Книги по истории искусства

From the Land of the Pharaohs. The finest treasures of ancient Egypt

Discover some of the most stunning masterpieces of ancient Egypt. This catalogue gathers sarcophagi, statues, murals, and other timeless treasures by unknown masters from the Old Kingdom to the Roman Period. Find out why these centuries-old gems of World Cultural Heritage are displayed alongside masterworks of Michelangelo and da Vinci, from New York to Cairo.

The art of ancient Egypt that has been handed down to us bears no names of its creators, and yet we value the creations of these unknown masters no less than the works of later centuries, such as statues by Michelangelo or the paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. This book introduces some of the most important masterpieces, ranging from the Old Kingdom during the Third millennium BC to the Roman Period.

The works encompass sculptures, reliefs, sarcophagi, murals, masks, and decorative items, most of them now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but some occupying places of honor as part of the World Cultural Heritage in museums such as the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Featured works include:
Seated statue of King Djoser
Wood relief of Hesire on a dining table
Statue of a scribe made of various materials
Funerary relief of Aschait
Sphinx of Sesostris III
Robed statue of Cherihotep
Reliefs from the Temple at Carnac
Sarcophagus of Queen Hatshepsut
Murals from Thebes
Seated figure of the goddess Sachmet
Statue of Queen Teje
Head of Akhenaten (Amenophis IV)
Queen Nefertiti
Golden mask of Tutankhamun
Ramses II from Abu Simbel
Horus falcon made of granite
Stone relief from the temple ambulatory at Edfu

The author:

Rose-Marie Hagen was born in Switzerland and studied history, Romance languages, and literature in Lausanne. After further studies in Paris and Florence, she lectured at the American University in Washington, D.C.

Rainer Hagen was born in Hamburg and graduated in literature and theater studies in Munich. He later worked for radio and TV, most recently as chief editor of a German public broadcasting service. Together they have collaborated on several TASCHEN titles, including Masterpieces in Detail, Pieter Bruegel, and Francisco de Goya.

About the series:

- Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre series features:
- approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions
- a detailed illustrated introduction plus a timeline of the most important political, cultural, and social events that took place during that period
- a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

Jewelry and decorative manufactured goods in Egyptian Revival style capitalized on public fascination resulting from the rediscovery of Egyptian monuments and artifacts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Museum exhibitions, movies, and political events popularized Egyptian architectural designs throughout the world. This is the first book of its kind to focus on revival consumer goods inspired by the ancient culture, including jewelry. Over 400 color photographs and line drawings depict beautiful examples with symbols and images of Egyptian design. Bold colors of natural pigments created the pallets that modern manufacturers used. Images of sylized insects, hieroglyphics, sphinx, royal symbols, and geometric patterns are explored. The manufacturers are introduced with pertinent information that collectors will reference. A chronology of Egyptian history identifies the kingdoms and their relevant styles. This should be an important reference for designers, historians, and ornamental collectors alike. The values with the captions reflect the market today, and the glossary and index are useful for all.

"(…) Le Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Architecture comprend 10 volumes de 450 pages chacun en moyenne, soit environ 4000 pages de texte illustré de 4500 gravures sur bois. Outre le texte fort intéressant et vivant, c’est cette iconographie qui donne à l’ouvrage l’essentiel de son intérêt. (…) Nous avons ainsi sélectionné les principaux passages du Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Architecture écartant ceux qui étaient trop techniques et les courtes rubriques ne comportant que du texte. (…) Sur les 4500 gravures originales nous en avons présenté 1335 dans le présent volume et quelques centaines dans le tome 2. Nous pensons que l’essentiel du Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Architecture est ici présenté… Avec ces deux volumes de l’Encyclopédie médiévale qui reprennent l’essentiel des deux Dictionnaires de Viollet-Le-Duc avec 1440 pages, nous avons publié plus de 3000 dessins !" / Georges Bernage

Refonte en un volume du Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture (1854-1868) et du Dictionnaire raisonné du Mobilier (1858-1870) par Georges BERNAGE :

 TOME I : Architecture
- Avant-propos de Georges BERNAGE (5 photographies dont un portrait par NADAR)
- TABLE DES RUBRIQUES : 62 entrées de Abside à Porte 720 pages

 TOME II : Architecture et Mobilier
- Avant-propos de Georges BERNAGE (9 illustrations)
- TABLE DES RUBRIQUES : 11 entrées de Prison à Vitrail pour la fin de l’Architecture et 7 entrées de Armes à Instruments de musique pour le Mobilier.
720 pages

The art of pleasure. An erotic history of humanity

From the dawn of time, ever since Adam and Eve, all artists of every age — whether the Egyptian, Greek, or Roman artists of Antiquity, or more recent famous names as Rembrandt, Courbet, Degas, or Picasso — have succumbed to their fantasies, obsessions, and libido, and produced erotic works that the censors have taken good care to keep from the public. For Erotica Universalis, we surface from the subterranean realms of the museums to enter those of our national and private libraries. Here we discover that not only most of our famous writers, such as Ovid, Aretino, Voltaire, Verlaine, or Maupassant, wrote erotic texts that bordered on indecency, but also that great artists like Boucher, Fragonard, Dalí, or Matisse were inspired to provide suitable illustrations for these naughty books. For this new hardcover edition of the classic 1995 bestseller, we have culled highlights from our Erotica Universalis collection. A banquet for the imagination and a feast of the eye!

The author:

Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. His TASCHEN titles include Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, Matisse, and Erotica Universalis.

About the series:

Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!

Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together more than 100 of our all-time favourite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.

Bookworm’s delight — never bore, always excite!

Erwin Blumenfeld (1897–1969) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. In 1941, he left Europe for the United States, where five years later he became a citizen. During the forties and fifties, he was one of the most sought-after fashion photographers in the world. However, most people are not familiar with the artist’s early work: the often bitingly humorous Dada montages he produced between 1916 and 1933.

This book by Helen Adkins, a renowned expert on the Berlin Dada movement, is the first to provide an extensive study of these early works. Blumenfeld did not intend for them to be shown publicly - they were personal gifts to his friends and acquaintances or enclosed in love letters to his fiancée. The approximately one hundred works - including many that have not previously been published and which the author discovered in the artist’s family archives and in other public and private collections - will be examined within the context of Blumenfeld’s life, photographs, drawings, and literary works.

M.C. Escher was born in 1898 in Leeuwarden (Netherlands). He received his first drawing lessons during secondary school from F.W. van der Haagen, who also taught him the block printing, thus fostering Escher's innate graphic talents.

From 1912 to 1922 he studied at the School of Architecture and Ornamental Design in Haarlem, where he was instructed in graphic techniques by S. Jessurun de Mesquita, who greatly influenced Escher's further artistic development. Between 1922 and 1934 the artist lived and worked in Italy. Afterwards, Escher spent two years in Switzerland and five in Brussels before finally moving back to Barn in Holland, where he died in 1972.

M.C. Escher is not a surrealist drawing us into his dream world, but an architect of perfectly impossible worlds who presents the structurally unthinkable as though it were a law of nature. The resulting dimensional and perspectival illusions bring us into confrontation with the limitations of our sensory perception.

The transformation of reality

A specifically German artistic revolution

Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Emil Nolde, E. L. Kirchner, Paul Klee, Franz Marc as well as the Austrians Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele were among the generation of highly individual artists who contributed to the vivid and often controversial new movement in early twentieth-century Germany and Austria: Expressionism. This publication introduces their work and places it within the cultural contexts and wider movements of the period.
The author, independent art historian Ashley Bassie, explains how Expressionist art led the way to a new, intense, evocative treatment of psychological, emotional and social themes in the early twentieth century. The book examines the developments of Expressionism and its key works, highlighting the often intensely subjective imagery and the aspirations and conflicts from which it emerged while focusing precisely on the artists of the movement.

The Author
Born in England in 1969, Ashley Bassie is an independent art historian, specialised in German Art. After graduating from the University of Manchester, the author conducted her research across Europe. She published several works creating a link between art and politics and centres her research on the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Anxious Angles. The pioneers and masterworks of “degenerate” Expressionism

Amid a frenzy of lurid colour and distortion, discover a calm, authoritative overview of German Expressionism. From the leading collectives of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter to regional schools and lesser-known artists, Dietmar Elger leads us through the protagonists and principles of this vivid 20th-century movement — its stylistic cacophony, its rage against bourgeois values, and its tussle with modern industrial reality.

German Expressionists were uneasy and angry. Emerging at the dawn of the 20th century, they railed against Christian and bourgeois values as much as rampant urban industrialization. Anti-imperialist, they were dispersed, shattered, and depleted by the horrors of the First World War, and rallied their efforts only to be officially erased by the Nazi “Degenerate Art” exhibition of 1937.

In this comprehensive TASCHEN collection, Head of the Gerhard Richter Archive Dietmar Elger gathers the many artists and elements of this urgent, scattered, complex movement into one authoritative overview of its protagonists, principles, and essential role in 20th-century modernism. Finding a critical calm amid the frenzy of colour and distortion, the book distils Expressionism’s leading collectives, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, as well as its regional characteristics across its Berlin and Munich hubs, and it's North German, Rheinland, and Viennese variants.

Along the way, we compare and contrast themes and stylistic choices as this dispersed group of artists wrestled with their modern industrial reality. We find luminous streaks from Wassily Kandinsky, and the sickly hues of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the futurist facets of Franz Marc, and a partial Impressionist throwback in the gaudy dabs of Emil Nolde. We walk into seedy bars with bloated old men and then enter a claustrophobic yellow room occupied by an awkwardly posed nude. We are crushed in a cacophony of city sound and smoke and then left alone with woods, a lake, and silence.

Spanning this richness and range in Expressionist output, Elger features such well-known figures as Beckmann, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Kokoschka, Nolde, Schiele, while taking care to present inadequately studied artists such as Conrad Felixmüller, Ludwig Meidner, and Marianne von Werefkin. The result is an expansive, inclusive, dependable digest of a vivid, often violent mode of expression, and the yearning and unease behind its frenzied paintwork.

The author:

Dietmar Elger studied art history, history, and literature at the University of Hamburg. In 1984/85, he was secretary of Gerhard Richter’s studio and between 1989 and 2006 curator for painting and sculpture at the Sprengel Museum, Hanover. He has organized numerous exhibitions on modern and contemporary art and has directed the Gerhard Richter Archive at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden since 2006. For TASCHEN he has authored the volumes Expressionism, Dadaism, and Abstract Art.

Of all the riches of the sixteenth-century European nobleman, none spoke more powerfully of his heroism, wealth and taste than his armour, clothing and weapons. Drawing on the V&A's popular arms and armour collection, Angus Patterson looks at the suits designed to kill, protect and impress. From parade suits, lavishly embossed and gilded, decorated with plumes of ostrich feathers and draped with colourful silk sashes to swords, daggers, pistols and gunpowder flasks slung from elaborate belts, detailed new photography alongside paintings and sculpture bring medieval and renaissance fashion to life

Even before the advent of haute couture, Paris was a great centre of fashion. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when the capital was transformed by an ambitious urban plan, its residents responded in kind, wearing styles as polished and modern as the city itself in order to participate in the exciting new social scene. Featuring famed paintings by such Impressionist masters as Degas, Cassatt, Manet, Monet and Morisot, this delightful book revisits the world of Parisian fashion through the eyes of first-hand observers. Thematic chapters present a gallery-like ensemble of paintings that follow in the footsteps of stylish Parisians as they stroll in the parks and boulevards, meet friends at cafes, take in the theatre, relax at home and go on holiday. In an extended narrative-style caption to accompany each image, fashion and art historian Debra N. Mancoff offers a detailed discussion of what men and women wore and how their dress defined them. To complete the picture, illustrated interludes, providing glimpses into dressmaking, corsetry and millinery, the origins of couture and the rise of the department store, reveal how Paris became the fashion capital of the world.

This book charts contemporary illustration’s rich history: the rampant idealism of the 1960s, the bleak realism of the 1970s, the over-blown consumerism of the 1980s, the digital explosion of the 1990s, followed by the increasing diversification of illustration in the early twenty-first century.

The book explores the contexts in which the discipline has operated and looks historically, sociologically, politically and culturally at the key factors at play across each decade, whilst artworks by key illustrators bring the decade to life.

Contemporary illustration’s impact and influence on design and popular culture are investigated through introductory essays and profiles of leading practitioners, illustrated with examples of their finest work.
About the Author

Lawrence Zeegen is an illustrator, educator and writer. He has worked as an illustrator since graduating from The Royal College of Art in 1989. He is Dean of the School of Design at the London College of Communication, and he lectures and speaks at conferences around the world.

Caroline Roberts is a journalist who writes mainly about the graphic arts. She was the founder of Grafik magazine.

Contents:

Foreword Introduction: What is Illustration?
Chapter 1 The 1960s: An Era of Utopian Idealism
Chapter 2 The 1970s: A Decade of Discontent
Chapter 3 The 1980s: The Designer Decade
Chapter 4 The 1990s: The Digital Dawn
Chapter 5 The 2000s: A New Wave
Chapter 6: Where Next?
Further Reading – Books
Further Viewing – Digital
Further Info – Organisations
Contacts – Illustrators and Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements

This book provides a guide to the history of Sevres porcelain as epitomised by seventy of the most important examples in the Royal Collection. Published to accompany the exhibition opening at The Queen's Gallery, London.

Soon after Giorgione introduced the fresco to Venice in the early 16th century, Venetian noble families began to commission the greatest masters of European painting to create grand fresco cycles for the interiors of their city palaces and their splendid villas on the mainland. This superbly photographed volume celebrates these frescoes, among the supreme achievements of Italian art and culture, providing an expertly guided tour of the beautiful residences in which they appear.

From complex allegories to Baroque masterpieces to fanciful distant worlds, Frescoes of the Veneto explores the changing nature of this tradition over the course of three centuries and features work by major artists such as Andrea Urbani and Giambattista Tiepolo, as well as lesser-known painters such as Giovanni Antonio Fasolo, Luca Ferrari da Reggio, and Jacopo Guarana. This splendid volume will be irresistible to lovers of Italian art and architecture and aficionados of the Veneto alike.

This chronological and topographic compilation presents the most famous single and cycles of frescos executed by Italian masters in various centuries using a technique that involves painting coloured pigments onto a layer of plaster not yet completely dry. As an art form, it is rooted in the mists of time, but it was rediscovered at the end of the Middle Ages and proved extremely popular throughout the modern period.

From the paintings adorning the walls of Romanesque churches to the great Baroque and Rococo cycles, the seven chapters of this volume, each with an introduction and additional, informative passages, help acquire a greater understanding and appreciation of this art form from the late Romanesque period through to the end of the 18th century.