«Tracing Warhol's origins as the sickly child of Ruthenian immigrants in working-class Pittsburgh to his transformation into New York's dark prince of Pop and finally into the world's most successful 'business artist', «Andy Warhol «Giant» Size» provides an appropriately larger-than-life look at the celebrated artist's career. Cultural critic Dave Hickey provides a compelling essay on Warhol's geek-to-guru evolution while chapter openers by Warhol friends and insiders give special insight into the way the enigmatic artist led his life and made his art. More than 2,000 illustrations culled from rarely seen archival material, documentary photography, and artwork not only provide a full picture of the artist's life but a telling look at late twentieth-century popular culture. Warhol's little-explored early career as a successful commercial illustrator and designer, his importance as a co-creator of the Pop movement, his midcareer switch to filmmaker and manager of the Velvet Underground, his founding of Interview magazine, and his bid for the hearts and pocketbooks of the high-flying glitterati are shown throughout this stunning new volume.»

IN THE SHADOW OF MOUNTAINS is a new collection of sublime portraits, landscapes, and street photography taken by Steve McCurry over the last 27 years. Children and shepherds, warriors and laborers are presented alongside striking views of sandstone cities, mountainous landscapes, and ancient temples. Evocative and timeless, these lyrical images capture the enduring spirit, grandeur, and beauty of the land that lies at the foot of the Hindu Kush. McCurry's photographs capture human experience and transcend boundaries of language and culture.

Each designer is represented by a full-page illustration, mostly in colour, of their most significant garden and an accompanying text that describes the image and discusses the type of garden and its role in the further development of the tradition. Each page includes cross-references to other designers working in a similar style, movement, or time period, as well as biographical information about the designer, and complete data on the garden reproduced.

This book explores the 'photo story' through 61 master classes by some of the world's greatest photographers, all members of the international photographic agency Magnum. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Elliott Erwitt and their colleagues use the photo story as a vehicle to explain their approach to taking and editing photographs. It is about the Magnum photographers, their subjects and their approaches to photography in general and to the particular form of the photo story. The book will also comprise a history of Magnum practice and photojournalism over a 70-year period. Magnum Stories is a collection of photo stories produced by the photographers of Magnum. Through the work of key Magnum photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Eugene Richards, Martin Parr, Inge Morath and Leonard Freed, this book covers a wide range of subjects including the Vietnam War, student protests in Tiananmen Square, Fidel Castro overthrows Cuban dictator in 1959, Picasso, Malcolm X, the French theatre group Theatre du Soleil, the US invasion of Grenada in the early 1980s, the New York police, Apartheid and Buddhism. The photographic genres covered include war photography, documentary, photojournalism, social realism, portraits of people and places, fashion and news. There are 61 Magnum photographers featured in the book. Each photographer is represented across 8 pages by a photo story of their choice, which is fully illustrated, and a text which is written in the photographer's own voice based on new interviews with the author. The texts are intelligent, idiosyncratic, each with their own voice and style. Accessible and engaging to read, they reveal different perceptions and approaches to photography and each photographer's unique and varied takes on the photo story and their practice — what is the photo story?, what does it mean?, how did they come across it? what key decisions are made when taking the story, etc. As well as featuring the work of individual photographers, this book functions as a history and interrogation of the form of the photo story — the key vehicle for photography in the twentieth century, from its earliest developments in the 30s, through the death of 'photojournalism', to contemporary manifestations, all of which is explored by the author in the introduction. The book explores the influences that have affected the photo story, such as key twentieth century events and the life of photographic magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and Paris Match, all of which have helped to define the genre. It provides a unique reflection on the course of photojournalism in the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, from the common purpose of the post-WWII years to the individualistic range of practices and interests that constitute documentary photography today.

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), was one of the finest and most distinctive of the Victorian painters. Dutch-born, he moved to London in 1870 and became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean sea and sky. In this original study, Rosemary Barrow presents an absorbing and often amusing portrait of an exuberant personality who carved out a brilliant career for himself at the heart of London's artistic and cultural elite. But above all she subjects the paintings to a fresh scrutiny, and reveals that Alma-Tadema, a knowledgeable student of antiquity, repeatedly used literary and archaeological allusions in his paintings to play a game of interpretation with his viewers. Time and again the seeming innocence of the scenes he depicts is subverted by a mischievously placed inscription or statue, suggesting to the initiated a darker and usually risque meaning. Neglected after his death, Alma-Tadema's paintings are once again admired for their beauty and their remarkable mastery of light, colour and texture. With its intriguing insights into his personality and intentions, this book should provide a challenging reassessment of a major artist.

«The Story of Art», one of the best-known and best-loved books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over half a century. Professor Gombrich's clear and engaging text combines with hundreds of full-colour illustrations to trace the history of art in an unfolding narrative, from primitive cave paintings to controversial art works of the present day.»

The series has always been highly regarded for its insight and authority, providing an invaluable introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each volume contains an introductory essay, forty-eight full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white.

This is more than just a book of photographs. It is a modernist Japanese photograph album created from Oriental fabrics and papers, and bound by hand. It contains the work of Gueorgui Pinkhassov, a highly-acclaimed photographic artist, innovator and member of Magnum. The sense of innovation and artistry is carried through in the photographs which explore how singular details, plays of light and reflection can capture a spirit and shape an atmosphere. The artist's haiku texts accompany the images.

This is a portfolio of the best of Steve McCurry's photography: classical, magical and powerful images from South and Southeast Asia. McCurry takes photographs all over the world, for National Geographic magazine and his own projects, but it is the people, places, colours and forms of Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma) that have inspired his most sublime images — photographs which transcend their original editorial purpose to become classics of photography. South Southeast features sixty-seven photographs with brief captions. A short text about McCurry introduces the book and he has written commentaries to accompany eight of the images, telling the stories behind them.

«Prodigies in photography are singularly rare; women prodigies virtually unheard of.» — Abigail Solomon-Godeau. Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) has become one of the most talked about, most studied, and most influential of late twentieth century photographers. She started taking photographs when she was barely thirteen and in less than a decade created a body of work that has now secured her a reputation as one of the most original American artists of the 1970s. Woodman brought an understanding of Baroque painting, Modernist art and contemporary post-minimalist practice to her haunting, sensual images. Both in her work with models, and in sometimes disturbing self-portraits, Woodman made a thoroughgoing challenge to the certainties of photography. Interested in how people relate to space, and how the three-dimensional world can be reconciled with the two dimensions of the photographic image, Woodman played complex games of hide-and-seek with her camera. One of the enduring appeals of her work is the way in which she constructs enigmas that trap our gaze. She depicts herself seemingly fading into a flat plane, merging with the wall under the wallpaper, dissolving into the floor, or flattening herself behind glass. But is this disappearing act really the artist putting in an appearance? That we are never completely sure what we are looking at means that we keep looking. Woodman constantly compares the fragility of her own body with the physical environment around her. Fascinated by transformation and the permeability of seemingly fixed boundaries, Woodman's work conjures the precarious moment between adolescence and adulthood, between presence and absence. This comprehensive monograph includes over 250 of Woodman's works — some of which have never been exhibited or published before — as well as extracts from her journals selected by her father George Woodman. There are examples of her large-scale blueprints and reproductions of her photobooks, including «Some Disordered Interior Geometries», which was published in 1981, the year she took her own life. An extensive text by Chris Townsend examines the influences of gothic literature, surrealism, feminism and post-minimalist art on Woodman's photographs. Townsend places Woodman in relation to her contemporaries, such as Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. This book confirms Woodman's position as one of America's most talented photographers and important artists since 1970, with an influence lasting well beyond her own time. Interested in how people relate to space, and how the three-dimensional world can be reconciled with the two dimensions of the photographic image, Woodman played complex games of hide-and-seek with her camera. One of the enduring appeals of her work is the way in which she constructs enigmas that trap our gaze. She depicts herself seemingly fading into a flat plane, merging with the wall under the wallpaper, dissolving into the floor, or flattening herself behind glass. But is this disappearing act really the artist putting in an appearance? That we are never completely sure what we are looking at means that we keep looking. Woodman constantly compares the fragility of her own body with the physical environment around her. Fascinated by transformation and the permeability of seemingly fixed boundaries, Woodman's work conjures the precarious moment between adolescence and adulthood, between presence and absence.»

«Since the mid 1970s Roman Signer's work has examined the forces of the elements — air, fire, earth and water — in a combination of performance (documented by photography and video) and sculpture (the physical remains of his acts). With a Dadaist love for the absurd, his artworks include «Race» (1981), a video performance in which the artist races a lit fuse across a field (hopelessly behind from the outset, the artist loses by nearly the entire length); «Action at Hotel Weissbad» (1992), in which an ordinary table is shot out a hotel window, the resulting photographs showing a table flying incongruously over a sleepy, snowy Swiss village; «Falling from a Bridge» (1980), in which wooden boxes are dropped from a great height into a rushing river, bursting into fragments with a thunderous crash; and «Bicycle with Rockets» (1991), the photographs of which show a fiery bicycle flying through the gallery like a demon comet. Often Signer will exhibit in the gallery the remains of an event not witnessed by the public, such as four empty barrels and a violently splattered wall, the remains of an explosion of paint in the gallery space («Portrait Gallery», 1993), or four sand piles with perfectly round craters on each, the neat results of four fuse explosions at their top («Cones of Sand», 1988). Roman Signer is an extremely respected artist worldwide. He represented Switzerland at the 1999 Venice Biennale and was included in Documenta 8 (1987) and Skulptur Projekte Munster (1997), among many other group exhibitions. Over the course of the past 25 years he has shown at nearly all the key European museums and kunsthalles. American venues have included the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (1998) and the Renaissance Society in Chicago (1991).»

«Professor E.H. Gombrich is acknowledged as one of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the 20th century. His writings include three major narrative works — «The Story of Art», «Art and Illusion» and «The Sense of Order» — and ten volumes of collected essays and reviews. This anthology presents a selection from all these books, as well as six pieces which have previously not been published by Phaidon. This work contains discussions on the nature of representation, the psychology of perception, the interpretation of images and the problems of theory and method. Other topics include social and cultural history, connoisseurship, iconography, symbolism and meaning in art, relativism, tradition, conservatism, and the idea of progress.»

- All-in-one fold-and-send writing pad featuring images from the secret world of young ballerinas — No envelopes required — simply write your letter on the stationery, fold up each sheet, seal, stamp and post — A perfect gift for the ballet-obsessed of every age

Pop Art was one of the most revolutionary art movements of the 20th century. In the 1950s, a group of artists in Great Britain and the USA, rather than despising popular culture, gladly embraced both its imagery and its methods, using photographs, advertisements, posters, cartoons and everyday objects to form the basis of their art. Their audacity at first scandalized the Establishment, but by the mid-1960s their work dominated the world art scene and names such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg were familiar to many. This book examines the formation and growth of the movement with selected examples from the style's most important exponents.

«Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is the only sculptor who is of equal rank to the French painters of the «Great Generation» from Monet to Cezanne. But while he has been considered an early modernist among sculptors, he drew on a rich variety of artistic traditions, including those of ancient Greece, the Renaissance, Egypt and the Far East. He was the creator of a new form in sculpture, the fragment as a finished work, usually a head or a trunk, sometimes a pair of heads only. Rodin is renowned for his expression of emotion and movement and his use of symbolism and distortion. In 1913 the artist described his pictorial approach to sculpting saying: «I place the model in such a way it stands out against the background and so that the light falls on this profile. Then I turn them again and gradually work my way round the figure». Gathered in this work is a collection of photographs of Rodin's masterpieces — from the impressive shape of «The Thinker», to the powerfully melancholy group of «The Burghers of Calais» and some of the most outstanding portrait busts of this century, among them Rose Beuret, Madame de Goloubeff, Victor Hugo and Gustav Mahler.»

«This is a collection of 45 Tokyo street fashion portraits from Japan's premier fanzine. «Fruits» was established in 1994, by photographer Shoich Aoki, initially as a project to document the growing explosion in street fashion within the suburbs of Tokyo. The magazine has since grown to cult status and is now avidly followed by thousands of Japanese teenagers who also use the magazine as an opportunity to check out the latest styles and trends. The average age of the kids featured in the magazine is between 12 and 18 years and the clothes they wear are a mixture of high fashion — Vivienne Westwood is a keen favourite — and home-made ensembles which, when combined, create a novel, if not hysterical, effect. This collection of postcards represents a documentation of the changing face of street fashion throughout the 1990s.»

This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology.

A new version of a Phaidon classic published in 1937, this evocative and fascinating book, now issued as a paperback, presents 500 of the world's greatest self-portraits, arranged in a simple chronological sequence from ancient times to the late twentieth century. 'The mirror, above all the mirror is our teacher' wrote Leonardo da Vinci. Portraits are an endless source of fascination, responding as they do to the basic human impulse to look at faces and try to see into the character behind them. Self-portraits have the added fascination that comes from looking into the mirror and trying to study one's own face. Taking its inspiration from the classic Phaidon volume published in 1937 with the same title, this book presents an uninterrupted sequence of 500 self-portraits, in chronological order from ancient Egypt to the late twentieth century. The challenge of creating their own likeness has proved irresistible to artists, and included here are powerful and evocative works by many of the world's greatest painters and sculptors, including Durer, Rembrandt, Picasso and Andy Warhol. Each image is both a work of art and a study in psychology and self-perception.. Presented without commentary, these works speak for themselves — a compelling collection for every student of art and human nature.

«Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is one of the most popular artists of the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. A founding member of the Viennese Secession and a leader of the Art Nouveau movement, Klimt was an innovator who achieved success with large decorative schemes as well as smaller portraits and paintings. He is admired for his sensuous images of women and for his original vision, producing images such as «Love», «The Three Ages of Man» and «The Kiss».»

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was a boldly original painter who led a short and violent life. The powerful realism of his figures upset many of his contemporaries, and their power to shock remains undiminished. This book, providing a biography, presents all his most famous masterpieces, each with a commentary. The introduction gives an account of his wayward life and his artistic development. Controversial in his own lifetime, and neglected after his death, Caravaggio has re-emerged both as a great master and as something of a cult figure, the subject of a notable film by Derek Jarman.