Книги по истории искусства

An accessible, comprehensive, freshly-updated celebration of the vast range of human artistry from 28,000 BC to today

Brought completely up to date for this revised edition and now available in a compact new format, this new edition of Phaidon's groundbreaking book presents art differently from all other compendia by revealing the huge diversity – or in many cases, the similarity – of artistic achievements around the globe. Images of more than 600 works from all periods and regions are arranged in chronological order, each with a short text that puts the work in critical context and explains its contribution to the development of art history.

5000 Years of Tiles is the essential, single-volume colour compendium of tile art and production around the world, from ancient times to the present day.

Over 350 beautiful colour illustrations showcase an incredible range of tile arts, including the first fired roof tiles in ancient Greece in the third millennium BC, English medieval floor pavements from Clarendon Palace, figural tiles from China, richly patterned Iznik tiles from the Islamic world and stylized ceramic tiles of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Placing the tiles firmly in their historical and cultural context, this richly illustrated book highlights the continuity and diversity of tiles, examining how tile art in one time and place has inspired and rejuvenated those in others. The function and form of this versatile art is examined in stunning detail, from floors to roofs, stoves to bathrooms, cathedrals to metro stations to reveal a fascinating history of design, colour and decoration.

Hailed by The Times as 'a pearl of a book', this new narrative history of the Renaissance by one of the UK’s foremost art critics takes in the whole of Europe and its global context

What was the 'Renaissance'? In the nineteenth century this flowering of creativity and thought was celebrated as the birth of the modern world. Today many historians are sceptical about its very existence. Earthly Delights rekindles the Renaissance as a seismic change in European mentalities, in a panoramic history that encompasses Florence and Bruges, London and Nuremberg. Artists from northern as well as southern Europe, including Leonardo, Bosch, Bruegel and Titian, star in a captivating and beautifully illustrated narrative that sets their lives against a period of convulsive change across a continent that was finding itself as it ‘discovered’ the world.

Art critic and writer Jonathan Jones tells the story of Renaissance artists as pioneers, adventurers and ‘geniuses’, a Renaissance concept. Albrecht Dürer gazes with wonder on Aztec art in Brussels in 1520, Leonardo da Vinci tries to perfect a flying machine, Hieronymus Bosch finds inspiration in West African ivory carvings imported by the Portuguese to Antwerp. A then unknown Netherlandish painter, Pieter Bruegel, arrives in 1550s Rome just as Michelangelo is striving in the same city to raise the new St Peter’s Basilica towards heaven. From Atlantic voyages to Germanic woods, Italian palazzi to the royal castle of Prague, this was an age when people dared to experiment with the occult and dabble in utopias: to think and create new worlds.

About the Author:

Jonathan Jones is the art critic for the Guardian newspaper. He is the author of several books including The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel that Defined the Renaissance (2010), The Loves of the Artists: Art and Passion in the Renaissance (2013), Sensations: The Story of British Art from Hogarth to Banksy (2019) and Artemisia Gentileschi (2020). Jones was also a member of the jury for the 2009 Turner Prize and has appeared in the BBC series Private Life of a Masterpiece. He was Series Consultant for BBC2’s Civilisations and is a frequent contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Front Row.

Contents List:

Introduction
1. The Arnolfini Nude
2. The Naked Citizen
3. The Triumph of Love
4. Profane Angels
5. Worldly Knowledge
6. Haywain To Hell
7. The Garden of Earthly Delights
8. Render Unto Caesar
9. Melancholia
10. Pulse of Life
11. Judgements
12. Carnival and Lent
13. Curiosities

The Saint Louis Art Museum has assembled one of North America’s largest and most comprehensive collections of German Expressionist paintings. Rediscover a defining movement of modern art through this original study of works by 25 artists who span its famously wide arc.

This is the first publication on the Saint Louis Art Museum’s internationally renowned collection of German Expressionist art, which includes major works by the movement’s leading artists and lesser-known figures rarely seen outside of Germany. Engaging entries delve into the paintings’ histories, from their production to their arrival in St. Louis. An introduction traces the collection’s origins to the flood of Expressionist art that entered the United States during World War II. What emerges is a new account of a pivotal era in modern art.

About the Author:

Melissa Venator is assistant curator of modern art at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Holbein at the Tudor Court focuses on the internationally significant collection of portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection.

This richly illustrated publication has essays on the artist, his sitters and on the history of his work in the Royal Collection.

Holbein at the Tudor Court focuses on the internationally significant collection of portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection. These portraits, in drawing, miniature and painting, date almost exclusively from Holbein's period as the pre-eminent artist at the court of Henry VIII.

This richly illustrated publication has essays on the artist, his sitters and on the history of his work in the Royal Collection, and a series of entries on individual works - looking at both on the work of art and on the identity of the sitter featured, and uses, where possible voices from the period (as found in letters, poems, administrative records and diplomatic accounts) to bring alive the world of the sixteenth-century English court.

About the Author:

Kate Heard is Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, Royal Collection Trust. Her previous publications include George IV: Art and Spectacle (2019), The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy (2014) and High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson (2013).

This groundbreaking study of avant-garde art produced in Ukraine between 1900 and the 1930s accompanies a major international exhibition opening at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid before traveling to other venues in Europe.

How does artistic life flourish during revolution and conflict? Ukraine in the early 1900s endured unimaginable political upheaval, yet this became a period of true renaissance in Ukrainian art, literature, theatre and cinema.

In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s presents the ground-breaking art produced in Ukraine in the early 20th century, focusing on the three key cultural centres of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa. Against a complicated socio-political backdrop of collapsing empires, World War I, the revolutions of 1917 with the ensuing Ukrainian War of Independence, and the eventual creation of Soviet Ukraine, several strands of distinctly Ukrainian art emerged.

While émigrés such as Sonia Delaunay and Alexander Archipenko found fame outside their homeland, the followers of Mykhailo Boichuk focused on Byzantine revivalism, and the artists of the Kultur Lige sought to promote the development of contemporary Yiddish culture. The first avant-garde exhibitions in Ukraine featured the radical art of Davyd Burliuk and Alexandra Exter, and the dynamic canvases of the Kyiv-based Cubo-Futurist Oleksandr Bohomazov. In Kharkiv, Vasyl Yermilov championed the industrial art of Constructivism, while Vadym Meller, Anatol Petrytskyi, Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov and Borys Kosarev revolutionized theatre design. The attempt to build a national identity in Ukraine resulted in a polyphony of styles and artistic developments across a full range of media – from oil paintings, sketches and sculpture to collages, cinema posters and theatre designs.

Twelve internationally renowned scholars, including curators from the National Art Museum of Ukraine, bring to life this astonishing period of creativity in Ukraine and all the movements it encompassed.

Table of Contents:

Foreword
Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Konstantin Akinsha

I. Kyiv

From Kyiv to Paris: The Cosmopolitanism of Alexandra Exter
Katia Denysova

The Beginning: The First Avant-Garde Exhibitions in Ukraine
Olena Kashuba-Volvach

The Art Section of the Kultur Lige: Yiddish Avant-Garde Art in Kyiv (1918–1922)
Hillel Kazovsky

Oleksandr Bohomazov: The Ukrainian Version of Futurism
Olena Kashuba-Volvach

Boichukism
Myroslava M. Mudrak

Bauhaus on the Banks of Dnipro
Olena Kashuba-Volvach

II: Kharkiv

The Tragic Sensuality of the Kharkiv Avant-Garde
Tetiana Zhmurko

Constructor Vasyl Yermylov: A Captive of the Material World 
Konstantin Akinsha

Visual and Spatial Experiments in Ukrainian Scenography of the 1920s
Olena Kovalchuk

Ivan Kavaleridze: Searching for the Hero of the New Age
Oksana Barshynova

Nova heneratsiia (1927–1930)
Myroslava M. Mudrak

III. Odesa

The Odesa Society of Independent Artists
Olha Barkovska

From Symbolism to Avant-Garde: The Emancipation of Ukrainian Cinema in the 1920s
Ivan Kozlenko

IV. Aftermath

In the Shadow of Russia: Ukrainian Art at the XVI Venice Biennale of 1928
Olena Kashuba-Volvach & Maryna Drobotiuk

The Émigrés from Ukraine: Archipenko, Delaunay and Baranoff-Rossiné
Katia Denysova

From Oblivion to Glory: Spetsfond or The Special Secret Holding
Yuliia Lytvynets

Plates
Authors’ Biographies
Picture Credits
Index

About the Author:

Konstantin Akinsha studied at the Shevchenko Art School in Kyiv, Ukraine, and in 1986 completed an MA in art history at the Moscow State University. He completed a PhD in art history at the University of Edinburgh. In the course of his career, Konstantin Akinsha has been curator at the Kyiv Museum of Western and Oriental Art, Moscow correspondent for ARTnews, contributing editor for ARTnews magazine, New York, as well as a Research Fellow at both the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, and Bremen Kunstverein, East European Institute of Bremen University. From 1999 to 2000 he was also Deputy Research Director, Art and Cultural Property, Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, Washington, D.C. In 2006 he became the European Correspondent for ARTnews magazine in Budapest, and in 2007 he also became a Eugene and Davmel Shklar Fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. Akinsha has written a number of books, including Stolen Treasure (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), co-authored with Gregorii Kozlov, and The Holy Place, co-authored with Gregorii Kozlov and Sylvia Hochfield (Yale University Press, 2007).

The spectacular beauty of Raphael’s tapestries as you have never seen it before

In 1515, Pope Leo X commissioned the Italian painter Raffaello Sanzio (1483–1520), now generally known as Raphael in English, to make the cartoons for a series of ten tapestries with scenes from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul. This commission played an instrumental part in the stylistic development of the Flemish tapestries, a marvellous illustration of princely splendour in the sixteenth century. Under Habsburg rule, Brussels soon emerged as a leading manufactory for exquisite products. Raphael’s designs are among the most successful series in the history of tapestry production.

This publication shows the enormous richness of the tapestries through dozens of details. It accompanies a collection exhibition of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, home to the former imperial tapestry collection, from 26 September 2023 to 14 January 2024.

About the Author:

Curator of the Kunstkammer and Tapestries, Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) in Vienna (Wien), Austria.
 

Illustrious turning point - Augsburg as the centre of the German Renaissance.

Hans Holbein the Elder and Hans Burgkmair are regarded alongside Albrecht Dürer as the forerunners of Renaissance painting in Germany. The prosperous Imperial and trading city of Augsburg was an important centre during this artistic golden age. By means of high-quality works this volume presents a comprehensive insight into the epochal revolution from the Middle Ages to the modern age.

Augsburg was influenced by the humanist culture of Italy from an early stage. Thanks to the art-loving trading houses with international operations like the Fuggers, as well as the long sojourns of Emperor Maximilian I and the frequent Imperial diets, the city offered artists like Holbein the Elder and Burgkmair an ideal setting for the development of a new form of art. Together with the works of Dürer, Holbein the Younger and others, many of their most important works bear witness to the highly fertile and yet contrasting ways in which the two artists adopted the Italian Renaissance.

About the Authors:

Guido Messling is the curator for German Painting in the Gallery of Painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Jochen Sander is the deputy director and head of collections for Dutch, Flemish and German Painting before 1800 at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.

 

A revised edition of a classic title, now with digitally restored photographs, showcasing the finest surviving examples of ancient Buddhist art.
'Benoy K. Behl's remarkable photographs, painstakingly gathered and digitally restored over thirty years of hard labour, are probably the best and truest record of these fabulous treasures that will ever be created.' William Dalrymple

A revised edition of a classic title, now with digitally restored photographs, showcasing the finest surviving examples of ancient Buddhist art.

Since their chance re-discovery in 1819, the breathtaking paintings and sculptures of the Ajanta caves have inspired and delighted experts and amateurs alike. Ranging in date from the second century BCE to the sixth century CE, these ancient Buddhist artworks rank among the world's most important cultural treasures. Benoy K. Behl captured the beauty and luminosity of these works using long exposures and only natural light and now presents them here digitally restored to show the paintings closer to their original glory than ever before.

The exquisite murals, depicting the tales of previous incarnations of Buddha, scenes of princely processions and fantastical birds and beasts, provide virtually the only evidence of painting styles that first developed in India and remain crucially important to the understanding of Buddhist art throughout Asia. On UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites, the Ajanta caves survive as a potent symbol of the great beauty of India's rich artistic past.

This new edition provides for the first time a view of some of the masterpieces of Ajanta painstakingly digitally restored by Behl. Sensitively carried out, the restoration makes the paintings clearer without interfering with their original grace and nuance, leading to a deeper appreciation of their artistry. Accompanied by expert commentaries to fully immerse the reader in the cultural context of the murals, this book will help preserve the legacy of the glorious art of Ajanta for years to come.

About the Author:

Benoy K. Behl is an art historian, film-maker and photographer who is known for his tireless and prolific output of work over the past forty-six years. He has taken over 53,000 photographs of Asian monuments and art heritage and made 145 documentaries on subjects of art and culture.

A concise, accessible, and up- to-date overview of the arts of Africa from prehistoric times to the present day.

A concise, accessible and up-to-date overview of the arts of Africa from prehistoric times to the present day.

This indispensable introductory guide explores the art of the African continent from its early origins over 150,000 years ago to the contemporary, set in the context of post-colonial debates, the restitution of cultural objects and artefacts, and the challenges of the present. This enormous and complex field of study, once under-appreciated by the Western art world, is now of global importance and an essential subject of education in art history.

For ease of reference and analysis, this indispensable guide is structured chronologically into manageable and meaningful chapters covering ancient art, the Middle Ages, travel and trade, encounters with Europe in the age of exploration, the colonial era, the rebuilding of the continent in recent times, and contemporary art. It addresses core, continent-wide themes in African visual and cultural expression, from the life-cycle (motherhood, children, initiation, religion) to the body and representations of power dynamics. Important regional artistic expressions are also explored, such as the cultures of Mali (the Western Sudan), Nigeria (the lower Niger and Benue area), the Congo Basin and various nomadic populations across the continent.

Written from an inclusive modern perspective, focusing not only on royal traditions but also the broader global history of the continent and its artistic practices, this is an excellent introduction for students, museum visitors and anyone with an interest in fine art, African history and cultural studies.

About the Author:

Suzanne Blier is Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and a leading expert on African art, architecture and culture. Her many books include A History of Art in Africa (co-author, 2000), Royal Arts of Africa (2012), Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba (2015) and The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art (with David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 2017).

A new edition of this classic collection of letters, critical reviews and reminiscences by Impressionist artists and their contemporaries.

The Impressionists - Monet, Manet, Degas, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley and others - are probably the most popular of all artistic schools. Their struggle to impose a new vision is one of the most absorbing in the whole history of art. With imagination and insight, art historian Bernard Denvir brings Impressionism into focus by showing it through the eyes of the artists themselves and their contemporaries, against the background of the time.

Through letters, critical reviews, statements and reminiscences - whether explosive or appreciative, blinkered or perceptive - of the people who were there, the story of this ground-breaking art movement comes alive. This was the age of innovation, political liberalization, emergent photography and modern ideas about perception. The Impressionists had new ways of painting, but they also had a new world to paint.

This revised edition now features full colour reproductions of art throughout and an updated bibliography.

About the Author:

Bernard Denvir was a distinguished art critic, art historian and writer. He was head of the Department of Art History at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, a member of the Council for Academic Awards, and for several years President of the British section of the International Association of Art Critics. He wrote widely on art, including books on Chardin, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism.

Contents List:

Introduction
Documents 1855–1871
Impressionist colour Documents
1. 1871–1873
2. 1874–1876
3. 1877–1881
4. 1882–1885
5. 1886–1894
6. 1895–1920
Biographies
Chronology
Bibliographical note
List of illustrations

One of the most famous and popular books on art ever written

The Story of Art, one of the most famous and popular books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over four decades. Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject.

For the first time in many years, the book has been completely redesigned. The illustrations, now in colour throughout, have all been improved and reoriginated, and include six fold-outs. The text has been revised and updated where appropriate, and a number of significant new artists have been incorporated. The bibliographies have been expanded and updated, and the maps and charts redrawn.

The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur.

About the Author:

Sir Ernst Gombrich’s standing in the world of art and his popularity with experts and a vast general readership remain unrivalled. Born in Vienna, he came to London in 1936 to work at the Warburg Institute, where he became director from 1959 until his retirement in 1976. He won numerous honors, including a knighthood, the Order of Merit, and the Goethe, Hegel, and Erasmus prizes.

A lively introduction to and history of international contemporary art from 1960 to the present

What does it mean?
Is it really art?
Why does it cost so much?
While these questions are perpetually asked about contemporary art, they are not the questions that E. H. Gombrich set out to answer in his seminal book The Story of Art. Contemporary art is very different from what came before. From the 1960s, where Gombrich’s account concludes, artists began to abandon traditional forms of art and started to make work that questioned art’s very definition. This is where Godfrey picks up the story.

Developments in contemporary art have followed no straightforward line of progress or sequence of movements. Recognizing this, Tony Godfrey creates a narrative from a series of often dramatic creative conflicts and arguments around what art is or should be. From object versus sculpture and painting versus conceptual to local versus global, gallery versus wider world, The Story of Contemporary Art traces a history in terms of drastic changes in social and political life over the last sixty years.

How do we experience being human in a world that seems to change so quickly? In exploring art’s relationship to this question, Godfrey asserts that multiple voices must be heard: critics, theorists, curators and collectors, but also audiences and artists themselves. Key to the book is the story of how a perception that art was made almost exclusively by white men from North America and Western Europe has been radically overturned. Compelling and intelligent, but never academic, this book tells us how.

About the Author:

Tony Godfrey, former Programme Director of the MA in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute, London, now lives in Manila, where he works as a curator with artists from South-East Asia. He has written for the Burlington Magazine and Art in America, and is the author of Conceptual Art and Painting Today, as well as numerous exhibition catalogues.

Brushwork and poetry – the great awakening of Venetian painting around 1500.

In the Venice of the Renaissance, master artists like Bellini, Giorgione, Palma Vecchio and Titian explored the essence of mankind and nature and their relationship to each other with an unprecedented intensity. This attractive volume shows through important portraits and landscape representations the pioneering innovations of Venetian painting, which continued to leave their mark right up to the modern age.

The painting of the city on the lagoon captivates us not only through the wealth of colours and the nuances of the light, but also through the exceptional sensitivity with which the artists focused on their works. They created sophisticated portraits, seductive idealised likenesses and history paintings whose principal character is the atmospheric landscape. The publication examines the masterpieces in depth with regard to their remarkable innovative strength, the context in which they were produced, and contemporary interpretations.

About the Author:

Andreas Schumacher is the Director of Collections at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

A comprehensive, lavishly illustrated guide to 20th-century pewter, which combines key international manufacturers and designers in one book

Pewter is a versatile alloy which has been used to make a wide variety of domestic objects since antiquity. Malleable and lustrous, it was commonly used for making tableware until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when porcelain and glass became more popular. An inexpensive alternative to silver, it re-emerged as a popular material in the twentieth century, allowing for a new-found flexibility, and encouraging designers to experiment with form. From architectural finesse to the smallest everyday object, pewter was used globally, and was favoured as an inlay for decorative panels, furniture, vases and bowls.

20th Century Pewter outlines the development of pewter design from the Art Nouveau movement up to the Modernist period. The first book to examine the artists and manufacturers working in this versatile material, it highlights the important factories and workshops of Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Scandinavia, Japan, and America. Histories of Wurttembergische Metallwaren Fabrik (WMF) and Liberty & Co. are included, as well as details of marks and monograms. With invaluable information on restoration, care, reproductions and fakes, the volume includes over 350 original photographs of outstanding examples of twentieth-century pewter design.