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Art & Architecture
As cryptic as they are compelling, the masterpieces of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) remain some of the most enduring enigmas of the art world. Their intricate, allegorical, and often startling content has captivated not only art historians, but also fashion designers, rock stars, writers, and punk rockers, as well as countless modern and contemporary artist successors.
Although rooted in the Old Netherlandish tradition, Bosch developed a highly subjective, richly suggestive style to render both the celestial bliss of heaven and the grotesque tortures of hell, most famously and meticulously excecuted in The Garden of Earthly Delights. Here, as in his other known works, his artistic language combined religious humility with a razor-sharp wit, often playing off pictorial versions of contemporary proverbs or figures of speech.
This book ties together the elusive threads of Bosch's oeuvre to provide a concise introduction to an at once haunting and enthralling pictorial world.
Brion Gysin is a legend. As an artist, author, filmmaker, and the long-term collaborator of William S. Burroughs, Gysin helped to develop the so-called Beat aesthetic from the beginning, influencing one of the most important American art movements of the last century and helping to shape decades of literature and art across the world.
In Here to Go, Terry Wilson introduces us to this singular talent through Gysin's own words. Best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique and the invention of the Dreamachine, it was to painting and drawing that Gysin devoted his greatest efforts. Gysin was a man of diverse interests and strident opinion; the interviews collected here cover topics as diverse as magick and psychic warfare, and as intermingled as literature and drugs.
With excerpts from Gysin's own written work and a rare extract from Gysin's original screenplay adaptation for Burrough's Naked Lunch, this is the most complete assembly of Gysin's written work. And, with additional texts by Burroughs himself, this is the best introduction to the life, work, and philosophy of one of the 20th century's most neglected, yet visionary, polymaths.
Distributed for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia
Over 180 color photographs from temples, museums, historical sites, and private collections enhance this attractive survey of the Buddhist art of India, Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. It presents the life story and teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha, founder of Buddhism, as shown in paintings, sculptures, and other works of art, and explores the major schools of Buddhism--Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen--and the styles and characteristics of the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, deities, and other images seen in their art.
Everyone interested in Buddhist art and its enduring significance will find this volume a useful reference for the study and appreciation of the various gestures, poses, and artistic elements seen in Buddhist art through the ages.
- Learn about foundations, post-and-beam wall framing, roof construction and insulation, interior thermal mass walls for improved efficiency, rain-water cisterns, electrical wiring, and photovoltaic systems.
- Learn earth-plastering techniques that create beautiful wall finishes.
- Understand how window placement and other structural elements can help to heat and cool your home and lower your energy bills.
- See how the structure works as a whole and how both energy efficiency and superb aesthetics can come from the same materials.
The forced polarity between form and function in considerations of architecture--opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic expression--obscures the deep connections between ethical and poetical values in architectural tradition. Architecture has been, and must continue to be, writes Alberto Pérez-Gómez, built upon love. Modernity has rightly rejected past architectural excesses, but, Pérez-Gómez argues, the materialistic and technological alternatives it proposes do not answer satisfactorily the complex desire that defines humanity. True architecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainable development; it responds to a desire for an eloquent place to dwell--one that lovingly provides a sense of order resonant with our dreams. In Built upon Love Pérez-Gómez uncovers the relationship between love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics and ethics--between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society.
Eros, as first imagined by the early lyric poets of classical Greece, is the invisible force at the root of our capacity to create and comprehend the poetic image. Pérez-Gómez examines the nature of architectural form in the light of eros, seduction, and the tradition of the poetic image in Western architecture. He charts the ethical dimension of architecture, tracing the connections between philia--the love of friends that entails mutual responsibility among equals--and architectural program. He explores the position of architecture at the limits of language and discusses the analogical language of philia in modernist architectural theory. Finally, he uncovers connections between ethics and poetics, describing a contemporary practice of architecture under the sign of love, incorporating both eros and philia.
Students will also discover an exciting variety of applications for their new skills, including addressing envelopes, making invitations, creating personalized stationery, and transcribing special texts or poems. Additional helpful features include a section of questions and answers and an appendix covering pens, inks, paper, light boxes, and other useful tools for using the basic Italic hand to create elegant works of calligraphic art.
Discover the healing and relaxing power inherent in calligraphic handwriting and the Medieval art of copying with this beautifully designed activity book that includes interactive sections filled with inspirational words and sentences to carefully mimic, each created by calligraphy master Màlleus.
Navigating a nonstop interconnected digital world leaves most of us frazzled and exhausted. One of the most enjoyable ways of learning to slow down is calligraphy and the art of copying. Many studies show that writing nicely and carefully can be therapeutic like meditation--repeating certain graphic signs and reciting a mantra have a similar effect. In fact, the art of copying is a kind of meditation: it improves concentration, provides a sense of order, and channels impatience and restlessness--helping to alleviate stress and quiet anxiety. The tactile nature of writing--putting fingers to pen to paper--makes our thoughts tangible and concrete. Tapping into our inner nature, writing focuses our attention so we can discover what we want most, organize our thoughts, and work towards making our dreams come true.
Calm Calligraphy is a beautiful spiritual guide and activity book that introduces you to the world of copying. Calligraphy master Màlleus offers a brief philosophical overview and introduction to his art and then provides relaxing words, phrases, and sentences on lined pages to help you unwind as you improve your skill and ultimately master the art of copying. The selections have been carefully created by the author and are inspired by the books collected in Màlleus' acclaimed scriptorium.
For older people, the exercises in Calm Calligraphy offer a way to stretch hand and finger muscles and warm up aching joints, while younger people can learn to create beautiful fine script, once a common practice taught in schools, that is quickly becoming a lost art.
With Calm Calligraphy, you can write away your stress, learn to focus better, and tune in to your inner desires.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of the Italian Baroque, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial, violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run.
Though famed for his dramatic use of color, light, and shadow, it was above all Caravaggio's boundary-breaking naturalism which scorched his name into the annals of art history. From the dirtied soles of feet to the sexualized languor of bare flesh, the artist allowed even sacred and biblical scenes to unfold with a startling, often visceral humanity. This vivid pictorial world was accompanied by an equally intense personal biography, scored by gambling, debts, drunken brawls, and even a murder charge.
This book brings together more than 50 of Caravaggio's most famous and revolutionary works to explore how and why this artist is now considered the most important painter of the early Baroque period and one of the defining influences of art history, without whom Ribera, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet could never have painted the way they did.
Just a few kilometers from the glittering skylines of Shanghai and Beijing, we encounter a vast countryside, an often forgotten and seemingly limitless landscape stretching far beyond the outskirts of the cities. Following traces of old trade routes, once-flourishing marketplaces, abandoned country estates, decrepit model villages, and the sites of mystic rituals, the authors of this book spent seven years exploring, photographing, and observing the vast interior of China, where the majority of Chinese people live in ways virtually unchanged for centuries.
China's Vanishing Worlds is an impressive documentation in images and text of modernization's effect on traditional ways of life, and a sympathetic portrait of lives burdened by hardship but blessed by simplicity and tranquility. The scars of China's recent history and the decay of centuries-old traditions are made visible in this volume, but so is the lure and promise of technology and another life for young people. In the next twenty years, an estimated 280 million Chinese villagers will become city dwellers, leaving their ancestral homes in search of urban jobs and opportunities.
In striking and evocative color photographs, we see picturesque villages set against a background of rolling hills, planned centuries ago according to the principles of feng shui; a restaurant with bright pink resin chairs and a wide-screen television; traditional buildings preserved by the accident of poverty and isolation; ramshackle rooms decorated with portraits of Chairman Mao; backpack-wearing children walking to school; festivals with elaborately costumed performers; old men playing cards; buyers and sellers at open-air markets.
China's Vanishing Worlds offers readers a rare opportunity to glimpse China as it once was, and as it will soon no longer be.
Unlike the bestiaries of the late medieval period in Europe, the Guideways was not interpreted allegorically; the strange creatures described in it were regarded as actual entities found throughout the landscape. The work was originally used as a sacred geography, as a guidebook for travelers, and as a book of omens. Today, it is regarded as the richest repository of ancient Chinese mythology and shamanistic wisdom. The Guideways may have been illustrated from the start, but the earliest surviving illustrations are woodblock engravings from a rare 1597 edition. Seventy-six of those plates are reproduced here for the first time, and they provide a fine example of the Chinese engraver's art during the late Ming dynasty.
This beautiful volume, compiled by a well-known specialist in the field, provides a fascinating window on the thoughts and beliefs of an ancient people, and will delight specialists and general readers alike.
Chiang Yee's Chinese Calligraphy: An Introduction to Its Aesthetic and Technique remains the classic introduction to Chinese calligraphy. In eleven richly illustrated chapters, Chiang explores the aesthetics and the technique of this art in which rhythm, line, and structure are perfectly embodied. He measures the slow change from pictograph to stroke to the style and shape of written characters by the great calligraphers.
In addition to aesthetic considerations, the text deals with more practical subjects such as the origin and construction of the Chinese characters, styles, technique, strokes, composition, training, and the relations between calligraphy and other forms of Chinese art. Chinese Calligraphy is a superb appreciation of beauty in the movement of strokes and in the patterns of structure--and an inspiration to amateurs as well as professionals interested in the decorative arts.
One of the first Western studies to systematically cover the more than two thousand years of Chinese art, this book by a modern expert considers a wide range of topics, including the relationship between religion and art and the different aesthetic philosophies prevalent in different periods. The book covers art works from the Han (third century B.C.) to the T'ang dynasties; the Sung period; aspects of Ch'an Buddhism and its relation to painting; the Yüan period; historical theories, methods of study, and aesthetic principles of the Ming dynasty; and individual departures and reassertion of traditional principles during the Ch'ing period.
Readable and intriguing, this volume is a valuable reference for art lovers and historians.
Paul Thomas Anderson's evolution from a brash, self-anointed "Indiewood" auteur to one of his generation's most distinctive voices has been one of the most remarkable career trajectories in recent film history. From early efforts to emulate his cinematic heroes to his increasingly singular late films, Anderson has created a body of work that balances the familiar and the strange, history and myth: viewers feel perpetually off balance, unsure of whether to expect a pitch-black joke or a moment of piercing emotional resonance.
This book provides the most complete account of Anderson's career to date, encompassing his varied side projects and unproduced material; his personal and professional relationships with directors such as Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, and Robert Downey Sr.; and his work as a director of music videos for Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, and Haim. Ethan Warren explores Anderson's recurring thematic preoccupations--the fraught dynamics of gender and religious faith, biological and found families, and his native San Fernando Valley--as well as his screenwriting methods and his relationship to his influences. Warren argues that Anderson's films conjure up an alternate American history that exaggerates and elides verifiable facts in search of a heightened truth marked by a deeper level of emotional hyperrealism. This book is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson's films and a provocative reframing of what makes his work so essential.
Essays and quotations by:
Ale One, All Jive 161, Blade, Cay 161, Checker 170, Clyde, Death, FDT 56, Flint 707, Iz The Wiz, Jester 1, Joe 182, Lava, LSD OM, Mico, Pnut 2, Roger 1, Ski 168, Snake 1, Taki 183, Vamm
Photos by:
Alan Fleisher, Robert Browning, Bill Ray, Jack Stewart
Includes: Jerusalem; Songs of Innocence and of Experience; All Religions are One; There is No Natural Religion; The Book of Thel; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Visions of the Daughters of Albion; America a Prophecy; Europe a Prophecy; The Song of Los Milton a Poem; The Ghost of Abel; On Homers Poetry [and] On Virgil; Laocoon; The First Book of Urizen; The Book of Ahania; The Book of Los.
A well-known painter and printmaker, Dow taught for many years at Columbia University and acted as a mentor to countless young artists, including Georgia O'Keeffe. His text, presented in a workbook format, offers teachers and students a systematic approach to composition. It explores the creation of freely constructed images based on harmonic relations between lines, colors, and dark and light patterns. The author draws upon the traditions of Japanese art to discuss a theory of "flat" formal equilibrium as an essential component of pictorial creation. Practical and well-illustrated, this classic guide offers valuable insights into modern design.
In the autumn of 1924, just before André Breton published the Manifeste du surréalisme, two young men met in Paris for the first time. Georges Bataille, 27, starting work at the Bibliothèque Nationale; Michel Leiris, 23, beginning his studies in ethnology. Within a few months, they were both members of the Surrealist group, although their adherence to Surrealism (unlike their affinities with it) would not last long: in 1930 they were among the signatories of "Un cadavre," the famous tract against Breton, the "Machiavelli of Montmartre," as Leiris put it. But their friendship would endure for more than 30 years, and their correspondence, assembled here for the first time in English, would continue until the death of Bataille in 1962.
