Art & Architecture

In this sweeping history, from the Stone Age to the present day, Witold Rybczynski shows how architectural ideals have been affected by technological, economic, and social changes--and by changes in taste. The host of examples ranges from places of worship such as Hagia Sophia and Brunelleschi's Duomo to living spaces such as the Katsura Imperial Villa and the Alhambra, national icons such as the Lincoln Memorial and the Sydney Opera House, and skyscrapers such as the Seagram Building and Beijing's CCTV headquarters. Rybczynski's narrative emphasizes the ways that buildings across time and space are united by the human desire for order, meaning, and beauty.

This is the story of architecture's physical manifestation of the universal aspiration to celebrate, honor, and commemorate, and an exploration of the ways that each building is a unique product of patrons, architects, and builders. Firm in opinion, even-handed, and rooted in scholarship, this book will delight anyone interested in understanding the buildings they use, visit, and pass by each day.

In 1968, Suzuki Seijun-a low-budget genre filmmaker known for movies including Branded to Kill, Tokyo Drifter, and Youth of the Beast-was unceremoniously fired by Nikkatsu Studios. Soon to be known as the "Suzuki Seijun Incident," his dismissal became a cause for leftist student protestors and a burgeoning group of cinephiles to rally around. His films rapidly emerged as central to debates over politics and aesthetics in Japanese cinema.

William Carroll offers a new account of Suzuki's career that highlights the intersections of film theory, film production, cinephile culture, and politics in 1960s Japan. Carroll places Suzuki's work between two factions that claimed him as one of their own after 1968: the New Left and its politicized theoretical practice on one hand, and the apparently apolitical cinephiles and their formalist criticism on the other. He considers how both of these strands of film theory shed light on the distinctive qualities of Suzuki's films, and he explores how both Suzuki's works and unheralded Japanese film theorists offer new ways of understanding world cinema.

This book presents both a major reinterpretation of Suzuki's work-which influenced directors such as John Woo, Jim Jarmusch, and Quentin Tarantino-and a new lens on postwar Japanese film culture and industry. Suzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema also includes a complete production history of Suzuki's filmography along with never-before-discussed information about his unfinished film projects.

Frank Lloyd Wright first noted the affinity between modern Western architecture and the philosophy of the ancient Chinese writer Laotzu. In this classic work, Amos Ih Tiao Chang expands on that idea, developing the parallel with the aid of architectural drawings and Chinese paintings. Now with a new foreword by David Wang, this book reveals the vitality of intangible, or negative, elements. Chang writes that these qualities make architectonic forms come alive, become human, naturally harmonize with one another, and enable us to experience them with human sensibility. The Tao of Architecture continues to be essential reading for understanding the intersection between architecture and philosophy.

To explore the Tarot is to explore ourselves, to be reminded of the universality of our longing for meaning, for purpose and for a connection to the divine. This 600-year-old tradition reflects not only a history of seekers, but our journey of artistic expression and the ways we communicate our collective human story.

For many in the West, Tarot exists in the shadow place of our cultural consciousness, a metaphysical tradition assigned to the dusty glass cabinets of the arcane. Its history, long and obscure, has been passed down through secret writing, oral tradition, and the scholarly tomes of philosophers and sages. Hundreds of years and hundreds of creative hands--mystics and artists often working in collaboration--have transformed what was essentially a parlor game into a source of divination and system of self-exploration, as each new generation has sought to evolve the form and reinterpret the medium.

Author Jessica Hundley traces this fascinating history in Tarot, the debut volume in TASCHEN's Library of Esoterica series. The book explores the symbolic meaning behind more than 500 cards and works of original art, two thirds of which have never been published outside of the decks themselves. It's the first ever visual compendium of its kind, spanning from Medieval to modern, and artfully arranged according to the sequencing of the 78 cards of the Major and Minor Arcana. It explores the powerful influence of Tarot as muse to artists like Salvador Dalí and Niki de Saint Phalle and includes the decks of nearly 100 diverse contemporary artists from around the world, all of whom have embraced the medium for its capacity to push cultural identity forward. Rounding out the volume are excerpts from thinkers such as Éliphas Lévi, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell; a foreword by artist Penny Slinger; a guide to reading the cards by Johannes Fiebig; and an essay on oracle decks by Marcella Kroll.

About the series

The Library of Esoterica explores how centuries of artists have given form to mysticism, translating the arcane and the obscure into enduring, visionary works of art. Each subject is showcased through both modern and archival imagery culled from private collectors, libraries, and museums around the globe. The result forms an inclusive visual history, a study of our primal pull to dream and nightmare, and the creative ways we strive to connect to the divine.

How did the apple, unmentioned by the Bible, become the dominant symbol of temptation, sin, and the Fall? Temptation Transformed pursues this mystery across art and religious history, uncovering where, when, and why the forbidden fruit became an apple.

Azzan Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden's fruit, once thought to be a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though scholars often blame theologians for the apple, accounts of the Fall written in commonly spoken languages--French, German, and English--influenced a broader audience than cloistered Latin commentators. Azzan Yadin-Israel shows that, over time, the words for "fruit" in these languages narrowed until an apple in the Garden became self-evident. A wide-ranging study of early Christian thought, Renaissance art, and medieval languages, Temptation Transformed offers an eye-opening revisionist history of a central religious icon.

This illustrated study of Tenryuji, ranked number one among the five great Zen temples of Kyoto and a major destination for tourism and worship, weaves together history, design, culture, and personal reflection to reveal the inner workings of a great spiritual institution. Looking at Tenryuji's present as a mirror to its past, and detailing the famous pond and rockwork composition by renowned designer Muso Soseki, Norris Brock Johnson presents the first full-length "biography" of a Zen temple garden.

Norris Brock Johnson is a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and has been teaching and writing about Japanese temple gardens for over twenty years.

With the emergence of conceptual art in the mid-1960s, the traditional notion of the studio became at least partly obsolete. Other sites emerged for the generation of art, leading to the idea of "post-studio practice." But the studio never went away; it was continually reinvented in response to new realities. This collection, expanding on current critical interest in issues of production and situation, looks at the evolution of studio--and "post-studio"--practice over the last half century.

In recent decades many artists have turned their studios into offices from which they organize a multiplicity of operations and interactions. Others use the studio as a quasi-exhibition space, or work on a laptop computer--mobile, flexible, and ready to follow the next commission.

Among the topics surveyed here are the changing portrayal and experience of the artist's role since 1960; the diversity of current studio and post-studio practice; the critical strategies of artists who have used the studio situation as the subject or point of origin for their work; the insights to be gained from archival studio projects; and the expanded field of production that arises from responding to new conditions in the world outside the studio. The essays and artists' statements in this volume explore these questions with a focus on examining the studio's transition from a workshop for physical production to a space with potential for multiple forms of creation and participation.

"Throwing clay on a potter's wheel and the seemingly effortless and wonderful way that clay will swell and climb in the hands of a skilled potter is merely the beginning to this most 'natural' and ancient of crafts."--from Throwing Pots

Throwing is a skill that many potters seek to master. It requires patience, time, and lots of practice. In Throwing Pots, Phil Rogers takes the reader through the basic principles of throwing. With the help of step-by-step illustrations, he demonstrates how to make a wide range of pots, from the simple bowl to the more complex forms of teapots and jugs, including lids and spouts. Rogers also discusses the aesthetics of pottery, encouraging readers to assess design and develop a personal style as well as recommending places to see examples of fine quality handthrown pottery.

Now, at last, here is a coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture as ancient as human society itself.

An examination of how modern art was impacted by the concept of prehistory and the prehistoric

Prehistory is an invention of the late nineteenth century. In that moment of technological progress and acceleration of production and circulation, three major Western narratives about time took shape. One after another, these new fields of inquiry delved into the obscure immensity of the past: first, to surmise the age of the Earth; second, to find the point of emergence of human beings; and third, to ponder the age of art. Maria Stavrinaki considers the inseparability of these accounts of temporality from the disruptive forces of modernity. She asks what a history of modernity and its art would look like if considered through these three interwoven inventions of the longue durée. Transfixed by Prehistory attempts to articulate such a history, which turns out to be more complex than an inevitable march of progress leading up to the Anthropocene. Rather, it is a history of stupor, defamiliarization, regressive acceleration, and incessant invention, since the "new" was also found in the deep sediments of the Earth. Composed of as much speed as slowness, as much change as deep time, as much confidence as skepticism and doubt, modernity is a complex phenomenon that needs to be rethought. Stavrinaki focuses on this intrinsic tension through major artistic practices (Cézanne, Matisse, De Chirico, Ernst, Picasso, Dubuffet, Smithson, Morris, and contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Thomas Hirschhorn), philosophical discourses (Bataille, Blumenberg, and Jünger), and the human sciences. This groundbreaking book will attract readers interested in the intersections of art history, anthropology, psychoanalysis, mythology, geology, and archaeology.

Tree houses are no longer just for children. With the growing excitement surrounding tree house architecture, adults around the world are building their own treetop hideaways -- savoring the childhood memories, feelings of nostalgia, and images of fantasy that are evoked by these almost dreamlike constructions. TreeHouses: Living a Dream brings together the most innovative ideas of today's architects and designers, providing readers with a comprehensive exploration of the unique construction methods that allow these amazing structures to adapt to their changing environments.

From Nebraska and Georgia to France and Germany, this book features a variety of projects that include playrooms, weekend retreats, home offices, dining rooms, and more. Each case study includes interior and exterior photography, as well as detailed site and floor plans accompanied by concise, informative text. With more than 350 full-color illustrations, TreeHouses: Living a Dream is sure to help every reader make a reality out of their tree house fantasy.