BELLAS ARTES

From court portraits for the Spanish royals to horrific scenes of conflict and suffering, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) made a mark as one of Spain’s most revered and controversial artists. A master of form and light, his influence reverberates down the centuries, inspiring and fascinating artists from the Romantic Eugène Delacroix to Britart enfants terribles, the Chapman brothers.Born in Fuendetodos, Spain, in 1746, Goya was apprenticed to the Spanish royal family in 1774, where he produced etchings and tapestry cartoons for grand palaces and royal residences across the country. He was also patronized by the aristocracy, painting commissioned portraits of the rich and powerful with his increasingly fluid and expressive style. Later, after a bout of illness, the artist moved towards darker etchings and drawings, introducing a nightmarish realm of witches, ghosts, and fantastical creatures.It was, however, with his horrific depictions of conflict that Goya achieved enduring impact. Executed between 1810 and 1820, The Disasters of War was inspired by atrocities committed during the Spanish struggle for independence from the French and penetrated the very heart of human cruelty and sadism. The bleak tones, agitated brushstrokes, and aggressive use of Baroque-like light and dark contrasts recalled Velázquez and Rembrandt, but Goya’s subject matter was unprecedented in its brutality and honesty.In this introductory book from TASCHEN Basic Art 2.0 we set out to explore the full arc of Goya’s remarkable career, from elegant court painter to deathly seer of suffering and grotesquerie. Along the way, we encounter such famed portraits as Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga, the dazzling Naked Maja, and The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, one of the most heart-stopping images of war in the history of art.

Beauty and elegance mingle with extravagance in the Palm Beach style of architect Marion Sims Wyeth, a kind of home design that takes the standard fixtures of paradise palm trees, ebullient fountains, glistening pools and gardens, views of the sea and mixes them with a dash of the exotic a Moorish-style balcony or doorway, Venetian archways, fanciful courtyards in the Spanish style, and spiralling staircases in stone and iron. Featured here are the legendary abodes of Marjorie Merriweather Post and Doris Duke Mar-a-Lago and Shangri La, respectively as well as the less well known but equally spectacular Hogarcito and La Claridad, to name but a few. For those unfamiliar with these dream palaces, intimate homes of repose and reflection, for the enjoyment of life and the living of it, the book serves at once as a revelation and an inspiration.

A celebration of Henry Melich’s wonderfully whimsical and romantic island escapes, which continue to inspire the work of designers today.

The works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude are monuments of transience. Gigantic in scale, they are always temporary, created to exist only for a limited time and to leave unique, unrepeatable impressions. “From the smallest of the Packages made in Paris in the early 1960s, to the delicate pattern of hundreds of branches embraced by a translucent fabric veil... in Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works there is nothing abstract, nothing imagined; it is all there―corporeal and tangible.” (Lorenza Giovanelli)

Art in Renaissance Italy (4th Edition) With a freshness and breadth of approach that sets the art in its context, this book explores why works were created and who commissioned the palaces, cathedrals, paintings and sculptures. It covers Rome and Florence, Venice and the Veneto, Assisi, Siena, Milan, Pavia, Genoa, Padua, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara, Urbino and Naples. Chapters are grouped into four chronological parts, allowing for a sustained examination of individual cities in different periods. 'Contemporary Scene' boxes provide fascinating glimpses of daily life and 'Contemporary Voice' boxes quote from painters and writers of the time. Innovative and scholarly, yet accessible and beautifully presented, this book is a definitive work on the Italian Renaissance. This revised edition contains around 200 new pictures and nearly all colour images. The chapter structure has also been improved for yet greater geographic and chronological clarity, and a new page size makes the volume more user-friendly.

Whether in his sumptuous images for advertising or his soft-hued nudes, Paul Outerbridge (1896–1958) was an alchemist of desire. Color was integral to his aesthetic allure, embracing the complex tri-color-carbro process to create a seductive surface of texture and tone. His quest was for “artificial paradises”―a perfection of form, with a surreal edge. This concise monograph introduces Outerbridge’s unique aesthetic and its commercial and artistic trajectory, from his professional peak as New York’s highest-paid commercial photographer through to his retreat to Hollywood in the 1940s after a scandal over his erotic photography. With key examples from his oeuvre, the book explores Outerbridge’s innovative style through Cubist still life images, magazine photographs, and his controversial nudes, as well as his interaction with other avant-garde photographers, such as Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and Man Ray. Along the way, we recognize Outerbridge’s particular ability to transform everyday objects into a quasi-abstract composition and his pioneering role in championing the expressionistic, as much as commercial, potential of color photographs.