“Bond, James Bond.” Since Sean Connery uttered those immortal words in 1962, the most dashing secret agent in the history of cinema has been charming and thrilling audiences worldwide. This impeccably British character created by author Ian Fleming has starred in 25 EON-produced films played by six different actors over seven decades.Paul Duncan, who has compiled this volume covering every James Bond film ever made, beginning with Dr. No (1962) and ending with No Time To Die ...
The history of nude photography is the history of people’s fascination with the topic. Indeed, the photographic depiction of the human body is the only subject that has enthralled photographers, theoreticians, and consumers over such a long period—more than 150 years. No other motif is as prevalent as this one during all the phases of development comprising the history of photography, no other is present, whatever the technique, and is a subject of discussion within the conte...
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” —Albert Einstein Our everyday lives are filled with a massive flow of information that we must interpret in order to understand the world we live in. Considering the complex variety of data floating around us, sometimes the best—or even only—way to communicate is visually. This unique book presents a fascinating perspective on the subject, highlighting the work of the masters of the profession, creato...
Georges Seurat (1859-1891) was only 31 when he died, but during his short life he created hundreds of drawings, oil sketches, and paintings on canvas that introduced a fresh perspective in European painting.As a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he carefullly observed the work of Delacroix and became fascinated with the interplay between light and color. In doing so, he developed Divisionism, using small dabs of paint from the point of the brush to create pointili...
Until his death at age 104, Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) was something of an unstoppable architectural force. Over seven decades of work, he designed approximately 600 buildings, transforming skylines from Bab-Ezzouar, Algeria, to his homeland masterpiece Brasília. Niemeyer’s work took the reduced forms of modernism and infused them with free-flowing grace.In place of pared-down starkness, his structures rippled with sinuous and seductive lines. In buildings such as the Niterói...
Petite but Powerful A sweeping survey of small-scale architectural invention Small Houses is a tribute to the endless artistic inventiveness of architects and ingenuity of perception of the familiar and known concepts. It is also a conscious pivot towards sustainability and reduction of impact on the environment as well as a daring attitude of change in lifestyle. As humanity faces inevitable pressures such as climate change, an increase in population, and strain on resource...
From the Los Angeles riots to the Columbine High School massacre, Americans witnessed events and purchased items that reflected the best and worst of the decade. Bill Clinton’s presidency was in jeopardy, the digital age had erupted, and Silicon Valley was affecting everyone on the planet. Meanwhile nudity and sex ruled the pages of magazines, selling everything from haute couture to fragrances and microwave ovens. Nirvana entertained Generation X while the “Greatest Gene...
An illustrated edition of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, with photographs by Steve Schapiro First published in 1963, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time stabbed at the heart of America’s so-called “Negro problem.” As remarkable for its masterful prose as for its frank and personal account of the black experience in the United States, it is considered one of the most passionate and influential explorations of 1960s race relations, weaving thematic threads of love, faith, ...
Bettina Is Back 35 years of daring, defiant photography Since her first photographs in the late ’70s, Bettina Rheims has defied the predictable. From her series on Pigalle strippers (1980) to her cycle on the life of Jesus in I.N.R.I. (1998), from Chanel commercials to Gender Studies (2011), her work has shaken up traditional codes of representation and pushed restlessly at the breaking point between two great human preoccupations: beauty and imperfection. This Rheims retr...
One of the leading lights of the Impressionist movement, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) remains a towering figure in art history with enduring public appeal. Sun-kissed, charming, and sensual, his work shows painting at its most lighthearted and luminous, while championing the plein air and color innovations of his time. Renoir’s oeuvre was prolific, with some several thousand works in his lifetime. Much influenced by forerunners such as Courbet, Degas, Manet, Delacroix, ...
Psychodrama: The reverberating power of an Expressionist icon A hairless, ghostly figure on a bridge. The sky orange-red above him. His hands raised to his ears, his mouth wide in a haunting wail. In painting The Scream, Edvard Munch (1863 1944) created Mona Lisa for our times. The shriek of his iconic figure reverberates around the world, its echo resounding in the work of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Martin Kippenberger, Marlene Dumas, and Tracey Emin.This introductory book s...
Most art historians agree that the modern art adventure first developed in the 1860s in Paris. A circle of painters, whom we now know as Impressionists, began painting pictures with rapid, loose brushwork. They turned to everyday street life for subjects, instead of overblown heroic scenes, and they escaped the power of the Salon by organizing their own independent exhibitions. After this first assault on the artistic establishment, there was no holding back. In a constant d...
In the work of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) lies an impact akin to a sudden acquisition of sight. His landscapes and seascapes scorch the eye with such ravishing light and color, with such elemental force, it is as if the sun itself were gleaming out of the frame. Appropriately known as “the painter of light,” Turner worked in print, watercolor, and oils to transform landscape from serene contemplative scenes to pictures pulsating with life. He anchored his work...
The great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/31-1569) was an astoundingly inventive painter and draftsman, who made his art historical mark with beautiful, evocative landscapes as well as religious subjects, both notable for their vernacular language and attention to everyday, contemporary life. Immersing himself in rural or small-town communities, Bruegel is particularly notable for his depiction of peasant experience and folk culture, earning the artist nick...
Largely self-taught as an artist, Francis Bacon (1909-1992) developed a unique ability to transform interior and unconscious impulses into figurative forms and intensely claustrophobic compositions. Emerging into notoriety in the period following World War II, Bacon took the human body as his nominal subject, but a subject ravaged, distorted, and dismembered so as to writhe with intense emotional content. With flailing limbs, hollow voids, and tumurous growths, his gripping,...
Lucian Freud (1922 2011) was interested in the telling of truth. Always operating outside the main currents of 20th-century art, the esteemed portrait painter observed his subjects with the regimen and precision of a laboratory scientist. He recorded not only the blotches, bruises, and swellings of the living body, but also, beneath the flaws and folds of flesh, the microscopic details of what lies within: the sensation, the emotion, the intelligence, the bloom, and the inevi...
The Divine Proportion The mysterious formula that rules art, nature, and science The Divine Proportion reveals a number of simple patterns: It is seen in the seed patterns of fruits, the family tree of bees, the pyramids of Egypt, Gothic cathedrals, Renaissance paintings, the human body, shells ... the list is endless. Mathematicians use the Greek symbol Φ to represent the Divine Proportion and equate it to a number that is defined by the ratio (1 + √5) / 2 or 1.6180339.......
Santiago Calatrava is a world-renowned architect, structural engineer, sculptor, and artist. From the Athens 2004 Olympic Sports Complex to the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in Manhattan, he exhibits a remarkable twin prowess for aesthetics and engineering, a simultaneous sensitivity to both the appearance and the anatomy of a structure. His influences are wide-ranging: Auguste Rodin’s approach to sculpture and architecture, principles of classicism and Greek Cycladi...
Simon “Woody” Wood, founder and editor-in-chief of Sneaker Freaker magazine, has spent the last two decades analyzing the global cult of footwear fanatics. That experience directly inspired World’s Greatest Sneaker Collectors, a stonking 752-page journey into the priceless stockpiles and obsessive minds of prominent aficionados.From Tokyo to New York, via London, Philadelphia, Melbourne, and Stjørdal, no crumbled midsole is left unturned as over 2,500 vintage classics, unique...
Follow photographer Frédéric Chaubin as he embarks on a unique, century-spanning journey through Europe. Featuring images of more than 200 buildings in 21 countries, Stone Age. Ancient Castles of Europe presents the history and architecture of the most dramatic medieval castles of the continent in an unprecedented collection.Building on the success of his foray into Soviet design with CCCP, Chaubin once again documents the afterlife of highly rational structures that seem out...
Have you ever thought of citrus fruits as celestial bodies, angelically suspended in the sky? Perhaps not, but J. C. Volkamer (1644–1720) did—commissioning an extravagant and breathtaking series of large-sized copperplates representing citrons, lemons, and bitter oranges in surreal scenes of majesty and wonder.Ordering plants by post mostly from Italy, Germany, North Africa, and even the Cape of Good Hope, the Nuremberg merchant Volkamer was a devotee of the fragrant and exot...
It’s been thirty years since Laurence Anholt began his beloved series about great artists and the real children who knew them. Since then, these classic tales of Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, and many other geniuses of Western art have provided a springboard into a lifetime’s love of art, selling millions of copies around the world. The stories have been adapted in many forms including ballet, opera, Braille editions for blind and partially ...
The idea of climbing a tree for shelter, or just to see the earth from another perspective, is as old as humanity. In this neat TASCHEN edition, take a tour of some of our finest arboreal adventures with the most beautiful, inventive, and enchanting tree houses around the world.From romantic to contemporary, from famed architects to little-known craftsmen, you’ll scale the heights to visit all manner of treetop structures, from a teahouse, restaurant, hotel, and children’s pl...
The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is one of the 18th century’s greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time. Though scientists of his era often collected natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Albertus Seba (1665–1736) was unrivalled in his passion. His amazing collection of animals, plants and insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime. In 1731, a...
