Yale University Press

Born in 1895 in a remote fishing village in Spain, Cristobal Balenciaga learned sewing and tailoring at his mother's knee. By 1937, the talented and persistent young man had opened his own design salon in Paris, and in the years following World War II, he emerged as a designer to be reckoned with in the world of haute couture. The House of Balenciaga grew to serve an international clientele from locations in Paris, Madrid, and Barcelona, and from 1937 to its closing in 1968 created some of the most outstanding and innovative examples of French and Spanish haute couture of the era. This beautifully illustrated book presents nearly 70 Balenciaga creations for day and evening, along with 25 hats, from the extraordinary archives of the Texas Fashion Collection of the University of North Texas. The book also includes striking fashion photographs from Vogue magazine and Harper's Bazaar by Richard Avedon and Louise Dahl-Wolfe. A series of essays explores many aspects of the designer's work, among them his contributions to fashion history; connections with such other prominent designers as Hubert de Givenchy and Oscar de la Renta; important relationships with Neiman Marcus and fashion buyer Bert de Winter in Dallas; and his close friend and client Claudia Heard de Osborne.

From 1874 to 1882, John Singer Sargent produced more than 200 paintings and water-colours aside from portraiture, including figures in landscape settings, architectural studies, seascapes, subject paintings, and studies after old masters. This book discusses these pictures. Each painting is documented with exhibition history and bibliography.

My Dear Mr. Stalin is the first publication that contains the complete correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin. This collection of more than three hundred hot-war messages, never before fully available in any language, is an invaluable primary source for understanding the relationship that developed between these two great world leaders during a time of supreme world crisis. The correspondence, secret at the time, begins with a letter Roosevelt wrote to Stalin offering aid to the Soviet Union following Hitler's surprise attack in 1941. It ends with a message that was an attempt to minimise the differences between the two leaders, approved by Roosevelt only minutes before his death in 1945. The book traces the evolution of their unique relationship, revealing the statesmanship of the two men and their thinking about the grave events of their time. An informative introduction to the volume and generous annotations set the letters in context.

Comic artist Ivan Brunetti, the creator of Schizo, offers a best-of anthology of contemporary art comics, along with some classic comic strips and other historical material that have retained a 'modern' sensibility. As with Chris Ware's selections for his best-selling McSweeney's anthology, Brunetti's choices make for a highly personal book ('my criteria were simple: these are comics that I savor and often revisit') that serves as a broad historical overview of the medium and a round-up of some of today's best and most interesting North American comic artists. Included here are works from such well-known artists as Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Ben Katchor, Charles Burns, Gary Panter, Seth, Phoebe Gloeckner, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Joe Sacco, Jamie and Gilbert Hernandez as well as many other pioneers whose names may be less familiar. Brunetti offers selections from the works of more than seventy-five avantgarde comic artists. His selections are arranged by genre, and grouped thematically. Luxuriously produced, and printed in four-colour throughout, the book is a must-have for collectors, aficionados, readers of comics, and those generally interested in cutting-edge art and literature.

This beautiful book focuses on Laurelton Hall, Louis Comfort Tiffany's extraordinary country estate in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. Beginning in 1902, Tiffany (1848-1933) designed every aspect of the immense home, which had eighty-four rooms and eight levels, and extensive grounds into which the house was carefully integrated. Tiffany's residential masterpiece was also a quasi-museum, for he filled it with his own works — windows, glassware, pottery, enamels, lamps, oil paintings, and watercolours — as well as with objects from his collections of Islamic, Asian, and Native American art. Laurelton Hall burned down in 1957, but about ten years earlier most of its contents had been removed and sold. Every aspect of the estate is examined and re-created in this volume: its terraced gardens with fountains and pools; the many outbuildings; and Tiffany's life there. The interior decoration of Laurelton Hall, a particular focus of the book, is represented by both numerous period photographs and newly commissioned colour photography of surviving artworks and salvaged architectural components from the estate. For all who admire Tiffany and his work, this book presents a unique portrait of his remarkable home.

This volume focuses on a wide range of Victorian-era objects from Britain and the United States in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The following topics are explored: still-life painting in nineteenth-century America; the burgeoning Victorian print market; a fascinating sketchbook used by the English painter Edward Burne-Jones; a spectacular Gothic-style British wine cabinet; and a rare photographic album compiled by an aristocratic English family. Also featured, in a portfolio section, are other highlights from the museum’s Victorian collection, including furniture, paintings, photographs, textiles, and works on paper by such noted artists as Julia Margaret Cameron, William Morris, and John Everett Millais.

Late in his career Thomas Gainsborough became preoccupied with the theme of the cottage door, and he created a group of paintings and drawings that show rustic figures clustered around the open door of a cottage set in a deeply wooded landscape. Often seen as exemplars of the rural idyll, these works were among the first landscape paintings to reflect the eighteenth-century aesthetic of sensibility. As a way of seeing, sensibility valued nature for its innocence and simplicity, and images, such as Gainsborough’s cottage subjects, for their power to move the viewer. This lovely book brings together the cottage door paintings and essays that discuss Gainsborough’s departure from the more naturalistic style of his earlier career and that place his new concern with sentimentalism and artificiality in the context of sensibility and the growing interest in expressive, even sensational, visual spectacles. To this end, contributors to the volume investigate new viewing practices associated with sensibility, the meaning of the cottage for Gainsborough and his contemporaries, the artist’s creation of affecting landscapes through the use of peasant subjects, and his theatrical treatment of these subjects in order to heighten his viewers’ emotional responses.

The notion of a golden age set in an earthly paradise has long kindled the human imagination. Virgil envisioned such a place of bucolic pleasures — erotic and unsullied, sometimes shadowed by blunted desires and doubts — in his Eclogues, set in the valley of Arcadia in ancient Greece. His poems defined for Western art and literature a theme that continues to this day. Their resonance as a foundation for European painters around 1900 is the subject of this beautifully illustrated catalogue, which focuses on three monumental paintings — Paul Gauguin's Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98), Paul Cezanne's The Large Bathers (1906), and Henri Matisse's Bathers by a River (1909-10, 1913, and 1916-17). Other masterpieces by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Nicolas Poussin, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes establish the high value given to Arcadia in the history of French painting. These are joined by major works by Henri Edmond Cross, Robert Delaunay, Andre Derain, Pablo Picasso, Henri Rousseau, and Paul Signac, as well as paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, and Natalia Goncharova to suggest the vitality of this subject outside the canonical French definitions. Distinguished scholars place these artists within the larger context of this inventive period in art history.

The first decades of the twentieth century brought enormous change in Britain. Men's and women's roles came under scrutiny, class and social structures were transformed. This book casts new light on the notorious Bloomsbury Group and how the issues of their day influenced their interpretation and decoration of the home. Christopher Reed analyses the rooms designed by Bloomsbury artists as spaces in which to be modern. The book traces the development of Bloomsbury's domestic aesthetic from the group's influential promulgation of Post-Impressionism in Britain around 1910 through the 1930s. In detailed studies of rooms and environments created by Virginia Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry, Reed challenges the accepted notion that these artists drifted away from modernism. He presents their work as an alternative form of modernism, later suppressed by sexist and homophobic attitudes that disparaged the decorative arts and domesticity in general, as well as Bloomsbury in particular. The aesthetic and ideological implications of the Bloomsbury interiors were international in scope, Reed argues, and these domestic designs served as an important marker along the route to modernity.

Oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, created at speed and in the heat of invention with a colourful loaded brush, convey all the spontaneity of the great Flemish painter's creative process. This ravishing book draws from both private and public collections to present in full colour 40 of Rubens's oil sketches. Viewers will find in these informal paintings an enchanting intimacy and gain a new appreciation of Rubens's capacity for invention and improvisation, and of his special genius for dramatic design and colouristic brilliance. The book investigates the role of the oil sketch in Rubens's work; the development of the artist's themes and narratives in his multiple sketches; and the history of the appreciation of his oil sketches. It also explores some of the unique aspects of his techniques and materials. By revealing the oil sketches as the most direct record of Rubens's creative process, the book presents him as the greatest and most fluent practitioner of this vibrant and vital medium. This book is the catalogue of the exhibition that appears at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut; the Berkeley Art Museum; and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibition at the Bruce Museum coincides with the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition of Rubens's Drawings, and a number of joint events have been arranged.

Although the interiors of aristocratic homes have received much attention, there has been little written about how the interiors of middle-class homes evolved through the ages. In this study, James Ayres traces the development — in words and pictures — of vernacular British interiors from the 16th to the mid-19th century. The work is a greatly expanded and revised version of Ayres' earlier work «The Book of the Home», and deals with a wide range of subjects, including heating and lighting, the use of colour and paint, details of doors, doorways and staircases, and much more. Ayres tells us, for example, that in Tudor England, glazed windows, door locks and floorboards were not simply considered to be fixtures in a middle-class home because of their expense, and it was only after such features became prevalent that these interiors grew more decorative and lavish. In pre-industrial Britain, textiles and printed wallpaper were used sparingly because of their cost, and colours and patterns were introduced through painted floors, ceilings, furniture and stencilled walls. People also took advantage of what was nearby; homes in the south-east, for example, made use of the cast and wrought iron products of Kent and Sussex, and those in Devon had locally-made earthenware fire-backs and firedogs. Ayres offers a mosaic that provides a vivid picture of the smaller domestic dwellings of the past. Embellished with early illustrations and the author's own line drawings and photographs, the work provides evidence for the treatment of historic interiors and inspiration for schemes of decoration today.

Mark Wilson Jones explores how the architects of ancient Rome approached design. Drawing on new archaeological discoveries and his own analyses of Roman monuments, the author discusses how the ancient architects dealt with the principles of architecture and the practicalities of construction as they engaged in the creative process.

This is the second volume of the catalogue raisonne of the work of the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). It comprises over 150 formal portraits and portrait sketches in oil and watercolour that he painted between 1889 and 1900. The catalogued works have been grouped into chronological sections, each with its own introduction to set the particular group in context. In addition, an overall introduction places Sargent in the context of European portraiture of the past and of his own time. Each work is documented in depth: entries include traditional data about the painting or watercolour; details of the work's provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography; a short biography of the sitter; a discussion of the circumstances in which the work was created; and a critical discussion of its subject matter, style, and significance in Sargent's career. With very few exceptions, all the works are reproduced in colour. There is also an illustrated inventory of Sargent's studio props and accessories and a cross-referenced checklist of the portraits in which they appear.

An exploration of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and its legacy, discussing its formation, the artists' theoretical concerns about depictions of the natural world, and their impact. This second edition is revised and updated to take into account artworks that have more recently come to light.

From about 1425, artists in the region which is now Belgium and The Netherlands created paintings which were startling in their realism and innovative approach. Published to accompany an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this book celebrates one of the great epochs of western art, from the work of the inventor of oil painting, Jan van Eyck, to that of the highly original genius, Peter Bruegel. More than 100 colour reproductions, with individual commentaries, present the accomplishments of the major figures of the period, including Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Gerard David and Hans Memling. Essays by specialists in the field discuss various aspects of the subject, and biographies are provided for all the artists represented, together with comparative illustrations of prints and paintings from collections other than that of The Metropolitan.

From haute couture to hot pants, from glamour to grunge, the past fifty years have witnessed some startling revolutions in fashion. This lively survey of postwar fashion not only describes the great designers and their creations but also places trends in clothing within their social and cultural contexts.

This beautiful and authoritative book is the first to examine the development of Gothic sculpture throughout Europe. It discusses not only the most famous monuments — such as the cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens, and Reims, Westminster Abbey, and the Siena Duomo — but also less familiar buildings in France, England, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia. Numerous illustrations — including photographs taken specially for the book — accompany the text. For the student or general reader, this book sets a standard in the field and will remain indispensable for many years to come. Richard Camber, Antique International Paul Williamson has produced a miracle of clarity and compression in the latest volume of the Pelican History of Art... His subject is one of the most challenging and most studied subjects in Western art: the birth, growth and development of Gothic sculpture in its first 150 years. Michael Hall, Country Life Beautifully produced and judiciously written.... Williamson's is a book which has helped vindicate the genre of the synoptic survey and provide a superb text for students as well as a new foundation for specialist research.

Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was one of the most important decorative artists working in Paris at the turn of the century. His distinctive and original posters and his decorative panels in le style Mucha became almost synonymous with French Art Nouveau. The admirer and iconographer of Sarah Bernhardt, he was also well known as the creator of familiar advertisements and as a book illustrator. Yet there was much more to Mucha's achievement than this. At the height of his career as a decorative artist, he became convinced that art should serve ideas, he became chief artistic and cultural adviser to the interwar Czech government, and he completed a major and controversial fresco cycle, the Slav Epic, as well as portraits and large symbolic paintings. This book — the first full-scale treatment of Mucha's oeuvre — includes discussions and reproductions of paintings, posters, panneaux decoratifs, pastels, drawings, and illustrations from throughout his career. In addition, the authors provide essays on Mucha's Paris years; his association with Sarah Bernhardt; the importance of American patronage on his later work; his graphic and painterly techniques; and the problems connected with the conservation of the large canvases. This lavishly illustrated book is the catalogue for an exhibition of Mucha's work that will tour the United States, beginning in San Diego in 1998.

Discussing the development of Greek architecture in the Aegean and other Greek lands from its earliest beginnings around 3000 BC to the first century BC. The temples of the Hellenic age are discussed, as are domestic Greek architecture, town planning, theatres and fortifications.

This sumptuously illustrated book coincides with the bicentenary of the death of the Empress Catherine the Great. It examines the story of the acquisition of these treasures and of the cultural relations between Britain and Russia in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The distinguished art critic John Russell provides an introduction for this book, and eminent British and Russian scholars offer chapters on such topics as British gardeners and the vogue of the English Garden, the sale of Sir Robert Walpole's remarkable collection of Old Master paintings from Houghton Hall to Catherine the Great, British architects at the Imperial court as well as articles on silver, porcelain and engraved gems. This book is the catalogue for the exhibition organised by the Yale Center for British Art and the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg which opens at the Yale Center for British Art in October 1996.

French architecture of the 18th century — which exhibited great technical ability and refined taste — influenced architectural style throughout Europe. This book is a survey of the French architecture of the period. It begins with the origins of the style moderne under the last years of Louis XIV, discusses the end of Rococo and the return to antiquity, and concludes with the Revolutionary architecture and the house of Madame Recamier. Kalnein describes the development of palace and hotel architecture by the two great architects de Cotte and Boffrand, discussing such large urban projects as the reconstruction of Rennes and the Places Royales. He traces the return to antiquity (which began when the scholars of the Academic d'Architecture were sent to Rome), the revolutionary architecture with its grand, but never executed, projects, and the shift from neoclassicism to early romanticism. Kalnein also examines the decorative arts of the period, which became even more important than architecture in the Rococo period. Focusing on such architects as Boffrand, Gabriel, and Redoux, he shows how a study of their building decoration illuminates the evolution of style moderne, the battle between Rococo and Neoclassicism, and the dissemination of French styles throughout Europe.

The magnificent bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, the ivory, gold, enamelled and bejewelled book covers made to contain superbly illuminated manuscripts, the startling reliquary caskets made in the shape of the part of the body supposed to be contained within them — these and other sacred objects were contained within church treasuries and cloisters in the early Middle Ages in Europe. This book traces the development of these so-called Minor Arts and the major role they played alongside the other pictorial arts and architectural sculpture of the period.

Roman sculpture was an integral part of Roman life, and the Romans placed statues and reliefs in their flora, basilicas, temples and public baths as well as in their houses, villas, gardens and tombs. In this illustrated book, Diana Kleiner discuses all the major public and private monuments in Rome, as well as many less well-known monuments in the capital and elsewhere in the empire. She examines art commissioned by the imperial elite as well as by private patrons, including freedmen and slaves and also highlights monuments honouring women and children. Kleiner demonstrates that the sociala, ethnic and geographical diversity of Roman patronage led to an art that was eclectic and characterised by varying styles, often tied to the social status of the patron, but she also examines the interrelations between works produced for different kinds of patrons. Kleiner begins with a long thematic introduction that describes Rome and its empire, characterises patrons from the capital and the provinces, discusses the position of the artist in Roman society and the materials he used, and presents a history of the study of Roman art. The remaining chapters constitute a chronological examination of Roman sculpture from the foundation of Rome in 753 BC to the transfer of the capital to Constantinople in AD 330. In each period the monuments are divided by type, for example portraiture, state relief sculpture, the art of freedmen and provincial art. Throughout, Kleiner treats Roman Sculpture in its cultural, political and social contexts and, wherever possible, as an element of the architectural commplex in which it was set.

'Art', declared Vasari in Lives of the Artists, has been reborn and reached perfection in our time'. Indeed the roster of great names in painting of the Cinquecento, which only begins with those of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, appears to justify this grand claim. Professor Freedberg here discusses the individual painters and analyses the hallmarks of their work. He traces the classical style of the High Renaissance, the Mannerism that succeeded it, and the events, in North Italy especially, that resist stylistic categories. He has given order to this diversity, but at the same time has preserved the intense individuality of the works of art. The fourth edition of this classic work includes colour illustrations and incorporates textual revisions and an updated bibliography.