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Phaidon Press
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The Cyberspace Lexicon
Автор: Cotton Bob Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 224 Дата загрузки: 11 октрября 20132013-02-29
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A unique reference book for all those using electronic media, The Cyberspace Lexicon provides a much-needed guide through the maze of existing and emerging technologies. From interactive video and multimedia, through to hypermedia, arcade games, high-band networks and virtual reality, this book explains all the essential concepts and technical terms. Techniques and technologies are defined, key concepts are explained, and 'buzzwords' are clarified. In-depth illustrated features covering major issues complement clear, concise entries designed for quick reference. With numerous colour photographs showing the latest programs and applications, this is an invaluable sourcebook for any media professional or student.
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Constable
Автор: Sunderland John Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 1992 Страниц: 128 Дата загрузки: 19 февраля 20091993-12-20
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This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology.
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Peter Doig
Автор: Searle Adrain Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 160 Дата загрузки: 26 февраля 20122012-05-06
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Whether painting a mysterious bearded figure floating on a flat wash of blue or a winter landscape glimpsed through a thick web of branches, Peter Doig harnesses the materiality of his medium to create what he calls 'abstractions of memories', distilling recollected sensations into moments of pure sentience, like scenes in a series of mysterious narratives. In «Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre» (2000-2) two costumed figures stand guard at a low stone wall while behind them a reservoir reflects a twinkling starry sky. The young man bundled up against the cold in «Blotter» (1993) contemplates his reflection in a frozen pond, while in «Red Boat (Imaginary Boys)» (2004) six men in white shirts navigate upstream through a dense tropical landscape. Doig's work has been exhibited at the world's top museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and has been selected for contemporary art's most important international exhibitions, such as the SITE Santa Fe Biennial (2006), the Tate Triennial (2003 and 2006) and the Venice Biennale (2003). Although his work has had an enormous impact on contemporary painting, paving the way for a whole generation of idiosyncratic figurative painters, his painted worlds are without parallel. Raised in Canada, based in London for two decades and now living in Trinidad, Doig has tallied a wide range of references, not only geographic (from French modernist architecture to the ski slopes of Quebec) but also artistic (from Ernst Kirchner to Philip Guston) and musical (from punk to calypso). Sometimes these references lurk in plain sight — «Figure in Mountain Landscape» (1997-8) is based on a photograph of Group of Seven painter Franklin Carmichael — but most often they lie deep below the churning surface of the canvas. In the Interview Kitty Scott asks the artist about his shifting sense of place and the way it continues to shape his work. In the Survey Adrian Searle considers how the paradoxical union of highly charged technique and muted subject matter lend the artist's paintings their unique 'emotional weather'. Catherine Grenier's Focus centres on the painting 100 Years Ago, examining its movement along axes of time and place, both historical and imaginary. In the Artist's Choice, Hannes Schneider & Arnold Fanck's text on skiing recalls the artist's longtime fascination with the sport while evoking the grace and physicality of his painting. Artist's Writings include a 2001 interview featuring questions from a range of artists, curators and critics; an appreciation of the work of Pierre Bonnard; and the artist's ten favourite 'house painters'.
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Graphic Agitation
Автор: McQuiston Liz Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 240 Дата загрузки: 23 февраля 20122011-12-20
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Graphic art is a powerful weapon of protest and propaganda, shock and subversion. From the revolutionary Sixties to the present, Graphic Agitation explores the many ways in which graphic art and design have addressed social and political issues around the globe. Covering a broad range of subject areas including war, peace, ecology, health and sexual politics, the book features the work of some of the design world's best-known personalities as well as the graphics of anonymous protest. In addition to its striking visual impact, this unique collection of images presents a memorable reflection of the social concerns and political struggles of our age.
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Cubism
Автор: Cooper Philip Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 128 Дата загрузки: 21 августа 20122011-06-21
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Cubism originated in Paris between 1906 and 1908 with the revolutionary experiments of Picasso and Braque. It was a movement which spread very rapidly throughout Europe and the world and which extended from painting into other fields of artistic expression such as sculpture and design. In questioning the imperative to be representational and in emphasising an autonomous vision of the world, Cubism was a radical innovation which continued to affect artistic movements well into the century. Philip Cooper examines the wider contemporary cultural background of the artists (and writers) who contributed to Cubism. He gives an account of the emergence and development of this movement and explores its various aspects and phases such as analytical Cubism and synthetic Cubism. There is a full discussion of the Cubists' pioneering approach and use of materials, including the invention of papier colle and collage.
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Ai Weiwei
Автор: Smith Karen Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 160 Дата загрузки: 26 февраля 20122012-05-06
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Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is truly an artist for the twenty-first century. In his sculptures, he refashions artefacts and antiques into surprising, sometimes monumental constructions such as «Template» (2007): hundreds of wooden doors and windows taken from demolished Ming and Qing dynasty temples and arranged into a massive outdoor sculpture.As much as these materials look to the past, they also speak of the present, because never before (and probably never again) have they been available in such abundance. Like his benches carved from centuries-old temple beams, «Template» is a sly commentary on the speed with which China's building boom is obliterating its past. (When Template collapsed in a rainstorm two weeks after its unveiling at Documenta 12, the artist embraced its demise as a clever artistic twist).In China today, making art that's critical of current cultural and economic policies is not a particularly safe career move. But Ai's father, the poet Ai Qing, walked a similar path, absorbing European avant-garde styles while studying in 1930s Paris and later standing by them in the face of Communist opposition, a move that eventually led to his exile to the distant provincial town where his son Weiwei came to be born and raised. In the late 1970s, Ai Weiwei moved to Beijing, banding together with other pro-democracy artists in a loose collective known as the Stars Group.In 1981, following government retaliation against one of their exhibitions, Ai moved to New York, where he attended art school and lived the life of the bohemian for twelve years, his East Village apartment serving as a base for countless visiting Chinese artists. When his father became ill in 1993, Ai returned to China, settling in Beijing and finally taking up his art career in earnest. Weiwei's artistic forebears belong primarily to the Western modernist avant-garde (Duchamp and Beuys are particularly relevant).But Ai has equally and increasingly been influenced by modernist architecture and contemporary urban planning, citing the need for an ideal for living in a country where runaway economic development has shown little regard for the everyday life of the individual. In stark contrast to the glass-and-steel high-rises going up around Beijing, the art galleries, ateliers and homes, Ai designs are boxy and modest, made from brick and other vernacular materials. Their resolution of Eastern and Western styles is a fitting parallel to his antique readymade sculptures. What truly marks out Ai as a twenty-first century artist is the multiplicity of his roles: not just artist, designer and architect but also curator, publisher, web blogger and compass for an entire generation of Beijing artists.He has been described more than once as the Chinese Warhol, overseeing a factory-like studio (Fake) with dozens of assistants engaged in countless projects in a range of disciplines. And indeed his outsize public persona is an inseparable part of his art. It should come as no surprise that when Herzog & de Meuron came to Beijing to conceive of a new stadium for the 2008 Olympics, Ai was the one who provided them with a design concept: an interlaced form based on the woven baskets his wife collects at local antique markets.At a time when the West is finally discovering Chinese contemporary art, Ai is one of the few to have transcended the label 'Chinese artist'. In part thanks to his gallery Urs Meile (Lucerne and Beijing), Ai has won the support of strong European collectors. His work is increasingly being shown at major venues around the world (Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthaus Graz, Tate Liverpool) and included in major international exhibitions (the Moscow Biennial, the Guangzhou Triennale, Documenta). A complex, multi-faceted artist, Ai is poised to make a deep impact on contemporary art far beyond China's borders. Ai Weiwei is represented by Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne and Beijing.
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Art Nouveau
Автор: Escritt Stephen Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 448 Дата загрузки: 22 сентября 20152013-02-26
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Art Nouveau conjures up images of nymph-like female figures and sinuous organic tendrils, as well as radical geometric simplicity. In its brief life span, which broached the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the style spread across the world in myriad incarnations. this comprehensive book places Art Nouveau in the context of its time and explores architecture, interior design, furniture, sculpture, painting, graphic arts and jewellery.
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Luc Tuymans
Автор: Loock Ulrich Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 260 Дата загрузки: 13 октрября 20132014-03-16
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Tuymans' monochromatic palette and choice of subject matter — domestic interiors, commonplace objects or family portraits — link painting with post-war filmmaking and amateur photography. The sources of other images on his canvases give his work a brooding violence. Although modest in scale and sensitive in execution, this work is powerful in its haunting evocation of lost lives and repressed histories. In general Tuymans' works are painted in groups for each show and with the venue and the exhibition space in mind. For example, when he represented his country in the Belgian Pavilion at the 2001 Venice Biennial, Tuymans produced a cycle of works based on the murder of the first post-independence Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Other works in the cycle show images of African sculpture copies from a statue in a Belgian restaurant and images from the Belgian Royal Museum's African collection. These works raised issues about colonialism and post-colonialism, but also came at a time when a parliamentary commission was investigating the links between the Belgian government and royal family's policies and the death of Lumumba.
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Nureyev
Автор: Brown Howard Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2008 Страниц: 177 Дата загрузки: 13 декабря 20102010-10-27
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Available again in paperback to mark the 70th anniversary of Nureyev's birth and the 15th of his death, this is a unique visual tribute to the greatest dancer of his time. Includes photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson and David Bailey.
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Albert Moore
Автор: Asleson Robyn Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 240 Дата загрузки: 23 февраля 20122011-12-20
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Albert Moore (1841-93) was one of the most important late Victorian artists. In a single-minded quest for aesthetic perfection, he employed the female figure to embody abstract systems of ideal beauty, and created many of the iconic and defining images of the Aesthetic Movement. Yet he has remained a shadowy figure. Based on original research and unpublished family documents, Robyn Asleson's monograph presents a fresh view of the artist's allegedly reclusive personality, and firmly establishes him as a major figure and a significant precursor of Modernism. This beautiful book is now issued in a paperback format that will bring the artist to a wide and appreciative audience. The Victorian artist Albert Moore (1841-93) pursued a lifelong quest for ideal beauty — an ambitious crusade which propelled him from the naturalism of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, through the medievalism of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, to the Classicism and Japonisme of his friends Frederic Leighton and James McNeill Whistler. Before his twenty-fifth year, Moore had outstripped the aesthetic interests of his closest colleagues and embarked on a solitary search for the timeless secrets of aesthetic perfection. In a series of exquisitely executed paintings, Moore employed the female figure to embody the abstract systems of ideal beauty that he discerned in the finest examples of art and nature. Building on the artist's meticulous watercolour studies of nature and his monumental figural decorations for architecture, these paintings chart the evolution of Moore's singular artistic creed and provide many of the defining images of the Aesthetic Movement. Fiercely protective of his independence, Moore rejected the high visibility embraced by his celebrated professional colleagues. Thus, ironically, while his paintings hung prominently at annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery, Moore himself remained a shadowy figure on the periphery of the Victorian art world. He remains an enigma today. Although his paintings are among the most celebrated icons of the Victorian era, few recognize in them the unique analysis of pure form that established Moore as the most radical exponent of English Aestheticism and one of the most progressive artists of the nineteenth century. A one-man avant-garde, Moore anticipated by several generations the abstract aesthetic concerns of twentieth-century Modernism. This full-length study of Albert Moore — the first to appear in over 100 years — seeks to restore the artist to his rightful place in art history, while also fleshing out his hitherto mysterious personality and lifestyle. Drawing on unpublished materials and on a mass of new and fully documented research, the book analyses the origins and development of Moore's aesthetic systems and traces his formative links to architectural theory and practice. New evidence concerning Moore's personal life and professional networks debunks the myth of his hermit-like existence, and sheds light on his notorious exclusion from Royal Academy membership. In particular, the author reveals that Moore's friendship with and influence upon James McNeill Whistler were closer and more important than has hitherto been assumed. The artist's studio practice and his relationship with patrons, models and students are also considered. In place of the taciturn recluse of Victorian legend, Albert Moore emerges as a passionate and audacious crusader for beauty, an artist well ahead of his time.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement
Автор: Blakesley Rosalind P. Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 272 Дата загрузки: 28 июня 20122012-10-07
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Dating from the 1850s to the First World War, the Arts and Crafts Movement was an international phenomenon of enormous scope and influence. It encompassed everything from architecture to town planning, metalwork and embroidery, in places as diverse as California and Budapest. Born of thinkers and practitioners in Victorian England its ideological currents reflect the era's most pressing social, political and artistic concerns. In this book Rosalind Blakesley explores the common ideas that give cohesion to a movement of otherwise bewildering breadth and stylistic heterogeneity. At the origins of the movement was a reaction against industrialization, the long-standing division between traditional crafts and Fine Art and the over-elaborate ornamentation which disguised an object or building's true 'function'.Early British Arts and Crafts practitioners campaigned for a revival of old craft techniques, for the elevation of the applied arts and for 'honesty' in design, ideas that were picked up and developed across Europe and the United States, with national variants quickly emerging. Germany, for example, recognized the potential of industrial techniques and experimented with standardization in design; in Finland, then annexed to Russia, Arts and Crafts was allied to the search for self-expression and a national style in art. Examining both acknowledged Arts and Crafts centres and lesser-known communities, Rosalind Blakesley concludes her authoritative and accessible survey with an evaluation of the Movement's significance in the twenty-first century.
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Portraits
Автор: McCurry Steve Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 496 Дата загрузки: 16 мая 20132012-10-30
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Magnum photographer Steve McCurry never set out to take portraits. Critically acclaimed and recognized internationally for his classic reportage, over the last 20 years he has worked for the «National Geographic» and other publications on numerous assignments: along the Afghan border, in Baghdad, Beirut and the Sahel. McCurry's coverage of the monsoon won first prize in the World Press Awards, and was part of his portfolio when he was named Magazine Photographer of the Year in 1984. In 1985, McCurry photographed an Afghan girl for the «National Geographic». The intensity of the subject's eyes and her compelling gaze made this one of contemporary photography's most celebrated and best-known portraits. McCurry is now equally famous for his other portrayals of memorable faces that he has encountered while travelling throughout the world. Compelling, unforgettable and moving, McCurry's images are unique street portraits: unstylized and unposed snapshots of people that reveal the universality of human emotion.
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Andy Warhol «Giant» Size
Автор: Bluttal Steven Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 624 Дата загрузки: 19 февраля 20122012-05-18
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Tracing Warhol's origins as the sickly child of Ruthenian immigrants in working-class Pittsburgh to his transformation into New York's dark prince of Pop and finally into the world's most successful 'business artist', «Andy Warhol «Giant» Size» provides an appropriately larger-than-life look at the celebrated artist's career. Cultural critic Dave Hickey provides a compelling essay on Warhol's geek-to-guru evolution while chapter openers by Warhol friends and insiders give special insight into the way the enigmatic artist led his life and made his art. More than 2,000 illustrations culled from rarely seen archival material, documentary photography, and artwork not only provide a full picture of the artist's life but a telling look at late twentieth-century popular culture. Warhol's little-explored early career as a successful commercial illustrator and designer, his importance as a co-creator of the Pop movement, his midcareer switch to filmmaker and manager of the Velvet Underground, his founding of Interview magazine, and his bid for the hearts and pocketbooks of the high-flying glitterati are shown throughout this stunning new volume.
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Steve Mccurry: In the Shadow of Mountains
Автор: McCurry Steve Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 152 Дата загрузки: 16 декабря 20122012-10-23
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IN THE SHADOW OF MOUNTAINS is a new collection of sublime portraits, landscapes, and street photography taken by Steve McCurry over the last 27 years. Children and shepherds, warriors and laborers are presented alongside striking views of sandstone cities, mountainous landscapes, and ancient temples. Evocative and timeless, these lyrical images capture the enduring spirit, grandeur, and beauty of the land that lies at the foot of the Hindu Kush. McCurry's photographs capture human experience and transcend boundaries of language and culture.
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The Garden Book
Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 520 Дата загрузки: 27 августа 20122013-04-24
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Each designer is represented by a full-page illustration, mostly in colour, of their most significant garden and an accompanying text that describes the image and discusses the type of garden and its role in the further development of the tradition. Each page includes cross-references to other designers working in a similar style, movement, or time period, as well as biographical information about the designer, and complete data on the garden reproduced.
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J: W. Waterhouse
Автор: Trippi Peter Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2005 Страниц: 240 Дата загрузки: 22 апреля 20092008-04-19
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John William Waterhouse is among the most popular Victorian artists, and many of his paintings, such as The Lady of Shalott, Hylas and the Nymphs and Ophelia, have become icons of femininity recognized the world over. With their compelling composition, glowing colour and Impressionist-inflected technique, these paintings are admired for their beauty, yet at the same time they have the power to transport the viewer into a romantic world of myth and legend. Waterhouse's depictions of female beauty reflect his age's complex and ambivalent attitudes towards women, in which Victorian ideals of sentiment and duty commingled with less noble undercurrents of erotic desire and misogyny. In this fresh and innovative study of the artist, Peter Trippi presents a new analysis of Waterhouse's seductresses, martyrs and nymphs, together with a lively discussion of the cultural and historical circumstances in which these images were painted. This authoritative volume utilizes new research to provide an accessible biography of the artist and to assess his place in the late Victorian art world. Themes explored include Waterhouse's passion for Italy, literature and the classical world, his participation in England's Royal Academy, his stylistic influences and studio practices, and the collectors, dealers, critics and curators who helped make him famous in his day. Like other Victorian artists, Waterhouse was neglected through much of the twentieth century, but as critical inhibitions have fallen away the revival of his fortune has been dramatic. Today he is again acknowledged as a master painter. Peter Trippi's monograph provides a timely re-evaluation that combines a close reading of Waterhouse's imagery with a candid appraisal of his unique talent.
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Igor Stravinsky
Автор: Oliver Michael Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 240 Дата загрузки: 23 февраля 20122011-12-20
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Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) is regarded as the inventor of modern music. His phenomenal achievements are comparable to those of his close friend and contemporary Pablo Picasso. This comprehensive biography traces the influences that informed his style and sets all of his major works into context, devoting particular attention to the composer s childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia. It charts his discovery by Diaghilev and traces his ensuing collaborations with choreographers, dancers, painters, designers, and writers. Above all the book concentrates on Stravinsky s creativity, describing how his musical mind worked and relating this to his complex and fascinating personality. Igor Stravinsky is part of Phaidon s successful 20th Century Composers series, which presents authoritative and engaging biographies of the great creative musicians of our time, augmented by striking visual material and essential reference information. This edition of the book features a whimsical new cover by Jean-Jacques Sempé, the world-renowned illustrator and cartoonist.
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Magnum Stories
Автор: Boot Chris Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 512 Дата загрузки: 18 июля 20112012-10-20
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This book explores the 'photo story' through 61 master classes by some of the world's greatest photographers, all members of the international photographic agency Magnum. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Elliott Erwitt and their colleagues use the photo story as a vehicle to explain their approach to taking and editing photographs. It is about the Magnum photographers, their subjects and their approaches to photography in general and to the particular form of the photo story. The book will also comprise a history of Magnum practice and photojournalism over a 70-year period. Magnum Stories is a collection of photo stories produced by the photographers of Magnum. Through the work of key Magnum photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Eugene Richards, Martin Parr, Inge Morath and Leonard Freed, this book covers a wide range of subjects including the Vietnam War, student protests in Tiananmen Square, Fidel Castro overthrows Cuban dictator in 1959, Picasso, Malcolm X, the French theatre group Theatre du Soleil, the US invasion of Grenada in the early 1980s, the New York police, Apartheid and Buddhism. The photographic genres covered include war photography, documentary, photojournalism, social realism, portraits of people and places, fashion and news. There are 61 Magnum photographers featured in the book. Each photographer is represented across 8 pages by a photo story of their choice, which is fully illustrated, and a text which is written in the photographer's own voice based on new interviews with the author. The texts are intelligent, idiosyncratic, each with their own voice and style. Accessible and engaging to read, they reveal different perceptions and approaches to photography and each photographer's unique and varied takes on the photo story and their practice — what is the photo story?, what does it mean?, how did they come across it? what key decisions are made when taking the story, etc. As well as featuring the work of individual photographers, this book functions as a history and interrogation of the form of the photo story — the key vehicle for photography in the twentieth century, from its earliest developments in the 30s, through the death of 'photojournalism', to contemporary manifestations, all of which is explored by the author in the introduction. The book explores the influences that have affected the photo story, such as key twentieth century events and the life of photographic magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and Paris Match, all of which have helped to define the genre. It provides a unique reflection on the course of photojournalism in the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, from the common purpose of the post-WWII years to the individualistic range of practices and interests that constitute documentary photography today.
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Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Автор: Barrow Rosemary J. Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 208 Дата загрузки: 17 августа 20122014-03-18
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Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), was one of the finest and most distinctive of the Victorian painters. Dutch-born, he moved to London in 1870 and became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean sea and sky. In this original study, Rosemary Barrow presents an absorbing and often amusing portrait of an exuberant personality who carved out a brilliant career for himself at the heart of London's artistic and cultural elite. But above all she subjects the paintings to a fresh scrutiny, and reveals that Alma-Tadema, a knowledgeable student of antiquity, repeatedly used literary and archaeological allusions in his paintings to play a game of interpretation with his viewers. Time and again the seeming innocence of the scenes he depicts is subverted by a mischievously placed inscription or statue, suggesting to the initiated a darker and usually risque meaning. Neglected after his death, Alma-Tadema's paintings are once again admired for their beauty and their remarkable mastery of light, colour and texture. With its intriguing insights into his personality and intentions, this book should provide a challenging reassessment of a major artist.
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10,000 Years of Art
Жанр: Phaidon Press Издательство: Phaidon Press Год: 2010 Страниц: 544 Дата загрузки: 23 декабря 20122015-08-03
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Following on from «The Art Book» (1994), «30,000 Years of Art» provides an original and accessible way of looking at art. On its publication in 2007, «The Daily Telegraph» described it as 'a bold new publishing event that promises to redefine the parameters of art history'. In this mini format edition of the book, 500 great works of art from all periods and regions in the world have been carefully selected from the original book and are again arranged in chronological order, breaking through the usual geographical and cultural boundaries of art history to celebrate the vast range of human artistry across time and space. The book presents art in a way different from other art history compendia, revealing the diversity, or in many cases similarity, of man's artistic achievements through time and around the globe. Ordered chronologically, the resulting timeline of works leads to compelling browsing: surprising juxtapositions offer intellectual pleasure and a sense of wonder and discovery. The selection of works from across the world, arranged in the sequence in which they were made, takes the reader on a global and historical journey, responding to such questions as 'where does the earliest art appear?' What were artists creating in China or Africa while Rembrandt was painting portraits in Leyden? How were similar subjects — equestrian themes, landscapes, religious scenes — manipulated by artists in Aztec Mexico and Medieval Europe? While artworks from ancient Greece or the European Renaissance or pre-Columbian Americas will be interspersed with contemporaneous works created in Africa, India or Japan, an extraction of the Greek or Renaissance or American works could stand alone as an essential abridgement of the finest art of that period or culture. The selection of works is non-hierarchical and includes both fine and decorative arts — most commonly painting and sculpture, but also textiles, masks, ceramics and jewellery. Primarily functional arts (furniture, architecture, industrial and graphic design etc.) are not covered. Each work is accompanied by key caption information (date, title, place of origin, style or culture, medium, dimensions etcetera), and a text that provides critical review of the work, placing it in its art historical context and thus explaining its contribution to the development of the history of art.
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