Search results for ""author thames"

The perfect primer on American photographer, photojournalist and filmmaker Ruth Orkin. Ruth Orkin (1921–85) always dreamed of becoming a filmmaker, and although that ambition was thwarted until later in her career, she quickly found other ways of engaging with the world of images. She was given her first camera at the age of ten and by the age of seventeen, she was cycling across America from Los Angeles to New York, documenting her trip in albums of annotated photographs. In the early 1940s she settled in New York, joining the Photo League and making her name with photo stories for major magazines such as Life, Look and This Week. In images that range from celebrity portraits to bird’s-eye views from her apartment window, from children at play to the experiences of a lone American tourist in Italy, Orkin’s photography always retains a cinematic sense of the passage of time and allows the humanity and charisma of her subjects to shine through.

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A member of Magnum, Marc Riboud has travelled the world, from Europe to the Middle East and from Vietnam to the United States. Repelled by violence, indifferent to the pursuit of ‘events’, yet irresistibly drawn by the desire to see, he is a reporter under the spell of life itself. Whether covering the Cultural Revolution or the Soviet Union before perestroika, he waits for the inner truth to ‘rise to the surface of things’. These photographs reveal his intense awareness of the innate power of each image.

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For almost 10,000 years man has built in unbaked earth, not only simple dwellings but also palaces, temples and fortresses of the utmost grandeur and durability. This encyclopedic work shows the extreme diversity of this type of architecture from a technical, cultural and historical point of view. After presenting the various types of raw earth constructions (adobe and rammed earth, walls and roofs, columns, etc.), Jean Dethier reveals some of the raw earth masterpieces scattered across five continents, most of which are listed as UNESCO world heritage sites. From the creations of antiquity to those of today, as well as vernacular heritage and modernist works, the book surveys a multitude of building types: monumental structures – the temples and palaces of Mesopotamia, the Great Wall of China, the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali, Capitagreen in Singapore; large urban developments – the city of Tenochtitlan in Mexico, the medinas of Morocco; housing in Marrakech, Bogota and various European cities; the castle-houses of the Somba people in Togo; Martin Rauch’s villas in Austria; and public amenities – sa high school in Bangladesh, a museum in Australia, a market in Koudougou, Burkina-Faso, and many more... The culmination of fifty years of work, this definitive book is illustrated with 600 photographs and about one hundred drawings and architectural plans.

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Over the course of a career spanning more than fifty years, Seattle-based architect Jim Olson, of Olson Kundig, has made his name designing a broad range of buildings that sensitively respond to their environment. Initially drawing from his close connection to the nature and culture of the Pacific Northwest, he has attracted an international reputation for designing houses for art collectors around the world. Considered together, his buildings reveal an exceptional interplay between art, light, nature, craft and architecture, which can be experienced in a range of projects that span the globe, from Mexico to South-East Asia. This complete overview of many decades of carefully considered buildings begins with an extended essay by Aaron Betsky, who considers the intimate relationship between Olson’s natural surroundings and love of art and his design process over the course of his career. This is followed by a selection of twenty-eight of Olson’s recent projects, interspersed with private sketches and his reflections on architecture and the creative process. The final reference section includes an extensive illustrated chronology of the architect’s entire corpus.

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MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, the influential and award-winning firm based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have an international reputation. Producing a wide range of projects both in Canada and further afield, they work in a sophisticated modern vernacular idiom, drawing inspiration from a rich local heritage of building types and reinterpreting them according to the best practices of 21st-century architecture. It is above all for their dignified and beautiful houses perched on the wild, rocky coasts of Nova Scotia that the firm is recognized. Overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, this remarkable body of work is based around a number of plan types that answer to the particular local climate: open to the sun but sheltered from the winds, and built using traditional materials that are allowed to weather, these dwellings embody the architects’ engagement with their unique surroundings and material culture. This new monograph covers MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects’ complete work. Introductions by renowned architectural writers set the scene, while individual projects are illustrated through evocative photographs and detailed plans and drawings. What emerges is a celebration of an architecture that is both practical and deeply poetic.

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Drawing on the success of XS series, Nano House presents 43 examples the most innovative, most ingenious and most responsible designs for small-scale (less than 75m2) houses set in a variety of contexts. Each house, shown in texts, photographs and plans, is an object lesson in domestic design. Using digital tools, sustainable materials and new prefabrication technologies, all these projects offer exciting and realistic solutions for houses where space is at a premium, nature must be preserved or accommodation created for those who need it most.

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The first book to consider Kiefer's photography and use of photographs in his wider artistic practice. Known for his monumental painting and installations, the internationally celebrated artist Anselm Kiefer's works are marked by a constant questioning of history and collective memory. Born in Germany two months before the Nazi capitulation in 1945, Kiefer's reflections on post-war identity, loss, and shared experience, nourished by myths and literature, create an unparalleled breadth of imagery. The use of photography as both practice and source material is a little-known aspect of Kiefer's art that has played a central role throughout his career. This book presents over 130 works charting the artist's relationship with photography, and his investigations into what images reveal.

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A global history of intoxication, exploring the international spectrum of drug use in cultures across the world, from prehistory to the present day. Every society is a high society. Every day, people drink coffee on European terraces, chew betel nut in Indonesian markets, take coca leaf on Andean mountainsides and smoke tobacco in every nation on earth. Mike Jay's global history of intoxication looks at the earliest archaeological evidence of drug use, the botanicals of the classical world, the mind-bending self-experiments of early scientists and today's war on drugs'. In High Society Jay paints vivid portraits of the roles that drugs play as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols and trade goods. He traces the understanding of intoxicants from prehistory to the present, and reveals how the international trade in substances such as tobacco, tea and opium shaped the modern world. First published to accompany the highly successful exhibition at the Wellcome Collection,

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A charming, lively and often amusing tour of 36 forgotten episodes and overlooked people and places of Scottish history. Scotland’s history is full of famous kings, queens, saints and warriors. But what about its lesser-known places, people and events? In this collection of half-forgotten tales, Alistair Moffat brings their stories out of the shadows, from the clashes of proud Picts and ‘pirate kings’ in the early medieval period to the invention of tartan, whisky, Aberdeen Angus and Peter Pan. Each surprising or scandalous twist sheds a new light on the history of Scotland.

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An updated edition of this classic title on the origins of 20th-century ideas in architecture and the applied arts. The turn of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary flowering of invention in architecture and design, leading to the emergence of two contrasting styles: Art Nouveau and the International Style. Professor Nikolaus Pevsner brings clarity to this period of dynamic change by tracing the origins of twentieth-century ideas in architecture and the applied arts. Featuring a new foreword by the distinguished architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, this classic title has now been updated with colour illustrations throughout.

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Forty articles expertly curated by biographer Andrew Robinson provide an unrivalled account of the lives and personalities behind the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time. Who made us see the atom, our minds, our planet and the universe afresh? How did we uncover the mysteries of life on earth? What next? The theories, discoveries and inventions of scientists have revolutionized our consciousness. Think of gravity, evolution, relativity, radioactivity and the Big Bang; electric motors, vaccines, nuclear power and computers. Behind these breakthroughs lie the personal stories of men and women with vision and determination: singular thinkers who defied adversity in their quest for answers. This book tells the remarkable lives of the pioneers – from Galileo, Faraday and Darwin, through Pasteur and Marie Curie, to Einstein, Freud and Turing. Written by an international team of distinguished scientists, historians and science writers, it will intrigue budding scientists; those fascinated by the lives of great individuals; and anyone curious to know how we came to understand the exterior world and the pulse of life within.

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A revised and expanded edition of the book described by Books Monthly as an absolute gem. A bible, in fact'. If the future is going to be creative, then Hegarty on Advertising points you in the right direction. Written by one of the world's legendary advertising men, this best-selling book contains five decades' worth of wisdom from the man behind hugely influential campaigns for brands such as Levi's, Audi, Boddingtons and Lynx. In this new and improved edition John Hegarty reveals what lies behind a great idea and effective advertising, the ingredients of a successful brand, the right way and the wrong way to run and launch an advertising agency, why you should always question the brief, the art of pitching to a potential client, the central role of storytelling in advertising, the impact of new technology in a rapidly evolving industry, and the importance of dealing with succession. And if that isn't enough, read the final chapters on winemaking and The Garage Soho, a startu

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‘A fascinating and deeply rewarding book’ Adam Zamoyski, Daily Telegraph Napoleon’s Plunder chronicles one of the most spectacular art appropriation campaigns in history and, in doing so, sheds new light on the complex origins of what was once called the Musée Napoléon, now known as the Louvre. It centres on the story of Napoleon’s theft of Paolo Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that in 1797 the French army tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Feast was just one of Napoleon’s spoils of war, which he claimed for the French nation and displayed in a public museum – the Louvre. He filled the former palace of the French kings with his acquisitions, and Europe flocked to Paris and hailed the Louvre as the greatest museum in the world. Did he take it for himself? Or for France? Or for the world at large? Saltzman interweaves the stories of Napoleon’s military campaigns, uncovering the treaties through which he obtained his loot, with the histories of the plundered works themselves, exploring how these masterpieces came into being. As much as a story of military might, this is an account of one of the most ambitious cultural projects ever conducted.

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A thought-provoking reflection on pilgrimage past and present, and a compelling exploration of its relevance today. The enormous rise in popularity in recent decades of the Camino, the ancient pilgrim path that stretches from France, across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, is part of a wider phenomenon being witnessed on other time-honoured pilgrim routes around the globe and across the faiths. But this is happening in a world that in many places is self-avowedly ever more sceptical, secular and scientific, with formal religious affiliation in steep decline. Why? Some argue that tourism is the new religion, and that those who today walk in the footsteps of countless past generations of believers do so to enjoy the holiday experience, the escape from their everyday world, the health benefits of so much exercise, and the companionship, without seeking any sort of spiritual enlightenment. Yet by looking at a diverse range of pilgrimage sites that includes Rome, Jerusalem, Lalibela in Ethiopia, the Buddha Trail in northern India, Shikoku in Japan and the self-styled ‘power place’ of Machu Picchu in Peru, Peter Stanford draws on his own experience as a pilgrim to argue that something more complex and challenging is going on. Financial crises, increasing inequality, climate change and worldwide pandemics are causing people to question the very foundations on which their post religion, twenty-first-century lives are built. This book considers how pilgrimage, with its long history, essential intertwining of arduous journey and openness to personal transformation, is providing the modern age with a means to take a longer, slower and hence more profound look at life, stretching all the way back to when the first pilgrim put one foot in front of another.

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A substantial retrospective on one of the world’s most remarkable and critically acclaimed art photographers. Separated into four parts, Ballenesque takes readers on a visual, chronological journey through Roger Ballen’s entire oeuvre, including both iconic images and previously unpublished photographs. Part I explores his formative artistic influences and his later rediscovery of boyhood through photography, culminating in his first published monograph, Boyhood, in 1979. Part II then charts the period between 1980 and 2000, during which time his deeper search for the elemental self found its way into the ‘Dorps’, or small towns, of South Africa and concluding with the release of his seminal monograph Outland. Part III covers the years 2000–2013, when Ballen achieved global recogition with Shadow Chamber and Boarding House and his work began to veer away from portraiture altogether. Finally, in Part IV, Ballen reflects upon his career in its entirety. With over 300 photographs and an introduction by eminent academic Robert J. C. Young, this book provides both an entirely new way of seeing Ballen’s work for those who already follow his career and a comprehensive introduction for those encountering his photographs for the first time.

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An award-winning study of England’s unique and peculiarly insular variant of modernism. While the battles for modern art and society were being fought in France and Spain, it has seemed a betrayal that John Betjeman and John Piper were in love with a provincial world of old churches and tea-shops. In this multi-award-winning book, Alexandra Harris tells a different story. In the 1930s and 1940s, artists and writers explored what it meant to be alive in England. Eclectically, passionately, wittily, they showed that ‘the modern’ need not be at war with the past. Constructivists and conservatives could work together, and even the Bauhaus émigré, László Moholy-Nagy, was beguiled into taking photographs for Betjeman’s nostalgic Oxford University Chest. This modern English renaissance was shared by writers, painters, gardeners, architects, critics, tourists and composers. John Piper, Virginia Woolf, Florence White, Christopher Tunnard, Evelyn Waugh, E. M. Forster and the Sitwells are part of the story, along with Bill Brandt, Graham Sutherland, Eric Ravilious and Cecil Beaton.

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In this clear and evocative account, John Gaskin unfolds the thinking about nature, life, death and other worlds that informed the culture and society of the Classical world, drawing out its interest for modern readers. Witty sketches and diagrams enliven the story, which runs from Homeric Greece to the banning of pagan religions in ad 391. The book concludes with a gazetteer describing notable sites and the people and ideas connected with them, making it an ideal companion for visitors to Classical ruins and for all armchair travellers curious to explore life’s big questions.

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Surrealism was launched as a literary and artistic movement by French poet André Breton in 1924, and by the time of his death in 1966 had become one of the most popular art movements of the 20th century. Its very name has entered everyday usage as a synonym for bizarre. Taking the reader on a narrative journey through the history of Surrealism, this book is a digestible introduction to the movement’s key figures, their works and where to find them. Complete with a glossary of key terms and chronology, this new addition to the Art Essentials series provides an indispensable resource for anyone interested in learning about this most influential of art phenomena.

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The Book of Kells, dating from about 800, is a brilliantly decorated manuscript of the four Gospels. This new official guide (Spanish language edition), by the former Keeper of Manuscripts at Trinity College Library, Dublin, provides fascinating insights into the Book of Kells, revealing the astounding detail and richness of one of the greatest works of medieval art. The illustrations in the guide include reproductions of complete pages, and details that allow one to marvel at the intricacy of the decoration. The Book of Kells is explored through its historical background; its structure; its decorative elements, including the richness of its symbols and themes; the scribes and artists who worked on the manuscript; and the tools and pigments used in its creation.

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Richard Tames, the well-known popularizer of English history, offers an entertaining exploration of the bits of English history that have been sidelined, lost or somehow overlooked. Written in an engaging, easy-to-read and often humorous style, Tames brings to life the various colourful characters, famous in their day, who have now sunk into obscurity, from St Cuthbert and Nicholas Breakspear (the only English pope) to Octavia Hill and the Marquis of Granby. Tames also covers such diverse areas as sports, lost villages, forgotten war heroes and inventors. Did you know, for example, that Barking was once home to the largest fishing fleet in the world? Or that coffee houses were once known as ‘penny universities’? Peppered with quotes and anecdotes, and arranged into concise sections, this book is ideal for dipping into or reading from cover to cover.

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Today’s discerning traveller is looking not merely for luxury but for a unique experience. But in this age of low-cost flights and easy travel, how do you avoid the crowds and find the hidden gems? Not via sponsored search results or thousands of indistinguishable reviews, that’s for sure. What you need is on-the-ground, in-person, tried-and-trusted knowledge. In this new guide to Italy, Herbert Ypma surprises and delights with his unequalled eye for detail and his unerring ability to judge what makes the difference between a good experience and a truly memorable one. The eighty-five experiences and tips that he maps out across the length and breadth of Italy fall into four key categories. ‘Staying in Character’ features thirty-five places to stay, from the grand to the eccentric, all embodying the soul and character of their setting – whether it’s sleeping next to a sloshing canal in Venice, dozing under the plume of Etna’s active volcano or experiencing monastic silence over dinner in Umbria. ‘Eclectic Experiences’ surveys twenty stand-out experiences, from jumping off the cliffs near Otranto to swimming the walls of Dionysius in Ortigia, and from exploring the forgotten farmland of Sicily’s interior to finding the best gelati in Rome. ‘Legend for Lunch’ points you in the direction of the most authentic places to eat, and ‘Convincing Context’ surveys twenty experiences enhanced by nuggets of history. Together they amount to a new map of authentic Italian experiences, making this the must-have 21st-century guide for the world’s most exacting traveller.

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Global in perspective and covering over four million years of history, this accessible volume provides a chronological account of both the development of the human race and the order in which modern societies have made discoveries about their ancient past. Beginning deep in prehistory, it takes in all the great archaeological sites of the world as it advances to the present day. A masterful combination of succinct analysis and driving narrative, Archaeology: The Whole Story also addresses the questions that inevitably arise as we gradually learn more about the history of our species: what are we? Where did we come from? What inspired us to start building, writing and all the other activities that we traditionally regard as exclusively human? A concluding section explains how we know what we know: for example, how seventeen prehistoric shrines were discovered around Stonehenge using magnetometers, ground-penetrating radars, and 3D laser scanners; and how DNA analysis enabled us to identify some bones discovered beneath a car park in Leicester as the remains of a fifteenth-century king of England. Written by an international team of archaeological experts and richly illustrated throughout, Archaeology: The Whole Story offers an unparalleled insight into the origins of humankind.

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Who are the Europeans? Where did they come from? In recent years scientific advances have yielded a mass of new data, turning cherished ideas upside down. The idea of migration in prehistory, so long out of favour, is back on the agenda. Visions of continuity now have to give way to a more dynamic view of Europe’s past, with one wave of migration followed by another, from the first human arrivals to the Vikings. This pioneering book brings together for the first time the latest genetic evidence and combines it with archaeology and linguistics to produce a new history of Europe.

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In Why You Can Build It Like That, John Zukowsky examines buildings from the past half century or so that pushed the boundaries of what was architecturally acceptable when they were built. 100 striking international examples of modern architecture are categorized into thematic chapters that reflect form as well as society. Zukowsky explores the history of these buildings and their makers, presenting relevant biographical factors and socio-cultural influences that impacted on the distinctive designs. The book includes the works of heroic early modernist architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, alongside long-established architectural firms such as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It also features mavericks of the past and present – Bruce Goff, Shin Takamatsu and Shigeru Ban – and singular architectural wonders that reflect their own times. Readers will find out why all the featured buildings look the way they do, and why they were created when and where they were. Zukowsky’s original text unravels the rich and complex stories that exist behind the design of some of the world’s more unconventional monuments, revealing exactly why each building is one of a kind.

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Typeface combinations don’t always work together naturally. For an experienced designer, the process becomes largely intuitive after years of practice, but even seasoned professionals sometimes struggle to come up with the perfect typeface pairing. It’s often obvious what not to use, but it’s less obvious what you should use when a range of good typefaces can differ in very subtle ways. Developed with typographers, graphic designers and font geeks in mind, Type Team is the ultimate guide for anyone wishing to get to grips with the best techniques for combining individual typefaces from all classifications and styles for any category of creative project. It explores 150 typeface combinations grouped into 25 contrasting categories, ranging from Classical and Scholarly to Edgy and Vibrant, and with a full page devoted to each entry. In addition, 50 typographic principles are paired with selected combinations and illustrated using the typefaces from the spread. Within the pages of this unique reference for font spotters, designers, and users, the perfect typeface combination for any creative project can be found.

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This new and completely redesigned edition surveys the myriad holy men, mystics and ascetics of India: their prehistoric origins; beliefs, gods and sects; initiation, training and daily lives; appearance, practices and belongings; sacred places and festivals; austerities, the inner fire and the quest for a higher plane of being. It is a vibrant, arresting and carefully curated gallery, taking in long-haired sages, devotees of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahman, naked wanderers, silent hermits, holy warriors, painted showmen, mantra-chanting yogis, ash-clad madmen, and seekers after and pathways to Enlightenment. Dolf Hartsuiker’s expert explanations, wry comments and striking, revealing photos bring to life the mysterious and varied lives of the Sadhus.

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Why take a self-portrait but obscure your face with a lightbulb (Lee Friedlander, Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts (1968)? Or deliberately underexpose an image (Vera Lutter, Battersea Power Station, XI: July 13 , 2004)? And why photograph a ceiling (William Eggleston, Red Ceiling , 1973)? In Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus , Jackie Higgins offers a lively, informed defence of modern photography. Choosing 100 key photographs – with particular emphasis on the last twenty years – she examines what inspired each photographer in the first place, and traces how the piece was executed. In doing so, she brings to light the layers of meaning and artifice behind these singular works, some of which were initially dismissed out of hand for being blurred, overexposed or ‘badly’ composed. The often controversial works discussed in this book play with our expectations of a photograph, our ingrained tendency to believe that it is telling us the unadorned truth. Jackie Higgins’s book proves once and for all that there’s much more to the art of photography than just pointing and clicking.

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The latest instalment in the Manufacturing Guides series, this book is targeted at students and professionals who create graphics or packaging for mass production. With some 400 specially commissioned photographs and technical illustrations, it describes more than 35 manufacturing processes, from the traditional and long-established to cutting-edge technologies.

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From ‘cabinets of curiosities’ to assemblages of found objects and imitations of museum displays, artists have often turned their attention to the ideas and systems traditionally embodied in the museum – display, archiving, classification, storage, curatorship – which they have then appropriated, mimicked and reinterpreted in their own work. Citing a huge range of examples, James Putnam shows not only the ways in which artists have been influenced by museum systems and made their works into simulations of the museum, but also how they have questioned the role of museums, observed their practices, intervened in them and helped to redefine them.

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No period has been more discussed, dissected and argued over than the Renaissance, and every age has reconstructed it in its own image. Today’s emphasis is on its complexity – the way ideas, politics, religion, society, art and science depended upon and affected one another. The Renaissance Complete does away with watertight divisions by means of a lucid, innovatory system of cross-references and brings the image to centre stage. The fascinating range of topics covered includes the revival of classical learning, the printing press, the rise of the nation-state, philosophy and the role of women. The scope is all-embracing: Italy, France, Spain, Britain, Germany and the northern countries; courts and patrons, painters and sculptors, churchmen and traders, men, women and children. Over 1,000 illustrations are carefully focused on over 100 key topics, subject-matter taking precedence over art history. An impressive information resource provides biographies, timelines, bibliography, a gazetteer of museums and galleries and an illustrated glossary.

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'The Medieval World Complete' re-creates one of the great ages of European civilization through a sequence of spectacular images accompanied by a lively, informed commentary. Ingeniously organized by topic and thoroughly cross-referenced, this all-embracing book enables the reader to explore and understand every facet of the Middle Ages, an era of breathtaking artistic achievement and of religious faith in a world where life was often coarse and cruel, cut short by war, famine and disease. Framed by chapters that outline the way the Middle Ages began and ended, the book consists of six sections encompassing religion and the Church, nations and law, daily life, art and architecture, scholarship and philosophy, and the world beyond Christendom. The book is completed by biographies of key personalities, from Charlemagne to Wycliffe, and timelines, maps, a glossary, gazetteer and bibliography.

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The book presents 170 images, mainly shop window displays, shot by artist David Hlynsky during the final years of the collapsing Soviet empire in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, East Germany and Moscow, using a Hasselblad camera to capture the slow, undramatic moments of daily life on the streets. The photographs are accompanied by essays by art historian Martha Langford and cultural studies specialist Jody Berland, as well as Hlynsky’s own account of his time as a flâneur in the shopping plazas behind the Iron Curtain.

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This book showcases and puts into historical context a host of sculpted works created in the 1920s and 1930s in the decorative vernacular defined loosely today as ‘Art Deco’. Whether designed as free-standing statuary for the domestic market or commissioned for some form of architectural placement, as a frieze on a building’s façade or as a public monument or pool fountain, the works shown demonstrate a sometimes bewilderingly broad range of styles and stylistic influences: from the chevrons, sunbursts, maidens, fountains, floral abstractions and ubiquitous biche (doe) of the Parisian geometric style to the crisp, angular patterns of the zig-zag, jazz-age, streamlined aesthetic of the 1930s. Alastair Duncan organizes his subject into three main categories: the first features work by avant-garde sculptors (Csaky, Janniot, Pompon, etc), often as pièces uniques or small editions; the second shows commercial sculpture, comprising mainly large-edition statuary, commissioned as decorative works for the burgeoning 1920s domestic market; while a final, third category covers architectural and monumental sculpture from West and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, North America, Brazil and beyond. With artists’ biographies and details of manufacturers, a full glossary and a thematic index, this volume is the essential and authoritative guide for all those interested in the Art Deco style, from the amateur collector of animalier sculpture to professional historians of the period.

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An updated edition of this classic survey, a thorough overview of Paul Cézanne’s life and work. For Picasso he was ‘like our father’; for Matisse, ‘a god of painting’. Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) is widely regarded as the father of modern art. In this authoritative and accessible study, Richard Verdi traces the evolution of Cézanne’s landscape, still-life and figure compositions, from the turbulently romantic creations of his youth to the visionary masterpieces of his final years. The painter’s biography – his fluctuating reputation and strained relations with his parents, wife and close friend Emile Zola – is vividly evoked using excerpts from his own letters and from contemporary accounts of the artist. Cézanne was torn between the desires to create art and to seek inspiration – to master the themes of the past, through his copying sessions in the Louvre, and to explore the eternal qualities of nature in the countryside of his native Provence. In this way the artist sought ‘to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums’. In this richly illustrated overview Verdi explores the strength, vitality and magnitude of Cézanne’s achievement.

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A unique insight into the life and art of Sean Scully, an internationally celebrated artist and creative practitioner at the height of his powers. Sean Scully’s paintings of brushy stripes and blocks of sumptuous colour are critically acclaimed and widely admired. Less well known is what a gifted storyteller and profound commentator on the history of art he is. In this fascinating book, the record of countless hours of conversations with Scully’s friend, the art critic Kelly Grovier, the painter reflects on his extraordinary journey – from homelessness on the streets of Dublin in the mid-1940s to his current position as one of the most important abstract artists working today. In these revealing conversations, Scully recalls with poignancy and wit his rough-and-tumble childhood in London (where his family moved when he was a toddler), his tenacity in the face of rejection from nearly every art school in England, and his rise to prominence in New York in the 1980s. Illustrated throughout with images that capture both the artist and his work, this volume explores Scully’s relationship with past masters, from Rembrandt to Rothko, and delves deep into his eventual rejection in the late 1970s of minimalism – the dominant force in abstract art at the time. Punctuated throughout by passionately recounted stories of struggle and loss, perseverance and triumph, the portrait that emerges from these pages is at once intimate and surprising. The book reflects the scope of Scully’s broad interests and opinions, with segments devoted not only to his attitudes towards the art world and his most significant works, but also culture, politics and philosophy. Scully communicates with a raw pugnacity that is every bit as hard-hitting as his big brushstrokes.With 146 illustrations in colour

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The first substantial book on the French Neo-Romantics, a cosmopolitan group working in 1920s Paris who turned against modernist abstraction in favour of a new form of figurative painting. In 1926, the Galerie Druet in Paris made waves presenting a group of young painters who had spurned modernist abstraction and returned to a form of figurative painting. For most of them this was the first time they had exhibited, but their impact was considerable. Art critic Waldemar George baptized them the ‘Neo-Romantics’ or the ‘Neo-Humanists’. They were influenced by Picasso, in particular his Blue and Rose periods, but went beyond him to forge new ways of painting. These were artists who liked to play with forgotten references and obsolete visual devices such as trompe l’oeil. They produced work for secondary art forms including the theatre, set design and ballet. In some ways they were the first post-modernists in the history of art, yet until now there has only ever been one book about them, After Picasso, published ten years after their exhibition. Only more recently has their influence on contemporary artists and thinkers including Max Jacob, George Hugnet and Gertrude Stein been recognized. Though friends, these painters never formed a formal group or movement. The Second World War sent them on different paths, with the Berman brothers and Tchelitchev moving to the United States. Before their departure, however, their activities attracted the attention and admiration of a cosmopolitan group of characters, including Gertrude Stein, Alfred Barr, Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine and many others including leading fashion figures of the day, Christian Dior and Elsa Schiaparelli.

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Excerpts from art critic, historian, lecturer and broadcaster James Hall's lively and comprehensive cultural history of self-portraiture, including such artists as Dürer, Gentileschi, Van Gogh and Kahlo. Surprising, questioning, challenging, enriching: the Pocket Perspectives series celebrates writers and thinkers who have helped shape the conversation across the arts. Mixing classic and contemporary texts, reissues and abridgements, these are bite-sized, fully illustrated reads in an attractive, affordable and highly collectable package.

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A fascinating tour of cities that have been lost to history, from the Neolithic period up to the late Roman Empire, that offers a fresh new perspective on the roots of urban life. The ruins of ancient Athens, Luxor and Rome are familiar cornerstones of world history, visited by travellers from across the globe. But what about the cities that have dropped off the map – that have been submerged under water, or swallowed up by the sands of time? Where are they, and what can they tell us about our past? In this compendium of forgotten cities, Philip Matyszak explores the trials, tribulations and triumphs they faced, revealing how people have embarked on the shared endeavour of living together since we first settled down 12,000 years ago. Illustrated throughout with important artefacts, ruins and maps, Lost Cities of the Ancient World brings to life the sites and settlements across Europe, the Middle East and beyond that time forgot, from the sunken city of Ropotamo in the Black Sea to the deep cave dwellings of Derinkuyu in Turkey. Some have survived only in ancient literature, such as the lost city of Zoar by the Dead Sea, known from the Bible but not yet found. Others have been located, allowing archaeologists to trace their changing fortunes through centuries of occupation. Matyszak reveals a dynamic network of peoples and cultures who fought and traded between themselves, exchanging inventions, ideas and philosophies, with the result that peoples as far apart as Çatalhöyük in Turkey and Skara Brae in the Orkney islands in Scotland shared much of a common heritage. By examining the motivations that first drew people to gather and settle together, as well as the challenges that led to their cities’ abandonment, this visually striking and often surprising book offers us a fresh perspective on our urban origins.

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A journey through M+’s collection and Hong Kong’s cultural spaces, telling the story of the city’s past and present through its works of art and key landmarks. Key to the M+ collections are objects made in or associated with Hong Kong, from neon signs and advertising ephemera to architectural plans, photographs and artworks, all of which offer new perspectives on contemporary life in the city. Hong Kong Visual Culture: The M+ Guide takes the reader on a journey through the city’s modern and contemporary visual culture. The book is arranged into three main sections, with the first focusing on artworks and objects that reflect daily life in Hong Kong; the second documenting the urban environment; and the final section concentrating on artistic perspectives and approaches that demonstrate the city’s unique outlook. Also included is a fold-out map by artist Don Mak and a specially commissioned cover. From Cantopop and Zaha Hadid’s man-made polished granite mountain to masterpieces of vernacular culture by the calligraphic artist the ‘King of Kowloon’ and the photographs of Michael Wolf, this richly illustrated book celebrates Hong Kong’s significant contribution to global material culture.With 245 illustrations

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Engaging encounters, personal anecdotes and jargon-free critical insights into some of the liveliest creative minds in modern art, by an international art world insider. Praised by the Art Newspaper as ‘the best art writer of his generation’, Michael Peppiatt has encountered many European modern artists over more than fifty years. This selection of some of his best biographical writing covers a wide spectrum of modern art, from Van Gogh and Pierre Bonnard, to personal conversations with painter Sonia Delaunay, artist Dora Maar, who was Picasso’s lover in the 1930s and 1940s, and Francis Bacon, perhaps the most famous of the many artists with whom Peppiatt has formed personal friendships. Michael Peppiatt’s lively, engaging writing takes us into the company of many notable art-world personalities, such as the Catalan painter Antoni Tàpies, whom he visits in his studio, and moments of disillusion, such as his meeting with the self-mythologizing artist Balthus. Art criticism blends with anecdote: riding with Lucian Freud in his Bentley, drinking with Bacon in Soho, discussing Picasso’s trousers with David Hockney... This collection of Peppiatt’s most perceptive texts includes under-recognized artists, such as Dachau survivor Zoran Music, or Montenegrin artist Dado, whose retrospective Peppiatt curated at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Remarkably varied in their scope and lucidly written for a general reader, these selected essays not only provide us with perceptive commentary and acute critical judgment, they also give a unique personal insight into some of the greatest creative minds of the modern era.

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This essential travel guide distils a decade of style expert Simon Crompton’s experiences travelling the world to meet and advise the finest menswear producers and artisans, providing everything the modern man needs to know to travel in style, explaining what to buy and where to buy it. Offering the lowdown on ten of the world’s most stylish cities, including Florence, New York, Stockholm and Hong Kong – with a further ten cities full of emerging talents presented more briefly in a reference section at the end of the book – each chapter includes listings of the finest local shops and producers. In-depth profiles of standout tailors, clothiers and shoemakers offer insights into the craftsmanship behind the trademark style of each city, from a traditional kimono maker in Japan to a bespoke opticians in Paris. A central section offers travel advice from leading style aficionados, including Mark Cho of The Armoury and Mats Klingberg of Trunk Clothiers, providing travel tips from those in the know. With locator maps to assist the planning of your trip and practical advice on how and what to pack, you will be prepared for any occasion. Whether you are on a luxurious city break or looking to fill a few spare hours on a business trip, this is the ideal vade mecum for any sartorial adventure.

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As a little boy of seven or eight, Jacques Henri Lartigue was given his first camera, and soon was developing his own photographs. Born into a prosperous family, from childhood Lartigue acutely observed the social rituals of the upper echelons of society through his photography. The hand-held Kodak camera, first introduced in 1888, granted the young photographer flexibility to capture the fine details of eccentric family members at home, the elaborate social parade in the Bois de Boulogne, on the beach in Normandy and beyond. Classic images of motor cars and high fashion sit alongside previously unpublished photographs from the Lartigue archive. These images of family beau-monde and demi-monde life are not only evidence of a prodigious talent, but also offer an intimate, adolescent perspective of Belle-Époque Paris, the world of Proust, Debussy and the Nabis, before the outbreak of the First World War. At a young age Lartigue mastered the medium of photography: this exploration of his extraordinary childhood is interwoven with a social and cultural portrait of the Belle Époque. Bonnard and Vuillard used the camera as a reference point for painting, Eugène Atget documented the architecture of the old Paris ahead of its developers, but Lartigue was the first to harness the immediacy of the snapshot, often capturing his subjects mid-gesture as in real life, creating a new visual language for the 20th century.

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Noma Bar is one of the world’s most inventive and provocative illustrators. He has developed his own silent language using a limited palette, familiar symbols and pictograms that take on new meanings. He is a master of inscribing double and triple readings into every image, often using negative space to conceal alternative stories, just waiting to be revealed. Bar’s innovative, incisive approach has won him global acclaim and a broad range of commissions, from magazines and newspapers to large-scale commercial and artistic projects. Whether a portrait of a divisive public figure or a representation of an emotive social or political issue, Bar meets complex and sensitive subjects head-on, with gentle humour and deftness. This ambitious edition of collected works, selected by and commented on by the illustrator himself, offers a multifaceted and illuminating insight into his inspirations and working practices – which are always full of surprises. It is destined to become a must-have reference source for any student or follower of visual and popular culture.

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Manet, Pissarro, Morisot, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh and their colleagues made some of the most beautiful drawings in the history of art. This book sets drawings by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists in the context of late nineteenth-century France and explains why these particular works are as important as their paintings in the representation of modernity. A new approach to materials and a wholly inclusive attitude to exhibitions gave drawings a more elevated status in this period than ever before, which avant-garde artists welcomed in their preference for scenes from contemporary life. For the first time also, painting and drawing shared the same stylistic principles of spontaneity, freer handling and lack of finish. Pastels by Degas, watercolors by Cézanne, pen-and-ink drawings by Van Gogh and mixed media works by Toulouse-Lautrec have an autonomy of their own, which proved instrumental in the development of modern art. The distinguished art historian Christopher Lloyd examines the drawings of twenty of the leading Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, highlighting an aspect of French avant-garde art that remains relatively unexplored and was of immense importance for the art movements that followed

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Peter Conrad’s exhilarating book exposes the absurdity and occasional insanity of our godforsaken, demon-haunted contemporary culture. Conrad casts his brilliant beam upon subjects from the Queen to the Kardashians, via Banksy, Nando’s, vaping, the vogue of the cronut, the mushroom-like rise of Dubai, the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, the growth of the Pacific garbage patch... In Judge Judy, he shows us a matronly Roman goddess dispensing justice with a fly swatter. In the metamorphosis of Caitlyn Jenner from Olympic athlete and paterfamilias into idealized female form, he sees parallels to the deeds of the residents of Mount Olympus themselves. Finally, after surveying advances in biomedical engineering and artificial intelligence, he asks whether we might be on the brink of a post-human world.

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Les Fauves (the wild beasts) was the nickname given in 1905 to a group of painters led by Henri Matisse. Today, their paintings are among the most popular of all twentieth-century art. Yet when Matisse and his friends - Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet, Dufy and Braque among them - first exhibited their work, the reaction of public and critics was astonishment and often hostility. Using strong, even strident, colours, applied in a manner deriving from Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, the Fauves took painting back to its basic principles, inspired by primitive art, popular prints and children's paintings, and paved the way to Cubism. The artists, their work, their relationship, their achievements and the critical and commercial response to their work are all discussed in this absorbing book.

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