Search results for ""TASCHEN""

Founded in 1928 as a “living diary” by the great Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti, domus has been hailed as the world’s most influential architecture and design journal. With style and rigor, it has reported on the major themes and stylistic movements in industrial, interior, product, and structural design. This fresh reprint of the 1970s domus coverage brings together the most important features from an era marking seismic changes in architecture and design. It was a time when individualism gained momentum as a novel style, and we began to notice the first postmodernist tendencies. Faced with the global energy crisis, architects and designers imbued their methods with a new ecological awareness. For work to be featured in the magazine it had to offer function, spatial clarity, intellectual persuasion, relevant originality, and/or grace. Those groundbreaking projects and practitioners that made the cut include Shiro Kuramata, Verner Panton, Joe Colombo, Richard Meier, the modernist structures by Foster Associates and the Centre Georges Pompidou by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. domus distilled Seven volumes spanning 1928 to 1999 Over 4,000 pages featuring influential projects by the most important designers and architects Original layouts and all covers, with captions providing navigation and context Introductory essays by renowned architects and designers Each edition comes with an appendix featuring texts translated into English, many of which were previously only available in Italian A comprehensive index in each volume listing both designers’ and manufacturers’ names

Read more less

Published annually from 1906 until 1980, Decorative Art, The Studio Yearbook was dedicated to the latest currents in architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, glassware, textiles, metalware, and ceramics. Since the publications went out of print, the now hard-to-find yearbooks have become highly prized by collectors and dealers.Decorative Art 1960s looks at the birth of pop in a decade of unprecedented social, sexual, and political change. All the restless energies bubbling throughout the world during the 1960s made their way into the design style of the decade. Liberation was in the air, men were rushing to the moon, and the sky was the limit as far as visual creativity was concerned. The concept of lifestyle really came into its own, and although the early years of the decade still saw a rivalry between the well-crafted object and the industrially manufactured, by its end both ethnic and pop iconography had gained equal foothold in the aesthetic. Light was also predominant in shaping interiors. Freedom of choice and personal expression were the buzzwords for the young consumer, and so the likes of Panton, Sottsass, Paolozzi, Parisi, Sarpaneva, and Lomazzi did what they could to oblige.

Read more less

Mert Alas, born in Turkey, and Marcus Piggott, born in Wales, met in 1994, at a party on a pier in Hastings, England. Piggott asked Alas for a light, the pair got talking, and rapidly discovered they had plenty in common, not least a love of fashion. Three years later, the duo now known as Mert and Marcus had moved into a derelict loft in East London, converted it into a studio, and had their first collaborative photographic work published in Dazed & Confused. These days, Mert and Marcus shape the global image of such renowned brands as Giorgio Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Fendi, Miu Miu, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, and Lancôme, and public figures including Lady Gaga, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Linda Evangelista, Gisele Bündchen, Björk, Angelina Jolie, and Rihanna. Their photographs encompass a wide range of styles and influences but are renowned particularly for their use of digitized augmentation of images, and a fascination for strong, sexually charged, confident female subjects: “powerful women, women with a meaning, a you-don’t-have-to-talk-or-move-too-much-to-tell-who-you-are kind of woman.” Bringing our best-selling Collector’s Edition to an affordable, compact format, this collection explores the unique vision of a creative partnership that has defined and redefined standards for glamour, fashion, and luxury. Approximately 300 images from the megawatt Mert and Marcus portfolio are accompanied by an introduction by Charlotte Cotton.

Read more less

Erased by bombing during the Korean War, North Korea’s trophy capital of Pyongyang was entirely rebuilt from scratch from 1953, in line with the vision of the nation’s founder, Kim Il Sung. Designed as an imposing stage set, it is a place of grand axial boulevards linking gargantuan monuments, lined with stately piles of distinctly Korean flavor, to be “national in form and socialist in content.” Under the present leader, Kim Jong Un, construction has ramped up apace—“Let us turn the whole country into a socialist fairyland,” declares one of his official patriotic slogans. He is rapidly transforming Pyongyang into a playground, conjuring a flimsy fantasy of prosperity and using architecture as a powerful anesthetic, numbing the population from the stark reality of his authoritarian regime.Guardian journalist and photographer Oliver Wainwright takes us on an eye-opening tour behind closed doors in the most secretive country in the world, revealing that past the grand stone façades lie lavish wonder-worlds of marble and mosaic, coffered ceilings, and crystal chandeliers, along with new interiors in dazzling color palettes. Discover the palatial reading rooms of the Grand People’s Study House, and peer inside the locker rooms of the recently renovated Rungrado May Day Stadium, ready to host a FIFA World Cup that will never come. This collection features about 200 photographs with insightful captions, as well as an introductory essay where Wainwright charts the history and development of Pyongyang, explaining how the architecture and interiors embody the national “Juche” ideology and questioning what the future holds for the architectural ambitions of this enigmatic country.

Read more less

Whether in his sumptuous images for advertising or his soft-hued nudes, Paul Outerbridge (1896–1958) was an alchemist of desire. Color was integral to his aesthetic allure, embracing the complex tri-color-carbro process to create a seductive surface of texture and tone. His quest was for “artificial paradises”—a perfection of form, with a surreal edge. This concise monograph introduces Outerbridge’s unique aesthetic and its commercial and artistic trajectory, from his professional peak as New York’s highest-paid commercial photographer through to his retreat to Hollywood in the 1940s after a scandal over his erotic photography. With key examples from his oeuvre, the book explores Outerbridge’s innovative style through Cubist still life images, magazine photographs, and his controversial nudes, as well as his interaction with other avant-garde photographers, such as Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and Man Ray. Along the way, we recognize Outerbridge’s particular ability to transform everyday objects into a quasi-abstract composition and his pioneering role in championing the expressionistic, as much as commercial, potential of color photographs.

Read more less

“We must remember that in the brutality of battle another such apocalypse is always just around the corner.” —Sebastião Salgado In January and February 1991, as the United States-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein’s troops retaliated with an inferno. At some 700 oil wells and an unspecified number of oil-filled low-lying areas they ignited vast, raging fires, creating one of the worst environmental disasters in living memory. As the desperate efforts to contain and extinguish the conflagration progressed, Sebastião Salgado traveled to Kuwait to witness the crisis firsthand. The conditions were excruciating. The heat was so vicious that Salgado’s smallest lens warped. A journalist and another photographer were killed when a slick ignited as they crossed it. Sticking close to the firefighters, and with characteristic sensitivity to both human and environmental impact, Salgado captured the terrifying scale of this “huge theater the size of the planet”: the ravaged landscape; the sweltering temperatures; the air choking on charred sand and soot; the blistered remains of camels; the sand still littered with cluster bombs; and the flames and smoke soaring to the skies, blocking out the sunlight, dwarfing the oil-coated firefighters. Salgado’s epic pictures first appeared in the New York Times Magazine in June 1991 and were subsequently awarded the Oskar Barnack Award, recognizing outstanding images on the relationship between man and the environment. Kuwait: A Desert on Fire is the first monograph of this astonishing series. Like Genesis, Exodus, and The Children, it is as much a major document of modern history as an extraordinary body of photographic work.

Read more less

For seven years, photographer and artist Lena Herzog followed the evolution of a new kinetic species. Intricate as insects but with bursts of equine energy, the “Strandbeests,” or “beach creatures,” are the creation of Dutch artist Theo Jansen, who has been working for nearly two decades to generate these new life-forms that move, and even survive, on their own. Set to roam the beaches of Holland, the Strandbeests pick up the wind in their gossamer wings and spring, as if by metamorphosis, into action. As if it were blood, not the breeze, running through their delicate forms, they quiver, cavort, and trot against the sun and sea, pausing to change direction if they sense loose sand or water that might destabilize their movement. Coinciding with a traveling exhibition, Herzog’s photographic tribute captures Jansen’s menagerie in a meditative black and white, showcasing Jansen’s imaginative vision, as well as the compelling intersection of animate and inanimate in his creatures. The result is a work of art in its own right and a mesmerizing encounter not only with a very surrealist brand of marvelous, but also with whole new ideas of existence.

Read more less

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) never left his homeland of the Netherlands but in his massive body of painting, drawing, and etching, he changed the course of Western art. His prolific oeuvre encompasses religious, historical, and secular scenes, as well as one of the most extraordinary series of portraits and self-portraits in history. Rembrandt’s work foregrounds texture, light, and acute observation. Like sudden, startling apparitions in a shadowy street, his subjects are illuminated against deep, dark backgrounds and rendered with immense physical as well as psychological scrutiny. Whether biblical or mythological figures, powerful patrons, or fellow citizens, each subject is bestowed not only with meticulous facial features but also with the intrigue of thoughts and feelings so that even age-old narratives such as the bible story of David and Bathsheba find a new level of human drama. Rembrandt also left one of the most extensive series of self-portraits of any artist, chronicling his own face from his youth to the year of his death. Rembrandt’s rise coincided with the blossoming of the Dutch Golden Age, an era of prosperity in the Netherlands. He was encouraged by wealthy patrons, but was above all driven by a profound fascination with people. In this book, we tour some of Rembrandt’s key paintings, etchings, and drawings to introduce his techniques, inspirations, and exceptional achievements. From the Baroque Belshazzar’s Feast to the world-famous Night Watch we uncover a world of deep, rich tones, masterful draftsmanship, and a remarkable sensitivity for the human condition.

Read more less

A hairless, ghostly figure on a bridge. The sky orange-red above him. His hands raised to his ears, his mouth wide in a haunting wail. In painting The Scream, Edvard Munch (1863–1944) created Mona Lisa for our times. The shriek of his iconic figure reverberates around the world, its echo resounding in the work of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Martin Kippenberger, Marlene Dumas, and Tracey Emin. This introductory book surveys Munch’s staggering capacity for psychodrama in The Scream and beyond. With rich illustration, it looks at the lurid, dark, and deeply modern visions that made up the artist’s response to relationships and emotions. These compelling images, regarded by the artist himself as a means of “free confession,” remain as magnetic today as they were on the brink of modernism.

Read more less

From Snow White to Cinderella, Rapunzel to Rumpelstiltskin, the Brothers Grimm bequeathed a canon of stories which have become literary and childhood classics. The most widely read story collection after the Bible, their magical tales are stalwarts of early learning and imagination, listed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register as a vital part of our history and culture. This beautiful hardback anthology is based on the Grimm’s popular 1857 edition and features 27 of their best-loved stories in a vibrant and meticulous new translation commissioned for this publication. The tales are accompanied by exquisite vintage illustrations from the past 200 years, including masterpieces from the legendary Kay Nielsen, British artists Walter Crane and Arthur Rackham, and giants of 19th-century German illustration Gustav Süs, Heinrich Leutemann, and Viktor Paul Mohn. Additional historic and contemporary silhouettes dance across the pages like delicate black paper lace. In addition to the tales and illustrations, the book contains a foreword on the Grimms’ legacy, brief introductions to each fairy tale, and extended artists’ biographies in the appendix. For adults and children alike, this precious edition brings the eternal magic of the Grimms’ stories to the heart of every home.The following fairy tales are featured in the book:The Frog Prince, The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats, Little Brother and Little Sister, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Fisherman and His Wife, The Brave Little Tailor, Cinderella, Mother Holle, Little Red Riding Hood, The Bremen Town Musicians, The Devil with Three Golden Hairs, The Shoemaker and the Elves, Tom Thumb’s Travels, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Feathers, The Golden Goose, Jorinde and Joringel, The Goose Girl, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Star Coins, Snow White and Red Nose, The Hare and the Hedgehog, Puss n’ Boots, The Golden Key

Read more less

With his graphic style, figural distortion, and defiance of conventional standards of beauty, Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was a pioneer of Austrian Expressionism and one of the most startling portrait painters of the 20th century. Mentored by Gustav Klimt, Schiele dabbled in a glittering Art Nouveau style before developing his own much more gritty and confrontational aesthetic of sharp lines, lurid shades, and mannered, elongated figures. His prolific portraits and self-portraits stunned the Viennese establishment with an unprecedented psychological and sexual intensity, favoring erotic, exposing, or unsettling poses in which he or his sitters cower on the floor, languish with legs akimbo, glower at the viewer, and thrust their genitalia into the foreground. His models are at times skeletal and sickly, at other times strong and sensual. Many contemporaries found Schiele’s work to be not only ugly but morally objectionable; in 1912, the artist was briefly imprisoned for obscenity. Today, his oeuvre is celebrated for its revolutionary approach to the human figure and for its direct and particularly fervent, almost furious brand of draftsmanship. This book presents key Schiele works to introduce his short but urgent career and his profound contribution to the development of modern art, which reaches right through to such contemporary talents as Tracey Emin and Jenny Saville.

Read more less

Also available as Art Edition (No. 1–1,000) including an exclusive, square format reproduction of the Arlecchino coffee table and a set of four numbered ocean liner interior prints. To study Gio Ponti’s prolific body of work is to appreciate the clear, unifying vision behind a complex creative universe. A synthesis of the arts, his creations expand intuitively with the Italian grandeur and studied lightness that defined his iconic style. Ponti’s rare capacity to move seamlessly between scales allowed him to approach the design of a teaspoon with the same conviction as he did an entire city. He was as much an architect and designer as he was a publisher, poet, and man. A treasure in its own regard, his contribution is also a distinctive landmark of Italy’s mid-century Renaissance and the modernist values it sought to realize. This is the most comprehensive account of Ponti’s work to date, unprecedented in scale and scope. It tracks the development of his oeuvre over 6 decades, with 136 projects indexed and reproduced in high resolution, each object framed by the context in which Ponti had created it. Like windows onto his elusive life, unpublished materials and candid imagery create new dialogues between his famous masterpieces and his lesser-known feats. A rich layer of texts, featuring an extensive biographical essay by Stefano Casciani, was produced in close collaboration with the Gio Ponti Archives offering an intimate insight on his life’s work. Materializing Ponti’s core philosophy of modernity, this book presents architecture as a performing object, a "self-illuminating" stage for his humanistic art de vivre and boundless creativity.

Read more less

First published in 1963, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time stabbed at the heart of America's so-called Negro problem. As remarkable for its masterful prose as for its frank and personal account of the black experience in the United States, it is considered one of the most passionate and influential explorations of 1960s race relations, weaving thematic threads of love, faith, and family into a candid assault on the hypocrisy of the land of the free. Now, James Baldwin's rich, raw, and ever relevant prose is reprinted with more than 100 photographs from Steve Schapiro, who traveled the American South with Baldwin for Life magazine. The encounter thrust Schapiro into the thick of the movement, allowing for vital, often iconic, images both of civil rights leadersincluding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Jerome Smith

Read more less

This electrifying vinyl edition creates a new and edgy definition for album art. Produced in collaboration with Colors magazine, it brings together more than 500 remarkable records from the collection of Alessandro Benedetti and Peter Bastine.This book forms a junction between photography, music, and design, celebrating vinyl for the integrity of sound recording and its artistic potential as a material form. With featured artists including Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Prince, Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, and beyond, it offers compelling insight into the most intricate details of a performer's visual identity, from a vivid color to a futuristic mirror effect.The discs are arranged thematically to span monochrome vinyl; unusual vinyl (including silver, gold, or mirror vinyl as well as extremely rare glow-in-

Read more less

Nothing succeeds like success, as the saying goes, but in the case of Donald Duck the opposite is true: the candor with which Donald reveals his weaknesses wins our hearts and stays with us forever.Revisit Donald's life's work from nine decades in one of the most expansive illustrated publications on the Disney universe. Following TASCHEN's Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History, we witness the career of Mickey's only rival for the throne as Disney's most popular creation. From his debut in the Silly Symphony short film The Wise Little Hen on June 9, 1934, the authors trace Donald's more than 170 cartoons, groundbreaking adventures in comics and TV, and theme park appearances. As a special treat to his fans, they also dive deep into the vaults to tell the story of his unfinished film projects.With unprecedented access to Disney's vast historical archives and collections as well as public and private collections, the authors illuminate Donald's life story with rar

Read more less

With a career spanning across continents and over six decades, the work of the renowned architect Norman Foster is nothing short of extraordinary. His creative innovation and holistic approach have made him one of the world’s most influential and well-known architects. From the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, to the Reichstag in Berlin, the enclosed court of the British Museum in London to the Millau Viaduct in France, with his practice of Foster + Partners, he has created celebrated landmarks that stand out for their inventive modernity and for what he calls “a sustainable approach to the design of the built environment.”This is the first time Foster’s complete body of work has been published in one edition on such a grand scale. Giving a rare insight into the inner workings of his creative practice. It details his personal approach to his work, his inspirations, the link between art and architecture, and the significance and correlation between his passions, such as being an avid aviator, and his work.The XXL monograph encompasses a lifetime of achievement and originality in two volumes. The first presents his architectural œuvre and is filled with numerous unpublished images and sketches handpicked by Foster from his archives. Paired with nearly 1000 illustrations, the second book contains eight essays he wrote explaining his sources of inspiration.Aside from the 1999 Pritzker Prize, he has won the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Architecture, the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, and the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture. This is a magnificent visual journey not only through significant buildings of our time but also into the mind of a genius. Norman Foster sketched every page of this book and spent countless hours with the author and the graphic designer to make it one of the most remarkable architecture books ever published.Also available as an Art Edition of 300 copies with a 1-meter-wide signed print of a drawing by Norman Foster, picturing the upcoming multifunctional community and business center InnHub in La Punt, Switzerland. The two volumes of this edition are collected in a custom-designed slipcase that folds into a book stand.

Read more less

Whether it's diamond-encrusted grills, oversized “truck” style chains, bust-down Rolex and Patek Philippe watches or a Tiffany necklace, jewelry is a cornerstone of hip-hop culture. Glittering, blinged-out jewels are the shining statement of a collective identity: unapologetic, charismatic, and street savvy. Spanning the history of hip-hop jewelry, from the 1980s to today, Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History is a stunning compilation of storytelling and visuals. Hundreds of extraordinary images of every major hip-hop artist on record celebrate how “Ice” has become a proclamation of identity and self-expression. Starting with Run-DMC’s gold Adidas pendants and Eric B. & Rakim’s ostentatious dookie rope chains and Mercedes medallions, the jewelry then transforms from street style into a booming design culture. The hip-hop tradition of “show up and show out” reaches new heights with artists like Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z, Gucci Mane, and Cardi B, whose over-the-top pieces integrate unique pop culture references, unconventional materials, and enduring collaborations with artists like Takashi Murakami. Author Vikki Tobak reveals – in great detail – the work of pioneering jewelers such as Tito Caicedo of Manny’s, Eddie Plein, and Jacob the Jeweler as well as newer artisans such as Avianne & Co., Ben Baller/IF & Co., Greg Yuna, Johnny Dang, Eliantte, and many more. Ice Cold is a treasure trove of dazzling, inspirational style, featuring the work of leading photographers, including Wolfgang Tillmans, Janette Beckman, Jamel Shabazz, Timothy White, Gillian Laub, David LaChapelle, Danny Clinch, Chris Buck, Mike Miller, Phil Knott, Raven B. Varona, Al Pereira, Albert Watson and many more. A foreword by hip-hop superstar Slick Rick and essays by A$AP Ferg, LL COOL J, Kevin “Coach K’ Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas of Quality Control Music take us on personal journeys into their jewelry universe. Ice Cold goes beyond the ostentatious bling to reveal a transformative story that is loud and proud.

Read more less

The paintings of Albert Oehlen live by audacious strategies, by questioning the image and the rules of abstraction, and by an openness and beauty often reached through the unlikeliest of means. In this expansive monograph, we meet the full range of Oehlen’s artistic thoughts and approaches: paintings that integrate mirrors, paintings that are executed strictly in primary colors or only in gray, heavily pixelated paintings produced with the help of one of the first personal computers. We find collaged fragments of garish poster ads on canvases that transforming screaming slogans into abstract elements, charcoal drawings the size of a wall, finger paintings, and paintings in which black treelike silhouettes contort themselves into a lexicon of abstract forms. Throughout, Oehlen transforms the conceptual into the compositional, at once invigorating and challenging the viewer. Revising and updating TASCHEN’s previous Collector’s Edition, this revelatory survey explores Oehlen’s trajectory from his early days up to the present. It features more than 400 paintings as well as insightful commentaries and interviews, covering Oehlen’s different work stages and approaches. Roberto Ohrt’s essay takes us back to the special vibe of the early 1980s where Oehlen worked alongside Kippenberger, Büttner, and others, part of a scene that painted quickly and close to the pulse of time. Oehlen discusses his computer paintings with John Corbett, and follows up on his more recent work, his thoughts on art, and his day in the studio in a lengthy conversation with Alexander Klar. Together with a collection of shorter texts and statements, this brings us close to the ideas of an artist who has been dubbed “the most resourceful abstract painter alive.”

Read more less

Founded in 1928 as a “living diary” by the great Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti, domus has been hailed as the world’s most influential architecture and design journal. With style and rigor, it has reported on the major themes and stylistic movements in industrial, interior, product, and structural design. This fresh reprint of domus' 1950s coverage brings together the most important features from an era of post-war optimism. As memories of conflict receded, architecture and design sought new forms, materials, and applications, as well as increasing international dialogue. Highlights include Le Corbusier’s design of the United Nations Building in New York; the Case Study Houses of Charles and Ray Eames; Richard Neutra in California, office machines by Olivetti, furniture by Ray and Charles Eames, ceramics and tables by Ettore Sottsass, and the Herman Miller Showroom by Alexander Girard in San Francisco. domus distilled Seven volumes spanning 1928 to 1999 Over 4,000 pages featuring influential projects by the most important designers and architects Original layouts and all covers, with captions providing navigation and context Introductory essays by renowned architects and designers Each edition comes with an appendix featuring texts translated into English, many of which were previously only available in Italian A comprehensive index in each volume listing both designers’ and manufacturers’ names

Read more less

From the dawn of time, ever since Adam and Eve, all artists of every age—whether the Egyptian, Greek, or Roman artists of Antiquity, or more recent famous names such as Rembrandt, Courbet, Degas, or Picasso—have succumbed to their fantasies, obsessions, and libido and produced erotic works that the censors have taken good care to keep from the public. For Erotica Universalis, we surface from the subterranean realms of the museums to enter those of our national and private libraries. Here we discover that not only most of our famous writers, such as Ovid, Aretino, Voltaire, Verlaine, or Maupassant, wrote erotic texts that bordered on indecency, but also that great artists like Boucher, Fragonard, Dalí, or Matisse were inspired to provide suitable illustrations for these naughty books. For this new hardcover edition of the classic 1995 best seller, we have culled highlights from our Erotica Universalis collection.

Read more less

In every crisis situation, children are the greatest victims. Physically weak, they are often the first to succumb to hunger, disease, and dehydration. Innocent to the workings and failings of the world, they are unable to understand why there is danger, why there are people who want to hurt them, or why they must leave, perhaps quite suddenly, and abandon their schools, their friends, and their home. In this companion series to Exodus, Sebastião Salgado presents 90 portraits of the youngest exiles, migrants, and refugees. His subjects are from different countries, victims to different crises, but they are all on the move, and all under the age of 15. Through his extensive refugee project, what struck Salgado about these boys and girls was not only the implicit innocence in their suffering but also their radiant reserves of energy and enthusiasm, even in the most miserable of circumstances. From roadside refuges in Angola and Burundi to city slums in Brazil and sprawling camps in Lebanon and Iraq, the children remained children: they were quick to laugh as much as to cry, they played soccer, splashed in dirty water, got up to mischief with friends, and were typically ecstatic at the prospect of being photographed. For Salgado, the exuberance presented a curious paradox. How can a smiling child represent circumstances of deprivation and despair? What he noticed, though, was that when he asked the children to line up, and took their portraits one by one, the group giddiness would fade. Face to face with his camera, each child would become much more serious. They would look at him not as part of a noisy crowd, but as an individual. Their poses would become earnest. They looked into the lens with a sudden intensity, as if abruptly taking stock of themselves and their situation. And in the expression of their eyes, or the nervous fidget of small hands, or the way frayed clothes hung off painfully thin frames, Salgado found he had a refugee portfolio that deserved a forum of its own. The photographs do not try to make a statement about their subjects’ feelings, or to spell out the particulars of their health, educational, and housing deficits. Rather, the collection allows 90 children to look out at the viewer with all the candor of youth and all the uncertainty of their future. Beautiful, proud, pensive, and sad, they stand before the camera for a moment in their lives, but ask questions that haunt for years to come. Will they remain in exile? Will they always know an enemy? Will they grow up to forgive or seek revenge? Will they grow up at all?

Read more less

For the last couple of years, Steven Heller and Julius Wiedemann have traced the latest developments in illustration around the globe—and for all those who thought digital heralded the end of an era, they’re here to set the record straight.There were extraordinary eras before mass media changed our viewing habits, back in the day when illustration was the primary means of illuminating the word on paper—all the way to today, when we get our words and images on screens as small as a watch face. In this environment, today’s designers and artists are holding their own brilliantly. Illustration is more free and varied than ever, and it is ubiquitous in all kinds of media, from paper to screen to books, packages, clothing, cars, and restaurants.This book celebrates the sheer quality, diversity, intensity, comedy, vivacity, and exceptionality of the work being created by illustrators right now. The artists in this collection are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, but they represent a compelling snapshot of the styles, techniques, and use of color by artists around the world. We dare you to pick your favorites.

Read more less

Gleaned from thousands of images, this book offers the best of American print advertising in the age of the “Big Idea.” From the height of American consumerism, bold and colorful campaigns paint a fascinating portrait of the 1950s and ’60s, as concerns about the Cold War gave way to the carefree booze-and-cigarettes capitalism of the Mad Men era.Digitally remastered for optimum reproduction quality, the ads burst with crisp fonts and colors, as well as a sexy sense of possibility, beguiling their audience to buy everything from guns to girdles, cars to toothpaste, air travel to home appliances. At turns startling, amusing and inspiring, this panorama of midcentury marketing is at once an evocative period piece and a showcase of design innovation and advertising wit.

Read more less

More than 100 years ago the brothers Adolf ("Adi") and Rudolf Dassler made their first pair of sports shoes. Hundreds of groundbreaking designs, epic moments, and star-studded collabs later, this book presents a visual review of the adidas shoe through almost 200 models.To further develop and tailor his products to athletes’ specific needs, Dassler asked them to return their worn footwear when no longer needed, with all the shoes eventually ending up in his attic (to this day, many athletes return their shoes to adidas, often as a thank you after winning a title or breaking a world record). This collection now makes up the "adidas archive", one of the largest, if not the largest archive of any sports goods manufacturer in the world—which photographers Christian Habermeier and Sebastian Jäger have been visually documenting in extreme detail for years.Shot using the highest reproduction techniques, these images reveal the fine details as much as the stains, the tears, the repair tape, the grass smudges, the faded autographs. It’s all here, unmanipulated and captured in extremely high resolution—and with it comes to light the personal stories of each individual wearer. We encounter the shoes worn by West Germany’s football team during its “miraculous” 1954 World Cup win and those worn by Kathrine Switzer when she ran the Boston Marathon in 1967, before women were officially allowed to compete; custom models for stars from Madonna to Lionel Messi; collabs with the likes of Pharrell Williams, Raf Simons, Stella McCartneyor Yohji Yamamoto; as well as the brand’s trailblazing techniques and materials.Accompanied by expert texts, each picture tells us the why and the how, but also conveys the driving force behind adidas. What we discover goes beyond mere design; in the end, these are just shoes, worn out by their users who have loved them—but they are also first-hand witnesses of our sports, design, and culture history, from the beginnings of the Dassler brothers and the founding of adidas until today.

Read more less

This volume is a comprehensive visual history of surfing, marking a major cultural event as much as a publication. Following three and a half years of meticulous research, it brings together hundreds of images to chart the evolution of surfing as a sport, a lifestyle, and a philosophy.The book is arranged into five chronological chapters, tracing surfing culture from the first recorded European contact in 1778 by Captain James Cook to the global and multi-platform phenomenon of today. Utilizing institutions, collections, and photographic archives from around the world, and with accompanying essays by the world’s top surf journalists, it celebrates the sport on and off the water, as a community of 20 million practitioners and countless more devotees, and as a leading influence on fashion, film, art, and music.An unrivaled tribute to the breadth, complexity, and richness of surfing, this book is a must-have for any serious player on the surfing scene and anybody who aspires to the surfing lifestyle. As one surfing scribe has declared, “There has never been a book like this, and there will never be another one again.”

Read more less

Discover the completely unique aesthetic of Tadao Ando, the only architect ever to have won the discipline’s four most prestigious prizes: the Pritzker, Carlsberg, Praemium Imperiale, and Kyoto Prize.Philippe Starck defines him as a “mystic in a country which is no longer mystic.” Philip Drew calls his buildings “land art” as they “struggle to emerge from the earth.” His designs have been described as haiku crafted from concrete, water, light, and space. But to Ando, true architecture is not expressed in metaphysics or beauty, but rather through space that embodies physical wisdom.This thoroughly updated edition spans the breadth of his entire career, including such acclaimed new projects as the Bourse de Commerce in Paris and the Nakanoshima Children’s Book Forest in Osaka. Each project is profiled through photographs and architectural drawings to explore Ando’s unprecedented use of concrete, wood, water, light, space, and natural forms.Featuring designs from award-winning private homes, churches, museums, and apartment complexes to cultural spaces throughout Japan, South Korea, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, and the USA, this XXL-edition brings you up close and personal with a Modernist master.

Read more less

Toward the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, an elderly, sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush for long. In this late phase of his life—he was almost 80 years of age—he developed the technique of “carving into color,” creating bright, bold paper cut-outs. Though dismissed by some contemporary critics as the folly of a senile old man, these gouaches decoupées (gouache cut-outs) in fact represented a revolution in modern art, a whole new medium that reimagined the age-old conflict between color and line. This edition of the first volume of our original award-winning XXL book provides a thorough historical context to Matisse’s cut-outs, tracing their roots to his 1930 trip to Tahiti and continuing through to his final years in Nice. It includes many photos of Matisse, as well as some rare images by Henri Cartier-Bresson and the filmmaker F. W. Murnau, with texts by Matisse, publisher E. Tériade, the poets Louis Aragon, Henri Michaux, and Pierre Reverdy, and Matisse’s son-in-law Georges Duthuit. In their deceptive simplicity, the cut-outs achieved both a sculptural quality and an early minimalist abstraction, which would profoundly influence generations of artists to come. Exuberant, multi-hued, and often grand in scale, these works are true pillars of 20th-century art, and as bold and innovative to behold today as they were in Matisse’s lifetime.

Read more less

From Edouard Manet’s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh’s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe—but often remains misunderstood as an “exotic” artifact that helped inspire Western creativity. The fact is that the Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon of which there exists no Western equivalent. Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art—including, as Karl Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into air”—were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century. This volume, derived from the original XXL monograph, lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art form by presenting the most exceptional Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected in this edition make up an unmatched record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan. From mystical mountains to snowy passes, samurai swordsmen to sex workers in shop windows, each piece is explored as a work of art in its own right, revealing the stories and people behind the motifs. We discover the four pillars of the woodblock print—beauties, actors, landscapes, and bird-and-flower compositions—alongside depictions of sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, or enticing courtesans—rock stars who populated the “floating world” and whose fan bases fueled the frenzied production of woodblock prints. We delve into the horrifying and the obscure in prints where demons, ghosts, man-eaters, and otherworldly creatures torment the living—stunning images that continue to influence Japanese manga, film, and video games to this day. We witness how, in their incredible breadth, from everyday scenes to erotica, the martial to the mythological, these works are united by the technical mastery and infallible eye of their creators and how, with tremendous ingenuity and tongue-in-cheek wit, publishers and artists alike fought to circumvent government censorship. As part of our 40th anniversary series, this edition compiles the finest extant impressions from museums and private collections across the globe in a lightweight, accessible format, offering extensive descriptions to guide us through this frantic period in Japanese art history.

Read more less

The most famous 18th-century copper engraver, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) made his name with etchings of ancient Rome. His startling, chiaroscuro images imbued the city’s archaeological ruins with drama and romance and became favorite souvenirs for the Grand Tourists who traveled Italy in pursuit of classical culture and education. Today, Piranesi is renowned not just for shaping the European imagination of Rome, but also for his elaborate series of fanciful prisons, Carceri, which have influenced generations of creatives since, from the Surrealists to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Loosely based on contemporary stage sets rather than the actual dingy dungeons of Piranesi’s day, these intricate images defy architectural reality to play instead with perspective, lighting, and scale. Staircases exist on two planes simultaneously; vast, vaulted ceilings seem to soar up to the heavens; interior and exterior distinctions collapse. With a low viewpoint and small, fragile figures, the prison scenes become monstrous megacities of incarceration, celebrated to this day as masterworks of existentialist drama.

Read more less

In 2016, sportswear manufacturer Nike and fashion designer Virgil Abloh joined forces to create a sneaker collection celebrating 10 of the Oregon-based company’s most iconic shoes. With their project The Ten—which reimagined icons like Air Jordan 1, Air Max 90, Air Force 1, and Air Presto, among others—they reinvigorated sneaker culture. Virgil Abloh’s designs offer deep insights into engineering ingenuity and burst with cultural cachet. Drawing on the genius of the original shoe using lettering, ironic labels, collage, and sculpting techniques, Abloh played with language and sculptural elements to construct new meaning. Inspired by the wit of Dadaism, architectural theory, and avant-garde happenings, he analyzed what makes each shoe iconic and deconstructed it into an artistic assemblage, making each shoe into a piece of industrial design, a readymade sculpture, and a wearable all at once. ICONS traces Abloh’s investigative, creative process through documentation of the prototypes, original text messages from Abloh to Nike designers, and treasures from the Nike archives. We find Swooshes sliced away from Air Jordans and reapplied with tape or thread, Abloh’s typical text fragments in quotation marks on Air Force 1, and All Stars cut into pieces. We take a look behind the scenes and witness Abloh’s DIY approach, which gave each model in the Off-WhiteTM c/o Nike collection its own unique touch. His deconstructive vocabulary is reflected in the Swiss binding, which showcases an open spine and discloses the production of the book. The book documents Abloh’s cooperative way of working and reaffirms the power of print. For its design Nike and Abloh partnered with the acclaimed London-based design studio Zak Group. Together they conceived a two-part compendium, equal parts catalog and conceptual toolbox. The first part of the book presents a visual culture of sneakers while a lexicon in the second part defines the key people, places, objects, ideas, materials, and scenes from which the project grew. Texts by Nike’s Nicholas Schonberger, writer Troy Patterson, curator and historian Glenn Adamson, and Virgil Abloh himself frame the collaborative work within fashion and design history. A foreword by Hiroshi Fujiwara places the project within the historical continuum of Nike collaborators.

Read more less

Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a German-born biologist, naturalist, evolutionist, artist, philosopher, and doctor who spent his life researching flora and fauna from the highest mountaintops to the deepest ocean. A vociferous supporter and developer of Darwin’s theories of evolution, he denounced religious dogma, authored philosophical treatises, gained a doctorate in zoology, and coined scientific terms which have passed into common usage, including ecology, phylum, and stem cell. At the heart of Haeckel’s colossal legacy was the motivation not only to discover but also to explain. To do this, he created hundreds of detailed drawings, watercolors, and sketches of his findings which he published in successive volumes, including several marine organism collections and the majestic Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), which could serve as the cornerstone of Haeckel’s entire life project. Like a meticulous visual encyclopedia of living things, Haeckel’s work was as remarkable for its graphic precision and meticulous shading as for its understanding of organic evolution. From bats to the box jellyfish, lizards to lichen, and spider legs to sea anemones, Haeckel emphasized the essential symmetries and order of nature, and found biological beauty in even the most unlikely of creatures. In this book, we celebrate the scientific, artistic, and environmental importance of Haeckel’s work, with a collection of 300 of his finest prints from several of his most important tomes, including Die Radiolarien, Monographie der Medusen, Die Kalkschwämme, and Kunstformen der Natur. At a time when biodiversity is increasingly threatened by human activities, the book is at once a visual masterwork, an underwater exploration, and a vivid reminder of the precious variety of life.

Read more less

With investigations into everything from black holes to exoplanets, the Hubble Telescope has changed not only the face of astronomy but also our very sense of being in the universe. On the 30th anniversary of its launch into low-earth orbit, this updated edition of Expanding Universe presents 30 brand new images, unveiling more hidden gems from the Hubble’s archives. Ultra-high resolution and taken with almost no background light, these pictures have answered some of the most compelling questions of time and space while also revealing new mysteries, like the strange “dark energy” that sees the universe expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The collection is accompanied by an essay from photography critic Owen Edwards and an interview with Zoltan Levay, who explains how the pictures are composed. Veteran Hubble astronauts Charles F. Bolden, Jr. and John Mace Grunsfeld also offer their insights on Hubble’s legacy and future space exploration.

Read more less

Pop artist, painter of modern life, landscape painter, master of color, explorer of image and perception—for six decades, David Hockney has been known as an artist who always finds new ways of exploring the world and its representational possibilities. He has consistently created unforgettable images: works with graphic lines and integrated text in the Swinging Sixties in London; the famous swimming pool series as a representation of the 1970s California lifestyle; closely observed portraits and brightly colored, oversized landscapes after his eventual return to his native Yorkshire. In addition to drawings in which he transfers what he sees directly onto paper, there are multiperspective Polaroid collages that open up the space into a myriad of detailed views, and iPad drawings in which he captures light using a most modern medium—testaments to Hockney’s enduring delight in experimentation. This special edition has been newly assembled from the two volumes of the David Hockney: A Bigger Book monograph to celebrate TASCHEN’s 40th anniversary. Hockney’s life and work is presented year by year as a dialogue between his works and voices from the time period, alongside reviews and reflections by the artist in a chronological text, supplemented by portrait photographs and exhibition views. Together they open up new perspectives, page after page, revealing how Hockney undertakes his artistic research, how his painting develops, and where he finds inspiration for his multifaceted work.

Read more less

To explore the Tarot is to explore ourselves, to be reminded of the universality of our longing for meaning, for purpose and for a connection to the divine. This 600-year-old tradition reflects not only a history of seekers, but our journey of artistic expression and the ways we communicate our collective human story. For many in the West, Tarot exists in the shadow place of our cultural consciousness, a metaphysical tradition assigned to the dusty glass cabinets of the arcane. Its history, long and obscure, has been passed down through secret writing, oral tradition, and the scholarly tomes of philosophers and sages. Hundreds of years and hundreds of creative hands—mystics and artists often working in collaboration—have transformed what was essentially a parlor game into a source of divination and system of self-exploration, as each new generation has sought to evolve the form and reinterpret the medium. Author Jessica Hundley traces this fascinating history in Tarot, the debut volume in TASCHEN’s Library of Esoterica series. The book explores the symbolic meaning behind more than 500 cards and works of original art, two thirds of which have never been published outside of the decks themselves. It's the first ever visual compendium of its kind, spanning from Medieval to modern, and artfully arranged according to the sequencing of the 78 cards of the Major and Minor Arcana. It explores the powerful influence of Tarot as muse to artists like Salvador Dalí and Niki de Saint Phalle and includes the decks of nearly 100 diverse contemporary artists from around the world, all of whom have embraced the medium for its capacity to push cultural identity forward. Rounding out the volume are excerpts from thinkers such as Éliphas Lévi, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell; a foreword by artist Penny Slinger; a guide to reading the cards by Johannes Fiebig; and an essay on oracle decks by Marcella Kroll.

Read more less

Photographs have a strange and powerful way of shaping the way we see the world. The most successful images enter our collective consciousness, defining eras, making history, or simply touching something so fundamentally human and universal that they have become resonant icons all over the globe. To explore this unique influence, Photo Icons puts some of the most important photographic landmarks under the microscope. From some of the earliest photography, such as Nicéphore Niépce’s 1827 eight-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre’s famous 1838 street scene, through to Martin Parr, this is as much a history of the medium as a case-by-case analysis of its social, historical, and artistic impact. We take in experimental Surrealist shots of the 1920s and the gritty photorealism of the 1930s, including Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother. We witness the power-makers (Che Guevara) and the heartbreakers (Marilyn Monroe) as well as the great gamut of human emotions and experiences to which photography bears such vivid witness: from the euphoric Kiss in Front of City Hall (1950) by Doisneau to the horror of Nick Ut’s Napalm Against Civilians showing nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phúc running naked toward the camera from South Vietnamese napalm.

Read more less

He’s been called a genius and a poet, but also a misogynist, a pornographer, a monster—but Nobuyoshi Araki’s work transcends simple moralistic classifications. He has said of his work: “There is no conclusion. It’s completely open. It doesn’t go anywhere.” One of the greatest Japanese photographers of our time, Araki’s oeuvre is marked by an unmistakable mastery of composition, color, and tone. Meaning “the beauty of tight binding,” Kinbaku-bi, the traditional Japanese art of erotic bondage has long fascinated the photographer, becoming one of his most important subjects. Araki plays with patterns of subjugation and emancipation, death and desire and with the slippage between serene image and shock. Whether literally or figuratively, his models are certainly immobilized, but in the most tantalizing ways—girls lay bound but defiant, suspended from the ceiling, in traditional dress or nude, face-on, sometimes with a flower subtly positioned between their legs. Araki picks his all-time favorite images of bondage. The result is a testament to his ability to tantalizing balance sexual vulnerability and seduction like no other.

Read more less