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A unique edition of bright texts, brilliant images, and historic reprints, this kit provides everything that both beginners and advanced Tarot users might need and want to read cards for themselves and to study and experience this cultural gem in all its beauty and significance.The valuable collector’s box includes a complete deck of the Waite Smith Tarot cards and Waite’s famous companion book The Key to the Tarot. In this illustrated book, with texts and images compiled by Johannes Fiebig, the Tarot cards become psychological mirrors and signposts leading toward new answers and personal solutions. The fact that this works well can be attributed to certain advantages inherent to the Waite-Smith cards, and these points are illuminated in an essay by Rachel Pollack.All 78 cards are presented individually and in detail. The explanatory texts provide several dimensions and levels of interpretation, including concrete practical tips. Further, the book offers a new feature: the quick check. This presents a concise hint regarding the meaning of each card in each possible position of all the spread patterns featured in the book.When Arthur E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith developed their Tarot deck in London in 1909, nobody could have predicted that it would have an overwhelming renaissance starting around 60 years later. What were the lives, works, and passions of these creators like? Pamela Colman Smith and Arthur E. Waite are brought vividly back to life in essays by Mary K. Greer and Robert A. Gilbert.

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“A woman once rang me up and said, ‘Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print Reptiles, you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.’ I replied, ‘Madame, if that’s the way you see it, so be it.’” A fittingly sly comment from renowned Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898–1972), whose complex and ambiguous drawings continue to leave hasty interpretations far behind. Long before the first computer-generated 3-D images, Escher was a master of the third dimension. His lithograph Magic Mirror dates as far back as 1946. By taking such a title for the book, mathematician Bruno Ernst stressed the enrapturing spell Escher’s work invariably casts on those who see it. Ernst visited Escher every week for a year, systematically talking through his entire oeuvre with him. Their discussions resulted in a friendship that gave Ernst intimate access to the life and conceptual world of Escher. Ernst’s account was meticulously scrutinized and made accurate by the artist himself. Escher’s work refuses to be pigeonholed. Scientific, psychological, or aesthetic criteria alone cannot do it justice. The questions remain: Why did he create the pictures? How did he construct them? What preliminary studies were necessary before achieving the final version? And how are his various creations interrelated? This updated and redesigned edition of a true classic—complete with biographical data, 250 illustrations, and a thorough breaking-down of each mathematical problem—offers answers to these and many other lingering mysteries, and is an authentic source text of the first order.

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Published annually from 1906 until 1980, Decorative Art, The Studio Yearbook was dedicated to the latest currents in architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, glassware, textiles, metalware, and ceramics. Since the publications went out of print, the now hard-to-find yearbooks have become highly prized by collectors and dealers. TASCHEN’s Decorative Art 50s explores the spirit of optimism and the fervent consumerism of the decade. Technology and construction had been enervated by research during the war and these discoveries could now be applied in peacetime. The popularization of plastics, fiberglass, and latex literally shaped the decade. Rising incomes and postwar rebuilding on both sides of the Atlantic led to a massive housing boom in both the suburbs and inner cities, and these new homes reflected the new style. While European design was extraordinarily inventive, American design was looking to an idealized vision of the future—between them a modern idiom was developed that can be seen vividly on these pages. This overview of the decade includes the work of such famous innovators as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Hans Wegner, and Gio Ponti.

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When Benedikt Taschen asked the most important portrait photographer working today, Annie Leibovitz, to collect her pictures in a SUMO-sized book, she was intrigued by the challenge. The project took several years to develop and when it was finally published in 2014, it weighed in at 26 kg (57 pounds). This incredible collection is now available in an accessible XXL book format. Leibovitz drew on more than 40 years of work, starting with the photojournalism she did for Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s through the conceptual portraits she made for Vanity Fair and Vogue. She selected iconic images—such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono entwined in a last embrace—as well as portraits that had rarely, if ever, been seen before. The Annie Leibovitz SUMO covered political and cultural history, from Queen Elizabeth II and Richard Nixon to Laurie Anderson and Lady Gaga. “What I had thought of initially as a simple process of imagining what looked good big, what photographs would work in a large format, became something else,” Leibovitz says. “The book is very personal, but the narrative is told through popular culture. It’s not arranged chronologically and it’s not a retrospective. It’s more like a roller coaster.” Fans of Leibovitz and her many celebrated subjects can now enjoy that same roller coaster ride for themselves with this unlimited edition.

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The life and times of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/30–1569) were marked by stark cultural conflict. He witnessed religious wars, the Duke of Alba’s brutal rule as governor of the Netherlands, and the palpable effects of the Inquisition. To this day, the Flemish artist remains shrouded in mystery. We know neither where nor exactly when he was born. But while early scholarship emphasized the vernacular character of his painting and graphic work, modern research has attached greater importance to its humanistic content. Starting out as a print designer for publisher Hieronymus Cock, Bruegel produced numerous print series that were distributed throughout Europe. These depicted vices and virtues alongside jolly peasant festivals and sweeping landscape panoramas. He would eventually increasingly turn to painting, working for the cultural elite of Antwerp and Brussels. This monograph is a testament to Bruegel’s evolution as an artist, one who bravely confronted the issues of his day all the while proposing new inventions and solutions. Rather than idealizing reality, he addressed the horrors of religious warfare and took a critical stand against the institution of the Church. To this end, he developed his own pictorial language of dissidence, lacing innocuous everyday scenes with subliminal statements in order to escape repercussions. This collection captures all the breadth and splendid detail of Bruegel’s oeuvre like never before, and gathers all 40 paintings, 65 drawings, and 89 engravings in pristine reproductions—each piece a unique witness to both the religious mores and the close-knit folk culture of Bruegel’s time.

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Among the few women artists who have transcended art history, none had a meteoric rise quite like Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). Her unmistakable face, depicted in over fifty extraordinary self-portraits, has been admired by generations; along with hundreds of photographs taken by notable artists such as Edward Weston, Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Nickolas Muray, and Martin Munkácsi, they made Frida Kahlo an icon of 20th century art. After an accident in her early youth, Frida became a painter. Her marriage to Diego Rivera in 1929 placed her at the forefront of an artistic scene not only in the cultural Renaissance of Mexico, but also in the United States. Her work garnered praise from the poet André Breton, who added the Mexican painter to the ranks of international surrealism and exhibited her work in Paris in 1939 to the admiration of Picasso, Kandinsky, and Duchamp. We access the intimacy of Frida’s affections and passions through a selection of drawings, pages from her personal diary, letters, and an extensive illustrated biography featuring photos of Frida, Diego, and the Casa Azul, Frida’s home and the center of her universe. This large-format XXL book allows readers to admire Frida Kahlo’s paintings like never before, including unprecedented detail shots and famous photographs. It presents pieces in private collections and reproduces works that were previously lost or have not been exhibited for more than 80 years, forming the most extensive study of Kahlo’s work and life to date.

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The story of the evolution of machines in computer history is full of the disruptive innovations that have led to today’s world. From the early beginnings of computing to the bulky mainframe to the personal computer era, we now live in an almost entirely digital age. The Computer explores steps from the first ideas of a calculating machine in the 19th century and early experiments with autonomous driving in the 1920s to oversized office computers in the 1950s to laptops and wearables of today. Jens Müller delivers a visual understanding of the emergence of the Information Age that hasn’t been shown before. Tracing the stories of tech visionaries, pioneers, and entrepreneurs, the book combines compelling visuals, historical documents, and in-depth explanations to reveal significant events in computer history. Encompassing the invention of machines, coding, and software development, as well as technology's influence on today's political landscape. This survey presents creations from Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. Showcasing forgotten gadgets and prototypes connecting iconic products such as the Apple Macintosh and the Sony Play Station. As well as remembering milestones in software development, videogaming, and the web. Infographics explain wireless communication and other fundamental technical concepts, while the history of corporations such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Atari, Amazon, and Google is retraced through rare photographs and advertising campaigns. A fascinating read, this book acknowledges the computer’s stupendous power and social impact. For techies and everyone interested in culture, economics, politics, and science, it illustrates how we got here today and helps us ask better questions about where we will be tomorrow.

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Buried in the 14th century BC but unearthed by Howard Carter in 1922, the objects entombed with Tutankhamun are an invaluable window into a long-extinct belief system. Seen today, they create an intricate picture of how the ancient Egyptian people viewed the perilous journey to paradise, a utopian Egypt that could only be entered following the final judgment. When acclaimed photographer Sandro Vannini started his work in Egypt in the late ’90s, a technological revolution was about to unfold. Emerging technologies enabled him to document murals, tombs, and artifacts in unprecedented detail. Using the time-consuming and strenuous multi-shot technique, Vannini produced complete photographic reproductions that revealed colors in their original tones with vivid intensity. Through these extraordinary images, we discover the objects’ quintessential features alongside the sophisticated and cleverly hidden details. In collaboration with a series of international exhibitions, starting with King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh at the California Science Center in March 2018, this comprehensive guide marks the centenary of Carter’s first excavations in the Valley of the Kings. These inestimable works endure through Vannini's photographs in their full, timeless splendor. From offerings and rituals to Osiris and eternal life, Vannini’s portfolio covers all facets of ancient Egyptian culture—but it is Tutankhamun’s unique legacy that dominates these images. With texts by the photographer, captions by specialist Mohamed Megahed, and chapter introductions from scholars in the field, King Tut. The Journey through the Underworld puts much-debated mysteries to rest. The learned yet accessible forewords come from distinguished Egyptologists including Salima Ikram and David P. Silverman. Insightful narratives, resplendent images, and a contemporary standpoint make this title a fitting tribute to the Boy King’s odyssey, illuminating an epoch that spanned an unimaginable 4,000 years.

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In the age of big data and digital distribution, when news travel ever further and faster and media outlets compete for a fleeting slice of online attention, information graphics have swept center stage. At once nuanced and neat, they distill abstract ideas, complex statistics, and cutting-edge discoveries into succinct, compelling, and masterful designs. Cartographers, programmers, statisticians, designers, scientists, and journalists have developed a new field of expertise in visualizing knowledge. This XL-sized compendium explores the history of data graphics from the Middle Ages right through to the digital era. Curated by Sandra Rendgen, some 400 milestones span astronomy, cartography, zoology, technology, and beyond. Across medieval manuscripts and parchment rolls, elaborate maps, splendid popular atlasses, and early computer-based information design, we systematically break down each work’s historical context, including such highlights as Martin Waldseemüller’s famous world map, the meticulous nature studies of Ernst Haeckel, and many unknown treasures. Hot on the heels of the best-selling Information Graphics and Understanding the World, this third volume fills the gap as an unprecedented reference book for data freaks, designers, historians, and anyone thirsty for knowledge. An enthralling exploration into the teachings, research, and lives of generations past.

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On December 15, 1868, Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868), Professor of Botany at the University of Munich and director of the Royal Botanic Garden, was carried to his grave in a coffin covered with fresh palm leaves. These were a reference to his groundbreaking Natural History of Palms: a work in three volumes, published between 1823 and 1853. At the time, this encyclopedic treasury contained the sum of human knowledge on the topic, and included 240 exquisite chromolithographic illustrations, featuring landscape views of palm habitats and botanical dissections.This epic folio was based on von Martius’s expedition to Brazil and Peru with zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, sponsored by King Maximilian I of Bavaria, to investigate natural history and native tribes. From 1817 to 1820 the pair traveled over 2,250 km (1,400 miles) throughout the Amazon basin, the most species-rich palm region in the world, collecting and sketching specimens. On their return both men were awarded knighthoods and lifetime pensions. In his epic work, von Martius outlined the modern classification of palm, produced the first maps of palm biogeography, described all the palms of Brazil, and collated the sum of all known genera of the palm family. Apart from his own collection of specimens and notes, von Martius also wrote about the findings of others. Von Martius’s folio is unusual in its inclusion of cross-sectioned diagrams, conveying the architecture of these mighty trees, which central Europeans would have found hard to imagine accurately. Equally remarkable are the color landscapes showing various palms—often standing alone—which have a simple and elegant beauty. This famous work is an unrivaled landmark in botanic illustration and taxonomy.

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Hailing from Vienna, Rudolph Michael Schindler (1887–1953) emigrated to Chicago in 1914, like his lifelong friend and rival Richard Neutra. Eventually hired by Frank Lloyd Wright to work in Los Angeles, Schindler took cues from notions found in Cubism and the International Style to shape his unique vision: a style he called “space architecture,” combining geometrical shapes, bold lines, and materials such as wood and concrete, with space as a medium in its own right, one to be controlled just like color or mass. This radical approach earned Schindler little recognition in his lifetime—but today, he is hailed as one of America’s most important Modernist pioneers. Discover such key projects as the Wolfe House, nestled in a steep hillside; the tree house-like Falk Apartment Building; the Lovell Beach House, recognized as one of the foremost examples of the Modernist canon in America; the Schindler/Chace House, Schindler’s most crucial work and his personal practice and home, which he shared with his family and that of Neutra. From private homes to small commercial buildings, Schindler’s groundbreaking designs heralded a new era of contemporary construction. This collection is complete with a map locating all of the architect’s most renowned projects, detailed entries, floor plans, as well as crisp photography of each structure and its interiors.

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Vivid color, organic forms, and a loathing of straight lines were just a few stalwart characteristics in the unique practice of Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000). A non-conformist hero, the artist, architect, and activist left a blazing trail of imagination and ideas in buildings, paintings, manifestos, initiatives, and more. Hundertwasser’s best-known work is considered by many to be the Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna, a structural synthesis of the vitality and uniqueness that determined the artist’s entire oeuvre. For Hundertwasser, rational, sterile, monotonous buildings caused human misery. He called for a boycott of the modernist paradigm championed by the likes of Adolf Loos, and campaigned instead for an architecture of creative freedom and ecological commitment. A fierce opponent of straight lines, which he called “godless and immoral,” Hundertwasser was fascinated by the spiral, drawing also on the Secessionist forms of Klimt and Schiele. This richly illustrated book traces Hundertwasser’s style and vision not only for each building, but for society at large. From naked addresses at the end of the 1960s to worldwide architecture projects and alternative blueprints for society, author Pierre Restany explores Hundertwasser’s most high-profile and innovative ideas in a thrilling introduction to a pioneering 20th-century mind.

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William Morris (1834–1896) was one of the greatest creative figures of the 19th century. As a visionary designer, as well as a manufacturer, writer, artist, and socialist activist, he pioneered the Arts and Crafts movement of the Victorian era, and left an extraordinary influence on architecture, textile, and interior design. This richly illustrated book offers a suitably beautiful introduction to Morris’s colorful life and all aspects of his design work, including interiors, tiles, embroidery, tapestries, carpets, and calligraphy. Though best known in his lifetime as a poet and author, it is these exquisite designs that secured Morris’s posthumous reputation. As page after page dazzles with their beautiful patterns and forms, we explore the pioneering craftsmanship and natural motifs that inspired them, as well as Morris’s remarkable cultural legacy, through British textiles, Bauhaus, and even modern environmentalism.

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Scottish architect, designer, and painter Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) was one of the earliest pioneers of modern architecture and design. While he did not receive much recognition in his hometown of Glasgow during his lifetime, his bold new blend of simplicity and poetic detail inspired modernists across Europe. Mackintosh’s avant-garde approach embraced a variety of media as well as fresh stylistic devices. His multi-faceted oeuvre incorporated architecture, furniture, graphic design, landscapes, and flower studies. He embraced strong lines, elegant proportions, and natural motifs, combining an adventurous dose of japonisme with a modernist sensibility for function. He preferred bold black typography, restrained shapes, and tall, generous windows suffusing rooms with light. Much of his work was collaborative practice with his wife, fellow artist Margaret Macdonald. The couple made up half of the loose Glasgow collective known as “The Four”; the other two were Margaret’s sister, Frances, and her husband, Herbert MacNair. On the continent, the “Glasgow Style” was met with delight. In Italy, Germany, and, in particular, Austria, artists of the Viennese Secession and Art Nouveau drew much from its rectilinear yet lyrical forms. In this introductory book, we take in Mackintosh’s practice across art, architecture, and design to explore his particular combination of the statuesque and sensual and its vital influence on modernist expression across Europe. Featured projects include his complete scheme for the Willow Tea Rooms and the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art, widely considered Mackintosh’s masterwork.

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From the towering Sagrada Família to the shimmering, textured façade of Casa Batlló and the enchanting landscape of Park Güell, it’s easy to see why Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) gained the epithet “God’s architect.” With fluid forms and mathematical precision, his work extols the wonder of natural creation: columns soar like tree trunks, window frames curve like flowering branches, and ceramic tiling shimmers like scaly, reptilian skin. With this outstanding attention to natural detail, his inspirations from both neo-Gothic and Orientalist aesthetics, and a lifelong commitment to Catalan identity, Gaudí created a unique brand of the Modernista movement which transformed, and defines, Barcelona’s cityscape. With seven of Gaudí’s projects listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, this book introduces the architect’s extraordinary vision and unique legacy, exploring the influences and the details which allow his buildings to impress, inspire, and amaze, one century after their construction.

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Painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and all-round showman Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was one of the 20th century’s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics. One of the first artists to apply the insights of Freudian psychoanalysis to art, he is celebrated in particular for his surrealist practice, with such conceits as the soft watches or the lobster telephone, now hallmarks of the surrealist enterprise, and of modernism in general. Dalí frequently described his paintings as “hand-painted dream photographs.” Their tantalizing tension and interest resides in the precise rendering of bizarre elements and incongruous arrangements. As Dalí himself explained, he painted with “the most imperialist fury of precision,” but only “to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality.”Revolutionizing the role of the artist, the mustache-twirling Dalí also had the intuition to parade a controversial persona in the public arena and, through printmaking, fashion, advertising, writing, and film, to create work that could be consumed and not just contemplated on a gallery wall. This book explores both the painting and the personality of Dalí, introducing his technical skill as well as his provocative compositions and challenging themes of death, decay, and eroticism.

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Largely self-taught as an artist, Francis Bacon (1909–1992) developed a unique ability to transform interior and unconscious impulses into figurative forms and intensely claustrophobic compositions. Emerging into notoriety in the period following World War II, Bacon took the human body as his nominal subject, but a subject ravaged, distorted, and dismembered so as to writhe with intense emotional content. With flailing limbs, hollow voids, and tumurous growths, his gripping, often grotesque, portraits are as much reflections on the trials and the traumas of the human condition as they are character studies. These haunting forms were also among the first in art history to depict overtly homosexual themes.

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We owe a great debt to Jean Baptiste Marc Bourgery (1797–1849) for his Atlas of Anatomy, which was not only a massive event in medical history, but also remains one of the most comprehensive and beautifully illustrated anatomical treatises ever published. Bourgery began work on his magnificent atlas in 1830 in cooperation with illustrator Nicolas Henri Jacob (1782–1871), a student of the French painter Jacques Louis David. The first volumes were published the following year, but completion of the treatise required nearly two decades of dedication; Bourgery lived just long enough to finish his labor of love, but the last of the treatise’s eight volumes was not published in its entirety until five years after his death. The eight volumes of Bourgery’s treatise cover descriptive anatomy, surgical anatomy and techniques (exploring in detail nearly all the major operations that were performed during the first half of the 19th century), general anatomy and embryology, and microscopic anatomy. Jacob’s spectacular hand-colored lithographs are remarkable for their clarity, color, and aesthetic appeal, reflecting a combination of direct laboratory observation and illustrative research. Unsurpassed to this day, the images offer exceptional anatomical insight, not only for those in the medical field but also for artists, students, and anyone interested in the workings and wonder of the human body.

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It started in 1978 with an ordinary coffee shop near Kyoto. Word spread that the waitresses wore no panties under their miniskirts. Similar establishments popped up across the country. Men waited in line outside to pay three times the usual coffee price just to be served by a panty-free young woman. Within a few years, a new craze took hold: the no-panties “massage” parlor. Increasingly bizarre services followed, from fondling clients through holes in coffins to commuter-train fetishists. One particularly popular destination was a Tokyo club called “Lucky Hole” where clients stood on one side of a plywood partition, a hostess on the other. In between them was a hole big enough for a certain part of the male anatomy. Taking the Lucky Hole as his title, Nobuyoshi Araki captures Japan's sex industry in full flower, documenting in more than 800 photos the pleasure-seekers and providers of Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood before the February 1985 New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act put a stop to many of the country's sex locales. Through mirrored walls, bed sheets, the bondage and the orgies, this is the last word on an age of bacchanalia, infused with moments of humor, precise poetry, and questioning interjections.

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Abstraction shook Western art to its core. In the early part of the 20th century, it refuted the reign of clear, indisputable forms and confronted audiences instead with vivid visual poems devoid of conventional representational imagery and characterized by allegories of emotion and sensation. This radical artistic adventure established new artistic means, as much as narratives. Expression became characterized by shocking juxtapositions of color, light, and line. Artists abandoned the conventions of brush and easel and played with new materials and methods of artistic gesture: commercial paints and housepainter’s brushes, working on unstretched and unprimed canvases, moving the canvas to the floor, and applying paint with hands. This essential introduction spans the international breadth, conceptual depth, and seismic impact of abstract art with a thorough survey not only of the big names such as Picasso, Klee, Kline, Rothko, and Pollock, but also lesser-known figures who made equally significant contributions, including Antoni Tàpies, K. O. Götz, Ad Reinhardt, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

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Louis Isadore Kahn (1901–1974) treated each building like a temple. Across the United States, in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Israel, his designs combined the sleek, utilitarian surfaces of modernism with a devotion to geometric forms and a reverence for natural light that suffused his stuctures with a monumental and breathtaking spirituality. This essential introduction brings together 17 of Kahn’s most important buildings across his cultural, governmental, religious, and residential repertoire. Plans, views, descriptions, and quality photographs trace the context and development of each project, while an introductory essay explores Kahn’s unique architectural ideology and his legacy as one of the most important 20th-century American architects since Frank Lloyd Wright. Through Kahn masterworks, such as the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, or Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, we’ll explore Kahn’s his “back to basics” grammar inspired by ancient sites in Italy, Greece, and Egypt; and his unique vocabulary of mass, void, and light that suffused the International Style with a near-celestial luminescence.

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Walter Gropius (1883–1969) set out to build for the future. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, the Berlin-born architect had an inestimable influence on our aesthetic environment, championing a bold new hybrid of light, geometry, and industrial design, as dazzling today as it was a century ago. In this essential architect introduction, we survey Gropius’ evolution and influence with 20 of his most significant projects, from the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, Germany, to the Chicago Tribune Tower and Harvard University Graduate Center, completed after Gropius’s exodus to the United States in 1937. We explore his role both as an architectural practitioner, and as a writer and educator, not only as a Bauhaus pioneer, but also, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as a leading proponent of the International Style. Along the way, we see how many of Gropius’s tenets remain benchmarks for architects, designers, and urbanists today. Whether in his emphasis on a functional beauty or his interest in housing and city planning, Gropius astounds in the agility of his thinking as much as in the luminous precision of his work.

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Very few artists can claim such lasting and worldwide fame and importance as Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). The nickname il divino (“the divine one”) has been applied to him since the 1530s right through to today: his achievements as a sculptor, painter, and architect remain unparalleled and his creations are among the best-known artworks in the world. This Bibliotheca Universalis edition is devoted to the artist’s graphic work, a testimony to his masterly command of line, form, and detail, from architectural studies to anatomically perfect figures. The book brings together some of the artist’s finest drawings from museums and collections around the world as well as some of his own notes and revisions, offering stunning proximity not only to the ambition and scope of Michelangelo’s practice but also his working process. A chapter with a compilation of newly attributed and reattributed drawings provides further insights into Michelangelo’s varied graphic oeuvre and the ongoing exploration of his genius.

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Until his death at age 104, Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) was something of an unstoppable architectural force. Over seven decades of work, he designed approximately 600 buildings, transforming skylines from Bab-Ezzouar, Algeria, to his homeland masterpiece Brasília. Niemeyer’s work took the reduced forms of modernism and infused them with free-flowing grace. In place of pared-down starkness, his structures rippled with sinuous and seductive lines. In buildings such as the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum, Edifício Copan, or the Metropolitan Cathedral in Brasília, he brought curvaceousness to the concrete jungle. In the futuristic federal capital of Brasília, he designed almost all public buildings, and thus became integral to the global image of Brazil. With rich illustrations documenting highlights from his prolific career, this book introduces Niemeyer’s unique vision and its transformative influence on buildings of business, faith, culture, and the public imagination of Brazil.

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) is regarded as one of the key figures in 20th-century European art. A Modernist to his bones, he sent seismic waves through the art world with his hard-edged, intensely colored paintings and disseminated his ideas through Die Brücke art movement and the MUIM-Institut school of modernist painting, both of which he cofounded. Kirchner’s work reconciled past and present through an Expressionist prism, reflecting the latest avant-garde ideas in art, while exploring traditional academic approaches and subjects. His works tackled social, moral, and emotional questions with a fierce intensity. Distorted perspectives, rough lines, and unusual colors were mainstays of his practice, as well as a recurring interest in capturing the human form, whether in frenetic city vistas such as Berlin Street Scene (1913) or in his famously decadent studio. In this introductory book, we explore the stretch of Kirchner’s career through Germany and Switzerland, including his founding of Die Brücke, and his inclusion in the Nazis’ infamous “degenerate art” exhibition in 1937. Along the way, we’ll encounter vivid landscapes, stark nudes, intense urban settings, and, above all, a persistent emphasis on the emotional experience of painter and viewer.

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From court portraits for the Spanish royals to horrific scenes of conflict and suffering, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) made a mark as one of Spain’s most revered and controversial artists. A master of form and light, his influence reverberates down the centuries, inspiring and fascinating artists from the Romantic Eugène Delacroix to Britart enfants terribles, the Chapman brothers. Born in Fuendetodos, Spain, in 1746, Goya was apprenticed to the Spanish royal family in 1774, where he produced etchings and tapestry cartoons for grand palaces and royal residences across the country. He was also patronized by the aristocracy, painting commissioned portraits of the rich and powerful with his increasingly fluid and expressive style. Later, after a bout of illness, the artist moved towards darker etchings and drawings, introducing a nightmarish realm of witches, ghosts, and fantastical creatures. It was, however, with his horrific depictions of conflict that Goya achieved enduring impact. Executed between 1810 and 1820, The Disasters of War was inspired by atrocities committed during the Spanish struggle for independence from the French and penetrated the very heart of human cruelty and sadism. The bleak tones, agitated brushstrokes, and aggressive use of Baroque-like light and dark contrasts recalled Velázquez and Rembrandt, but Goya’s subject matter was unprecedented in its brutality and honesty. In this introductory book from TASCHEN Basic Art 2.0 we set out to explore the full arc of Goya’s remarkable career, from elegant court painter to deathly seer of suffering and grotesquerie. Along the way, we encounter such famed portraits as Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga, the dazzling Naked Maja, and The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, one of the most heart-stopping images of war in the history of art.

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American painter Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) pioneered a new epoch in American art, bursting onto a scene dominated by Abstract Expressionism in late 1950s New York and defining a new art vocabulary for a new era. With his groundbreaking use of industrial production techniques and trivial, quotidian imagery such as cartoons, comic strips, and advertising, Lichtenstein joined contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist to reflect and satirize American mass media and consumer culture. Works such as Look, Mickey! (1961), Drowning Girl (1963), and Whaam! (1963) deployed mass production techniques, particularly Ben-Day dots printing, to create a blow-up effect and pixelated “dot” style, with which Lichtenstein has become synonymous. This book provides an essential overview of Lichtenstein’s career, tracing his earliest Pop statements through to later “brushstroke” retorts to Abstract Expressionism and reinterpretations of modern masterpieces. We look at his leading position in midcentury modernism, and the ways in which his works both critique and chronicle 20th-century America.

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At the turn of the 20th century, architecture took an imaginative leap. As new construction materials and technologies met such far-flung stimuli as the Far East, nirvana, and the unleashed unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis, buildings by the likes of Gaudí, Horta, Hoffmann, Loos, and Mackintosh instilled structure with the sinuous lines of nature, surfaces with a fairy-tale shimmer, and spaces with an ethereal wash of light or shadowy, mysterious hush. For this dramatic portfolio, printed for the first time ever in a book with five colors including gold, the late architectural photographer Keiichi Tahara traveled across Europe to present the finest examples of this Art Nouveau architecture. From the glamorous façade of the Grand Hotel Europa to the elaborate sweep of a staircase or the perfect poise of a single chandelier, Tahara captures the intricate details as much as the holistic spatial effects of these ambitious, marvelous structures. With an eye attuned to the style’s organic detailing, he surveys its floral patterns, vine-like balustrades, and the soft, hollow interiors that seem to summon us into some primordial place. Drenched in sunshine or draped in dramatic shadows, Tahara’s pictures excel in evoking not only the unrivaled aura of these buildings but also the particular, fin-de-siècle spirit of their age, caught on the axis of a century, and characterized by reflection and yearning, as much as technological, philosophical, and political advance. Texts by Riichi Miyake accompany Tahara’s pictures to describe the buildings’ floor plans, designs, and the broader context of their dreamlike environments.Limited and numbered edition of 10,000 copies

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From impossible staircases to tessellated birds, Dutch artist M.C. Escher (1898–1972) crafted a unique graphic language of patterns, puzzles, and mathematics. Dense, complex, and structured by intricate principles, his work is at the same time decorative and playful, toying constantly with optic illusions and the limitations of sensory perception. For mathematicians and scientists, Escher is a mastermind. For hippies, he was the pioneer of psychedelic art. Born in Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands in 1898, Escher’s early works focused on nature and landscapes, with regular exhibitions in Holland, and some international recognition. It was on a trip to the Alhambra Palace in Spain in the 1920s, however, that Escher found his niche. Sketching the patterns of the palace’s Moorish architecture, Escher became captivated by the codependency of forms within and next to each other. Working mainly with lithographs and woodcuts, Escher went on to explore the relationships among shapes, figures, and space with a near-obsessive delight. He reveled in quirky vantage points, multiple perspectives, the transition from paper flatness to illusory volume, and intricate mathematical puzzles such as the Möbius strip, a seemingly infinite loop which twists and recoils on itself in a contortion of apparent physical impossibility. This introductory book taps into Escher’s brilliant mind with key works from his restless investigation of image and perception. Along the way, you’ll find fish morphing into birds, lizards crawling off the page, masterful reflections, infinite mazes, and some of the most mind-bending images of 20th-century art.

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Until restaurants became commonplace in the late 1800s, printed menus for meals were rare commodities reserved for special occasions. As restaurants proliferated, the menu became more than just a culinary listing. The design of the menu became an integral part of eating out and as such menus became a marketing tool and a favored keepsake.Menu Design is an omnibus showcasing the best examples of this graphic art. With nearly 800 examples, illustrated in vibrant color, this deluxe volume not only showcases this extraordinary collection of paper ephemera but serves as a history of restaurants and dining out in America. In addition to the menu covers, many menu interiors are featured providing an epicurean tour and insight into more than a hundred years of dining out. An introduction on the history of menu design by graphic design writer Steven Heller and extended captions by culinary historian John Mariani accompany the menus throughout the book. Various photographs of restaurants round out this compendium that will appeal to anyone who enjoys graphic and gastronomic history.

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The work of Henri Matisse (1869–1954) reflects an ongoing belief in the power of brilliant colors and simple forms. Though famed in particular for his paintings, Matisse also worked with drawing, sculpture, lithography, stained glass, and collage, developing his unique cut-out medium when old age left him unable to stand and paint. Matisse’s subjects were often conventional: nudes, portraits, and figures in landscapes, Oriental scenes, and interior views, but in his handling of bold color and fluid draftsmanship, he secured his place as a 20th-century master. It was Matisse’s palette that particularly thrilled the modern imagination. With vivid blue, amethyst purple, egg-yolk yellow, and many shades beyond he liberated his work from a meticulous representation of reality and sought instead a “vital harmony,” often referring to music as an inspiration or analogy for his work. A comprehensive and informative source, this lavishly illustrated publication includes preparatory studies, full-page reproductions, and enlarged details. Discover the artist's adventurous path, from the chromatic brilliance of his Fauve period, right through to his invention of gouache cut-outs at the ripe age of 80. Each image has been reproduced with painstaking care to create a viewing experience worthy of the expressionist par excellence. The bard of color deserves no less.

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Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a German-born biologist, naturalist, evolutionist, artist, philosopher, and doctor who spent his life researching flora and fauna from the highest mountaintops to the deepest ocean. A vociferous supporter and developer of Darwin’s theories of evolution, he denounced religious dogma, authored philosophical treatises, gained a doctorate in zoology, and coined scientific terms which have passed into common usage, including ecology, phylum, and stem cell. At the heart of Haeckel’s colossal legacy was the motivation not only to discover but also to explain. To do this, he created hundreds of detailed drawings, watercolors, and sketches of his findings which he published in successive volumes, including several marine organism collections and the majestic Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), which could serve as the cornerstone of Haeckel’s entire life project. Like a meticulous visual encyclopedia of living things, Haeckel’s work was as remarkable for its graphic precision and meticulous shading as for its understanding of organic evolution. From bats to the box jellyfish, lizards to lichen, and spider legs to sea anemones, Haeckel emphasized the essential symmetries and order of nature, and found biological beauty in even the most unlikely of creatures. In this book, we celebrate the scientific, artistic, and environmental importance of Haeckel’s work, with a collection of 450 of his finest prints from several of his most important tomes, including Die Radiolarien, Monographie der Medusen, Die Kalkschwämme, and Kunstformen der Natur. At a time when biodiversity is increasingly threatened by human activities, the book is at once a visual masterwork, an underwater exploration, and a vivid reminder of the precious variety of life.

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Greatest of All Time: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali is not just a book; it is a testament to the extraordinary life of one of the world’s most famous athletes. GOAT delves into the intricate layers of Ali’s existence, tracing Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.’s journey from his humble beginnings navigating segregation and financial hardship in Louisville, Kentucky, to his evolution into the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali. Essays by those closest to him reveal stories behind monumental fights like those with Sonny Liston, the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman, and Thrilla in Manila against Joe Frazier. The book also explores Ali’s signature fighting style, which, when paired with his rapper-style wit, positioned him as a charismatic figure inside and outside the ring.Beyond boxing, GOAT weaves together Ali’s historic moments with his resilience against discrimination and his determination to confront racial inequities. His triumph at the 1960 Rome Olympics was marred by hostility, underscoring the racial tensions he faced; Ali boldly challenged these prevailing biases. The boxer’s embrace of Islam became a cornerstone of his moral standards, guiding his principles against racism, inequality, and undue violence, with the latter informing his staunch opposition to the Vietnam War. Interspersed between these accounts are thousands of historical documents and images of Ali, including the boxer’s documentarian-turned-confidant Howard Bingham’s intimate snapshots, Neil Leifer and Flip Schulke’s iconic pictures, and Hank Kaplan’s archival contributions. Stills from Leon Gast's film ‘When We Were Kings’, which told the story of Ali’s pivotal 1974 fight, are also included in the volume.GOAT is a heartfelt homage to a boxing legend, exploring Muhammad Ali’s indomitable spirit and celebrating his enduring impact on civil rights, sports, and culture.

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Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. Literally meaning “pictures of the floating world,” ukiyo-e was a particular woodblock print genre of art that flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries. Subjects ranged from the bright lights and attractions of Edo (modern-day Tokyo), to spectacular natural landscapes. In the West, Hiroshige’s prints became exemplary of the Japonisme that swept through Europe and defined the Western world’s visual idea of Japan. Because they could be mass produced, ukiyo-e works were often used as designs for fans, greeting cards, and book illustrations. The style influenced Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Art Nouveau artists alike, with Vincent van Gogh and James Abbott McNeill Whistler both particularly inspired by Hiroshige’s landscapes. This introductory book presents key images from Hiroshige’s vibrant, vivid portfolio of blooming cherry trees, beautiful women, Kabuki actors, and busy shopping streets to introduce one of the greats of Asian art history.

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Originally from Vienna, Richard Neutra came to America early in his career, settling in California. His influence on postwar architecture is undisputed, the sunny climate and rich landscape being particularly suited to his cool, sleek modern style. Neutra had a keen appreciation for the relationship between people and nature; his trademark plate glass walls and ceilings which turn into deep overhangs have the effect of connecting the indoors with the outdoors. His ability to incorporate technology, aesthetics, science, and nature into his designs brought him to the forefront of Modernist architecture. In this volume, all of Neutra’s works (nearly 300 private homes, schools, and public buildings) are gathered together, illustrated by over 1,000 photographs, including those of Julius Shulman and other prominent photographers.

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Over the course of his artistic career, Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) transformed not only his own style, but the course of art history. From early figurative and landscape painting, he went on to pioneer a spiritual, emotive, rhythmic use of color and line and is today credited with creating the first purely abstract work. As much a teacher and theorist as he was a practicing artist, Kandinsky’s interests in music, theater, poetry, philosophy, ethnology, myth, and the occult, were all essential components to his painting and engraving. He was involved with both the influential Blaue Reiter and Bauhaus groups and left a legacy not only of dazzling visual work, but also of highly influential treatises such as Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Key tenets included the connections between painting, music and mystical experience, and the purification of art away from material realism and towards an emotional expression, condensed in particular by color. This book presents key Kandinsky works to introduce his repertoire of vivid colors, forms, and feelings. Tracing the artist’s radical stylistic development, it shows how one painter’s progression paved the way for generations of abstract expression to come.

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Diego Rivera (1886–1957) is a loud presence on the art historical stage. With devout political principles and a turbulent romantic history, he was at once husband and paladin of Frida Kahlo, advocate and adversary of Stalin’s Soviet Union, and liberator and traitor of Leon Trotsky. Vibrant, graphic, and often monumental, Rivera’s paintings carry the same live political and passionate charge as his personal biography. Fusing European influences such as Cubism with a socialist ideology and an exaltation of Mexico’s indigenous and popular heritage, he created a new iconography for art history and for his country. He became one of the most important figures in the Mexican mural movement and won international acclaim for his public wall paintings, in which he presented a utopian yet accessible vision of a post-revolutionary Mexico. In 1931, Rivera was the subject of MoMA’s second ever monographic exhibition. This book explores the unique blend of influence and ideology which secure Rivera’s place as both a unique and a universal painter, bound to the particular turbulent experience of early 20th century Mexico, and yet preoccupied with subjects such as revolution and class inequity which continue to speak to us today.

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One of the most accomplished human beings who ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci (14521519) remains a quintessential Renaissance genius. The perfect companion to the Leonardo Graphic Work edition, this book is a compact catalogue raisonné of all of the artist's masterful paintings. Drawn from our best-selling XXL edition, the book traces the artist's life and work across 10 chapters, presenting all known paintings and drawing on his letters, contracts, diary entries, and writings to explore the man behind such groundbreaking artworks. From Virgin of the Rocks to Virgin and Child with St. Anne to the ever-beguiling Mona Lisa, you'll find some of the finest treasures of the Louvre, Prado, and National Gallery, London here, as well as Leonardo works lost to time, but no less startling in their precision and poise.

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One of the most accomplished human beings who ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci (14521519) remains a quintessential Renaissance genius. The perfect companion to the Leonardo Graphic Work edition, this book is a compact catalogue raisonné of all of the artist's masterful paintings. Drawn from our best-selling XXL edition, the book traces the artist's life and work across 10 chapters, presenting all known paintings and drawing on his letters, contracts, diary entries, and writings to explore the man behind such groundbreaking artworks. From Virgin of the Rocks to Virgin and Child with St. Anne to the ever-beguiling Mona Lisa, you'll find some of the finest treasures of the Louvre, Prado, and National Gallery, London here, as well as Leonardo works lost to time, but no less startling in their precision and poise.

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Few devotees of the form can approach Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn's radical contributions to self-portraiture. Challenging the conventions enshrined by his predecessors, Rembrandt transformed the art into a fully realized medium capable of communicating emotional depth rather than favorably immortalizing one's likeness in the finest trappings of luxury. With more than 80 works spanning paintings, etchings, and drawings, the Dutchman's lifelong practice of self-portraiture functions as a means of concretizing that which is fleeting. Across four decades, one constant is particularly striking across media and stylesRembrandt's dedication to presenting himself from multiple perspectives, celebrating the multiplicity of the individual and championing the unfiltered portrayal of emotional expression.Apart from the thematic concerns present within Rembrandt's suite of self-portraits, the wor

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Dazzling in scale, diversity and detail, the world never ceases to open our eyes and captivate our curiosity. Ever since the earliest cave paintings, humans have looked at this Earth that is our home and endeavored to understand it.This expansive visual atlas presents the most exciting, creative and inspiring ways of explaining the world in information graphics. Divided into five chapters, the book covers the environment, technology, economics, society, and culture to reveal some of the Earth’s greatest intricacies in accessible visual form. Featuring more than 280 graphics, reproduced in large scale including seven fold-out spreads, the collection focuses on the 21st century, but also includes historical masterpieces to put our current situation into perspective.Nigel Holmes introduces the book with an exclusive infographic of his own, while Sandra Rendgen provides an illustrated historical essay to explore how we have studied and interpreted our world over the centuries. With graphics drawn from such sources as Fortune, National Geographic, and The Guardian, this is not only a showcase of outstanding data design, but also a fascinating digest of where and how we live.

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Vices or virtues: drinking and smoking provided marketers with products to be forged into visual feasts. In this lush compendium of advertisements, we explore how depictions of these commodities spanned from the elegant to the offbeat, revealing how manufacturers prodded their customers throughout the 20th century to imbibe and inhale. Each era’s alcohol and tobacco trends are exuberantly captured page after page, with brand images woven into American popular culture so effectively that almost anyone could identify such icons as the Marlboro Man or Spuds MacKenzie, figures so familiar they could appear in ads without the product itself. Other advertisers devised clever and subliminal approaches to selling their wares, as the wildly successful Absolut campaign confirmed. Even doctors contributed to an improbable propaganda, testifying that smoking could calm your nerves and soothe your throat, while hailing liquor as an elixir capable of bringing social success. Whether you savor these visual delights, or enjoy inhaling and wallowing in forbidden pleasures, you will certainly be thrilled by this exploration of a decidedly vibrant—and sometimes controversial—chapter of advertising history.

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Urban islands and bamboo hideaways set the stage for a pop culture phenomenon like no other. In mid-century America, the imaginative appeal of Tiki penetrated fashion, music, eating, drinking, and architecture. In handy Bibliotheca Universalis format, Tiki Pop traces the development of Tiki as romantic vision and cultural appropriation. Follow Tiki from James Cook's first Pacific Island expeditions, through Gauguin's exotic paintings, Hollywood jungle fantasies, and elaborate temples erected to celebrate Tiki as the god of recreation. With hundreds of images, Tiki the pop icon unfolds from its earliest, enthusiastic beginnings to its spectacular downfall in the dawning awareness of the Western world’s colonial misdeeds. This book is the culmination of the extensive research of Sven Kirsten, urban archaeologist, Tiki sage, and author of earlier TASCHEN investigations, The Book of Tiki and Tiki Modern, which first recovered the figure of Tiki from obscurity. In his widely lauded graphic style, Kirsten places venerable ancient godheads next to their Polynesian pop counterparts, movie posters next to matchboxes, comic strips next to Robinson Crusoe illustrations. The result is at once a visual feast, a piece of cultural history, and a tribute to a very particular vision of paradise.

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Tamara de Lempicka (1898–1980) lived art in the fast lane. With an appetite for glamour and fame as much as Left Bank bohemianism, she fled her native Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and set about taking Paris by storm. Her prolific, monumental oeuvre remains one of the most vivid visual documents of 1920s Art Deco. De Lempicka’s style deployed cool colors and tight post-cubist forms into an at once neoclassical and voluptuous figuration. Her subjects are often nude and always sensual, aloof, and powerful. Bedecked in seductive light and textures, they command our attention but typically avert their gaze with an aspect of haughty grandeur. They include both high-society patrons and progressive portraits of emancipated and lesbian women, such as Women Bathing and Portrait of Suzy Solidor. De Lempicka’s notorious Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, meanwhile, was commissioned for the cover of German magazine Die Dame and became an icon of speed, sophistication, and female independence. Through some of de Lempicka’s finest, most compelling portraits, this introduction explores the artist’s unique visual language and its privileged place not only in the annals of interwar art but also in the history of female artists and our collective consciousness of the Roaring Twenties.

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Though numbering just 35 known works, the œuvre of Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) is hailed as one of the most important and inspiring portfolios in art history. His paintings have prompted a New York Times best seller, a film starring Scarlett Johansson, and record visitor numbers at art institutions from Amsterdam to Washington. Vermeer’s subjects focus on daily domestic activities, from letter writing to music playing to preparations in the kitchen. The scenes astound with their meticulous detail, majestic planes of light, and with Vermeer’s extraordinary ability to draw out narrative intrigues. In such beloved paintings as Lady Standing at a Virginal, A Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid and, most famously, the enigmatic, wide-eyed, and enchanting Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer evokes not only the effects of substance and texture, but also the many stories and secrets that reside beneath the surface. Featuring all Vermeer’s known works and succinct, accessible texts, this essential introduction explores Vermeer’s leading place in art history and his unique ability to transform oil paint into a living, breathing scene of human life.

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