BELLAS ARTES

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.

The leading design authority for the last century, AD under Astley is more popular and far-reaching than ever before, featuring a wide range of styles and tastemakers and helping to personalize interior design for us all. This book showcases highly original interiors and the personality and creativity of the bold-faced names who live in them. Spanning the worlds of fashion, music, film, art, and design, the people inhabiting these pages come from around the globe, showing us there are so many ways to create a beautiful home. The interiors encompass different milieus and styles, from city to country, classical to bohemian, modern to old world, including art-filled urban lofts and classic townhouses as well as country estates and tropical getaways.

Aerin Lauder’s love of flowers is deeply personal, being passed down to her by her celebrated grandmother, Estée Lauder, as well as her mother, Jo Carole Lauder. From fresh bouquets to floral patterns on wallpaper, fabric, and tabletop pieces, in Living with Flowers Lauder shares the many ways she brings flowers into her home. Whether it’s an arrangement of daisies in the kitchen to welcome friends or family for dinner, or a single stem on her desk to brighten the workday, flowers are an essential part of her home and her lifestyle.

While touring readers through four of his own homes, Paredes shares the key elements in his creative process, giving us access to the same tools he uses in every home to decorate rooms that feel modern even as they glamorize the past, to show us how an environment has real power to transform our very state of mind. Paredes is renowned for being a master of extrapolating an entire theme from one unique item, say transforming the stripe of a crisp Oxford shirt into a unique upholstery perfect for the seaside, or finding inspiration for a couch’s decorative fringe in a well-worn piece of leather ranch gear. He is said to have “perfect visual pitch,” creating vignettes and rooms with an energy that feels undeniably masculine and sophisticated thanks to dark wood, iron railings, rustic fabrics, an overall patina, and soft furnishings in soothing earth tones.

Step (or jitterbug) into the dazzling world of 1930s American advertising, where bold promises, slick design, and more than a touch of wishful thinking kept the country dreaming through the Great Depression. While wallets tightened, creativity soared―glossy magazine pages teemed with cheerful, colorful ads selling everything from beauty creams to Hawaiian vacations, all wrapped in an air of optimism that defied the hard times.