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Part of a new series of beautiful gift art books this book focuses on Wassily Kandinsky, a renowned Russian-born painter, wood-engraver and lithographer who is often regarded as one of the earliest pioneers of abstract art. Beginning with a fresh and thoughtful introduction to Kandinsky's life and art, Wassily Kandinsky Masterpieces of Art goes on to showcase his key works in all their glory; spanning his early paintings inspired by Russian folk art and fairy tales to his later works characterised by contrasting colours and striking geometric shapes.

This important addition to our understanding of art history’s masterworks puts some of the world's most famous paintings under a magnifying glass to uncover their most small and subtle elements and all they reveal about a bygone time, place, and culture.

Guiding our eye to the minutiae of subject and symbolism, authors Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen allow even the most familiar of pictures to come alive anew through their intricacies and intrigues. Is the bride pregnant? Why does the man wear a beret? How does the shadow of war hang over a scene of dancing? Along the way, we travel from Ancient Egypt through to modern Europe, from the Renaissance to the Roaring Twenties. We meet Greek heroes and poor German poets and roam from cathedrals to cabaret bars, from the Garden of Eden to a Garden Bench in rural France.

As we pick apart each painting and then reassemble it like a giant jigsaw puzzle, these celebrated canvases captivate not only in their sheer wealth of details but also in the witness they bear to the fashions and trends, people and politics, loves and lifestyles of their time.

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!

Under the Microscope. The secrets behind world-renowned masterpieces

If you thought these paintings were familiar, look again, and look closer. Part art history, part detective work, this fascinating collection explores 100 world-famous works of art through enlarged details, revealing the fashions and lifestyles, the loves and intrigues, politics and people that truly make a masterpiece.

This important addition to our understanding of art history’s masterworks puts some of the world's most famous paintings under a magnifying glass to uncover their most small and subtle elements and all they reveal about a bygone time, place, and culture.

Guiding our eye to the minutiae of subject and symbolism, authors Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen allow even the most familiar of pictures to come alive anew through their intricacies and intrigues. Is the bride pregnant? Why does the man wear a beret? How does the shadow of war hang over a scene of dancing? Along the way, we travel from Ancient Egypt through to modern Europe, from the Renaissance to the Roaring Twenties. We meet Greek heroes and poor German poets and roam from cathedrals to cabaret bars, from the Garden of Eden to a Garden Bench in rural France.

As we pick apart each painting and then reassemble it like a giant jigsaw puzzle, these celebrated canvases captivate not only in their sheer wealth of details but also in the witness they bear to the fashions and trends, people and politics, loves and lifestyles of their time.

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

It might seem like the sitters and subjects of art history’s greatest nude paintings have little left to show, but don't be fooled: there is more than meets the eye in these naked masterworks. Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen guide us into the secrets of the flesh, coupling extended discussions with crisp, enlarged details of 12 iconic works from the canon of art history.

Biblical tales of morality or modern portrayals of leisure, works such as Tintoretto’s Susanna and the Elders or Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass offer diverse visions of natural beauty. Each artwork is presented in reproductions of the highest quality, sourced directly from the original, located in collections of the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Uffizi, and many others.

From works depicting ultimate feminine grace, like Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus, to Hans Baldung’s mesmerizing image of the body’s decline in The Three Ages of Man and Death, these paintings are unified in their masterful rendering of the bare human form—both in life and beyond. Through this exploration into the covert secrets of nude works, they cease to be two-dimensional and come to full hot-blooded life.

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

World-renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has worked in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, performance art, and installation. Kusama’s iconic Infinity Mirror Rooms, which originated with Phalli’s Field in 1965, situate viewers in kaleidoscopic spaces filled with multicolored lights or whimsical forms. These mirror-lined installations reflect endlessly, distorting rooms to project the illusion of infinite space. Over the years, the works have come to symbolize different modalities within the various contexts they have inhabited, from Kusama's “self-obliteration” in the Vietnam War era to her more harmonious aspirations in the present.

By examining her early unsettling installations alongside her more recent ethereal atmospheres, this volume aims to historicize the body of work amidst the resurgence of experiential practices within the global landscape of contemporary art. Generously illustrated, this publication invites readers to examine the series’ impact over the course of the artist’s career. Accompanying essays, an interview with the artist, and a scholarly chronology round out the book.

Exhibition at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, February 16 - May 14, 2017

About the Author:

Mika Yoshitake is Associate Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Melissa Chiu is Director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Alexander Dumbadze is Chair and Associate Professor of Art History at The George Washington University, Washington, Dc. GloriaA Sutton is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at Northeastern University, Boston. Miwako Tezuka is Consulting Curator at Arakawa + Gins Reversible Destiny Foundation, New York.

In the mid-1950s, Yves Klein (1928–1962) declared that “a new world calls for a new man.” With his idiosyncratic style and huge charisma, this bold artist would go on to pursue a brief but bountiful career, producing more than 1,000 paintings over seven years in an oeuvre now considered a mainstay of postwar modernism.Klein made his name above all with his large monochrome canvases in his own patented hue of blue. International Klein Blue (IKB), composed of pure pigment and binding medium, is at once rich and luminous, evocative and decorative, and was conceived by Klein as a means of evoking the immateriality and infinitude of the world.

The works of this “Blue Revolution” seem to draw us into another dimension, as if hypnotized by a perfect summer sky. Klein was also renowned for his deployment of “living brushes,” in which naked women, daubed in International Klein Blue, would make imprints of their bodies on large sheets of paper.

This Basic Art introduction presents key Klein works to introduce an artist who was at once a showman, inventor, and pioneer of performance art. With page after page of the ever-alluring International Klein Blue, it is both an essential guide to a modern art master and a meditation on the unique effects of a single color.

Munch’s pictorial worlds – the initial impetus for modernism

Edvard Munch’s radical modernity in painting was a challenge for his contemporaries. This applied in particular to the art scene in Berlin around 1900 which the Norwegian Symbolist artist influenced profoundly. In return, he received support there and was able to continue to develop his work. The publication is lavishly illustrated and describes knowledgeably the story of Munch and Berlin.

In 1892 the Association of Berlin Artists invited the still-unknown Edvard Munch (1863–1944) to an exhibition. The public was shocked by the colourful, sketch-like pictures. The artist enjoyed the furore and moved to the city on the Spree, where he repeatedly sojourned until 1908. Here he learned the techniques for printed graphics and presented for the first time paintings in several continuous series which would become central to his oeuvre. In Berlin, before long, the concept of the “Magic of the North” (Stefan Zweig) was no longer associated with romantic or naturalistic fjord landscapes, but with Munch’s psychologically concentrated pictorial worlds.

About the Authors:

Thomas Köhler has been the director of the Berlinische Galerie, the State Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture in Berlin since 2010.

Stefanie Heckmann has been the head of the fine art collection at the Berlinische Galerie since 2014 and is the curator of the exhibition.
 

A joyful and celebratory gift book devoted to the work of the much-loved English artist Eric Ravilious (1903–1942) and the influence of natural forms and themes in his work.

Eric Ravilious was a designer, painter, printmaker and illustrator best known for his depictions of the English landscape, particularly the South Downs. Often described as a particularly ‘English’ artist, key to his style was an ability to convey in watercolour the mild vagaries of the British climate. His engagement with nature, though romantic rather than precise, pervades his works in many different techniques. This book explores his appreciation of the natural world and the techniques he used in a variety of media to convey those elements.

Drawing on the V&A’s collections, more than 100 beautiful images capture Ravilious’s deep enjoyment of everything in nature, from dewponds, cockerels, grassy hills, owls, greenhouse geraniums, cornsheaves and snow, to the rainy seas, airport-runway puddles and tideswept beaches of his later work as a war artist. The book includes sections on weather, plants, landscape, animals and birds, and ends with a section devoted to man in the landscape, showcasing Ravilious’s love of rusting machinery and other signs of human presence within nature, not least his famous depictions of hillside chalk figures.

This book will appeal to those with a love of English landscapes, flora and fauna or an interest in British art and design in the interwar period.

About the Author:

Ella Ravilious is Curator of Architecture and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, having worked there in various roles since 2005. She is the granddaughter of Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood.
 

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.

Hiroshige: Nature and the City is the most extensive overview of the career of the famed Japanese print artist, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) in the English language to date. It is based on the largest collection of Hiroshige in private hands outside Japan, the Alan Medaugh collection.

The catalogue consists of 500 entries, with an emphasis on urban and rural landscapes, fan prints and prints of birds and flowers. Grouped chronologically by subject it presents Hiroshige’s interpretation of the urban scenes from his hometown Edo (present-day Tokyo), the great series documenting travel along the famous highways of Japan, and the idylls of nature as represented in his bird-andflower prints.

Hiroshige often incorporated poetry in his works and for the first time all textual content is transcribed and translated. Additionally, the catalogue pays due attention to the differences between variant editions of his prints. Thus, it provides essential comparative material for every scholar, dealer, and collector.

Five essays precede the catalogue section, each written by specialists in the field. Rhiannon Paget (Curator of Asian Art at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art) provides a general introduction to Hiroshige’s life and career. Andreas Marks (Curator Minneapolis Museum of Art) contributes two essays: on the publishers of Hiroshige’s prints and on Hiroshige’s collaborative works designed with his colleagues. Shiho Sasaki (conservation specialist at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco) discusses the pigment use in Hiroshige’s prints while John Carpenter (Curator of Japanese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) investigates the source of the poetry of Hiroshige bird-and-flower prints.

About the Author:

John Carpenter is Curator of Japanese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he has worked since the summer of 2011. From 1999 to 2009 he taught the history of Japanese art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and served as Head of the London Office of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. He has also taught courses at the University of Heidelberg. From 2009 to 2011 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo. He has published widely on Japanese art, especially in the areas of calligraphy, painting, and woodblock prints. Among his recent publications is a catalogue of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, Designing Nature: The Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese Art (2012).

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).

A complete overview of the Giorgio Morandi exhibition in NY and Bologna.

Giorgio Morandi is an undisputed master of twentieth-century painting. His greatness lies in the balance between an outlook typical of the Age of Enlightenment and the formal synthesis of Cézanne and modernism.

Often remembered as a reserved and reclusive man, inclined toward a “cloistered” lifestyle, Morandi, in reality, was a highly sensitive interpreter of the spirit of his times. Through constant attention to differing artistic and cultural movements, he succeeded in translating the aspirations they embodied into the variants of an unfailingly autonomous approach to painting.

This volume provides a complete overview of the major exhibition of masterpieces by Giorgio Morandi at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museo d’Arte Moderna in Bologna (MAMbo). Over one hundred paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings illustrate the artist’s entire creative and poetic course from the landscapes and still lifes of 1913–1914 to his final works of 1963–1964. Particular attention is focused on the masterpieces of the 1920s and 1930s, in which Morandi perfected his extraordinary approach to image-making through in-depth investigation of the world and of human existence as filtered through the metaphor of the still life.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, New York
16 settembre – 14 dicembre 2008
MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna
22 gennaio – 12 aprile 2009

The first book dedicated to Picasso’s self-portraits, many held in private collections and published here for the first time

Much has been said and written about Picasso’s life and art, but until now his self-portraits have never been studied and presented in a single book, perhaps because the artist always left many doubts about his work. However, there is no doubt that Picasso represented himself ceaselessly, whether in a dashed-off pencil sketch, as a flourish at the bottom of a letter, or on a giant canvas.

At the suggestion of Picasso’s widow Jacqueline, the distinguished art historian Pascal Bonafoux began researching Picasso’s self-portraits more than forty years ago. This meticulously researched book presents the fruits of his decades-long project. From the first attributed painting in 1894 as a thirteen-year-old boy, until Picasso's final self-portrait in 1972, a year before his death, Bonafoux charts the evolution of the artist's life and art. Here is Picasso as a student; as a young bohemian; an impetuous artist in Paris; as harlequin; as lover, husband and father; and finally, as an old man confronting his mortality. The book comprises about 170 drawings, paintings and photographs, some from private collections and previously unpublished, bringing together for the first time the attributed self-portraits of this genius of 20th-century art.

About the Author:

Pascal Bonafoux is a French writer, novelist, art critic and art historian, specializing in self-portraiture. He is the author of many books, including Rodin & Eros, also published by Thames & Hudson.

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.