ARTES

An exquisite photo collection showcasing awe-inducing moments from around the world, including the aurora borealis, cities made of neon lights, a great wildebeest migration, a contortionist on display--and more. In life, there are certain sights that are as beautiful as they are unforgettable--from a majestic supercell to the secrets of a deep blue ice cave to the world's largest library. These fascinating spectacles shock us in their diversity, their complexity, and their epic scale, bringing us the miraculous beauty of our planet. Featuring more than 200 color images, including acclaimed photography from the National Geographic Image Collection, this volume presents a dazzling array of natural and manmade wonders, unusual phenomena, and amusing curiosities. Each page will enlighten and inspire, presenting our world at its best.

Pop artist, painter of modern life, landscape painter, master of color, explorer of image and perception―for six decades, David Hockney has been known as an artist who always finds new ways of exploring the world and its representational possibilities. He has consistently created unforgettable images: works with graphic lines and integrated text in the Swinging Sixties in London; the famous swimming pool series as a representation of the 1970s California lifestyle; closely observed portraits and brightly colored, oversized landscapes after his eventual return to his native Yorkshire. In addition to drawings in which he transfers what he sees directly onto paper, there are multiperspective Polaroid collages that open up the space into a myriad of detailed views, and iPad drawings in which he captures light using a most modern medium―testaments to Hockney’s enduring delight in experimentation. This special edition has been newly assembled from the two volumes of the David Hockney: A Bigger Book monograph to celebrate TASCHEN’s 40th anniversary. Hockney’s life and work is presented year by year as a dialogue between his works and voices from the time period, alongside reviews and reflections by the artist in a chronological text, supplemented by portrait photographs and exhibition views. Together they open up new perspectives, page after page, revealing how Hockney undertakes his artistic research, how his painting develops, and where he finds inspiration for his multifaceted work.

Del retrato que hizo Edouard Manet del escritor naturalista Émile Zola ante una estampa japonesa a las meticulosas copias de los grabados de Hiroshige que Van Gogh coleccionó con devoción, los pioneros del modernismo europeo del siglo XIX no ocultaron su amor por el arte japonés. En toda su sensualidad, libertad y efervescencia, la xilografía es el ejemplo por antonomasia de la ola de japonismo que primero cautivó a Francia y más tarde a toda Europa, a menudo en forma de objetos “exóticos” malinterpretados que contribuyeron a inspirar la creatividad occidental. La xilografía japonesa es un fenómeno sin equivalente en el arte occidental. Algunas de las ideas más disruptivas del arte moderno —entre ellas, como expresó Karl Marx, que “todo lo sólido se derrite en el aire”— se inventaron en Japón a principios del siglo XVIII y se expresaron como nunca antes en las obras de maestros de la talla de Hokusai, Utamaro e Hiroshige a principios del siglo XIX.

Una aproximación al arte del montaje tanto de sonido como de imagen, a la creación, la técnica y los secretos que rodean ambos oficios. Michael Ondaatje y Walter Murch se conocieron en el rodaje de El paciente inglés. La película, basada en la novela homónima de Ondaatje ganadora del Premio Booker, consiguió nueve Oscar: el de mejor montaje y el de mejor sonido reconocían el talento de Murch. La curiosidad del escritor le llevó a acercarse a Walter Murch, alguien que trabajaba con un lenguaje en principio muy distinto al suyo. Aquel encuentro derivó en una amistad a la que hoy debemos uno de los mejores libros sobre cine.  Se trata de una mirada única sobre el trabajo de directores como Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Anthony Minghella, Philip Kaufman o Fred Zinneman pero, sobre todo, es una aproximación de la manos de un genio al arte del montaje tanto de sonido como de imagen. El interrogatorio de un gran amante del séptimo arte como Michael Ondaatje se convierte en una lección magistral de cine.

Las películas de Spielberg son célebres y han cautivado a millones de espectadores por la forma en que combinan el aspecto comercial con la profundidad creativa del director. A menudo sus filmes ocultan un cierto trasfondo oscuro que se complementa con su maestría para entrelazar historias extraordinarias con los aspectos más mundanos de la vida. Y es que hasta Indiana Jones tiene un lado vulnerable y humano.

Frank Frazetta has reigned as the undisputed king of fantasy art for 50 years, his fame only growing in the years since his death. With his paintings now breaking auction records (Egyptian Queen sold for $ 5.4 million in 2019) he’s long overdue for this ultimate monograph.Born to a Sicilian immigrant family in Brooklyn, 1928, Frazetta was a minor league athlete, petty criminal and serial seducer with movie star looks and phenomenal talent. He claimed to only make art when there was nothing better to do – he preferred playing baseball - yet began his professional career in comics at age 16. Strip work led him to the infamous EC Comics, then to oils for Tarzan and Conan pulp covers. Both characters were interpreted by many before him, but as he explained in the 1970s, “I’m very physical minded. In Brooklyn, I knew Conan, I knew guys just like him,” and he used this first-hand knowledge of muscle and macho to redefine fantasy heroes as more massive, more menacing, more testosterone-fueled than anything seen before. As counterbalance he created a new breed of women, nude as censorship allowed, with pixie faces and multiparous bodies: thick thighed, heavy buttocked, breasts cantilevered out to there, yet still, with their soft bellies and hints of cellulite, believably real. Add in the action, the creatures, the twilit worlds of haunting shadow and Frazetta’s art is addictive as potato chips.

One of the most accomplished human beings who ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) remains a quintessential Renaissance genius. The perfect companion to the Leonardo Graphic Work edition, this book is a compact catalogue raisonné of all of the artist’s masterful paintings. Drawn from our best-selling XXL edition, the book traces the artist’s life and work across 10 chapters, presenting all known paintings and drawing on his letters, contracts, diary entries, and writings to explore the man behind such groundbreaking artworks. From Virgin of the Rocks to Virgin and Child with St. Anne to the ever-beguiling Mona Lisa, you’ll find some of the finest treasures of the Louvre, Prado, and National Gallery, London here, as well as Leonardo works lost to time, but no less startling in their precision and poise.

Pese a ser aclamado como uno de los mejores guitarristas de su época y de la historia, George Harrison luchó contra sentimientos de inferioridad, especialmente en sus primeras décadas. A menudo era el blanco de las bromas de sus compañeros de banda debido a su origen de clase baja y, por lo general, no se le permitía contribuir más que con una o dos canciones por álbum de las decenas que escribía. Ahora, el aclamado biógrafo de los Beatles, Philip Norman, examina a Harrison a través de la lente de sus numerosas contradicciones. Comparado con las enormes luminarias compositoras Lennon y McCartney, se le consideraba un talento menor; sin embargo, compuso obras maestras como «While My Guitar Gently Weeps» o «Here Comes the Sun», y su triple álbum de debut en solitario All Things Must Pass consiguió un inmenso éxito, apareciendo en muchas listas de los 100 mejores álbumes de rock de todos los tiempos. Los críticos de música moderna lo sitúan en el panteón de los dioses de la guitarra de los años sesenta, junto a Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards y Jimmy Page.

In pursuit of both knowledge and delight, the craft of botanical illustration has always required not only meticulous draftsmanship but also a rigorous scientific understanding. This new edition of a TASCHEN classic celebrates the botanical tradition and talents with a selection of outstanding works from the National Library of Vienna, including many new images.