The self as a subject is one of the most fascinating and fruitful of artistic enterprises. From the 15th century to today, this collection brings together some of the best examples of self-portraiture to explore the genre's evolution over the centuries as well as the enduring questions of selfhood and self-representation that have besieged human experience for centuries before social media and the selfie. Is a self-portrait of an artist a medium of reflection? Or is it merely a black void, the "false mirror", as the Surrealist René Magritte entitled his 1928 painting of an eye? How much does it impart ... |
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Multilingual Edition. ... The idea of climbing a tree for shelter, or just to see the earth from another perspective, is as old as humanity. In this neat "Taschen" edition, take a tour of some of our finest arboreal adventures with 50 of the most beautiful, inventive, and enchanting tree houses around the world. From romantic to contemporary, from famed architects to little-known craftsmen, you'll scale the heights to visit all manner of treetop structures, from a teahouse, restaurant, hotel, and children's playhouse to simple perches from which to contemplate life, enjoy the view, and discover that ... |
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Multilingual Edition: English, French, German. Editors: Burkhard Riemschneider, Henk Schiffmacher. ... Whether you’re thinking of getting a tattoo or just want to see to what lengths others have gone in decorating their bodies, this is the book to check out. "1000 Tattoos" explores the history of the art worldwide via designs and photos - from 19th century engravings to tribal body art, from circus ladies of the ’20s to classic biker designs. For years, Henk Schiffmacher has been recognised as one of the stars of the tattoo scene. His Amsterdam studio attracts countless tattoo pilgrims, and he also runs the ... |
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A new edition of the classic and timely record of refugees and migrants on the move. ... It has been almost a generation since Sebastiao Salgado first published Exodus but the story it tells, of fraught human movement around the globe, has changed little in 16 years. The push and pull factors may shift, the nexus of conflict relocates from Rwanda to Syria, but the people who leave their homes tell the same tale: deprivation, hardship, and glimmers of hope, plotted along a journey of great psychological, as well as physical, toil. Salgado spent six years with migrant peoples, visiting more than 35 countries to document ... |
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Most commonly associated with the birth of the Impressionist movement in mid-19th-century Paris, Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) in fact defied easy categorization and instead developed a unique style, strongly influenced by Old Masters, the body in motion, and everyday urban life. The elder scion of a wealthy family, Degas cofounded a series of exhibitions of "Impressionist" art, but soon disassociated himself from the group in pursuit of a more realist approach. His subjects centered on the teeming, noisy streets of Paris, as well as its leisure entertainments, such as horse racing, cabarets, and, most particularly, ... |
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Emerging amid the brutality of World War I, the revolutionary Dada movement took disgust with the establishment as its starting point. From 1916 until the mid-1920s, artists in Zurich, Cologne, Hanover, Paris, and New York launched a radical assault on the politics, social values, and cultural conformity which they regarded as complicit in the devastating conflict. Dada artists shared no distinct style but rather a common wish to upturn societal structures as much as artistic standards and to replace logic and reason with the absurd, chaotic, and unpredictable. Their practice encompassed experimental theater, games, ... |
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Museum Ludwig Cologne. ... The history of photography began nearly 200 years ago, but only relatively recently has it been fully recognized as a medium in its own right. Cologne’s Museum Ludwig was the first museum of contemporary art to devote a substantial section to international photography. The L. Fritz Gruber collection, from which this book is drawn, is one of the most important in Germany and one of the most representative anywhere in the world, constituting the core of the museum’s holdings. This book provides a fascinating insight into the collection's rich diversity; from conceptual art to abstraction to ... |
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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 - 1610) was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of the Italian Baroque, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial, violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. Though famed for his dramatic use of color, light, and shadow, it was above all Caravaggio's boundary-breaking naturalism which scorched his name into the annals of art history. From the dirtied soles of feet to the sexualized languor of bare flesh, the artist allowed even sacred and biblical scenes to unfold with a startling, often visceral humanity. This ... |
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The unfading popularity of Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) attests not only to the particular appeal of his luxuriant painting but also to the universal themes with which he worked: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death. The son of a goldsmith, Klimt created surfaces of ornate and jewel-like luminosity which show influence of both Egyptian and Japanese art. Through paintings, murals, and friezes, his work is defined by radiant color, fluid lines, floral elements, and mosaic-like patterning. With a number of subjects dealing with sensuality and desire as well as anxiety and despair, all this iridescence is also suffused ... |
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Peaking in the 1960s, Pop Art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, the role of the artist, and of what constituted an artwork. Focusing on issues of materialism, celebrity, and media, Pop Art drew on mass-market sources, from advertising imagery to comic books, from Hollywood's most famous faces to the packaging of consumer products, the latter epitomized by Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans. As well as challenging the establishment with the elevation of such popular, banal, and kitschy images, Pop ... |
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"In Genesis, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen." Sebastiao Salgado On a very fortuitous day in 1970, 26-year-old Sebastiao Salgado held a camera for the first time. When he looked through the viewfinder, he experienced a revelation: suddenly life made sense. From that day onward - though it took years of hard work before he had the experience to earn his living as a photographer - the camera became his tool for interacting with the world. Salgado, who "always preferred the chiaroscuro palette of black-and-white images," shot very little color in his early ... |
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Though numbering just 35 known works, the œuvre of Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675) is hailed as one of the most important and inspiring portfolios in art history. His paintings have prompted a New York Times bestseller, a film starring Scarlett Johansson, and record visitor numbers at art institutions from Amsterdam to Washington. Vermeer's subjects focus on daily domestic activities, from letter writing to music playing to preparations in the kitchen. The scenes astound with their meticulous detail, majestic planes of light, and with Vermeer’s extraordinary ability to draw out narrative intrigues. In such ... |
