Search results for ""TASCHEN""
Taschen GmbH Friedrich
The beauty of nature and man’s loneliness are dominant themes in the work of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). The artist often places a small human figure in a broad landscape, as in his famous paintings Monk by the Sea and The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. For a long time the importance and influence of this great Romantic painter were underestimated. When he died, Friedrich had already been forgotten by his contemporaries and was only rediscovered in the early 20th century. Today he is considered to be the most important German painter of his generation and a precursor of Expressionism. Once Friedrich gave the following advice to an artist-colleague of his who was constricted by academic rules: “Shut your physical eye so that you first see your painting with your spiritual eye. Then bring to light what you saw in the dark so that it has an effect on others, shining inwards from outside.” In other words, concentration and not imitation, essence and not frivolous brushwork.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Klimt
£15.24
Taschen GmbH The World of Ornament
Discover a world of decorative ideas with this compendium of history’s most elegant patterns and ornamental designs.The World of Ornament brings together the two greatest encyclopedic collections of ornament of the 19th century: Auguste Racinet’s L’Ornement polychrome Volumes I and II (1875–1888) and Auguste Dupont-Auberville’s L’Ornement des tissus (1877) to provide one lavish source book spanning jewelry, tile, stained glass, illuminated manuscript, textile, and ceramic ornament. Encompassing classical, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Asian and Middle Eastern, as well as European designs from medieval times through the 19th century, this compilation of cultures and aesthetics offers a primary reference for artists, historians, designers, and patternmakers, and anyone engaged in decorative design and impact.
£20.00
Taschen GmbH 1000 Record Covers
Record covers are a sign of our life and times. Like the music on the discs, they address such issues as love, life, death, fashion, and rebellion. For music fans the covers are the expression of a period, of a particular time in their lives. Many are works of art and have become as famous as the music they stand for—Andy Warhol's covers, for example, including the banana he designed for The Velvet Underground. This edition of Record Covers presents a selection of the best rock album covers of the 60s to 90s from music archivist, disc jockey, journalist, and former record-publicity executive Michael Ochs’s enormous private collection. Both a trip down memory lane and a study in the evolution of cover art, this is a sweeping look at an underappreciated art form.
£18.00
Taschen GmbH Duchamp
When is a urinal no longer a urinal? When Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) declared it to be art. The uproar that greeted the French artist’s Fountain (1917), a porcelain urinal installed in a gallery, sent shock waves through the art world establishment that reverberate right through to today. This essential introduction distills all the daring and the scandal of Duchamp’s practice into one essential overview not only of a pioneering creative but also of a critical moment in Western culture. From his groundbreaking blend of abstraction, Cubism, and Futurism in Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) to his forays into the now-iconic “readymades” such as Bicycle Wheel (1913) and Bottle Rack (1914) we explore how Duchamp consistently challenged the notion of what art is and, in so doing, opened up a world of conceptual possibilities beyond the “retinal” experience.
£16.39
Taschen GmbH 100 Illustrators
Drawn from TASCHEN’s Illustration Now! series, this go-to catalog brings together 100 of the most successful and important illustrators around the globe. With featured artists including Istvan Banyai, Gary Baseman, Seymour Chwast, Paul Davis, Brad Holland, Mirko Ilić, Anita Kunz, and Christoph Niemann, the international overview provides an invigorating record of the dynamism and diversity of the illustration scene. Each illustrator is featured with a self-portrait, samples from their portfolio, and a succinct description by Steven Heller, with a supplementary list of selected exhibitions and publications. In his introduction, Steven Heller describes the dynamic realm of illustration today and the challenging process of selection within this highly competitive and ever-moving genre.
£18.00
Taschen GmbH Leonardo
Filling notebook after notebook with sketches, inventions, and theories, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) not only stands as one of the most exceptional draftsmen of art history, but also as a mastermind and innovator who anticipated some of the greatest discoveries of human progress, sometimes centuries before their material realization. From the smallest arteries in the human heart to the far-flung constellations of the universe, Leonardo saw nature and science as being unequivocally connected. His points of inquiry and invention spanned philosophy, anatomy, geology, and mathematics, from the laws of optics, gravitation, heat, and light to the building of a flying machine. In his painting, Leonardo steered art out of the Middle Ages with works such as The Last Supper and the world-famous La Gioconda or Mona Lisa depicting not only physical appearances, but a compelling psychological intrigue and depth which continues to draw crowds of mesmerized visitors to masterpieces in Paris, Milan, Washington, London, and Rome. This book brings together some of Leonardo’s most outstanding work to introduce a figure of infinite curiosity, feverish imagination, and sublime artistic ability, often described as having “not enough worlds for to conquer, and not enough lives for to live” (Alan Woods).
£13.50
Taschen GmbH Helmut Newton. A Gun for Hire
"Some people's photography is an art. Mine is not. If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that's fine. But that's not why I do them. I'm a gun for hire," Helmut Newton told Newsweek in 2004. This prosaic proclamation from one of the 20th century's most celebrated photographers may be perceived as surprising. Still it firmly positions Newton as the no-frills image-maker that he was. His work is so powerful and striking, that it defies categorization. In refusing to call his work "art," Newton leaves us free to do so. Judging from the amount of museum and gallery shows that have featured his work, it is clear that the option has been widely exercised. A Gun for Hire brings together a selection of Newton's fashion catalog work from the early 1960s to 2003 including campaigns for BiBA (the first fashion catalog in 1962), Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Thierry Mugler, Blumarine, Villeroy & Boch and Absolut Vodka, as well as his last editorial photographs for US and Italian Vogue—encompassing the body of work he made as a "gun for hire." With an introduction by Matthias Harder and statements by Pierre Bergé, Tom Ford, Josephine Hart, June Newton, and Anna Wintour.
£45.00
Taschen GmbH Mick Rock. The Rise of David Bowie. 1972–1973
A unique tribute from David Bowie’s official photographer and creative partner, Mick Rock, compiled in 2015, with Bowie’s blessing.In 1972, David Bowie released his groundbreaking album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. With it landed Bowie’s Stardust alter ego: a glitter-clad, mascara-eyed, sexually ambiguous persona who kicked down the boundaries between male and female, straight and gay, fact and fiction into one shifting and sparkling phenomenon of ’70s self-expression. Together, Ziggy the album and Ziggy the stage spectacular propelled the softly spoken Londoner into one of the world’s biggest stars.A key passenger on this glam trip into the stratosphere was fellow Londoner and photographer Mick Rock. Rock bonded with Bowie artistically and personally, immersed himself in the singer’s inner circle, and, between 1972 and 1973, worked as the singer’s photographer and videographer.This collection brings together spectacular stage shots, iconic photo shoots, as well as intimate backstage portraits. With a lenticular cover of different headshots, it celebrates Bowie’s fearless experimentation and reinvention, while offering privileged access to the many facets of his personality and fame. Through the aloof and approachable, the playful and serious, the candid and the contrived, the result is a passionate tribute to a brilliant and inspirational artist whose creative vision will never be forgotten.
£45.00
Taschen GmbH Helmut Newton. Legacy
Virtually unparalleled in scope and spanning more than five decades, the photography of visionary Helmut Newton (1920–2004) reached millions through publication in magazines like Vogue and Elle. His oeuvre transcended genres, bringing elegance, style, and voyeurism to fashion, portrait, and glamour photography through a body of work that remains as inimitable as it is unrivaled. Having mastered the art of fashion photography early in his career, Newton’s shoots invariably went beyond standard practice, blurring the lines between reality and illusion. Newton’s clear aesthetic pervades all areas of his work, particularly fashion, portraiture, and nude photography. Women take center stage – with subjects such as Catherine Deneuve, Liz Taylor, and Charlotte Rampling. Moving beyond traditional narrative approaches, Newton’s fashion photography is imbued not only with luxurious elegance and subtle seduction, but also cultural references and a surprising sense of humor. During the 1990s, Newton shot for the German, American, Italian, French, and Russian editions of Vogue, primarily in and around Monte Carlo where he was living from 1981 onwards. Transforming locations like his own garage into starkly contrasting or particularly minimalist theatrical stages, Newton would often portray the eccentric lives of the beautiful and rich, full of eroticism and elegance, in unconventional scenarios. He made use of and simultaneously questioned visual clichés, at times tinged with self-irony or mockery, but always full of empathy. Helmut Newton. Legacy showcases highlights from one of the most published bodies of work in photography, including numerous rediscovered images. A prolific image maker and genuine visionary, this book celebrates Newton’s lasting influence on modern photography and visual art to this day.
£72.00
Taschen GmbH Greek Myths
The Greek myths are timeless classics, whose scenes and figures have captivated us since ancient times. The gods and heroes of these legends hold up a mirror to the human condition, embodying universal characteristics and truths – whether it be the courage of Perseus, the greed of Midas, the vaulting ambition of Icarus, the vengeance of Medea, or the hubris of Niobe. These traits are the basis for immortal dramas and rich narratives, as profound as they are entertaining, which form the bedrock of our culture and literature today and remain relevant and fascinating for all readers, young and old alike. This edition contains 47 tales based on the most famous episodes in Greek mythology, from Prometheus, the Argonauts, and Theseus to the Trojan War and Homer’s Odyssey. The individual texts are selected from the seminal work Sagen des klassischen Altertums (Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece) by Gustav Schwab (1792–1850), and strikingly illustrated by 29 artists, among them outstanding representatives of the Golden Age of Book Illustration and the Arts and Crafts Movement, including Walter Crane (1845–1915), Arthur Rackham (1867–1939), William Russell Flint (1880–1969), and Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900–1930). These illustrations are complemented by scene-setting vignettes for each story and a genealogical tree of Greek gods and goddesses by Clifford Harper, commissioned especially for this volume. Placing the tales in context, the book contains a historical introduction by Dr. Michael Siebler and is rounded off with biographies of all featured artists as well as an extensive glossary of ancient Greece’s most famous protagonists. The heroism, tragedy, and theater of Greek mythology glimmer through each tale in this lavishly illustrated edition, awakening the gods and heroes to new life.
£30.00
Taschen GmbH Julia Watson. Lo—TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism
Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, this mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive. Today, we have slowly come to realize that the legacy of this mythology is haunting us. Designers understand the urgency of reducing humanity’s negative environmental impact, yet perpetuate the same mythology of technology that relies on exploiting nature. Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable.Lo—TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. It is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems. With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and four chapters spanning Mountains, Forests, Deserts, and Wetlands, this book explores thousands of years of human wisdom and ingenuity from 18 countries including Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Iraq, India, and Indonesia. We rediscover an ancient mythology in a contemporary context, radicalizing the spirit of human nature. The tactile reading experience of Lo—TEK reflects the ingenuity of carefully selected projects with sophisticated design details: copper highlights the value of ancient knowledge, a cardboard hardcover echoes rawness, and the Swiss binding showcases an open spine and reveals the construction of the book, just as the book discloses hidden technological knowledge.
£36.00
Taschen GmbH The Marvel Age of Comics 1961–1978. 40th Ed.
It was an age of mighty heroes, misunderstood monsters, and complex villains. With the publication of Fantastic Four No. 1 in November 1961, comics giant Marvel inaugurated a transformative era in pop culture. Through the next two decades, the iconic Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the X-Men leapt, darted, and towered through its pages. Captain America was resurrected from his 1940s deep-freeze and the Avengers became the World’s Greatest Super Heroes. Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and dozens more were added to the pantheon, each with their own rogues’ gallery of malevolent counterparts. Nearly 60 years later, these thrilling characters from the 1960s and ’70s are more popular than ever, fighting the good fight in comics, toy aisles, and blockbuster movies around the world. In The Marvel Age of Comics 1961–1978, legendary writer and editor Roy Thomas takes you to the heart of this seminal segment in comic history—an age of triumphant character and narrative innovation that reinvented the super hero genre. With more than 500 images and insider insights, the book traces the birth of champions who were both epic in their powers and grounded in a world that readers recognized as close to their own; relatable heroes with the same problems, struggles, and shortcomings as everyone else. By the ’70s, we see how the House of Ideas also elevated horror, sword and sorcery, and martial arts in its stable of titanic demigods, introducing iconic characters like Man-Thing, Conan, and Shang-Chi and proving that their brand of storytelling could succeed and flourish outside of the capes and tights. Behind it all, we get to know the extraordinary Marvel architects whose names are almost as familiar as the mortals (and immortals!) they brought to life—Stan “The Man” Lee, Jack “King” Kirby, and Steve Ditko, along with a roster of greats like John Romita, John Buscema, Marie Severin, Jim Steranko, and countless others. The result is a behind-the-scenes treasure trove and a jewel for any comic fan’s library, brimming with the innovation and energy of an invincible era for Marvel and its heroes alike. © 2020 MARVEL
£25.00
Taschen GmbH Hokusai. Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
Mount Fuji has long been a centerpiece of Japanese cultural imagination, and nothing captures this with more virtuosity than the landmark woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). The renowned printmaker documents 19th-century Japan with exceptional artistry and adoration, celebrating its countryside, cities, people, and serene natural beauty. Produced at the peak of Hokusai’s artistic ambition, the series is a quintessential work of ukiyo-e that earned the artist world-wide recognition as a leading master of his craft. The prints illustrate Hokusai’s own obsession with Mount Fuji as well as the flourishing domestic tourism of the late Edo period. Just as the mountain was a cherished view for travelers heading to the capital Edo (now Tokyo) along the Tōkaidō road, Mount Fuji is the infallible backdrop to each of the series’ unique scenes. Hokusai captures the distinctive landscape and provincial charm of each setting with a vivid palette and exquisite detail. Including the iconic Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa (also The Great Wave), this widely celebrated series is a treasure of international art history. Among only a few complete reprints of the series, this XXL edition pays homage to Hokusai’s striking colors and compositions with unprecedented care and magnitude. Bound in the Japanese tradition with uncut paper, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji presents the original 36 plates plus the additional 10 later added by the artist. The perfect companion piece to TASCHEN’s One Hundred Views of Edo and The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, this publication paints an enchanting picture of pre-industrial Japan and is itself a stunning monument to the art of woodblock printing.
£125.00
Taschen GmbH Leonardo. The Complete Paintings and Drawings
Unmatched in his ingenuity, technical prowess, and curiosity, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) epitomizes the humanistic ideal of the Renaissance man: a peerless master of painting, sculpture, cartography, anatomy, architecture—and more. Simultaneously captivating art historians, collectors, and the millions who flock yearly to admire his works, Leonardo’s appeal is as diffuse as were his preoccupations. His images permeate nearly every facet of Western culture—The Vitruvian Man is engraved into millions of Euro coins, The Last Supper is considered the single most reproduced religious painting in history, and the Mona Lisa has entranced countless artists and observers for centuries. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his death, this updated edition of our XL title is an unrivaled survey of Leonardo’s life and work, including a catalogue raisonné encompassing both his surviving and lost paintings. Through stunning full-bleed details, we experience every measured brushstroke, each a testament to Leonardo’s masterful ability. An expansive catalog of nearly 700 of Leonardo’s drawings further illuminates the breadth of his pursuits. From diagrams of intricately engineered machines to portraits of plump infants, they stand reflective of his boundless and visionary technical imagination, balanced with a subtle and perceptive hand, capable of rendering quotidian moments with moving emotional timbre. Also included is a new foreword by Frank Zöllner, expanded exclusively for this special edition, which dissects the latest scientific developments on Leonardo’s work and the story behind the haunting Salvator Mundi, which recently fetched a record-breaking $ 450 million at auction.
£50.00
Taschen GmbH Sebastião Salgado. Gold
“What is it about a dull yellow metal that drives men to abandon their homes, sell their belongings and cross a continent in order to risk life, limbs and sanity for a dream?” – Sebastião Salgado When Sebastião Salgado was finally authorized to visit Serra Pelada in September 1986, having been blocked for six years by Brazil’s military authorities, he was ill-prepared to take in the extraordinary spectacle that awaited him on this remote hilltop on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. Before him opened a vast hole, some 200 meters wide and deep, teeming with tens of thousands of barely-clothed men. Half of them carried sacks weighing up to 40 kilograms up wooden ladders, the others leaping down muddy slopes back into the cavernous maw. Their bodies and faces were the color of ochre, stained by the iron ore in the earth they had excavated. After gold was discovered in one of its streams in 1979, Serra Pelada evoked the long-promised El Dorado as the world’s largest open-air gold mine, employing some 50,000 diggers in appalling conditions. Today, Brazil’s wildest gold rush is merely the stuff of legend, kept alive by a few happy memories, many pained regrets—and Sebastião Salgado’s photographs. Color dominated the glossy pages of magazines when Salgado shot these images. Black and white was a risky path, but the Serra Pelada portfolio would mark a return to the grace of monochrome photography, following a tradition whose masters, from Edward Weston and Brassaï to Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, had defined the early and mid-20th century. When Salgado’s images reached The New York Times Magazine, something extraordinary happened: there was complete silence. “In my entire career at The New York Times,” recalled photo editor Peter Howe, “I never saw editors react to any set of pictures as they did to Serra Pelada.” Today, with photography absorbed by the art world and digital manipulation, Salgado’s portfolio holds a biblical quality and projects an immediacy that makes them vividly contemporary. The mine at Serra Pelada has been long closed, yet the intense drama of the gold rush leaps out of these images. This book gathers Salgado’s complete Serra Pelada portfolio in museum-quality reproductions, accompanied by a foreword by the photographer and an essay by Alan Riding.Also available in a signed and limited Collector’s Edition
£50.00
Taschen GmbH Richter
An encounter with Gerhard Richter, the German artist who widened horizons in the relationship between painting and reality. From early photographic paintings, along with his famous RAF cycle, to late abstract paintings, experiencing Richter’s work always offers us the unexpected and unseen. Where he once set out to liberate the medium from ideological ballast, today, faced with the overwhelming presence of digital images, he shows us the unsurpassed impact and intensity of painting. A definitive introduction to one of the greatest artists of our time spanning not only his entire career, but also 50 years of cultural, economic, and political events.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Andy Warhol. Polaroids 1958-1987
Andy Warhol was a relentless chronicler of life and its encounters. Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, he amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself. Created in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation, this book features hundreds of these instant photos. Portraits of celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Nicholson, Yves Saint Laurent, Pelé, Debbie Harry are included alongside images of Warhol’s entourage and high life, landscapes, and still lifes from Cabbage Patch dolls to the iconic soup cans. Often raw and impromptu, the Polaroids document Warhol’s era like Instagram captures our own, offering a unique record of the life, world, and vision behind the Pop Art maestro and modernist giant. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
£46.09
Taschen GmbH Alfred Hitchcock. The Complete Films
The name Alfred Hitchcock is synonymous with suspense—that is to say, masterful, spine-tingling, thrilling, shocking, excruciating, eye-boggling suspense. With triumphs such as Rebecca, Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho, Hitchcock (1899–1980) fashioned a new level of cinematic intrigue and fear through careful pacing, subtlety, and suggestiveness. This complete guide traces Hitchcock’s life and career from his earliest silent films right through to his last picture in 1976, Family Plot. Updated with fresh images, the book combines detailed entries for each of Hitchcock’s 53 films, an incisive essay that sheds light on his fear-inducing devices, photos of the master at work, and an illustrated list of each of his cameos, together adding up to a movie buff’s dream.
£30.64
Taschen GmbH Walt Disney’s Disneyland
Walt Disney dreamed for decades about opening the ultimate entertainment venue, but it wasn’t until the early 1950s that his handpicked team began to bring his vision to life. Together, artists, architects, and engineers transformed a dusty tract of orange groves about an hour south of Los Angeles into one of the world’s most beloved destinations. Today, there are Disney resorts from Paris to Shanghai, but the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which has been visited by more than 800 million people to-date, remains one of America’s most popular attractions. From the day it opened on July 17, 1955, Disneyland brought history and fairy tales to life, the future into the present, and exciting cultures and galaxies unknown to our imaginations. This bountiful visual history draws on Disney’s vast historical collections, private archives, and the golden age of photojournalism to provide unique access to the concept, development, launch, and enjoyment of this sun-drenched oasis of fun and fantasy. Disneyland documents Walt’s earliest inspirations and ideas; the park’s extraordinary feats of design and engineering; its grand opening; each of its immersive “lands” from Main Street, U.S.A., to Tomorrowland; and the park’s evolution through the six decades since it opened. It is a treasure trove of original Disney documentation and expertise, with award-winning writer Chris Nichols drawing on his extensive knowledge of both Disneyland and Southern California history to reveal the fascinating tale of “the happiest place on Earth.”
£43.00
Taschen GmbH Holbein
Religion, Renaissance, and Reformation—these three ideologies shaped the world of 16th-century portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543), a pivotal figure of the Northern Renaissance, whose skills took him to Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and England, and garnered patrons and subjects as prestigious as Henry VIII, Thomas More, Anne of Cleves, and Reformation advocate Thomas Cromwell. This book brings together key Holbein paintings to explore his illustrious and international career as well as the courtly drama and radical religious change that informed his work. With rich illustration, we survey the masterful draftsmanship and almost supernatural ability to control details, from the textures of luxurious clothing to the ornament of a room, that secured Holbein’s place as one of the greatest portraitists in Western art history. His probing eye was matched with a draftsman. Along the way, we see how he combined meticulous mimesis with an inspired amalgam of regional painterly traits, from Flemish-style realism to late medieval German composition and Italian formal grandeur. During his time in England, Holbein became official court painter to Henry VIII, producing both reformist propaganda and royalist paintings to bolster Henry’s status as monarch and as the new Supreme Head of the Church following the English Reformation. His portrait of Henry from 1537 is regarded not only as a portraiture pinnacle but also as an iconic record of this transformative monarch and the Tudor dynasty. Through this turbulent period, Holbein also produced anticlerical woodcuts, and sketched and painted Lutheran merchants, visiting ambassadors, and Henry’s notorious succession of wives.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Film Noir
Whether it’s Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, or The Big Sleep, roam a screen world of dark and brooding elegance with this essential handbook to Film Noir. From private eyes and perfect crimes to corrupt cops and doomed affairs, editors Paul Duncan and Jürgen Müller examine noir’s key themes and their most representative movies from 1940 to 1960. Copiously illustrated with film stills as well as original posters, this book offers page after page of noir’s masterful visual compositions while exploring the narrative paradigms of this cryptic, compelling, and evolving genre. If that weren’t enough to tickle your cinematic appetite, the volume concludes with TASCHEN’s top 50 pick of noir classics. Brimming with the enigmatic dames, desperate gangsters, and psycho killers that continue to cast a long and captivating shadow over cinema, this is a must-have handbook for noir aficionados and amateurs alike.
£21.36
Taschen GmbH Burton Holmes. Travelogues. The Greatest Traveler of His Time 1892-1952
It was the Belle Époque, a time before air travel or radio, at the brink of a revolution in photography and filmmaking, when Burton Holmes (1870–1958) began a lifelong journey to bring the world home. From the grand boulevards of Paris to China’s Great Wall, from the construction of the Panama Canal to the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Holmes delighted in finding “the beautiful way around the world” and made a career of sharing his stories, colorful photographs, and films with audiences across America. He coined the term “travelogue” in 1904 to advertise his unique performance and thrilled audiences with two-hour sets of stories timed to projections of multihued, hand-painted glass-lantern slides and some of the first “moving pictures.” Paris, Beijing, Delhi, Dubrovnik, Moscow, Manila, Jakarta, Jerusalem: Burton Holmes was there. He visited every continent and nearly every country on the planet, shooting over 30,000 photographs and nearly 500,000 feet of film. This book represents the best of the Holmes archive, brimming with brilliant color photographs. A rare window onto the world of 100 years ago, it is also the ultimate inspiration to strike out on a travel adventure of your own.
£22.31
Taschen GmbH Fashion History from the 18th to the 20th Century
Clothes define people. A person’s attire, whether it be a sari, kimono, or business suit, is an essential code to his or her culture, class, personality, even faith. Indeed, clothing has the power to define people and their generation. Recognizing this sartorial significance is the Kyoto Costume Institute, whose team of curators examine fashion through sociological, historical, and artistic perspectives. With one of the world’s most extensive clothing collections, the KCI has amassed a wide range of historical garments, including underwear, shoes, and fashion accessories dating from the 18th century to the present day.Showcasing the Institute’s vast collection, Fashion History is a fascinating excursion through clothing trends from the 18th to the 20th century. With photographs of clothing displayed on custom-made mannequins and commentary from some of the sharpest minds in fashion studies, the book is a testimony to attire as “an essential manifestation of our very being” and to the Institute’s passion for fashion as a complex and intricate art form.
£20.00
Taschen GmbH Caravaggio. The Complete Works
Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), was a legend even in his own lifetime. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: Violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. This work offers a comprehensive reassessment of Caravaggio’s entire œuvre with a catalogue raisonné of his works. Each painting is reproduced in large format, with recent, high production photography allowing for dramatic close-ups with Caravaggio's ingenious details of looks and gestures. Five introductory chapters analyze Caravaggio's artistic career from his early struggle to make a living, through his first public commissions in Rome, and his growing celebrity status. They look at his increasing daring with lighting and with a boundary-breaking naturalism which allowed even biblical events to unfold with an unprecedented immediacy before the viewer.
£57.79
Taschen GmbH 1000 Tattoos
Whether you’re thinking of getting a tattoo or just want to see to what lengths others have gone in decorating their bodies, this is the book to check out.1000 Tattoos explores the history of the art worldwide via designs and photos—from 19th-century engravings to tribal body art, from circus ladies of the ’20s to classic biker designs.
£20.00
Taschen GmbH Titian
Immerse yourself in the rich shades and textures of Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488–1576), commonly known as Titian, and the figurehead of 16th-century Venetian painting. With his bold approach to form and startling, opulent colors, Titian worked with a number of prestigious commissions and left behind an astonishing repertoire of portraits, mythological scenes, altarpieces, and landscapes that remains one of the most important legacies of Renaissance art. This dependable artist introduction traces Titian’s complete career and its trailblazing influence on successive generations of artists, from Diego Velázquez to van Dyck. From the rippling sensuality of Venus of Urbino (c. 1488–1576) to the airborne dynamism of Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–1523), all the major works are here, charting the artist’s stylistic experimentation over time as well as his consistent and unique ability to work across genres and to bring a defining new level of emotional and spiritual aspect to his subjects. “Titian has the finest talent and a very pleasant, vivacious manner.” — Michelangelo.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Breuer
In 1956, TIME magazine called him one of the defining “form-givers of the 20th century.” Today, Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) remains a locus classicus of modernism for architects and designers alike. As a Bauhaus pioneer, even his earliest work was marked by a material restraint; the balance of texture, color, and shape; and a symbiosis of local and global, big and small, rough and smooth. In this essential introductory monograph, we survey Breuer’s complete career through some of his most influential projects and ideas, from his landmark tubular furniture to the MoMA Research House to his innovation of “binuclear” housing, splitting living and sleeping areas into separate wings. Along the way, we follow Hungarian-born Breuer’s journey to international acclaim, with featured projects from Germany, France, England, Switzerland, and across the United States contributing to his global status as a modernist maestro.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Van Eyck
Often imitated but never equaled, Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) left an indelible impression on Renaissance art and paved the way for future realist painters. With its unprecedented precision and masterful use of color, Arnolfini Double Portrait, depicting the wedding of a young couple, is testament to the mastery of the Flemish painter and leader of the Early Netherlandish school. Van Eyck painted both secular and religious subject matter, emphasizing a naturalism and realism that moved seamlessly between 15th-century everyday life and poetic, heavenly settings. Working with oil paint, he innovated the medium, allowing for great intensity and depth of color. Trace the artist’s impressive oeuvre in this hardcover survey of his work, including altarpieces, religious figures, and commissioned portraits. Featuring enlarged details and close analyses of masterpieces like the Ghent Altarpiece, this publication also offers a chronology of van Eyck’s production, including the output of his workshop which continued even after his death.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Toulouse-Lautrec
In our imaginings of Paris, painter and graphic artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) has no small role to play. In his prints, posters, paintings, and drawings, the artist immortalized the city’s Belle Époque nightlife and put the northern neighborhood of Montmartre on the global map of creative-hedonist hotspots. The son of old French nobility, Toulouse-Lautrec seems to have been drawn early on to visions of a demimonde, centering his attention on the dance halls, cabarets, and brothels of Montmartre and adopting famed dancers and singers as his subjects, most notably Jane Avril. His works include both lively performance scenes and quiet, tender “after-hours” portraits such as The Sofa and In Bed. Stylistically, he mastered both bold graphics, as celebrated in his promotional posters of Jane Avril, and a loose yet evocative sketchwork. Though he died aged just 36, due to complications from alcoholism and syphilis, Toulouse-Lautrec’s cultural influence was immense. This introductory book takes a walk through his world of singers, dancers, musicians, and prostitutes to reveal an artist of great humanity, striking figurative skill, and a pronounced sense for the energy and stories of a city.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Degas
Most commonly associated with the birth of the Impressionist movement in mid-19th-century Paris, Edgar Degas (1834–1917) in fact defied easy categorization and instead developed a unique style, strongly influenced by Old Masters, the body in motion, and everyday urban life. The elder scion of a wealthy family, Degas cofounded a series of exhibitions of “Impressionist” art, but soon disassociated himself from the group in pursuit of a more realist approach. His subjects centered on the teeming, noisy streets of Paris, as well as its leisure entertainments, such as horse racing, cabarets, and, most particularly, ballet. With often ambitious, off-kilter vantage points, his images of ballerinas numbered approximately 1,500 works, all deeply invested in the physicality and the discipline of dance. Through illustrations of Foyer de la Danse (1872), Musicians in the Orchestra (1872), and many more, this book provides an essential overview of the artist who created a category all his own, a world of classical resonance, bold compositions, and an endless fascination with movement, which together produced some of the most striking and influential works of the era.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Gauguin
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) was not cut out for finance. Nor did he last particularly long in the French Navy, or as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen who did not speak Danish. He began painting in his spare time in 1873 and in 1876 took part in the Paris Salon. Three years later, he was exhibiting alongside Pissarro, Degas, and Monet. A querulous, hard-drinking individual, Gauguin often called himself a savage. His close but fraught friendship with the similarly temperamental Vincent van Gogh climaxed in a violent incident in 1888, when van Gogh purportedly confronted Gauguin with a razor blade, and later cut off his own ear. Shortly afterwards, following the completion of a midcareer masterpiece Vision After the Sermon (1888), Gauguin took himself to Tahiti, with the intention of escaping “everything that is artificial and conventional…” On Tahiti, Gauguin’s unfettered joy in the island’s nature, native people, and figurative images soared, spurring a prolific output of paintings and prints. In works such as Woman with a Flower (Vahine no te Tiare, 1891) and Sacred Spring: Sweet Dreams (Nave Nave Moe, 1894), he developed a distinct, Primitivist style that positively oozed with sunshine and color. In the tradition of exotic sensuality, his thick, buttery lashings of paint lingered in particular over the curves of Tahitian women. Gauguin died alone, on Tahiti’s neighboring Marquesas Islands, with many of his personal papers and belongings dispersed in a local auction. It was not until a smart art dealer began curating and showing Gauguin’s work in Paris that the artist’s profound influence began making itself felt, especially to the new breed of French avant-garde artists, such as Picasso and Matisse.This book offers the essential introduction the artist’s truly colorful life, from the Impressionist salons of 1870s Paris to his final days in the Pacific, productive and passionate to the end.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Rembrandt. The Complete Paintings
The Dutch Golden Age of painting spawned some of history’s greatest artists and artisans, but few can boast the genius and legacy of Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–1669). Despite never leaving his native Netherlands, Rembrandt projected his oeuvre past the boundaries of his own experience, producing some of art’s most diverse and impactful works across portraiture, biblical, allegorical, landscape, and genre scenes. In all their forms, Rembrandt’s paintings are built of intricacies—the totality of each subtle facial wrinkle, gaze, or figure amounting to an emotional force that stands unmatched among his contemporaries and artistic progeny alike.Each work is imbued with feeling. Biblical scenes, like Bathsheba at her Bath, become vehicles for meditations on human longing, probing depths beyond that which is canonized in scripture or depicted in other representations. His portraits, be them of wealthy patrons or tradesmen, communicate the essence of an individual through fine demarcations, their faces bathed in an ethereal light against darkened earthtones. Perhaps most striking, his series of self-portraits is a triumph of the medium; beginning in his youth and spanning until a year prior to his death, Rembrandt’s self portraiture is an intimate glimpse into his lifelong process of self-reflection.This XXL monograph compiles all 330 of Rembrandt’s paintings in stunning reproductions. From Belshazzar’s Feast to The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, we discover Rembrandt’s painted oeuvre like never before.
£222.00
Taschen GmbH 1000 Pin-Up Girls
“Girls, Gags & Giggles,” ran publisher Robert Harrison’s recipe for dishing up pin-up to the American male. Men loved his tasty dishes, a mixture of strippers and starlets dressed in outfits so fetishistic no one noticed they were never nude. While other magazines delivered the girl next door, Harrison’s publications banked on bad girls in satin and leather, fishnet stockings, and six-inch heels performing slapstick stunts straight from the burlesque stage. Harrison lured his readers in with vibrantly painted covers by top pin-up artists Earl Moran, Billy DeVorss and, most famously, Peter Driben. This Bibliotheca Universalis edition celebrates this eye-catching candy with every single cover from Beauty Parade, Wink, Titter, Eyeful, Flirt, and Whisper, from 1942 to 1955, as well as interior spreads, featuring, among others, a budding Bettie Page. In an age when far more graphic material is the norm, 1000 Pin-Up Girls celebrates an era of pin-up and pulp style to fuel your erotic imagination.
£20.00
Taschen GmbH BIG. Yes is More. An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution
Yes is More is the easily accessible but unremittingly radical manifesto of Copenhagen-based architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG.Unlike a typical architectural monograph, this book uses the comic book format to express its groundbreaking agenda for contemporary architecture. It is also the first comprehensive documentation of BIG’s trailblazing practice—where method, process, instruments, and concepts are constantly questioned and redefined. Or, as the group itself says:“Historically, architecture has been dominated by two opposing extremes: an avant-garde full of crazy ideas, originating from philosophy or mysticism; and the well organized corporate consultants that build predictable and boring boxes of high standard. Architecture seems entrenched: naively utopian or petrifyingly pragmatic. We believe there is a third way between these diametric opposites: a pragmatic utopian architecture that creates socially, economically, and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective. At BIG we are devoted to investing in the overlap between radical and reality. In all our actions we try to move the focus from the little details to the BIG picture.” Bjarke Ingels attracts highly talented coworkers, but also gifted and ambitious clients from all over the world. He then creates intelligent synergies from wild energies and unforeseen dynamics, and transforms them into surprising, functional, valuable, and beautiful solutions to the specific and complex challenges in each task. BIG projects have won awards from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Architecture Biennale, as well as many other international prizes. Yes is More is a play on words that represents the company’s ethos and sums up its irreverent attitude towards excessive formalism, and its determination to involve the population at large in its creations. As an extension of its methods and results, its debut monograph uses the most approachable and populist means of communication available—the comic.
£25.00
Taschen GmbH Harry Benson. Paul
Harry Benson began photographing Paul McCartney in 1964, when the Beatles took America by storm, toured the world, and made their movie debut with A Hard Day’s Night. The legendary photojournalist was on hand to document it all. When the Fab Four came to an end, it was Benson who had intimate access to Paul and his wife Linda, as Paul forged a new path, creatively and personally. Featuring more than 100 color and black-and-white images, this collection is a window into the life of one of the world’s best-known recording artists, one who has remained enigmatic despite a lifetime in the limelight. Through Benson’s lens, Paul traces the evolution of its namesake from performer to icon, father and husband. We see the young musician at the height of his fame with the Beatles, in the recording studio with Linda and their band Wings, with the family, behind the scenes and on stage during the 1975–76 “Wings Over America” tour, partying with the stars, and at the couple’s quiet farm in the UK in the early 1990s. On the occasion of Sir Paul's 80th birthday, Paul gives an all-access look at a life spent making the world’s most popular music. A must for any music fan.
£45.00
Taschen GmbH The Big Book of Legs
The female leg is a sexual oddity. Non-genital, and nearly identical in structure to the corresponding male body part, there is no obvious reason why it’s eroticized. Yet, through much of history, across many cultures, the female leg was hidden from sight and treated as such a taboo topic that it became an object of intense sexual obsession. In the Victorian era the word “leg” was so forbidden that it couldn’t be uttered in polite society, lest men be driven wild with lust. Even now, 100 years after women’s legs came out of hiding, their allure remains strong. In this third book of Dian Hanson’s wildly successful body parts series she explores how freeing the female leg became central to women’s liberation, beginning with the post-French Revolution cancan and ending with the 1960’s Sexual Revolution miniskirt. Over 400 photos document the first burlesque “leg shows” of the 1800s, the silk-stockinged flappers of the 1920s, the nylon-mania of the 1940s, the dawn of the stiletto heel in the 1950s, all leading to the golden age of leg magazines in the 1960s. Learn who wore the first high heels, how nylons became a weapon of war, why Betty Grable’s were the million dollar legs, where Elmer Batters got his start, and just what the deal is with feet, while enjoying great vintage photos by Irving Klaw, Batters and other masters of leg art.
£45.00
Taschen GmbH domus 1928–1939
Offering an unrivaled record of architecture and design, the “living diary” of domus was founded by Gio Ponti in 1928. Through the years and decades that followed, the journal charted the major themes and movements of industrial, interior, product, and structural design with an eye for creative excellence as much as editorial rigor. This fresh reprint features domus’ coverage from the transformative years between 1928 and 1939. It is an era famed for the emergence of the International Style when the likes of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, and Richard Neutra channeled modernist ideals into rectilinear forms, restrained surfaces, and open, luminous interiors. The domus coverage of this decisive decade spanned the details and the grand designs. From soaring steel skyscrapers to tubular furniture, its coverage is a definitive record of how light, form, and pared-down aesthetics combined in the pursuit of an honest and utilitarian form for the modern and rapidly industrializing age. 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
£27.00
Taschen GmbH domus 1940–1949
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’ coverage of the 1940s brings together the most important features from a decade of destruction and reconstruction. Even amid the bombing raids inflicted on Milan, domus continued to publish through much of the war, charting the design zeitgeist, while managing a successive turnover of editors and editors-in-chief during Ponti’s “interregnum” between 1941 and 1948. The pages from this period record reports and features on modern industrial design and furniture, new prefabricated houses, American academic architecture, the building projects of Carlo Mollino, Gian Luigi Banfi, Franco Albini, and Giuseppe Terragni, as well as the postwar flowering of Organic Design. 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
£27.00
Taschen GmbH Renoir. 40th Ed.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (1841–1919) timelessly charming paintings still reflect our ideals of happiness, love, and beauty. Derived from our large-format volume, the most comprehensive retrospective of his work published to date, this compact edition examines the personal history and motivation behind the legend. Though he began by painting landscapes in the Impressionist style, Renoir found his true affinity in portraits, after which he abandoned the Impressionists altogether. Though often misunderstood, Renoir remains one of history’s most well-loved painters—undoubtedly because his works exude such warmth, tenderness, and good spirit. In an incisive text tracing the artist’s career and stylistic evolution, Gilles Néret shows how Renoir reinvented the painted female form, with his everyday goddesses and their plump contours, rounded hips and breasts. Renoir’s later phase, marked by his return to the simple pleasure of the female nude in his Bathers series, was his most innovative and stylistically influential, and would inspire such masters as Matisse and Picasso. With a complete chronology, bibliography, photos, sketches, and brilliant reproductions, this is the essential work of reference on this enduring master artist.
£22.50
Taschen GmbH Gay Talese. Phil Stern. Frank Sinatra Has a Cold
“Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel—only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence.” — Gay Talese In the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese set out for Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to write a major profile on Frank Sinatra. When he arrived, he found the singer and his vigilant entourage on the defensive: Sinatra was under the weather, not available, and not willing to be interviewed. Undeterred, Talese stayed, believing Sinatra might recover and reconsider, and used the meantime to observe the star and to interview his friends, associates, family members, and hangers-on. Sinatra never did grant the one-on-one, but Talese’s tenacity paid off: his profile Frank Sinatra Has a Cold went down in history as a tour de force of literary nonfiction and the advent of New Journalism. In this illustrated edition, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold is published with an introduction by Talese, reproductions of his manuscript pages, and correspondence. Interwoven are photographs from the legendary lens of Phil Stern, the only photographer granted access to Sinatra over four decades, as well as from top photojournalists of the ’60s, including John Bryson, John Dominis, and Terry O’Neill. The photographs complement Talese’s character study, painting an incisive portrait of Sinatra in the recording studio, on location, out on the town, and with the eponymous cold, which reveals as much about a singular star persona as it does about the Hollywood machine.
£45.00
Taschen GmbH Peter Lindbergh. Dior
Peter Lindbergh photographed DIOR’s most exceptional muses, Marion Cotillard and Charlize Theron among them, and signed campaigns for Lady Dior and J'Adore with his inimitable style. Throughout his career, the photographer was one of the House’s closest collaborators. This final book was an original co-creation that was close to the artist’s heart—and to ours. Seventy years of DIOR history projected against the effervescence of Times Square, New York: this was the concept behind Lindbergh’s project, extraordinary both in scope and dimension, for which DIOR, in an unusual move, allowed an unprecedented number of priceless garments to be taken from its vaults in Paris and shipped across the Atlantic. The result is electric. Amid the frenzy of Times Square, Alek Wek glows in the immaculate 1947 Bar suit, the storied ensemble that launched the House of DIOR. In snatches of street scenes, models Saskia de Brauw, Karen Elson, and Amber Valletta flit through crowds and scaffolding, are reflected in building façades, and draped in haute couture, from pieces hand-sewn by Christian Dior to more recent designs by Maria Grazia Chiuri. Lindbergh’s trademark monochrome and color photographs masterfully highlight the intricacies, silhouettes, and textures of each garment.Lindbergh himself is present in every aspect of this two-volume publication designed by his long-time collaborator and friend Juan Gatti. Volume one features 165 never-before-published images from the shoot, including an introduction by Martin Harrison. Volume two pays homage to Lindbergh’s profound relationship with the Parisian House by curating more than 100 of his photographs of DIOR creations, from haute couture to ready-to-wear, men’s and women’s, originally published in some of the world’s most prestigious magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. A breathtaking tribute to two pillars of fashion and photography and their timeless collaborations.
£135.00
Taschen GmbH Peter Lindbergh. Shadows on the Wall
“What is merely beautiful has always bored me. I’m interested in what is powerful and real.” —Peter Lindbergh With such credits as shooting the first American Vogue cover under Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, bringing together for the first time a group of young women who would become the ’90s supermodels, and numerous solo exhibitions at world-renowned institutions including the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, and the Gagosian in London, Peter Lindbergh is a master of his craft who has made his mark in the halls of photography history. The industry quickly became enamored with his almost anti-fashion photography, capturing the zeitgeist and the spirit of his subjects rather than pursuing today’s search for perfection, which he considers inhuman. Handpicked from 37,000 unreleased photos from his groundbreaking 2017 Pirelli calendar shoot, Lindbergh offers an intimate insight into a pool of extraordinary talent: Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Charlotte Rampling, Dame Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, Kate Winslet, Léa Seydoux, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, Robin Wright, Rooney Mara, Uma Thurman, and Zhang Ziyi. His message is simple. These intimate images represent a different kind of beauty, far away from society’s obsession with youth and perfection; one which is concerned with individuality, the courage to be yourself, and your very own sensibility.
£90.00
Taschen GmbH 1000 Nudes. A History of Erotic Photography from 1839-1939
The history of nude photography is the history of people’s fascination with the topic. Indeed, the photographic depiction of the human body is the only subject that has enthralled photographers, theoreticians, and consumers over such a long period—more than 150 years. No other motif is as prevalent as this one during all the phases of development comprising the history of photography, no other is present, whatever the technique, and is a subject of discussion within the context of nearly all aesthetic movements. Nor has any other pictorial topic produced such a variety of specialities as the nude: from the ethnological interpretation of the body to the glamour shot, from nudist photography to the pin-up of today. No other photographic field of application has inspired as much desire as it has awakened official wrath.1000 Nudes offers a cross section of the history of nude photography, ranging from the earliest nude daguerreotypes and ethnographic nude photographs to experimental nude photography. The period of time spanned by this work is from 1839 to roughly 1939, from the medium’s infancy to the end of the classic modernist period. Content-wise, the book pays tribute to the full range of pictorial approaches, from the manually elaborated artistic nudes of the turn of the century, enveloped in layers of theory, to the “obscene” postcard motifs which had not the slightest artistic pretension and were intended to exert a maximum effect on the buyer’s wallet. All the pictures shown are taken from the late Uwe Scheid’s collection, one of the world’s largest and most important collections of erotic photography.
£20.00
Taschen GmbH Rock Covers
Album art is indelibly linked to our collective musical memories; when you think of your favorite albums, you picture the covers. Many photographers, illustrators, and art directors have become celebrities from their album artworks—the best examples of which will go down in history as permanent fixtures in popular culture. Paying tribute to this art form, Rock Covers brings you a compilation of more than 750 remarkable album covers, from legendary to rare record releases. Artists as varied as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, The Cure, Iron Maiden, and Sonic Youth are gathered together in celebration of the cover art that defined their albums and their cult status. Each cover is accompanied by a fact sheet listing the art director, photographer or illustrator, year, label, and more, while nearly 250 records that marked particular turning points for a band, an artist, or the music genre, are highlighted with short descriptions. This far-reaching catalog of visualized rock is contextualized with insider interviews with five professionals who shaped the history of rock, and by top-10 record lists from ten leading rock collectors.
£56.80
Taschen GmbH Helmut Newton & Alice Springs. Us and Them
This is a photographic love story tracing the fifty-five years of collaboration, partnership and history of Helmut and June Newton. First published in 1998, their legendary joint project Us and Them was presented in book form and accompanying exhibitions. The book‘s first part – Us – features personal portraits of each other and self-portraits taken over several decades, revealing affection and intimacy behind each image and bringing forth nostalgia of the time. It is a photographic diary that records the life Helmut and June Newton shared away from the public eye. The second part of the book – Them – is a sumptuous journey through time, where the lens of the master brings forth images of stunning portraits of an array of jet set, celebrities, important cultural figures, and some of the most famous faces of the time. From Catherine Deneuve, Anjelica Huston, David Hockney, and Timothy Leary to Peter Beard, Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler, Jane Birkin, and Charlotte Rampling, among others. The portraits taken by Helmut and June Newton in various sittings are presented side by side in pairs, thus revealing two facets of the same personality. This volume unmistakably highlights that the life and work of Helmut and June Newton were inexplicably linked in every way. One was never possible without the other.
£15.00
Taschen GmbH Marvel Comics Library. Spider-Man. Vol. 2. 1965–1966
Their collaboration on Spider-Man couldn’t last forever—but the five-years of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s remarkable partnership lasted long enough for their character to evolve into a timeless icon and create a fandom that would last generations. TASCHEN’s second volume of Amazing Spider-Man stories collects the latter half of the duo’s magnum opus, featuring brand new arch-villains the Scorpion, Molten Man, and the Crime-Master, return engagements with Kraven the Hunter and the Green Goblin—and the three-part “Master Planner Saga” that reignited a feud with an iconic mystery villain, and left behind what many comics critics declare to be the greatest super hero story of all time. Beyond the action that faced Spider-Man—all choreographed with aplomb by the master stylist Ditko—there was also the matter of Peter Parker’s maturation during a decade of social upheaval and change. With Stan Lee’s blend of soap opera melodramatics and finger-on-the-pulse social sensitivities, Peter graduated from high school to college and started to deal with a myriad of adult struggles, mirroring the life experiences of the book’s readership. A scrawny teenager no more, Lee and Ditko would widen his network of friends and frenemies, debuting Gwen Stacy, Harry Osborn, and, in a series of hilarious cameos, Mary Jane Watson—all characters that would develop into one of the deepest and most substantive supporting casts in all of comics. Also introduced is Harry’s father, Norman Osborn, the short-tempered industrialist who would later be revealed as Spider-Man’s most dreaded foe. Meanwhile, Peter’s up-and-down romance with Betty Brant would reach its culmination with both changed forever. Collected in an XXL-size volume that closely simulates the size and proportions of the original comic artboards, all individual issues have been sourced from the collection of Bob Bretall, holder of the Guinness World Record for largest comics collection. Bretall’s pedigreed collection has been photographed using TASCHEN’s sterling reproduction methods, resembling the way these comics first looked when initially published in 1965 and 1966, while also being digitally remastered using modern retouching techniques to correct problems with the era’s inexpensive, imperfect printing. A custom paper stock was exclusively developed for this series to simulate the newsprint feel and color holding of the original comics. The Marvel Comics Library has earned well-deserved raves from comic collecting diehards for combining an old school comic book reading experience with a luxurious oversized book format, winning the industry’s coveted Eisner Award for Best Publication Design. Complementing the comics is an incisive and often side-splitting essay by British TV and radio host Jonathan Ross. Accompanying his essay is a gallery of original art, photographs, rarities, and other ephemera of the era. © 2023 MARVEL
£135.00
Taschen GmbH The Little Book of Tom. Bikers
In 1953 Marlon Brando donned a black leather Perfecto motorcycle jacket, military cap, denim jeans, and engineer boots to portray Johnny, sneering leader of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, in The Wild One. In 1954 Tom of Finland abandoned brown leather in his artwork to create his own wild ones: muscular, hyper-masculine, black leather-clad rebels with powerful engines between their legs. The look was adopted by the Satyrs Motorcycle Club, the first gay outlaw club, that same year, making Tom’s fantasy world reality. Of course, being Tom, he soon customized his new gay icons, adding leather jodhpurs, knee high boots and leather caps, and every motorcycle bore the brand name “Tom” on the gas tank. Tom’s bikers first appeared as two “Motorcycle Boys” in Physique Pictorial, Winter 1958. Another made the cover of the April 1960 issue. Bikers dominated his PP content from then on, as a nod to its American readership as much as his growing obsession. When he sought an ongoing character, a personal avatar, in 1968, he created Kake as the ultimate biker leatherman, and elaborated on his riding adventures – of every kind - through 26-panel stories. Tom adopted Kake’s gear as his own, presenting in black leather jacket, white t-shirt, jeans, and high boots to the end of his life. The Little Book of Tom: Bikers includes Tom’s earliest images for Physique Pictorial, Kake in motorcycle gear, biker panel stories, and sizzling single drawings, all packed into 192 pages of sexy, masculine men enjoying other masculine men in black leather, blue jeans, and high black boots. On bikes.
£15.00