From Maira Kalman, the author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and The Elements of Style, comes this beautiful pictorial and narrative exploration of the significance of objects in our lives, drawn from her personal artifacts, recollections, and selections from the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.With more than fifty original paintings and featuring bestselling author …
The Art Museum is the finest art collection ever assembled between two covers. This revolutionary and unprecedented virtual art museum in a book, features 1,000 oversized pages of over 2,500 works of art. It is the most comprehensive and visually spectacular history of world art ever published. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with …
Alan Lee, the Oscar-winning conceptual designer for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, discusses his approach to depicting Tolkien’s imaginary world. The book presents more than 150 of Lee’s celebrated illustrations to show how his imagery for both the illustrated Lord of the Rings and the films progressed from concept to finished art. In addition, the book …
Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives …
The act of drawing has long been considered the foundation of an artistic education, and the life class essential to the formation of an artist’s style and technique. Yet in the contemporary art world drawing is increasingly regarded as a medium in its own right, and the figure as a subject for ongoing exploration well beyond the sketchbook. …
John Singer Sargent’s approach to watercolor was unconventional. Going beyond turn-of-the-century standards for carefully delineated and composed landscapes filled with transparent washes, his confidently bold, dense strokes and loosely defined forms startled critics and fellow practitioners alike. One reviewer of an exhibition in London proclaimed him “an eagle in a dove-cote”; another called his work “swagger” watercolors. For …
This book takes a look at Chinese art within a variety of contexts—archeological, cultural, historical, social, and ritual/religious. Organized both chronologically and thematically, it covers a full historical span and includes a wide range of media settings for art—from elite to popular. An emphasis on the dynamic processes that effect the history of Chinese art: social, …
An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value, a …
The painter’s painter: Light, color and penetrating portraits from Spain’s Golden Age luminary Manet called him “the greatest painter of all.” Picasso was so inspired by his masterpiece Las Meninas that he painted 44 variations of it. Francis Bacon painted a study of his portrait of Pope Innocent X. Monet and …
A visual odyssey that will change the way we see our planet, this remarkable book, companion to the acclaimed Discovery Channel/ BBC series, is an enduring and awe-inspiring record of one of the most ambitious natural history projects ever undertaken. Using the latest aerial surveillance, state-of-the-art cameras, and high definition technology, the creators of Planet Earth have assembled …