Just how slow does a snail go? Are bugs afraid of the dark? Why do ants march in a line?
Find out the answers to these and many more bug questions. Play search and find in the pictures, too. Will you spot all the bugs?
Meet all kinds of flying, stinging, wriggling bugs from around the world in this first animal book to share with young children. It’s packed with facts about how different kinds of bugs eat, hunt and have babies in the wild.
Why do wolves howl at the moon? Do hyenas really laugh? Why do hippos love the mud? Find out the answers to these and many more beastly questions. Play search and find in the pictures, too. Can you spot all the special paw prints?
Meet all kinds of grizzly, hairy, wild and wonderful beasts from around the world in this first book of animals to share with young children. It’s packed with facts about how different types of wild animals eat, hunt and survive.
Few photography books can lay claim to being truly groundbreaking. The first edition of Magnum Contact Sheets was one of them. This exceptional book, presented here in a new, accessible and democratically priced format for the first time, reveals how Magnum photographers capture and edit the very best shots. Addressing key questions of photographic practice – was the final image a set-up, or a serendipitous encounter; did the photographer work diligently to extract the potential from a situation, or was the fabled ‘decisive moment’ at play? – this book lays bare the creative methods, strategies and editing processes behind some of the world’s most iconic images.
139 contact sheets, representing 69 photographers, are featured, as well as zoom-in details, selected photographs, press cards, notebooks and spreads from contemporary publications, including Life magazine and Picture Post. Further insight into each contact sheet is provided by texts written by the photographers themselves or by experts chosen by members’ estates.
Many acknowledged greats of photography are included, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt and Inge Morath, as well as Magnum’s latest generation, such as Jonas Bendiksen, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Alec Soth. These photographers cover over seventy years of history, from the Normandy landings by Robert Capa, the Paris riots of 1968 by Bruno Barbey and war in Chechnya by Thomas Dworzak to images of Che Guevara by Rene Burri, Malcolm X by Eve Arnold and clasic New Yorkers by Bruce Gilden.
This landmark book, published just as the shift to digital photography threatens to render the contact sheet obsolete, celebrates the sheet as artifact, as personal and historic record, as invaluable editing tool, and as a fascinating way of accompanying great photographers as they work towards, and capture, the most enduring images of our time.
Which were the books that shaped art history as it developed in the twentieth century? This pioneering book provides an invaluable roadmap of the field by reassessing the impact of several of the most important works of art history. Each of its sixteen incisive chapters, focusing on a single title, is written by a leading art historian, curator or one of the promising scholars of today. In bringing these cross-generational contributions together, the book presents a varied and invaluable overview of the history of art, told through its seminal texts.
The sixteen books include Nikolaus Pevsner’s gospel of Modernism, Pioneers of the Modern Movement, Alfred Barr’s now legendary monograph on Matisse, E.H. Gombrich’s Art and Illusion, Clement Greenberg’s Art and Culture, which had a seismic impact when it was published in 1961, and Rosalind Krauss’s The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, which introduced structuralist and poststructuralist thinking into art historical study.
Initiated by and prepared under the auspices of The Burlington Magazine, each chapter – with writers including John Elderfield, Boris Groys, Susie Nash and Richard Verdi – analyses a single major book, setting out its premises and argument and mapping the intellectual development of its author, discussing its position within the field of art history, and looking at its significance in the context both of its initial reception and its legacy.
An introduction by John-Paul Stonard explores how art history has been forged by these outstanding contributions, as well as by the dialogues and ruptures between them. Supplementary documentation summarises the achievements of each art historian and provides a detailed publication history of their texts, with suggestions for further reading. Plus over 50 illustrations include rarely seen portraits of the writers and show covers and interior spreads from the original editions of each publication.
Enlivening debates and questioning the very status of art history itself, The Books that Shaped Art History is a concise and brilliant study of the discipline and an invaluable resource for students, teachers, bibliophiles and all those interested in visual culture and its histories.
In the sixth century BC, a prince from northern India left family and fortune in search of answers to the great questions of life and death.
Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, the ‘Enlightened One’, laid down a doctrine that soon spread all over the world.
The Wisdom of the Buddha explores the life and teachings of this remarkable man and searches back through history and legend to examine the philosophy that illuminates the way for more than three hundred million people today.
Can I Build Another Me? follows a child’s hilarious, wildly inventive train of thought as he decides to make a clone of himself – and starts to ponder what makes him HIM. Is it the scar on his knee or his sticky palms? Is it his love of acorns or the way he winks? The more he thinks about it, the more complicated it becomes…
First published in 1953, the year that saw thousands descend on London to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, London A to Z is a lexicon of the city’s curiosities, from the Achilles statue in Hyde Park ‘erected by the women of England to honour (if not to resemble) the Duke of Wellington’, via greyhound racing, lost property offices and umbrellas, to zebra crossings (relative newcomers to London in 1953).
Adorned throughout with Edward Bawden’s beautiful and distinctive illustrations, this charmingly idiosyncratic guide brings to life with a dry humour the London and Londoners of the day. More than sixty years have passed since it was first published, and while many sights are now lost to time, this vintage guide continues to capture London in all its uniqueness.
Now with a new introduction by Peyton Skipwith, a longstanding friend of Edward Bawden, here is highly enjoyable reading for every metropolitan!
In every crisis situation, children are the greatest victims. Physically weak, they are often the first to succumb to hunger, disease, and dehydration. Innocent to the workings and failings of the world, they are unable to understand why there is danger, why there are people who want to hurt them, or why they must leave, perhaps quite suddenly, and abandon their schools, their friends, and their home.
In this companion series to Exodus, Sebastião Salgado presents 90 portraits of the youngest exiles, migrants, and refugees. His subjects are from different countries, victims to different crises, but they are all on the move, and all under the age of 15. Through his extensive refugee project, what struck Salgado about these boys and girls was not only the implicit innocence in their suffering but also their radiant reserves of energy and enthusiasm, even in the most miserable of circumstances. From roadside refuges in Angola and Burundi to city slums in Brazil and sprawling camps in Lebanon and Iraq, the children remained children: they were quick to laugh as much as to cry, they played soccer, splashed in dirty water, got up to mischief with friends, and were typically ecstatic at the prospect of being photographed.
For Salgado, the exuberance presented a curious paradox. How can a smiling child represent circumstances of deprivation and despair? What he noticed, though, was that when he asked the children to line up, and took their portraits one by one, the group giddiness would fade. Face to face with his camera, each child would become much more serious. They would look at him not as part of a noisy crowd, but as an individual. Their poses would become earnest. They looked into the lens with a sudden intensity, as if abruptly taking stock of themselves and their situation. And in the expression of their eyes, or the nervous fidget of small hands, or the way frayed clothes hung off painfully thin frames, Salgado found he had a refugee portfolio that deserved a forum of its own.
The photographs do not try to make a statement about their subjects’ feelings, or to spell out the particulars of their health, educational, and housing deficits. Rather, the collection allows 90 children to look out at the viewer with all the candor of youth and all the uncertainty of their future. Beautiful, proud, pensive, and sad, they stand before the camera for a moment in their lives, but ask questions that haunt for years to come. Will they remain in exile? Will they always know an enemy? Will they grow up to forgive or seek revenge? Will they grow up at all?
Groundbreaking in both its content and its presentation, Art Since 1900 has been hailed as a landmark study in the history of art. Conceived by some of the most influential art historians of our time, this extraordinary book has now been revised, expanded and brought right up to date to include the latest developments in the study and practice of art. It provides the most comprehensive critical history of art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries ever published.
With a clear year-by-year structure, the authors present 130 articles, each focusing on a crucial event – such as the creation of a seminal work, the publication of an important text, or the opening of a major exhibition – to tell the myriad stories of art from 1900 to the present. All the key turning-points and breakthroughs of modernism and postmodernism are explored in depth, as are the frequent antimodernist reactions that proposed alternative visions. This third edition includes a new introduction on the impact of globalization, as well as essays on the development of Synthetic Cubism, early avant-garde film, Brazilian modernism, postmodern architecture, Moscow conceptualism, queer art, South African photography, and the rise of the new museum of art.
The book’s flexible structure and extensive cross-referencing enable readers to plot their own course through the century and to follow any one of the many narratives that unfold, be it the history of a medium such as painting, the development of art in a particular country, the influence of a movement such as Surrealism, or the emergence of a stylistic or conceptual body of work such as abstraction or minimalism. Illustrating the text are reproductions of almost eight hundred of the canonical (and anti-canonical) works of the century. A five-part introduction sets out the methodologies that govern the discipline of art history, informing and enhancing the reader’s understanding of its practice today. Two roundtable discussions consider some of the questions raised by the preceding decades and look ahead to the future. Background information on key events, places and people is provided in boxes throughout, while a glossary, full bibliography and list of websites add to the reference value of this outstanding volume.
Acclaimed as the definitive work on the subject, Art Since 1900 is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of art in the modern age.
Illuminated manuscripts of the Bible are some of the finest, most beautiful but least-known works of art to survive from the Middle Ages.
This exquisitely illustrated book presents 45 expertly selected treasures that transport us across 1,000 years of history, passing chronologically through some of the major centres of the Christian world.
Every manuscript included in this major new study is a glorious masterpiece, and is reproduced on a scale that enables us to marvel at the illuminator’s art.
In 1960, photographer William Claxton and noted musicologist Joachim E. Berendt traveled the United States hot on the trail of jazz. Through music halls and marching bands, side streets and subways, they sought to document this living, breathing, beating musical phenomenon that enraptured America across social, economic, and racial lines.
The result of Claxton and Berendt’s collaboration was Jazzlife, much sought after by collectors and now revived in this fresh TASCHEN volume. From coast to coast, from unknown street performers to legends of the genre, this defining jazz journey explores just what made up this most original of American art forms. In New Orleans and New York, in St. Louis, Biloxi, Jackson, and beyond, Claxton’s rapturous yet tender images and accompanying texts examine jazz’s regional diversity as much as its pervasive vitality and soul. They show the music makers and the many spaces and people this music touched, from funeral parades to concert stages, from an elderly trumpet player to kids who hung from windows to catch a glimpse of a passing band.
With portraits of Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters, Gabor Szabo, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and many more, this is as much a compelling slice of history as it is a loving personal tribute.
How do bees communicate? What does a beekeeper do? Did you know that Napoleon loved bees? Who survived being stung by 2,443 bees?
This encyclopaedic book answers all these questions and many more, imparting masses of information with a light, humorous touch, and in scorers of vibrant illustrations. Piotr Socha tracks the history of bees from the time of the dinosaurs to their current plight, examining along the way the role bees have played in history and in the rest of the natural world.
The extraordinarily revealing interviews with Francis Bacon conducted over a period of 25 years by the distinguished art critic David Sylvester amount to a unique statement by Bacon on his art and on art in general. As a discussion of the problems of making art, the book has been widely influential not only among artists but also among writers and musicians including David Bowie, who named it among his favourite books.
With a rare and brilliant use of language, Bacon talks about his aims as a painter and the ways in which he works, responding always with vivacity and candour to Sylvester’s searching questions.
Bacon’s obsessive effort to record and re-create the human form, his practice of making variations on old masters’ paintings and on photographs, his dependence upon chance, and his views about the way in which his work has been interpreted are only some of the many subjects discussed and investigated in depth during these historic encounters.
Offering unparalleled access to the thought, work and life of one of the creative geniuses of the twentieth century, this book – with its subsequent revised and augmented editions – has become a classic.
The Book of the Dead of Sobekmose, in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, New York, is one of the most important surviving examples of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead genre. Such ‘books’ – papyrus scrolls – were composed of traditional funerary texts, including magic spells, that were thought to assist a dead person on their journey into the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians believed in an underworld fraught with dangers that needed to be carefully navigated, from the familiar, such as snakes and scorpions, to the extraordinary: lakes of fire to cross, animal-headed demons to pass and, of course, the ritual Weighing of the Heart, whose outcome determined whether or not the deceased would be ‘born again’ into the afterlife for eternity.
This publication is the first to offer a continuous English translation of a single, extensive, major text that can speak to us from beginning to end in the order in which it was composed. The papyrus itself is one of the longest of its kind to come down to us from the New Kingdom, a time when Egypt’s international power and prosperity were at their peak. This new translation not only represents a great step forward in the study of these texts, but also grants modern readers a direct encounter with what can seem a remote and alien civilization. With language that is, in many places, unquestionably evocative and very beautiful, it offers a look into the mindset of the ancient Egyptians, highlighting their beliefs and anxieties about this world as well as the next.
Michael Johnson is one of the world’s leading graphic designers and brand consultants. His studio, johnson banks, is responsible for the rebranding of many notable clients, including Virgin Atlantic, Think London, BFI, Christian Aid, and MORE TH>N, and he has garnered a plethora of awards in the process.
In Branding, Johnson strips everyday brands down to their basic components, with case studies that enable us to understand why we select one product or service over another and allow us to comprehend how seemingly subtle influences can affect key life decisions. The first part of the book shows how the birth of a brand begins not with finding a solution but rather with identifying the correct question the missing gap in the market to which an answer is needed. Johnson proceeds to unveil hidden elements involved in creating a successful brand from the strapline that gives the brand a narrative and a purpose to clever uses of typography that unite design and language.
With more than 1,000 illustrations showcasing the world’s most successful corporate identities, as well as generic templates enabling you to create your own brand or ad with ease, Branding explores every step of the development process required to create the simplest and most immediately compelling brands.
Why was a humble dung beetle chosen to represent the sun god as Khepri, or a desert jackal to represent Anubis, the embalmer god? Ancient Egyptian religion, with its many gods and symbols, has always been a source of wonder and mystery to the monotheistic West.
In this compact guide to the gods and symbols of ancient Egypt many puzzling and intriguing questions are answered in nearly 300 entries, ranging from Acacia to Wreath.
Over 100 illustrations, with extended captions, complement the text and the book also includes a chronological table, bibliography and index.
This Book Thinks You’re a Maths Genius explores seven key areas of maths: geometry, space and volume, statistics, numbers and number patterns, codes and ciphers and the concept of infinity. Each spread centres on an open-ended question that introduces a key mathematical concept and suggests activities that engage the child in a fun and entertaining way. Activities include predicting the trajectory of a Malteser; building loo roll skyscrapers; mind-reading magic tricks; devising your own spy code; and working out the physical correlations between your dad and Usain Bolt. The end of the book includes a section of paper-based crafts including the kit to make a cardboard football and a data log for family quirks.
Written as an engrossing detective story by the leading authority on the subject, this book deals with the core issues and multiple influences in the creation of the Irish people as well as exploring the controversial question of the Celts and the Irish language.
Bringing together the evidence of archaeology, culture, tradition, genetics and linguistics to shed welcome new light on the age-old riddle of Irish origins, and illustrated with numerous informative line drawings and maps, this brilliantly argued book is essential reading for anyone interested in Ireland and the Irish.
‘Everyone in Syria has lived his war. Every day people have fought for their lives, every day has brought a bid for survival, but it is not only bodies that suffer; souls, too, go through these battles, dying a thousand times in anticipation, only to rise up wearily to face another day.’
So begins the eyewitness account of Marwa al-Sabouni, a young architect based in war-torn Homs, on Syria’s bitter conflict. Seen through the revealing lens of architecture and depicted with clarity, conviction and deep intelligence, she shares her personal experience of how the built environment directly affects the community that inhabits it, how the stage for civil war has long been set in her country, and how architecture might play a role in reversing the damage.
The Battle for Home reveals uncomfortable truths and asks important questions, but ultimately offers hope for rebuilding both a proud country and a much-needed sense of identity.
Global in perspective and covering over four million years of history, this accessible volume provides a chronological account of both the development of the human race and the order in which modern societies have made discoveries about their ancient past. Beginning deep in prehistory, it takes in all the great archaeological sites of the world as it advances to the present day.
A masterful combination of succinct analysis and driving narrative, Archaeology: The Whole Story also addresses the questions that inevitably arise as we gradually learn more about the history of our species: what are we? Where did we come from? What inspired us to start building, writing and all the other activities that we traditionally regard as exclusively human? A concluding section explains how we know what we know: for example, how seventeen prehistoric shrines were discovered around Stonehenge using magnetometers, ground-penetrating radars, and 3D laser scanners; and how DNA analysis enabled us to identify some bones discovered beneath a car park in Leicester as the remains of a fifteenth-century king of England.
Written by an international team of archaeological experts and richly illustrated throughout, Archaeology: The Whole Story offers an unparalleled insight into the origins of humankind.
Where do we find the world’s very first art? When, and why, did people begin experimenting with different materials, forms and colours? Were our once-cousins, the Neanderthals, also capable of creating art? Prehistorians have been asking these questions of our ancestors for decades, but only very recently, with the development of cutting-edge scientific and archaeological techniques, have we been able to piece together the first chapter in the story of art. Overturning the traditional Eurocentric vision of our artistic origins, which has focused almost exclusively on the Franco-Spanish cave art, Paul Bahn and Michel Lorblanchet take the reader on a search for the earliest art across the whole world. They show that our earliest ancestors were far from being the creatively impoverished primitives of past accounts, and Europe was by no means the only ‘cradle’ of art; the artistic impulse developed in the human mind wherever it travelled. The long universal history of art mirrors the development of humanity.
For more than 4,000 years the pyramids of Giza have stood like giant question marks that have intrigued and endlessly fascinated people. Who exactly built them? When? Why? And how did they create these colossal structures? But the pyramids are not a complete mystery – the stones, the hieroglyphs, the landscape and even the layers of sand and debris hold stories for us to read. Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, with over four decades of involvement with Giza, provide their unique and personal insight into the site, bringing together all the information and evidence to create a record unparalleled in its detail and scope.
The celebrated Great Pyramid of Khufu, or Cheops, is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing, but there is much more to Giza. We may think of the pyramids as rising from the desert, isolated and enigmatic, yet they were surrounded by temples, tombs, vast cemeteries and even teeming towns of the living. All are described in detail here and brought back to life, with hundreds of illustrations including detailed photographs of the monuments, excavations and objects, as well as plans, reconstructions and the latest images from remote-controlled cameras and laser scans.
Through the ages, Giza and the pyramids have inspired the most extraordinary speculations and wild theories, but here, finally, in this prestigious publication, is the full story as told by the evidence on the ground, by the leading authorities on the site.
The Kisokaido route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country’s then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travelers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaido journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838.
Both Eisen and Hiroshige were master print practitioners. In The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaido, we find the artists’ distinct styles as much as their shared expertise. From the busy starting post of Nihonbashi to the castle town of Iwamurata, Eisen opts for a more muted palette but excels in figuration, particularly of glamorous women, and relishes snapshots of activity along the route, from shoeing a horse to winnowing rice. Hiroshige demonstrates his mastery of landscape with grandiose and evocative scenes, whether it’s the peaceful banks of the Ota River, the forbidding Wada Pass, or a moonlit ascent between Yawata and Mochizuki.
Taken as a whole, The Sixty-Nine Stations collection represents not only a masterpiece of woodblock practice, including bold compositions and an experimental use of color, but also a charming tapestry of 19th-century Japan, long before the specter of industrialization. This TASCHEN XXL edition revives the series with due scale and splendor. Sourced from the only-known set of a near-complete run of the first edition of the series, this legendary publication is reproduced in the finest quality, bound in the Japanese tradition and with uncut paper. A perfect companion piece to TASCHEN’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, it is at once a visual delight and a major artifact from the bygone era of Imperial Japan.
This beautiful and engaging volume charts the evolution of manga from its roots in late 19th-century Japan through the many and varied forms of comics, cartoons and animation created throughout Asia for more than 100 years.
World authority on comic art Paul Gravett details the evolving meanings of the myths and legends told and retold by manga artists of every decade and reveals the development and cross pollination of cultural and aesthetic ideas between manga artists throughout Asia. He explores the explosion of creativity in manga after the Second World War with the emergence of such artists as Osamu Tezuka, whose pioneering Astro Boy spawned a new and much imitated visual dynamic. He highlights how creators have responded to political events since 1950 in the form of propaganda, criticism and commentary in manga magazines, comics and books.
There have been many remarkably powerful and sophisticated graphic novels, although some sexually explicit and emotionally dark adult manga has also attracted criticism, raising questions about taste and acceptability. Gravett discusses the influence of censorship on manga and concludes with a survey of current multi- platform offerings of manga in Asia and the transition from cut-price rental libraries to the booming specialist emporia and comic conventions that champion the kaleidoscope of creativity apparent in the digital age.
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was a German-born biologist, naturalist, evolutionist, artist, philosopher, and doctor who spent his life researching flora and fauna from the highest mountaintops to the deepest ocean. A vociferous supporter and developer of Darwin’s theories of evolution, he denounced religious dogma, authored philosophical treatises, gained a doctorate in zoology, and coined scientific terms which have passed into common usage, including ecology, phylum, and stem cell.
At the heart of Haeckel’s colossal legacy was the motivation not only to discover but also to explain. To do this, he created hundreds of detailed drawings, watercolors, and sketches of his findings which he published in successive volumes, including several marine organism collections and the majestic Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), which could serve as the cornerstone of Haeckel’s entire life project. Like a meticulous visual encyclopedia of living things, Haeckel’s work was as remarkable for its graphic precision and meticulous shading as for its understanding of organic evolution. From bats to the box jellyfish, lizards to lichen, and spider legs to sea anemones, Haeckel emphasized the essential symmetries and order of nature, and found biological beauty in even the most unlikely of creatures.
In this book, we celebrate the scientific, artistic, and environmental importance of Haeckel’s work, with a collection of 450 of his finest prints from several of his most important tomes, including Die Radiolarien, Monographie der Medusen, Die Kalkschwämme, and Kunstformen der Natur. At a time when biodiversity is increasingly threatened by human activities, the book is at once a visual masterwork, an underwater exploration, and a vivid reminder of the precious variety of life.
One of the most popular and influential British artists of our times, David Hockney has never ceased to change his style and ways of working, always re-energizing his art with new solutions, fresh ideas and technical mastery. Now excitedly embracing his ‘late period’, Hockney remains as engaged as ever with the questions he has always posed for himself – what to depict, how to depict it and how to persuade the spectator that he or she is an active participant rather than just a passive witness.
Published to mark Hockney’s 80th birthday and in the wake of the most extensive Tate retrospective ever accorded to a living artist, this new edition includes a new preface, afterword and final chapter covering work of the past two decades. Tracing a line from the beginnings of Hockney’s career in the early 1960s, the portraits and images of Los Angeles swimming pools, his drawings and photocollages, to his highly acclaimed stage designs for the opera, video works, his iPad drawings and other novel forms of picturemaking, Marco Livingstone shows the continuing preoccupation with invention and artifice that has made this artist’s work at once popular and enduring.
Here is a comprehensive, accessible and authoritative illustrated reference to the history, art and science of photography. In one single, elegant volume, it features over 300 iconic photographs and contains more than 1,200 concise yet fully detailed entries on all aspects of the subject. Though much information can today be found online, locating it takes time and sources can have questionable provenance and uncertain academic credentials. All previous dictionaries of photography are now outdated, as well, focusing either on the famous and influential practitioners of the genre or presented as mere glossaries of technical terms. This landmark publication, newly available in paperback, is the culmination of ten years of development and research. Working with an international expert panel of 150 consultants and 79 researchers, Nathalie Herschdorfer has triumphed in creating the first source of information for all scholars, practitioners and collectors of photography to turn to in the future.
Growing numbers of us work not only from home, but from anywhere; job flexibility has become a key requirement for employers and workers alike. This, in turn, has created new challenges for architects and designers – many of whom themselves start out working from home – who are tackling demand head on with innovative solutions that allow clients to transform their spaces to suit a wide range of needs, from multifunctional studios to homes that seamlessly combine work and family life.
Divided into five thematic sections, this book explores the exciting variety of ways that the workplace can be integrated into the domestic environment. From stand-alone multifunctional furniture to mobile room dividers and dynamic solutions that fold out or pop up to create new work areas, each design addresses the unique needs of the space, client and working practices for which it was required, and tackles new questions about the rapidly evolving relationship between work and domestic life in the 21st century.
This essential and timely resource for homeworkers and practitioners offers fresh ideas for how to strike the perfect balance between living and working at home.
The coming of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century witnessed unprecedented changes in society: rapid economic progress went hand-in-hand with appalling working conditions, displacement, squalor and destitution for those at the bottom of the social scale. These new circumstances presented a challenge to contemporary image-makers, who wished to capture the effects of hunger, poverty and alienation in Britain, Ireland and France in the era before documentary photography. In this groundbreaking book, the eminent art historian Linda Nochlin examines the styles and expressive strategies that were used by artists and illustrators to capture this misère, roughly characterized as poverty that afflicts both body and soul. She investigates images of the Irish Famine in the period 1846-51; the gendered representation of misery, particularly of poor women and prostitutes; and the work of three very different artists: Théodore Géricault, Gustave Courbet and the less wellknown Fernand Pelez. The artists’ desire to depict the poor and the outcast accurately and convincingly is still a pertinent issue, though now, as Nochlin observes, the question has a moral and ethical dimension – does the documentary style belittle its subjects and degrade their condition?
The paintings of Albert Oehlen live by audacious strategies, by questioning the image and the rules of abstraction, and by an openness and beauty often reached through the unlikeliest of means.
In this expansive monograph, we meet the full range of Oehlen’s artistic thoughts and approaches: paintings that integrate mirrors, paintings that are executed strictly in primary colors or only in gray, heavily pixelated paintings produced with the help of one of the first personal computers. We find collaged fragments of garish poster ads on canvases that transforming screaming slogans into abstract elements, charcoal drawings the size of a wall, finger paintings, and paintings in which black treelike silhouettes contort themselves into a lexicon of abstract forms. Throughout, Oehlen transforms the conceptual into the compositional, at once invigorating and challenging the viewer.
Revising and updating TASCHEN’s previous Collector’s Edition, this revelatory survey explores Oehlen’s trajectory from his early days up to the present. It features more than 400 paintings as well as insightful commentaries and interviews, covering Oehlen’s different work stages and approaches. Roberto Ohrt’s essay takes us back to the special vibe of the early 1980s where Oehlen worked alongside Kippenberger, Büttner, and others, part of a scene that painted quickly and close to the pulse of time. Oehlen discusses his computer paintings with John Corbett, and follows up on his more recent work, his thoughts on art, and his day in the studio in a lengthy conversation with Alexander Klar. Together with a collection of shorter texts and statements, this brings us close to the ideas of an artist who has been dubbed “the most resourceful abstract painter alive.”
Nominated for the 2019 Kate Greenaway Medal
Why do octopuses have eight arms?
Why do crabs run sideways?
Are jellyfish made of jelly?
Yuval Zommer’s beautiful new book provides the answers to these and many more fishy questions. His wonderfully quirky illustrations show off all kinds of slippery, shimmery and surprising sea creatures, including sea turtles, whales, sharks, rays and seahorses. Chatty, funny and full of amazing facts, it will be devoured by children eager to find out about the most exciting creatures from the deep blue.
Sunday Times Art Book of the Year 2018
‘If you are interested in modern British art, the book is unputdownable. If you are not, read it.’ – Grey Gowrie, Financial Times
‘All the good stories, and more, are here … this is a genuinely encyclopaedic work, unlike anything else I have come across on the topic, informed by a deep love and understanding of modern painting. Everybody interested in the subject should read it.’ – Andrew Marr, Sunday Times
A masterfully narrated account of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s, illustrated throughout with documentary photographs and works of art
The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s is the story of interlinking friendships, shared experiences and artistic concerns among a number of acclaimed artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres, Frank Bowling and Howard Hodgkin.
Drawing on extensive first-hand interviews, many previously unpublished, with important witnesses and participants, the art critic Martin Gayford teases out the thread connecting these individual lives, and demonstrates how painting thrived in London against the backdrop of Soho bohemia in the 1940s and 1950s and ‘Swinging London’ in the 1960s. He shows how, influenced by such different teachers as David Bomberg and William Coldstream, and aware of the work of contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock as well as the traditions of Western art from Piero della Francesca to Picasso and Matisse, the postwar painters were allied in their confidence that this ancient medium, in opposition to photography and other media, could do fresh and marvellous things. They asked the question ‘what can painting do?’ and explored in their diverse ways, but with equal passion, the possibilities of paint.
Thirty of the world’s leading architects, including Norman Foster, Thom Mayne, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, talk about the houses they designed for themselves over the past decade. What inspired them, what were the constraints, how did their concepts take shape? Michael Webb explores the creative process and traces the influence of architects’ houses over the past two hundred years, from Jefferson’s Monticello to the creations of Charles and Ray Eames, Toyo Ito and Frank Gehry.
Texts, images, sketches and plans are interwoven to illustrate houses that differ widely, in size, material, character and location. There are urban infills, rustic retreats, experiments, and fusions of new and old. They all make a statement, modest or ambitious, and each reflects the personality and tastes of its owner. These architects have accepted the challenge of doing something out of the ordinary, turning constraints to advantage. They give different answers to a crucial question: how can a house enrich lives and its surroundings? Spacious or frugal, refined or rough-edged, daring or reductive, these adventurous dwellings will inspire other architects and everyone who would like to design or commission a house that is one-of-a-kind.
Poets and intellectuals brushed shoulders in bustling coffeehouses, young avant-gardists heralded a new era in social and sexual liberalism, waltzes resounded through the Ringstrasse, the Vienna Secession preached: “To every age its art – to every art its freedom;” and tremors warned of looming political disintegration when the Austrian capital passed into a new century.
Across economics, science, art, and music, Vienna blossomed into a “laboratory of modernity,” one which nurtured some of the greatest artistic innovators-from Egon Schiele‘s unflinching nude portraits to Gustav Klimt‘s decadent Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, from the ornamental seams and glass floors of Otto Wagner to Ditha Moser‘s calendars adorned in golden deities.
Discover the zeitgeist, the scandals, and the extraordinary protagonists in this introduction to a transformative epoch. Across painting, sculpture, architecture, and design, we explore all the movers and shakers through insightful profiles and crisp double-page reproductions. Marking the centenary of the deaths of some of its brightest talents, this collection joins Vienna in its 2018 celebration of Modernism.
A pup and his father contemplate his grand future while looking at other Great Dogs in their family. Will he be a marathon runner like Uncle Tibor, the fastest dog in the family? Will he be an astronaut like Aunt Yuki, who reached for the stars? Or maybe a teacher like Uncle Scooter, respected by all? No matter what, says his father, he will be a GREAT dog!
Davide Cali’s tongue-in-cheek writing and Miguel Tanco’s unique and funny illustrations bring these great dogs to life and will have readers giggling from start to finish. With gatefolds that show the real story behind the characters and a surprise twist at the end, Great Dog is a winner for kids and parents alike!
At the dawn of the automobile age, Americans’ predilection for wanderlust prompted a new wave of inventive entrepreneurs to cater to this new mode of transportation. Starting in the 1920s, attention-grabbing buildings began to appear that would draw in passing drivers for snacks, provisions, souvenirs, or a quick meal. The architectural establishment of the day dismissed these roadside buildings as “monstrosities”.
Yet, they flourished, especially along America’s Sunbelt, and in particular, in Southern California, as proprietors indulged their creative impulses in the form of giant, eccentric constructions – from owls, dolls, pigs, and ships, to coffee pots and fruit. Their symbolic intent was guileless, yet they were marginalized by history. But, over the past 40 years, California’s architectural anomalies have regained their integrity, and are now being celebrated in this freshly revised compendium of buildings, California Crazy.
Brimming with the best examples of this architectural genre, California Crazy includes essays exploring the influences that fostered the nascent architectural movement, as well as identifying the unconventional landscapes and attitudes found on Los Angeles and Hollywood roadsides which allowed these buildings to flourish in profusion.
In addition, California Crazy features David Gebhard’s definitive essay, which defined this vernacular movement almost forty years ago. The California Crazy concept is expanded to include domestic architecture, eccentric signage, and the automobile as a fanciful object.
Erased by bombing during the Korean War, North Korea’s trophy capital of Pyongyang was entirely rebuilt from scratch from 1953, in line with the vision of the nation’s founder, Kim Il Sung. Designed as an imposing stage set, it is a place of grand axial boulevards linking gargantuan monuments, lined with stately piles of distinctly Korean flavor, to be “national in form and socialist in content.”
Under the present leader, Kim Jong Un, construction has ramped up apace-“Let us turn the whole country into a socialist fairyland,” declares one of his official patriotic slogans. He is rapidly transforming Pyongyang into a playground, conjuring a flimsy fantasy of prosperity and using architecture as a powerful anesthetic, numbing the population from the stark reality of his authoritarian regime.
Guardian journalist and photographer Oliver Wainwright takes us on an eye-opening tour behind closed doors in the most secretive country in the world, revealing that past the grand stone façades lie lavish wonder-worlds of marble and mosaic, coffered ceilings, and crystal chandeliers, along with new interiors in dazzling color palettes. Discover the palatial reading rooms of the Grand People’s Study House, and peer inside the locker rooms of the recently renovated Rungrado May Day Stadium, ready to host a FIFA World Cup that will never come.
This collection features about 200 photographs with insightful captions, as well as an introductory essay where Wainwright charts the history and development of Pyongyang, explaining how the architecture and interiors embody the national “Juche” ideology and questioning what the future holds for the architectural ambitions of this enigmatic country.
The Big Idea shortlisted for series design in the British Design and Production Awards
Is Capitalism Working? is a highly relevant question today – not least to a generation coming of age in a world still experiencing aftershocks from the near-meltdown of the world economy in 2008. Economic theory can be complex, but Jacob Field’s wellstructured and thought-provoking text lays out the debate in a clear, accessible and engaging manner. Infographics and timelines ensure that readers grasp the basic tenets, history and context of capitalism, without distracting from the compelling arguments. Jacob Field presents a measured conclusion that reviews the evidence on each side, allowing room for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
Knitting and crochet have long been considered forms of folk art, but in the 21st century, these time-honoured crafts are breaking away from the outdated stereotype of cosy domesticity. Whether miniature or oversized, multi-coloured or monochrome, abstract or naturalistic, intimate or exhibitionist, knitted works are now invading galleries, museums and other public spaces. Yarn has become a medium for artistic expression as valid and multifaceted as painting, sculpture or photography.
Showcasing forty international artists who incorporate knitting, crochet and more into their practice, this book provides a survey of yarn work in contemporary art, illustrating the huge range of ways in which these techniques have been embraced as a form of creative expression. Some artists evoke a kind of nostalgia, rediscovering skills that have fallen from fashion or promoting the value of ancient handicrafts in an industrialized world of mass-production. Others push the boundaries of knitting by using non-traditional materials such as rope or wire, or by using its sculptural potential to tackle themes that are political, personal or transgressive.
Although often associated with feelings of warmth, enclosure and familial love, yarn can also represent the ties that bind us together or a membrane that protects us from the world. Packed with striking images, this book demonstrates how knitting needles and crochet hooks can created works of art that are challenging and unique, forcing us to take a fresh look at our own lives and beliefs and at the objects that surround us every day.
Why are trees so important? How many types are there? How do they benefit the environment and wildlife? This book, by the award-winning author Piotr Socha, answers these questions and more, tracking the history of trees from the time of the dinosaurs to the current day.
The idea of heaven on earth haunts the human imagination. The day will come, say believers, when the pain and confusion of mortal life will give way to a transfigured community. Such a vision of the world seems indelible. Even politics, some reckon, has not escaped from the realm of the sacred: its dreams of the future still borrow their imagery from the prophets.
In Heaven on Earth, T.J. Clark sets out to investigate the very different ways painting has given form to the dream of God’s kingdom come. He goes back to the late Middle Ages and Renaissance – to Giotto in Padua, Bruegel facing the horrors of religious war, Poussin painting the Sacraments, Veronese unfolding the human comedy. Was it to painting’s advantage, is Clark’s question, that in an age of enforced orthodoxy (threats of hellfire, burnings at the stake) artists could reflect on the powers and limitations of religion without putting their thoughts into words?
At the heart of the book stands Bruegel’s ironic but tender picture of The Land of Cockaigne, but also Veronese’s inscrutable Allegory of Love. The story ends with Picasso’s Fall of Icarus, made for UNESCO in 1958, which already seems to signal – perhaps to prescribe – an age when all futures are dead.
Africa State of Mind gathers together the work of an emergent generation of photographers from across Africa, including both the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. It is both a summation of new photographic practice from the last decade and an exploration of how contemporary photographers from the continent are exploring ideas of ‘Africanness’ to reveal Africa to be a psychological space as much as a physical territory – a state of mind as much as a geographical place.
Dispensing with the western colonial view of Africa in purely geographic or topographic terms, Ekow Eshun presents Africa State of Mind in four thematic parts: Hybrid Cities; Inner Landscapes; Zones of Freedom; and Myth and Memory. Each theme, introduced by a text by Eshun, presents selections of work by a new wave of African photographers who are looking both outward and inward: capturing life among the sprawling cities and multitudinous conurbations of the continent, turning the legacy of the continent’s history into the source of resonant new myths and dreamscapes and exploring questions of gender, sexuality and identity. Each of the photographers seeks to capture the experience of what it means, and how it feels, to live in Africa today.
GOLD Winner of the Junior Design Awards in the Best Designed/Illustrated Book for Children category
What does a venus fly trap eat?
How strong is a giant water lily?
Does a cactus flower?
The newest addition to Yuval Zommer’s bestselling series answers these questions and more as it introduces young children to all kinds of colourful, carnivorous, weird and wonderful flowering plants from around the world. It opens with introductory spreads on how to be a botanist; how to recognise different types of flowers; the life-cycle of a plant; flower anatomy; and the seven types of animal pollinators including bats, birds and beetles. Subsequent spreads, illustrated within various habitats, are dedicated to specific varieties of plants, including the carnivorous venus flytrap, the giant water lily and the weird and wonderful corpse flower. Readers will enjoy learning about different edible flowers and why flowers are fragrant or colourful, not to mention grisly details about carnivorous and poisonous flowers.
Prince’s extraordinary cultural significance was highlighted by the worldwide outpouring of love following his tragic passing in April 2016. A huge influential source to many in the fields of music and art, Prince towers as a cultural figure of the twentieth (and into the twenty-first) century. Celebrate his enormous life in this interactive adventure book.
On each page, Prince lies in wait, ready for the eagle-eyed reader to spy him among the crowds. These huge illustrations capture the set of Purple Rain, the labyrinth Paisley Park studios and more! This book is bursting with super-super-fan references: the ultimate gift for any Prince fan. (Which is anyone with a heart, right?)
The world appears to be divided into cat and dog lovers, but fortunately Walter Chandoha, the 20th century’s greatest pet photographer found himself happily in the middle. He loved these intriguing creatures equally for their unique beauty and individualism, and as subjects to photograph in a career spanning over 70 years. While working on his critically acclaimed TASCHEN book Cats, Chandoha handpicked his favorite dog photos for a potential follow-up title, putting into carefully marked boxes hundreds of contact sheets, prints, and color transparencies, many unseen for at least 50 years, and some totally unseen.
Chandoha sadly passed away in 2019 at the age of 98, but his legacy lives on in this dashing sequel dedicated to man’s best friend. “Walter Chandoha’s photographs of dogs are compelling not just because dogs have an inherent charm, but because the person behind the camera was a master of his craft,” writes the photography critic Jean Dykstra in the book’s introduction.
We see terriers, collies, beagles, bloodhounds, poodles, small dogs, big dogs, show dogs, working dogs, and many more, featuring over 60 breeds photographed in both black-and-white and glorious Kodachrome.
Spanning a 50-year period, the book is divided into six sections, and each chapter reveals Chandoha’s exceptional combination of technique, versatility, and soul. The opening chapter “In the Studio” focuses on formal portraiture; next it’s “Strike a Pose” where our canine companions ham it up for the camera; in “Out and About” they get to roam and play, often photographed with Chandoha’s own children; next it’s “Best in Show” with Chandoha using his reportage skills to capture vintage dog shows from the Mad Men era; in “Tails from the City,“ the dogs are hitting the streets of mid-century New York; and in the closing chapter “Country Dogs,“ it’s back to nature, the fields, and the beaches. Dogs is an unleashed photographic tribute to these lovable and loyal creatures.
The visual arts enrich our lives in many ways: bringing innovative ideas and the pleasures of beauty and emotion, but they can also confound. How To Understand Art sets out to enhance the viewer’s experience by breaking down the elements of art and sculpture to provide a firm basis for simple enjoyment as well as further investigation.
With 100 visual examples drawn from across the globe, the stress is on how to assess art objectively – a key skill for any art student, museum visitor or cultural enthusiast. Janetta Rebold Benton guides the reader to re-evaluate their experiences of looking at art by learning to move beyond ‘I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like,’ and shift towards an understanding of ‘why I like it’.
Materials and techniques are discussed – drawing, painting, printing, photography, sculpture and decorative art – making it possible to assess what can (and cannot) be done in certain media. The book also features a section devoted to six key artists who have had a particularly notable and innovative influence on the history of art: Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Perfectly aimed at students and the general reader, this indispensable guide to the subject is well-placed to encourage questions and discussion, especially in the light of current debates surrounding class, ethnicity, gender and race.
With 111 illustrations in colour
If all the scientists are saving the world… who is working on time travel? Scientists who are zooming through space, protecting the planet, singing with whales… and even learning to travel through time. Get ready to meet more than 20 inspiring, real-life scientists, and discover how they started asking questions… just like YOU!
Intrepid readers are invited on a field trip into the wild to discover whether wolves are as big and as bad as we think they are.
For many people, wolves are the stuff of nightmares and horror films, but the reality is that they’re among some of the most vulnerable wild animals on our planet.
By following field guide Huw Lewis Jones and nature illustrator Sam Caldwell into the wild, readers will meet subspecies of grey wolf living in forests throughout Europe, North America and China, as well as red wolves in North Carolina and other members of the canid family, including coyotes. Along the way, aspiring naturalists will discover the difference between a ‘timber’ and a ‘tundra’ wolf, what traits wild wolves share with domestic dogs, and why wolf poo is so important to scientists!
Through entertaining and informative text and expressive illustrations, Are Wolves Afraid of the Dark? challenges the stereotype of the ‘big, bad wolf’, passed down to us through fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, and shows that wolves are intelligent, sensitive creatures with far more to fear from us than we have from them!
Philip Matyszak skilfully navigates the myths and legends of early Rome, exploring the enigmatic origins of the Romans and how the first seeds of a great empire were sown.
‘I sing of arms and the man’ wrote Virgil at the start of the Aeneid, one of Rome’s most iconic origin stories exploring the tumultuous journey of Aeneas from Trojan prince to a hero of Rome. But did Aeneas actually flee from Troy? How did this story affect the Roman’s perspective of themselves? And did they believe it? In Rome Before Rome, Philip Matyszak explores the myths and legends, heroes and villains that shaped the Roman sense of self.
There are few books which explain how these different legends fit into Rome’s overall narrative and none which explore the range of myths Matyszak describes. Some of the legends are well known, from Romulus and Remus to the Rape of the Sabines, whilst others are more obscure such as the story of the praetor Cipus, who grew horns and became a King of Rome. Whether renowned or unfamiliar, all are significant in their own way and have had a profound impact on the Romans. Even today these myths continue to reverberate throughout western culture as films, TV shows and plays.
Matyszak dissects these myths, investigating hard-to-find texts, such as the historical texts of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch’s Roman Questions sources, as well as classic texts like Livy’s From the Founding of the City and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, revealing that Rome’s illustrious mythological past is not quite as it might seem.
This Empty World, Nick Brandt’s new monograph, features a series of dramatically staged photographs that bring together and reveal the animals and people of East Africa as the victims of environmental degradation in an emotionally powerful, cinematic way.
Moving into colour photography for the first time, the work is both a technical tour-de-force and a massively ambitious project in which several sets are constructed on a scale typically only seen in film production. Each panoramic image is a combination of two moments in time, almost all of them captured weeks apart from the exact same camera position.
Brandt first builds and lights a partial set, then waits for the animals that inhabit the region to enter the frame. Once captured on camera, the full set is built with the camera remaining fixed in place. The sets include bridge and highway construction sites, a petrol station, a bus station and even a dead forest. Completing the scene with a huge cast drawn from local communities, Brandt then photographs the second sequence. The final large scale prints are a composite of the two intricately plotted elements.
Viewed as a whole, the images vividly illustrate a world in which, overwhelmed by runaway human development, there is no longer space for animals to survive, and beg the question: what kind of world will we live in when stripped of its natural wonders.
Photographed on unprotected, inhabited Maasai community land, after the sets were removed and their elements recycled, no evidence of the images now remains in the landscape.
In this clear and evocative account, John Gaskin unfolds the thinking about nature, life, death and other worlds that informed the culture and society of the Classical world, drawing out its interest for modern readers. Witty sketches and diagrams enliven the story, which runs from Homeric Greece to the banning of pagan religions in ad 391. The book concludes with a gazetteer describing notable sites and the people and ideas connected with them, making it an ideal companion for visitors to Classical ruins and for all armchair travellers curious to explore life’s big questions.
One of the most compelling and controversial figures in history, Akhenaten has captured the imagination like no other Egyptian pharaoh. Known today as a heretic, Akhenaten sought to impose upon Egypt and its people the worship of a single god – the sun – and in so doing changed the country in every way.
In this immensely readable re-evaluation, Nicholas Reeves takes issue with the existing view of Akhenaten, presenting an entirely new perspective on the turbulent events of his seventeen-year reign. Reeves argues that, far from being the idealistic founder of a new faith, Akhenaten cynically used religion for purely political ends in a calculated attempt to reassert the authority of the king. Backed up by abundant archaeological and documentary evidence, Reeves’s closely written narrative also provides many new insights into questions that have baffled scholars for generations – the puzzle of the body in Tomb 55 in the Valley of the Kings; the fate of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s beautiful wife, and the identity of the mysterious successor, Smenkhkare; and the theory that Tutankhamun, Akhenaten’s son and true heir, was murdered.
This celebration of 20 of China’s latest generation features detailed profiles of each architect, exploring their routes to success, their inspirations and the challenges posed for those working and designing in this richly diverse and rapidly evolving region. Each profile is followed by a selection of recent works, including everything from small-scale conceptual plans to country houses, schools, offices and large-scale city development projects. From exploring new ways to build with radical, sustainable materials to sensitively honouring the vernacular traditions of the country’s complex history, each architect brings their unique vision to the question of what architecture means in China today.
‘Kemp is a natural storyteller… This book leads you on a journey through the life, work and legacy of one of history’s most intriguing figures.’ The Times
In an engaging personal narrative interwoven with historical research, Martin Kemp discusses a life spent immersed in the world of Leonardo, and his encounters with great and lesser academics, collectors and curators, devious dealers and unctuous auctioneers, major scholars and authors, pseudo-historians and fantasists. He shares how he has grappled with swelling legions of ‘Leonardo loonies’, walked on the eggshells of vested interests in academia and museums, and fended off fusillades of non-Leonardos, sometimes more than one a week. Examining the greatest masterpieces, from the Last Supper to Salvator Mundi, through the expert’s eye, we learn first-hand of the thorny questions that surround attribution, the scientific analyses that support the experts’ interpretations, and the continuing importance of connoisseurship.
Throughout, from the most scholarly interpretations to the popularity of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, we are reminded of Leonardo’s unique genius and wonder at how an artist from 500 years ago continues to make such compelling posthumous demands on all those who engage with him.
Why is a flamingo pink? Can a parrot talk? Is a bald eagle really bald? This follow-up to the hugely successful The Big Book of Bugs, The Big Book of Beasts and The Big Book of the Blue answers these questions and many more. It opens with introductory spreads explaining how to recognize different bird’s eggs, the bird family tree, why different species of birds have different beaks and feathers, and why some birds migrate and travel vast distances every year. Subsequent spreads, illustrated with various habitats, are dedicated to specific varieties of bird, including hummingbirds, peacocks, flamingos, bald eagles, secretary birds, albatrosses and red-crowned cranes. Some will teach children how to spot different birds within a specific variety, for example how to differentiate the American robin from the European robin. Others explore bird habitats, for example showing how birds adapt to live in cities. Finally, the book invites young bird spotters to protect birds where they live and make their gardens bird friendly. This is a big, beautiful book to look at again and again.
A flashback to the iconic pop cultural moments of the decade – any ‘90s kid will find themselves reminiscing over The Spice Girls, Furbies, Robin Williams in Flubber, Pokémon, Jelly shoes and Leonardo DiCaprio’s floppiest hairdos.
Much of ‘90s culture dictates ours today. Without Friends or Seinfeld, would our world still turn? If Nirvana hadn’t made it big, would grunge have ever reached the masses? Can anyone even pass a driving test without training in Mario Kart?? We doubt it, and this book proves it.
Bacon and the Mind sheds light on Francis Bacon’s art by exploring his motivations, and in so doing opens up new ways of understanding his paintings through three pillars; art, neuroscience and psychology.
This beautiful book is comprised of five essays, illustrated in colour throughout by Francis Bacon’s works. It is the first in a brand new series of books, Francis Bacon Studies, that seeks to illuminate Francis Bacon’s art and motivations.
The first essay, by Christopher Bucklow, argues compellingly that Bacon does not depict the reality of his subjects, but rather their reality for him – in his memory, in his sensibility, and in his private world of sensations and ideas.
Steven Jaron’s essay questions the psychological implications of Bacon’s habitual language, his obsession with ‘the wound’, with vulnerability and the nervous system. Jaron’s deconstruction of Bacon’s visual imagination results in revealing insights into the man and his work.
Darian Leader’s long-time fascination with Bacon’s paintings predates his powerful BBC documentary, In the Name of the Father? (1996). His contribution to this book, presents the latest of his fresh and stimulating insights into the artist.
The focus in John Onians’s contribution explores the effect of Bacon’s non-conscious mental processes in the creation of his paintings.
‘The “Visual Shock” of Francis Bacon: An essay in Neuroaesthetics’ is a newly edited and now fully illustrated re-presentation of an article by Semir Zeki and Tomohiro Ishizu, previously accessible only online.
Martin Harrison, Editor of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, edits the book and contributes the Preface and Afterword.
The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing,
supported by Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation Monaco,
in association with Thames & Hudson.
WINNER, Best Children’s Book 5+, Junior Design Awards 2019. The judges said: “Perfect for inspiring wanderlust and creating a lovely holiday keepsake to look back on. We all loved the fact that this book adds another creative and exciting dimension to going on holiday. The illustrations are gorgeous and with five sections to devoted to separate adventures, it is a journal that can be brought out year after year.”
“This gorgeous series makes a perfect gift for creative children.” — Frances Morris, Director, Tate Modern
Take Me On Holiday is the second book in an exciting new series of guided journals for young explorers. With its stylish design, zingy illustrations and handy size to pop in a bag, it’s essential packing for any creative child’s suitcase – whether they’re going to a relative’s house for the weekend or taking a trip to a far-flung corner of the world.
This innovative, interactive book is divided into five ‘adventure’ chapters. Children start a new adventure at the beginning of each holiday. Within each chapter, there’s space for them to plan and research their trip, document the journey and record memorable days out. As they complete lists, draw pictures and answer questions they’ll discover more about the places they’re visiting – and learn a little more about themselves, too.
Quirky, easy to navigate and brimming with interesting holiday facts, this book is a must-have for any trip – don’t leave home without it!
On a winter’s night in 1949 in New York City, young marketing student and budding photographer Walter Chandoha spotted a stray kitten in the snow, bundled it into his coat, and brought it home. Little did he know he had just met the muse that would determine the course of his life. Chandoha turned his lens on his new feline friend-which he named Loco-and was so inspired by the results that he started photographing kittens from a local shelter. These images marked the start of an extraordinary career that would span seven decades.
Long before the Internet and #catsofinstagram, Chandoha was enrapturing the public with his fuzzy subjects. From advertisements to greetings cards, jigsaw puzzles to pet-food packaging, his images combined a genuine affection for the creatures, a strong work ethic, and flawless technique. Chandoha’s trademark glamorous lighting, which made each cat’s fur stand out in sharp relief, would define the visual vocabulary of animal portraiture for generations and inspire such masters as Andy Warhol, who took cues from Chandoha’s charming portraits in his illustrated cat book.
Cats leaps into the archives of this genre-defining artist, spanning color studio and environmental portraits, black-and-white street photography, images from vintage cat shows, tender pictures that combine his children with cats and more. This is a fitting tribute not just to these beguiling creatures but also to a remarkable photographer who passed away in 2019 at the age of 98; and whose compassion can be felt in each and every frame.
Sunday Times Art Book of the Year 2018
‘If you are interested in modern British art, the book is unputdownable. If you are not, read it.’ – Grey Gowrie, Financial Times
‘All the good stories, and more, are here … this is a genuinely encyclopaedic work, unlike anything else I have come across on the topic, informed by a deep love and understanding of modern painting. Everybody interested in the subject should read it.’ – Andrew Marr, Sunday Times
A masterfully narrated account of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s, illustrated throughout with documentary photographs and works of art
The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s is the story of interlinking friendships, shared experiences and artistic concerns among a number of acclaimed artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres, Frank Bowling and Howard Hodgkin.
Drawing on extensive first-hand interviews, many previously unpublished, with important witnesses and participants, the art critic Martin Gayford teases out the thread connecting these individual lives, and demonstrates how painting thrived in London against the backdrop of Soho bohemia in the 1940s and 1950s and ‘Swinging London’ in the 1960s. He shows how, influenced by such different teachers as David Bomberg and William Coldstream, and aware of the work of contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock as well as the traditions of Western art from Piero della Francesca to Picasso and Matisse, the postwar painters were allied in their confidence that this ancient medium, in opposition to photography and other media, could do fresh and marvellous things. They asked the question ‘what can painting do?’ and explored in their diverse ways, but with equal passion, the possibilities of paint.
Who are the English? Their language and culture have had an impact on the modern world out of all proportion to the size of their homeland. But what do we really understand about their ancestry? Traditionally they have been seen as the descendants of those Germanic peoples who poured into Britain after the Roman legions departed, today known as the Anglo-Saxons. Alternative interpretations have questioned this picture, or suggested complications. At last, the astonishing progress made in extracting and analysing ancient DNA means that theories can be tested empirically, shedding new light on the movement and migrations of peoples in the past.
Skilfully and accessibly blending together results from this cutting-edge DNA technology with new research from archaeology and linguistics, Jean Manco reveals a long and adventurous journey before a word of English was spoken. Going beyond a narrow focus on the Anglo-Saxon period, she probes into the deep origins of the Germani and their kin, and extends the story to the language of Shakespeare, taken to the first British colony in America. The result is an exciting new history of the English people, and a ground-breaking analysis of their development.
Paula Rego is an artist of astonishing power with a unique and unforgettable aesthetic. Taking its cues from the artist, this fascinating study invites us to reflect on the complexities of storytelling on which Rego’s work draws, emphasizing both the stories the pictures tell, and how it is that they are told.
Deryn Rees-Jones sets interpretations of the pictures in the context of Rego’s personal and artistic development across sixty years. We see how Rego’s art intersects with the work of both the literary and the visual, and come to understand her rich and textured layering of reference: her use of the Old Masters; fiction, fairy tales and poems; the folk traditions of Rego’s native Portugal; and her wider engagement with politics, feminism and more. The result is a highly original work that addresses urgent and topical questions of gender, subject and object, self and other.
“Wonderfully portable, this journal doesn’t skimp on style. . . As parents, what appealed to us in particular was the educational component: there are loads of facts on the school theme, with info about pioneering teachers throughout history and how uniforms differ from one country to the next. . . We love the fun educational tidbits and gorgeous colours.” — The Independent
“A fantastic pocket-sized journal that lays out your school adventure in easy-to-complete sections, stimulating your imagination and helping you along with your first tentative steps in your school adventure.” — ReadItDaddy
Take Me To School is the third book in an exciting new series of guided journals for young explorers. With its stylish design, zingy illustrations and handy size to pop in a schoolbag, it’s a fun, lively way to record time at school, engage with friends and remember favourite moments forever!
This innovative, interactive book is divided into five ‘adventure chapters. Children can start the book at any point in the school term. Each chapter is designed to be completed in one week (though it not prescriptive), and is divided into themes that encourage them to explore their surroundings, record their thoughts and draw what they see. As they complete lists, create pictures and answer questions they are prompted to think carefully about their surroundings, engage with their friends and look at their everyday school environment with fresh eyes. With a ‘thoughts and feelings section in every chapter, the book encourages positive thinking and a growth mindset.
Quirky, easy to navigate and brimming with interesting facts about schools throughout history and around the world, this book is a must-have for every primary school age student – don’t leave home without it!
From Edouard Manet‘s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh‘s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe-but often remains misunderstood as an “exotic” artifact that helped inspire Western creativity.
The fact is that the Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon of which there exists no Western equivalent. Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art-including, as Karl Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into air”-were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century.
This book lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art form by presenting the 200 most exceptional Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected in this edition make up an unmatched record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan.
From mystical mountains to snowy passes, samurai swordsmen to sex workers in shop windows, each piece is explored as a work of art in its own right, revealing the stories and people behind the motifs. We discover the four pillars of the woodblock print-beauties, actors, landscapes, and bird-and-flower compositions-alongside depictions of sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, or enticing courtesans-rock stars who populated the “floating world” and whose fan bases fueled the frenzied production of woodblock prints. We delve into the horrifying and the obscure in prints where demons, ghosts, man-eaters, and otherworldly creatures torment the living-stunning images that continue to influence Japanese manga, film, and video games to this day. We witness how, in their incredible breadth, from everyday scenes to erotica, the martial to the mythological, these works are united by the technical mastery and infallible eye of their creators and how, with tremendous ingenuity and tongue-in-cheek wit, publishers and artists alike fought to circumvent government censorship.
Three years in the making, this XXL edition presents reproductions of the finest extant impressions from the vaults of museums and private collections across the globe-many newly photographed especially for this project. Some 17 stunning fold-outs invite us to study even the subtlest details, while extensive descriptions guide us through this frantic period in Japanese art history.
Features: The work of 89 artists, from the world-renowned to the unfamiliar 7 chapters organized chronologically to trace the history of the medium from 1680 to 1938 17 fold-outs, hand-folded due to their size and specifications Exclusive reproductions from museums and private collections An appendix listing all artists and works
The second in a series of books that seeks to illuminate Francis Bacon’s art and motivations, and to open up fresh and stimulating ways of understanding his paintings.
Francis Bacon is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His works continue to puzzle and unnerve viewers, raising complex questions about their meaning. Over recent decades, two theoretical approaches to Bacon’s work have come to hold sway: firstly, that Bacon is an existentialist painter, depicting an absurd and godless world; and secondly, that he is an anti-representational painter, whose primary aim is to bring his work directly onto the spectator’s ‘nervous system’.
Francis Bacon: Painting, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis brings together some of today’s leading philosophers and psychoanalytic critics to go beyond established readings of Bacon and to open up radically new ways of thinking about his art. The essays bring Bacon into dialogue with figures such as Aristotle, Hegel, Freud, Lacan, Adorno and Heidegger, as well as situating his work in the broader contexts of modernism and modernity. The result is a timely and thought-provoking collection that will be essential reading for anyone interested in Bacon, modern art and contemporary aesthetics.
Liam Wong’s debut monograph, a cyberpunk-inspired exploration of nocturnal Tokyo.
‘I want to take real moments and transform them into something surreal, to make the viewer question the reality depicted in each photograph. This body of work encompasses my three years as a photographer and ultimately the completion of my debut photo series.’
Liam Wong
A testament to the deep art of colour composition, this publication – art directed by Wong himself and produced to the highest printing standard – brings together a complete and refined body of images that are evocative, timeless and completely transporting. Rounding out the book’s special treatment is the first publication use of the 45/90 font, designed by Henrik Kubel, of London-based A2-TYPE. The book also features a section that reveals the creative and technical process of Wong’s method, from identifying the right scene to composition, from capturing the essence of a moment to enhancing colour values and deepening an image’s impact – insights are invaluable to admirers and photography enthusiasts alike.
The idea of heaven on earth haunts the human imagination. The day will come, say believers, when the pain and confusion of mortal life will give way to a transfigured community. Such a vision of the world seems indelible. Even politics, some reckon, has not escaped from the realm of the sacred: its dreams of the future still borrow their imagery from the prophets. In Heaven on Earth, T.J. Clark sets out to investigate the very different ways painting has given form to the dream of God’s kingdom come. He goes back to the late Middle Ages and Renaissance – to Giotto in Padua, Bruegel facing the horrors of religious war, Poussin painting the Sacraments, Veronese unfolding the human comedy. Was it to painting’s advantage, is Clark’s question, that in an age of enforced orthodoxy (threats of hellfire, burnings at the stake) artists could reflect on the powers and limitations of religion without putting their thoughts into words?
At the heart of the book stands Bruegel’s ironic but tender picture of The Land of Cockaigne, and also Veronese’s inscrutable Allegory of Love. The story ends with Picasso’s Fall of Icarus, made for UNESCO in 1958, which already seems to signal – perhaps to prescribe – an age when all futures are dead.
Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) was one of the most pioneering and provocative art historians of our time. In 1971 she published her groundbreaking article, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, an impassioned feminist rallying cry that called traditional art historical practices into question and led to a major revision of the discipline.
Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader brings together thirty essential essays from throughout Nochlin’s career, including two written specially for this collection. The book opens with an interview with Nochlin, in which she looks back on her life’s work and reflects on the position of women artists today. Her major thematic texts, such as ‘Women Artists After the French Revolution’ and ‘Starting from Scratch: The Beginnings of Feminist Art History’ appear alongside the landmark 1971 essay and its rejoinder, ‘”Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”: Thirty Years After.’ Also included are entries focusing on a selection of major women artists, such as Mary Cassatt, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Miwa Yanagi and Sophie Calle, as well as concise biographies of all the artists discussed in the book and a complete bibliography of Nochlin’s publications.
How did our universe come to exist? Why do stars shine? Is there life beyond the Earth?
For millennia, humans have looked to the celestial sphere to explain the cosmos,first recording the movements of the Moon 25,000 years ago. Since the Enlightenmentand the dawn of the space age, scientists have been unravelling cosmic mysteries, andraising astonishing new questions for future generations to answer. Today we live inan age of unprecedented astronomical revelation, from the discovery of water on Marsto the detection of gravitational waves and the first photograph of a black hole.
World-renowned astronomer Paul Murdin explains the science behind these discoveries, along with the passions, strugglesand quirks of fate that made them some of the most intriguing dramas of their times,demonstrating how human ingenuity and technological innovation have expandedour knowledge of the Universe beyond anything our ancestors – even as recently asa generation ago – could ever have imagined.
‘I won’t read a more interesting book all year… utterly fascinating’ A. N. Wilson, Sunday Times
‘Enormously good-humoured and entertaining… Hockney asks big questions about the nature of picture-making and the relationship between painters and photography in a way that no other contemporary artists seems to.’ Andrew Marr, New Statesman
A new, compact edition of David Hockney and Martin Gayford’s brilliantly original book, with a revised final chapter and three entirely new Hockney artworks
Informed and energized by a lifetime of painting, drawing and making images with cameras, David Hockney, in collaboration with the art critic Martin Gayford, explores how and why pictures have been made across the millennia. What makes marks on a flat surface interesting? How do you show movement in a still picture, and how, conversely, do films and television connect with old masters?
Juxtaposing a rich variety of images – a still from a Disney cartoon with a Japanese woodblock print by Hiroshige, a scene from an Eisenstein film with a Velázquez painting – the authors cross the normal boundaries between high culture and popular entertainment, and make unexpected connections across time and media. Building on Hockney’s groundbreaking book Secret Knowledge, they argue that film, photography, painting and drawing are deeply interconnected. Insightful and thought provoking, A History of Pictures is an important contribution to our appreciation of how we represent our reality. This new edition has a revised final chapter with some of Hockney’s latest works, including the stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey.
WINNER, Best Designed / Illustrated Book For Children — Junior Design Awards 2020 (Silver Medal)
“A book to make going outside an inspiring adventure. This little paperback does much more than it says on the tin. . . It really should make young people see and think differently about the natural world around them, and packs in a great deal of information and stimulation.” — Andrea Reece, LoveReading4Kids
Take Me Outdoors is the fourth book in an exciting series of guided journals for young explorers. With its smart design, lively illustrations and perfect size to carry around, it’s a fun, lively way to engage with the wild and natural world – whether in your own garden, a local park, or further afield.
This innovative, interactive book is divided into five ‘adventure’ chapters – one for each excursion. Each chapter is divided into themes that encourage children to explore their surroundings, record their thoughts and draw what they see. As they complete lists, create pictures and answer questions they are prompted to think carefully and look at their world – from the clouds in the sky to grass or stones on the ground – with fresh eyes. A final chapter allows them to compare their adventures, and there’s also a useful glossary so they can learn new words and ideas.
Fun, quirky and bursting with facts about birds, bugs and plants; the weather and the environment; expeditions and explorers; and the artists, writers and musicians who have been inspired by nature, this book is a must for children curious about the incredible world they live in. It’s both a great keepsake and a tool for sparking creative writing.
Any millennial will say that the 90s were the best decade, and they’re very much correct. Much of 90s culture dictates the world today. Without Friends or Seinfeld, would our world still turn? If Nirvana hadn’t made it big, would grunge have ever reached the masses? Can anyone even pass a driving test without training in Mario Kart?? We doubt it, and this jigsaw puzzle just about proves it.
As you assemble this puzzle, get ready for Nokia, Nintendo 64, Tamagotchi, Discman, Rollerblades, Bucket hats, CD-ROM, Beanie Babies, chokers and more! Then there’s personalities like Oprah, the Fresh Prince, Princess Diana, Madonna, the Spice Girls and Britney Spears, as well as the classic film and TV of the 90s: Dawson’s Creek, Jurassic Park, Pretty Woman, Home Alone, Mrs Doubtfire, Pulp Fiction and more!
Blast your favourite Madonna album while you’re doing the jigsaw for the full immersive experience.
No longer considered merely decorative, ceramic art has broken free from the dusty display cases to which it was once relegated and is now taking centre stage in contemporary galleries.
Although often integrating traditional modelling, firing and glazing techniques into their output, the 90 artists featured here invite us to look at ceramics in a different way. Whether creating monumental installations or intricate miniatures, imaginary beasts or life-size human figures, they subtly blur the borders between art and craft, sometimes conceiving witty or unnerving twists on traditional ceramic forms, sometimes using cutting-edge technology, conceptual thinking and new platforms to push the boundaries of clay and broaden its appeal.
Packed with works that are questioning and provocative, disturbing and seductive, this is an exciting overview of a booming field.
With investigations into everything from black holes to exoplanets, the Hubble Telescope has changed not only the face of astronomy but also our very sense of being in the universe. On the 30th anniversary of its launch into low-earth orbit, this updated edition of Expanding Universe presents 30 brand new images, unveiling more hidden gems from the Hubble’s archives.
Ultra-high resolution and taken with almost no background light, these pictures have answered some of the most compelling questions of time and space while also revealing new mysteries, like the strange “dark energy” that sees the universe expanding at an ever-accelerating rate.
The collection is accompanied by an essay from photography critic Owen Edwards and an interview with Zoltan Levay, who explains how the pictures are composed. Veteran Hubble astronauts Charles F. Bolden, Jr. and John Mace Grunsfeld also offer their insights on Hubble’s legacy and future space exploration.
To explore the Tarot is to explore ourselves, to be reminded of the universality of our longing for meaning, for purpose and for a connection to the divine. This 600-year-old tradition reflects not only a history of seekers, but our journey of artistic expression and the ways we communicate our collective human story.
For many in the West, Tarot exists in the shadow place of our cultural consciousness, a metaphysical tradition assigned to the dusty glass cabinets of the arcane. Its history, long and obscure, has been passed down through secret writing, oral tradition, and the scholarly tomes of philosophers and sages. Hundreds of years and hundreds of creative hands-mystics and artists often working in collaboration-have transformed what was essentially a parlor game into a source of divination and system of self-exploration, as each new generation has sought to evolve the form and reinterpret the medium.
Author Jessica Hundley traces this fascinating history in Tarot, the debut volume in TASCHEN’s Library of Esoterica series. The book explores the symbolic meaning behind more than 500 cards and works of original art, two thirds of which have never been published outside of the decks themselves. It’s the first ever visual compendium of its kind, spanning from Medieval to modern, and artfully arranged according to the sequencing of the 78 cards of the Major and Minor Arcana. It explores the powerful influence of Tarot as muse to artists like Salvador Dalí and Niki de Saint Phalle and includes the decks of nearly 100 diverse contemporary artists from around the world, all of whom have embraced the medium for its capacity to push cultural identity forward. Rounding out the volume are excerpts from thinkers such as Éliphas Lévi, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell; a foreword by artist Penny Slinger; a guide to reading the cards by Johannes Fiebig; and an essay on oracle decks by Marcella Kroll.
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was a German-born biologist, naturalist, evolutionist, artist, philosopher, and doctor who spent his life researching flora and fauna from the highest mountaintops to the deepest ocean. A vociferous supporter and developer of Darwin’s theories of evolution, he denounced religious dogma, authored philosophical treatises, gained a doctorate in zoology, and coined scientific terms which have passed into common usage, including ecology, phylum, and stem cell.
At the heart of Haeckel’s colossal legacy was the motivation not only to discover but also to explain. To do this, he created hundreds of detailed drawings, watercolors, and sketches of his findings which he published in successive volumes, including several marine organism collections and the majestic Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), which could serve as the cornerstone of Haeckel’s entire life project. Like a meticulous visual encyclopedia of living things, Haeckel’s work was as remarkable for its graphic precision and meticulous shading as for its understanding of organic evolution. From bats to the box jellyfish, lizards to lichen, and spider legs to sea anemones, Haeckel emphasized the essential symmetries and order of nature, and found biological beauty in even the most unlikely of creatures.
In this book, we celebrate the scientific, artistic, and environmental importance of Haeckel’s work, with a collection of 300 of his finest prints from several of his most important tomes, including Die Radiolarien, Monographie der Medusen, Die Kalkschwämme, and Kunstformen der Natur. At a time when biodiversity is increasingly threatened by human activities, the book is at once a visual masterwork, an underwater exploration, and a vivid reminder of the precious variety of life.
“Long days inside getting everyone down? Children will see their home through fresh eyes with this clever journal. Go on five different adventures without even leaving the front door.” — Marianne Levy, “30 Best Children’s Books for Christmas 2020”, Independent
Take Me Home is the latest book in an exciting series of guided journals for young explorers. Crammed with facts, lively illustrations and inspiring activities, it’s perfect for spending creative time at home – just the thing for completing after school or on a rainy day.
With this book as your guide, you don’t even need to go out of your own front door to discover new things! Each chapter of Take Me Home is filled with activities that encourage children to explore the place where they live, jot down their ideas and draw what they see. As they complete lists, create pictures and answer questions they are prompted to look at their own home in new ways – observing its different spaces and the objects that fill it.
Fun, quirky and bursting with information about homes throughout history; architecture and design; the way things work; and the artists and writers who have been inspired by the idea of home, this book is a perfect gift for curious and creative children.
Take Me Home follows the popular format of Take Me To Museums, Take Me On Holiday, Take Me To School and Take Me Outdoors.
This timely book, in the form of an encyclopedia, considers the totality of issues surrounding the Anthropocene, that geologic era characterized by humanity’s vast impact on the Earth.
Connectedness acknowledges the incomplete nature of its project seeing as how this riotous era is not yet finished. With contributions by Greta Thunberg, Bill McKibben, Alice Waters, Tomás Saraceno, Björk and many others, this publication consists of approximately 100 entries, arranged alphabetically, each reflecting on questions, phenomena, terms, possibilities and theories associated with the Anthropocene. Examples of entries include Air, Borders and Coexistence, as well as more complex subjects such as Donna Haraway on the Chthulucene or Anders Blok on Climate Risk Communities. The content ranges from scientific to cultural-theoretical and artistic contributions featuring a wide span of scholars, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, authors, artists and others. The book accompanies the exhibition at the Danish Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Architectural Biennale.
Born in 1926, married in 1947, crowned as Queen in 1953, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II carried out her duty with great dedication for more than seven decades. TASCHEN celebrates her remarkable royal story with a new edition of Her Majesty, a definitive photographic collection of her public and private life.
Brimming with history, tradition, fashion, glamour, and culture, the book spans the Queen’s early years right until her passing in 2022.. Along the way, we trace her coming of age during World War II; her marriage, motherhood, and coronation; her encounters with such icons of their age as the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, and JFK; and her extensive international travels. We visit the spectacular royal palaces and enjoy the infectious celebration of royal weddings and jubilees. We witness the elegance of official portraits, and the intimacy of family moments.
As much a showcase of top photographers as a celebration of her remarkable royal life. Her Majesty includes the work of such luminaries as Cecil Beaton, Studio Lisa, Dorothy Wilding, Karsh, Lord Snowdon, David Bailey, Patrick Lichfield, Annie Leibovitz and many others.
With the rise of feminism, women photographers conquered the mainstream, with an increasingly commodified art world now viewing them simply as photographers and not merely a novelty or subcategory. Some women combined their photography practice with video, installations and other media, while others used the camera as a tool for questioning the concept of imagemaking itself, or for opening a fruitiful dialogue with subjects, instead of imposing an outside viewpoint. A rising awareness of environmental concerns went hand in hand with the issues of globalization and diversity.
The livre d’artiste, or ‘artist’s book’, is among the most prized in rare book collections. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one of the greatest artists to work in this genre, creating his most important books over a period of eighteen years from 1932 to 1950 – a time of personal upheaval and physical suffering, as well as conflict and occupation for France. Brimming with powerful themes and imagery, these works are crucial to an understanding of Matisse’s oeuvre, yet much of their content has never been seen by a wider audience.
In Matisse: The Books, Louise Rogers Lalaurie reintroduces us to Matisse by considering how in each of eight limited-edition volumes, the artist constructs an intriguing dialogue between word and image. She also highlights the books’ profound significance for Matisse as the catalysts for the extraordinary ‘second life’ of his paper cut-outs. In concert with an eclectic selection of poetry, drama and, tantalizingly, Matisse’s own words, the books’ images offer an astonishing portrait of creative resistance and regeneration.
Matisse’s books contain some of the artist’s best-known graphic works – the magnificent, belligerent swan from the Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé, or the vigorous linocut profile from Pasiphaé (1944), reversed in a single, rippling stroke out of a lake of velvety black. In Jazz, the cut-out silhouette of Icarus plummets through the azure, surrounded by yellow starbursts, his heart a mesmerizing dot of red. But while such individual images are well known, their place in an integrated sequence of pictures, decorations and words is not.
With deftness and sensitivity, Lalaurie explores the page-by-page interplay of the books, translating key sequences and discussing their distinct themes and creative genesis. Together Matisse’s artist books reveal his deep engagement with questions of beauty and truth; his faith; his perspectives on aging, loss, and inspiration; and his relationship to his critics, the French art establishment and the women in his life. In addition, Matisse: The Books illuminates the artist’s often misunderstood political affinities – in particular, his decision to live in the collaborationist Vichy zone, throughout World War II. Matisse’s wartime books are revealed as a body of work that stands as a deeply personal statement of resistance.
Global warming, plastic pollution, deforestation, species loss and rising inequality got you down? Then take your very valid concerns and channel them into action with this proactive guide to saving the planet, one day at a time.
Small changes in the way we eat, shop, recycle and commute really can change the world. From planting bee-friendly blooms in your backyard, to making your own body scrub from coffee grounds, and investing your spare cash into clean energy programs, there are many ways to lessen your impact on the planet.
By incorporating small changes into your daily life, you – yes you! – can, and will, make the world a better place.
For more than thirty years, Harry Gruyaert has been recording the subtle chromatic vibrations of Eastern and Western light. His photographs attest to his singular vision: his interest in story, public space and unexpected scenes.
This book brings together 125 of Gruyaert’s photographs of India, many published here for the first time. From Gujarat to Kerala, Gruyaert captured the quintessence of this multifaceted country. Streets bustling with activity in New Delhi or Calcutta; modest villages in Tamil Nadu or Rajasthan; ghats of the great religious city of Benares; women in saffron and purple saris beating grain, dyers busy at smoky vats, an encampment of nomadic shepherds at twilight… Gruyaert’s India is saturated with colour, light and noise – and sometimes silence too.
These images move beyond stereotype to present the plurality of India. ‘Taking a photo means both seeking contact and refusing it, being at once the most and the least present,’ says the photographer. It is a question of teasing out wonder, of capturing what characterizes places. The search for density within the frame makes photography a physical experience – one that is particularly well represented here, in this multi-sensorial journey through India.
With 130 illustrations
Political intrigue and treachery, heroism and brutal violence, victory and defeat – all this is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, an epic account of one of the pivotal episodes in English history embroidered on a strip of linen. Famously, it shows the stricken Anglo-Saxon king Harold dying on the battlefield of Hastings in 1066 amid a shower of arrows, as axes clash, spears fly and fallen warriors are trampled beneath charging hooves.
However, there is much more to this remarkable historical and artistic treasure, which tells its tale with an intensity and immediacy that speak to our modern world, almost 1,000 years after its creation. Many mysteries and questions still surround this unique embroidery and not all is as it might appear at first glance. Who made it, when, why, where and what for? David Musgrove and Michael Lewis skilfully lead us through the full story of the Tapestry and the history it relates, providing illuminating insight into a world of fascinating details that might otherwise be overlooked or their significance missed. They set the events in the context of the machinations on either side of the English Channel in the years leading up to the Norman Conquest, and tease out what the Tapestry tells us of the deeds of kings as well as aspects of everyday life in medieval Europe.
A complete and accessible up-to-date account, illustrated throughout in colour with new photography, this is the definitive guide to the Bayeux Tapestry and its legacy, exploring the rich narrative behind its stitches and the turbulent times in which it was created.
With 145 illustrations in colour
Genius. Anti-artist. Charlatan. Impostor! Since 1914 Marcel Duchamp has been called all of these. No artist of the 20th century has aroused more passion and controversy, nor exerted a greater influence on art, the very nature of which Duchamp challenged and redefined as concept rather than product by questioning its traditionally privileged optical nature. At the same time, he never ceased to be engaged, openly or secretly, in provocative activities and works that transformed traditional artmaking procedures.
Written with the enthusiastic support of Duchamp’s widow, this is one of the most original and important books ever written on this enigmatic artist, and challenges received ideas, misunderstanding and misinformation.
With 172 illustrations in colour
Why do horses wear shoes? How do horses ‘speak’? And why can’t horses burp? Answering twenty curious questions about the equine species, this book is a charming blend of zoology, history and popular culture that celebrates why horses have been such beloved companions for centuries. Featuring a myriad of different horse breeds, readers will discover what’s so unique about a horse’s body and its behaviour, and why they deserve to be well cared for.
Self-portraiture shows no sign of losing its ability to capture the public imagination. Given our current proclivity to snap and share ‘selfies’ in seconds, it is unsurprising to find a renewed interest in the genre among general audiences and students. Self-portraits have the power to illuminate a range of universal concerns, from identity, purpose and authenticity, to frailty, futility and mortality.
In this volume, curator Natalie Rudd expertly casts fresh light on the self-portrait and its international appeal, exploring the historical contexts within which self-portraits have proliferated and considering the meanings they hold today. With commentaries on works by artists ranging from Jan van Eyck and Artemisia Gentileschi to Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Jenny Saville, the book explores the emotive and expressive potential of self-portraiture, and its capacities to distance or to demystify. Can self-portraits offer windows into artistic process? Is there ever a singular identity to be captured? Is it necessary for a self-portrait to depict the human form? In her vibrant and timely discussion, Rudd dissects these and other important questions, revealing the shifting faces of individuality and selfhood in an age where we are interrogating notions of personal identity more than ever before.
With 97 illustrations in colour
Robin Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness was published in 1960 and quickly took its place as a key work of architectural and cultural critique in the nation’s canon. This new book responds to Boyd’s most well-known text with new critical and creative writing by authors from a range of disciplines. Through different styles and approaches, each author makes Boyd’s work live in the contemporary moment, exploring enduring questions about the elusive, sometimes lucky and sometimes ugly character of Australia today.
Richly illustrated with new photography by David Wadelton and drawings by Oslo Davis, After The Australian Ugliness is a provocative reflection on how Australia sees itself today, and how others see it.
Francis Bacon was one of most elusive and enigmatic creative geniuses of the twentieth century. However much his avowed aim was to simplify both himself and his art, he remained a deeply complex person. Bacon was keenly aware of this underlying contradiction, and whether talking or painting, strove consciously towards absolute clarity and simplicity, calling himself ‘simply complicated’.
Until now, this complexity has rarely come across in the large number of studies on Bacon’s life and work. Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait shows a variety of Bacon’s many facets, and questions the accepted views on an artist who was adept at defying categorization. The essays and interviews brought together here span more than half a century. Opening with an interview by the author in 1963, the year that he met Bacon, there are also essays written for exhibitions, memoirs and reflections on Bacon’s late work, some published here for the first time. Included are recorded conversations with Bacon in Paris that lasted long into the night, and an overall account of the artist’s sources and techniques in his extraordinary London studio.
This is an updated edition of Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait (2008), published for the first time in a paperback reading book format. It brings this fascinating artist into closer view, revealing the core of his talent: his skill for marrying extreme contradictions and translating them into immediately recognizable images, whose characteristic tension derives from a life lived constantly on the edge.
With 14 illustrations, 7 in colour
Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay on women artists is widely acknowledged as the first real attempt at a feminist history of art. Nochlin refused to handle the question of why there had been no ‘great women artists’ on its own, corrupted, terms. Instead, she dismantled the very concept of ‘greatness’, unravelling the basic assumptions that had centred a male-coded ‘genius’ in the study of art. With unparalleled insight and startling wit, Nochlin laid bare the acceptance of a white male viewpoint in art historical thought as not merely a moral failure, but an intellectual one. Freedom, as she sees it, requires women to risk entirely demolishing the art world’s institutions, and rebuilding them anew – in other words, to leap into the unknown.
In this stand-alone anniversary edition, Nochlin’s essay is published alongside its reappraisal, ‘Thirty Years After’. Written in an era of thriving feminist theory, as well as queer theory, race and postcolonial studies, ‘Thirty Years After’ is a striking reflection on the emergence of a whole new canon. With reference to Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman and many more, Nochlin diagnoses the state of women and art with unmatched precision and verve. ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ has become a slogan and rallying cry that resonates across culture and society; Dior even adopted it in their 2018 collections. In the 2020s, at a time when ‘certain patriarchal values are making a comeback’, Nochlin’s message could not be more urgent: as she herself put it in 2015, ‘there is still a long way to go’.
With 14 illustrations
From the Beatles to Beck, Sinatra to Sam Smith, a parade of era-defining artists have passed through the doors of the Capitol Records Tower, one of Hollywood’s most distinctive landmarks and home to one of the world’s most defining labels for the past 75+ years.
To commemorate this extraordinary history of recorded music, TASCHEN presents this official account of Capitol Records, from its founding year of 1942 to today. With a foreword by Beck, essays by cultural historians and music and architecture critics, as well as hundreds of images from Capitol’s extensive archives, we follow the label’s evolution and the making of some of the greatest music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Through pop, rock, country, classical, soul, and jazz, the photographic and musical history includes the label’s most successful, cool, hip, and creative stars, as well as the one-hit wonders who had their all-too-brief moments in the spotlight.
Along the way, we encounter the likes of Miles Davis, Nat King Cole, the Kingston Trio, and Frank Sinatra in Capitol’s first 20 years; the Beach Boys, the Band, and the Beatles in the 1960s; global rock magnets Pink Floyd, Wings, Steve Miller Band, Bob Seger, and Linda Ronstadt in the 1970s; Beastie Boys, Duran Duran, Radiohead, and Bonnie Raitt in the 1980s and 1990s; and such contemporary stars as Coldplay, Katy Perry, and Sam Smith. An unmissable milestone for music lovers, Capitol Records is a live and kicking celebration of the mighty giant of the industry that created the soundtrack to generations past, present, and future.
I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York focuses on the work of photographer Todd Webb produced in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. Webb photographed the city day and night, in all seasons and in all weather. Buildings, signage, vehicles, the passing throngs, isolated figures, curious eccentrics, odd corners, windows, doorways, alleyways, squares, avenues, storefronts, uptown and downtown, from the Brooklyn Bridge to Harlem. He created a richly textured portrait of the everyday life and architecture of New York. Webb’s work is clear, direct, focused, layered with light and shadow, and captures the soul of these places shaped by the friction and frisson of humanity.
A native of Detroit, Webb studied photography in the 1930s under the guidance of Ansel Adams at the Detroit Camera Club, served as a navy photographer during World War II, and then went on to become a successful postwar photographer. His work is in many museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
With 167 illustrations
Great paintings cannot be fully understood in a single encounter; there is always more to be derived from them. Art lovers may revisit and reconsider the masterpieces throughout their lives, but a deeper understanding can only be gained by analysing the painting in detail, be it the placement of the subject, the lighting, the style of brushstrokes or the themes.
Art in Detail examines 100 iconic paintings from the Western canon and spotlights the finer points a quick glance will almost certainly fail to reveal. These include subtle internal details, such as hidden symbols and artistic tricks employed by the painter to achieve particular effects. In addition, Susie Hodge writes intelligently about external influences on the artist – everything from the socioeconomic context in which he or she flourished, to smaller local difficulties, such as the level of air pollution at the time the painting was created. And she treats each of her subjects not only, to quote Matthew Arnold, ‘as in itself it really is’, but also as part of a tradition that links the oldest painting to the most recent, as artists pass a metaphorical baton down through the ages.
With 700 illustrations
The African diaspora – a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade and Western colonialism – has generated a wide array of artistic achievements, from blues and reggae, to the paintings of the pioneering African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and video creations of contemporary hip-hop artists. This book concentrates on how these works, often created during times of major social upheaval and transformation, use black culture both as a subject and as context. From musings on “the souls of black folk” in late nineteenth-century art, to questions of racial and cultural identities in performance, media, and computer-assisted arts in the twenty-first century, this book examines the philosophical and social forces that have shaped a black presence in modern and contemporary visual culture.
Now updated, this new edition helps us understand better how the first two decades of the twenty-first century have been a transformative moment in which previous assumptions about race, difference, and identity have been irrevocably altered, with art providing a useful lens through which to think about these compelling issues.
With 218 illustrations in colour
These 450+ questions will test even the biggest Bowie fanatics’ knowledge of Aladdin Sane, Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke.
In what film did he play Andy Warhol? How did he meet Iman? Which of Iggy Pop’s albums did he help write while they lived in Berlin?
This interactive trivia book is the ultimate chance to flex your knowledge of our Starman, David Bowie, covering his music, his movies, his personas, family and friends. This book will separate the Heroes from the Super Creeps.
Joel Beath and Elizabeth Price explore this question drawing inspiration from a diverse collection of apartment designs, all smaller than 50m2/540ft2. Through the lens of five small-footprint design principles and drawing on architectural images and detailed floor plans, the authors examine how architects and designers are reimagining small space living.
Full of inspiration we can each apply to our own spaces, this is a book that offers hope and inspiration for a future of our cities and their citizens in which sustainability and style, comfort and affordability can co-exist. Never Too Small proves living better doesn’t have to mean living larger.
This timely book, in the form of an encyclopedia, considers the totality of issues surrounding the Anthropocene, that geologic era characterized by humanity’s vast impact on the Earth.
Connectedness acknowledges the incomplete nature of its project seeing as how this riotous era is not yet finished. With contributions by Greta Thunberg, Bill McKibben, Alice Waters, Tomás Saraceno, Björk and many others, this publication consists of approximately 100 entries, arranged alphabetically, each reflecting on questions, phenomena, terms, possibilities and theories associated with the Anthropocene. Examples of entries include Air, Borders and Coexistence, as well as more complex subjects such as Donna Haraway on the Chthulucene or Anders Blok on Climate Risk Communities. The content ranges from scientific to cultural-theoretical and artistic contributions featuring a wide span of scholars, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, authors, artists and others. The book accompanies the exhibition at the Danish Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Architectural Biennale.
Work allows us to pay the bills. The practical and conceptual divide between work and leisure profoundly shapes our lives. Work is where many of us derive our status and our sense of purpose. Work is so much part of our lives and our culture that we have internalized beliefs about its value and have built our economies and lives around those beliefs. This book reviews how the meaning, status and structure of work have changed across history and cultures. Amidst the Covid-19 crisis, the growth of AI and the climate emergency, it questions the need for the ‘growth escalator’, in which society relies on continuous growth to flourish, and suggests that we should find ways to step off or at least slow down the ‘hedonic treadmill’, in which we crave ever more goods only to tire of them ever more quickly.
This book posits that we are approaching a new era of work. It outlines some of the factors that might lead to change, including the adoption of forms of universal basic income, the growth of the zero- or low-cost economy (renewable energy, user-generated content, community mutual support), and the growth of self-employment and quasi-autonomous ways of working (including from home) in organizations. It concludes that such changes might foster a more fundamental shift: a growing intolerance to the idea of work as a burden and a desire to transform it from something imposed on us into simply the means by which we live our best lives together, recreating in modern conditions with modern resources, a prehistoric unity between being and working.
With 190 illustrations in colour
Have you noticed something about every “100 Greatest Movies Ever Made,” or “100 Films to See Before You Die” list? The people in those movies … they’re almost all men. With so much incredible cinema to choose from, there’s only so many movies you can watch about bunch of white guys struggling with their daddy issues, right?
It’s time to push past the male gatekeepers of what makes a movie “great” or “culturally significant” and get a broader view of what’s out there. This curated selection of great films spans eras and genres, from the overlooked female trail-blazers of the silent era and the iconic triple-threat performers of classic Hollywood, to the gun-toting rebels of the ’80s and ’90s and the funny women absolutely dominating comedy in the new millennium. The Feminist Film Guide offers a fresh take on what defines great cinema and lends a voice to the female creators and characters who’ve defined the artform.
Virtually unparalleled in scope and spanning more than five decades, the photography of visionary Helmut Newton (1920-2004) reached millions through publication in magazines like Vogue and Elle. His oeuvre transcended genres, bringing elegance, style, and voyeurism to fashion, portrait, and glamour photography through a body of work that remains as inimitable as it is unrivaled. Having mastered the art of fashion photography early in his career, Newton’s shoots invariably went beyond standard practice, blurring the lines between reality and illusion. Newton’s clear aesthetic pervades all areas of his work, particularly fashion, portraiture, and nude photography. Women take center stage – with subjects such as Catherine Deneuve, Liz Taylor, and Charlotte Rampling. Moving beyond traditional narrative approaches, Newton’s fashion photography is imbued not only with luxurious elegance and subtle seduction, but also cultural references and a surprising sense of humor.
During the 1990s, Newton shot for the German, American, Italian, French, and Russian editions of Vogue, primarily in and around Monte Carlo where he was living from 1981 onwards. Transforming locations like his own garage into starkly contrasting or particularly minimalist theatrical stages, Newton would often portray the eccentric lives of the beautiful and rich, full of eroticism and elegance, in unconventional scenarios. He made use of and simultaneously questioned visual clichés, at times tinged with self-irony or mockery, but always full of empathy.
Helmut Newton. Legacy showcases highlights from one of the most published bodies of work in photography, including numerous rediscovered images. A prolific image maker and genuine visionary, this book celebrates Newton’s lasting influence on modern photography and visual art to this day.
