John William Waterhouse is among the most popular Victorian artists, and many of his paintings, such as The Lady of Shalott, Hylas and the Nymphs and Ophelia, have become icons of femininity recognized the world over. With their compelling composition, glowing colour and Impressionist-inflected technique, these paintings are admired for their beauty, yet at the same time they have the power to transport the viewer into a romantic world of myth and legend. Waterhouse's depictions of female beauty reflect his age's complex and ambivalent attitudes towards women, in which Victorian ideals of sentiment and duty commingled with less noble undercurrents of erotic desire and misogyny. In this fresh and innovative study of the artist, Peter Trippi presents a new analysis of Waterhouse's seductresses, martyrs and nymphs, together with a lively discussion of the cultural and historical circumstances in which these images were painted. This authoritative volume utilizes new research to provide an accessible biography of the artist and to assess his place in the late Victorian art world. Themes explored include Waterhouse's passion for Italy, literature and the classical world, his participation in England's Royal Academy, his stylistic influences and studio practices, and the collectors, dealers, critics and curators who helped make him famous in his day. Like other Victorian artists, Waterhouse was neglected through much of the twentieth century, but as critical inhibitions have fallen away the revival of his fortune has been dramatic. Today he is again acknowledged as a master painter. Peter Trippi's monograph provides a timely re-evaluation that combines a close reading of Waterhouse's imagery with a candid appraisal of his unique talent.

Presented in an identical format to Phaidon's previous Fruits, published in 2001, Fruits Too is a collection of Tokyo teenage street fashion portraits selected from Japan's premier street fanzine of the same title. Published every month by Shoichi Aoki, who is also the sole photographer for the magazine, Fruits was established in 1994 as a project to document the growing explosion in street fashion within the suburbs of Tokyo. Over the last decade the magazine has 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 those kids featured in the magazine is between 12 and 18 years old. Most of the clothes that they wear are a combination of high fashion — Vivienne Westwood is a keen favourite — and homemade ensembles which when combined together create a novel if not hysterical combination. This latest publication of the best of Fruits will follow the original Phaidon publication by including translations of the various Japanese captions that were originally attached to the photographs that list the name, age and clothing of each person photographed.

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.

Produced in a pocket-sized, jacketed-paperback format, Phaidon's miniature editions make ideal gifts and desirable possessions. Each book features a wealth of finely reproduced colour images.

The life and work of artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) are presented in this volume. He was born into a poor Jewish family in Vitebsk, Russia, a place whose memory remained a constant source of inspiration. Establishing his reputation in Paris before the First World War, he spent the years 1914-1922 in Russia, but disillusioned by the Revolution, he returned and made France his home. He was influenced by the Cubists and in turn influenced the Surrealists, but his vision and his style were always his own — a unique blend of imagination, symbolism, fantasy and colour based on his memories. In addition to painting, he became a celebrated printmaker and perhaps the greatest modern master of stained glass. In an introduction and in commentaries on the 48 colour plates, Gill Polonsky provides a portrait of this exuberant and versatile genius, a moralist, fantasist, mythmaker and religious artist whose work is a kind of visual poetry, expressing in form and colour his intensely personal vision.

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.

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.

An essential introduction to the world's greatest directing team — the Coen brothers. Ethan and Joen Coen is a comprehensive, yet concise and accessible monograph including insightful texts written by some of the world's most respected specialists. This guide is richly illustrated with 100 images, some of which have rarely been seen before.

Albert Moore (1841-93) was one of the most important late Victorian artists. In a single-minded quest for aesthetic perfection, he employed the female figure to embody abstract systems of ideal beauty, and created many of the iconic and defining images of the Aesthetic Movement. Yet he has remained a shadowy figure. Based on original research and unpublished family documents, Robyn Asleson's monograph presents a fresh view of the artist's allegedly reclusive personality, and firmly establishes him as a major figure and a significant precursor of Modernism. This beautiful book is now issued in a paperback format that will bring the artist to a wide and appreciative audience. The Victorian artist Albert Moore (1841-93) pursued a lifelong quest for ideal beauty — an ambitious crusade which propelled him from the naturalism of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, through the medievalism of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, to the Classicism and Japonisme of his friends Frederic Leighton and James McNeill Whistler. Before his twenty-fifth year, Moore had outstripped the aesthetic interests of his closest colleagues and embarked on a solitary search for the timeless secrets of aesthetic perfection. In a series of exquisitely executed paintings, Moore employed the female figure to embody the abstract systems of ideal beauty that he discerned in the finest examples of art and nature. Building on the artist's meticulous watercolour studies of nature and his monumental figural decorations for architecture, these paintings chart the evolution of Moore's singular artistic creed and provide many of the defining images of the Aesthetic Movement. Fiercely protective of his independence, Moore rejected the high visibility embraced by his celebrated professional colleagues. Thus, ironically, while his paintings hung prominently at annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery, Moore himself remained a shadowy figure on the periphery of the Victorian art world. He remains an enigma today. Although his paintings are among the most celebrated icons of the Victorian era, few recognize in them the unique analysis of pure form that established Moore as the most radical exponent of English Aestheticism and one of the most progressive artists of the nineteenth century. A one-man avant-garde, Moore anticipated by several generations the abstract aesthetic concerns of twentieth-century Modernism. This full-length study of Albert Moore — the first to appear in over 100 years — seeks to restore the artist to his rightful place in art history, while also fleshing out his hitherto mysterious personality and lifestyle. Drawing on unpublished materials and on a mass of new and fully documented research, the book analyses the origins and development of Moore's aesthetic systems and traces his formative links to architectural theory and practice. New evidence concerning Moore's personal life and professional networks debunks the myth of his hermit-like existence, and sheds light on his notorious exclusion from Royal Academy membership. In particular, the author reveals that Moore's friendship with and influence upon James McNeill Whistler were closer and more important than has hitherto been assumed. The artist's studio practice and his relationship with patrons, models and students are also considered. In place of the taciturn recluse of Victorian legend, Albert Moore emerges as a passionate and audacious crusader for beauty, an artist well ahead of his time.

A collection of bold, fun, colourful images giving an insight into the life of Mario Testino, one of today's top fashion photographer. Over the past few years the name of Mario Testino has become synonymous with the cutting edge of fashion photography. His redefining images of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Madonna, as well as numerous campaigns for Gucci, Versace, Missoni and others, have established him as an arbiter of Nineties style. Born in Lima, Peru, he moved to London in his twenties and set about becoming a photographer. His tremendous energy and love of life carried him through the tough journey that finally earned him innumerable pages in Vogue and an address book that is positively bursting at the seams. Any Objections? is Testino's first book. Provocative and sometimes shocking, it is a lightning roller-coaster of unpublished images which brilliantly illuminates the vision of one of photography's shrewdest eyes. Fashion and the gutter, nature and artifice, high life and low, jostle for his attention. Faces of the very famous in the least expected places, bodies of the very beautiful, landscapes and cities, close friends and extraordinary passersby all find their place in a pattern which is held together by Testino's evident sense of the absurd. The book is an insight into the raw material of fashion, where a glimpse of life from a street in Tangier can be the inspiration for a fashion story in New York. At once diary and commentary, picture after picture (all reproduced full-page) provoke reactions as diverse as their subject-matter: from shock to amusement and from surprise to delight. Whether or not you have any objections, you can't help being intrigued by Testino's very personal view of the world that surrounds him.

England has been a key subject of Magnum photographer Martin Parr's work since he started taking pictures. Think of England is a comic, opinionated, affectionately satirical, colour-saturated photo-essay about the identity of England. As Scotland and Wales consolidate their status as nations and Great Britain begins to unravel, this book of new work contributes to the debate about what it means to be English. Quintessentially English himself, Parr's great achievement as a photographer is his ability to transform the obvious into the surprising, reinventing cliches of Englishness as provocative revelations. His tour of obvious England takes in Ascot and the charity shop, seaside resorts, herbaceous borders, the bring-and-buy stall, cucumber sandwiches and cups of tea, baked beans and bad footwear. Parr's work has already added to the visual vocabulary of England; this book, his first specifically on the subject of England, stretches it further. Simultaneously affectionate and brutally direct, all the photographs are shot with a ring flash camera (more usually used for medical photographs), which has been his medium of choice for the last four years.

The Devil's Playground presents a major collection of photographs by Nan Goldin (b.1953). Since the 1980s, Goldin has consistently created photographs that are intimate and compelling: they tell personal stories of relationships, friendships and identity, while chronicling different eras and exposing the passage of time. This book features a significant body of latest work by Goldin, including photographs from new series such as Still on Earth (1997-2001), 57 Days (2000) and Elements (1995-2003), many of which are previously unpublished. Laid out in diary-like sequences by Goldin herself, the material is both courageously candid and affirmative. The photographs are grouped into themed chapters, between which are interspersed texts, poems and lyrics by prominent writers, including Nick Cave, Catherine Lampert, Cookie Mueller and Richard Price. The Devil's Playground is the first major book to be published on Goldin's work since 1996 and it is by far her most important to date. This monograph brings to light both the sources of Goldin's inspiration and her life as a prominent contemporary artist: she is internationally recognized as one of today's leading photographers. Born in Washington DC, Goldin grew up in Boston where she began taking photographs at the age of 15. She has since lived in New York, Bangkok, Berlin, Tokyo and Paris, amassing an extensive body of work that represents an often disconcertingly seductive photographic portrait of our time.

This title presents 45 postcards illustrated with images from David Doubilet's book Water Light Time. Sharks, shipwrecks, rare and unusual species, exotic vegetation, startling and vivid colours, Doubilet's pictures aim to inspire awe at both the wonder of the undersea world and the skill of the photographer. This is a selection of 15 (3 copies each) of the most beautiful (and usable as postcards) images from his brightly coloured and sometimes dangerous submarine world.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) became, in the century following his death, an individual of undisputed universal acclaim. His brief but astoundingly eventful life has inspired the scrutiny of other painters, film-makers, psychologists and novelists, and his personal celebrity outstrips even the substantial fame of his works. While the popular appeal of such pictures as Sunflowers or Starry Night resides in their seemingly emotion-fuelled spontaneity, they are in fact the products of a reflective and idea-driven man who was profoundly interested in and inspired by all manner of literary, musical and artistic sources. Spanning his early work in the Netherlands, the formative years in and around Paris, and the intense, vibrant studies of peasants and the countryside of the South of France, this survey makes extensive use of Van Gogh's own correspondence to illuminate his artistic development and the personal vision that lies behind his work. The result is a balanced and sensitive account of this most innovative and influential of artists.

This volume — investigating the work of a particular photographer, in this case, Wynn Bullock — comprises a 4000-word essay by an expert in the field, 55 photographs presented chronologically, each with a commentary, and a biography of the featured photographer.

With his distinctive paintings of landscapes, figures and still-lifes, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) profoundly influenced the Cubists and the direction of 20th-century art. This account of his life and work traces his full career from his early years in Aix-en-Provence, through his time in Paris studying the Old Masters and working with the Impressionists, to his later, reclusive years back in Provence, when he produced the pictures that made him the precursor of a new art. The book roots Cezanne in his own time and place, examining his work within the issues and debates of his own generation, particularly those about the essential characteristics and direction of French art and society.

American Art Book is a vibrant guide to the most influential and best-loved American artists from Colonial times to the present. Covering three centuries, the art ranges from Puritan portraits to the luminous paintings of the Hudson River School and the American Impressionists, to the videos and neon and digital works of today's most intriguing Conceptual artists. Like the enormously popular Art Book, it presents 500 artists in an A to Z format that departs from the usual emphasis on genres and time periods: Grandma Moses sits next to Robert Motherwell, and Winslow Homer faces Jenny Holzer, encouraging readers to contemplate the connections between art, American history, and popular culture. Each artist is represented by a full-page color plate of a significant work, accompanied by an informative and engaging text that places the artist in the context of contemporary movements and preceding traditions. The book includes an easy-to-use glossary of artistic terms and movements, and a directory of museums and public collections across the United States and abroad with important holdings in American art, making it a valuable reference work as well as a stimulating way to approach this multifaceted subject.

In this lively and original study, Kristin Lohse Belkin shows that there is far more to Peter Paul Rubens than the notorious Rubenesque nude. She explores his techniques and workshop practices, the role of women in his life and art, and his engagement with contemporary issues of Church and State. The author unravels the allegorical and iconographic content of key works, situating them within their original settings. Drawing on his extensive correspondence, she traces Rubens' involvement in the events of his time and charts his relationship with members of his circle.

Jenny Holzer is an artist who works with new media, in locations ranging from baseball stadiums to public transportation systems. This book surveys all her installations, including her celebrated marble benches and electronic boards at the DIA Foundation New York, street and gallery based exhibitions, permanent public monuments, and works on the World Wide Web. Starting on the streets of New York with simple fly-posters, she has gone on to disseminate her truisms, slogans, memorials and poems through a variety of media. They are enunciated by an unstable register of personae be it ad man, stand up comic, torturer, victim or evangelist. The sites for her work range from T shirts and golf balls, to dazzling electronic signboards at baseball stadiums or the Internet. Her work uses language to investigate ideologies, conscious and unconscious formations about identity and experience. Her complex and poetic texts can be shocking, humorous and intriguing in content; at the same time she draws on Minimalism's use of industrial materials, and deploys scale, movement and light to create art of great formal power and beauty. The book is part of a series of studies of important artists of the late-20th century. Each title offers a comprehensive survey of the artist's work, providing analyses and multiple perspectives on contemporary art and its inspiration.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was the most influential sculptor of his age. Inventive and skilled, he virtually created the Baroque style. In his religious sculptures he excelled at capturing movement and extreme emotion, uniting figures with their setting to create a single conception of overwhelming intensity that expressed the fervour of Counter-Reformation Rome. Intensity and drama also characterize his portraits and world-famous Roman fountains. This monograph provides an authoritative introduction to all aspects of Bernini's sculpture, while the full catalogue gives detailed information on his complete oeuvre.