Сборники работ по искусству

Defining Decadence. The legacy of Gustav Klimt

A century after his death, Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) still startles with his unabashed eroticism, dazzling surfaces, and artistic experimentation. This monograph gathers all of Klimt’s major works alongside authoritative art historical commentary and privileged access to the artist’s archive.

With top quality illustration, including new photography of the celebrated Stoclet Frieze, the book follows Klimt through his prominent role in the Secessionist movement of 1897, his candid rendering of the female body, and his lustrous “golden phase” when gold leaf brought a shimmering tone and texture to such beloved works as The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also known as The Woman in Gold.

Through luminous spreads and carefully curated details, the monograph traces the repertoire of Japanese, Byzantine, and allegorical stimuli that informed Klimt’s flattened perspectives, his symbolic vocabulary, and his mosaic-like textures. Drawing upon contemporary critics and voices, the book also examines the art world’s polarized reception to Klimt’s pictures as much as his own stylistic trajectory. From his landscape painting to erotic works to the controversial ceiling for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, we see how Klimt’s admixture of tradition and daring divided the press and public — becried by some as a pornographer, hailed by others as a modern maestro.

The editor and author:

Tobias G. Natter is an internationally acknowledged expert on art in “Vienna around 1900.” For many years he worked at the Austrian Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, latterly as head curator. He also worked as guest curator at the Tate Liverpool, the Neue Galerie New York, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Schirn in Frankfurt am Main, and the Jewish Museum in Vienna. From 2006 to 2011, he directed the Vorarlberg Museum in Bregenz, and from 2011 to 2013 was director of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. In 2014 he founded Natter Fine Arts, which specializes in assessing works of art and developing exhibition concepts. He is the author of TASCHEN’s Gustav Klimt. Complete Paintings, Art for All. The Colour Woodcut in Vienna around 1900 and Egon Schiele. The Complete Paintings 1909–1918.

Gustav Klimt: In search of the “total artwork” follows the course of Klimt’s career. It starts with his early work as one of Vienna’s most successful public muralists and concluding with his later triumph as the city’s foremost society portraitist. In between, the publication examines Klimt’s absorption of Symbolist influences, his collaborations with the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, and his involvement with the 1908 “Kunstschau”, the last major exhibition organized by and for the Austrian avant-garde prior to the outbreak of World War I.

Child of materialism and positivism, Courbet was without doubt one of the most complex painters of the nineteenth century. Symbolising the rejection of traditions, Courbet did not hesitate to confront the public with the truth by liberating painting from conventional rules. He became from then on the leader of pictorial realism.

This text on Courbet is the result of years of intensive research and traces with great care contradictory testimonies, the praises as well as the negative critics this controversial painter had during his times. Through his precision as an art historian, Georges Riat sheds new light on the work of this artist who created a real separation with the academicism of the time.

Die Graue Passion gilt als ein Hauptwerk von Hans Holbein d. Ä. (um 1465–1524) und als eine der ungewöhnlichsten Passionsfolgen der altdeutschen Kunst. Schon der Name des zwischen 1494 und 1500 entstandenen Zyklus weist auf die farbliche Gestaltung der Bildfolge hin. Ihr kommt innerhalb der europäischen Malerei eine einzigartige Stellung zu. Der vermutlich in Augsburg geborene Künstler zählt neben Martin Schongauer und Albrecht Dürer zu den bedeutendsten deutschen Malern seiner Zeit. Mit seiner Kunst steht Hans Holbein d. Ä. zwischen den Epochen, am Übergang von der Spätgotik zur Renaissance. Die Publikation verdeutlicht die künstlerische Herkunft und Wirkung der Grauen Passion durch eine exemplarische Werkauswahl der Vorgänger und Zeitgenossen Holbeins. Eine eingehende Dokumentation gibt Einblicke in die aufwendigen Restaurierungsarbeiten, die an den zwölf Bildtafeln vorgenommen wurden.

The “Gray Passion” is one of Hans Holbein the Elder’s great masterpieces, as well as one of the most unusual passion cycles in German art. Painted between 1494 and 1500, the cycle’s title refers to its color scheme. This set of panels occupies a unique position within European painting. Holbein, who was probably born in Augsburg around 1465, was one of the most important painters of his time, in a class with Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer. His art places him between eras, on the threshold between Late Gothic and the Renaissance. Thanks to the inclusion of an exemplary selection of works by Holbein’s predecessors and contemporaries, this publication sheds light on the artistic background and impact of the “Gray Passion.” Thorough documentation provides insight into the elaborate restoration of the cycle’s twelve panels.

120 illustrations

Born in Selingenstadt, Memling (1430/40-1494) left his native Germany to settle in Bruges in 1465, where the death of his supposed teacher, Rogier van der Weyden, left a near absence of competition.
Unlike one of his predecessors, Van Eyck, Memling, considered a minor artist for a long time, was not a painter of the court, but of the bourgeoisie. A man recognized and respected by the end of his life for his enormous talent, he amassed one of greatest fortunes in the city.
Forgotten during the 17th and the 18th centuries, Memling is nowadays regarded as one of the greatest painters of the United Provinces of the 15th century, thanks to the perfect balance between realism and idealization that permeates his portraits. His compositions, most often diptychs and triptychs for altarpieces, show a talent comparable to that of Van Eyck. His taste for detail and precision in drawing, his mastery of technique, and his sense of composition produced such magnificent works as The Last Judg ment (1466-1473), The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (1479), and Seven Joys of the Virgin (1480).
Through its rich collection of reproductions of Memling’s major paintings, which highlight the fine faces and modest poses prescribed by the artistic canons of the ime, this work examines the complex talent of this mportant artist.

This two-volume edition includes a perfect facsimile of Matisse's seminal cut-out work: Jazz. At last, readers can experience Jazz as if holding the 1947 original.

The reputation of Henri Matisse (1869–1954) as the most important artist of the modern era is rivaled only by Picasso — who himself said, "All things considered, there is only Matisse."

Towards the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, an elderly, sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush. So at almost 80 years of age, he developed a new technique: he drew shapes on colored paper, cut them out and pasted them together. These gouaches decoupées (gouache cut-outs) represented a revolution in modern art, yet their simplicity was dismissed by many critics as the folly of a senile old man. Later critics realized that Matisse had found a brilliant solution to the age-old conflict between line and color — one that would profoundly influence generations of artists to come.

Printed in exactly the same colors, using the same paper and inks as the 1947 edition, the facsimile volume allows readers to experience Jazz in its original, unbound form.

The second volume provides a thorough historical context to Matisse's cut-outs, tracing their genesis in his 1930 trip to Tahiti, through to his final years in Nice. Also included are other pivotal works from his later career, including his contributions to Verve magazine and his exquisite decoration of the Vence Chapel. Includes rare and historic photographs by Matisse taken in Tahiti, as well as photos of Matisse by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, and the filmmaker Murnau. The text is supplemented by quotations from Matisse, Picasso, E. Tériade (the publisher of Jazz and Verve), the poets Louis Aragon, Henri Michaux, and Pierre Reverdy, and Matisse's son-in-law, Georges Duthuit.

- Printed with 18 different colors on a small offset press, only 4 pages at a time, to get the highest fidelity to the original
- The name of the paper is Old Mill from the Italian paper mill Fedrigoni in 190 gsm. The paper has archival quality and is, with its felt-like softness, much like hand-made paper
- Just like the original, this reprint is unbound and folded in signatures of 4 pages. It is protected by a French folded jacket and a hard-backed cover

It is not only due to his spectacular jungle paintings that Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), known as “Le Douanier” (the customs officer), ranks among the most popular artists of early modernity. This book commemorates the one-hundredth anniversary of the artist’s death. With over eighty colour illustrations of forty major works, the publication presents the essence of Rousseau’s art of depiction. At its core is his fascination with the contradictory qualities of the tamed Western world and untamed, increasingly imaginary nature. Encounters with his works that have never before been presented make it possible to see Rousseau in an entirely new light. Going beyond the cliché of the “great naïve painter,” we discover a unique artist who opened up entirely new possibilities for modernity.

In this fascinating look at over 180 “hidden” images Helga Prignitz-Poda, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Mexican artist, pulls back the curtain on masterpieces that rarely, if ever, see the inside of an exhibition or gallery.

Illustrated with stunning reproductions of works that Prignitz-Poda has discovered over the course of her career, this book helps expand our knowledge and understanding of this hugely popular artist. Arranged chronologically, the works include those Kahlo completed in her youth, works from her travels to America, paintings she made as an instructor in Mexico City, and a number of still-lifes from the last phase of her career. From largely unknown images, such as embroidery-stitched at the age of five and doodles on love letters to her boyfriend Alejandro, to well-known works such as My Birth (1932), now owned by Madonna, and Remembrance of the Open Wound, which was destroyed in a fire, these “hidden” artworks create an invaluable resource for Frida Kahlo scholars and will be treasured by the painter’s many fans.

About the author:

Helga Prignitz-Poda is an art historian and specialist in Latin American studies and lives in Istanbul and Berlin. She is a co-editor of the catalogue raisonné of Frida Kahlo's work and curator of the exhibition.

Renaissance radical. An earthly delight not to be missed

In the midst of the realist-leaning artistic climate of the Late Gothic and Early Renaissance, Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516) was more than an anomaly. Bosch’s paintings are populated with grotesque scenes of fantastical creatures succumbing to all manner of human desire, fantasy, and angst. One of his greatest inventions was to take the figural and scenic representations known as drolleries, which use the monstrous and the grotesque to illustrate sin and evil, and to transfer them from the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts into large-format panel paintings. Alongside traditional hybrids of man and beast, such as centaurs, and mythological creatures such as unicorns, devils, dragons, and griffins, we also encounter countless mixed creatures freely invented by the artist. Many subsidiary scenes illustrate proverbs and figures of speech in common use in Bosch’s day. In his Temptation of St Anthony triptych, for example, the artist shows a messenger devil wearing ice skates, evoking the popular expression that the world was “skating on ice” — meaning it had gone astray. In his pictorial translation of proverbs, in particular, Bosch was very much an innovator.

Bosch — whose real name was Jheronimus van Aken — was widely copied and imitated: the number of surviving works by Bosch’s followers exceeds the master’s own production by more than tenfold. Today only 20 paintings and eight drawings are confidently assigned to Bosch’s oeuvre. He continues to be seen as a visionary, a portrayer of dreams and nightmares, and the painter par excellence of hell and its demons.

Featuring brand new photography of recently restored paintings, this exhaustive book, published in view of the upcoming 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death, covers the artist’s complete works. Discover Bosch’s pictorial inventions in splendid reproductions with copious details and a huge fold-out spread, over 110 cm long, of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Art historian and acknowledged Bosch expert Stefan Fischer examines just what it was about Bosch and his painting that proved so immensely influential.

The author:

Stefan Fischer studied art history, history and classical archaeology in Münster, Amsterdam and Bonn. In 2009 he completed his doctoral thesis on “Hieronymus Bosch: Malerei als Vision, Lehrbild und Kunstwerk”. His specialist fields are Netherlandish painting of the 15th to the 17th century and museology.

Bosch lived and worked over 500 hundred years ago in the Netherlands’ town of ’s Hertogenbosch, from which he takes his name. He is best known for his fantastical, wondrous art full of strange creatures both grotesque and heavenly. The work he has left behind still defies the imagination. 

Taking account of the latest research, Hieronymus Bosch: Masterpieces of Art gives an overview of what is known of this elusive painter and draughtsman, and reproduces his (and some of his followers’) impressive work, from traditional Biblical stories with a Boschian twist, such as the Adoration of the Magi, to his apocalyptic Four Visions of the Hereafter. His diptychs and triptychs, such as the famously complex Garden of Earthly Delights are covered as well as his stunning line drawings, such as The Wood Has Ears, The Field Has Eyes.

Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570) was an Antwerp painter and printmaker. Together with his wife, he was one of the first to establish a publishing house for prints.

From 1548 their firm "At the Sign of the Four Winds" issued hundreds of important etchings and engravings. Prints after frescoes and paintings by Italian artists Raphael and Bronzino, the first series of classical ruins, antique sculpture, as well as designs by such Northern artists as Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were distributed all over Europe and helped to spread Renaissance ideals of beauty.

It was Cock who spotted the talent of Pieter Bruegel, an artist who would eventually supply Cock with more than sixty designs for prints.

One of the greatest artists of sixteenth-century Europe, Hans Holbein the younger earned high acclaim for his work both in the city of Basel and in England for Henry VIII and other patrons. This book is the first to explore the full range of the artist’s English body of work as well as the relation of this work to the visual and material culture of Tudor England. Providing a detailed account of the paintings, drawings, and woodcuts that Holbein produced in England, the book demonstrates convincingly that that country was not as remote from a common European culture as is often assumed. Rather, it was an unmistakable part of that culture.

Susan Foister discusses not only Holbein's well-known portraits but also his decorative paintings and murals, now lost, his designs for goldsmiths, and the works that can be associated with the English Reformation. In addition, she considers Holbein's religious and secular images, his techniques and practices, his status as an official court painter, and a variety of other intriguing topics.

Edward Hopper is as quintessentially American as Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol. Like them, his imagery has reached far beyond the realm of art to impact on our culture in the broadest terms, so that we see early twentieth-century America through his work, as much as within it. The painter Charles Burchfield attributed Hopper’s success to his “bold individualism,” declaring that “in him we have regained that sturdy American independence which Thomas Eakins gave us.” Hopper’s art was profoundly of its time, both in its expression of the subtle melancholies of modern life and in its deeply cinematic qualities--perhaps Hopper’s greatest gift was his treatment of light--to which directors from Alfred Hitchcock to Wim Wenders have paid homage.

This volume presents a definitive Hopper monograph. Published for a massive retrospective at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, and the Grand Palais in Paris, it approaches Hopper’s relatively small oeuvre in two sections. The first covers the artist’s formative years from approximately 1900 to 1924, examining a selection of sketches, paintings, drawings, illustrations, prints and watercolors, which are considered alongside works by painters that influenced Hopper, such as Winslow Homer, Robert Henri, John Sloan, Edgar Degas and Walter Sickert. The second section considers the years from 1925 onwards, addressing his mature output through chronological but thematic groupings. Comprehensive in its scope, with a wealth of color reproductions, Hopper is the last word on the artist.

Painter of urban loneliness. Significant American 20th-century art

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is considered as one of the first important American painters in 20th century art. After decades of patient work, Hopper enjoyed a success and popularity that since the 1950s has continually grown. In canvas after canvas he painted the loneliness of urban people. Many of Hopper’s pictures represent views of streets and roads, rooftops, and abandoned houses, depicted in a brilliant light that strangely belies the melancholy mood of the scenes. Hopper’s paintings are marked by striking juxtapositions of color, and by the clear contours with which the figures are demarcated from their surroundings. His extremely precise focus on the theme of modern men and women in the natural and man-made environment sometimes lends his pictures a mood of eerie disquiet. On the other hand, Hopper’s renderings of rocky landscapes in warm brown hues, or his depictions of the seacoast, exude an unusual tranquillity that reveals another, more optimistic side of his character.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

* a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
* approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
* a concise biography