Phaidon Press

Albert Moore (1841-93) was one of the most important late Victorian artists. In a single-minded quest for aesthetic perfection, he employed the female figure to embody abstract systems of ideal beauty, and created many of the iconic and defining images of the Aesthetic Movement. Yet he has remained a shadowy figure. Based on original research and unpublished family documents, Robyn Asleson's monograph presents a fresh view of the artist's allegedly reclusive personality, and firmly establishes him as a major figure and a significant precursor of Modernism. This beautiful book is now issued in a paperback format that will bring the artist to a wide and appreciative audience. The Victorian artist Albert Moore (1841-93) pursued a lifelong quest for ideal beauty — an ambitious crusade which propelled him from the naturalism of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, through the medievalism of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, to the Classicism and Japonisme of his friends Frederic Leighton and James McNeill Whistler. Before his twenty-fifth year, Moore had outstripped the aesthetic interests of his closest colleagues and embarked on a solitary search for the timeless secrets of aesthetic perfection. In a series of exquisitely executed paintings, Moore employed the female figure to embody the abstract systems of ideal beauty that he discerned in the finest examples of art and nature. Building on the artist's meticulous watercolour studies of nature and his monumental figural decorations for architecture, these paintings chart the evolution of Moore's singular artistic creed and provide many of the defining images of the Aesthetic Movement. Fiercely protective of his independence, Moore rejected the high visibility embraced by his celebrated professional colleagues. Thus, ironically, while his paintings hung prominently at annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery, Moore himself remained a shadowy figure on the periphery of the Victorian art world. He remains an enigma today. Although his paintings are among the most celebrated icons of the Victorian era, few recognize in them the unique analysis of pure form that established Moore as the most radical exponent of English Aestheticism and one of the most progressive artists of the nineteenth century. A one-man avant-garde, Moore anticipated by several generations the abstract aesthetic concerns of twentieth-century Modernism. This full-length study of Albert Moore — the first to appear in over 100 years — seeks to restore the artist to his rightful place in art history, while also fleshing out his hitherto mysterious personality and lifestyle. Drawing on unpublished materials and on a mass of new and fully documented research, the book analyses the origins and development of Moore's aesthetic systems and traces his formative links to architectural theory and practice. New evidence concerning Moore's personal life and professional networks debunks the myth of his hermit-like existence, and sheds light on his notorious exclusion from Royal Academy membership. In particular, the author reveals that Moore's friendship with and influence upon James McNeill Whistler were closer and more important than has hitherto been assumed. The artist's studio practice and his relationship with patrons, models and students are also considered. In place of the taciturn recluse of Victorian legend, Albert Moore emerges as a passionate and audacious crusader for beauty, an artist well ahead of his time.

Dating from the 1850s to the First World War, the Arts and Crafts Movement was an international phenomenon of enormous scope and influence. It encompassed everything from architecture to town planning, metalwork and embroidery, in places as diverse as California and Budapest. Born of thinkers and practitioners in Victorian England its ideological currents reflect the era's most pressing social, political and artistic concerns. In this book Rosalind Blakesley explores the common ideas that give cohesion to a movement of otherwise bewildering breadth and stylistic heterogeneity. At the origins of the movement was a reaction against industrialization, the long-standing division between traditional crafts and Fine Art and the over-elaborate ornamentation which disguised an object or building's true 'function'.Early British Arts and Crafts practitioners campaigned for a revival of old craft techniques, for the elevation of the applied arts and for 'honesty' in design, ideas that were picked up and developed across Europe and the United States, with national variants quickly emerging. Germany, for example, recognized the potential of industrial techniques and experimented with standardization in design; in Finland, then annexed to Russia, Arts and Crafts was allied to the search for self-expression and a national style in art. Examining both acknowledged Arts and Crafts centres and lesser-known communities, Rosalind Blakesley concludes her authoritative and accessible survey with an evaluation of the Movement's significance in the twenty-first century.

Magnum photographer Steve McCurry never set out to take portraits. Critically acclaimed and recognized internationally for his classic reportage, over the last 20 years he has worked for the «National Geographic» and other publications on numerous assignments: along the Afghan border, in Baghdad, Beirut and the Sahel. McCurry's coverage of the monsoon won first prize in the World Press Awards, and was part of his portfolio when he was named Magazine Photographer of the Year in 1984. In 1985, McCurry photographed an Afghan girl for the «National Geographic». The intensity of the subject's eyes and her compelling gaze made this one of contemporary photography's most celebrated and best-known portraits. McCurry is now equally famous for his other portrayals of memorable faces that he has encountered while travelling throughout the world. Compelling, unforgettable and moving, McCurry's images are unique street portraits: unstylized and unposed snapshots of people that reveal the universality of human emotion.

Tracing Warhol's origins as the sickly child of Ruthenian immigrants in working-class Pittsburgh to his transformation into New York's dark prince of Pop and finally into the world's most successful 'business artist', «Andy Warhol «Giant» Size» provides an appropriately larger-than-life look at the celebrated artist's career. Cultural critic Dave Hickey provides a compelling essay on Warhol's geek-to-guru evolution while chapter openers by Warhol friends and insiders give special insight into the way the enigmatic artist led his life and made his art. More than 2,000 illustrations culled from rarely seen archival material, documentary photography, and artwork not only provide a full picture of the artist's life but a telling look at late twentieth-century popular culture. Warhol's little-explored early career as a successful commercial illustrator and designer, his importance as a co-creator of the Pop movement, his midcareer switch to filmmaker and manager of the Velvet Underground, his founding of Interview magazine, and his bid for the hearts and pocketbooks of the high-flying glitterati are shown throughout this stunning new volume.

IN THE SHADOW OF MOUNTAINS is a new collection of sublime portraits, landscapes, and street photography taken by Steve McCurry over the last 27 years. Children and shepherds, warriors and laborers are presented alongside striking views of sandstone cities, mountainous landscapes, and ancient temples. Evocative and timeless, these lyrical images capture the enduring spirit, grandeur, and beauty of the land that lies at the foot of the Hindu Kush. McCurry's photographs capture human experience and transcend boundaries of language and culture.

Each designer is represented by a full-page illustration, mostly in colour, of their most significant garden and an accompanying text that describes the image and discusses the type of garden and its role in the further development of the tradition. Each page includes cross-references to other designers working in a similar style, movement, or time period, as well as biographical information about the designer, and complete data on the garden reproduced.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) is regarded as the inventor of modern music. His phenomenal achievements are comparable to those of his close friend and contemporary Pablo Picasso. This comprehensive biography traces the influences that informed his style and sets all of his major works into context, devoting particular attention to the composer s childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia. It charts his discovery by Diaghilev and traces his ensuing collaborations with choreographers, dancers, painters, designers, and writers. Above all the book concentrates on Stravinsky s creativity, describing how his musical mind worked and relating this to his complex and fascinating personality. Igor Stravinsky is part of Phaidon s successful 20th Century Composers series, which presents authoritative and engaging biographies of the great creative musicians of our time, augmented by striking visual material and essential reference information. This edition of the book features a whimsical new cover by Jean-Jacques Sempé, the world-renowned illustrator and cartoonist.

This book explores the 'photo story' through 61 master classes by some of the world's greatest photographers, all members of the international photographic agency Magnum. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Elliott Erwitt and their colleagues use the photo story as a vehicle to explain their approach to taking and editing photographs. It is about the Magnum photographers, their subjects and their approaches to photography in general and to the particular form of the photo story. The book will also comprise a history of Magnum practice and photojournalism over a 70-year period. Magnum Stories is a collection of photo stories produced by the photographers of Magnum. Through the work of key Magnum photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Eugene Richards, Martin Parr, Inge Morath and Leonard Freed, this book covers a wide range of subjects including the Vietnam War, student protests in Tiananmen Square, Fidel Castro overthrows Cuban dictator in 1959, Picasso, Malcolm X, the French theatre group Theatre du Soleil, the US invasion of Grenada in the early 1980s, the New York police, Apartheid and Buddhism. The photographic genres covered include war photography, documentary, photojournalism, social realism, portraits of people and places, fashion and news. There are 61 Magnum photographers featured in the book. Each photographer is represented across 8 pages by a photo story of their choice, which is fully illustrated, and a text which is written in the photographer's own voice based on new interviews with the author. The texts are intelligent, idiosyncratic, each with their own voice and style. Accessible and engaging to read, they reveal different perceptions and approaches to photography and each photographer's unique and varied takes on the photo story and their practice — what is the photo story?, what does it mean?, how did they come across it? what key decisions are made when taking the story, etc. As well as featuring the work of individual photographers, this book functions as a history and interrogation of the form of the photo story — the key vehicle for photography in the twentieth century, from its earliest developments in the 30s, through the death of 'photojournalism', to contemporary manifestations, all of which is explored by the author in the introduction. The book explores the influences that have affected the photo story, such as key twentieth century events and the life of photographic magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and Paris Match, all of which have helped to define the genre. It provides a unique reflection on the course of photojournalism in the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, from the common purpose of the post-WWII years to the individualistic range of practices and interests that constitute documentary photography today.

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), was one of the finest and most distinctive of the Victorian painters. Dutch-born, he moved to London in 1870 and became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean sea and sky. In this original study, Rosemary Barrow presents an absorbing and often amusing portrait of an exuberant personality who carved out a brilliant career for himself at the heart of London's artistic and cultural elite. But above all she subjects the paintings to a fresh scrutiny, and reveals that Alma-Tadema, a knowledgeable student of antiquity, repeatedly used literary and archaeological allusions in his paintings to play a game of interpretation with his viewers. Time and again the seeming innocence of the scenes he depicts is subverted by a mischievously placed inscription or statue, suggesting to the initiated a darker and usually risque meaning. Neglected after his death, Alma-Tadema's paintings are once again admired for their beauty and their remarkable mastery of light, colour and texture. With its intriguing insights into his personality and intentions, this book should provide a challenging reassessment of a major artist.

Following on from «The Art Book» (1994), «30,000 Years of Art» provides an original and accessible way of looking at art. On its publication in 2007, «The Daily Telegraph» described it as 'a bold new publishing event that promises to redefine the parameters of art history'. In this mini format edition of the book, 500 great works of art from all periods and regions in the world have been carefully selected from the original book and are again arranged in chronological order, breaking through the usual geographical and cultural boundaries of art history to celebrate the vast range of human artistry across time and space. The book presents art in a way different from other art history compendia, revealing the diversity, or in many cases similarity, of man's artistic achievements through time and around the globe. Ordered chronologically, the resulting timeline of works leads to compelling browsing: surprising juxtapositions offer intellectual pleasure and a sense of wonder and discovery. The selection of works from across the world, arranged in the sequence in which they were made, takes the reader on a global and historical journey, responding to such questions as 'where does the earliest art appear?' What were artists creating in China or Africa while Rembrandt was painting portraits in Leyden? How were similar subjects — equestrian themes, landscapes, religious scenes — manipulated by artists in Aztec Mexico and Medieval Europe? While artworks from ancient Greece or the European Renaissance or pre-Columbian Americas will be interspersed with contemporaneous works created in Africa, India or Japan, an extraction of the Greek or Renaissance or American works could stand alone as an essential abridgement of the finest art of that period or culture. The selection of works is non-hierarchical and includes both fine and decorative arts — most commonly painting and sculpture, but also textiles, masks, ceramics and jewellery. Primarily functional arts (furniture, architecture, industrial and graphic design etc.) are not covered. Each work is accompanied by key caption information (date, title, place of origin, style or culture, medium, dimensions etcetera), and a text that provides critical review of the work, placing it in its art historical context and thus explaining its contribution to the development of the history of art.

»The Story of Art», one of the best-known and best-loved books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over half a century. Professor Gombrich's clear and engaging text combines with hundreds of full-colour illustrations to trace the history of art in an unfolding narrative, from primitive cave paintings to controversial art works of the present day.

This text is the 16th revised and updated edition of this introduction to art, from the earliest cave paintings to experimental art. Eight new artists from the modern period have been introduced. They are: Corot, Kollwitz, Nolde, de Chirico, Brancussi, Magritte, Nicolson and Morandi. A sequence of new «endings» have been added, and the captions are now fuller, including the medium and dimension of the works illustrated. Six fold-outs present selected large-scale works. They are: Van Eyck's «Ghent Altarpiece», Leonardo's «Last Supper», Botticelli's «Birth of Venus», Jackson Pollock's «One (Number 31, 1950)», Van der Weyden's «Descent from the Cross» and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The series has always been highly regarded for its insight and authority, providing an invaluable introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each volume contains an introductory essay, forty-eight full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white.

This is more than just a book of photographs. It is a modernist Japanese photograph album created from Oriental fabrics and papers, and bound by hand. It contains the work of Gueorgui Pinkhassov, a highly-acclaimed photographic artist, innovator and member of Magnum. The sense of innovation and artistry is carried through in the photographs which explore how singular details, plays of light and reflection can capture a spirit and shape an atmosphere. The artist's haiku texts accompany the images.

This is a portfolio of the best of Steve McCurry's photography: classical, magical and powerful images from South and Southeast Asia. McCurry takes photographs all over the world, for National Geographic magazine and his own projects, but it is the people, places, colours and forms of Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma) that have inspired his most sublime images — photographs which transcend their original editorial purpose to become classics of photography. South Southeast features sixty-seven photographs with brief captions. A short text about McCurry introduces the book and he has written commentaries to accompany eight of the images, telling the stories behind them.

»Prodigies in photography are singularly rare; women prodigies virtually unheard of.» — Abigail Solomon-Godeau. Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) has become one of the most talked about, most studied, and most influential of late twentieth century photographers. She started taking photographs when she was barely thirteen and in less than a decade created a body of work that has now secured her a reputation as one of the most original American artists of the 1970s. Woodman brought an understanding of Baroque painting, Modernist art and contemporary post-minimalist practice to her haunting, sensual images. Both in her work with models, and in sometimes disturbing self-portraits, Woodman made a thoroughgoing challenge to the certainties of photography. Interested in how people relate to space, and how the three-dimensional world can be reconciled with the two dimensions of the photographic image, Woodman played complex games of hide-and-seek with her camera. One of the enduring appeals of her work is the way in which she constructs enigmas that trap our gaze. She depicts herself seemingly fading into a flat plane, merging with the wall under the wallpaper, dissolving into the floor, or flattening herself behind glass. But is this disappearing act really the artist putting in an appearance? That we are never completely sure what we are looking at means that we keep looking. Woodman constantly compares the fragility of her own body with the physical environment around her. Fascinated by transformation and the permeability of seemingly fixed boundaries, Woodman's work conjures the precarious moment between adolescence and adulthood, between presence and absence. This comprehensive monograph includes over 250 of Woodman's works — some of which have never been exhibited or published before — as well as extracts from her journals selected by her father George Woodman. There are examples of her large-scale blueprints and reproductions of her photobooks, including «Some Disordered Interior Geometries», which was published in 1981, the year she took her own life. An extensive text by Chris Townsend examines the influences of gothic literature, surrealism, feminism and post-minimalist art on Woodman's photographs. Townsend places Woodman in relation to her contemporaries, such as Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. This book confirms Woodman's position as one of America's most talented photographers and important artists since 1970, with an influence lasting well beyond her own time. Interested in how people relate to space, and how the three-dimensional world can be reconciled with the two dimensions of the photographic image, Woodman played complex games of hide-and-seek with her camera. One of the enduring appeals of her work is the way in which she constructs enigmas that trap our gaze. She depicts herself seemingly fading into a flat plane, merging with the wall under the wallpaper, dissolving into the floor, or flattening herself behind glass. But is this disappearing act really the artist putting in an appearance? That we are never completely sure what we are looking at means that we keep looking. Woodman constantly compares the fragility of her own body with the physical environment around her. Fascinated by transformation and the permeability of seemingly fixed boundaries, Woodman's work conjures the precarious moment between adolescence and adulthood, between presence and absence.

Since the mid 1970s Roman Signer's work has examined the forces of the elements — air, fire, earth and water — in a combination of performance (documented by photography and video) and sculpture (the physical remains of his acts). With a Dadaist love for the absurd, his artworks include «Race» (1981), a video performance in which the artist races a lit fuse across a field (hopelessly behind from the outset, the artist loses by nearly the entire length); «Action at Hotel Weissbad» (1992), in which an ordinary table is shot out a hotel window, the resulting photographs showing a table flying incongruously over a sleepy, snowy Swiss village; «Falling from a Bridge» (1980), in which wooden boxes are dropped from a great height into a rushing river, bursting into fragments with a thunderous crash; and «Bicycle with Rockets» (1991), the photographs of which show a fiery bicycle flying through the gallery like a demon comet. Often Signer will exhibit in the gallery the remains of an event not witnessed by the public, such as four empty barrels and a violently splattered wall, the remains of an explosion of paint in the gallery space («Portrait Gallery», 1993), or four sand piles with perfectly round craters on each, the neat results of four fuse explosions at their top («Cones of Sand», 1988). Roman Signer is an extremely respected artist worldwide. He represented Switzerland at the 1999 Venice Biennale and was included in Documenta 8 (1987) and Skulptur Projekte Munster (1997), among many other group exhibitions. Over the course of the past 25 years he has shown at nearly all the key European museums and kunsthalles. American venues have included the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (1998) and the Renaissance Society in Chicago (1991).

Towards the end of Van Gogh's short life, when he lived in Provence, his pictures of flowers and plants acquired a singular beauty and intensity. Nature and the countryside provided him with the inspiration, restorative power and freshness of subject matter for which he seems to have yearned. The sight of trees in blossom, flowery meadows, sunflowers and irises prompted endless experiments in colour and movement and resulted in a wealth of vibrant and beautiful paintings. This gorgeous book celebrates Van Gogh's great love of flowers. It contains a broad selection of ravishing colour illustrations, together with a number of the artist's very attractive pen and ink drawings, which demonstrate the vigorous and individual calligraphy of his work. The text draws upon Van Gogh's own moving and descriptive letters to show the great importance to him of nature and flowers.

The Art Deco style was all pervasive during the 1920s and 1930s affecting the decorative arts, fine arts and fashion. This text specifically examines Art Deco painting and defines it as a genre. The author analyzes the characteristics of the style, period and history of the movement, explaining its relationship to Classicism, the Symbolists, the Precisionists, photography and Cubism. It discusses the frequent use of classical imagery, the importance of society portraiture, the portrayal of the «demi-monde» and the lure of decorative exoticism. French, American, Russian, British and Italian Art Deco painters, who are all represented here, were attracted as much to the skyscraper and the automobile as they were to the classical nude. The result was a remarkable mix of traditional and modern: the sleek, seductive portraits by the Polish emigre Tamara de Lempicka, the fantastical classical allegories of Jean Dupas, the elegant high-style compositions of Australia by Charles Meere and the evocative «real-life» scenes of Glyn Philpot.

Professor E.H. Gombrich is acknowledged as one of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the 20th century. His writings include three major narrative works — «The Story of Art», «Art and Illusion» and «The Sense of Order» — and ten volumes of collected essays and reviews. This anthology presents a selection from all these books, as well as six pieces which have previously not been published by Phaidon. This work contains discussions on the nature of representation, the psychology of perception, the interpretation of images and the problems of theory and method. Other topics include social and cultural history, connoisseurship, iconography, symbolism and meaning in art, relativism, tradition, conservatism, and the idea of progress.

- All-in-one fold-and-send writing pad featuring images from the secret world of young ballerinas — No envelopes required — simply write your letter on the stationery, fold up each sheet, seal, stamp and post — A perfect gift for the ballet-obsessed of every age

Pop Art was one of the most revolutionary art movements of the 20th century. In the 1950s, a group of artists in Great Britain and the USA, rather than despising popular culture, gladly embraced both its imagery and its methods, using photographs, advertisements, posters, cartoons and everyday objects to form the basis of their art. Their audacity at first scandalized the Establishment, but by the mid-1960s their work dominated the world art scene and names such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg were familiar to many. This book examines the formation and growth of the movement with selected examples from the style's most important exponents.

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is the only sculptor who is of equal rank to the French painters of the «Great Generation» from Monet to Cezanne. But while he has been considered an early modernist among sculptors, he drew on a rich variety of artistic traditions, including those of ancient Greece, the Renaissance, Egypt and the Far East. He was the creator of a new form in sculpture, the fragment as a finished work, usually a head or a trunk, sometimes a pair of heads only. Rodin is renowned for his expression of emotion and movement and his use of symbolism and distortion. In 1913 the artist described his pictorial approach to sculpting saying: «I place the model in such a way it stands out against the background and so that the light falls on this profile. Then I turn them again and gradually work my way round the figure». Gathered in this work is a collection of photographs of Rodin's masterpieces — from the impressive shape of «The Thinker», to the powerfully melancholy group of «The Burghers of Calais» and some of the most outstanding portrait busts of this century, among them Rose Beuret, Madame de Goloubeff, Victor Hugo and Gustav Mahler.

This is a collection of 45 Tokyo street fashion portraits from Japan's premier fanzine. «Fruits» was established in 1994, by photographer Shoich Aoki, initially as a project to document the growing explosion in street fashion within the suburbs of Tokyo. The magazine has since grown to cult status and is now avidly followed by thousands of Japanese teenagers who also use the magazine as an opportunity to check out the latest styles and trends. The average age of the kids featured in the magazine is between 12 and 18 years and the clothes they wear are a mixture of high fashion — Vivienne Westwood is a keen favourite — and home-made ensembles which, when combined, create a novel, if not hysterical, effect. This collection of postcards represents a documentation of the changing face of street fashion throughout the 1990s.