The making of pictures has a history going back perhaps 100,000 years to an African shell used as a paint palette. Two-thirds of it is irrevocably lost, since the earliest images known to us are from about 40,000 years ago. But what a 40,000 years, explored here by David Hockney and Martin Gayford in a brilliantly original book. They privilege no medium, or period, or style, but instead, in 16 chapters, discuss how and why pictures have been made, and insistently link `art' to human skills and human needs. Each chapter addresses an important question: What happens when we try to express reality in two dimensions? Why is the `Mona Lisa' beautiful and why are shadows so rarely found in Chinese, Japanese and Persian painting? Why are optical projections always going to be more beautiful than HD television can ever be? How have the makers of images depicted movement? What makes marks on a flat surface interesting? Energized by two lifetimes of looking at pictures, combined with a great artist's 70-year experience of experimentation as he makes them, this profoundly moving and enlightening volume will be the art book of the decade.

Claude Monet's water lily paintings are among the most iconic and beloved works of art of the past century. Yet these entrancing images were created at a time of terrible private turmoil and sadness for the artist. The dramatic history behind these paintings is little known; Ross King's Mad Enchantment tells the full story for the first time and, in the process, presents a compelling and original portrait of one of our most popular and cherished artists. By the outbreak of war in 1914, Monet, then in his mid-seventies, was one of the world's most famous and successful painters, with a large house in the country, a fleet of automobiles and a colossal reputation. However, he had virtually given up painting following the death of his wife Alice in 1911 and the onset of blindness a year later. Nonetheless, it was during this period of sorrow, ill health and creative uncertainty that - as the guns roared on the Western Front - he began the most demanding and innovative paintings he had ever attempted. Encouraged by close friends such as Georges Clemenceau, France's dauntless prime minister, Monet would work on these magnificent paintings throughout the war years and then for the rest of his life. So obsessed with his monumental task that the village barber was summoned to clip his hair as he worked beside his pond, he covered hundreds of yards of canvas with shimmering layers of pigment. As his ambitions expanded with his paintings, he began planning what he intended to be his legacy to the world: the `Musee Claude Monet' in the Orangerie in Paris. Drawing on letters and memoirs and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's life, Mad Enchantment gives an intimate portrayal of Claude Monet in all his tumultuous complexity, and firmly places his water lily paintings among the greatest achievements in the history of art.

David Hockney is possibly the world's most popular living painter, but he is also something else: an incisive and original thinker on art. Here are the fruits of his lifelong meditations on the problems and paradoxes of representing a three-dimensional world on a flat surface. How does drawing make one `see things clearer, and clearer, and clearer still', as Hockney suggests? What significance do different media - from a Lascaux cave wall to an iPad - have for the way we see? What is the relationship between the images we make and the reality around us? How have changes in technology affected the way artists depict the world? The conversations are punctuated by wise and witty observations from both parties on numerous other artists - Van Gogh or Vermeer, Caravaggio, Monet, Picasso - and enlivened by shrewd insights into the contrasting social and physical landscapes of California, where Hockney lives, and Yorkshire, his birthplace. Some of the people he has encountered along the way - from Henri Cartier-Bresson to Billy Wilder - make entertaining appearances in the dialogue.

Gauguin's great diary from Tahiti almost never saw the light of day in its original form. The manuscript was sent by the artist from his island refuge to his friend Charles Morice in Paris, and published in 1901 with immediate success, under the two names of Paul Gauguin and Charles Morice. Morice, with Gauguin's permission, had 'edited' and enlarged it to make it more readable. How much of the charm and crispness of the manuscript had been lost in the process was anyone's guess. It was to be 40 years before Gauguin's original version came to light, and it is published here in a translation by the poet Jonathan Griffin, together with a detailed description by the art historian Jean Loize, who re-discovered the manuscript. Loize shows that Morice had in parts altered Gauguin's text beyond recognition - a startling discovery that entirely changed ideas about Gauguin's style and intentions. This genuine version of Noa-Noa is not only an important document, it is also a beautiful piece of writing: amusing, acid, wide-eyed, moving. Gauguin feared that, unedited, it would seem absurdly crude; and no doubt it would have, to most readers in his day. Today we can appreciate its sketch form, jerky directness, authentic freshness. This edition is illustrated with the watercolours, wood-engravings and drawings that Gauguin assembled for the book.

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life.' DAVID HOCKNEY Praise for Spring Cannot be Cancelled: 'This book is not so much a celebration of spring as a springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light. It is scholarly, thoughtful and provoking' The Times 'Lavishly illustrated... Gayford is a thoughtfully attentive critic with a capacious frame of reference' Guardian 'Hockney and Gayford's exchanges are infused with their deep knowledge of the history of art ... This is a charming book, and ideal for lockdown because it teaches you to look harder at the things around you' Lynn Barber,The Spectator 'Designed to underscore [Hockney's] original message of hope, and to further explore how art can gladden and invigorate ... meanders amiably from Rembrandt, to the pleasure principle, andouillette sausages and, naturally, to spring' Daily Telegraph On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney's new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live. With 142 illustrations in colour

This book, published to coincide with a major exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, explores and celebrates Turner's lifelong fascination with the sea. It also sets his work within the context of marine painting in the 19th century. Each chapter has an introductory text followed by discussion of specific paintings. Four of the chapters conclude with a feature essay on a specific topic.

World-renowned visionary artist John Harris' unique concept paintings capture the Universe on a massive scale, featuring everything from epic landscapes and towering cities to out-of-this-world science fiction vistas.
This collection focuses on his wide variety of futuristic art, as well as his striking covers for a variety of esteemed SF authors, including Arthur C Clarke, John Scalzi, Ben Bova, Hal Clement, Jack McDevitt, Frederik Pohl, Orson Scott Card's Enders books and many more.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) is regarded as one of the key figures in 20th-century European art. A Modernist to his bones, he sent seismic waves through the art world with his hard-edged, intensely colored paintings and disseminated his ideas through Die Brucke art movement and the MUIM-Institut school of modernist painting, both of which he cofounded. Kirchner's work reconciled past and present through an Expressionist prism, reflecting the latest avant-garde ideas in art, while exploring traditional academic approaches and subjects. His works tackled social, moral, and emotional questions with a fierce intensity. Distorted perspectives, rough lines, and unusual colors were mainstays of his practice, as well as a recurring interest in capturing the human form, whether in frenetic city vistas such as Berlin Street Scene (1913) or in his famously decadent studio. In this introductory book, we explore the stretch of Kirchner's career through Germany and Switzerland, including his founding of Die Brucke, and his inclusion in the Nazis' infamous "degenerate art" exhibition in 1937. Along the way, we'll encounter vivid landscapes, stark nudes, intense urban settings, and, above all, a persistent emphasis on the emotional experience of painter and viewer. 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

Featuring over 100 images, including step-by-step examples illustrating how to improve costume renderings. This is an invaluable resource for students in Costume Rendering and Costume Design courses, along with professional costume designers looking to improve their rendering skills. Written to complement any rendering style.

Sold in packs of 6. Gorgeous, foiled, handmade greeting cards, blank inside and shrink-wrapped with a gold envelope. Themed with our art calendars, foiled notebooks and illustrated art books. Our greeting cards are printed on FSC paper and wrapped in biodegradable cellobag, and are themed with our art calendars, foiled notebooks and illustrated art books. Catrin Welz-Stein's work is characterised by a sense of whimsy and wonder, as can be seen in this moonlit vision. The fantasy landscape illuminated by twinkling stars shows a fresh, green world from which the moon can be pulled closer. The image evokes a feeling of nostalgia for bedtime stories, full of characters who could make anything possible.

Follow the author's brush through four seasons, creating your own bouquet of flowers. In this step-by-step guide you will find: The basic tools you'll need for watercolor painting Basic watercolor techniques, including proper brush grip, brush movement, applying paint, color mixing, layering and more Illustrated tutorials with clear steps for painting beautiful seasonal flowers in various styles. Inspirations for your work The 24 solar terms that have been passed down for millennia, along with traditional Chinese flower culture. Author and illustrator Lu He specializes in combining Western watercolors with the style of traditional Chinese ink. The resulting beautiful, soft look integrates shape and spirit, freestyle and tradition, luxury and quiet elegance. By following his instruction, you will be able to create blooming flowers of different styles, whether delicate, beautiful, bold or gentle.

Best known for his depictions of fierce samurai warriors in battle, Utagawa Kuniyoshi also produced landscapes, portraits of Kabuki actors, and images of mythical animals. His dynamic action scenes and fantastic creatures are recognized today as precursors of manga and anime. This dazzling volume by Matthi Forrer, one of the leading experts on ukiyo-e art, traces Kuniyoshi's entire career. Chapters look at the major aspects of Kuniyoshi's oeuvre; his book illustrations and portraits of fashionable women; his enormously popular series featuring actors, warriors, and landscapes; and the influence of Western art on his career. Meticulous, large-scale reproductions highlight the work's clear outlines, elegantly muted palette, and precise details-from electrifying depictions of a tiger, mid-pounce, and light-hearted interpretations of Chinese folktales, to the terrifying figures of samurai swordsmen and romantic winter landscapes. A Japanese-style binding and box complete this luxurious package that promises an endlessly absorbing journey into the life of Kuniyoshi during the latter days of Japan's Edo period.

Few creative alliances flourished as productively as that of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe and the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Author Peter-Cornell Richter examines the lives of these artists to reveal the roads they took together and independently. Alternating biographical chapters interweave their stories. More than fifty exquisite reproductions of their paintingsand photographs illustrate how the two artists inspired and influenced each other, producing masterpieces of lasting relevance.

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.

A lavishly illustrated look at the sources behind the paintings of Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon famously found inspiration in photographs, film-stills and mass-media imagery. In this new, updated edition of In Camera, Martin Harrison reveals how these sources informed some of Bacon's most important paintings and triggered decisive turning points in the artist's stylistic development. Key influences, including the masters Velazquez, Poussin and Rodin, the photographer Eadweard Muybridge and the film director Sergei Eisenstein, are given close consideration. Bacon's work is examined in relation to the precedents set by other artists working in the tradition of making use of mechanical reproductions, including Pablo Picasso and Walter Sickert, and in the context of his contemporaries Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko, Graham Sutherland and Patrick Heron. With the aid of over 270 illustrations, including valuable source images and documents, In Camera is a bravura accomplishment of original research, addressing important questions about Bacon's painting practice and shedding fresh light on his life and work.

This book addresses the little-studied area of Russian genre painting in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century. Rosalind Gray begins by examining artistic patronage and published texts which engaged with the visual arts, in order to illustrate the context in which Russian artists were working. Five major painters - Venetsianov, Bryullov, Ivanov, Fedotov and Perov - are then discussed in detail.

The first and highly-anticipated monograph on one of the most successful, collected, and exciting painters today Swiss-born Nicolas Party, one of the most successful and critically acclaimed artists working today, is known for his color-saturated paintings of everyday objects, with distinctly personal yet very accessible and recognizable imagery - bright, graphic patterns applied to canvases, ceramics, furniture, floors, ceilings, doorways, and walls. He captures the essence of his subjects in surprising ways, heightening their physical and emotional resonance. Fascinated by the power of paint to alter our perception of the built environment and, within a gallery context, how we experience art, Party regularly paints murals, either as stand-alone works or as carefully orchestrated settings for his practice. This is the first book dedicated to his practice and the first to examine in totality his career to date - it will be a must-read for collectors and followers of the contemporary art scene.

Arthur Melville was arguably the most innovative and modernist Scottish artist of his generation and one of the finest British watercolourists of the nineteenth century, yet he avoided categorisation. In 1943 that the Scottish Colourist John Duncan Fergusson confessed that although they never met, "his work opened up to me the way to free painting - not merely freedom in the use of paint, but freedom of outlook". This book offers a comprehensive survey of Arthur Melville's (1855-1904) rich and varied career as artist-adventurer, Orientalist, forerunner of The Glasgow Boys, painter of modern life and re-interpreter of the landscape of Scotland. His travels inspired spectacular watercolours and paintings. This book illustrates around sixty of his works, each with a catalogue entry, and an essay by Kenneth McConkey, which discusses Melville's art and career.

Discover the creativity that lies hidden within you and express it

Painting because it is such a flexible and adaptable form of art gives us unparalleled freedom to express what we are feeling. Through colors, forms, lines, even fabrics, we can tap into our deepest emotions and thoughts; we can access our very source. Given this opportunity, we unburden our spirits and are freed to express ourselves. from the Introduction

What can you learn about yourself through painting? How can a piece of artwork reflect your own personality, beliefs and values? How can touching brush to canvas help you portray something about yourself that is otherwise inexpressible?

Delve into these questions and more in this imaginative, creative resource. Professional artist and beloved teacher Linda Novick leads you on an exploration of the divine connection you can experience through art. Each chapter includes a simple yoga-inspired breathing and stretching exercise to focus your mind and refresh your body, along with an original art project that helps you explore a theme essential to both your creativity and your spirituality. Whether you re a painting novice or an accomplished artist, no matter your faith and background, this engaging book has a place for you. Experience the joy of unbridled creativity

Until now, no detailed examination has been made of the twenty-four portraits known to have been painted of Coleridge during his life. Most of these are still extant, and together they constitute a kind of biography, as well as revealing the assumptions, not only of the sitter and the artists, but also of the culture to which they belong. Each in its different way seems to reveal some aspect of Coleridge's personality. This sequence of images - to which various posthumous and imaginary portraits supply an interesting postscript - are the subject of this illustrated study and catalogue by the eminent Coleridgean and Romantic scholar Morton D. Paley. There are reproductions throughout, two of them in colour.