2 Art and Architecture


75618 UFFIZI & PITTI: The Paintings, the Artists, the


Schools Of Painting by Mina Gregori


The painting collections in the State Museums of Florence are unequal for their quality, historic significance and the sheer number of works and never before have they been presented in a publication of such splendid technical quality. The Uffizi, the Palatine Gallery, the


Accademia and other national collections were closely tied at first to the Medici family. These museums bear witness to the Florentine supremacy in the arts that was established by Cosimo I. The Uffizi Gallery since the 1600s has been admired for its wonderful objects and later for its classical sculpture and was laid out with a magnificence inspired by Ancient Roman galleries. Florence has become a European centre for art and its collections of paintings, drawings, self portraits and miniatures and Florence stands out as an irreplaceable reference point of culture and art history for the entire world. Enjoy here the extraordinary variety and wealth of its public collections in what can only be described as a ‘monumental’ tome of 648 pages 9" x 12" and a real heavyweight at over 4kg because of the quality of the colour illustrations and plates. Many are double and full page spreads featuring by Titian, Tintoretto, Dürer, Federico Barocci, Guercino, Giovanni Bilivert, Volterrano, Rubens, a whole section on the Netherlands, dramatic biblical scenes like the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew by de Ribera and the lifelike portraits and scenes created by Velázquez and Goya, the classical dreamlike quality of Poussin and the cherubic depictions by Boucher among the hundreds and hundreds of examples, beautifully reproduced. Covering late and international Gothic style, Italian painting, the 13th century onwards plus Germany, Flanders, Spain in 16th century and more. A breathtakingly handsome volume to treasure. Special import from Germany.


£99 NOW £50


75215 FOR THE PRIVILEGED FEW: Islamic Miniature Painting from The David Collection


by Kjeld von Folsach This breathtakingly beautiful publication was originally intended as a visual souvenir of an exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Taking 132 works, it aims to illustrate 650 years of Islamic


painting from about 1200 to 1850, covering an area that reaches from Egypt, Iraq and Turkey to Central Asia, Iran and India. Reproductions of exotic miniatures play a decisive role in this enterprise. The accompanying essays provide a guide to a vast area which is relatively unknown to most of us in the West. By far the overwhelming majority of paintings that have survived are works of art the same size as an A4 sheet of paper. They were used as illustrations in a manuscript or made as independent works, often produced to be put in an album with other miniature paintings or examples of calligraphy. That is why they are sometimes called ‘book paintings’. The very small medallion portraits, that are frequently termed ‘miniatures’ in the West, hardly exist in the Islamic world. ‘Islamic art’ is a problematic term, as it should really be seen in the context of and in harmony with the religion of Islam, but here it is taken to mean all art made for Muslims in the part of the world where Islam is the dominant religion. This volume also includes a few Indian paintings that were made in a Hindu context, such as the Birth in a Palace on page 224. They were included because they were clearly inspired by the Indo-Islamic culture, and created when a Muslim dynasty ruled on the Indian subcontinent. Amazingly, the book reveals that the Koran expresses no unequivocal prohibition against images of the human figure, although there are warnings against polytheism and idolatry. So readers will be pleasantly surprised to be able to enjoy in this gorgeous volume such wonderful reproductions as The Iranian Princess tells Bahram Gut the Story of the Lovers’ Tribulations. 236 pages 33cm x 24.5cm in glorious colour with Map of the Islamic World and Islamic Dynasties. $50 NOW £20


75244 THE QUEEN’S


HOUSE GREENWICH by Pieter van der Merwe Built by Inigo Jones between 1616 and about 1638, the Queen’s House is of unique significance as the earliest English building in the Italian Renaissance manner, generally called Palladian. In Britain this soon transformed into classical


Georgian, the dominant style in British architecture until the mid 19th century. The House is also the point of origin, stylistic and spatial, of the monumental architectural landscape at Greenwich, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Details of the Queens’s House furnishings and use before 1806 are sparse. Its subsequent career as centre of a naval school and since the 1930s as part of the National Maritime Museum is better documented but has attracted less specialist study. This richly illustrated book sketches the full history in its Greenwich landscape, explores it architectural significance, social uses and famous and less well-known people associated with it. Here is the Orangery overlooking the park, the 1660s bedchamber reconstructed, early woodcuts, Flemish-school paintings, architectural elevations, history, studies by Holbein, sovereignty and the sea, cricket in the grounds, the Hospital School, the Ranger’s House in the park and much more. A beautifully colour illustrated softback, 128pp. £12.95 NOW £6


www.YouTube.com - Type in bibliophilebooks to see our video book reviews 75150 EL GRECO: A Prophet


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75254 TIGERS AND SAILS AND ABC TALES by Malcolm Cormack and Virginia


Museum of Fine Arts One masterpiece per right hand page, the A-Z begins with Renoir’s The Artist’s Son, Jean, Drawing 1901, Philip Reinagle’s Portrait of


an Extraordinary Musical Dog 1805, Renoir’s Pensive 1875, Walter Parry Hodges’ title page for ‘The Beaufort Hunt’ 1833 of a fox, curled up, penetrating eyes staring straight ahead at you through the picture frame, George Stubbs’ Hyena with a Groom on Newmarket Heath 1767 with a horse and groom in a country setting, Pissarro’s Coconut Palms by the Sea, Picasso’s Jester on Horseback, Sir Alfred Munnings’ After the Race, Cheltenham, Rousseau’s Tropical Landscape to Sledding by George Henry Durrie and another American Winslow Homer, plus Manet, Derain and Matisse among the 26 works featured to enjoy even if we cannot see these treasures in Richmond, Virginia. All in colour. £12.95 NOW £4.50


75152 1000 TATTOOS by Henk Schiffmacher and


Burkhard Riemschneider Repulsive to many yet irritatingly and endlessly fascinating to look at, here are 1,000 classic tattoo designs; ethnographic tattoos, Japanese tattoos, the early days to contemporary tattoo art. The opening chapter covers the history


and practice of tattooing. The text is in German, French and English and the balance of this 544 page heavyweight hardback are the breathtaking designs themselves. Erotic for some. Ouch and ooh, how could they? New reprint from Taschen. ONLY £13


75228 PICASSO AND MODERN BRITISH ART edited by James


Beechey and Chris Stephens With texts by leading experts in the field such as Helen Little, Assistant Curator of Tate Britain, Patrick Elliott, Senior Curator of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Christopher Green, Emeritus Professor at the Courtauld


Institute of Art, this volume, accompanying a major touring exhibition, sheds light on a little-known aspect of Picasso’s career, while at the same time redrawing our mental map of British culture of the 20th century. It is the first book to examine the notorious artist’s lifelong connections with Britain and his tremendous impact on British art. It explores his rise in Britain as a figure of controversy and celebrity, tracing the ways in which his work was exhibited and collected here during his lifetime. Picasso’s enormous influence on British modernism is explored through seven of his British contemporaries, for whom he proved to be an important stimulus. They are Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney. In many ways, the discovery of Picasso in Britain might be effectively equated with the discovery of modern art and the gradual acceptance of another way of seeing. By confining itself to a relatively limited number of artists, rather than attempting to include the many who came under Picasso’s influence, this volume helps us to appreciate more fully the work of those artists who have come to be seen as central to any story of Modern British Art, and to realise how their story connects with that of Picasso. The democratisation of contemporary art continues to this day. Whereas, in the pre- and inter-war period, the work of Picasso could generally only be seen in small galleries and the houses of a select group of private collectors, by the post-war period he was permanently represented in the National Collections. So, too, were the modern artists who came under his influence. Readers will be fascinated to compare Hockney’s Christopher Without His Glasses and Picasso’s Portrait of Emilie Marguerite Walter, and Sutherland’s Composition: Devastation with Picasso’s Guernica. A mesmerising 240 paperback pages 30cm x 23.5cm with over 160 plates in glowing colour and b/w, chronology and list of exhibited works.


£24.99 NOW £11 75251 PICASSO:


Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris by Alex Nyerges


and Anne Baldassari A very beautiful exhibition catalogue we have imported of an ambitious project staged at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It was the first retrospective of


Picasso’s work to be held there and comprised nearly 200 works charting his whole career from the Blue Period to the final years of his life. Paintings, sculptures and constructions as well as graphic and photographic works, this chronologically arranged itinerary begins with a small yet iconic canvas dating to 1901 entitled The Death of Casagemas, a portrait by Picasso of his double and friend as artiste maudit and concludes with a self portrait in the form of a homage to Velázquez and Rembrandt, The Musician, dating from 1972. Sailors in a Brothel, The Kiss, Standing Nude, Bull’s Head, Reclining Nude, many portraits of Dora Maar, The Embrace, Reading, Bust of a Woman, the vibrant Two Women Running on the Beach from 1922, The Village Dance, Violin, Construction of Sheet Metal and Wire, Man with a Guitar are among the varied, spectacular examples, each given one very large page and reproduced in quality colour. With a short quote to introduce each section. ‘For me, a picture is the sum of destruction. I make a painting and then destroy it.’ - 1935. ‘I kept on looking at the fetishes. Then I understood that I myself am also against everything.’ - 1974. 272 huge glossy pages in Skira softback.


$39.95 NOW £20


of Modernism 1541-1614 by Michael Scholz-Hänsel Cretan-born painter Domenicos Theotocopoulos, better known by his Spanish nickname El Greco (c.1545-1614), studied under Titian in Venice before settling down in Toldeo. Commissioned by the church and local nobility, El Greco


produced dramatic paintings marked by distorted figures and vibrant colour contrasted with subtle greys. Though his work was appreciated by his contemporaries, especially intellectuals, it wasn’t until the 20th century that it was widely embraced and admired, influencing in particular the Expressionist movement. Between 1586 and 1588 he created one of the great works of European painting, the monumental Burial of the Count of Orgaz for a chapel altar. He confined his pallet to a small number of very expressively used shades, with an evident preference for pale purple, pink and yellow and greyish tone. He located the iconographical events in a space that he dramatised by means of light and atmospheric phenomena. Here is Adam and Eve, the Trojan War, the Madonna of Charity, family groups, Greek nobility in portrait, the Tears of St. Peter, views of Toledo, kings and courtiers, angels and saints, biblical scenes like the magnificently portrayed the Purification of the Temple and the Last Supper. A seductive Tashcen book with slick production value, all in colour. 96 large pages, 9½” x 12". ONLY £9


75157 MONET: Or The


Triumph of Impressionism by Daniel Wildenstein In 1874, when Claude Monet first exhibited the painting


‘Impressionism, Sunrise’, the critics were outraged. Impressionism went on to become one of the major art movements of the late 19th century but at the time was


considered ‘subversive’. Monet lived long enough to become a prophet honoured in his own country and his influence on 20th century art was to be a lasting one. He drew his inspiration from nature - landscapes and the plant life that inhabited them, water and its reflection, the air glittering with light or mistily luminescent. He saw the world as if reflected by the rays of the sun, a dream refracted in a prism and this dream led him in later works to the ‘Water-Lilies’ and the borderline of abstraction. This biography is a revised version of the first volume of the four-volume catalogue also published by Taschen. It is beautifully bound, with most of the hundreds of reproductions in colour. 488 pages. Fantastic value for this slick production. ONLY £13


75206 10,000 YEARS OF ART


by Phaidon Press Limited If any of our readers can find an art book of better value than this one, then we shall be rendered speechless - not an easy feat. It is a compact guide to the whole of art history, from 8,000 BC to the present day. 500 masterworks from all cultures are presented in


chronological order so that readers can compare what was being created across the globe at the same time. Only here can you find for example Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de’ Benci next to an ink painting from the Chinese Ming Dynasty, or Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon alongside a face mask from Gabon. Each work has been chosen for its unique place in art history and as a representative example of the art of its culture. With descriptive text that sets each work in context explaining its contribution to the development of art, and the medium in which it was created, this unique book is an accessible, informative introduction to world art - and it is also fun! Roughly 40 consultants and writers were involved in its production - and it shows. We shall be interested to receive readers’ reactions. 544 pocket sized softback pages crammed with colour reproductions, with glossary.


£7.95 NOW £5 75258 MANET AND THE


AMERICAN CIVIL WAR by Juliette Wilson-Bareau and David Degener


On the 19th June 1864, the United States warship Kearsarge sank the Confederate raider Alabama off the coast of Cherbourg in one of the most celebrated naval engagements of the American Civil War. The


battle was widely reported in the illustrated press and riveted public attention on both sides of the channel. When Kearsarge lay anchored off the French resort town of Boulogne-Sur-Mer it was thronged by curious visitors, one of whom was the artist Edouard Manet. Although he did not witness the historic battle, Manet made a painting of it partly in an attempt to regain the respect of his colleagues after having been ridiculed for his work in the 1864 Salon. His picture of the naval engagement and his portrait of the victorious Kearsarge belonged to a group of his seascapes of Boulogne whose unorthodox perspective and composition would profoundly influence the course of French painting. The book was published to accompany a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It begins by examining Manet’s early experience of the sea including the voyage to South America he took when he was 16 years old. The detailed narrative of the battle that follows recounts the clandestine history of the two ships and their tangled prelude and some of the vivid personalities involved. Manet’s paintings and watercolours related to the battle are then considered alongside numerous prints, lithographs, letters and photographs and archival illustrations. A final chapter touches on Old Master paintings to Chinese woodblock prints, tracing the influence on other artists like Courbet and Whistler. 86 large pages in quality softback. ONLY £5


75619 VENETIAN VILLAS: The History and Culture


by Michelangelo Muraro and Paolo Marton


Nearly 80 superb villas in the province of the Veneto, many Palladian, are captured in 400 beautiful large colour photographs.


Dotted over the evocative landscape adjacent to Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso and other centres are world-famous country houses, manors and villas in their beautifully landscaped or magnificent and rustic settings. Those designed by the great Andrea Palladio and his follower’s inspired celebrated houses and palaces in 18th century Britain and Colonial America. Names of these villas recall Venetian power and splendour - Comaro, Barbaro, Contarini, Foscari. Some are palaces, others jewel-like residences, many decorated with grandiose frescoes by masters such as Veronese or the two Tiepolos, father and son. All are examples of flawless architecture and exquisite proportions and many are set within beautiful gardens enhanced by fountains and sculptures. The book is arranged chronologically and each villa assessed historically, architecturally and artistically within a suite of photographs, some with plans and elevations. Following the 112 page introduction is the first section beginning with Petrarch’s house, his coat of arms, and contemporary photographs of exterior and interior and the poet’s study with a beautiful wooden chair. Next is the Palazzo da Mula on the Isle of Murano, the palace appears to float on water. Slipcased, a huge monumental 13" x 11" volume, maps, 514pp in delicious colour, many double page spreads of rich interiors and close ups of tapestries and masterpieces. A very rare find we have imported from Germany.


£110 NOW £35


75693 BECKMANN & AMERICA: Art to Hear


Book and CD by Hatje Kantz


41 important paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture present the ‘Half American’ Max Beckmann (1884-1950) in an entirely new art and listening experience. Here is


a virtual visit to an exhibition. The official audio guide has been recorded onto a 75 minute CD for the occasion of a major exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. You will hear all about the highlights of the exhibition and in tandem you can observe all the plates of the works discussed, one per full page in this 60 page hardback book. We love Back Bend, a 1950 bronze, the wild and sometimes grotesque nudes such as in Early Men - Primeval landscape, watercolour, gouache and ink drawings, the scratchy ink drawing of View From a Hotel Window in Chicago and the precise lithographs like the Day and Dream series of Sleeping Athlete and King and Demagogue. The sensual Begin the Beguine is number four in this collection, all in colour where possible. 47 illus. Beautifully packaged. ONLY £6


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