""In "Genesis," my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen."" --Sebastiao Salgado
On a very fortuitous day in 1970, 26-year-old Sebastiao Salgado held a camera for the first time. When he looked through the viewfinder, he experienced a revelation: suddenly life made sense. From that day onward--though it took years of hard work before he had the experience to earn his living as a photographer--the camera became his tool for interacting with the world. Salgado, who "always preferred the chiaroscuro palette of black-and-white images," shot very little color in his early career before giving it up completely.
Raised on a farm in Brazil, Salgado possessed a deep love and respect for nature; he was also particularly sensitive to the ways in which human beings are affected by their often devastating socio-economic conditions. Of the myriad works Salgado has produced in his acclaimed career, three long-term projects stand out: "Workers"(1993), documenting the vanishing way of life of manual laborers across the world, "Migrations"(2000), a tribute to mass migration driven by hunger, natural disasters, environmental degradation and demographic pressure, and this new opus, "Genesis," the result of an epic eight-year expedition to rediscover the mountains, deserts and oceans, the animals and peoples that have so far escaped the imprint of modern society--the land and life of a still-pristine planet. "Some 46% of the planet is still as it was in the time of genesis," Salgado reminds us. "We must preserve what exists." The "Genesis" project, along with the Salgados' Instituto Terra, are dedicated to showing the beauty of our planet, reversing the damage done to it, and preserving it for the future.
Over 30 trips--travelled by foot, light aircraft, seagoing vessels, canoes, and even balloons, through extreme heat and cold and in sometimes dangerous conditions--Salgado created a collection of images showing us nature, animals, and indigenous peoples in breathtaking beauty. Mastering the monochrome with an extreme deftness to rival the virtuoso Ansel Adams, Salgado brings black-and-white photography to a new dimension; the tonal variations in his works, the contrasts of light and dark, recall the works of Old Masters such as Rembrandt and Georges de La Tour.
What does one discover in "Genesis"? The animal species and volcanoes of the Galapagos; penguins, sea lions, cormorants, and whales of the Antarctic and South Atlantic; Brazilian alligators and jaguars; African lions, leopards, and elephants; the isolated Zo'e tribe deep in the Amazon jungle; the Stone Age Korowai people of West Papua; nomadic Dinka cattle farmers in Sudan; Nenet nomads and their reindeer herds in the Arctic Circle; Mentawai jungle communities on islands west of Sumatra; the icebergs of the Antarctic; the volcanoes of Central Africa and the Kamchatka Peninsula; Saharan deserts; the Negro and Jurua rivers in the Amazon; the ravines of the Grand Canyon; the glaciers of Alaska... and beyond. Having dedicated so much time, energy, and passion to the making of this work, Salgado likens "Genesis" to "my love letter to the planet."
Whereas the limited Collector's Edition is conceived like a large-format portfolio that meanders across the planet, this unlimited book presents a selection of photographs arranged in five chapters geographically: Planet South, Sanctuaries, Africa, Northern Spaces, Amazonia and Pantanal.
Each in its own way, this book and the Collector's edition--both edited and designed by Lelia Wanick Salgado--pay homage to Salgado's triumphant and unparalleled "Genesis" project.
The world premiere of "Sebastiao Salgado: Genesis "will open at the Natural History Museum in London on April 11, 2013. The exhibition builds on the Museum's reputation as the home of the planet's best nature photography. For further information and to book tickets please go to www.nhm.ac.uk/salgado. Additionally, from May 14th, a special portfolio of plantinum prints from "Genesis" will be shown at Phillips Howick Place gallery in London.
Worldwide venues for the "Genesis" exhibition: The Natural History Museum, London, UK - April 11 through September 8, 2013 The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada - May 2 through September 2, 2013 Ara Pacis Museum, Rome, Italy - May 15 through September 15, 2013 Jardim Botanico, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil - May 28 through August 25, 2013 Musee de l'Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland - September 21, 2013 through January 12, 2014 La Maison Europeenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris, France - September 25, 2013 through January 5, 2014 SESC Belenzinho, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil - September 9 - November 2013

In 1958, journalist Neil Leifer took the picture that remains one of his most famous to this day. The day he got the shot - Alan Ameche's game-winning "sudden death" touchdown - was Leifer's 16th birthday. This game, called "the greatest ever played," signaled football's emergence as America's new national pastime; formerly half-empty stadiums welcomed sold-out crowds seemingly overnight, while football surpassed baseball in national television ratings. Starting then, on any given Sunday Leifer was most likely shooting a football game somewhere in America...While best known for his iconic photograph of Muhammad Ali towering over a fallen Sonny Liston, it is his football pictures Leifer considers his best. This collection represents the best of his best, culled from over 10,000 rolls of film on the sport. With an introduction assembled from the best football columns of the era by famed sports columnist Jim Murray, and incisive captions detailing the legendary players, coaches, and games, this volume carries the guts and glory of the game into the end zone.

Between 1987 and 2001, Dian Hanson, then editor of Leg Show magazine, and photographer Roy Stuart collaborated on over 100 fetish photo shoots. It was critical to Stuart's taboo-busting philosophy that any sex portrayed in these photos be authentic, and he often included female masturbation, always to climax. To Stuart it seemed absurd that so many young women didn't know how to reliably give themselves orgasms. It smacked of male/female inequality. He therefore kept a number of high-powered vibrators in his studio and encouraged prospective models, during the often weeks-long educational process leading up to a photo shoot, to experiment with these machines to learn what pleased them best. When he and Hanson would confer on a shoot he might ask if masturbation would be appropriate; she came to understand this meant the model had acquired the necessary skill and wanted to demonstrate it. The answer, therefore, was always "yes". The volume Getting Off, second in the Embrace Your Fantasies series, represents the best of these photo sessions, accompanied by original Leg Show text by Hanson. All images are from the original transparencies, rescued from the Leg Show archives before the magazine ceased publishing in 2012. Join us once again for an exploration of 1990s sexual freedom, and a unique celebration of female empowerment.

Stan the Man Honoring the life and times of the most legendary name in comics This is the big one, True Believers! The mostly true tale of Stan Lee: a Giant-Size extravaganza, nearly ten years in the making, about the one and only Godfather of Comics. From his childhood in Depression-era New York, to transforming Marvel into the number one comics publisher in the world, to his 21st-century reinvention as Chief Creative Officer of global entertainment company POW! Entertainment, Stan "the Man" Lee stands the test of time as the most legendary name in comicbook history. Stanley Lieber began working at Timely Comics in 1940 at the age of 17 and found himself at the helm of the bullpen as its top editor just two years later. But it wasn't until 1961 that he ignited a revolution known as the "Marvel Age of Comics." With a legendary stable of art partners including Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, and Jim Steranko, Lee unleashed a dizzying cascade of seminal comicbook creations--the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, and the Avengers to name a few. After moving to Hollywood in 1980, he did it again, developing TV and film projects that laid the groundwork for the "Marvel movie." Stan's constant cameo presence in these billion-dollar worldwide events is a testament to his influence. As the man behind POW! Entertainment, he became a master of all media--working with rock stars and professional sports leagues, movie mavens and reality TV shows--reinforcing his creative stature the world over. Written and edited with Lee's full cooperation, his tale is told by his successor at Marvel, renowned comics writer, editor, and historian Roy Thomas, who brings "you are there" insights and wide-eyed clarity to key moments of Lee's journey to pop culture immortality. Featuring hundreds of treasures of comicbook art, a novel-length essay by Thomas, a foreword written by Lee himself, intimate photographs sourced straight from his family archives, a protective slipcase, and a separate booklet with complete reprints of Stan's comics from throughout the decades, this is a titanic tribute worthy of the Man. First published as a signed Collector's Edition, now available as an unlimited XXL edition. All Marvel characters are (c) MARVEL

For 40 years, the Cold War dominated the world stage. East and West Germany stood at the frontlines of the global confrontation, symbolized by the infamous Berlin Wall, which separated lovers, friends, families, coworkers, and compatriots. The Wende Museum in Los Angeles, California, is named after the period of change immediately following the wall's destruction. It was established in 2002 to study the visual and material culture of the former Eastern Bloc, and, with physical and psychic distance, to foster multiple perspectives on this multilayered history that continues to shape our world. This encyclopedic volume features around 2,000 items from its extraordinary collections. Based on our XL-sized volume, this edition includes a full spectrum of art, archives, and artifacts from socialist East Germany: official symbols and dissident expressions, the spectacular and the routine, the mass-produced and the handmade, the funny and the tragic. Accompanying these remnants of a now-vanished world are texts from scholars and specialists from across Europe, Canada, and the United States, with themes ranging from the secret police to sexuality, from monuments to mental-mapping. More than 800 pages, featuring around 2,000 objects. A smaller, more accessible version of our XL-sized volume, the most comprehensive overview of GDR visual and material culture to date. Several dozen images of everyday life and public events from the most famous GDR photographers. Special two-language edition featuring texts both in English and German. From November 18, 2017, visit the Wende Musem at its expanded campus in Culver City's Armory Building, a site originally created in preparation for World War III but re-designed by Michael Boyd, Christian Kienapfel, and Benedikt Taschen to welcome its 100,000+ collection of artifacts.

Ever since Henry David Thoreau's described his two years, two months, and two days of cabin existence at Walden Pond, Massachusetts in Walden, or, Life in the Woods (1854), the idea of a refuge dwelling has seduced the modern psyche. In the past decade, as our material existence and environmental footprint has grown exponentially, architects around the globe have become particularly interested in the possibilities of the minimal, low-impact, and isolated abode.This new TASCHEN title, combining insightful text, rich photography and bright, contemporary illustrations by Marie-Laure Cruschi, explores how this particular architectural type presents special opportunities for creative thinking. In eschewing excess, the cabin limits actual spatial intrusion to the bare essentials of living requirements, while in responding to its typically rustic setting, it foregrounds eco-friendly solutions. As such, the cabin comes to showcase some of the most inventive and forward-looking practice of contemporary architecture, with Renzo Piano, Terunobu Fujimori, Tom Kundig and many fresh young professionals all embracing such distilled sanctuary spaces.The cabins selected for this publication emphasize the variety of the genre, both in terms of usage and geography. From an artist studio on the Suffolk coast in England to eco-home huts in the Western Ghats region of India, this survey is as exciting in its international reach as it is in its array of briefs, clients, and situations. Constant throughout, however, is architectural innovation, and an inspiring sense of contemplation and coexistence as people return to nature and to a less destructive model of being in the world.

Wine of plenty

Salvador Dali's epicurean guidebook

Hot on the heels (or lobster claws) of the best-selling Salvador Dali phenomenon, Les diners de Gala, TASCHEN presents the artist's equally surreal and sensual viticulture follow-up: The Wines of Gala. A Dalinian take on pleasures of the grape and a coveted collectible, the book sets out to organize wines "according to the sensations they create in our very depths." Through eclectic metrics like production method, weight, and color, the book presents wines of the world in such innovative, Daliesque groupings as "Wines of Frivolity," "Wines of the Impossible," and "Wines of Light."

Bursting with imagery, the book features more than 140 illustrations by Dali. Many of these are appropriated artworks, including various classical nudes, all of them reconstructed with suitably Surrealist, provocative touches, like Jean-Francois Millet's The Angelus, one of Dali's favorite points of reference over the decades. Dali also included what is now considered one of the greatest works from his late "Nuclear Mystic" phase, The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955), which sets the iconic biblical scene in a translucent dodecahedron-shaped space before a Catalonian coastal landscape. Dali was by this stage a devout Catholic, simultaneously captivated by science, optical illusion, and the atomic age.

The first section is dedicated to "Ten Divine Dali Wines," an overview of 10 important wine-growing regions, while the second develops Dali's revolutionary ordering of wine by emotional experience, instead of by geography or variety. Rather than any prescriptive classification, it's a flamboyant, free-flowing manifesto in favor of taste and feeling, as much a multisensory treat as a full-bodied document of Dali's late-stage oeuvre, in which the artist both reflected on formative influences and refined his own cultural legacy.

Drawn from TASCHEN's Illustration Now! series, this go-to catalog brings together 100 of the most successful and important illustrators around the globe. With featured artists including Istvan Banyai, Gary Baseman, Seymour Chwast, Paul Davis, Brad Holland, Mirko Ilic, Anita Kunz, and Christoph Niemann, the international overview provides an invigorating record of the dynamism and diversity of the illustration scene. Each illustrator is featured with a self-portrait, samples from their portfolio, and a succinct description by Steven Heller, with a supplementary list of selected exhibitions and publications. In his introduction, Steven Heller describes the dynamic realm of illustration today and the challenging process of selection within this highly competitive and ever-moving genre.

On October 1, 1958, the world's first civilian space agency opened for business as an emergency response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik a year earlier. Within a decade, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, universally known as NASA, had evolved from modest research teams experimenting with small converted rockets into one of the greatest technological and managerial enterprises ever known, capable of sending people to the Moon aboard gigantic rockets and of dispatching robot explorers to Venus, Mars, and worlds far beyond. In spite of occasional, tragic setbacks in NASA's history, the Apollo lunar landing project remains a byword for American ingenuity; the winged space shuttles spearheaded the International Space Station and a dazzling array of astronomical satellites and robotic landers, and Earth observation programs have transformed our understanding of the cosmos and our home world's fragile place within it. Throughout NASA's 60-year history, images have played a central role. Who today is not familiar with the Hubble Space Telescope's mesmerizing views of the universe or the pin-sharp panoramas of Mars from NASA's surface rovers? And who could forget the photographs of the first men walking on the Moon? Researched with the collaboration of NASA, this collection gathers more than 400 historic photographs and rare concept renderings, scanned and remastered using the latest technology and reproduced in extra-large size. Texts by science and technology journalist Piers Bizony, former NASA chief historian Roger Launius, and best-selling Apollo historian Andrew Chaikin-and an extensive mission checklist documenting the key human and robotic missions-round out this comprehensive exploration of NASA, from its earliest days to its current development of new space systems for the future.The NASA Archives is more than just a fascinating pictorial history of the U.S. space program. It is also a profound meditation on why we choose to explore space and how we will carry on this grandest of all adventures in the years to come.

Capturing several centuries of French crusades: Battles, burials and coronations coming to life before your eyes Completed circa 1474, Sebastien Mamerot s lavishly illustrated manuscript is the only contemporary document to describe several centuries of French crusades, when successive kings tried to seize the Holy Land. Jean Colombe, the medieval illuminator best known for his work on the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, is the principal artist of its 66 exquisite miniatures. Les Passages d Outremer (The Expeditions to Outremer) comprises 277 parchment folios, illustrated by Colombe and the finest caligraphers of the medieval era, and now resides in the French national library. This new hardcover edition in our popular Klotz format comprises a complete translation of the manuscript text, illustrated with 66 colourful miniatures by Jean Colombe, accurate down to the color of the medieval gold heightening, and their explanations. The battles, burials, coronations and processions depicted in the illustrations come to life before our eyes and create a forceful image, as well as a compelling read, of this centuries-long campaign of religious fervour and epic journey."

The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is one of the 18th century's greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time. Though scientists of his era often collected natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Albertus Seba (1665-1736) was unrivaled in his passion. His amazing collection of animals, plants and insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime. In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned careful and often scenic illustrations of every specimen. With these meticulous drawings, he arranged for the publication of a four-volume catalog, covering the entire collection from strange and exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, birds, and butterflies, as well as now extinct creatures. This reproduction is taken from a rare, hand-colored original. The introduction supplies background information about the fascinating tradition of natural collections to which Seba's curiosities belonged.

Reflections on symbols and symbolic imagery
"The Book of Symbols" combines original and incisive essays about particular symbols with representative images from all parts of the world and all eras of history."The Book of Symbols" combines original and incisive essays about particular symbols with representative images from all parts of the world and all eras of history. The highly readable texts and almost 800 beautiful full-color images come together in a unique way to convey hidden dimensions of meaning. Each of the c. 350 essays examines a given symbol's psychic background, and how it evokes psychic processes and dynamics. Etymological roots, the play of opposites, paradox and shadow, the ways in which diverse cultures have engaged a symbolic image--all these factors are taken into consideration.
Authored by writers from the fields of psychology, religion, art, literature and comparative myth, the essays flow into each other in ways that mirror the psyche's unexpected convergences. There are no pat definitions of the kind
that tend to collapse a symbol; a still vital symbol remains partially unknown, compels our attention and unfolds in new meanings and manifestations over time. Rather than merely categorize, "The Book of Symbols" illuminates how to move from the visual experience of a symbolic image in art, religion, life, or dreams, to directly experiencing its personal and psychological resonance.
"The ""Book of Symbols" sets new standards for thoughtful exploration of symbols and their meanings, and will appeal to a wide range of readers: artists, designers, dreamers and dream interpreters, psychotherapists, self-helpers, gamers, comic book readers, religious and spiritual searchers, writers, students, and anyone curious about the power of archetypal images.

This illustrated volume, written and edited by Philip Jodidio contains some of the most remarkable examples of homes on the move. Starting with totally revamped Airstream mobile homes, and going on to spectacular yachts like Philippe Starck's Motor Yacht A, this book doesn't stop moving, surveying the best in campers and tents, and even going on to private jets in the A319 or Boeing 737 category, veritable flying palaces for the privileged few.

Poised at the start of the 21st century, we can see clearly that the previous century was marked by momentous changes in the field of design. Aesthetics entered into everyday life with often staggering results. Our homes and workplaces turned into veritable galleries of style and innovation. From furniture to graphics, it's all here-the work of artists who have shaped and re-created the modern world with a dizzying variety of materials. From the organic to the geometric, from Art Deco, through to Pop and High-Tech, this book contains all the great names-Harry Bertoia, De Stijl, Dieter Rams, Philippe Starck, Charles and Ray Eames, to name only a very few. This essential book is a comprehensive journey through the shapes and colors, forms and functions of design history in the 20th century. An A-Z of designers and design schools, which builds into a complete picture of contemporary living. Lavishly illustrated, this is design in the fullest sense.

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat's complex relationship captivated the art world then and now. At a time when Warhol was already world famous and the elder statesman of New York cool, Basquiat was a downtown talent rising rapidly from the graffiti scene. Together, they forged an electrifying personal and professional partnership. As a prolific documentarian of his own world, Warhol extensively photographed and wrote of his friendship with Basquiat, all played against the backdrop of 1980s downtown New York City. It reveals not only the emotional depth of their relationship but also its ambiguities, extremities, and complexities. Produced in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Foundation and Jean-Michel Basquiat's estate, this book chronicles the duo's relationship in hundreds of previously unpublished photographs of Basquiat along with a dynamic cast of characters from Madonna to Grace Jones, Keith Haring to Fela Kuti. The shots are accompanied by entries from the legendary Andy Warhol Diaries, selected collaborative artworks, and extensive ephemera. Touching, intimate, and occasionally sardonic, Warhol on Basquiat is a voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of two of modern art's brightest stars.

Filling notebook after notebook with sketches, inventions, and theories, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) not only stands as one of the most exceptional draftsmen of art history, but also as a mastermind and innovator who anticipated some of the greatest discoveries of human progress, sometimes centuries before their material realization. From the smallest arteries in the human heart to the far-flung constellations of the universe, Leonardo saw nature and science as being unequivocally connected. His points of inquiry and invention spanned philosophy, anatomy, geology, and mathematics, from the laws of optics, gravitation, heat, and light to the building of a flying machine. In his painting, Leonardo steered art out of the Middle Ages with works such as The Last Supper and the world-famous La Gioconda or Mona Lisa depicting not only physical appearances, but a compelling psychological intrigue and depth which continues to draw crowds of mesmerized visitors to masterpieces in Paris, Milan, Washington, London, and Rome. This book brings together some of Leonardo's most outstanding work to introduce a figure of infinite curiosity, feverish imagination, and sublime artistic ability, often described as having "not enough worlds for to conquer, and not enough lives for to live" (Alan Woods).

Designed to be a companion to our classic title 1000 Chairs, this edition contains an awesome selection of over 1000 lights. Presented chronologically by decade are the 20th century's most interesting electric lights, from Tiffany's beautiful leaded-glass shades to completely outrageous designs from the late 1960s and 1970s to the latest high-tech LED lamps. All major styles are represented here-Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern Movement, De Stijl, Postwar, Pop, Radical, Postmodern, and Contemporary-in 640 pages of truly illuminated works.This definitive reference work is a must-have for collectors and design fans.

The first three volumes of this series were met with fervent acclaim from our readers, most of whom have been lying in wait for an affordable trade edition since the $ 1,000 boxed sets appeared. They laud these 440-page editions for their quality hardcover, elegant matte paper, and impeccable reproduction as the best of the best-the perfect tribute to the world's favorite dirty old man. Expect this book to be no different. Combining volumes 7 and 8 from the first boxed set (confusing, we know), it spans the years 1982 to 1989, a period when the artist was comfortably ensconced in rural California, raising his young daughter Sophie, who appears throughout this volume. But Crumb was still Crumb, declaring in one drawing, above a lovingly rendered tree, "As I get older I get more twisted, convoluted, depraved, cynical, embittered, self-centered, jaded, debauched, ruthless, greedy, conceited, set-in-my-ways, long-winded, absent-minded, prejudiced, closed-minded, misanthropic, nervous..." To prove this self-flagellating analysis he fills the pages with his signature perversions (in country settings), scathing social commentary, cruel self-portraits, experimental cubism... and some lovely sylvan landscape. His mastery of the Rapidograph pen is at its zenith here in his 40s; we only wish he'd chosen to include his prescient comic of Donald Trump from 1989.

In a fleeting 14-year period between two world wars, Germany's Bauhaus school of art and design changed the face of modernity. With utopian ideas for the future, the school developed a pioneering fusion of fine art, craftsmanship, and technology, which they applied across media and practices from film to theater, and sculpture to ceramics. This best-selling reference work is made in collaboration with the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum fur Gestaltung in Berlin, the world's largest collection on the history of the Bauhaus. Some 575 illustrations including architectural plans, studies, photographs, sketches, and models record not only the realized works but also the leading principles and personalities of this idealistic creative community through its three successive locations in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin. From informal shots of group gymnastics to drawings guided by Paul Klee, from extensive architectural plans to an infinitely sleek ashtray by Marianne Brandt, the collection brims with the colors, materials, and geometries that made up the Bauhaus vision of a "total" work of art. As we approach the Bauhaus centennial, this is a defining account of its energy and rigor, not only as a trailblazing movement in Modernism but also as a paradigm of art education, where creative expression and cutting-edge ideas led to simultaneously functional and beautiful creations. The handy edition features artists Josef Albers, Marianne Brandt, Walter Gropius, Gertrud Grunow, Paul Klee, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Lilly Reich, and many more.

In June of 1938, Action Comics debuted with a new kind of comic-book character on its cover: a costumed man with two identities, who possessed extraordinary strength and powers-a man able to protect the public when ordinary measures would not do. He was not the first super hero, but the Man of Steel would become the prototype for all super heroes thereafter. Superman's story, and those of Batman, Wonder Woman, and hundreds of other DC Comics characters, are all told in The Golden Age of DC Comics. Expanded from the Eisner Award-winning XL book, 75 Years of DC Comics, this edition offers readers the ultimate insight on DC's first decades, from its pulp origins up to the comic-book burnings of the McCarthy '50s. More than 600 pages of covers and interiors, original illustrations, photographs, film stills, and ephemera bring the story lines, the characters, and their creators to vibrant life. Also included is an exclusive interview with legendary artist Joe Kubert. Copyright (c) 2019 DC Comics. All related characters and elements (c) & TM DC Comics. (s19)

The life and times of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/30-1569) were marked by stark cultural conflict. He witnessed religious wars, the Duke of Alba's brutal rule as governor of the Netherlands, and the palpable effects of the Inquisition. To this day, the Flemish artist remains shrouded in mystery. We know neither where nor exactly when he was born. But while early scholarship emphasized the vernacular character of his painting and graphic work, modern research has attached greater importance to its humanistic content. Starting out as a print designer for publisher Hieronymus Cock, Bruegel produced numerous print series that were distributed throughout Europe. These depicted vices and virtues alongside jolly peasant festivals and sweeping landscape panoramas. He would eventually increasingly turn to painting, working for the cultural elite of Antwerp and Brussels. This monograph is a testament to Bruegel's evolution as an artist, one who bravely confronted the issues of his day all the while proposing new inventions and solutions. Rather than idealizing reality, he addressed the horrors of religious warfare and took a critical stand against the institution of the Church. To this end, he developed his own pictorial language of dissidence, lacing innocuous everyday scenes with subliminal statements in order to escape repercussions. To produce this XXL-sized collection, TASCHEN undertook a comprehensive photographic campaign, capturing all the breadth and splendid detail of Bruegel's oeuvre like never before. The result gathers all 40 paintings, 65 drawings, and 89 engravings in pristine reproductions-each piece a unique witness to both the religious mores and the close-knit folk culture of Bruegel's time.Marking the 450th anniversary of his death and his first ever monographic exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, this volume is the most immersive journey into Bruegel's unique visual universe.

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.

Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) made a unique modernist mark. Influenced by both the landscape and the political independence of his native Finland, he designed warm, curving, compassionate buildings, wholly set apart from the slick, mechanistic, geometric designs that characterized much contemporary European practice. Whether a church, a villa, a sauna, or a public library, Aalto's organic structures tended to replace plaster and steel with brick and wood, often incorporating undulating, wave-like forms, which would also appear in his chair, glassware, and lamp designs. An adherent to detail, Aalto insisted upon the humanity of his work stating: "Modern architecture does not mean using immature new materials; the main thing is to work with materials towards a more human line." Many of Aalto's public buildings such as Saynatsalo Town Hall, the lecture theatre at Otaniemi Technical University, the Helsinki National Pensions Institute and the Helsinki House of Culture may be seen as psychological as well as physical landmarks in the rebuilding of Finland after the ravages of war.

From Snow White to Cinderella, Rapunzel to Rumpelstiltskin, the Brothers Grimm bequeathed a canon of stories which have become literary and childhood classics. The most widely read story collection after the Bible, their magical tales are stalwarts of early learning and imagination, listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register as a vital part of our history and culture. This new edition of The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm brings to life 14 of the most beloved Grimm stories, including classics such as Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel. In a unique design format, each featured tale is paired with a different illustrator, bringing special pictorial splendor to each story. Featured artists include such masters of pictorial invention as Kay Nielsen, Walter Crane, and Viktor Paul Mohn, as well as many new discoveries. Historic and contemporary silhouettes-many commissioned especially for this anthology-further animate the tales, dancing across the page like delicate black lace. The book also contains a foreword on the Grimms' legacy and brief introductions to each fairy tale. For adults and children alike, this beautiful compilation brings the eternal magic of the Grimms' stories to the heart of every home.The following fairy tales are featured in the book:The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Brave Little Tailor, Cinderella, Mother Holle, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, The Star Coins, Puss 'n Boots, The Golden Goose, The Twelve Dancing Princesses.