Illuminating reflections on painting and drawing from one of the most revered artists of the twentieth century 'Thank God for yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, and permanent green light' How does a painter see the world? Philip Guston, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, spoke about art with unparalleled candour and commitment. Touching on work from across his career as well as that of his fellow artists and Renaissance heroes, this selection of his writings, talks and interviews draws together some of his most incisive reflections on iconography and abstraction, metaphysics and mysticism, and, above all, the nature of painting and drawing. 'Among the most important, powerful and influential American painters of the last 100 years ... he's an art world hero' Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine 'Guston's paintings make us think hard' Aindrea Emelife, Guardian

Born in Yugan, near Jingdezhen, the birthplace of porcelain, Bai Ming has contributed to the revival of contemporary Chinese ceramics and introduced it to a new worldwide audience through numerous exhibitions. Today he is arguably China's greatest exponent of this most traditional art form. In this book, Bai Ming traces his career, revealing a sensitive yet creative and flamboyant style, built on the most rigorous traditional techniques. Focussing particularly on his blue and white ceramic work, this book, through a large selection of glorious images and the artist's own words, reveals Bai Ming's exquisite style and superb attention to detail.

Although Max Liebermann (1847-1935) began his career as a realist painter depicting scenes of rural labor, Dutch village life, and the countryside, by the turn of the century, his paintings had evolved into colorful images of bourgeois life and leisure that critics associated with French impressionism. During a time of increasing German nationalism, his paintings and cultural politics sparked numerous aesthetic and political controversies. His eminent career and his reputation intersected with the dramatic and violent events of modern German history from the Empire to the Third Reich. The Nazis' persecution of modern and Jewish artists led to the obliteration of Liebermann from the narratives of modern art, but this volume contributes to the recent wave of scholarly literature that works to recover his role and his oeuvre from an international perspective.

London-based artist Stephen Willats is a pioneer of conceptual art and has made work examining the function and meaning of art in society since the late 1950s. His first South London Gallery exhibition in 1998, entitled Changing Everything, brought together a body of work made in partnership with local residents over a two-year period. Aiming to create a cultural model of how art might relate to society, the work invited visitors to make their own contributions to it, shifting the way the art institution relates to the world around it. For his latest SLG show, Surfing with the Attractor, Willats re-presents material from Changing Everything alongside a new installation featuring a huge 'data stream' spanning 15 metres and made in collaboration with 14 London-based artists. Comprising hundreds of carefully ordered images in various media, the data stream documents two contrasting streets of London: Rye Lane in Peckham and Regent Street in the West End.Extending beyond the gallery space, the show also includes films from the data stream shown on monitors in shops on Peckham Road and Camberwell Church Street, and graphic stickers will be widely distributed.

Digital artist Zheng Wei Gu (AKA Guweiz) shares his anime-inspired world in this beautifully produced and insightful book, leading you through his fantasy world with a portfolio packed with gritty detail and a surreal vibe. Guweiz began drawing when he was 17, inspired by an anime art tutorial on YouTube. Discovering a natural talent, he carried on drawing and quickly amassed a fan-base for his edgy illustration style. Throughout this book, readers will discover his artistic journey from the very beginning, with behind-the-scenes details about how some of his most popular pieces were created. He reveals his secrets for turning influences into truly original digital art, including that all-important narrative that takes drawing and painting beyond the purely visual. Step-by-step tutorials share techniques and tips to help you create these sorts of effects in your art, resulting in images with the depth of detail and intrigue that Guweiz has made his trademark. The artist's unique urban take on the popular manga/anime style is gripping right from the first page, from the surreal take on Japanese lifestyle to the urban fantasy he creates.

Sigmund Freud was already internationally acclaimed as the principal founder of psychoanalysis when he turned his attention to the life of Leonardo da Vinci. It remained Freud's favourite composition. Compressing many of his insights into a few pages, the result is a fascinating picture of some of Freud's fundamental ideas, including human sexuality, dreams, and repression. It is an equally compelling - and controversial - portrait of Leonardo and the creative forces that according to Freud lie behind some of his great works, including the Mona Lisa. With a new foreword by Maria Walsh.

A complete retrospective of the paper engineer and artist Matthew Shlian, documenting a decade of unrivalled and unexpected creativity. Paper engineer and artist Matthew Shlian has always recognized the material's potential for experimentation. Folded, tessellated, compressed, extrapolated, two-dimensional paper becomes three-dimensional sculpture in beautiful and unexpected ways. 'My process is extremely varied from piece to piece. Often I start without a clear goal in mind, working within a series of limitations. For example on one piece I'll only use curved folds, or make my lines this length or that angle, etc. Other times I begin with an idea for movement and try to achieve that shape or form somehow.' Unfolding is Shlian's first comprehensive monograph. A journey into the new possibilities of folding technology, the intricate complexities of Islamic patterns, and the sheer potential offered by a sheet of white paper, it celebrates a humble material, on the edge of its existence, elevated to timeless form and possibility.

A highly-illustrated monograph on the life and work of Arthur Singer, an American wildlife artist specializing in birds. His work in reference books and U.S. stamps is internationally acclaimed. Arthur B. Singer was an American wildlife artist specializing in bird illustration. In a career spanning five decades, he illustrated more than 20 books, including his masterpiece, Birds of the World, as well as classic bird guides: Birds of North America, Birds of Europe, and The Hamlyn Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe. Singer joined the U.S. Army in 1942 and was assigned to Company C of the 603rd Camouflage Engineers.As a member of unit, known as the "Ghost Army," Singer along with other artists, created camouflage and other forms of deception on the battlefields of Europe. Upon his return to the U.S., he worked briefly in an advertising agency and became a full-time illustrator and artist in 1955. During the 1980s, assisted by his son, Alan, Singer's paintings of state birds were seen by millions when the U.S. Postal Service issued the State Birds & Flowerspostage stamps. The stamps became one of the largest selling commemoratives in U.S. Postal history. He received the Hal Borland Award in 1985 from the National Audubon Society. His paintings are represented in several public and private collections in the United States and Europe. Since his death in 1990, retrospectives of Singer's artwork have been presented in several museums and art galleries across the U.S. PAUL SINGER has focused on designs for zoos, museums, and botanic gardens. He has worked as an interpretive sign designer for the National Park Service and his illustrations are included inThe Knopf Nature Guide series for Audubon, The Audubon MasterGuides to Birding, The Knopf Collector Guides to American Antiques and other publications. ALAN SINGER is a graduate of The Cooper Union School of Art and worked with his father, Arthur, on painting revisions to both of Singer's field guides to birds, and helped illustrate the State Bird & Flower Stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. Since 1989, he has been a tenured professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. A prolific printmaker, painter, andauthor, he has had 27 solo exhibits.

This facsimile edition of a 1922 children's book features seventy-three dynamic and whimsical woodcut illustrations-the first woodcuts that the famed American craftsman Wharton Esherick produced. A high-quality replica authorized by the Wharton Esherick Museum, this book reveals the foundation of Esherick's direction as an artist. Edited by Museum director Paul Eisenhauer, it also features a foreword by Museum assistant curator Laura Heemer. The illustrations frame verses that introduce children to the principles of evolution, a highly controversial topic at the time: the book was published three years before the famous Scopes "Monkey" trial of 1925 that resulted in the inclusion of the teaching of evolution in public schools. Drawn by the excitement of the controversy, Esherick threw his passion into these illustrations. Afterward he would go on to carve over 300 woodcuts, leading to decorative carving, and ultimately, to Esherick's realization that he was a sculptor rather than a painter.

Born in 1899 to Russian Aristocrats, Tamara de Lempicka escaped the Bolsheviks by exchanging her body for freedom, dramatically beginning a sexual career that included most of the influential men and women she painted. Her paintings, like the artist herself, glow with beauty and sexuality. Contemporary critics, however, dismissed her gorgeously stylised portraits and condemned her scandalous lifestyle. A resurgence of interest in her work occurred in the 1980s, spurred by such celebrity collectors such as Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand and Madonna.

The Life and Times of Moses Jacob Ezekiel: American Sculptor, Arcadian Knight tells the remarkable story of Moses Ezekiel and his rise to international fame as an artist in late nineteenth-century Italy. Sephardic Jew, homosexual, Confederate soldier, Southern apologist, opponent of slavery, patriot, expatriate, mystic, Victorian, dandy, good Samaritan, humanist, royalist, romantic, reactionary, republican, monist, dualist, theosophist, freemason, champion of religious freedom, proto-Zionist, and proverbial Court Jew, Moses Ezekiel was a riddle of a man, a puzzle of seemingly irreconcilable parts. Knighted by three European monarchs, courted by the rich and famous, Moses Ezekiel lived the life of an aristocrat with rarely a penny to his name. Making his home in the capacious ruins of the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, he quickly distinguished himself as the consummate artist and host, winning international fame for his work and consorting with many of the lions and luminaries of the fin-de-siecle world, including Giuseppe Garibaldi, Queen Margherita, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Sarah Bernhardt, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Eleonora Duse, Annie Besant, Clara Schumann, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Alphonse Daudet, Mark Twain, Emile Zola, Robert E. Lee, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Isaac Mayer Wise. In a city besieged with eccentrics, he, a Southern Jewish homosexual sculptor, was outstanding, an enigma to those who knew him, a man at once stubbornly original and deeply emblematic of his times. According to Stanley Chyet in his introduction to Ezekiel's memoirs, "The contemporary European struggle between liberalism and reaction, between modernity and feudalism, between the democratic and the hierarchical is rather amply refracted in Ezekiel's account of his life in Rome." Indeed so many of the contentious cultural, political, artistic, and scientific struggles of the age converged in the figure of this adroit and prepossessing Jew.