Museums & Collections Books - Page 12

John Singer Sargent: The Later Portraits

Richard Ormond, Elaine Kilmurray

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This sumptuous book is the third volume of the definitive catalogue raisonnŽ of the work of the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). Comprising over two hundred portraits and portrait sketches in oil and watercolor painted between 1900 and the artist's death in 1925, this book completes the trilogy of portrait volumes. The catalogued works have been grouped into two chronological sections, each with an introduction that sets the particular group in context. There is also a section of undated portraits and an appendix listing previously unrecorded works. Each work is documented in depth: entries include traditional data about the painting or watercolor; details of the work's provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography; a short biography of the sitter; a discussion of the circumstances in which the work was created; and a critical discussion of its subject matter, style, and significance in Sargent's career. Most of the works are reproduced in color. There is also an illustrated inventory of Sargent's studio props and accessories and a cross-referenced checklist of the portraits in which they appear.

Graffiti Planet: The Best Graffiti from Around the World

Alan Ket

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Graffiti or "street art" has been a significant art form for more than 20 years, altering and shaping the urban landscape from Tokyo to Paris, Los Angeles to Sydney, Belfast to Berlin. Ever-changing and evolving, its anonymous, transient nature means it literally can appear one day and disappear the next. Yet out of this shifting mass of spray paint, some true stars have emerged—artists such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Banksy—as well as countless unsung heroes who have taken the form to new heights. This book is a celebration of the endless creativity of the medium, featuring 100 glossy photos of groundbreaking graffiti from around the world, and including an introduction by the editor, Ket. It is a perfect introduction to the subject for anyone excited by this most vibrant and democratic of art forms.

Frida Kahlo

Hayden Herrera, Victor Zamudio-Taylor, Frida Kahlo

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Few artists have captured the public's imagination with the force of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. During her lifetime, she was best known as the flamboyant wife of celebrated muralist Diego Rivera. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship: Rivera declared himself to be "unfit for fidelity." As if to assuage her pain, Kahlo recorded the vicissitudes of her marriage in paint. She also recorded the misery of her deteriorating health--the orthopedic corsets that she was forced to wear, the numerous spinal surgeries, the miscarriages and therapeutic abortions. The artist's sometimes harrowing imagery is mitigated by an intentional primitivism and small scale, as well as by her sardonic humor and extraordinary imagination. In celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Kahlo's birth, this major new monograph is published on the occasion of the 2007-08 traveling exhibition. It features the artist's most renowned work--the hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits--as well as a selection of key portraits and still lifes; more than 100 color plates, from Kahlo's earliest works, made in 1926, to her last, in 1954; critical essays by Elizabeth Carpenter, Hayden Herrera and Victor Zamudio-Taylor; and a selection of photographs of Kahlo and Rivera by preeminent photographers of the period, including Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Gisele Freund, Tina Modotti and Nickolas Muray. The catalogue also contains snapshots from the artist's own photo albums of Kahlo with family and friends such as Andre Breton and Leon Trotsky--some of which have never been published, and several of which Kahlo inscribed with dedications, effaced with self-deprecating marks or kissed with a lipstick trace--plus an extensive illustrated timeline, selected bibliography, exhibition history and index.

Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft

Simon Houpt

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Priceless masterpieces…
Brazen thefts:
The true story behind the blank spaces on the museum walls.
 
 
What kind of person would dare to steal a legendary painting—and who would buy something so instantly recognizable? In recent years, art theft has captured the public imagination more than ever before, spurred by both real life incidents (the snatching of Edvard Munch’s well-known masterwork The Scream) and the glamorous fantasy of such Hollywood films as The Thomas Crown Affair. The truth is, according to INTERPOL records, more than 20,000 stolen works of art are missing—including Rembrandts, Renoirs, van Goghs, and Picassos. Museum of the Missing offers an intriguing tour through the underworld of art theft, where the stakes are high and passions run strong. Not only is the volume beautifully written and lavishly illustrated—if all the paintings presented here could be gathered in one museum it would be one of the finest collections in existence—it tells a story as fascinating as any crime novel. This gripping page-turner features everything from wartime plundering to audacious modern-day heists, from an examination of the criminals’ motivations to a look at the professionals who spend their lives hunting down the wrongdoers. Most breathtaking of all, this invaluable resource offers a “Gallery of Missing Art,” an extensive section showcasing stolen paintings that remain lost—including information about the theft and estimated present-day value—and which may never be seen again. 
 

Maria Sibylla Merian and Daughters: Women of Art and Science

Ella Reitsma

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Editorial Review:

This gorgeously illustrated book presents the life and work of Maria Sibylla Merian, who defied the conventions of her time to pursue her passion for documenting the natural world in all its glorious, and sometimes ferocious, detail.
After more than fifteen years of marriage to a fellow artist and the birth of two daughters, Merian left her husband. She began to support herself by selling watercolors of insects, fruit, and flowers, eventually establishing an art business in Amsterdam with her daughters, Johanna Helen and Dorothea Maria. Merian's innovative compositional style--displaying the life cycle of an insect against the background of its host plant--developed out of her own careful and painstakingly recorded observations of insect metamorphoses.
Ella Rietsma is the first author to attempt to separate Merian's work from that of her two daughters, who collaborated extensively with their mother. Writing in a lively, accessible style, Reitsma includes newly discovered drawings and fresh biographical details. This book coincides with an exhibition of Merian's work on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from June 10 through August 31, 2008.

Jewish Museums of the World: Masterpieces of Judaica

Grace Cohen Grossman

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Editorial Review:

Jewish Museums of the World celebrates more than 150 Jewish museums from every point on the globe. Treasures from unexpected collections are featured in more than 400 illustrations, whose scope spans ceremonial to fine arts to history. A directory of all the museums contained in the book, as well as other, important sites of Jewish historical interest, provides basic information, including phone, fax, and Web sites. Combing the breadth of knowledge, the magnificence of the illustrations, and the inclusion of its encompassing directory, this book will make you feel as if you’ve taken a virtual tour of Jewish museums around the world.

ABC of Men's Fashion

Sir Hardy Amies

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“A man should look as if he has bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care, and then forgotten all about them.”

For all men—and indeed all women who are interested in men’s clothes—here is an alphabetical guide to men’s fashion written with wit and expert knowledge. From the etiquette of dressing for all occasions to the meaning of technical terms, Hardy Amies’s skillful eye guides you safely through style decisions on everything from blazers and brogues to skiing and sandals. No man can afford to be without this classic style bible.

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE:

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, September 22, 2007–January 6, 2008

”There’s no such thing as a designer of menswear-—it’s only history. The suit around the world is based on the english suit, which began in about 1670.

Any man, whether he’s american, japanese, french or whatever, who wants to be seriously well dressed, looks to the englishman’s suit for how to achieve it.”—from abc of men’s fashion

Salvador Dali. 1904-1989

Robert Descharnes, Gilles Neret

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Riding Dali's Roller-Coaster 5 out of 5 stars.
42 of 44 people found this review helpful.

As a college art major I developed a distaste for Dali and his art, even referring to him as a "pimp" in an essay. I was turned off by his commercialism and his overly-polished style. But over the years my opinion began to shift, and the major retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art has completely renovated my appreciation for the man and his art.

This huge and handsome tome is the catalogue for the Philly retrospective, and includes hundreds of color images along with insights into the thought behind the imagery. The book takes you through his youthful experiments in post-impressionism and cubism (there are a few works you'd swear were by Picasso!), into his affiliation with Surrealism, his development of his personal "paranoiac-critical" method, and his later interests in physics and conversion to Catholicism. The middle section of the book and exhibit includes hundreds of his best-known and most widely-admired paintings, but surprises abound in the early and later sections, with works most people never knew he created.

What struck me most in the show and the book was how thoroughly dedicated Dali was to his art, and how intellectually involved his work was. His draughtsmanship was also so acute as to defy belief. I realize now that I was sold so completely on his posture as an eccentric personality, that I lost sight of the power of his art. But this show and book reveal how truly special and significant Dali was as an artist, art theorist, and explorer of the hinterlands of the mind and soul.

Editorial Review:

Picasso called Dali "an outboard motor that's always running". Dali thought himself a genius with a right to indulge in whatever lunacy popped into his head. Painter, sculptor, writer and film maker, Salvador Dali (1904 - 1989) was one of the century's greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics - and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting. He brought extraordinary sensitivity, imagination and concern for precision to bear upon submerged levels of consciousness. This lively biography presents the infamous Surrealist in full colour and in his own words. His provocative ideas are all here, from the soft watches to the notorious burning giraffe. And the fantastic phenomenon that was Salvador Dali is grasped entire, and placed in his various contexts.

James Castle: A Retrospective (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

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James Castle (1899-1977) never learned to speak, read, or write, nor did he ever leave his native state of Idaho, and yet he created a wide range of extraordinary works that resonate with much of twentieth-century art. This book offers the first critical exploration of the many creative genres of this self-taught artist, who first came to notice in the 1950s and 1960s but has only recently been recognized by major museums.Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 full-colour reproductions and packaged with an original documentary DVD illuminating fascinating aspects of his life and art, this book examines Castle's drawings, colour-wash works, idiosyncratic cardboard and paper constructions, and word, sign, and symbol pieces. As a child he developed his favourite medium and method of working, mixing stove soot with saliva and applying this "ink" with sharpened sticks and cotton wads to such found materials as product packaging and discarded paper. These everyday materials have given his works a singular, immediate, and appealing natural quality.This engaging volume considers Castle's remarkable art from a variety of perspectives, examining his life, modes of depiction, working methods and materials, and the "visual poetry" of his text works.

1000 Chairs

Charlotte Fiell, Peter Fiell, Simone Philippi

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

excellent purchase if you like chairs and design 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The order came in quickly, book was in tip-top condition. You can cnsider this a quality book if you like chairs and the history and the evolvement of design in chairs. The pictures are fun to look at and you can marvel at the creativity of the designers.

Editorial Review:

The ubiquitous chair in all its shapes and forms (TASCHEN's 25th anniversary special edition) More than any other piece of furniture, the chair has been subjected to the wildest dreams of the designers. The particular curve of a back-rest, or the twist of a leg, the angle of a seat or the colour of the entire artefact all reflect the stylistic consciousness of each era. From Gerrit Rietveld and Alvar Aalto via Verner Panton to Eva Zeisel; from Art Nouveau to International Style, from Pop Art to Postmodernism, the phenomenon of the chair is so complex that it requires a reference work as comprehensive as this to do it full justice. They are all here: Thonet's bentwood chairs and Hoffmann's sitting-machines, Marcel Breuer's Wassily chair and Ron Arad's avant garde armchairs. The book, a slightly abbreviated version of our classic title 1000 Chairs, devotes one page to each chair, displayed on its own as pure form, with biographical and historical information about the chair.