At a time when surfing is more popular than ever, it's fitting to look back at the years that brought the sport into the mainstream. Developed by Hawaiian Islanders over five centuries ago, surfing began to peak on the mainland in the 1950s-becoming not just a sport, but a way of life, admired and exported across the globe. One of the key image-makers from that period is LeRoy Grannis, a surfer since 1931, who began photographing the longboard era of the early 1960s in both California and Hawaii. This edition brings back Grannis's hair-raising, sold-out Collector's Edition, curated from the photographer's personal archives, to showcase his most vibrant work in a compact and affordable format-from the bliss of catching the perfect wave at San Onofre to dramatic wipeouts at Oahu's famed North Shore. An innovator in the field, Grannis suction-cupped a waterproof box to his board, enabling him to change film in the water and stay closer to the action than any other photographer of the time. He also covered the emerging surf lifestyle, from "surfer stomps" and hordes of fans at surf contests to board-laden woody station wagons along the Pacific Coast Highway. It is in these iconic images that a sport still in its adolescence embodied the free-spirited nature of an era-a time before shortboards and celebrity endorsements, when surfing was at its bronzed best.

"The Tower is also present to the entire world... a universal symbol of Paris... from the Midwest to Australia, there is no journey to France which isn't made, somehow, in the Tower's name." - Roland Barthes When Gustave Eiffel completed his wrought iron tower on Paris's Champ de Mars for the World's Fair in 1889, he laid claim to the tallest structure in the world. Though the Chrysler Building would, 41 years later, scrape an even higher sky, the Eiffel Tower lost none of its lofty wonder: originally granted just a 20-year permit, the Tower became a permanent and mesmerizing fixture on the Parisian skyline. Commanding by day, twinkling by night, it has mesmerized Francophiles and lovers, writers, artists, and dreamers from all over the world, welcoming around seven million visitors every single year. Based on an original, limited edition folio by Gustave Eiffel himself, this fresh TASCHEN edition explores the concept and construction of this remarkable building. Step by step, one latticework layer after another, Eiffel's iconic design evolves over double-page plates, meticulous drawings, and on-site photographs, including new images and even more historical context. The result is at once a gem of vintage architecture and a unique insight into the idea behind an icon.

A photographic journey through the history of this epic city
Samuel Johnson famously said that: "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." London's remarkable history, architecture, landmarks, streets, style, cool, swagger, and stalwart residents are pictured in hundreds of compelling photographs sourced from a wide array of archives around the world. London is a vast sprawling metropolis, constantly evolving and growing, yet throughout its complex past and shifting present, the humor, unique character, and bulldog spirit of the people has stayed constant. This book salutes all those Londoners, their city, and its history. In addition to the wealth of images included in this book, many previously unpublished, London's history is told through hundreds of quotations, lively essays, and references from key movies, books, and records.
From Victorian London to the Swinging 60s; from the Battle of Britain to Punk; from the Festival of Britain to the 2012 Olympics; from the foggy cobbled streets to the architectural masterpieces of the millennium; from rough pubs to private drinking clubs; from Royal Weddings to raves, from the charm of the East End to the wonders of the Westminster; from Chelsea girls to Hoxton hipsters; from the power to the glory: in page after page of stunning photographs, reproduced big and bold like the city itself, London at last gets the photographic tribute it deserves.
Photography by: Eve Arnold, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Donovan, Walker Evans, Roger Fenton, Bert Hardy, Evelyn Hofer, Tony Ray Jones, Nadav Kander, Roger Mayne, Linda McCartney, Don McCullin, Norman Parkinson, Martin Parr, Irving Penn, Rankin, Grace Robertson, Lord Snowdon, William Henry Fox Talbot, Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans, and many, many others.

Album art is indelibly linked to our collective musical memories; when you think of your favorite albums, you picture the covers. Many photographers, illustrators, and art directors have become celebrities from their album artworks-the best examples of which will go down in history as permanent fixtures in popular culture. Paying tribute to this art form, Rock Covers brings you a compilation of more than 750 remarkable album covers, from legendary to rare record releases. Artists as varied as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, The Cure, Iron Maiden, and Sonic Youth are gathered together in celebration of the cover art that defined their albums and their cult status. Each cover is accompanied by a fact sheet listing the art director, photographer or illustrator, year, label, and more, while nearly 250 records that marked particular turning points for a band, an artist, or the music genre, are highlighted with short descriptions. This far-reaching catalog of visualized rock is contextualized with insider interviews with professionals who shaped the history of rock, and by top-10 record lists from ten leading rock collectors. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

Making stops in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, this edition rounds up some of today's most exceptional and inspiring interiors across six continents. From rustic minimalism to urbane eclecticism, the selection celebrates a global spectrum of styles, united by authenticity, a love of detail, and a zest for individual expression that will never go out of fashion. Includes interiors in Argentina, Brazil, China, Cuba, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, the USA, and many more countries. With pictures by leading interior photographers including Xavier Bejot, Pieter Estersohn, Marina Faust, Reto Guntli, Francois Halard, HieplerBrunier, Ditte Isager, Nikolas Koenig, Ricardo Labougle, Eric Laignel, Ake Lindman, Thomas Loof, Jason Schmidt, Mark Seelen, Rene Stoeltie, Tim Street-Porter, Vincent Thibert, Simon Upton, Paul Warchol. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

French-born Jean Prouve (1901-1984) was the 20th century's leading construction designer, a self-declared constructeur and member of the jury who oversaw the design of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. As a designer, he captured the midcentury spirit of innovation, expansion, and growth, developing techniques that united simple, striking aesthetics with practical, cost-effective materials and assembly. From vast, temporary exhibition marquees to handheld letter openers, modular building systems to interior lighting, Prouve's designs efficiently fitted their function with minimal fuss and understated elegance. Feted by designers, architects, and engineers the world over, Prouve has left a rich and inspirational legacy, which resonates perfectly with the approach of this compact volume, neatly summarizing his life and works. 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 Architecture series features: an introduction to the life and work of the architect the major works in chronological order information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts, and plans)

Yang Liu uses her wonderfully apt pictograms to display the discordances between American and European customs with wit and wisdom. In Europe meets USA she captures her own experiences of living on both sides of the Atlantic, twinkling a fresh light onto the more obvious confusions. She also reveals the less conscious prejudices that exist between the denizens of the small continent of Europe and those of the giant United States. If the usual view of our divergences is full of cliches in which there are grains of truth, the same is true in reverse. From shopping to commuting, from going to school to romance, from working to annual leave, from football to heros-with 128 pages, this linen-bound booklet invites each side to appreciate the anomalies, change perspective and look at the world through the other's eyes.

"Through these travels and the photographs, I got to love the United States more than I could have in any other way." - Jack Delano Amid the ravages of the Great Depression, the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) was first founded in 1935 to address the country's rural poverty. Its efforts focused on improving the lives of sharecroppers, tenants, and very poor landowning farmers, with resettlement and collectivization programs, as well as modernized farming methods. In a parallel documentation program, the FSA hired a number of photographers and writers to record the lives of the rural poor and "introduce America to Americans." This book records the full reach of the FSA program from 1935 to 1943, honoring its vigor and commitment across subjects, states, and stylistic preferences. The photographs are arranged into four broad regional sections but otherwise allowed to speak for themselves-to provide individual impressions as much as they cumulatively build an indelible survey of a nation. The images are both color and black-and-white, and span the complete spetrum of American rural life. They show us convicts, cotton workers, kids, and relocated workers on the road. We see subjects victim to the elements of nature as much as to the vagaries of the global economic market. We find the work of such perceptive, sensitive photographers as Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Russell Lee, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Lange, and read their own testimonies to the FSA project and their encounters with their subjects, including Lange's worn, weather-beaten and iconic Migrant Mother. What unites all of the pictures is a commitment to the individuality and dignity of each subject, as much as to the witness they bear to this particular period of the American past. The subjects are entrenched in the hardships of their historical lot as much as they are caught in universal cycles of growing, playing, eating, aging, and dying. Yet they face the viewer with what is utterly their own: a unique, irreplaceable, often unforgettable presence. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

To travel through Italy is as close as one gets to being in paradise. For centuries, writers, artists, architects, and merchants have been drawn here, inspired by the beauty of Venice, Florence, Naples, and Rome. Countless books, paintings, poems, and sculptures are evidence of its undying appeal, and over the past 60 years, the country has become one of the world's top travel and holiday destinations. The loveliness of Italy is, if not eternal, certainly enduring, and the easygoing and relaxed Italian lifestyle is still unrivaled. Here, some of Italy's most amazing landscapes and diverse regions are brought to life, like Tuscany, Umbria, the Amalfi Coast, and, no less magical, the Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily. In these mythical surroundings are legendary hotels full of atmosphere, where novels are set, movies are made, weddings are celebrated, and famous love stories consummated: Villa d'Este on Lake Como, the Pellicano Hotel in Porto Ercole, the Il San Pietro on the Amalfi Coast, and the Palazzo Margherita in Basilicata-to name just a few. Angelika Taschen also reveals where to find more secret and hidden jewels-from the Locanda Cipriani, a destination for food lovers on the island of Torcello, to the romantic Castello di Vicarello in Tuscany and the atmospheric Masseria Moroseta in Puglia.

From the legendary Tank Girl to live-action animations with Gorillaz, a Chinese contemporary opera to an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, artist Jamie Hewlett is one of the most energetic figures of contemporary pop culture. With influences ranging from hip hop to zombie slasher movies, Hewlett emerged in the mid-1990s as co-creator of the zeitgeist-defining Tank Girl comic. With then-roommate Damon Albarn, he went on to create the groundbreaking cartoon band Gorillaz. The award-winning virtual pop group of animated characters is a truly global phenomenon. Gorillaz have topped charts around the world, toured the globe from San Diego to Syria, and picked up hundreds of millions of streams and record sales along the way. Since then, Hewlett has continued to collaborate with Albarn on projects including an elaborate staging of the Chinese novel Monkey: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, complete with circus acrobats, Shaolin monks, and Chinese singers. In 2006, he was named Designer of the Year by the Design Museum in London, and in 2009, Hewlett and Albarn won a BAFTA for their animated Monkey sequence for the Beijing Olympic Games. In 2015 The Suggestionists, an exhibition of prints at the Saatchi Gallery in London, demonstrated an exciting new direction in Hewlett's practice. This special edition celebrating TASCHEN's 40th anniversary updates Hewlett's first major monograph with around 30 brand new pieces. The book illustrates his thrilling creative journey with more than 400 artworks from the Tank Girl era through Gorillaz and up to the present day. Through stories, characters, strips, and sketches, we trace Hewlett's exceptional capacity for invention and celebrate a polymath artist who refuses to rest on his laurels, or to be pigeonholed into a particular practice. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

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, sculpture to ceramics. This book 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 550 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. Featured artists include Josef Albers, Marianne Brandt, Walter Gropius, Gertrud Grunow, Paul Klee, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Lilly Reich.

Get ready to quake in fear with this revised and expanded edition of our history of horror cinema. This chilling volume packs 640 pages full with the finest slashers, ghosts, zombies, cannibals, and more, curating the very creepiest screen creations from the flickering spooks of the 1920s to the special-effect terrors of the 21st century. Across 10 illustrated chapters, the compendium gets under the skin of some of horror's favorite figures and themes, whether the vampire, the haunted house, the female killer, or the werewolf. Each classic device is explored in aesthetic and historical terms, probing horror's manipulation of archetypal human fears as much as socially and culturally specific anxieties. A subsequent Top 50 movies section brings readers up close and trembling with 50 horror showpieces, from black-and-white classics like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Godzilla to Rosemary's Baby, The Wicker Man, The Shining, The Blair Witch Project, and much, much more. Throughout, the book's featured images include movie posters, set designs, film stills, and on-set shots. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

The self as a subject is one of the most fascinating and fruitful of artistic enterprises. From the 15th century to today, this collection brings together some of the best examples of self-portraiture to explore the genre's evolution over the centuries as well as the enduring questions of selfhood and self-representation that have besieged human experience for centuries before social media and the selfie. Is a self-portrait of an artist a medium of reflection? Or is it merely a black void, the "false mirror," as the Surrealist Rene Magritte entitled his 1928 painting of an eye? How much does it impart about contemporary notions of beauty, power, and status? From Albrecht Durer to Egon Schiele, Fra Filippo Lippi to Frida Kahlo, this far-reaching collection explores the numerous ways in which artists have taken themselves as subjects, the variety of ingenious methods and perspectives they have used, and the intriguing questions they raise. 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 History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

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

From the adrenaline-filled 24 Hours of Le Mans to the legendary Goodwood Festival of Speed, Lake Como's famed Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este to the premier Monterey Car Week, the collector car calendar and market has shown one of the most extraordinary growth trajectories of recent years. As thousands flock to specialized meet ups, rallies, auctions, and Concours d'Elegance around the globe, asking prices for the rarest motors have revved higher and higher. So much so, that the value of the 100 cars included in this book exceeds a staggering $ 1 billion. For the seasoned car collector or the awestruck newcomer, this double-volume is the unrivaled collector car anthology. Curating 100 of the most exquisite, remarkable, and desirable cars of all time to tell a spellbinding story of automotive design-and-engineering endeavor in the tireless pursuit of ever-greater performance both on and off the track, from the first Indy 500-winning 1910 Marmon Wasp to the futuristic 2020 Aston Martin Valkyrie. Laps ahead of any generic catalog, this superlative volume exudes authority and elegance, settling for nothing less than the very best of the best, and presenting each model with the lavish spreads it deserves, complete with stunning imagery taken by the world's leading car photographers alongside rare archival treasures, from original factory photos to famous motorsports event posters. Each entry is also accompanied by expert descriptive texts and specs, detailing each car's make, model, year, engine size, horsepower, top speed, transmission, and all-important production numbers. By passionately tapping into their transatlantic expertise and insider knowledge of car auctions, museums, and collections around the world, design authors Peter and Charlotte Fiell survey the autoworld's finest cars of all time. Their carefully curated selection spans the whole history of the automobile, taking in such rare models as a 1912 Stutz Model A Bearcat, as well as lesser-known jewels such as the astonishing 1937 Talbot-Lago T150-C SS "Goutte d'Eau" Coupe by Figoni et Falaschi. This definitive compendium includes a foreword from Rob Myers, the founder of RM Sotheby's, and includes an introduction from the authors that gives a unique perspective on the ins and outs of car collecting at the highest level. The main content is interspersed with interviews with Dr. Frederick Simeone, founder of the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum; The Duke of Richmond and Gordon, founder of the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival; Sandra Button, Chairman of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance; John Collins, leading dealer of historic Ferraris; and Shelby Myers, global head of Private Sales at RM Sotheby's, which offer key personal insights into the car-collecting world.

Since the dawn of modernism, visual and music production have had a particularly intimate relationship. From Luigi Russolo's 1913 Futurist manifesto L'Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noise) to Marcel Duchamp's 1925 double-sided discs Rotoreliefs, the 20th century saw ever more fertile exchange between sounds and shapes, marks and melodies, and different fields of composition and performance. In Francesco Spampinato's unique anthology of artists' record covers, we discover the rhythm of this particular cultural history. The book presents 500 covers and records by visual artists from the 1950s through to today, exploring how modernism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, postmodernism, and various forms of contemporary art practice have all informed this collateral field of visual production and supported the mass distribution of music with defining imagery that swiftly and suggestively evokes an aural encounter. Along the way, we find Jean-Michel Basquiat's urban hieroglyphs for his own Tartown record label, Banksy's stenciled graffiti for Blur, Damien Hirst's symbolic skull for the Hours, and a skewered Salvador Dali butterfly on Jackie Gleason's Lonesome Echo. There are insightful analyses and fact sheets alongside the covers listing the artist, performer, album name, label, year of release, and information on the original artwork. Interviews with Tauba Auerbach, Shepard Fairey, Kim Gordon, Christian Marclay, Albert Oehlen, and Raymond Pettibon add personal accounts on the collaborative relationship between artists and musicians.

"Les diners de Gala is uniquely devoted to the pleasures of taste ... If you are a disciple of one of those calorie-counters who turn the joys of eating into a form of punishment, close this book at once; it is too lively, too aggressive, and far too impertinent for you."-Salvador Dali Food and surrealism make perfect bedfellows: sex and lobsters, collage and cannibalism, the meeting of a swan and a toothbrush on a pastry case. The opulent dinner parties thrown by Salvador Dali (1904-1989) and his wife and muse, Gala (1894-1982) were the stuff of legend. Luckily for us, Dali published a cookbook in 1973, Les diners de Gala, which reveals some of the sensual, imaginative, and exotic elements that made up their notorious gatherings. This reprint features all 136 recipes over 12 chapters, specially illustrated by Dali, and organized by meal courses, including aphrodisiacs. The illustrations and recipes are accompanied by Dali's extravagant musings on subjects such as dinner conversation: "The jaw is our best tool to grasp philosophical knowledge." All these rich recipes can be cooked at home, although some will require practiced skill and a well-stocked pantry. This is cuisine of the old school, with meals by leading French chefs from such stellar Paris restaurants as Lasserre, La Tour d'Argent, Maxim's, and Le Train Bleu. Good taste, however voluptuous, never goes out of fashion. In making this exceptionally rare book available to a wide audience, TASCHEN brings an artwork, a practical cookbook, and a multisensory adventure to today's kitchens.The first English edition of Les Diners de Gala was published in 1973 by FELICIE, INC., New York

Manet called him "the greatest painter of all." Picasso was so inspired by his masterpiece Las Meninas that he painted 44 variations of it. Francis Bacon painted a study of his portrait of Pope Innocent X. Monet and Renoir, Corot and Courbet, Degas and Dali... for so many champions of art history, the ultimate sounding board was-and remains-Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez (1599-1660). First available as an XXL-sized volume, this accessible edition brings together Velazquez's complete works with a selection of enlarged details and photography of recently restored paintings, achieved through the joint initiative of TASCHEN and Wildenstein. The dazzling images are accompanied by insightful commentary from Jose Lopez-Rey on Velazquez's interest in human life and his equal attention to all subjects, from an old woman frying eggs to a pope or king, as well as his commitment to color and light, which would influence the Impressionists over two centuries later.

With an inspirational richness and diversity of styles, these homes, residences, hideaways, and studios will astound and astonish, no matter the taste; be it rustic country cottage, New York-style loft, or bohemian bungalow. This survey of contemporary interior design carefully curates homes from all over the world-from Auckland, New Zealand, to Avignon, France. Mapped out through hundreds of images by renowned interior photographers, these gorgeous houses offer inspiration and ideas for your next renovation. Many of the selected homes are owned by creatives-designers, filmmakers, and collectors-whose eye for the perfect synthesis of interior elements is impressive, to say the least. Bringing together wallpaper, furniture, textiles, and objet d'art while cautiously balancing color, texture, and form, the creators of these dynamic spaces practice an art form of their own. Eclectic or minimal, antique or extra-modern, this variety of decor locates contemporary style in all its manifestations, showcasing the endless possibilities and home-making magic of interior design. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

Over the course of his artistic career, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) transformed not only his own style, but the course of art history. From early figurative and landscape painting, he went on to pioneer a spiritual, emotive, rhythmic use of color and line and is today credited with creating the first purely abstract work. As much a teacher and theorist as he was a practicing artist, Kandinsky's interests in music, theater, poetry, philosophy, ethnology, myth, and the occult, were all essential components to his painting and engraving. He was involved with both the influential Blaue Reiter and Bauhaus groups and left a legacy not only of dazzling visual work, but also of highly influential treatises such as Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Key tenets included the connections between painting, music and mystical experience, and the purification of art away from material realism and towards an emotional expression, condensed in particular by color. This book presents key Kandinsky works to introduce his repertoire of vivid colors, forms, and feelings. Tracing the artist's radical stylistic development, it shows how one painter's progression paved the way for generations of abstract expression 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

Discover a world of decorative ideas with this compendium of history's most elegant patterns and ornamental designs. The World of Ornament brings together the two greatest encyclopedic collections of ornament of the 19th century: Auguste Racinet's L'Ornement polychrome Volumes I and II (1875-1888) and Auguste Dupont-Auberville's L'Ornement des tissus (1877) to provide one lavish source book spanning jewelry, tile, stained glass, illuminated manuscript, textile, and ceramic ornament. Encompassing classical, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Asian and Middle Eastern, as well as European designs from medieval times through the 19th century, this compilation of cultures and aesthetics offers a primary reference for artists, historians, designers, and patternmakers, and anyone engaged in decorative design and impact. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

For seven years, photographer and artist Lena Herzog followed the evolution of a new kinetic species. Intricate as insects but with bursts of equine energy, the "Strandbeests," or "beach creatures," are the creation of Dutch artist Theo Jansen, who has been working for nearly two decades to generate these new life-forms that move, and even survive, on their own. Set to roam the beaches of Holland, the Strandbeests pick up the wind in their gossamer wings and spring, as if by metamorphosis, into action. As if it were blood, not the breeze, running through their delicate forms, they quiver, cavort, and trot against the sun and sea, pausing to change direction if they sense loose sand or water that might destabilize their movement. Coinciding with a traveling exhibition, Herzog's photographic tribute captures Jansen's menagerie in a meditative black and white, showcasing Jansen's imaginative vision, as well as the compelling intersection of animate and inanimate in his creatures. The result is a work of art in its own right and a mesmerizing encounter not only with a very surrealist brand of marvelous, but also with whole new ideas of existence.

Abstraction shook Western art to its core. In the early part of the 20th century, it refuted the reign of clear, indisputable forms and confronted audiences instead with vivid visual poems devoid of conventional representational imagery and characterized by allegories of emotion and sensation. This radical artistic adventure established new artistic means, as much as narratives. Expression became characterized by shocking juxtapositions of color, light, and line. Artists abandoned the conventions of brush and easel and played with new materials and methods of artistic gesture: commercial paints and housepainter's brushes, working on unstretched and unprimed canvases, moving the canvas to the floor, and applying paint with hands. This essential introduction spans the international breadth, conceptual depth, and seismic impact of abstract art with a thorough survey not only of the big names such as Picasso, Klee, Kline, Rothko, and Pollock, but also lesser-known figures who made equally significant contributions, including Antoni Tapies, K. O. Goetz, Ad Reinhardt, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. 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 History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

As a boy, Tom's first crush was a strapping young farmhand who worked the fields around his family home. Finland is a land of tough physical men, catching fish in the icy sea; cutting logs in the endless forests; threshing oats, rye, and barley on the farms. Tom, a more sensitive boy, admired these rough men and their distinctive clothing, designed for protection and utility. He later said, "When I was young, leather was worn by people who worked outside because it was warm. All the men who wore leather, they were the type of men which I adored." When he began to draw he celebrated these early idols, improving their wardrobes with tight jeans, faded T-shirts, and thigh-high beak-toed Lappish boots. It was a young logger in this gear who appeared on the spring 1957 cover of Physique Pictorial, introducing Tom to the world. In the decades to follow Tom added truckers, repairmen, construction workers, circus roustabouts, and the American cowboy to his roster of working-class heroes. Though just sexual fantasies for him, his portrayal of blue-collar lovers helped working class gays accept their true selves. The Little Book of Tom: Blue Collar traces Tom's fascination with working men in one compact and affordable package. A brawny lineup of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings is set alongside archival and contextual material, including historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom's own reference photos.