Yale University Press

Directing his pointed wit at the upper echelons of 18th-century British society, William Hogarth, a painter, printmaker, and social critic, mocked the politics and customs of his day. His series of satirical paintings and engravings, which still absorb viewers after nearly three centuries, record human vice and folly with a sharp eye and cutting intelligence. This compelling book, with an accompanying DVD narrated by Alan Bennett, examines Hogarth's best-known series of paintings, Marriage A-la-Mode, and unlocks many mysteries that have surrounded this gripping artistic commentary. «Marriage A-la-Mode» recounts the story of a marriage arranged between the son of a spendthrift nobleman who needs cash and the daughter of a rich City of London merchant who hopes to buy social status. Love never develops, and the discordant lives of the bride and bridegroom descend into adultery and venereal disease followed by murder, execution, and suicide. Judy Egerton deciphers the visual cues and symbols Hogarth employs in his comic story of doubtful morals.

In recent decades Japanese art has achieved immense popularity in the West while being little understood. Critics have focused on the superficiality and infantilism they find prevalent in much of the work, while many Westerners are familiar with the country's artistic side solely through manga and anime. «Bye Bye Kitty!!!» offers a more incisive and wide-ranging view of the contemporary Japanese art scene, depicted through the works of fifteen artists, ranging in age from twenty-seven to forty-five and working in painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. The book's title invokes the subtle irony and subversive techniques adopted by this new generation of artists in their rebellion against the kawaii, or 'cute', aesthetic of mainstream Japanese culture. An essay by David Elliott provides an overview of the artists and explores many of the societal questions, such as the role of feminism, the rise of the 'salaryman', and reflections on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, featured in their works. A contribution by Tetsuya Ozaki illuminates the history and culture of Japan's current Heisei era, which began in January 1989 after the death of Emperor Hirohito. The artists featured in «Bye Bye Kitty!!!» demonstrate that they have the power not only to reconfigure international stereotypes about the current state of Japanese art but also to shape the very landscape of contemporary Japanese art itself.

In the words of the historian Jacob Burkhardt, 15th-century Italy was 'the place where the notion of the individual was born'. In keeping with this notion, early Renaissance Italy also hosted the first great age of portraiture in Europe. Artists working in Florence, Venice, and the courts of Italy created magnificent portrayals of the people around them — heads of state and church, patrons, scholars, poets, artists — concentrating for the first time on producing recognizable likenesses and expressions of personality. Written by a team of international scholars, «The Renaissance Portrait» provides new research and insight into the early history of portraiture. Unlike most surveys of Renaissance art, it introduces and studies in detail the three major Italian art centres of the 15th century, exploring how the rapid development of portraiture was closely linked to Renaissance society and politics, ideals of the individual, and concepts of beauty. Close to 190 works, in media ranging from painting and manuscript illumination to marble sculpture and bronze medals, created by artists that include Donatello, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Pisanello, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina, are illustrated and extensively discussed. Accompanying a major exhibition in Berlin and New York and featuring artworks from international museums and collectors, «The Portrait in Renaissance Italy» is a visual and literary delight to scholars and to any lover of Renaissance art.

Portraits and genre scenes by the great Dutch painter Frans Hals (1582/83–1666) are celebrated for their immediacy and dazzling brushwork. His dramatic compositions and bold technique brought his subjects to life in an unprecedented way. This book focuses upon eleven major works by Hals from the Metropolitan Museum's collection, supplemented by two Hals paintings from private collections and a selection of other Dutch paintings and prints. The pictures included here span forty years of Hals's career, from the early Merrymakers at Shrovetide of about 1616 to engaging portraits he painted in Haarlem during his later years. The author discusses the formation of Hals's style, emphasizing his stay in Antwerp in 1616 and his knowledge of Flemish masters and of contemporary critical thinking. For the first time, Hals's work is considered in the context of broader European trends, in particular the Early Baroque movement that flourished in Antwerp during the 1600s.

The Turkmen people of Central Asia and Iran are revered for their carpets and textiles. Less well known, but equally stunning, is the extraordinary silver jewelry created by Turkmen tribal craftsmen and urban silversmiths throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. This catalogue presents nearly two hundred pieces in glorious detail, ranging from crowns and headdresses to armbands and rings, and featuring accents of carnelian, turquoise, and other stones. Characterized by elegant form, geometric shapes, and delicate openwork, Turkmen jewelry has typically been viewed through an ethnographic rather than an aesthetic lens. By highlighting these objects—which come from one of the most significant private collections of Turkmen ornaments in the world—and placing them in the larger context of Islamic art, this groundbreaking publication elevates the vibrant, monumental pieces from folk art to fine art.

With images culled from eleven hundred years of history, this comprehensive survey explores the Byzantine empire's vast range of artistic splendors that indelibly informed the art of modern Europe. Renowned scholar Thomas Mathews emphasizes that the Byzantines' interest in humanism and painting the human figure became the essential bridge between classical and renaissance Europe. Starting with a brief history of Byzantium as a basis for understanding Byzantine theology and art, he places the empire's artistic development within a broad cultural and historical context. Featuring more than one hundred color plates of mosaics, metalwork, architecture, frescoes and religious artifacts, as well as maps, diagrams, and a timeline, this definitive work provides a complete yet succinct introduction to the full range of Byzantine art and iconography.

Richard Siken's Crush, selected as this year's winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Gluck hails the cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, and purgatorial recklessness of Siken's poems. She notes, Books of this kind dream big... They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.

Picasso and Braque offers an intimate look at one of the most pivotal exchanges in the history of Western art: the culminating two years (1910-12) of Analytic Cubism. While the Cubist experiment has long been a requisite chapter in the history of modernism, this is the first publication to delve deeply into these two intense years of productivity, revealing the intriguing pictorial game being played out between these two great masters. Essays by prominent curators and historians offer sustained readings of paintings, drawings, and prints in terms of their engagement with issues of genre, format, medium, and artistic process. In addition, the new technology of spectral imaging provides reproductions of astounding color and textural fidelity, making this an essential publication for those seeking to understand better the complexity of Picasso's and Braque's mark-making, which typically evades conventional photography.

Italian couturier Roberto Capucci (born 1930) is revered by contemporary fashion designers for his innovative silhouettes and masterful use of colour and materials. Capucci refers to his creations as 'studies in form', and draws inspiration from a multitude of sources, including art, architecture and nature. This beautifully illustrated book, the companion to the first exhibition of Capucci's work in the United States, examines his career from the 1950s to the present in the context of the rise of Italian fashion. Capucci's designs first captured the attention of the international press in 1951, when he presented his collection in Florence. Considered one of Italy's greatest talents, he experimented with construction techniques and unconventional materials such as raffia, wire, and stones. He refused to compromise his artistic vision to commercial concerns, and after withdrawing from the formal fashion world in the early 1980s, he presented one collection a year, each in a different city around the world. Featuring more than 80 extraordinary works, including the iconic 'dress sculptures' with their inventive use of pleating, colour and form, Roberto Capucci is a captivating look at this brilliant designer who transcends the conventional line between fashion and art.

The Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610) had a profound impact on a wide range of baroque painters of Italian, French, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish origin who resided in Rome either during his lifetime or immediately afterward. This captivating book illustrates the notion of Caravaggism, showcasing 65 works by Peter Paul Rubens and other important artists of the period who drew inspiration from Caravaggio. Also depicted are Caravaggio canvases that fully exhibit his distinctive style, along with ones that had a particularly discernible impact on other practitioners. Caravaggio's influence was greatest in Rome, where his works were seen by the largest and most international group of artists, and was at its peak in the early decades of the 17th century both before and after his untimely death at the age of 39. Not since Michelangelo or Raphael has one European artist affected so many of his contemporaries and over such broad geographic territory. Essays by an array of major Caravaggio scholars illuminate the underlying principles of the exhibit, reveal how Caravaggio altered the presentation and interpretation of many traditional subjects and inspired unusual new ones, and explore the artist's legacy and how he irrevocably changed the course of painting.

The reputation of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) as an inventor and scientist, and his complex personality, have sometimes almost overshadowed the importance of his aims and techniques as a painter. This exquisite book focuses on a crucial period in the 1480s and 90s when, as a salaried court artist to Duke Ludovico Sforza in the city-state of Milan — freed from the pressures of making a living in the commercially minded Florentine republic — Leonardo produced some of the most celebrated and influential works of his career. The Last Supper, his two versions of The Virgin of the Rocks, and The Lady with an Ermine (a beautiful portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, Ludovico's mistress) were paintings that set a new standard for his Milanese contemporaries. Leonardo's style was magnified, through collaboration and imitation, to become the visual language of the regime, and by the time he returned to Florence in 1500, his status had been utterly transformed. This new examination of Leonardo's painting career and his lasting impact on Italian Renaissance style features works from U.S., British, and European collections. Collectively, they represent the diverse range of his artistic output, from drawings in chalk, ink, and metalpoint to full-scale oil paintings. Together with the authors' meticulous research and detailed analysis, they demonstrate Leonardo's consummate skill and extraordinary ambition as a painter.

With the creation of the dramatic Supper at Emmaus (Louvre) and a series of intimate oil sketches of Christ on oak panels, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) overturned the entire history of Christian art. Traditionally, when depicting Christ, artists had relied on rigidly copied prototypes and icons. Among Rembrandt's innovations was his use of a Jewish model to portray a Christ imbued with empathy, gentleness, grace, and faithfulness to nature. Lavishly illustrated, this captivating and important book presents the seven known panels, along with more than 60 paintings, drawings, and prints by Rembrandt and his pupils. Essays by expert contributors offer insights into the production of the panels and their relationship to other works in Rembrandt's oeuvre; how he changed the meaning and status of the canonical image of Christ in northern European art; and much more. Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus is a marvelously intriguing study of how one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age revolutionized an aspect of art history dating to antiquity.

This lavishly illustrated catalogue is a comprehensive historical review of Chinese ceramics covering newly excavated discoveries from the Paleolithic era thousands of years ago to the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Throughout China's history there has been an ongoing practice of invention and innovation in the forms, materials, decorations, and functions of ceramics made in China, both for the domestic market and for its ever-growing trade with foreign markets. The creation of ceramic ware holds a special and very important place among the many arts and inventions that characterize Chinese culture, society, and civilization. The product of a ten-year collaboration among eminent American, Chinese, and Japanese scholars, the volume offers a new perspective in interpreting the oldest and one of the most admired Chinese art forms, from its technological aspects to its aesthetic value. The volume includes a chapter on Chinese export ceramics that delves into Chinese trade activities and ceramic wares made for export as well as a chapter about the authenticity of Chinese ceramics, discussing issues related to connoisseurship of this Chinese art. As author He Li writes, Despite the rich variety of Chinese ceramics around the world, no fully illustrated, photographed survey of a complete history has been attempted in English. This volume will convey the excitement of encountering these specially chosen examples for the first time.

This stunning volume features masterpieces of sculpture from the Renaissance through the 19th century. Well-known works by the great European sculptors — including Luca and Andrea della Robbia, Juan Martinez Montanes, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Francois Girardon, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Antoine-Louis Barye, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, and Auguste Rodin — are joined by recent additions to the collection, notably Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's mesmerizing psychological study of an introspective man. The ninety-two selected examples are diverse in media (marble, bronze, stucco, wood, terracotta, ivory) and size — ranging from a tiny oil lamp fantastically conceived and decorated by the Renaissance bronze sculptor Riccio to Antonio Canova's eight-foot-high Perseus with the Head of Medusa, executed in the heroic Neoclassical style. Incorporating information from recent conservation studies and the latest scholarly research, Ian Wardropper discusses the history and significance of the highlighted works, each reproduced with glorious new photography.

Windows on the War is a groundbreaking publication — the first in English to focus on posters designed by the Soviet Union's TASS news agency to bolster support for the Soviet war effort. TASS posters were created by a large collective of Soviet writers, printers, and artists, including such notables as Mikhail Cheremnykh, Nikolai Denisovskii, the Kukryniksy, and Pavel Sokolov-Skalia. Often six feet tall and always striking and bold, these stenciled posters were printed and placed daily in windows for the public to see. They were also sent abroad to serve as international cultural ambassadors, rallying Allied and neutral nations to the Soviet cause. Drawn from the Art Institute of Chicago's collection as well as other private and public holdings, these TASS posters have not been seen since World War II. An international team of scholars present the TASS posters both as unique historical objects and as artworks that reveal how preeminent artists of the day used unconventional technical and visual means to contribute to the war effort, marking a major chapter in the history of design and propaganda. Generously illustrated, the book presents photographs, documentary materials, and memorabilia in meaningful juxtapositions with images of the TASS posters. Also included are documents illuminating the expression of Russian cultural life in the United States during the war, opening a fascinating window onto the war along the Eastern Front.

Presents a hundred pairs of shoes, from the 16th to the 21st century, that paint a picture of how styles have changed — sometimes radically — over the years. This title also presents examples of fashionable footwear in a range of styles, from flats to stilettos.

The Battle of Britain. Pearl Harbor. Stalingrad. D-Day. These defining events of the Second World War exemplify both the immense heroism and the grievous costs of global conflict. They are the tense, thrilling moments that had the potential to swing the war in favor of either side and in turn change the course of history. In this gripping new look at the twentieth century's most crucial conflict, historian P. M. H. Bell analyzes twelve unique turning points that determined the character and the ultimate outcome of the Second World War. Be they military campaigns, economic actions, or diplomatic summits, Bell's twelve turning points span the full breadth of the war, from the home front to the front line. Many are familiar — Barbarossa and Hiroshima among them — while sections on war production, the Atlantic convoy system, and the conferences at Tehran and Yalta emphasize the importance of the combatants' actions off the battlefield. Through these keenly narrated episodes, Bell reveals how the Allied and Axis powers achieved their greatest successes and stumbled into their strategic failures, inviting us to think about the Second World War in a fresh, stimulating way. Ultimately, his close study of these dozen turning points reminds us, often terrifyingly, how easily things might have turned out differently.

This definitive introduction to the gnostic scriptures provides a crucial look at the theology, religious atmosphere, and literary traditions of ancient Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism. Maps and tables.

Universally recognized as a brilliant and gifted 18th-century artist, Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) was regarded by Horace Walpole as one of the three greatest painters in England, along with his friends Reynolds and Gainsborough. Yet he has remained without a detailed study of his life and works, owing to the fascinating and complex vicissitudes of his career, now established from widely scattered sources. From being a late-baroque painter at a German princely court to working under the royal patronage of George III and Queen Charlotte, from his serious interest in Indian life and landscape, developed while living near Calcutta, to his attacks on the bloody progress of the French Revolution, Zoffany created pictures that document with incomparable liveliness the worlds and people among whom he moved.

Walter Crane (1845-1915) was one of the most important, versatile, and radical artists of the 19th century: a painter, decorator, designer, book illustrator, poet, author, teacher, art theorist, and socialist. Crane's astonishingly diverse body of work challenged the establishment, both artistically and politically. In this original and carefully researched new study, Morna O'Neill presents a fascinating portrait of an artist who used his talent and energy to dismantle the traditional boundaries between fine art and decorative art, between elite art and popular art, and between art and propaganda. O'Neill reconsiders Crane's politics and reintegrates it with his art, allowing Crane to emerge in this book as a unique figure, an artist who translated art for art's sake into art for all.

What woman can resist imagining herself in a beautiful designer dress? Here, for the first time ever, are 100 fabulous gowns from the permanent collection of the renowned Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, each of which is a reminder of the ways fashion reflects the broader culture that created it. Featuring designs by Paul Poiret, Coco Chanel, Madame Gres, Yves Saint Laurent, Gianni Versace, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and many others, this one-of-a-kind collection presents a stunning variety of garments. Ranging from the buttoned-up gowns of the late 17th century to the cutting-edge designs of the early 21st, the dresses provide a vivid picture of the sensibilities and excesses of each era while providing a vivid picture of how styles have changed — sometimes radically — over the years. A late 1600s wool dress with a surprising splash of silver thread; a large-bustled red satin dress from the 1800s; a short, shimmery 1920s dancing dress; a glamorous 1950s cocktail dress; and, a 1960s minidress — each tells a story about its period and serves as a testament to the enduring ingenuity of the fashion designer's art. Images of the dresses are accompanied by informative text and enhanced by close-up details as well as runway photos, fashion plates, works of art, and portraits of designers. A glossary of related terms is also included.

This beautiful book presents one hundred great works from the National Gallery Collection, each by a different artist. Arranged in chronological order and accompanied by Louise Govier's lively text, full-page reproductions of these selected highlights introduce you to some of the most inspiring paintings ever made. From the earliest Italian altarpiece of around 1265, to the most recent — Paul Cezanne's great Bathers, of about 1894-1905 — each painting has been chosen for its unique significance; whether representing a particular artist, a place or a time, or simply for its beauty and the pleasure it provides.

Federico Barocci was among the most admired painters in sixteenth-century Italy, but the distinctive nature of his compelling altarpieces and their historical importance have never been fully understood. This important study relates Barocci’s achievements to transformations in the theory and practice of painting during an era in which pictorial developments generated deep tensions for ecclesiastical art. Barocci was celebrated as one of the only painters whose religious works combined the sensuous allure increasingly desired in modern art with profound devotion. Through a close study of Barocci’s work and of documents ranging from letters to art theory, Stuart Lingo reconstructs how the painter accomplished his artistic and cultural miracle. In so doing, he offers new insights into critical artistic issues in the late Renaissance, from the cultural significance of stylistic choices to the early development of analogies between painting and music as affective arts.

The Lone Star State is home to a dazzling array of world-class artworks, many in private collections and rarely exhibited. Reflecting the Kimbell Art Museum’s own collecting strengths, this book focuses on the art of Europe and the ancient Mediterranean from about 700 B.C. to around 1950. Over 40 prominent collections are featured along with works that have been given to museums in Texas or have left the state through gift or sale. Among the artists included are Thomas Gainsborough, Paul Gauguin, Guercino, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh. The distinguished scholar Richard R. Brettell contributes a comprehensive essay on the importance of private collecting in Texas.