2 Art and Architecture


72581 POE ILLUSTRATED: Art by Doré, Dulac, Rackham and Others by Jeff A. Menges


In his relatively brief and troubled life, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was as haunted by tragedy and loss as he was plagued by poverty, illness and alcoholism, and his manifold personal misfortunes were an immense influence upon the dark romanticism of his work. Obsessed with death, decay and madness, he created narratives of characters trapped in perverse, almost invariably threatening situations. Here Jeff Menges selects over 100 of the most memorable moments from Poe’s writing, captured in gripping and frequently disturbing images by his most acclaimed interpreters in their original colour or b/w. Many of these are rarely seen as they come from private collections and rare editions and they include scenes from The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death and many others and include work by Manet, Heath Robinson, Harry Clarke and E.L. Blumenschein as well as those of the book’s subtitle. Menges provides a brief overview and Poe biography, as well as introductions to the artists and captions to their images. Eerie and disquieting, these remarkable works of art further cement Poe’s reputation as master of the macabre. 80pp softback, 8½”×11". £15.99 NOW £6.50


73108 BERENICE ABBOTT:


PHOTOGRAPHER by George Sullivan


Born at the close of the 19th century and determined to make her mark on the 20th, Berenice Abbott cut her hair short the day after leaving school and followed her unconventional friend Sue Jenkins to New York and the Bohemian life of Greenwich Village. The year was 1917 and the Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp had just declared the Village to be an “Independent Republic”. Encouraging Berenice to become a sculptor, Duchamp introduced her to the Surrealist photographer Man Ray, and she went as Ray’s assistant to Paris in 1921. Her style was very different from Ray’s and soon she was photographing famous people such as Peggy Guggenheim, Andre? Gide, Djuna Barnes and James Joyce. A key influence was Eugene Atget and his studies of French streets, which inspired Abbott to record the streets of New York on her return, documenting a cityscape that was fast disappearing. One of the most famous is “Night View” taken from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and other iconic images feature self-service Automats, a kosher chicken market, the canyon-like Exchange Place, the Flatiron Building, the now-demolished Pennsylvania Station, Manhattan Bridge, and office workers on Fifth Avenue. This interesting life story and even more fascinating body of work is a tribute to a determined and pioneering artist. 170pp, notes, bibliography, numerous black and white photos.


$20 NOW £7


71676 GOD’S ARCHITECT: Pugin and the Building of


Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill


Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) was one of Britain’s greatest architects. The son of a French draftsman, he worked for King George IV at Windsor Castle at the age of 15. By the time he was 21 he had been shipwrecked, bankrupted and widowed. 19 years


later he died, insane and disillusioned, having changed the face and the mind of British architecture in works as revered as the House of Lords and the Clock Tower at Westminster, Big Ben. Our book is the first modern biography which draws on thousands of unpublished letters and drawings to recreate his life and work as architect, propagandist and Gothic designer. It also tells the turbulent story of his three marriages and sudden death at aged just 40. Colour plates, photos and woodcuts. 601pp. $45 NOW £10


72630 RENOIR AT THE THEATRE: Looking at La Loge edited by Ernst Vegelin van


Claerbergen and Barnaby Wright Published by the Courtauld Gallery and with essays by John House, Aileen Ribeiro and Nancy Ireson, this is a first edition exhibition catalogue. Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s La Loge (the Theatre Box) is one of the iconic paintings of Impressionism and a major highlight of the Courtauld Gallery. Its depiction of a fashionably dressed couple in an elegant theatre box, the husband leaning back and looking through eyeglasses, the woman’s penetrating gaze fixing our stare, powerfully expresses Renoir’s desire to capture the beauty and excitement of modern life through a new language of painting. Looks at Paris’s theatres and fashion industry and the influence of satire and the popular press. Lavishly illus, including x-rays and an infrared photograph of what lies beneath the two female subjects. 128 large pages in softback. ONLY £5


72631 ROBIN HOPPER CERAMICS: A Lifetime of Works, Ideas and Teachings by Robin Hopper


Join Robin Hopper as he inspires and instructs artists on topics including form, surface, function, design, development and themes. Here, he paints an intriguing self-portrait of the man within the legendary artist,


Over 400


book reviews/bibliophilebooks


teacher and arts activist, as he reveals the difficulties of his own life and urges artists to push themselves further in their work. Explore the range of functional pottery developed by Hopper and the considerations that need to be taken into account if you want to make domestic ware. The artist also addresses proportion, ratio, architecture and geometry. Other topics include the development of surface and the blending of colours as well as primary sources of new ideas for one-of-a-kind work. The last chapter contains an appraisal of eight different series of work: Coloured Clay Variations, Mocha Diffusions, Landscapes and Seascapes, Sculptures, Oriental, Garden, Classical and Southwest. 255 pages 21cm x 27.5cm, 400 photos in glowing colour and b/w, diagrams and line drawings. £34.99 NOW £7.50


72797 YOUNG MICHELANGELO: The Path to the Sistine


From his birth in Florence in 1475 as Michelangelo di Lodovico Buanarroti Simoni up to his early 30s, Spike probes the thinking, learning, talent and yearnings of a young man. We follow his development into a master sculptor, creator at an early age of Pietà and David, reveals his involvement in the most troubling controversies of the age and stunningly recreates contemporary Florence and Rome with vivid sketches of Leonardo, Lorenzo, Julius II and Machiavelli, for Michelangelo knew them all. From 1475 to 1508 he was witness to events such as the Bonfire of the Vanities, the Borgias, the siege of Florence and the excommunication and hanging/burning of Girolamo Savonarola. A relentless ambition and exceptional talent saw him produce sculpture and painted masterpieces that are synonymous with the highest achievements of the Renaissance. 45 colour and 7 b/w illus. 271pp. £20 NOW £7


63013 FIRST SEEN: Portraits of the World’s


Peoples 1840-1880 by Kathleen Stewart Howe


These photos from the Wilson Centre for Photography offer a map of the human world in the mid-19th century. This extraordinary collection comprises the first known photographs of peoples and races, of all classes, ranks and castes, ethnic and tribal types - the criminal, the ill, the picturesque - on nearly every continent. They are represented at work, in their environments, in their homes and in their celebrations. Organised into larger thematic groups, they reveal the common threads of human societies and human curiosity. Here are a daguerreotype of a Borneo tribesman, and the first images of the people of Madagascar and the ordinary people of Egypt. Here are a Zulu Shaman, a Fakir from Hyderabad and a Holy Man, all of them to our eyes rather terrifying. 206 large format pages with notes, 161 colour plates and nine reference illus, with chronology. £35 NOW £10


71715 DAN CRUICKSHANK’S BRIDGES: Heroic Designs That Changed the World by Dan Cruickshank


From the Roman Empire’s Pont du Gard to the modern mega Millau Viaduct, here are awe-inspiring bridges old and new, those which have pushed the boundaries of design and those which have been built to proclaim religious virtue. Here, for instance, is the simple Chinese-style bridge at Giverny which, in the 1880s, inspired Claude Monet to produce numerous paintings of the play of light on its structure, contrasted with the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, Japan which, in 1998 gave a superlative demonstration of the minimal elegance and dazzling spans that suspension bridges can achieve, as well as their ability to withstand high winds, powerful sea currents and earthquakes. 384 pages, colour and b/ w photos plus line drawings. £25 NOW £8.50


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. There is something irresistible about miniature 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. How large or small can a miniature be? Can a museum, for example, qualify as a miniature? 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? 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, 200 colour photos. £19.99 NOW £9


70660 GOYA


by Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), court painter to the Spanish crown captured through his works a snapshot of life in Spain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His famously unsmiling women, cheerful scenes for gloomy places, the Circumcision of Christ, the Crockery Vendor, the Straw Mannequin where four girls are tossing what seems like a boy high into the air in a light-hearted but cruel carnival tradition, his self portraits, portraits of nobility, the Inquisition Tribunal, the Miracle of St Antony, his famous Saturn are all featured with a detailed chronological summary of the artist’s life and work. 100 colour illus. 9.4" x 11.8", 96 pages. ONLY £7.50


70735 MAGICAL CHORUS by Solomon Volkov


Subtitled A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn, this ground-breaking looks closely at the relationships of major artists with Lenin and Stalin, Khrushchev and Gorbachev, and the effect of their symbiosis on the nation’s culture. Following the revolutionary tumult of 1905 the battle lines were drawn, with the newly-communist Rimsky-Korsakov being sacked from his job and joining the impresario Diaghilev’s crusade to popularise Russian art, music and ballet in the West. Avant-garde artists, including Kandinsky and Chagall, started leaving Russia, but


Goncharova and her circle struggled on. The reign of terror had begun. The author discusses the position of artists such as Shostakovich, Eisenstein, Akhmatova and Prokofiev, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Nabokov and Brodsky under new regimes. 333 roughcut pages, photos.


£30 NOW £5


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


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. 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? 541 pages 21cm x 29 cm illustrated in colour and b/w. £45 NOW £16


70896 NORMAN SAUNDERS by David Saunders


Here, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth, is the ultimate, ground-breaking book on one of the greatest and most prolific American illustrators of the 20th century. Norman Saunders was the legendary illustrator of Mars Attacks, Batman and countless Men’s Adventure Magazines, paperbacks and Sci-Fi. This is the world’s first book to present his finest paintings in ravishing reproductions. The artist’s son has written an insightful biography, seasoned with quotes from the artist and his associates, chronicling the frontier childhood and training of an illustrator who rose to the top of his profession and then spent World War II in China painting travel sketches. He was relegated to an underground world of subculture publishing, where he painted countless icons for Pre-code Comics and Bubble Gum Trading Cards, until his happy rediscovery by fans in his twilight years. 368 pages 24cm x 31cm. 880 illus, 300 are from original art, dazzling colour. $39.95 NOW £13


70746 SURREALISM: Desire Unbound


by Vincent Gille and Jennifer Mundy Beautifully produced hardback Tate Modern exhibition catalogue, first edition. Surrealism, Psychoanalysts and Hysteria, Anamorphic Love: The Surrealist Poetry of Desire, Books of Love - Love Books, Surrealism, Male- Female, Violation and Veiling In Surrealist Photography: Woman as Fetish, Pornography and the Social Body are among the chapter headings by such leading art historians as David Lomas, Vincent Gille and Hal Foster. Key works by such artists as Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Giacometti, Bellmer, Meret Oppenheim and Claude Cahun are illustrated and discussed, as are surrealist films and photographs by Man Ray, Brassaï and others. The volume features some of the rare and beautiful books produced by the surrealists in their celebration of love, as well as a selection of manuscripts, letters and documentary photographs. Poetry, art, quotes and history all play their part. 350 huge pages. £60 NOW £15


71024 THE ART DETECTIVE by Philip Mould Subtitled ‘Fakes, Frauds and Finds and the Search for Lost Treasures’. Each chapter revolves around a particular painting and the people who helped unmask its identity. A Norman Rockwell faked by an amateur artist from Vermont trapped in a messy divorce; a Winslow Homer watercolour that mysteriously founds its way to a dump in Ireland; a Rembrandt self portrait disguised by so many layers of over painting that it was unrecognisable; a long-lost Gainsborough that Mould spotted misidentified at an Auction in LA. Memoir, art history and brilliant yarn. Colour and b/w photos. 261pp.


$26.95 NOW £6.50 70879 CEZANNE TO PICASSO: Ambroise


Vollard Patron of the Avant-Garde edited by Rebecca Rabinow


Published jointly by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Yale University Press in 2006, this monumental volume was created to accompany an exhibition which celebrated the achievements of Ambroise Vollard, the pioneering Parisian art dealer of the late 19th century. Over his long life (1866-1939), Vollard organised exhibitions for scores of artists including Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso and Matisse, promoted the likes of Degas and included amongst his clients the greatest collectors of the era, including Gertrude Stein, Ivan Morozov and Denys Cochin. Importantly, he also encouraged artists to expand into prints and artists’ books, publishing colourful print albums and collector’s books that are among the most celebrated works of the last century. 464 9½”×12½” pages, 529 illus, 260 in colour, preliminary sketches and 22 essays. Chronology, list of exhibits. Apologies if stickered. £40 NOW £15


72300 THE PAINTINGS OF JOHN DUNCAN: A Scottish Symbolist by John Kemplay


John Duncan’s early works in oil are exquisite studies in a pre-Raphaelite mode, for instance his tapestry-inspired “Joan of Arc”, his grey-tinted “Taking of Excalibur”, the decorative “Peacocks and Fountains” or the beautiful young women who crowd into a roundel shape in “Hymn to the Rose”. Two formative years in the Chicago School of Art were followed by the setting up of a studio in Edinburgh in 1903. His first major Symbolist work was “The Riders of the Sidhe” (the faery folk thought to inhabit the Neolithic site of New Grange), executed in tempera which was to be his main medium for the rest of his career. “Tristan and Isolde” of 1912 has much in common with the Italian masters whom he had recently studied in Florence. 128pp, numerous reproductions, most in colour. 23.4 x 1.7 x 28.5 cm.


£17.95 NOW £8


73104 TURKS: A Journey of 1000 Years, 600-1600 by Filiz Cagman,


Nazan Olcer and David J. Roxburgh The Royal Academy “Turks” exhibition in 2005 took many art-lovers by surprise, with its rich displays of painting, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, manuscripts and armour. Turkey is a key state in east European politics and culture, and this huge and sumptuous book accompanying the exhibition opens up the country’s impressive heritage. Its gateway position on the Silk Road led to a change from Buddhism to Islam in the 10th century, with an accompanying transformation of the visual arts. Seljuk influence introduced animal motifs, many of them expressive of shamanistic beliefs, and the art of tiling as a decorative architectural feature is also associated with the Iranian Seljuks. A major named artist is the 14th century Muhammad Siyal Qalam, whose darkly pigmented demons, priests and dervishes are easily recognisable with their bulging eyes and contorted postures. When the Timurid and Turkmen dynasties replaced the Mongols, they developed a new level of detail in manuscript work and calligraphy. Elaborate war masks, a helmet, mail-coat and other armour from Anatolia and Uzbekistan reflect the centrality of warfare. The art of the Ottoman court is richly jewelled, although Islamic doctrine frowned on ostentation, and the architectural revolution of Suleyman I the Magnificent was dominated by the master-builder Sinan, whose mosques embodied practicality, dignity and grandeur. A portrait of Suleyman by the Venetian School of Titian indicates his


importance throughout the Mediterranean, and his kaftans are


unbelievably beautiful. 392pp, notes, bibliography, 370 colour reproductions. Royal Academy of Arts first edition, 2005.


£50 NOW £30


72414 GAUGUIN by Ingo F. Walther After starting a career as a bank broker, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) turned to painting at the age of 25. After initial successes within the Impressionist circle, he broke with Vincent van Gogh and subsequently, when private difficulties caused him to become restless, embarked on a peripatetic life, wandering first through Europe and finally, in the search for pristine originality and unadulterated nature, to Tahiti. The paintings created from this time to his death in 1903 brought him posthumous fame. Gauguin was able to convey the magical effect that both the landscapes and life of the natives - their body language, charm and beauty - had on him. Features a detailed chronological summary of the artist’s life and work. 100 colour illus. 9.4 x 11.8", 96 pages. ONLY £8


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