In our imaginings of Paris, painter and graphic artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) has no small role to play. In his prints, posters, paintings, and drawings, the artist immortalized the city's Belle Epoque nightlife and put the northern neighborhood of Montmartre on the global map of creative-hedonist hotspots. The son of old French nobility, Toulouse-Lautrec seems to have been drawn early on to visions of a demimonde, centering his attention on the dance halls, cabarets, and brothels of Montmartre and adopting famed dancers and singers as his subjects, most notably Jane Avril. His works include both lively performance scenes and quiet, tender "after-hours" portraits such as The Sofa and In Bed. Stylistically, he mastered both bold graphics, as celebrated in his promotional posters of Jane Avril, and a loose yet evocative sketchwork. Though he died aged just 36, due to complications from alcoholism and syphilis, Toulouse-Lautrec's cultural influence was immense. This introductory book takes a walk through his world of singers, dancers, musicians, and prostitutes to reveal an artist of great humanity, striking figurative skill, and a pronounced sense for the energy and stories of a city. 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

Lampooned during his lifetime for his style as much as his subject matter, French painter Edouard Manet (1832-1883) is now considered a crucial figure in the history of art, bridging the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Manet's work combined a painterly technique with strikingly modern images of contemporary life, centered on the urban Paris experience. He recorded the city's parks, bars, and cabarets, often delighting in the frisson of underground or provocative content. The Paris salon rejected his Dejeuner sur l'herbe with its juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman, while the steady gaze and unabashed pose of the prostitute Olympia, a very modern reworking of Titian's Venus of Urbino, caused a society scandal. This richly illustrated book introduces Manet's work and his uniquely influential combination of Realism, Impressionism, and reworked Old Masters that would become paradigms of a brave new world for generations of modernists to come. 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

Nature provides the subject for the beautifully intricate patterns and graceful lines of the art of Charlie Burk. His subject is clearly grass, with a horizon line or a slice of sky visible in many of his works as he moves in his world of sumptuous colors and delicate patterns. In a complex play of call-and-response, one brushstroke calls for the next. ""What really interests me,"" he says, ""is the texture grass creates and the way it moves in space."" Another equally powerful pull is the visual beauty and the artistic journey it presents, that ever-fresh experience of dancing on the edge between abstract and representational art.

I am glad I am alive to witness these things; giving words to this life of sensations is a relief. Smell the flowers while you can. Close to the Knives is the artist, writer and activist David Wojnarowicz's extraordinary memoir. Filthy, beautiful, and sharp to the point of piercing, it is both an exploration of the world seen through the eyes of an artist, and a moving portrait of a generation living, grieving, and dying through the AIDS crisis. It is a triumphant hymn of resistance, and a dizzying celebration of the joys of seeing and living in the world.

Keith Haring was a revolutionary artist, who transformed the art world during his short but impactful life. Brought to life by Simon Doonan, Creative Director for Barneys New York, this new pocket-sized biography tells his inspirational story.

Revolutionary and renegade, Keith Haring was an artist for the people, creating an instantly recognisable repertoire of symbols - barking dogs, space-ships, crawling babies, clambering faceless people - which became synonymous with the volatile culture of 1980s. Like a careening, preening pinball, Keith Haring playfully slammed into all aspects of this decade - hip-hop, new-wave, graffiti, funk, art, style, gay culture - and brought them together.

Haring's fanatical drive propelled him into the orbit of the most interesting people of his time: Jean Michel Basquiat envied him; Warhol, William Boroughs and Grace Jones collaborated with him. Madonna and he shared the same tastes in men. Famous at 25, dead from AIDS at 31, Keith Haring is remembered as a Pied Piper, an unpretentious communicator who appeared happiest when mentoring a gang of kids, arming them with brushes and attacking the nearest wall.

A series of brief biographies of the great artists, Lives of the Artists takes as its inspiration Giorgio Vasari's five-hundred-year-old masterwork, updating it with modern takes on the lives of key artists past and present. Focusing on the life of the artist rather than examining their work, each book also includes key images illustrating the artist's life. Hardbound, but pocket-sized, the books each sport a specially-commissioned portrait of their subject on the half-jacket.

The definitive introduction to the artist Mary Cassatt, placing her work in the wider context of 19th-century feminism and art theory. A close ally of Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot and Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt was the only American painter at the heart of the Impressionist group in Paris. Highly respected on both sides of the Atlantic, Cassatt was a forthright advocate for women's intellectual, creative and political emancipation. She brought her discerning gaze and compositional inventiveness across many media to the subtle social interactions of women in public and private spaces, such as at the theatre, and in moments of intimacy with children, where she was one of the most attentive and unsentimental analysts of the infant body and the child's emerging personality. Tracing key moments in Cassatt's long career, art historian Griselda Pollock highlights Cassatt's extensive artistic training across Europe, analysing her profound study of Old Masters while revealing her intelligent understanding of both Manet and Courbet. Pollock also provides close readings of Cassatt's paintings and her singular vision of women in modernity. Now revised with a new preface, updates to the bibliography and colour illustrations throughout, this book offers a rich perspective on the core concerns of a major Impressionist artist through the frames of class, gender, space and difference.

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.

The first African-American artist to attain art superstardom, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) created a huge oeuvre of drawings and paintings (Julian Schnabel recalls him once accidentally leaving a portfolio of about 2,000 drawings on a subway car) in the space of just eight years. Through his street roots in graffiti, Basquiat helped to establish new possibilities for figurative and expressionistic painting, breaking the white male stranglehold of Conceptual and Minimal art, and foreshadowing, among other tendencies, Germany's" Junge Wilde" movement. It was not only Basquiat's art but also the details of his biography that made his name legendary--his early years as "Samo" (his graffiti artist moniker), his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Madonna and his tragically early death from a heroin overdose. This superbly produced retrospective publication assesses Basquiat's luminous career with commentary by, among others, Glenn O'Brien, and 160 color reproductions of the work.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father--an ethnic mix that meant young Jean-Michel was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of 11. In 1977, at the age of 17, Basquiat took up graffiti, inscribing the landscape of downtown Manhattan with his signature "Samo." In 1980 he was included in the landmark group exhibition "The Times Square Show"; the following year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist ever to be invited to Documenta. By 1982, Basquiat had befriended Andy Warhol, later collaborating with him; Basquiat was much affected by Warhol's death in 1987. He died of a heroin overdose on August 22, 1988, at the age of 27.

The famous Italian artist Raphael's illustrations, drawings and portraits, shown in this book of plates by Oskar Fichnel.

Written by Musa Mayer - Philip Guston's daughter and President of The Guston Foundation - this book brings Guston's life and his hugely rich and diverse output together into one succinct volume. Split into three sections covering Guston's early career, his mid-century Abstract Expressionist work, and his controversial but now hugely influential late period, the book offers a complete introduction and overview of a mercurial figure.

A new survey of the best works by the elusive and spectacular Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla. Often compared to his contemporary, the American artist John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923) was a master draftsman and painter of landscapes, formal portraits, and monumental, historically themed canvases. Highly influenced by French Impressionism, the Valencian artist was a master plein-air painter known for his luminous seaside scenes of frolicking youths and for vivid depictions of Spanish rural life and its pleasures and customs. This beautifully designed and produced volume brings together one hundred of Sorolla's major paintings, selected by his great-granddaughter Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the foremost authority on the artist. Benefiting from close proximity to the artist and his personal archives, she presents an in-depth essay that explores Sorolla's life, work, and remarkable international legacy. With virtually all of the artist's previous publications now out of print, this much-anticipated volume is an important addition to the literature on this great Spanish master.

This study provides an historical context for the origin and evolution of the Spanish tradition of Apocalpyse imagery. The volumes in this series include an introductory text and catalogue raisonnee in chronological sequence in which concise codicological descriptions of each item are given, as well as critical discussions of date and orgin. All the illustrations of each manuscript are reproduced forming a corpus of nearly 2000 illustrations.;This volume introduces the textual and visual tradition of manuscripts containing the Spanish monk Beatus's "Commentary on the Apocalypse". It examines the origins and the sources for Beatus's textual commentaries and the formation and evolution of particular iconographic traditions.

Stevenson introduces this book of a collection of the famous painter and drawer 'Rubens' artwork. This book is brought together with reproductions, notes and origins of the photographs.

In this first survey of his career, you'll find beloved, neo-psychedelic artist Oliver Hibert blending in as living art among examples of his fine art, illustration, and design, including his unique recreation of the tarot deck. Building off of features in publications including Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, and Beautiful Decay, this title breaks down Hibert's quest for the "Superflat" using his favored medium of acrylic and addresses the question of what happens when an artist tackles commercial assignments. His body of work is connected through color and inspiration from the 1960s, an aesthetic that has attracted the likes of The Flaming Lips for whom Hibert has created posters, tour apparel, and album covers. With well over 200 images, Eye See You also shows just how prolific the artist is, covering his paintings, sculpture, and drawings, as well as his many projects for clients such as Nike, Fender Guitars, Miley Cyrus, and Creature Skateboards. This is a must-have and insightful work for collectors and fans of contemporary art.

This expansive book takes a fresh look at 100 living artists from the Midwest, their personal stories and inspirations, along with several examples of their works. A wealth of urban settings, wide plains, flourishing cities, rushing rivers, and placid lakes are source material and inspiration for the artists. These works show how each artist interprets life. They explore the richness of the homegrown imagery of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin - their culture, society, and environment. They are delineating our stories for future generations in oil, pastels, sculpture, and other media. Their works are displayed in over 600 full color images. This book is essential for all who appreciate or practice art today.

Drawing occupies a prominent place in the work of Paul Klee (1879-1940). Klee attached great importance to drawing and in particular to the line as the principle from which the realisation and visual generation of an idea emanates. This aspect is also a core interest of collectors Sylvie and Jorge Helft, who over almost five decades have assembled some 70 of Klee's pencil, pen and pastel drawings, as well as watercolours, etchings, and lithographs, which the artist has created between 1914 and 1940. The Helff's Klee collection forms an extraordinarily coherent whole. This book, published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI) in Lugano from 4 September 2022 to 8 January 2023, features for the first time this unique selection from Klee's oeuvre. A conversation with Sylvie and Jorge Helft by MASIS's director Tobia Bezzola and essays by philosopher Francisco Jarauta, art and literary critic Juan Manuel Bonet, and art dealer and curator Achim Moeller supplement the full colour plates.

Swiss artist HR Giger (1940-2014) is most famous for his creation of the space monster in Ridley Scott's 1979 horror sci-fi film Alien, which earned him an Oscar. In retrospect, this was just one of the most popular expressions of Giger's biomechanical arsenal of creatures, which consistently merged hybrids of human and machine into images of haunting power and dark psychedelia. The visions drew on demons of the past, harking back as far as Giger's earliest childhood fears as well as evoking mythologies for the future. Above all, they gave expression to the collective fears and fantasies of his age: fear of the atom, of pollution and wasted resources, and of a future in which our bodies depend on machines for survival. From surrealist dream landscapes created with a spray gun and stencils to album cover designs, from guillotine-like sculptures to self-designed bars, Giger personally guides us through his multi-faceted universe in this definitive introduction to a master of horror. Detailed reproductions and designs and a foreword by Timothy Leary complement Giger's intimate autobiographical texts. 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

From impossible staircases to tesselated birds, Dutch artist M.C. Escher (1898-1972) crafted a unique graphic language of patterns, puzzles, and mathematics. Dense, complex, and structured by intricate principles, his work is at the same time decorative and playful, toying constantly with optic illusions and the limitations of sensory perception. For mathematicians and scientists, Escher is a mastermind. For hippies, he was the pioneer of psychedelic art. Born in Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands in 1898, Escher's early works focused on nature and landscapes, with regular exhibitions in Holland, and some international recognition. It was on a trip to the Alhambra Palace in Spain in the 1920s, however, that Escher found his niche. Sketching the patterns of the palace's Moorish architecture, Escher became captivated by the codependency of forms within and next to each other. Working mainly with lithographs and woodcuts, Escher went on to explore the relationships among shapes, figures, and space with a near-obsessive delight. He reveled in quirky vantage points, multiple perspectives, the transition from paper flatness to illusory volume, and intricate mathematical puzzles such as the Moebius strip, a seemingly infinite loop which twists and recoils on itself in a contortion of apparent physical impossibility. This introductory book from TASCHEN Basic Art 2.0 taps into Escher's brilliant mind with key works from his restless investigation of image and perception. Along the way, you'll find fish morphing into birds, lizards crawling off the page, masterful reflections, infinite mazes, and some of the most mind-bending images of 20th-century art. 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

An exquisite, full colour country almanac by artist Catherine Hyde, following the phases of the moon and a hare's journey throughout the twelve months of the year in a lyrical tribute to the natural world.

Waking from the winter solstice a hare begins her journey. Through the landscape and its changing seasons, moving in harmony with the moon. Atmospheric and gorgeous paintings show the hare running in January, watching in February, leaping in March, until it comes full circle, sleeping in December.

Twelve double page paintings of the hare's journey are accompanied by full pages of art, showing a tree, a flower and a bird for each month of the year. This rich celebration of flora, fauna and country life includes hawthorn and cowslips, swallows, blackbirds, buzzards and owls, harebells, holly, olive, rowan, poppies and much more. Titbits of text folklore, fairytale, myth and legend complement the art complete this desirable gift book.

Alternately praised as "an American original" and lampooned as an arbiter of kitsch, the regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton has been the subject of myriad monographs and journal articles, remaining almost as controversial today as he was in his own time. Missing from this literature, however, is an understanding of the profound ways in which sound figures in the artist's enterprises. Prolonged attention to the sonic realm yields rich insights into long-established narratives, corroborating some but challenging and complicating at least as many. A self-taught and frequently performing musician who invented a harmonica tablature notation system, Benton was also a collector, cataloguer, transcriber, and distributor of popular music. In Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound, Leo Mazow shows that the artist's musical imagery was part of a larger belief in the capacity of sound to register and convey meaning. In Benton's pictorial universe, it is through sound that stories are told, opinions are voiced, experiences are preserved, and history is recorded.

Egon Schiele lived in Vienna during its last years as capital of the declining Habsburg Empire. Rejected by his family and hounded by society for his interest in young girls, he expressed through his art a deep and bewildering loneliness and an obsession with sexuality, death and decay. Schiele died at the age of twenty-eight, yet he left behind him a body of work that sustains a huge public reputation - and myth. This profusely illustrated book delves into both the controversial sexual themes and neglected aspects of Schiele's art, notably his formal experiments and his later expressionist portraits and allegorical paintings - works that reveal much about the importance of his short career.

This is an expert and detailed account of the painter Claude Monet, one of the key founders of the Impressionist movement and arguably the most influential painter of modern times. It is an insightful biography that tells the story of his life, the historical context of society at the time, and his relationships with Renoir, Sisley and Manet. It features a beautiful gallery of all Claude Monet's most significant works accompanied by in-depth analysis of his style and technique, stunningly illustrated with 500 beautiful images. It explores his relationship with the traditional art world and his courageous rejection of it, choosing to establish a new form of art. The first half of this impressive book is a review of the life of Claude Monet and the development of his talents. It follows his early experiences and artistic education, as well as his personal life, financial difficulties and marriages, shedding light on why Monet became the painter he did. The second half is a gallery of more than 300 of his works with analysis of each painting. Paintings are reproduced from all phases of his career, including when he lived at Argenteuil, where some of the most famous impressionist works were created. This extraordinary book is an essential volume for anyone wanting to learn more about this fascinating and ground-breaking artist, and to study his greatest works in one beautiful collection.