"This book is as close as we can ever come to seeing the Moche people-- and to having a basis for understanding the society that produced such remarkable works of art." -- Craig Morris, Senior Vice President and Dean of Science, American Museum of Natural History

"By presenting the Moche artists and the people who have been portrayed by them, Donnan brings us to a level of understanding and proximity, so to speak, that I would have never considered possible just a few years ago. . . . Believe me, this book is going to be a bestseller." -- Steve Bourget, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Texas at Austin

Of all the ancient civilizations that flourished in the Americas, only one perfected true portraiture of living people and produced it in quantity-- the Moche who inhabited the north coast of Peru between approximately AD 100 and 800. Using the medium of three-dimensional ceramic vessels that could have contained liquid, Moche artisans typically formed the heads of the individuals they wished to portray, though sometimes they presented full figures with realistic portrait faces. Depicting an astonishing range of physical types, these portraits now allow us to meet Moche people who lived more than 1,500 years ago and to sense the nuances of their individual personalities.

This pathfinding book presents the first wide-ranging, systematic study of the Moche portraits. Drawing on more than 900 examples from museums and private collections around the world-- some 300 of which are illustrated here in full color-- Christopher Donnan documents how the portrait tradition evolved, how the portraits were produced and distributed, who theyportrayed, why they were made, and how they were used in Moche society. His analysis is supported by extensive archaeological evidence, which provides the context for portraits found in Moche tombs and midden deposits, as well as useful information for identifying the headdresses and ornaments worn by the individuals portrayed.

The first in-depth investigation of Gauguin's portraits, revealing how the artist expanded the possibilities of the genre in new and exciting ways Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) broke with accepted conventions and challenged audiences to expand their understanding of visual expression. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in his portraits, a genre he remained engaged with throughout all phases of his career. Bringing together more than 60 of Gauguin's portraits in a wide variety of media that includes painting, works on paper, and sculpture, this handsomely illustrated volume is the first focused investigation of the multifaceted ways the artist approached the subject. Essays by a group of international experts consider how the artist's conception of portraiture evolved as he moved between Brittany and Polynesia. They also examine how Gauguin infused his work with symbolic meaning by taking on different roles like the Christ figure and the savage in his self-portraits and by placing his models in suggestive settings with alluring attributes. This welcome addition to the scholarship on one of the 19th century's most innovative and controversial artists reveals fascinating insights into the crucial role that portraiture played in Gauguin's overall artistic practice.

What did it mean for painter Lee Krasner to be an artist and a woman if, in the culture of 1950s New York, to be an artist was to be Jackson Pollock and to be a woman was to be Marilyn Monroe? With this question, Griselda Pollock begins a transdisciplinary journey across the gendered aesthetics and the politics of difference in New York abstract, gestural painting. Revisiting recent exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism that either marginalised the artist-women in the movement or focused solely on the excluded women, as well as exhibitions of women in abstraction, Pollock reveals how theories of embodiment, the gesture, hysteria and subjectivity can deepen our understanding of this moment in the history of painting co-created by women and men. Providing close readings of key paintings by Lee Krasner and re-thinking her own historic examination of images of Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler at work, Pollock builds a cultural bridge between the New York artist-women and their other, Marilyn Monroe, a creative actor whose physically anguished but sexually appropriated star body is presented as pathos formula of life energy. Monroe emerges as a haunting presence within this moment of New York modernism, eroding the policed boundaries between high and popular culture and explaining what we gain by re-thinking art with the richness of feminist thought. -- .

Powerful, supple, and sensual - these are words best used to describe the art of TC Cor - an illustrator with an expert eye for the way flesh glistens and muscle ripples on the female form. His newest "bodies" of work have been assembled in this meticulous collection, and is a magnificent gallery of pencil and airbrush illustrations.

Using clear and concise language and in-depth, step-by-step demonstrations, author and renowned artist Mary Whyte guides beginning and intermediate watercolorists through the entire painting process, from selecting materials to fundamental techniques to working with models. Going beyond the practical application of techniques, Whyte helps new artists capture not just the model's physical likeness, but their unique personality and spirit. Richly illustrated, the book features Mary Whyte's vibrant empathetic watercolors and works by such masters of watercolor as Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

With the first centerfold image of the radiant Marilyn Monroe, Hugh M. Hefner masterminded a cultural icon: Playboy 's Playmate of the Month. This voluptuous new edition celebrates every nude centerfold from every issue of Playboy, from 1953 to February 2016. Initially published a decade ago, and now comprehensively updated, this must-have edition boasts 734 nude centerfolds and decade openers from literary luminaries, including an all-new essay by Elizabeth Wurtzel on the last decade of centerfolds, and a redesigned package that perfectly captures the complete cultural and aesthetic arc of the Playboy centerfold. With contributions by: - Robert Coover - Paul Theroux - Robert Stone - Jay McInerney - Daphne Merkin - Maureen Gibbon - Elizabeth Wurtzel

Showcasing a diverse variety of women, these portraits demonstrate the work of famed nude photographer Thomas Karsten. The collection captures a variety of unique subjects from different parts of the world, depicting the individual beauty of each culture and going beyond endeavored poses to communicate intense emotion and eroticism. Combined with the author's poetic reflections, this painstakingly produced volume is both an optical and sensual pleasure. This bilingual edition includes English and German.

A major survey of contemporary artist Hung Liu, whose layered portraits explore history and memory through the stories of marginalized figures Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands presents the stunning work of this contemporary Chinese American artist. Liu (1948-2021) blends painting and photography to offer new frameworks for understanding portraiture in relation to time, memory, and history. Often working from photographs, she uses portraiture to elevate overlooked subjects, amplifying the stories of those who have historically been invisible or unheard. This richly illustrated book examines six decades of Liu's painting, photography, and drawing. Author Dorothy Moss illuminates the importance of family photographs in Liu's work; Nancy Lim examines the origins of Liu's artistic practice; Lucy R. Lippard explores issues of identity and multiculturalism; and Elizabeth Partridge focuses on Liu's recent series based on Dorothea Lange's Depression-era photographs. Philip Tinari, along with artists Amy Sherald and Carrie Mae Weems, among others, conveys Liu's impact on contemporary art. Having lived through war, political revolution, exile, and displacement, Liu paints a complex picture of an Asian Pacific American experience. Her portraits speak powerfully to those seeking a better life, in the United States and elsewhere. Published in association with the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Exhibition Schedule: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (August 27, 2021-May 29, 2022)

Attention ladies - Zombies are out for more than just your brains! Sure they smell bad and tend to leave bits of rotting flesh around the house, but c'mon - you can say that about all your old boyfriends! Illustrator Rich Larson digs up a whole new gallery of ghoul-on-girl action!

Ever wanted to look over the gynecologist's shoulder when they were working? This is as close as you will get to seeing that view, with over 100 lip-parted, exposed, or spread open vaginas. Many of them even have a speculum opening them up to show more than you ever wanted to see. Vaginas, vaginas, and even MORE vaginas, and none of them have closed labia, or lips. Some are pulled apart, some are spread, some have fingers holding them open, and some are stretched wide open with the gynecologist tool, the speculum. These photos take you straight to (and sometimes into) the love canal, also known as the "pussy." These color pictures range from three inches away to three feet away. Men and lesbians alike will love comparing the different vagina pictures, all fully nude / naked, all in full color. This is an 5 by 8 book with one full picture per, to bring the vagina to life. Beyond topless or generally naked, or fully nude, this is all about the money shots. Don't think of this as XXX Sex Porn, think of it as beautiful feminine erotic art. All shapes, sizes, and colors of vaginas are in this book, a very compelling collection of women from around the world. A super set of pictures expanding the Female Genitalia 201 imagery, this book has no actual sex, but WARNING; VERY GRAPHIC NUDITY.

Vaginas, vaginas, and even MORE vaginas. Feel like a gynecologist when you see how close some of these photos take you to the love canal, also known as the "pussy." These color pictures range from three inches away to three feet away. Men and lesbians alike will love comparing the different vagina pictures, all fully nude / naked, all in full color. There are wrinkly vaginas, smooth vaginas, hairy vaginas, shaved vaginas, puffy vaginas, and shrunken vaginas... open vaginas, and closed vaginas.... pale colored vaginas, rich deep colored vaginas.... This is an 5 by 8 book with two pictures per page, so these certainly bring the vagina to life. Don't think of this as XXX Sex Porn, think of it as beautiful feminine erotic art. All shapes, sizes, and colors are in this book, a compelling collection of women from around the world. No actual sex, but WARNING; VERY GRAPHIC NUDITY.

From head to toe, the human form, in all its complexities, is visually simplified to such a degree in this remarkable workbook that even complete beginners will soon be able to draw accurate, well-proportioned faces and figures every time they try.
Avoiding complex charts of muscles and bones that are more helpful to doctors than to artists, this book's refreshing approach teaches anatomy from a cartoonist/illustrator's point of view. For example, there are many large and small muscles in the neck, all rendered in great detail in most anatomy books, but here, master teacher Christopher Hart shows only the four that are visible and need to be drawn. His clear instruction helps readers to visualize and portray shifting body weight in a pose without the need of a model, and instead of showing a mass of facial muscles and bones, he translates them into the simple planes an artist needs to draw a range of expressive faces.

Depictions of motherhood are ever present in Western art, yet rarely questioned or challenged. We may shy away from a subject that could be seen as sentimental or overly associated with idealistic constructs of femininity, nurture and care. Whether we are mothers ourselves, or whether we bring or nurture life in a wider sense, we all have some understanding of motherhood. We are all born of a woman's body. We are formed from the messy, challenging, self-denying and transformative experiences of motherhood. Giving birth to their creations, artists have represented this vital and complex subject in a variety of ways, providing insight into what motherhood might mean, its joys and challenges, and seeking to articulate its unspoken aspects. This beautiful gift book delves into the subject of motherhood as seen through the eyes of artists, providing a fresh insight into maternity as an art-historical subject and revealing the ways in which it has been confronted and re-imagined in the past 150 years. Featuring fifty artworks in a variety of media, this book is a celebration of motherhood in all its complexity.

With his first collection of amazing illustrations Heavenly Bodies, digital wizard Bruce Colero created other-worldly beauties with an inspired mixture of talent and technology. The reaction was, to say the least, overwhelming! Colero's approach to fantasy artwork heralded a new master to the realm! Now, in a more "adults-only" addendum, Bruce let's his mojo loose and breathes life and fire into some pretty hot babes! Here is a collection of women far out of anyone's league, but sure to haunt your wildest daydreams! These ladies are scorching, state-of-the-art super-heated eye-candy! If you're over 18 and ready to have the back of your head explode (always fun!), then Skin Deep will be on your must-have list for June! The book is produced in an oversized 9x12 inch format.

Designed and outlined by Will Eisner before his death in 2005, this posthumous masterwork, the third and final book in the Will Eisner Instructional Series, finally reveals the secrets of Eisner s own techniques and theories of movement, body mechanics, facial expressions, and posture: the key components of graphic storytelling. From his earliest comics, including the celebrated Spirit, to his pioneering graphic novels, Eisner understood that the proper use of anatomy is crucial to effective storytelling. His control over the mechanical and intuitive skills necessary for its application set him apart among comics artists, and his principles of body grammar have proven invaluable to legions of students in overcoming what is perhaps the most challenging aspect of creating comics. Buttressed by dozens of illustrations, which display Eisner s mastery of expression, both subtle and overt, Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative will benefit comics fans, students, and teachers and is destined to become the essential primer on the craft."

Despite his posthumous fame as a painter of flowers, still-lifes, gardens, landscapes and city scenes, during his lifetime Vincent van Gogh believed that his portraits constituted his most important works. Although as an artist he was `touched by so many different things', he was nevertheless committed to the art of portraiture - a quality that distinguished him from his contemporaries. Van Gogh was passionate in his avoidance of bland, photographic resemblances, in the hope of capturing the essential character of his models by means of expressive colour and brushwork. Showcasing a dramatic set of portraits created during Van Gogh's ten-year career, this book reflects the strong visual impact with which the artist captured the diversity of contemporary life. In his many portraits, we can discern the artist's desire to record expressively a number of themes, from the plight of the agricultural workers in his native Brabant and the destitution of prostitutes and their children in urban Europe, to the lives of his cosmopolitan acquaintances in Paris, including cafe owners and art dealers. It was here that he began his remarkable sequence of self-portraits. With reference to Van Gogh's extensive correspondence, Skea elaborates how the artist perceived his chosen subjects as would a writer, and how he felt that his portraits should somehow evoke what he considered to be the spiritual underpinning of human existence

How an eighteenth-century engraving of a slave ship became a cultural icon of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance One of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what it really was-shocking, immoral, barbaric, unimaginable. Printed as handbills and broadsides, the image Cheryl Finley has termed the "slave ship icon" was easily reproduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was circulating by the tens of thousands around the Atlantic rim. Committed to Memory provides the first in-depth look at how this artifact of the fight against slavery became an enduring symbol of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance. Finley traces how the slave ship icon became a powerful tool in the hands of British and American abolitionists, and how its radical potential was rediscovered in the twentieth century by Black artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and curators. Finley offers provocative new insights into the works of Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, Betye Saar, and many others. She demonstrates how the icon was transformed into poetry, literature, visual art, sculpture, performance, and film-and became a medium through which diasporic Africans have reasserted their common identity and memorialized their ancestors. Beautifully illustrated, Committed to Memory features works from around the world, taking readers from the United States and England to West Africa and the Caribbean. It shows how contemporary Black artists and their allies have used this iconic eighteenth-century engraving to reflect on the trauma of slavery and come to terms with its legacy.

More than any other ancient civilization, the Greeks placed the human body at the center of their culture. To them, the sculpted human figure was both an object of sensory delight and an expression of an intelligent mind. In the modern popular imagination, mention of the ancient Greeks is likely to conjure up an image of idealized and naked youth, and it is true that the ideal nude, both male and female, is a striking feature of Greek sculpture. However, in later Greek art, sculptors and their patrons became increasingly interested in human diversity, experimenting with the representation of ethnicity, age, social standing, and character.
The marble, bronze, and terra-cotta sculptures presented in this volume--outstanding highlights drawn from over six centuries of artistic production--demonstrate the diversity of Greek figural forms, from the idealized beauty of the Classical era to the individualized portraits of the Hellenistic period. Large, stunning details testify to the artists' skills in portraying cold, hard materials as warm, human flesh.