BELLAS ARTES

In this essential TASCHEN introduction to Tadao Ando we explore the hybrid of tradition, modernism, and function that allows his buildings to enchant architects, designers, fashion designers, and beyond. Through key projects including private homes, churches, museums, apartment complexes, and cultural spaces, we explore a uniquely monumental yet comforting aesthetic that draws as much on the calm restraint of Japanese tradition as the compelling modernist vocabularies of Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. With featured projects in Japan, France, Italy, Spain, and the United States, we see not only Ando’s global reach but also his refined sensitivity for the environs: the play of light through windows, and, in particular, the interaction of buildings with water. From the mesmerizing Church of the Light in Osaka to the luminous Punta della Dogana Contemporary Art Center in Venice, this is a radiant tour through a distinctly contemporary form as much as a timeless appeal of light, elements, and equilibrium.

Hailed as the first American-born art movement to have a worldwide influence, Abstract Expressionism denotes the non-representational use of paint as a means of personal expression. It emerged in America in the 1940s, with lead protagonists including Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. Abstract Expressionism spawned many different stylistic tendencies but two particularly prominent sub-categories: action painting, exemplified by de Kooning and Pollock, and color field painting, made most famous by Rothko. Throughout, Abstract Expressionists strove to convey emotions and ideas through the making of marks, through forms, textures, shades, and the particular quality of brushstrokes. The movement favored large-scale canvases, and embraced the role of accident or chance. With featured works from 20 key Abstract Expressionist artists, this book introduces the movement which shifted the center of art gravity from Paris to New York and remains for many the golden moment of American art.

Stephen Johnson, compositor, dirige en la BBC un programa de música clásica y explora en este texto cómo la música de Shostakovich se fue gestando bajo la época del Terror de Stalin, y cómo logró dar forma a los miedos y esperanzas de un pueblo castigado por la guerra y la historia. Johnson escribe sobre el poder terapéutico de la música para quienes padecen desórdenes mentales y cuenta cómo la música de Shostakovich le insufló a él mismo una fuerza insospechada en su lucha contra el trastorno bipolar. El texto enlaza episodios autobiográficos con entrevistas realizadas a músicos rusos coetáneos de Shostakovich y con reflexiones sobre la particular lectura que hace Johnson de filósofos, psicoanalistas y neurólogos, hasta dibujar ante nosotros una imagen profunda y convincente de cómo la música concebida por una persona encierra el hechizo que permite salvar la vida de otra persona.

The extraordinary paintings and watercolors of this contemporary British abstract artist, deeply influenced by the romantic English landscape tradition of Constable and Turner. This is the first major look at the work of the renowned yet intensely private and reclusive artist William Tillyer (b. 1938), best known for his abstract oil paintings, watercolors, and prints. Tillyer’s skill and hugely varied body of work make him one of Britain’s most respected artists, in the same generation as Lucian Freud and David Hockney. Tillyer is finally getting the recognition he deserves. While Tillyer’s paintings are largely abstract, they are based on the landscape of North Yorkshire, where he has lived and worked for most of his life. The book covers Tillyer’s experiments with nontraditional materials and techniques—his 3D panels, cut canvases, constructed works with found objects, printmaking with a wide range of processes, and paintings on wire mesh.

A seminal work by one of today’s most vital figurative artists explores the complexity of race, wealth, and class through storytelling and multimedia drawings. This extraordinary illustrated story—Toyin Ojih Odutola’s best-known body of work—chronicles the private lives of two fictional aristocratic Nigerian families, the UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi, if colonialist and slave-trade interventions had never disrupted the country. Rendered life-size in charcoal, pastel, and pencil, Ojih Odutola’s figures appear enigmatic and mysterious, set against the artist’s larger conceived narrative, highlighting the malleability of identity and assumptions about race, wealth, and class. The UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi presents the story of these families in four chapters illustrated and authored by Ojih Odutola, accompanied by the artist’s sketches and notes. Also included are several insightful essays on the artist herself by noted writers and critics Zadie Smith, Leigh Raiford, and others. An introduction to the artist’s vivid fictionalized world, as well as a reflection on the role of this body of work within her broader practice, this remarkable volume serves as the essential guide to Ojih Odutola’s unique form of storytelling.

This highly anticipated follow-up volume presents the exquisite designs of Tord Boontje, one of the most creative and romantic industrial designers working today. Tord Boontje: Enchanted World is a comprehensive visual document of the designer’s most recent work. As an artist and a craftsman, Boontje incorporates an artisanal sensibility into contemporary industrial design, drawing upon a rich graphic tradition to create objects of exceptional beauty and delicacy. Featured here are some of his latest works, many undertaken after Boontje stepped down as Head of Design Products at the Royal College of Art in 2013 (a position he assumed after Ron Arad in 2009). Now, solely focused on his own design studio in London, Boontje showcases many of his designs, including the wispy Icarus Lamp, an armoire constructed entirely of pressed-metal fig “leaves” for Meta, a portable Bluetooth speaker for Yamaha hidden under a curtain of horsehair, and many other romantic explorations that have made Boontje’s output stand out in the world of design. Combining developing technologies and traditional approaches, his pieces are prized for their originality, delicacy, and intricate detail. This book is a must for design lovers, providing readers with a window into how Boontje crafts his unique objects, from studio prototype to retail. Indeed, the book is conceived as a work of total design, using special printing effects and beautiful marginalia on almost every page in the form of Boontje’s sensitive and romantic detailed hand-drawn illustrations that have served as the inspiration for many of the objects featured here.