You can discover Japanese art like no other. Originally created by the artists of the ukiyo-e school of the floating world to advertise brothels in 17th-century Yoshiwara, these popular spring pictures (shunga) transcended class and gender in Japan for almost 300 years. These tender, humorous and brightly coloured pieces celebrate sexual pleasure in all its forms, culminating in the beautiful, yet graphic, work of iconic artists Utamaro, Hokusai and Kunisada. This catalogue of a major international exhibition aims to answer some key questions about what shunga is and why was it produced. Erotic Japanese art was heavily suppressed in Japan from the 1870s onwards as part of a process of cultural modernisation that imported many contemporary western moral values. Only in the last twenty years or so has it been possible to publish unexpurgated examples in Japan and this ground-breaking publication presents this fascinating art in its historical and cultural context for the first time. Within Japan, shunga has continued to influence modern forms of art, including manga, anime and Japanese tattoo art. Drawing on the latest scholarship and featuring over 400 images of works from major public and private collections, this landmark book sheds new light on this unique art form within Japanese social and cultural history. Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art is published to accompany an exhibition at the British Museum from October 2013 to January 2014.

Jon Hul is one of the most remarkable 'photo-realistic' painters of pin-up and erotic artwork working today. His paintings fetch huge gallery prices, but contrary to popular belief, those paintings don't just 'happen'! Jon draws constantly, both to keep his eye sharp for detail and expression, and to work out any concepts he has for a final full-colour illustration. In other words - the boy goes through a lot of pencils! The magic Hul can perform with the lowly combination of graphite and paper is showcased for the first time in "The Jon Hul Sketchbook". An eye-opening presentation of delightful eye-candy, with many of Jon's favourite models in all forms of grey-toned delight!

Maybe you've noticed. Today's superheroes and action heroes aren't as brawny and muscular as they used to be. In fact, almost all the characters in comic books and on TV have a fresh, new look--simplified, streamlined, edgier, with a hint of anime/cartoon design, and appealing to kids and adults alike. Now Christopher Hart, the superhero of how-to-draw books, has come to the rescue of artists everywhere with "Simplified" "Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist." Anatomy has always been a difficult subject, but for this book Hart uses his straightforward approach to show a simpler way. In clear step-by-step illustrations and text, he shows: how to draw streamlined figures in poses; body types and muscles; the mechanics of facial expression; how to know which muscles to eliminate in a simplified drawing; grouping muscles; muscle contours versus bone contours; muscles in classic comic-book poses like flying and punching; and more. Now artist can stop struggling with the fine points of anatomy and start creating modern looking heroes and heroines with help from "Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist."

Portraits, an inherently personal subject, provide an engaging entry point to an exploration of the politics, patronage, and power in Renaissance Florence The Medici family ruled Florence without interruption between 1434 and 1494, but following their return to power in 1512, Cosimo I de' Medici demonstrated an unprecedented ability to wield culture as a political tool. His rule transformed Florence into a dynastic duchy and give Florentine art the central position it has held ever since. As Florence underwent these dramatic political transformations in the sixteenth century, portraits became an essential means of recording a likeness and conveying a sitter's character, social position, and cultural ambitions. This fascinating book explores the ways that painters (including Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, and Francesco Salviati), sculptors (such as Benvenuto Cellini), and artists in other media endowed their works with an erudite and self-consciously stylish character that distinguished Florentine portraiture. Featuring more than ninety remarkable paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and medals, this volume is written by a team of leading international authors and presents a sweeping, penetrating exploration of a crucial and vibrant period in Italian art. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (June 26-October 11, 2021)

How do women paint or photograph each other? How do they represent each other in performance or sculpture? As mothers or heroines? With tenderness, aggression or respect? Madam & Eve explores the female gaze as it focuses on other women. The authors - an artist and a curator - investigate the work of over 200 artists, ranging from the well-established to the lesser known. A historical introduction sets up the artistic and cultural context for the rest of the book, which focuses on art since the 1970s and covers the universal themes of the body, life, death, stories, and icons. The result is an amazing parade of artworks: eye-catching, poignant, powerful, political, idiosyncratic, playful, awkward, passionate, sexy, and positive. It is also an eloquent examination of the impact that the feminist movement has had on contemporary art.

Undressed to impress. When it comes to pleasure, size doesn't matter, as we all know it's quality, not quantity, that counts. But let's admit it: a big penis is undeniably compelling. Big shoulders, big lapels, and big hair may come and go, but the big penis never goes out of fashion. With those possessing more than 8 inches (20 cm) making up less than 2 per cent of the world's population, this rare accessory will always fascinate (a word, coincidentally, derived from the Latin fascinum, meaning both phallus and magical spirit).In this companion volume to "The Big Book of Breasts", we explore the centuries-old fascination with the large phallus, a fascination common to men and women alike. This hefty book is profusely illustrated with over 400 historic photos of spectacular male endowments, including rare photos of the legendary John Holmes. The majority of the photographs are from the 1970s, when the sexual revolution first freed photographers to depict the male entirely nude. Photographers include Bob Mizer of Athletic Model Guild, David Hurles of Old Reliable, Colt, Falcon, Sierra Domino, Third World, and Champion Studios, with each of these iconic photographers interviewed or profiled, along with information about each of their models. And if this isn't enough, the book closes with a special surprise comparable to the Guinness Book of Records' - Norma Stitz featured in "The Big Book of Breasts"!

Say no to silicone: The greatest natural breasts of our times Some call it the American obsession, but men everywhere recognize the hypnotic allure of a large and shapely breast. In The Big Book of Breasts, Dian Hanson explores the origins of mammary madness through three decades of natural big-breasted nudes. Starting with the World War II Bosom-Mania that spawned Russ Meyer, Howard Hughes's The Outlaw and Frederick's of Hollywood, Dian guides you over, around, and in between the dangerous curves of infamous models including Michelle Angelo, Candy Barr, Virginia Bell, Joan Brinkman, Lorraine Burnett, Lisa De Leeuw, Uschi Digard, Candye Kane, Jennie Lee, Sylvia McFarland, Margaret Middleton, Paula Page, June Palmer, Roberta Pedon, Rosina Revelle, Candy Samples, Tempest Storm, Linda West, June Wilkinson, Julie Wills, and dozens more, including Guinness World Record holder Norma Stitz, possessor of the World's Largest Natural Breasts. The 420 pages of this book contain the most beautiful and provocative black and white and color photos ever created of these iconic women, plus nine original interviews, including the first with Tempest Storm and Uschi Digard in over a decade, and the last with Candy Barr before her untimely death in 2005. In a world where silicone is now the norm, these spectacular real women stand as testament that nature knows best. The editor: Dian Hanson is a twenty-five-year veteran of men's magazine publishing. She began her career at Puritan magazine in 1976 and went on to edit a variety of titles, including Partner, Oui, Hooker, Outlaw Biker, and Juggs magazines. In 1987 she took over the ?60s title Leg Show and transformed it into the world's best-selling fetishpublication. Most recently, she authored TASCHEN's Terryworld, Tom of Finland: The Comic Collection and History of Men's Magazines six-volume set.

Examining the body language displayed in works of art is a whole new way of looking at art. The gestures portrayed can reflect the mores of a particular period in history, the customs of a certain culture or a fashion in artistic styles. Exploring these with masterful subtlety, celebrated artist and anthropologist Desmond Morris uncovers fascinating insights about changing social attitudes and conventions through history and around the world, finding surprising similarities as well as now rarely used gestures. Morris selects a number of key gestures, such as the handshake, the pointed foot, or the glove-slap, and groups them by the message they are intended to convey, such as Greetings, Status and Threats. He discusses the previously unconsidered symbolism behind these. What is understood as a gang sign today may have borne a more enigmatic meaning for Botticelli. And what did Napoleon's hidden hand really mean? Postures: Body Language in Art uniquely combines the author's expertise in both art and social science, so that even the most familiar paintings are suddenly seen in a new light.

Statuesque actress, stuntwoman, martial artist, bodybuilder, bodyguard, dominatrix. For over 15 years Mistress Xena has helped bring thousands of twisted fantasies to life. Submitted allows you to become a fly on the wall of her dungeon as she reveals her story and the private fantasies of her anonymous clients. These incredible dreams are revealed for the first time - outrageous to some, but for Xena it's just another day at the office. These letters take the reader on an often hilarious and provocative journey through the secret minds and desires of Xena's slaves.

Exploring the body of nude photography being made by a large group of young artists from all over the world, this collection examines the new moods and outlooks in photography engendered by the heady era that witnessed the explosion of the snapshot aesthetic, the birth of digital photos and the proliferation of online outlets for sharing and exhibiting art.

There is a popular and romantic myth about Rembrandt and the Jewish people. One of history's greatest artists, we are often told, had a special affinity for Judaism. With so many of Rembrandt's works devoted to stories of the Hebrew Bible, and with his apparent penchant for Jewish themes and the sympathetic portrayal of Jewish faces, it is no wonder that the myth has endured for centuries.
"Rembrandt's Jews" puts this myth to the test as it examines both the legend and the reality of Rembrandt's relationship to Jews and Judaism. In his elegantly written and engrossing tour of Jewish Amsterdam--which begins in 1653 as workers are repairing Rembrandt's Portuguese-Jewish neighbor's house and completely disrupting the artist's life and livelihood--Steven Nadler tells us the stories of the artist's portraits of Jewish sitters, of his mundane and often contentious dealings with his neighbors in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, and of the tolerant setting that city provided for Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews fleeing persecution in other parts of Europe. As Nadler shows, Rembrandt was only one of a number of prominent seventeenth-century Dutch painters and draftsmen who found inspiration in Jewish subjects. Looking at other artists, such as the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael and Emmanuel de Witte, a celebrated painter of architectural interiors, Nadler is able to build a deep and complex account of the remarkable relationship between Dutch and Jewish cultures in the period, evidenced in the dispassionate, even ordinary ways in which Jews and their religion are represented--far from the demonization and grotesque caricatures, the iconography of the outsider, so often found in depictionsof Jews during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Through his close look at paintings, etchings, and drawings; in his discussion of intellectual and social life during the Dutch Golden Age; and even through his own travels in pursuit of his subject, Nadler takes the reader through Jewish Amsterdam then and now--a trip that, under ever--threatening Dutch skies, is full of colorful and eccentric personalities, fiery debates, and magnificent art.

Celebrated photographer Robert Mapplethorpe challenged the limits of censorship and conformity, com- bining technical and formal mastery with unexpected, often provocative content that secured his place in history. Mapplethorpe's artistic vision helped shape the social and cultural fabric of the 1970s and 80s and, following his death in 1989 from AIDS, informed the political landscape of the 1990s. His photographic works continue to resonate with audiences all over the world. Throughout his career, Mapplethorpe preserved studio files and art from every period and vein of his production, including student work, jewelry, sculptures, and commercial assignments. The resulting archive is fascinating and astonishing. With over four hundred illustrations, this volume surveys a virtually unknown resource that sheds new light on the artist's motivations, connections, business acumen, and tal- ent as a curator and collector.

Examines the styles and contexts of portrait statues produced during one of the most dynamic eras of Western art, the early Hellenistic age. Often seen as the beginning of the Western tradition in portraiture, this historical period is here subjected to a rigorous interdisciplinary analysis. Using a variety of methodologies from a wide range of fields - anthropology, numismatics, epigraphy, archaeology, history, and literary criticism - an international team of experts investigates the problems of origins, patronage, setting, and meanings that have consistently marked this fascinating body of ancient material culture.

This publication examines how artist's portray themselves in self-portraits and how they portray their fellow artists. The artist's studio, models and milieu (friends, family etc) are also considered. Most of Liss Llewellyn's projects in the last twenty five years have involved working directly with artists' studios. Amongst the thousands and thousands of images that until now had lain undisturbed, often hardly seen since the day they were created, some occasionally stand out. Often modest in size and not obviously works of importance; a scrap of paper recording the intense introspective gaze of an artist, or a moment of intimacy suggesting the artist was in love with his subject - be it his or her spouse, model or children. This portrait of an artist is the result of twenty years of collecting and brings together a remarkable group of works which, large or small, minor or major all have in common one quality - the ability to transport the viewer momentarily into the artist's milieu.

The National Portrait Gallery holds the world's most extensive collection of portraits: a museum of people, a gallery of stories and ideas, and a home of artistic masterpieces. It celebrates the power and creativity of individuals - artists as well as their sitters. Icons and Identities draws upon the outstanding collections of the National Portrait Gallery to investigate and celebrate the variety and complexity of the genre. It draws together 'icons' - the most famous faces from British history from Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Isaac Newton to Audrey Hepburn and The Beatles - alongside less well-known sitters that provide a fascinating insight into the representation of identity in portraits. It also includes some intriguing surprises to reflect the diversity of the National Portrait Gallery's collection and to introduce audiences around the world to exceptional portraits of many kinds. This publication will show how artists, working across a range of media including painting, photography and multimedia, have revealed the visually stimulating and intellectually vibrant tradition of portrait making. It is structured around a series of key timeless themes and each section will include a selection of works from a range of periods, allowing audiences to consider how artists and sitters have engaged with themes of power, fame, the self, innovation, identity, memory and loss.

No matter what your orientation, EVERYbody's a little "Aqua-sexual," especially when the subject is Mermaids Illustrator Edward Reed takes a moist and salty excursion into the deep to showcase that rarest and most sea-going of mythical creatures in this glorious gallery of full color portraits Creatures of such mythical delight become as real as the girl-fish next door Come get a net-full of delights

This book examines the new institution of divinization that emerged as a political phenomenon at the end of the Roman Republic with the deification of Julius Caesar. Michael Koortbojian addresses the myriad problems related to Caesar's, and subsequently Augustus', divinization, in a sequence of studies devoted to the complex character of the new imperial system. These investigations focus on the broad spectrum of forms - monumental, epigraphic, numismatic, and those of social ritual - used to represent the most novel imperial institutions: divinization, a monarchial princeps, and a hereditary dynasty. Throughout, political and religious iconography is enlisted to serve in the study of these new Roman institutions, from their slow emergence to their gradual evolution and finally their eventual conventionalization.

*** 'Figure Drawing is structured like an art school course and is every bit as rewarding.' Artists and Illustrators Informative and instructive, this comprehensive guide will give you all the tools you need to draw the human figure, from life and from a screen. While many books focus on just one aspect of figure drawing, this manual unites the skills of observation, expression and understanding in one coherent approach. Beginning with the key principles of observation, Figure Drawing will help you to build a strong foundation of skills to make well-observed, proportionally accurate drawings. As the book progresses you will explore processes and exercises that move beyond the purely observed to express the gesture, form and substance of your model. Photographic and illustrative examples throughout the book support your learning at every step. Clear step-by-step tutorials provide a practical understanding of the key materials, skills and ideas in figure drawing. A comprehensive anatomical reference section, broken down into manageable zones, deepens your knowledge of the human form. The book is a Swiss-bound paperback, designed to lie flat when open and in use.

Figure Drawing for Artists: Making Every Mark Count is not a typical drawing instruction book; it explains the two-step process behind juggernauts like DreamWorks, WB and Disney. Though there are many books on drawing the human figure, none teach how to draw a figure from the first few marks of the quick sketch to the last virtuosic stroke of the finished masterpiece, let alone through a convincing, easy-to-understand method. That changes now! In Figure Drawing for Artists: Making Every Mark Count, award-winning fine artist Steve Huston shows beginners and pros alike the two foundational concepts behind the greatest masterpieces in art and how to use them as the basis for their own success. Embark on a drawing journey and discover how these twin pillars of support are behind everything from the Venus De Milo, to Michelangelo's Sibyl, to George Bellow's Stag at Sharkey's, and how they're the fundamental tools for animation studios around the world. Not to mention how the best comic book artists since the beginnings of the art form use them whether they know it or not. Figure Drawing for Artists: Making Every Mark Count sketches out the same two-step method taught to the artists of DreamWorks, Warner Brothers, and Disney Animation, so pick up a pencil and get drawing. The For Artists series expertly guides and instructs artists at all skill levels who want to develop their classical drawing and painting skills and create realistic and representational art.

The ways of war in the Middle Ages never cease to fascinate. There is a glamour associated with knights in shining armour, colourful tournaments and heroic deeds which appeals to the modern imagination. Because medieval warfare had its colourful side it is easy to overlook the face that war was a very serious business in an age when brute force was the recognised way of settling a quarrel, and conflict formed a normal way of life at every level of society. This book illustrates the art of war with dozens of medieval images from books and manuscripts, and reveals a wealth of social and military background on heraldry, armour, knights and chivalry, castles, sieges, and the arrival of gunpowder. This new edition is completely revised with a selection of new illustrations from the British Library's medieval manuscripts.