Books » Art & Photography Books

Taro Gomi continues the best-selling series that includes Scribbles, Doodles, Squiggles, and Doodle All Year. The renowned illustrator encourages you to think and create in 30 mailable ways with his playful prompts and open-ended artwork. It is perfect for artists of every kind - whether at home or on the road!

A book that equally illuminates and inspires, Art Work reveals the artistic notetaking habits of an astonishing range of artists, filmmakers, writers, designers, and other creators by granting rare access to the journal pages and other visual materials they use to capture and foster their work. More than twenty creators including Wes Anderson, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Will Self, Richard Serra, Blek le Rat, Tony Kushner, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Merce Cunningham, and others are profiled through a generous selection of images and essays that give context to their work in general as well as to the project being illustrated. Materials featured encompass literal notebooks, a blizzard of Post-it notes, chalkboards, the marks recorded on the walls of a sculptor s studio, and beyond, demonstrating and exploring for students and artists the boundless range of the creative process.

In The Exquisite Book, one hundred indie artists play an ingenious version of the Exquisite Corpse drawing game. Each adorns a page with artwork having seen only the page of the artist immediately prior and using a single horizon line to connect the two. Some continue the "story" quite literally while others build on the previous page in more fanciful ways. This astonishing volume's format is as unique as its content, with each of the book's ten chapters residing on a ten-page accordion pull-out, allowing readers to view the art continuously. With an illustrated foreword by Dave Eggers, and art from such luminaries as James Jean and Jill Bliss, this charming book is, simply, exquisite.

The study of the cattle-horned initiation masks of southern Senegal and the Gambia innovatively weaves together art history, history, and cultural anthropology to give a detailed view of Casamance cultures, as they have interacted and changed over the past two centuries. Based on seven field trips to West Africa and fifteen years of research in colonial archives and in museum collections from Dakar to Leipzig, Professor Mark's work presents a subtle interpretation of Casamance horned masquerades, their complex ritual symbolism, and the metaphysical concepts to which they allude. (The masks protect against the power of the kussay, or "sorcerers".) In tracing the cultural interaction and changing identity of the peoples of the Casamance, the author convincingly argues for a new and dynamic approach to art and ethnic identity. Culture should be seen, not as a fixed entity, but as a continuing process. This dynamic model reflects the long history of interaction between Manding and Diola and between Muslim and non-Muslim, a process that has resulted in the creation of hybrid masking forms.

Albert Drer was born in Nuremberg on 21 May 1471. He began his career under the tutelage of Michael Wolgemut, the eminent German painter and printmaker, before travelling through Germany and to parts of Italy. In 1494 he returned to Nuremberg, where he remained until his death on 6 April 1528. Although an artist and a fluent and engaging writer, it is Drer's woodcuts and engravings that most demonstrate his enviable creative skills. Indeed, the editor of this volume, T. D. Barlow, argues that Drer can indeed be reckoned one of the all-time masters of his craft. Within this 1926 volume, Barlow has chronologically catalogued almost 300 of Drer's engravings; it is the result of many years' work. The finished product will be of great interest as a reference work for scholars engaged in the study of Drer's work and in the distribution of his impressions and their reproductions.

Art, Theory and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy offers a critical overview of the literature on the visual arts produced during the High and Late Renaissance. Analyzing and interpreting texts by such writers as Vasari, Lomazzo, Zuccaro, and Tasso, Robert Williams demonstrates how these works offer insight into the experience of contemporary viewers, thus permitting a clearer view of the relationship between abstract thought and lived experience. By focusing on a heretofore neglected, but important body of literature, Williams shows how an understanding of it can transform our knowledge and appreciation of the Renaissance.

Based on ancient Far Eastern designs that symbolize harmony, balance, and wholeness, this vivid postcard collection features a dozen different mandala motifs. Fanciful centerpieces for the circular patterns include butterflies, dragons, stars, and flowers, each surrounded by a hypnotic spiral of colors. The easily detached cards retain their crisp edges.

Visual arts depend on light to communicate, and an understanding of the physical properties of light and color should enhance the communication for both the artist and the viewer.

This book is intended for students in the visual arts and for others with an interest in art but with no prior knowledge of physics. It presents the science behind what and how we see-that is, it presents the science of light. It emphasizes phenomena rather than theories and the joy of discovery rather than the drudgery of derivations-that is, the presentation is the opposite of "heavy science."

The text considers such questions as - why is the sky blue? - what is the nature of light? - how do mirrors and prisms affect the color of light? - how do compact discs store music and information? - what can visual illusions tell us about the nature of perception? and it discusses such topics as - the optics of the eye and camera - the physiology of the eye and the nature of color vision - the different kinds of sources of light - photography and holography - symmetry in art and nature - color in printing and painting - computer imaging and processing

It includes numerous problems, questions for discussion, and suggestions for simple experiments, many of which can be done at home.