Book Description

Leonardo da Vinci's multi-faceted genius is brought to life in this richly illustrated account of his entire career. Leonardo da Vinci comes immediately to mind with any mention of the term "Renaissance Man." He is one of the great geniuses of Western civilization, achieving remarkable successes as a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scholar of many sciences, civil and military engineer, and designer of machines that anticipated inventions hundreds of years in the future. Celebrate the genius of Leonardo with this beautifully illustrated account of his life, detailing the many accomplishments of one of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Deep
This work simply goes way beyond any other review of Leonardo I have read. Based on a analytical disection of Leonardo's efforts not only of art yet his reasoning to create his masterpieces.The book borders on passing into a new dimension the one Leonardo attempted to enter. " OH wretched mortals open your eyes" (L) This work is capable of comparing the Art, the Expression, the Daily or instant feelings relative to the change, as the Human evolved during this period. Comparing God, Man, Nature, and Beast as they changed the World we live in. ... Read more

Book Description

Paul Klee, best known for his mastery of color and semi-abstract patchwork paintings of squares, completed more than 10,000 paintings, drawings, and etchings during his life. His work is difficult to classify but widely admired and highly sought after. Carl Djerassi, scientist, novelist, philanthropist, most famous for inventing the birth control pill, was a great fan of Klee and amassed one of the most important private collections of his work in the world.

This catalog reproduces highlights from the collection, now owned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, including full-color images of nearly one hundred rarely published works. These drawings, sketches, gouache and watercolors reflect the whole of Klee’s short but prolific career and are among his most beautiful and important works. The text includes background and critical commentary from noted Klee experts. In addition, an interview with Djerassi reveals his artistic endeavors and passion for Klee, a creative genius whose energy, versatility, productivity, and vision speak volumes to the scientist and anyone interested in the inventive power of the imagination. ... Read more

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An insight into Frida's world
The life of Frida Kahlo, one of the world's greatest women artists, is excellently portrayed in this book. Rauda Jamis manages to give us a unique insight of the pain, anguish and passion that fill the world of Frida. From her birth to her death, the book captures us and invites us to travel with Frida, as we identify ourselves more and more as we read, with this fascinating woman. ... Read more

Book Description

This study examines why writing and drawing were so important to Leonardo da Vinci, who, over the course of his lifetime, filled about 15,000 pages with texts and images.Focusing on the fragmentary and chaotic character of his notes, Robert Zwijnenberg investigates important cultural developments, such as the renewed interest in classical rhetoric which occurred during the Italian Renaissance, as well as the work of scholars and artists who influenced Leonardo, including Cusanus, Alberti, Taccola, and Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Zwijnenberg's study also sheds new light on linear perspective and anatomy, the artist's most favoured fields of study. Through this synthetic approach, Zwijnenberg demonstrates that Leonardo's obsessive writing and drawing enabled the artist to capture the infinite complexity of the world; and that the physical acts of writing and drawing played an independent role in the intellectual process of making sense of the world around him. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Her brother Augustus is better known today, but in the early decades of the 20th century Gwen John (1876-1939) was equally, if not more, respected as a painter (and not just as model and muse to her lover Rodin). Particularly in Paris, where she made her home, and in New York, where she was represented by pioneering art dealer John Quinn, she was acclaimed for the sureness of her technique and the haunting psychological penetration with which she captured the inner lives of her subjects. Drawing on her letters and journals, novelist and poet Sue Roe is able to chronicle the evolution of John's artistic, emotional, and spiritual strivings in fascinating detail. Rodin encouraged her work, but Roe perceptively notes that John's passionate desire to submit to the sculptor warred with her "profound sense of independence [and] need to access and control her own muse." She was sustained by a series of intimate friendships with other women (including her brother's wife and mistress), as well as a burgeoning Catholic faith. Far from being the eccentric recluse of posthumous legend, John exhibited and sold her work regularly and had an active social life. The stillness and harmony of her work, Roe convincingly argues, were the product of enormous self-discipline and restraint imposed on a turbulent psyche. This sensitive, sympathetic biography arouses our admiration and awe for a woman who "lived uniquely, with dedication and daring." --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A Painter of Interiors
Gwen John (1876-1939),the Welsh painter,is the sister of the more reknown Augustus John but with a style of art distinctly her own. Gwen John is a painter of interiors and reticience, who allows the subject's state of being, both physical and spiritual, to dominate the canvas. As her teacher Whistler knew and praised John's use of use of colour and especially tone became her trademark.
Ms. Roe has done an admirable job of combining the hidden life of this artist and the world of art in Paris from 1900-1939 in which she moved freely and with great competence. Ms. Roe has gone a long way in shattering the "Gwen John myth" of solitude and isolation and demonstrates that Ms. John continued to have and make friends and maintain her family ties until her death in 1939.
Ms. Roe writes of John's early days in Paris a a model and lover of Rodin. Her later associations with Rilke,the American collector and her patron John Quinn and his companion poet Jeanne Robert Foster,as she lived in Paris during the heady days of the great new developments in modern art. In the 1930s John retired to a Parisian suburb with her cats and her wild garden but continued her work. Even in her 50s she considered herself a student and studied under Lothe. She was reknown for her perfectionism and her inability to meet arbitrary deadlines because her own sense of what a painting should be, did not always meet the expectations of dealers and exhibitors. Her work was not commercial it was personal almost religious.
Gwen John is far less known than her contemporaries Chagall, Picasso, Roualt yet she knew she had a place in art and so pursued her vision fearlessly. She had little reknown in her own lifetime but time has proven her vision and her reputation in art is now secure.
I once met the art critic Sister Wendy Beckett at the Tate Museum, and she asked me whose works I had come to see. I told her Gwen John and Sister Wendy replied "Don't you just love her?." Gwen John,unique,ruthless,gentle,complex,gifted,restless and Celtic, Sue Roe shows us why those who admire Gwen John "just love her" and invites those who do not know her to do so. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

For every one who needs to think
People who don't appreciate the work of Barbara Kruger are blinded by their own bigotry, ignorance and fear to examine themself. All of her work is essential and should not be ignored by a single person. This is a great introduction to Barbara.

A NECESSARY BOOK FOR YOUR COLLECTION
"LOVE FOR SALE" THE WORDS AND PICTURES OF BARBARA KRUGER, is a ~must~ for anyone concerned with modern art, these days! Barbara constantly ~hits~ us, in full ~frontal-attack~ with her words! I was very fortunate to study under her, while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and, MORE fortunate, today to own a couple of her original signed prints. Even my dinner guests, dining here in my home, here in Florence Italy, are left ~stunned~ and with an open-mouth, while studying her prints. BUY-THIS-BOOK-NOW...YOU WONT BE DISSAPOINTED!

Buy Me, I'll Change Your Life
Barbara Kruger's art, often pairing appropriated black & white photos with blocks of bold-faced type, has appeared on billboards, bus placards, posters, t-shirts and even shopping bags. She's big on circulating her stuff outside of conventional venues such as galleries and exhibits. This book showcases her brilliant work with plenty of full-page plates as well as photos of her installations and projects. There's a brief introduction covering her early design work for "Mademoiselle" magazine in the '60s and for various book covers in the '70s, up through her progression into the art world by the '80s. The pages of text are accompanied by assorted quotes from a variety of individuals (Edgar Allen Poe, Mae West, Sandra Bernhard). The influence of Kruger's stuff continues to turn up. Her work has been lifted for music videos (Motley Crue, Rage Against The Machine) and album covers (Snog, Consolidated), and her style is commonly imitated by lazy advertisers. This collection is an impressive and inspiring look at her career and her contribution to the world of art and design.

Barbara Kruger rocks!
I thoroughly enjoyed Love for Sale: the Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger. It was very interesting to see the wide variety of topics that she covers in her art. Some of the statements she makes can sometimes be difficult to admit or to bring up, but she boldly states the truth of the matter. I highly reccommend this book to art students, as I am, because I think it teaches us a lesson on being brave in stating our message and opinions. Barbara Kruger is my hero, and after looking at this book, she'll be yours, too.

Love for Sale is a must for fearless readers and veiwers.

If you're not afraid to explore the darker areas of self (especially if you're a male) Kruger's work probes deep into the psyche of late 20th century patriarchal consumerism and the values of the dominant culture.

Whether you love photography or love critical theory, Kruger will delight you and disturb your idea of self as you are dazzled by starkly arranged works that appear to read you instead of you reading them. ... Read more

Book Description

"Places give me the energy for ideas.... I get my energy from being out on the road."—Richard Long

This new volume about and by the British sculptor and land art pioneer Richard Long is centered mainly on his work from the last dozen years, though it also contains some earlier pieces. Long's ability to turn any given space, indoors or out, into a work of art is unrivaled, and this new journey takes the reader around the world: to the Sahara Desert and down the Rio Grande; from coast to coast in France and Spain; to Bolivia and Peru; and to the peaks of Honshu in Japan.

Some of the sculptor's oeuvre is created during his walks through the world's landscapes, while other works bring the materials of nature—stones, boulders, branches, twigs, and mud—into a more domestic or sheltered environment: museums, galleries, houses, gardens. These sculptures feed the senses, whereas the artist's walks feed the imagination.

Majestic museum sculptures made from tons of rock are juxtaposed with dramatic mud paintings and with photographs recording ephemeral changes to the natural landscape. Many of the photographs were taken by the artist himself, and he has also included his own notes and writings.

If walking has become Long's trademark, the path is perhaps the central image or archetype in his work. To walk a line is the easiest thing a human being can do to put a mark on a place. The idea of the path or way has meaning in all cultures—from the most material to the most spiritual. It is both real and symbolic, whether it be the Christian's pilgrimage, the Taoist's Great Way, or the Zen Buddhist's Heavenly Way. 248 illustrations, 150 in color. ... Read more

Book Description

Whiz! Bang! Pop! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein has rendered everything from a comic-book cell and a warplane to a country landscape and a turkey in his trademark style drawn from printed advertisements and cartoons. A master mixer of popular culture and high art, Lichtenstein's painterly use of Benday dots and heavy outlines turned oil paintings into something they had never before come close to. This catalogue chronicles the evolution of his brushstroke and painterly style from the late 50s through the 90s, complete with photographs of the artist at work, and reproductions of paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Critic and scholar Dave Hickey's highly original and compelling personal essay challenges the way we traditionally think about Lichtenstein's art.
Essay by Dave Hickey.

11.5 x 10.25 in.
60 color illustrations ... Read more

Amazon.com

Vasily Kandinsky was one of the most pivotal figures in the development of modernist painting. He was born in the mid 19th-century, and by the time of his death in 1944 he had played a key role in revolutionizing the nature of European painting, and laying the groundwork for future movements. Most significant among his contributions to high modernism are his involvements with the Blue Rider group, Russian constructivism, and the later years of the Bauhaus. By the end of 1910 Kandinsky had developed a purely abstract style--arguably one of the first--in his paintings, particularly the watercolors.

This beautiful book, designed to accompany the first full-scale exhibition of Kandinsky's work in London at the Royal Academy of Arts, traces his development from an unremarkable painter of Russian folk scenes to the geometrically precise and clinical draftsman of the later abstract creations. His image-making culminated during his final years with paintings of strangely micro-organic-looking works. Art historian Frank Whitford's introductory essay charts Kandinsky's career with wonderful lucidity, and is particularly good on the tension between the artist's theory and practice. He is less clear on the significance of the works on paper and outlining Kandinsky's legacy; but perhaps the book will provide the possibilities for just such a reassessment of the painter's standing within the history of modern art.--Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk

168 color illustrations ... Read more

Reviews (1)

best painter
it is a very good book. i enjoyed it expecially because I LOVE Kandinsky. It is worth it ... Read more

Book Description

The man who enshrined a hoover vacuume and a basketball, who created a life-sized polychromed wood replica of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp Bubbles, who transfered his sex life with Italian porn star wife Ilona Staller onto canvas, and who made a monumental topiary sculpture in the shape of a puppy, is back. After a seven-year hiatus from the public eye, bad boy Jeff Koons returns in this comprehensive and overdue survey of his work of the past five years. Three elaborate, highly-produced series are presented, including the joyously effusive "Celebration," an ambitious body of 16 photo-realist paintings and 20 stainless steel sculptures that draw upon the symbols and objects associated with the observance of life's festive rituals.
Essays by Eckard Schneider and Alison Gingeras.

9.5 x 11 in.
40 color illustrations
English/German ... Read more

Reviews (2)

try to make something good for once.
most of koons work is just duchamps idea repeated in several different forms.

pornography and Art - can they live together???
Pornography - Erotic Art is only few of his works! but takes big place in every reader mind!! (and please don't tell me u buy Playboy for the articles...) Jeff Koons decided to expose himself and his intimic life. He is no longer takes his wife and show HER nudity! but expose himself as well! he makes us think about the thin line between Pornography and Art! and he defenatly do it in a wondergul gentle way! Have fun and don't feel guilty forenjoying the regular Art inside the book! ... Read more