2 Art and Architecture ART AND ARCHITECTURE


A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.


- Paul Cezanne


70658 MAN RAY by Katherine Ware and Manfred Heiting Man Ray (1890-1976) is


indisputably one of the most original artists of the 20th century. His revolutionary nude studies, fashion work and portraits opened a new chapter in the history of


photography. Born under the name of Emmanuel Radnitzky in


Philadelphia, he began his artistic career in New York. In 1921 he moved to Paris, where he was enthusiastically welcomed into Dadaist and Surrealist circles. Man Ray experimented tirelessly with new photographic techniques, multiple exposure, rayography and solarisation being some of his most famous. Erotic, playful and sometimes sinister, his compositions show unusual bodies and objects: strange, striking images that transform our perceptions of reality. This collection of famous, lesser known, and unknown works fully illustrates Man Ray’s singular visionary power. Mr and Mrs Woodman 1947 get up to some saucy antics although they are only wooden models, common objects take on a new perspective in his wonderful sequence of Rayographs, portraits of James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst prove that as he said, ‘I maintain that photography is not artistic.’ Nusch and Sonya 1935 is a particularly striking portrait of female friendship on page 74, his nudes of Kiki at Montparnasse 1922 show him as master of erotica as does the nude in lace on page 31 in one of his many stunning black and white studies. With useful biographical section, this is a volume to pore over. 9.4" x 11.8", 192 pages. New from Taschen. ONLY £9.50


71185 TURNER’S EARLY SEASCAPES: The Sun Rising


Through Vapour by J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) produced some of the most monumental maritime pictures creating a public sensation with his


depiction of tempestuous seas and dramatic shipwrecks. He was an artist of the sea in all its moods, and alongside his stormy set-pieces with their striking sunrises and sunsets, violent storms and swirling clouds, he painted a series of smaller, serene seascapes which show the seas as a source of food, defence and trade. He is the master of atmospheric light. This exhibition catalogue focuses on his painting ‘The Sun Rising Through Vapour’ and explores his debt to the Old Masters and earlier marine painters. 30 great works by Turner and related artists, colour and b/w, in 72 page softback. £12.95 NOW £3.50


71239 DISCOVER BRITAIN’S HISTORIC


HOUSES: WALES by Simon Jenkins


Simon Jenkins’s series on the best historic houses in Britain continues with this spectacular collection of stately homes, mansions, manor houses and castles of Wales. Caernarfon Castle is awarded five stars, a massive Norman fortress


rebuilt by the English King Edward I and intended to evoke the spirit of Wales, Rome and Constantinople. Just 28 men held it against Glyndwr’s rebellion in 1403. Very different though externally impressive is Raglan Castle, built in the mid-15th century as an antiquarian copy of a French citadel. Clytha Castle near Abergavenny is an elegant and fantastic Gothick folly built in 1790, with views to the Sugar Loaf, and another fantasy is the Victorian Castell Coch, a turreted Robin Hood stage set designed by William Burges. Powis


70727 ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER: A Study in Sibling Rivalry by Andrew Saint


The book concerns the relations that necessarily have to be forged between architects and engineers when a building - especially a big and expensive one - is planned. How the two parties work together has often been debated but never before been addressed over such a broad span of history. The volume explores divergent and potentially explosive relationships from Britain and France to the United States and from the Renaissance through the Second World War to the present day, examining what happens when the two professions lock horns. Projects from the Eiffel Tower to the Pompidou Centre, and from abattoirs to Chicago sky-scrapers are re-examined, and personalities of the stature of Le Corbusier, Ove Arup, Norman Foster and Frank Lloyd Wright analysed, to determine the interactions and conflicts that arise. Kings, presidents and dictators over the ages are involved. Iconic buildings are cited. Vital questions are posed. Who gets the credit for the design? What are the professional demarcations between the architect and the engineer? What is the status of the art that goes into the construction, and how does that connect or clash with advances in technique and efficiency? It is a study that has radical implications for the compartmentalised ways in which the history of architecture and construction has normally been addressed. We are still arguing about it! A huge, heavy 541 pages 21cm by 29 cm very lavishly


illustrated in colour and b/w with list of abbreviations.


£45 NOW £17.50


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Castle is “a grand house packed inside a medieval box”. The late 17th century Tredegar House is one of Wales’s most elegant mansions with its amazing Gilt Room displaying a Baroque ceiling copied from the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. On a smaller scale is the Merchant’s House in Tenby, with one room to each of its three floors and a herb garden at the back. Dylan Thomas’s house at Laugharne has a view over the estuary powerfully evocative of Under Milk Wood. 192pp, glossary, contact details. 95 entries, beautiful photos, maps, timeline. ONLY £6


70335 BUILDINGS


WITHOUT ARCHITECTS by John May


Published by Rizzoli to their usual very high standards of design and quality, the book is subtitled The Global Guide to Everyday Architecture and the editorial consultant is Anthony Reid. The book is a wonderfully informative reference on vernacular styles, from adobe pueblos and Pennsylvania barns to Mongolian


gers and European wooden churches. There are examples from every continent showing impressively made handmade structures together with diagrams, cross sections and photographs. It offers inspiration for home woodworking enthusiasts as well as architecture buffs and conservationists. There is a plains Indian tipi, a log cabin, a big barn, a Mouri meetinghouse, an Urus reed house, an Inuit igloo, a Haida plank house, and historical background on each section. For example, the Great Mosque of Djenne in Mali, the largest mud brick building in the world and one of the most famous landmarks in Africa. Stilt dwellings are the only housing solution to the people of Ganvié, dubbed the Venice of Africa. The Rendille herders shelter in whelk-shaped tents, while the Zafimanily people of Madagascar build houses from bamboo and wood that evolves into a more permanent form as the relationship of its married owners deepens. In the south of Africa the Zulus’ beehive indlus and the painted houses of the Ndebele are widely celebrated as expressions of their differing but equally vibrant cultures. That is the tone and content of this entire, fascinating book covering Bedouin tents to Dutch mills. Some colour photos, engineering diagrams, great cutaways and cross sections. 192pp. $22.50 NOW £6


70585 WORLDS OF ENCHANTMENT: The Art of


Maxfield Parrish by Jeff Menges


Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) was born in Philadelphia and experienced 40 years of highly specialised commercial illustration work followed by another 30 years of very personal introspective work. His romantic, richly coloured images


of winsome maidens, Florentine festivals, Cinderella, Jason and his Teacher, Jason and the Talking Oak, covers the national weekly magazines like Collier’s, illustrations for Poems of Childhood (1904) and Century magazine with lavish gardens, Desert without Water (Cowboys), the Milkmaid, posters and faraway places continue to appeal to the modern audience with their striking bold colours. Selected from hundreds of the artist’s images for books, magazines and calendars, this original collection spotlights his work from 1897 through to the 1920s. 84 full page colour plates, 8 x 10½” softback. £15.99 NOW £5.50


70363 FRANCIS BACON


by Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens Featuring 250 full colour plates, magazine tear sheets, photographs and imagery from films, this is a catalogue for the exhibition that was held at The Tate in London, The Prado in Madrid and The Met in NYC. Francis Bacon (1909-92) is now widely regarded as Britain’s greatest modern painter. Bacon developed a way of portraying the human body that was unique. By 1946, the critic Kenneth Clarke felt able to state simply: ‘Francis Bacon has genius.’ Here are the twisted faces of portraits of Pope Innocent X, Isabele Rawsthorne, three studies of figures at the base of a crucifixion, studies for nudes, a dog, Velázquez, a figure in a landscape, the human body, many self portraits and details, a triptych from August 1972 and the portrait of George Dyer. With useful chronology, a beautifully created publication from Skira. 288 page large softback, 25 x 28½cm. $40 NOW £19


70828 X-RAY ART by Nick Veasey


Nick Veasey creates works of art by the simple means of using images from X-rays and security scanners, working in a lead-lined room and varying the exposure to reveal the hidden structures below the surface of the world around us. This collection of his work includes subjects from the body, nature, fashion and everyday objects. A study of the face of a woman manages to retain the warmth of the eyes and smile while revealing bone detail, while X-rays of plants and flowers expose the intricate fibrous structures of leaves and petals. Some of the most beautiful images are X-rays of clothes, in which the thread and weave of the fabric combines with the clear and elegant outline of metal findings such as zips and buttons. 224pp, softback, 200 colour studies. £14.99 NOW £4.75


70413 THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL: A


Book Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright A landmark in book design, this exquisite reprint is based on the original edition printed in 1896 to 1898 by Frank Lloyd Wright and William Herman Winslow (1857-1934), his publisher. Wright’s all-encompassing concept of architecture included not only designs for building structures but also artful, integrated treatments of interior spaces, furnishings and decorations. The collaboration of the two men produced two exemplary fine-art titles, of which The House Beautiful is the crowning achievement. Each page of the original was photographed and faithfully reproduced to convey the delicate elegance of the book’s original text and artwork, including Wright’s text frames and photographs. In a block capital typeface with fantastically intricate borders, huge capitals, the philosophy of printing is presented in short pithy sentences for us to enjoy as the eye beholds the beautiful capitals and intricate motifs and borders. There is even a facsimile page of the signed limited to 90 copies edition of the book signed by both Wright and Winslow. Photos of Japanese flower designs in addition. £18.95 NOW £7


70942 ARTS OF TUSCANY: From the Etruscans to Ferragamo by Marina Belozerskaya


First of all, we were absolutely knocked out by the illustrations in this impressive volume but then became seduced by the informative text as well. As can be deduced from the title, the book covers an incredibly long span of history. The Etruscans ruled Tuscany from the 8th century BC until the 4th century BC, and Ferragamo was designing shoes from the 1920s to the 1940s - although this entrancing volume goes even further than that, to Pucci and Gucci in the 1960s. As can be seen, then, Tuscany has been producing extraordinary artwork of one kind or another for about 3000 years. Here are the outstanding chefs d’oeuvre of bronzesmiths, goldsmiths, artists, sculptors, architects, engineers, musicians (recorded in wall paintings), viticulturists, chefs, fashion designers and actors (as evidenced by the enormous amphitheatres of the Romans). Wherever you go in Tuscany the arts are paramount. Here are gorgeous medieval paintings in Lucca and Pisa and there the fabulous buildings of Siena. Here is Florence in the Quattrocento and there the Florence of the Popes and the Grand Dukes. Here are the breathtakingly beautiful sculptures in the gardens of the Villa Medici Di Castello and there an awesome mahogany cabinet with Pietre Dure inlays in the Palazzo Vecchio.


Wherever you open this book, your eyes light upon beauty, as each era’s achievements provide the foundation for the next. The volume celebrates an opulent but essentially humanistic cultural legacy which has produced and is continuing to produce great art masterpieces that express the spirit of the land and its people. 265 pages 23.5cm by 31cm in superb colour.


£35 NOW £17.50


70397 THE ART OF SMALL THINGS by John Mack


The author worked in the British Museum for 28 years and continues to work on projects for the Museum from his new post as Professor of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia. What he does not know about art could fit in a thimble. Not surprisingly, then, within these pages are to be found the exquisite and the esoteric, the wondrous and, frankly, the plainly weird. We are beguiled by all things miniature and by the skills involved in creating a miniature masterpiece. There is something irresistible about tiny Elizabethan paintings, an intricately carved Japanese netsuke, the words of the Lord’s Prayer written on a minute jewelled clasp or an 18th century Italian micro-mosaic. However, although this book is ravishing, it is not merely a collection of photos of beautiful small things. The author also explores the concentrated messages that can be conveyed in the miniature form and how this is exploited in different cultural contexts for a variety of purposes. He assesses the importance of relative scale and questions how ‘miniature’ can be defined. How large or small can a miniature be? Can a museum, for example, qualify as a miniature? It is, after all, a deliberate and selective scaling down of a wider totality. Is a map a miniaturisation of a larger world? What is the point of something that is almost too small to be seen by the human eye? And, most tantalising question of all, could we be living within a microcosm of someone else’s construction? Think about it! Meanwhile, enjoy this selection of treasures from Gulliver to King Kong, classical art to surrealism and Aristotle to the Yoruba. 218 pages 19½cm x 25½cm lavishly illustrated with 200 colour photos.


£19.99 NOW £10


70940 ART NOUVEAU: Jugendstil


by the Scala Group 600 pages of sheer luxury, this tremendously heavyweight tome has glorious full page colour images on every huge page measuring 11½” square. Art Nouveau is rooted in the phenomenon that was secessionism, an international art movement that spread through the


US and Europe between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries whose artistic language took its inspiration directly from nature. Three important magazines Jugend, Pan and Ver Sacrum all promoted this new artistic trend. In Germany it was known as Jugengstil, Sezessionstil in Austria, Modernismo in Cataluña, Modern Style in Great Britain, Liberty in Italy and Art Nouveau in Belgium and France. The style swept through all sectors of the arts and the production of objects - architecture, painting, sculpture, furnishings, graphics, design, the art of glass and jewellery. Here are posters, book covers, illustrations and designs, hundreds upon hundreds, all in colour and glorious photographs of the most luxurious furniture by Eugene Gaillard and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Liberty sofas and mirrors, Alphonse Mucha’s exquisite stained glass in situ in an interior and dozens of examples of Tiffany glass like his Hibiscus and Parrots to Hoffmann’s more functional sleek glasses. Exquisitely produced by Scala. ONLY £29.50


64465 THE NABIS by Albert Kostenevich


Pierre Bonnard was the leader of the group of Post- Impressionist painters who called themselves ‘The Nabis’ based on the Hebrew word for prophet. Influenced by Odilon Redon, Puvis de Chavannes, popular imagery and Japanese woodblock printing, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton and Denis to name the most prominent members revolutionised the spirit of decorative technique during one of the richest periods in French painting. Although the increasing individualism of their work often threatened to weaken their unity, the Nabis were above all a group of close friends. The artwork presented in this no-expense-spared 200 page volume varies between Bonnard’s guilelessness, Vuillard’s ornamental and mysterious works, Denis’s soft languor and Vallotton’s almost-bitter roughness. Delicious colour full page artworks on nearly every page. 9½” x 11". ONLY £9


70932 THE ISLAMIC WORLD by Stuart Cary Welch, edited by John P. O’Neill


From Spain to India, over more than ten centuries, here are pages from Korans, epic poems, poetic anthologies, glass-work, jewellery and stone-and wood-carving show the rich variety of Islamic art. A room from Damascus, created in the 18th century, reveals the exquisite


craftsmanship for which Islamic architects, wood-carvers and ceramists are justly famous. There also are beautiful examples of the various calligraphic styles. Here is the complex arabesque and geometric patterning that was employed to embellish mosques, and to decorate smaller sacred and secular objects as well. Islamic glass and ceramics are illustrated by breathtaking examples drawn from every corner of the Muslim world. Here too are carpets from Mamluk Egypt, Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India. 162 paperback pages 23.5cm x 31cm with 142 full colour reproductions and fold out map.


£14.95 NOW £7


70556 RUBENS: A Portrait by Paul Oppenheimer


It is perhaps not generally known that, as well as being a talented Flemish painter, and a proponent of the extravagant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour and sensuality, Sir Peter Paul Rubens was knighted by both Philip IV King of Spain, and Charles I King of England. For he was not only a classically educated humanist scholar and art collector, he was also a diplomat who travelled extensively, and whose journeys combined art and diplomacy and probably spying as well. While travelling, he was able to study paintings by Veronese, Tintoretto, Titian, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, as well as being influenced by the recent highly naturalistic paintings of Caravaggio. Despite his reputation for painting monumental canvases crammed with battling lions, sensual gardens of love and well- fleshed women, which have nothing to say to the modern viewer, Rubens’ grasp of absolute beauty is totally contemporary. This revelatory biography, uses paintings, drawings and correspondence. He was responsible for Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. 404 pages with illustrations in colour and b/w.


£23.99 NOW £7.50


68753 TITIAN by Peter Humfrey


The commentary, which places the artist’s career and works into the social and historical context of 16th century Italy, is lively and accessible and the colour plates are unsurpassed. Titian’s influence has been immense, inspiring many great masters from Rembrandt and Velázquez to Turner and the Impressionists. He was celebrated for his brushwork and revolutionary use of colour, and his paintings range from portraits to religious and mythological scenes. This comprehensive and erudite volume traces his life from his artistic beginnings to his triumphs in Venice and Ferrara, then at the courts of Mantua and Urbino where he worked for the North Italian Dukes. The penultimate chapter sees his return to Venice and the details of his late career. 238 very large pages, bound in bright red with gold tooling, with more than 170 works in gorgeous colour. Biographies and chronology. $69.95 NOW £20


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