Asia promises multisensory marvels. Whether it's a scorching hot curry, the vivid sounds of a local market, or an expert massage in a haven of feng-shui calm, the world's largest continent offers abundant opportunities to invigorate mind and body. From the futuristic urban metropolis to the pristine island shore, from your own piece of paradise in Bali to palatial splendor in India, this revised and updated TASCHEN collection gathers the finest Asian getaways. Each featured hotel is presented with interior and exterior photographs; pricing, service, and contact information; as well as an atmospheric reading recommendation.

An Expressionist before the term was coined, James Ensor (1860-1949) was the classic insider-outsider enigma. He knew all the right art-world figures but loathed most of them. His style lurched from the Gothic fantastical to the Christian visionary. He was a cosmopolitan trailblazer of modernism, but lived reclusively in an attic room in the resort town of Ostend. For all his elusiveness, Ensor influenced generations of artists through his vivid often gruesome paintings, prints, and drawings. He is cited in particular for his use of dark satire and allegory, his innovative lighting, and for his interest in carnival and performance, showcased in The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 as well as in his repertoire of self-portraits in which he employs masking, travesty, and role-playing to adopt such varied guises as Christ on the Cross and a gender-bending dandy. This introduction to Ensor explores the richness and variety of his imagery through key examples of his macabre, maverick oeuvre.

It was 1830 when an English scientist named Henry De la Beche painted the first piece of paleoart, a dazzling, deliciously macabre vision of prehistoric reptiles battling underwater. Since then, artists the world over have conjured up visions of dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, cavemen, and other creatures, shaping our understanding of the primeval past through their exhilarating images. In this unprecedented new book, writer Zoe Lescaze and artist Walton Ford present the astonishing history of paleoart from 1830 to 1990. These are not cave paintings produced thousands of years ago, but modern visions of prehistory: stunning paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, mosaics, and murals that mingle scientific fact with unbridled fantasy. The collection provides an in-depth look at this neglected niche of art history and shows how the artists charged with imagining extinct creatures often projected their own aesthetic whims onto prehistory, rendering the primordial past with dashes of Romanticism, Impressionism, Japonisme, Fauvism, and Art Nouveau, among other influences. With an incisive essay from Lescaze, a preface by Ford, four fold-outs, and dozens of details, the book showcases a stunning collection of artworks culled from major natural history museums, obscure archives, and private collections, and includes new photography of key works, including Charles R. Knight's seminal paintings in Chicago and little-known masterpieces such as A. M. Belashov's monumental mosaic in Moscow. From the fearsome to the fantastical, Paleoart is a celebration of prehistoric animals in art, and a novel chance to understand our favorite extinct beasts through an art historical lens.

When the excavations at Pompeii were first placed on a scholarly archaeological footing in the 19th century, brothers Fausto and Felice Niccolini were close at hand and ready to respond. Making use of the newly introduced technique of color lithography, they documented the buildings, frescos, statues, as well as the most ordinary everyday objects, of the city buried in just 24 hours by the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius and preserved for over 1,600 years under a mantle of volcanic ash. The Niccolinis' goal was to illustrate all aspects of life in the antique city. Their publication, Le case ed i monumenti di Pompei ("The Houses and Monuments of Pompeii"), which was issued in installments between 1854 and 1896 in Naples, presented over 400 color plates providing not only views, maps, and groundplans of the city and its public buildings, but also offered unprecedented access to Pompeii's private residences. They revealed the astonishing painted wall decorations that adorned these long-buried abodes, their intricate works of art, and the practical utensils of everyday use, conjuring up a vivid picture of each house as a real domestic space. In total, the plates illustrated more than 1,000 items, each extensively specified and located for the first time, making the publication a major reference in Pompeii research. In addition, "animated" representations visualized daily life in Pompeii's workshops, taverns, and shops, on its public squares, and in its temples, theaters, and baths. This meticulous facsimile revives the Niccolinis' extraordinary achievement with all color plates and two introductory essays setting the project in its contemporary context and presenting the historical protagonists of the Vesuvian excavations. In addition, we explore the remarkable influence exerted by Pompeian art-and by the haunting plaster casts made of victims of the eruption-on the visual arts. Across painting, sculpture, and interior design, we trace the Pompeii legacy in the work of Robert Adam, Anton Raphael Mengs, Angelika Kaufmann, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Pablo Picasso, and Giorgio de Chirico, right through to recent masters Duane Hanson and George Segal.

New York Girls, first released in 1995, and published by TASCHEN Books in 1996, defined a time, a place, and the raw esthetic of the artist Richard Kern. Kern was a leading figure in the 1980s Cinema of Transgression, director of the iconic films You Killed Me First, Fingered and Submit to Me Now; producer of Sonic Youth's "Death Valley '69" and Marilyn Manson's Lunchbox music videos; and a pioneering zine publisher responsible for The Heroin Addict and The Valium Addict. After kicking his own heroin habit, Kern turned to still photography, shooting girls in his downtown, punk-inflected New York social circle. They were naked, bold, tattooed, pierced, and casually posed in minimal sets, mostly just Richard's ratty slum apartment. They were young, but not innocent, fully complicit in the bondage, gunplay, and infamous candle insertions. The text was an interview with Kern by Kim Gordon. All of this predated SuicideGirls by six years and was utterly, supremely cool. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kern's best-known work, TASCHEN is releasing an updated edition with never-published outtakes from the original photo sets, as well as photos rejected as too explicit for the first book and stills from his 25 films. We know you've missed Monica, Erin, Jaiko, Jen, Susan, Amy and Sam, and thought you'd enjoy seeing just a bit more of them.

Rock on: From Elvis to Nirvana: the most important record covers in rock history 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 that includes 600 remarkable 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 all gathered together here in celebration of the covers that defined their albums. Each cover is accompanied by a fact sheet listing the art director, photographer/illustrator, year, label, and more. Two hundred special records that changed the course of history, for either the band, the artist, or the music genre, are specially highlighted with short descriptions. Five professionals who made and shaped the history of rock share insider information in featured interviews while 10 leading rock DJs seal the deal with top-10 favorite record playlists."

Take a journey through the makers and shapers of celluloid history. From horror to romance, noir to slapstick, adventure to tragedy, Western to new wave, this selection gathers the greats of 20th-century cinema into one indispensable guide to movie gold. The collection is arranged chronologically and in an extra-handy format. Film entries include a synopsis, cast/crew listings, technical information, actor/director bios, trivia, and lists of awards, as well as film stills, production photos, and the original poster for each film. From Metropolis to Modern Times, A Clockwork Orange to Bunuel's The Young and the Damned, from the blockbusters to lesser-known masterpieces, thumb through and transform a quiet evening into an unforgettable screen encounter.

Binge watching: From Twin Peaks to House of Cards: television as an art form Their names are Walter White, Tony Soprano, and Don Draper, and they are the heroes of a new age of entertainment. In the last decade, shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and Mad Men have toppled cinema from its leading position in the universe of popular culture. Proclaiming their ambition to tear down the barriers set up around commercial television for too many decades, networks such as HBO, AMC, and ABC have launched a new era of cinematic narrative. Cable TV networks, DVDs, and the Internet have ushered in new ways to watch television and spawned global fan communities who, independently of programs and broadcasting schedules, devour episode after episode, season after season, and probe the multiple levels of meaning of their favorite series. Thanks to these expertly-produced shows, we can plunge into the offices of a 1960s advertising agency, follow the day-to-day dealings of a Mafia clan in New Jersey, or shadow elite soldiers suspected of being terrorists. Alongside a wealth of TV stills, this book presents an overview of the most important and successful series of recent years. Who were the trendsetters of this TV revolution? Who were its forerunners? What inspired the creators? What sparked the boom that has already produced dozens of top-rated series and shows no sign of slowing down? The book offers readers fascinating insights into the worlds of their favorite series and inspires them to discover new ones. All of the facts are here about authors and actors, influences and backgrounds, sequels and spin-offs from David Lynch s groundbreaking masterpiece Twin Peaks and milestones such as Oz, Lost, and Breaking Bad to current highlights like Game of Thrones and House of Cards."

In the latter half of the 19th century, in the verdant countryside near Aix-en-Provence, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), busily plied his brush to landscapes and still lifes that would become anchors of modern art. With compact, intense dabs of paint and bold new approaches to light and space, he mediated the way from Impressionism to the defining movements of the early 20th century and became, in the words of both Matisse and Picasso, "father of us all." This fresh artist introduction selects key works from Cezanne's oeuvre to understand his development, innovation, and crucial influence on modern art. From compositions of fruits and pears to scenes of outdoor bathers, we trace his experimentation with color, perspective, and texture to evoke "a harmony parallel to Nature," as well as the very process of seeing and recording. Along the way, we discover Cezanne's celebrated Card Players, his layering of warm and cool hues to build up form and surface, and the geometric rigor of his landscapes from the vicinity of Aix-en-Provence, as bright with the light of southern France as they are bold with a radical new rendering of dimensions and depth.

Photographer, teacher, and sociologist Lewis W. Hine (1874-1940) shaped our consciousness of American working life in the early 20th century like no other. Combining his training as an educator with his humanist concerns, Hine was one of the earliest photographers to use the camera as a documentary tool, capturing in particular labor conditions, housing, and immigrants arriving on Ellis Island. His images, including those of children in cotton mills, factories, coal mines, and fields, became icons of photographic history that helped to transform labor laws in the United States. This book brings together a representative collection of Lewis W. Hine's photography from all periods of his work. It spans his earliest forays into social-documentary work through to his more artistic and interpretative late photographs, including his phenomenal images of the construction of the Empire State Building and his symbiotic staging of human and machine as a comment on increasing industrialization. Alongside the near 350 photographs, the book includes an essay by the editor, introducing Hine's life and pioneering work.

For Marc Chagall (1887-1985), painting was an intricate tapestry of dreams, tales, and traditions. His instantly recognizable visual language carved out a unique early 20th-century niche, often identified as one of the earliest expressions of psychic experience. Chagall's canvases are characterized by loose brushwork, deep colors, a particular fondness for blue, and a repertoire of recurring tropes including musicians, roosters, rooftops, flowers, and floating lovers. For all their ethereal charms, his compositions were often rich and complex in their references. They wove together not only colors and forms, but also his Jewish roots with his present encounters in Paris, markers of faith with gestures of love and symbols of hope with testimonies of trauma. Across scenes of birth, love, marriage, and death, this dependable artist introduction explores the many versions of Chagall's rich vocabulary. From visions of his native Vitebsk in modern-day Belarus to images of the Eiffel Tower, we explore the unique aesthetic of one of the most readily identifiable modern masters and one of the most influential Jewish artists of all time.

Richard Kern's gloriously natural girls
""These photographs may strike some people as sexist and others as sexy. Either way they are uncommonly visceral." - The New York Times," New York
Richard Kern likes real women: unpretentious, unadorned, and definitely undressed. Those who love Kern know each book is an invitation to join him in his privileged world where natural young women share their most intimate moments. Kern has never lost his boyish curiosity with girls and their secrets, so instead of posing them in sterile sets he follows them through the house--or rather his New York apartment--from backyard to kitchen to bathroom to bedroom, capturing every sexy and embarrassing moment. "Action "is his most revealing book yet. But we know that sometimes it can be a little risky to look at a book this revealing in public, so this special edition comes with TASCHEN's clever new Panic Cover feature to end public censure once and for all. Simply slip off the attractive but explicit cover, reverse, and redress your book for a sedate look perfect for all occasions. For 240 pages we will still be careening through the life of Kern, accompanied by dozens of energetic, fun-loving, clothes-dropping exhibitionists, but those ladies in the park will think you're reading "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" "Young women want to show the world they're not like their man-hating women's lib mothers," a Kern model once told me, and these girls certainly get the point across. To further assist the young ladies in their rebellion, the book includes an hour-long DVD of original Kern film with an exclusive musical score by Thurston Mooreof Sonic Youth. "Way to stick it to the Mom, ladies And thank you, Richard, you lucky dog."-Dian Hanson

In 1998, TASCHEN introduced the world to the masterful art of Touko Laaksonen with The Art of Pleasure. Prior to that, Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, enjoyed an intense cult following in the international gay community but was largely unknown to a broader audience. In 2009, TASCHEN followed up with the ultimate Tom overview: Tom of Finland XXL, a beautiful big collector's edition with over 1,000 images, covering six decades of the artist's career. The work was gathered from collections across the United States and Europe with the help of the Tom of Finland Foundation, featuring many drawings, paintings, and sketches never previously reproduced. Other images had only been seen out of context and were finally presented in the sequential order Tom intended for full artistic appreciation and erotic impact. The elegant oversized volume showed the full range of Tom's talent, from sensitive portraits to frank sexual pleasure to tender expressions of love and haunting tributes to young men struck down by AIDS, and was completed by eight commissioned essays on Tom's social and personal impact by Camille Paglia, John Waters, Armistead Maupin, Todd Oldham, and others, plus a scholarly analysis of individual drawings by art historian Edward Lucie-Smith. The only thing missing from Tom of Finland XXL was a widely affordable price tag-until now. The new Tom of Finland XXL is still big enough to work your biceps, and includes all of the original content, but costs a fraction of the original price. You're welcome.

While anchoring his practice in the traditions of antiquity and the Renaissance, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) paved the way for modern sculpture. From a very early stage, he was interested in movement, the expression of the body, chance effects, and the incomplete fragment. It was these elements that gave shape, and the impression of life, to such famous works as The Kiss and The Thinker. Produced in collaboration with the Musee Rodin, this TASCHEN Basic Art introduction examines the formative years of Rodin's training as well as the key stages of his subsequent career. It retraces the genesis of his sculptures and monuments from both a historical and an aesthetic point of view and illuminates the links between his different works. The reader gains access to the artist's ideas, as well as to the real material processes in his studio-the modeling in clay, the passage from plaster to bronze or to marble, enlargement, the creation of assemblages, and his deeply sensual erotic drawings. An inexhaustible source of inspiration for subsequent generations of artists, Rodin's work incorporated innovation and transgression, but above all an unrivaled passion for working in front of the living model and for capturing the truth of human experience and forms. With rich illustration and texts from Francois Blanchetiere, this book invites us to discover-and rediscover-this priceless legacy.

Until his death at age 104, Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) was something of an unstoppable architectural force. Over seven decades of work, he designed approximately 600 buildings, transforming skylines from Bab-Ezzouar, Algeria, to his homeland masterpiece Brasilia. Niemeyer's work took the reduced forms of modernism and infused them with free-flowing grace. In place of pared-down starkness, his structures rippled with sinuous and seductive lines. In buildings such as the Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum, Edificio Copan, or the Metropolitan Cathedral in Brasilia, he brought curvaceousness to the concrete jungle. In the futuristic federal capital of Brasilia, he designed almost all public buildings, and thus became integral to the global image of Brazil. With rich illustrations documenting highlights from his prolific career, this book introduces Niemeyer's unique vision and its transformative influence on buildings of business, faith, culture, and the public imagination of Brazil.

George Eastman's career developed in a particularly American way. The founder of Kodak progressed from a delivery boy to one of the most important industrialists in American history, and a crucial innovator in photographic history. Eastman died in 1932, and left his house to the University of Rochester. Since 1949 the site has operated as an international museum of photography and film, and today holds the largest collection of its kind in the world, containing over 400,000 images and negatives-among them the work of such masters as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Ansel Adams. Home also to 23,000 cinema films, five million film stills, one of the most important silent film collections, technical equipment and a library with 40,000 books on photography and film, the George Eastman House is a pilgrimage site for researchers, photographers, and collectors from all over the world. This volume curates the most impressive images from the collection in chronological order to offer an incomparable overview of photographic history.

A major Symbolist artist, Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was also a painter of scenic and emotional extremes. Until around 1890, he was renowned for work in black and white only. These "Noirs" in charcoal drawing or lithograph were composed not only of a sombre palette, but also by fantastic, frightening figures. Gradually, the artist began to introduce colored pastel, and with it, new and lighter motifs. Flowers became a recurring preoccupation. Where symbols of melancholy once stood, horses and fluttering butterflies entered the scene. While this latter-day lyricism and harmony contrasted sharply with Redon's earlier mood of melancholy, his guiding principle remained to "place the visible at the service of the invisible". With his dream-like imagery, sumptuous textures, and suggestive use of color, Redon sought to create a pictorial equivalent to his own psyche. From foreboding to lightness, he was above all an artist of states of mind, with considerable influence on later Post-Impressionism.

From the Land of the Pharaohs. The finest treasures from Ancient Egypt. The art of ancient Egypt that has been handed down to us bears no names of its creators, and yet we value the creations of these unknown masters no less than the works of later centuries, such as statues by Michelangelo or the paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. This book introduces some of the most important masterpieces, ranging from the Old Kingdom during the Third millennium BC, to the Late Period in the 9th century BC. The works encompass sculptures, reliefs, sarcophagi, murals, masks, and decorative items, most of them now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but some occupying places of honor as part of the World Cultural Heritage in museums such as the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Featured works include: Seated statue of King Djoser. Wood relief of Hesire on a dining table. Statue of a scribe made of various materials. Funerary relief of Aschait. Sphinx of Sesostris III. Robed statue of Cherihotep. Reliefs from the Temple at Carnac. Sarcophagus of Queen Hatshepsut. Murals from Thebes. Seated figure of the goddess Sachmet. Statue of Queen Teje. Head of Akhenaten (Amenophis IV). Queen Nefertiti. Golden mask of Tutankhamun. Ramses II from Abu Simbel. Horus falcon made of granite. Stone relief from the temple ambulatory at Edfu.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was a major figure in modern American art for some seven decades. Importantly, her fame was not associated with shifting art styles and trends, but rather with her own unique vision, based on finding essential and abstract forms in nature. O'Keeffe's primary subjects were landscapes, flowers, and bones, each explored in successive series over several years. Certain works went on for decades, producing 12 or more variations of an original image. Among these, O'Keeffe's magnified pictures of calla lilies and irises are her most famous. Enlarging the tiniest petals to fill an entire canvas, O'Keeffe created a proto-abstract vocabulary of shapes and lines, earning her the moniker "mother of American modernism." In 1946, O'Keeffe became the first female artist to be given a solo show at the MoMA in New York. This introductory book from TASCHEN Basic Art 2.0 traces O'Keeffe's long and luminous career through key paintings, contemporary photographs, and portraits taken by Alfred Stieglitz, to whom O'Keeffe was married. We follow the artist through her pioneering innovations, major breakthroughs, and her travels and inspirations in Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and, above all, New Mexico, where she was particularly inspired by the majestic landscapes, vivid colors and exotic vegetation.

This is your new permanent desk fixture. TASCHEN's perpetual calendars. For those of you whose datebooks have been replaced by smartphones, TASCHEN has created the new "365 Day-By-Day" series so that you can still enjoy the warm analog feeling of marking every day with the turn of a page. Each day you'll discover a new image and a related quote - on special days you'll also learn the birthdays of cinema's greatest icons - ensuring a constant source of inspiration right on your desktop. At the end of the year, just turn back to the beginning and start again!

Baby Talk The Anne Geddes phenomenon An infant curled within a seashell, on a bed of flowers, or its mother's body. With her distinct style and sensitive compositions, Anne Geddes has become one of the world's most widely known and loved photographers, celebrated for her unique take on infancy and parenthood in soft, characterful, vibrant portraits. Like no photographer before, Geddes strives to capture the beauty, purity, and vulnerability of early childhood and to embody within an image her deeply held belief that each and every child must be "protected, nurtured and loved." Since its inception in 1992, The Geddes Philanthropic Trust has designated significant funds from the range of Anne Geddes products to help prevent child abuse and neglect in countries around the world. This Geddes retrospective draws from access to the photographer's complete archive, reaching back to the late 1980s. With many previously unseen images as well as a sticker motif, it honors not only a whimsical and endearing aesthetic but its underlying philosophy of care for the young and vulnerable and for the future of mankind.Text in English, French, and German

Discover a world of decorative ideas with this compendium of history's most elegant patterns and ornamental designs. Once out of print, 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, indispensable 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 esthetics offers a primary reference for artists, historians, designers and patternmakers, and anyone engaged in decorative design and impact.

In the years following World War I, Los Angeles was a city awakening to its darker side, transforming itself from a backwater town to a gleaming metropolis and city of the future. But along the way a tarnished patina began to coat its ever-more glamorous facade. As thousands flocked to the city with their dreams and desires, so too came get-rich-quick schemes, phony religions, organized crime, and corruption. A visual history like no other, Dark City brings together images from archives, museums, newspaper photo morgues, private collections, and the author's extensive image library to reveal the true grit, grime, and sheer horror stories of Los Angeles from the 1920s to 1950s. In large format, we roam through the back alleys, gin joints, tattoo parlors, gambling dens, nightclubs, and the most brutal crime scenes, to uncover a city crawling with murder and mayhem. From Sunset Boulevard to a jazz-saturated Central Avenue, tabloid headlines chronicle the most famous celebrities and infamous crimes in a hopped-up city that provided inspiration for journalists, pulp fiction scribes, and filmland script writers in their creation of the noir genre. With rare vintage magazine reprints from the crime tabloids of the time, this is a uniquely evocative visual history through which the crime, crooks, crazies, and mean streets of the City of Angels are transformed from myth to reality.

"This book is really two books. It is a biography, and it is also a pictorial retrospective of an actress whose greatest love affair was conceivably with the camera," wrote Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography, Marilyn.Now TASCHEN has paired Mailer's original text with Bert Stern's photographs from the legendary Last Sitting-widely considered the most intimate photographs of Monroe ever taken-to create a fitting tribute to the woman who, at the time of her death in 1962, was the world's most famous, a symbol of glamour and eroticism for an entire generation. But though she was feted and adored by her public, her private life was that of a little girl lost, desperate to find love and security. Mailer's Marilyn is beautiful, tragic, and complex. As Mailer reflects upon her life-from her bleak childhood through to the mysterious circumstances of her death-she emerges as a symbol of the bizarre decade during which she reigned as Hollywood's greatest female star. This book, conceived by Lawrence Schiller, Mailer's collaborator on five works, combines the author's masterful text with Stern's penetrating images of the 36-year-old Marilyn. Photographed for Vogue magazine over three days at the Bel-Air Hotel, Marilyn had never allowed such unfettered access, nor had she looked so breathtakingly beautiful. Six weeks later, mysteriously, she was dead. In this bold synthesis of literary classic and legendary portrait-sitting, Mailer and Stern lift the veils of confusion surrounding Monroe-the woman, the star, the sex symbol-and offer profound insight into an iconic figure whose true personality remains an enigma even today.First published as a TASCHEN limited collector's edition, this book is now available in a standard hardcover version, published on the 50th anniversary of Bert Stern's "Last Sitting" and of Marilyn Monroe's death, August 5, 1962.