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Yale University Press
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What is still life? We are familiar with the objects portrayed but have difficulty explaining the essence of this popular art form. Erika Langmuir examines the special fascination of still life, and what distinguishes it from other categories of painting. She discusses its evolution from the trompe l'oeil wall paintings of antiquity, through its revival in the age of Caravaggio and Velazquez, and again in the works of Cezanne and Picasso. Originally published as Pocket Guide Still Life, this eloquent survey benefits from a wider format, new reproductions and updated references. |
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Throughout his long working life, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) produced large-format portraits and subject pictures. This book offers fresh insights into Renoir's complex ambitions as a young artist, when he submitted works to both the avant-garde impressionist exhibitions and the official Salon. |
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Admired for finding beauty in everyday surroundings, William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) brought an autobiographical element to his work, earning him a unique place in late-19th-century American art history. This book, the third of four volumes to document the complete works of Chase, traces his career as a landscape painter. Following Chase's training in Munich in the 1870s and his many trips to Spain in the early 1880s, his works became light filled and colorful. These paintings anticipate Chase's well-known park scenes of the 1880s painted in Brooklyn and New York and his 1890s works depicting the hills and shoreline adjacent to his home in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, now recognized as being among the most important examples of American Impressionism. This book presents all of his known landscapes painted in oil, which include many of his best-loved works, in beautiful reproduction, accompanied by the most current and thorough documentation on them. |
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Oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, created at speed and in the heat of invention with a colourful loaded brush, convey all the spontaneity of the great Flemish painter's creative process. This ravishing book draws from both private and public collections to present in full colour 40 of Rubens's oil sketches. Viewers will find in these informal paintings an enchanting intimacy and gain a new appreciation of Rubens's capacity for invention and improvisation, and of his special genius for dramatic design and colouristic brilliance. The book investigates the role of the oil sketch in Rubens's work; the development of the artist's themes and narratives in his multiple sketches; and the history of the appreciation of his oil sketches. It also explores some of the unique aspects of his techniques and materials. By revealing the oil sketches as the most direct record of Rubens's creative process, the book presents him as the greatest and most fluent practitioner of this vibrant and vital medium. This book is the catalogue of the exhibition that appears at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut; the Berkeley Art Museum; and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibition at the Bruce Museum coincides with the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition of Rubens's Drawings, and a number of joint events have been arranged. |
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Self-portraiture is a challenging and complicated subject for any artist. Many fascinating and daunting questions emerge: if an artist is also the subject of the work, is there a conflict of interest? Or does self-portraiture afford an artist the opportunity to explore more freely the significance and meaning of his own presence within the world? And, what do these works actually tell us about an artist? Throughout his career, the preeminent photographer Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) has taken on the challenge of self-portraiture. In this extraordinary book, we experience the full range of Friedlander's photography, from his early works to recent photographs taken of the artist with his family. |
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Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was one of the most famous and controversial artists of the twentieth century. This title focuses on Dali's work after 1940, presenting it as a multifaceted oeuvre that simultaneously drew inspiration from the Old Masters and the contemporary world. |
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Set against the backdrop of imperial Russia, this tale of forbidden romance is the stuff of a great historical novel. It presents the account of the love between Count Nicholas Sheremetev, Russia's richest aristocrat, and Praskovia Kovalyova, his serf and the greatest opera diva of her time. |
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Today's photography is part of our own cultural moment, but it also arises from artistic traditions of the past. Seduced by Art looks at the effects of art and its history on the creation of photographs, tracing continuities in aims, visual style, and technical experimentation. This sumptuous book shows how photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron sought to elevate the status of their work by referencing Old Masters. Similarly, contemporary practitioners look to their photographic predecessors, as well as art history, for inspiration. Among the many photographers featured are Ori Gersht, Luc Delahaye, Thomas Struth, Tom Hunter, and Helen Chadwick, and paintings from Caravaggio, Zurbaran, Delacroix, Ingres, Constable, and others. Each chapter takes a genre — portraiture, the nude, still life, and landscape — and discusses the challenges that each poses for photographers. Interviews with Tina Barney, Rineke Dijkstra, Richard Billingham, Richard Learoyd and Maisie Maud Broadhead focus in-depth on contemporary working practices. |
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This stunning volume features masterpieces of sculpture from the Renaissance through the 19th century. Well-known works by the great European sculptors — including Luca and Andrea della Robbia, Juan Martinez Montanes, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Francois Girardon, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Antoine-Louis Barye, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, and Auguste Rodin — are joined by recent additions to the collection, notably Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's mesmerizing psychological study of an introspective man. The ninety-two selected examples are diverse in media (marble, bronze, stucco, wood, terracotta, ivory) and size — ranging from a tiny oil lamp fantastically conceived and decorated by the Renaissance bronze sculptor Riccio to Antonio Canova's eight-foot-high Perseus with the Head of Medusa, executed in the heroic Neoclassical style. Incorporating information from recent conservation studies and the latest scholarly research, Ian Wardropper discusses the history and significance of the highlighted works, each reproduced with glorious new photography. |
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Working quietly and without much public attention for more than 20 years, American fashion designer Ralph Rucci suddenly became a headline topic in 2002, when he was invited to show his collection at the haute couture in Paris — the first American to receive such an invitation since Mainbocher in the 1930s. This sumptuously illustrated book is the first to explore in depth Rucci's life and work, including the inspirations behind the extraordinarily beautiful and very expensive clothes he creates. The contributors to the volume explore many aspects of Rucci's genius and emergence as a master in the fashion world. Valerie Steele places his life and work in the context of modern fashion history and discusses his connections with such figures as Balenciaga and Halston. Patricia Mears closely examines the garments he designs, reveals what makes them so special, and considers influences on his work. Clare Sauro describes Rucci's accessories, which complete the aesthetic vision that his fashions embody. The book is enriched with more than 100 photographs that include catwalk images, fashion shots of Rucci's clients, Chado Ralph Rucci garments from the collection of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology and from his own archives, as well as various inspirational objects and fashions. |
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This beautifully illustrated catalogue showcases 126 Spanish and Portuguese artworks from the 17th and 18th centuries, all highlights from the dazzling collection of Roberta and Richard Huber. Featuring works in a variety of media and from far-flung places, including paintings, silver, and furniture from South America and sculptures in ivory from the Spanish Philippines and from Portuguese territories in India. Distinguished experts shed light on these significant objects, many of which have not been previously published and which illustrate the unparalleled artistic exchanges between and within these colonial empires. The Andean painters Melchor Perez Holguin (1660-1732) and Gaspar Miguel de Berrio (c. 1706-c. 1762) inventively interpreted European iconographies, while similar adaptations took place in Asia, where native craftsmen carved Christian images in ivory. These works travelled along the trade routes connecting Europe to Asia and the Americas, thus influencing the development of a new visual culture. |
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From 1874 to 1882, John Singer Sargent produced more than 200 paintings and water-colours aside from portraiture, including figures in landscape settings, architectural studies, seascapes, subject paintings, and studies after old masters. This book discusses these pictures. Each painting is documented with exhibition history and bibliography. |
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What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, What Art Is challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato's definition of art in The Republic, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol's famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. |
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This informative and engaging book on the Museum's outstanding collection of Etruscan art also provides an introduction to the fascinating and diverse culture of ancient Etruria, which thrived in central Italy from about 900 to 100 B.C. Masterpieces of the collection include seventh-century B.C. objects from the Monteleone di Spoleto tomb group (including the famous, remarkably well-preserved, bronze chariot), intricate gold jewellery, carved gems, and wonderful ambers. For the first time in more than 70 years, this incredible body of work is published in an informative and engaging book that draws upon decades of exhaustive research. Etruscan Art opens with short histories of pre-Roman Italy, Etruscan Studies, and the Metropolitan's collection, followed by chronological analyses of tomb groups, types of objects, and individual objects. The closing section features forgeries, pastiches, and objects of uncertain authenticity, all previously thought to be genuine. Richard De Puma, one of the foremost experts on Etruscan art, provides an invaluable new contribution to the study of ancient Italy. |
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This fascinating book offers the first comprehensive study in English of Baldassare Longhena (1598-1682), the indispensable architect of the Venetian Baroque. While Longhena's legacy is most visible in his iconic Madonna della Salute, the 17th-century basilica devoted to the Virgin Mary in gratitude for Venice's deliverance from the plague, and in the Pesaro and Rezzonico palaces along the Grand Canal, he created a plethora of other works over the course of a career that spanned half a century. Andrew Hopkins' lucid and thought-provoking text considers the full span of Longhena's illustrious career, from his monumental staircases and libraries, to the palaces commissioned by private patrons and his projects for Venice's Greek and Jewish communities. This lively account is accompanied by more than sixty colour and 300 black-and-white photographs commissioned especially for the book. A complete list of Longhena's work is included in an appendix. |
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Widely regarded as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) did much of his best-known work in Manhattan during the 1960s, becoming an epic chronicler of that tumultuous decade. But Winogrand was also an avid traveller and roamed extensively around the United States, bringing exquisite work out of nearly every region of the country. This landmark retrospective catalogue looks at the full sweep of Winogrand's exceptional career. Drawing from his enormous output, which at the time of his death included thousands of rolls of undeveloped film and unpublished contact sheets, the book will serve as the most substantial compendium of Winogrand's work to date. Lavishly illustrated with both iconic images and photographs that have never been seen before now, and featuring essays by leading scholars of American photography, Garry Winogrand presents a vivid portrait of an artist who unflinchingly captured America's swings between optimism and upheaval in the postwar era. |
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Since its origins in the 1970s, punk has had an incendiary influence on fashion. As a style, punk was about chaos, anarchy, and rebellion. This title examines the impact of punk's aesthetic of brutality on high fashion, focusing especially on its do-it-yourself, rip-it-to-shreds ethos, the antithesis of couture's made-to-measure exactitude. |
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From purses to parasols, spectacles to slippers, wigs to walking sticks, the Rijksmuseum has a superb collection of fashion accessories that also includes a rich array of more familiar items: hats, gloves, and shoes for both men and women. Ranging from the 15th to the 21st century, the objects in this stylish book are grouped by color, allowing intriguing juxtapositions of period, material, and type. Many of these accessories were originally received as gifts on all kinds of occasions and for all kinds of reasons: a souvenir from a distant country sent to the family back home; a pair of gloves or a purse embroidered with symbols of marriage and the couple's initials; an ivory fan commissioned in Canton, carved with the initials of a lover or inscribed with an amorous allusion; an embroidered cap from a wife to a husband to mark the birth of a child; a fan for a daughter from her grateful parents for her loyal obedience; or a gift for wedding guests to take home. Superb photography and award-winning design make this an exceptionally desirable book for every follower of fashion with a sense of history. |
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While Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is celebrated as a sculptor, architect, and painter, it is less known that he also was a playwright, scenographer, actor, and director. The Baroque period saw the rise of opera and ballet, as well as increasingly elaborate scenographic technologies for court and religious theatre. Bernini drew from this lexicon of theatrical effects, deploying light, movement, and the porous boundary between fictive and physical space to forge a language of Baroque illusion for both his scenographies and his sculptural ensembles. Bernini: Art and Theatre investigates the different types of cultural space for the staging of his art, from court settings to public squares and church interiors. Drawing parallels between the visual and theatrical arts, and highlighting the dramatic amplification of religious art in the period, this provocative study provides a model that can be extended beyond Bernini to enable us to reconsider 17th-century visual culture as a whole. |
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«Although Jane Hading (1859-1940), Lily Elsie (1886-1962), and Billie Burke (1884-1970) gained fame as stage actresses, their popular appeal also rested on their ability to cultivate a glamorous appearance. Their careers illustrate the early transformation of actresses into marketable commodities whose celebrity status depended on the consumption of their images. This celebrity, in turn, was used to market an array of beauty and fashion goods to women striving to emulate them. The three women featured in «Staging Fashion» exemplify the factors that ensured success for 20th-century actresses. Each of these women was dressed by a leading couturier (or several couturiers), both onstage and offstage. In major cities such as New York, Paris and London, actresses depended on exquisite, custom-made gowns both to secure principal roles and to maintain popularity. Their physical beauty, which was consistent with elite notions of class and race, was depicted on postcards and in popular fashion and theatre magazines and newspapers. Finally, these actresses developed distinct «personalities», which were conveyed by their stage roles and in numerous photos and articles.» |
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