Expressionism

In the latter half of the 19th century, in the verdant countryside near Aix-en-Provence, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), busily plied his brush to landscapes and still lifes that would become anchors of modern art. With compact, intense dabs of paint and bold new approaches to light and space, he mediated the way from Impressionism to the defining movements of the early 20th century and became, in the words of both Matisse and Picasso, `father of us all.`This fresh artist introduction selects key works from Cezanne`s oeuvre to understand his development, innovation, and crucial influence on modern art. From compositions of fruits and pears to scenes of outdoor bathers, we trace his experimentation with color, perspective, and texture to evoke `a harmony parallel to Nature,` as well as the very p...

From his royal court portraits to horrific scenes of conflict, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes remains one of Spain`s most revered and startling artists. With key works from throughout his career, this vivid introduction explores Goya`s mastery of form and light and varied, daring subjects.

A post-Impressionist pioneer, Vincent van Gogh is also one of the most quintessential tortured artists" in history. Through his lurid colors and emphatic brushwork, this introductory book gathers van Goghs most famous paintings to explore his vibrant, feverish portrayal of mood and place and its influence on generations to come.

Kolejna książka F. Nietzschego napisana w formie aforyzmów, często określana jako Ludzkie arcyludzkie część druga. Nietzsche jedn z najwybitniejszych niemieckich filozofów, człowiek którego poglądy znacząco wpłynęły na całą późniejszą filozofię w tym tomie skupia swą uwagę głównie na rozważanich o sztuce, demokracji, pięknie, na podtawowych problemach etycznych takich jak wolność woli, odpowiedzialność, wina, kara, sumienie.

Czym przyprawiano flamingi i papugi w czasach Cesarstwa Rzymskiego? Które przyprawy Adam chciał wynieść z Edenu? Co znajdowało się w masce doktora plagi? Na te i wiele innych pytań odpowiada Thomas Reinertsen Berg w swojej najnowszej książce. Zabiera nas z Zachodu na Wschód, w podróż przez Chiny, Indie, Sri Lankę, śladami największych odkrywców. Wraz z nim przenosimy się w czasie, by poznać fascynującą historię najważniejszych przypraw – goździków, cynamonu, kardamonu, pieprzu. Przez wieki były symbolami luksusu i postępu. Świętości albo grzechu. Z ich powodu wybuchały wojny między potęgami kolonialnymi. Marco Polo, Krzysztof Kolumb i legendarny Sindbad z odległych wypraw chcieli wrócić na statkach załadowanych do pełna przede wszystkim pachnącymi i...

Mądra i błyskotliwa opowieść o istnieniu Książka, w której pulsuje życie Czy jesteśmy zaprogramowani na określoną długość życia? Czy człowiek może być nieśmiertelny? A może to dobrze, że umieramy? Pisarzowi Juanowi José Millásowi od lat nie dawało spokoju pragnienie zrozumienia życia, jego początków i końca. By znaleźć odpowiedzi na dręczące go pytania, zwrócił się o pomoc do wybitnego paleontologa Juana Luisa Arsuagi. Autorzy z detektywistycznym zacięciem badają i odkrywają, dlaczego mysz żyje zaledwie trzy lata, a homar sto czterdzieści, i czemu niektóre gatunki nazywamy nieśmiertelnymi. Wyjaśniają znaczenie zmutowanego genu, a także po co nam seks, skoro istnieje partenogeneza. Zdradzają wpływ intensywności życia na jego długość i zast...

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880?1938) is regarded as one of the key figures in 20th-century European art. A Modernist to his bones, he sent seismic waves through the art world with his hard-edged, intensely colored paintings and disseminated his ideas through Die Brücke art movement and the MUIM-Institut school of modernist painting, both of which he cofounded. Kirchner?s work reconciled past and present through an Expressionist prism, reflecting the latest avant-garde ideas in art, while exploring traditional academic approaches and subjects. His works tackled social, moral, and emotional questions with a fierce intensity. Distorted perspectives, rough lines, and unusual colors were mainstays of his practice, as well as a recurring interest in capturing the human form, whether in frenetic ci...

When is a urinal no longer a urinal? When Marcel Duchamp (1887?1968) declared it to be art. The uproar that greeted the French artist?s Fountain (1917), a porcelain urinal installed in a gallery, sent shock waves through the art world establishment that reverberate right through to today. This essential introduction distills all the daring and the scandal of Duchamp?s practice into one essential overview not only of a pioneering creative but also of a critical moment in Western culture. From his groundbreaking blend of abstraction, Cubism, and Futurism in Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) to his forays into the now-iconic ?readymades? such as Bicycle Wheel (1913) and Bottle Rack (1914) we explore how Duchamp consistently challenged the notion of what art is and, in so doing, opened up a w...

Fast and Furious The action men of modernism With motion and machines as its most treasured tropes, Futurism was founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, along with painters Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carr?, and Gino Severini. With affiliate painters, sculptors, designers, architects, and writers, the group sought to subsume the dusty establishment into a new age of sleek, strong, purified modernity. Futurism?s place in art history is as ambivalent as it is important. The movement pioneered revolutionary methods to convey movement, light, and speed, but sparks controversy in its glorification of war and fascist politics. Their frenzied, almost furious, canvases, are as remarkable for their macho aggression as they are for their radical experimentation with brushstrokes, te...

Abstract pioneer Harmonies in red, yellow, and blue A key figure in the international avant-garde, Piet Mondrian (1872?1944) was at once an extraordinary painter and leading art theoretician whose influence resonates to this day. Coining the term ?Neo-plasticism?, he pursued a style of painting composed only of primary colors against a grid of black vertical and horizontal lines and a white base background. Mondrian?s vision was that this essential painting would help to achieve a society in which art as such has no place, but rather exists for the total realization of ?beauty.? With stints in Amsterdam, Paris, London, and New York, Mondrian drew upon the modern metropolis and modern music, especially jazz, as points of inspiration. In 1917, he cofounded De Stijl, originally a publication,...

Henri Matisse (1869?1954) was a fighting spirit. Despite a cancer diagnosis in 1941, increasing frailty, and the confines of a wheelchair, the indomitable Frenchman never stopped in his quest to make art. With what he called une seconde vie, a second life, he embarked on a remarkable collage period, cutting and pasting pieces of colored paper into gouaches découpées of birds, plants, flowers, and the female form. Emphasizing color and contrast, the cut-out technique generated both striking lines and vivid juxtapositions. In works such as Icarus (1943), The Blue Nude (1952), The Snail (1953), and The Sheaf (1953), clean forms and elemental structures power a compositional force that belies the work?s decorative appeal, at once tightly organized and infectious with joie de vivre. As his wo...

Książka Dominique?a Charpina ? jednego z największych znawców starożytnego Bliskiego Wschodu ? to fascynujący obraz kultury Mezopotamii ukazany poprzez sztukę słowa. Wychodząc od tekstów literackich, mówiących o powstaniu pisma, autor pasjonująco opowiada o władcach i skrybach, kapłanach i kupcach, o wróżbiarstwie, zaklęciach i lamentacjach, o inskrypcjach, kronikach i listach do bogów. Napisana pięknym i przystępnym językiem "Sztuka pisania i czytania w Babilonie" sięga do licznych przykładów zachowanych tekstów i przynosi ogrom wiedzy o jednej z najbardziej fascynujących cywilizacji. Jak tłumaczono narodziny pisma? Jak przebiegała lektura dokumentów przed obliczem króla? Jak wyglądały zinstytucjonalizowane już w XXI w. p.n.e. szkoły kształcące skryb�...

Religion, Renaissance, and Reformation?these three ideologies shaped the world of 16th-century portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98?1543), a pivotal figure of the Northern Renaissance, whose skills took him to Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and England, and garnered patrons and subjects as prestigious as Henry VIII, Thomas More, Anne of Cleves, and Reformation advocate Thomas Cromwell. This book brings together key Holbein paintings to explore his illustrious and international career as well as the courtly drama and radical religious change that informed his work. With rich illustration, we survey the masterful draftsmanship and almost supernatural ability to control details, from the textures of luxurious clothing to the ornament of a room, that secured Holbein?s place as one of th...

Sublime stillness The king of the contemplative landscape The beauty of nature and man s loneliness are dominant themes in the work of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). The artist often places a small human figure in a broad landscape, as in his famous paintings Monk by the Sea and The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. For a long time the importance and influence of this great Romantic painter were underestimated. When he died, Friedrich had already been forgotten by his contemporaries and was only rediscovered in the early 20th century. Today he is considered to be the most important German painter of his generation and a precursor of Expressionism. Once Friedrich gave the following advice to an artist-colleague of his who was constricted by academic rules: Shut your physical eye so that y...

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880?1938) is regarded as one of the key figures in 20th-century European art. A Modernist to his bones, he sent seismic waves through the art world with his hard-edged, intensely colored paintings and disseminated his ideas through Die Brücke art movement and the MUIM-Institut school of modernist painting, both of which he cofounded. Kirchner?s work reconciled past and present through an Expressionist prism, reflecting the latest avant-garde ideas in art, while exploring traditional academic approaches and subjects. His works tackled social, moral, and emotional questions with a fierce intensity. Distorted perspectives, rough lines, and unusual colors were mainstays of his practice, as well as a recurring interest in capturing the human form, whether in frenetic ci...

Meet Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, the leading light of the Spanish Golden Age and a giant of Western art history. From humble genre scenes to the ever-mysterious Las Meninas, this introductory book charts the compositional expertise, natural figuration, and masterful handling of tone that secured Velázquez`s place as `the greatest painter of all.`

A polymath of the German Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer (1471?1528) was a prolific artist, theorist, and writer whose works explored everything from religion to art theory to philosophy. His vast body of work includes altarpieces, portraits, self-portraits, watercolors, and books, but is most celebrated for its astonishing collection of woodcut prints, which transformed printmaking from an artisan practice into a whole new art form. Dürer?s woodcuts astonish in scale as much as detail. Through works such as Apocalypse and the Triumphal Arch for Emperor Maximilian I, he created dense, meticulous compositions that were much larger, much more finely cut, and far more complex than any earlier woodcut efforts. With an ambitious tonal and dynamic range, he introduced a new level of conceptual, em...

Enigmatic and ambiguous in its role as both setting and subject, the landscape has been one of the most important genres in painting for centuries. This dedicated survey spans the late Middle Ages to modern times to bring the evolution of the landscape genre to life through its most critical works, executed by groundbreaking artists as diverse as Titian and Warhol. As a form, landscapes represent the topography of the natural world as much as our own, reflecting the diversity of earth`s vistas, but also keen indications of developments in representational aesthetics, religious and political history, notions of the sublime and the romantic, as well as the arrival of modernity and the vast changes wrought on the environment by industrialization and urbanization. Opening this insightful volum...