in spite of their lack of detail or colour. He is
sympathetic toward his little people and we empathise with their
situations, their leisure time, their waiting for buses and their
more tragic moments such as accidental death, suicide or family
funerals. His sculptures can be found in gutters, on top of
buildings and bus shelters - in many unusual and unlikely places in
the capital. This book is the first time his images have been shown
in together in one book dedicated to his work, many images never
seen before. Cordal's concrete sculptures are like little magical
gifts to the public that only a few lucky people will see and love
but so many more will have missed. Left to their own devices
throughout London, what really makes these pieces magical is their
placement. They bring new meaning to little corners of the urban
environment. They express something vulnerable but deeply engaging.
Bettina is the first monograph to showcase the work of the
previously unsung artist Bettina Grossman, whose wildly
interdisciplinary practice spanned photography, sculpture, textile,
cinema, drawing, and more. An eccentric personality fully dedicated
to her art, Bettina lived in the famous Chelsea Hotel from 1968
until her death in late 2021. In her tiny studio, she produced and
accumulated a considerable body of work, much of which has remained
unseen and unpublished until now. Her interests ranged from
geometric and abstract studies, drawn from observations of people
on the street, to pieces that transformed language into graphic,
abstract "verbal forms." Incorporating strategies of chance and the
abstraction of everyday form through repetition and seriality,
Bettina pushed the photographic medium to and beyond its limits. As
Robert Blackburn, artist and founder of the Printmaking Workshop,
astutely observed of Bettina's work: "The photography, film,
sculpture are as one, for the photographic medium is employed not
only for documentation but as an endless source of inspiration from
which other disciplines emerge-and merge." Bettina was the winner
of the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles 2020 and is
copublished by Aperture and Editions Xavier Barral.
Instrumental in the formation of the underground comics scene in
San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s, Crumb has ruptured and
expanded the boundaries of the graphic arts, redefining comics and
cartoons as countercultural art forms. Presenting a slice of
Crumb's unique universe, this book features a wide array of printed
matter culled from the artist's five-decade career-tear sheets of
drawings and comics taken directly from the publications where the
works first appeared, magazine and album covers, broadsides from
the 1960s and 1970s, tabloids from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury,
Oakland, Manhattan's Lower East Side, and other counterculture
enclaves, as well as exhibition ephemera. Complementing this volume
are historical works from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
that have inspired Crumb and pages from his rarely seen sketchbooks
from the 1970s and 1980s that reveal his exemplary skill as a
draftsman. Documenting the critically acclaimed exhibition Drawing
for Print: Mind Fucks, Kultur Klashes, Pulp Fiction & Pulp Fact
by the Illustrious R. Crumb at David Zwirner, New York, in 2019,
curated by Robert Storr, this publication offers an opportunity to
immerse oneself in Crumb's singular mind. In the accompanying text,
Storr explores the challenging nature of some of Crumb's work and
the importance of artists who take on the status quo.
After Egon Schiele (1890-1918) freed himself from the shadow of his
mentor and role model Gustav Klimt, he had just ten years to
inscribe his signature style into the annals of modernity before
the Spanish flu claimed his life. Being a child prodigy quite aware
of his own genius and a passionate provocateur, this didn't prove
to be too big a challenge. His haggard, overstretched figures,
extreme depiction of sexuality and self-portraits, in which he
staged himself with emaciated facial expressions bordering between
brilliance and madness, had none of the decorative quality of
Klimt's hymns of love, sexuality and yearning devotion. Instead,
Schiele's work spoke of a brutal honesty, one that would upset and
irreversibly change Viennese society. Although his works were later
defamed as "degenerate" and for a time were almost forgotten
altogether, they influenced generations of artists-from Gunter Brus
and Francis Bacon to Tracey Emin. Today, his then misunderstood
oeuvre continues to fetch exorbitant prices on the international
art market. This monograph, first published in an XL edition, is
now available in a slightly abridged, more compact edition to
celebrate TASCHEN's 40th anniversary and features the paintings and
drawings that retrace the fertile last decade of Schiele's life.
These works are accompanied by essays introducing his life and
oeuvre, situating the Austrian master in the context of European
Expressionism and charting his extraordinary legacy. About the
series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural
archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with
accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate
their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an
unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books
by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new
editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact,
friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to
impeccable production.
In 1940, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, both established
artists with international reputations who had become disillusioned
with the commercial aspects of the art world, moved to Benton End,
overlooking the River Brett on the outskirts of Hadleigh, Suffolk.
What they found there was a somewhat ramshackle but capacious
sixteenth-century farmhouse, standing in over three acres of walled
gardens lost beneath brambles and elder trees; the house had not
been lived in for fifteen years. But Benton End became both their
home and the new premises of the East Anglian School of Painting
and Drawing which, in 1937, they had founded together in Dedham,
Essex. From 1940 until Lett Haines died in 1978 and Cedric Morris
in 1982, Benton End was an exotic world apart where art,
literature, good food, gardening and lively conversation combined
to produce an extraordinarily stimulating environment for amateurs
and professionals alike. Ronald Blythe recalls that 'there was a
whiff of garlic and wine in the air. The atmosphere ...was robust
and coarse, and exquisite and tentative all at once. Rough and
ready and fine mannered. Also faintly dangerous.' The sharply
contrasting characters and interests of Morris and Lett Haines
ensured the widest range of contacts and visitors to Benton End who
included Francis Bacon, Ronald Blythe, Benjamin Britten and Peter
Pears, David Carr, Beth Chatto, Randolph Churchill, Elizabeth
David, Lucian Freud, Kathleen Hale, Maggi Hambling, Lucy Harwood,
Glyn Morgan, John Nash, and Vita Sackville-West. There was no
formal teaching and students were left free to pursue their own
enthusiasms and to show their work to Morris or Lett Haines for
advice. Without formal teaching, they were free to pursue their own
enthusiasms, while Morris's skill as a plantsman and noted breeder
of irises, contrasted with Lett Haines's intellectual
sophistication, interest in food and wine, artistic
experimentation, and a general lack of enthusiasm for the outdoors.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Jean-Michel Basquiat:
Art and Objecthood, at Nahmad Contemporary, this book will
illuminate the role of found objects and unconventional materials
in the Jean- Michel Basquiat's oeuvre. Basquiat, whose artistic
practice has profoundly impacted audiences on an international
scale, used objects and media from his environs to proliferate
messages of social justice and change. Featuring a breadth of works
that the artist made using unconventional painted supports and
found-object sculptures, this publication will provide an
innovative, in-depth look into the artist's sculptural practice. In
addition to painting and drawing on items within his domestic
spaces-refrigerators, chairs, and cabinets-Basquiat also left his
mark on items he encountered on the street-discarded windows and
doors, mirrors, wood boards, and subway tiles. The publication will
present new scholarship by leading Basquiat academics and art
historians that will explore Basquiat's use of found objects and
materials and their role in addressing issues of social inequality
and the politics of race in the United States.
Bridget Riley, one of the leading abstract painters of her
generation, holds a unique position in contemporary art. She has
developed and extended the range of her interests ever since her
first success in the 1960s, creating a body of work which is both
consistent and highly varied. This volume, now fully revised and
updated, reveals the mind behind this remarkable aachievement,
drawing together the most important texts and interviews of the
last fifty years. Riley's writings show a passionate engagement
with her subjects and a great insight paired with a freshness of
approach and an exceptional clarity of expression. Quite apart from
providing a key to understanding her own work, this book is a
fascinating document reflecting the issues and problems facing an
artist in the 21st century.
For many the smoke and mirrors which surround Banksy are as
fascinating as the artwork of the 21st century's most important
living artist. Banksy Myths Volume 2 takes the same approach as Vol
1. We collect the stories, the reader can judge for themselves.
One of the greatest biographies of an artist ever written, and a
key document of the Renaissance. Written by a friend, fellow
painter and fellow Florentine. Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475-1564)
is perhaps the greatest artist in the entire Western tradition. In
painting, sculpture and architecture he created works that went
beyond anything imagined before. The David - miraculously created,
as Vasari describes, out of a piece of marble botched by another
sculptor - the Sistine Ceiling, the Sistine Last Judgement, before
which the Pope knelt in terrified prayer when it was first
unveiled: these works have lost none of their awe-inspiring power.
Michelangelo's impact was immediate, and he achieved a level of
fame and influence that was unprecedented. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the painter Giorgio Vasari should have made him the
culmination of his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects,
the first true work of art history. Vasari was a close colleague as
well as a fellow-artist and fellow- Florentine. The biography
printed here, from Vasari's much improved second edition, draws a
picture of Michelangelo the man and the artist that has an
immediacy and an authority that have not been surpassed. The
introduction by David Hemsoll situates this great work in the
context of 16th century Italian art.
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