Francine Prose's life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed-street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged-was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time. In "Caravaggio", Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters with passion and acute sensitivity.

A creative toolbox of techniques and ideas to take your painting to a new spiritual dimension. All of nature is permeated by a hidden geometric creative power. From the spiral growth of ferns, fractal branching systems in trees, and symmetries in leaves and flowers: everything in nature is connected and follows universal principles. In this exquisite book, artist Kathleen Hoffman shares her fascination with mandalas, sacred symbols such as the triskelion and the labyrinth, and nature's endless wonder, through a collection of 12 step-by-step painting projects, accessible to painters of all abilities. Hoffman begins with the basic techniques of acrylic painting and then builds on this with each project, showing new design elements that are used in her pictures and how she implements them in terms of colour and composition. This book is an invitation to connect with the power of nature and symbols; to discover the infinite variety of these structures, and to unfold this beauty in your painting.

This book explores images of Venice in the written and visual art of the multitalented American writer, painter, lecturer, and engineer Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915). A successful artist and intrepid traveller, F. Hopkinson Smith spent every summer in Venice for almost twenty years: his stays in the Italian city resulted in a large output of watercolours and writings, including his popular travelogue Venice of To-Day (1895), which featured over 200 illustrations by Smith himself. Despite Smith's popularity during his lifetime, his reputation as a writer and painter faded after his death and has occupied only a modest place in the American canon. This is the first scholarly work to examine the life and work of this unique American artist, whose legacy spans two centuries and was grounded in the enduringly popular fin-de-siecle. This book examines Smith's literary and visual perception of Venice while illuminating the life and works of this multifaceted artist, whose works are highly illustrative of the era's mainstream American culture and its perception of foreign spaces.

Mere clothing is transformed into desirable fashion by the way it is represented in imagery. Fashion's Double examines how meanings are projected onto garments through their representation, whether in painting, photography, cinema or online fashion film, conveying identity and status, eliciting fascination and desire. With in-depth case studies including the work of Nick Knight and Helmut Newton, film examples such as The Hunger Games, music video Girl Panic by Duran Duran, and much more, this book analyses the interrelationship between clothing, identity, embodiment, representation and self-representation. Written for students and scholars alike, Fashion's Double will appeal to anyone studying fashion, cultural studies, art theory and history, photography, sociology, and film.

Short biography & critical assessment of Roger Hilton's work, in which the author focusses on the rich complexity & cultural significance of the artist's later work in gouache.

Turner's work is famous throughout the world. He transformed British landscape painting from a minor art to a highly respected one with huge power and range.. This beautifully illustrated guide looks at the man and his influences, and takes a route though Europe and Britain as his artistic life flowers and matures. Look out for more Pitkin Guides on the very best of British art, history, heritage and travel.

Over his long and successful career David Remfry MBE RA RWS has achieved a mastery of watercolour that few have matched. Unusually for the medium, he works on a large scale and often focuses on people, exploring the dance hall and the nightclub in breathtaking images that are at once beautiful and edgy. This book is the first full-length monograph devoted to the artist's watercolours. Its author, James Russell, is well known for his writing on 20th-century British artists. Russell brings his scholarship, humour and fascination for people and their lives to his study of Remfry's career, tracing the evolution of a remarkable talent, looking in depth at the most significant works and placing Remfry in the context of both the British watercolour tradition and international contemporary painting. This is at once a glorious art book and an intimate portrait of city life. Having spent 20 years living and working at the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York, Remfry has a following on both sides of the Atlantic. New Yorkers - often in party mode - feature in many of his watercolours, and his recollections of people and places add colour to the text.

Secret Knowledge created an international sensation when it was published in 2001. Now, Hockney takes his controversial thesis - that some of the masterpieces of Western art were created using optical devices - even further in light of new and exciting discoveries. In 32 new pages, he demonstrates how Renaissance artists used mirrors and lenses to help them develop chiaroscuro, perspective, and the arts of depicting three-dimensional space and forms. Stunning in its presentation and wide-ranging in its implications, Secret Knowledge remains the art book sensation of the new century.

The most exhilarating painter of the Renaissance and arguably of the whole of western art, Tintoretto was known as Il Furioso because of the attack and energy of his style. His vaunting ambition is recorded in the inscription he placed in his studio: l disegno di Michelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano ("Michelangelo's drawing and Titian's colour"). The Florentines Vasari and Borghini, and the Venetians Ridolfi and Boschini wrote the earliest biographies of the artist. The four accounts are related to each other and form the backbone of the critical success of Tintoretto. Borghini is the first one to give some information about Marietta Tintoretto, also an artist, and Ridolfi is the richest in anecdotes about the artist's life and personality - including the one about the inscription which he may, however, have invented. Boschini, a witty Venetian nationalist, wrote his account in dialect verse. El Greco, whose marginal notes to Vasari are included for the first time in English, Calmo and Franco knew Tintoretto personally and their writings give a real flavour of this complicated man. Unavailable in any form for many years, these biographies have been newly edited for this edition. They are introduced by the scholar Carlo Corsato, who places each in its artistic and literary context. Approximately 50 pages of colour illustrations cover the full range of Tintoretto's astonishing output.

No other artist, apart from J. M. W. Turner, tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840-1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cezanne called "only an eye, but my God what an eye!" who stayed true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting directly from the object. It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of color. Whether it was through his early interest in Japanese prints, his time as a conscript in the dazzling light of Algeria, or his personal acquaintance with the major painters of the late 19th century, the work Monet produced throughout his long life would change forever the way we perceive both the natural world and its attendant phenomena. The high point of his explorations was the late series of water lilies, painted in his own garden at Giverny, which, in their approach towards almost total formlessness, are really the origin of abstract art. This biography does full justice to this most remarkable and profoundly influential artist, and offers numerous reproductions and archive photos alongside a detailed and insightful commentary.

Way to the West is a glorious collection resulting from a collaboration between disciplines of art. Featuring twenty-five beautiful full-page watercolours alongside accompanying poems, its focus is on the western tip of Cornwall. For Andy and Vally Cornwall's geographical remoteness, its abiding attraction as a holiday location, its proud fishing and mining history and the varying and often dramatic moods of its weather and sea are an inspiration and cause for celebration. The profound emotional and psychological effects on visitors to Cornwall is not lost on the authors, who have a long association with the area, having walked its entire coastline and holidayed there for over a half a century. Way to the West is a celebration of the natural world and the home, the past and the present, and of the fierce interconnectedness of people with their landscape.