Art History
By Evdokia Belova, E Bocharnikova
POD ISBN: 9781646993925
215.9 x 270 mm – 204 pages
Although the techniques of classical ballets were invented by French and Italian masters two hundred years ago, the Russian Ballet refined these techniques, thus enhancing its already superb performances.
By William Hogarth
POD ISBN: 9781646991327
215.9 x 270 mm – 256 pages
William Hogarth wrote his Analysis of Beauty in 1753, during the Age of Enlightenment. Through this captivating text, he tends to define the notion of beauty in painting and states that it is linked, per se, to the use of the serpentine lines in pictorial compositions. He calls it the “line of beauty”. His essay is thus dedicated to the study of the composition of paintings, depending on the correct use of the pictorial lines, light, colour, and the figure’s attitudes. These timeless concepts have been applied by several artists through the centuries. Paintings from every period have here been chosen to support this demonstration. They allow us to explore the various manners in which beauty can be expressed in painting.
By Joseph Archer Crowe, Giovanni Battista, Cavalcaselle Anna Jameson
POD ISBN: 9781683259206
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Oscillating between the majesty of the Greco-Byzantine tradition and the modernity predicted by Giotto, Early Italian Painting addresses the first important aesthetic movement that would lead to the Renaissance, the Italian Primitives. Trying new mediums and techniques, these revolutionary artists no longer painted frescoes on walls, but created the first mobile paintings on wooden panels. The visages of the figures were painted to shock the spectator in order to emphasise the divinity of the character being represented. The bright gold leafed backgrounds were used to highlight the godliness of the subject. The elegance of both line and colour were combined to reinforce specific symbolic choices. Ultimately the Early Italian artists wished to make the invisible – visible. In this magnificent book, the authors emphasise the importance that the rivalry between the Sienese and Florentine schools played in the evolution of art history. The reader, in the course of these forgotten masterworks, will discover how the sacred began to take a more human form, opening a discrete but definitive door through the use of anthropomorphism, a technique that would be cherished by the Renaissance.
By Joseph Archer Crowe, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Anna Jameson
POD ISBN: 9781646995271
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Oscillating between the majesty of the Greco-Byzantine tradition and the modernity predicted by Giotto, Early Italian Painting addresses the first important aesthetic movement that would lead to the Renaissance, the Italian Primitives. Trying new mediums and techniques, these revolutionary artists no longer painted frescoes on walls, but created the first mobile paintings on wooden panels. The visages of the figures were painted to shock the spectator in order to emphasise the divinity of the character being represented. The bright gold leafed backgrounds were used to highlight the godliness of the subject. The elegance of both line and colour were combined to reinforce specific symbolic choices. Ultimately the Early Italian artists wished to make the invisible – visible. In this magnificent book, the authors emphasise the importance that the rivalry between the Sienese and Florentine schools played in the evolution of art history. The reader, in the course of these forgotten masterworks, will discover how the sacred began to take a more human form, opening a discrete but definitive door through the use of anthropomorphism, a technique that would be cherished by the Renaissance.
By Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781646991495
195 x 238 mm – 256 pages
Covering 27 museums throughout 27 European capitals, here you can discover some of the most beautiful museum collections in Europe, their creation, and the story of their acquisitions led by the most well-known curators and art enthusiasts. Additionally, it highlights the various cultural policies and points of view concerning the promotion of artistic heritage in Europe. The most emblematic European museums are presented along with some well-kept and fascinating secrets, such as in Nicosia of Cyprus and Sofia in Bulgaria.
By Klaus H. Carl, Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781683259152
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
The Baroque period lasted from the beginning of the 17th-century to the middle of the 18th-century. Baroque art was artists’ response to the Catholic Church’s demand for solemn grandeur following the Council of Trent, and through its monumentality and grandiloquence, it seduced the great European courts. Amongst the Baroque arts, architecture has, without doubt, left the greatest mark in Europe: the continent is dotted with magnificent Baroque churches and palaces, commissioned by patrons at the height of their power. The works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini of the Southern School and Peter Paul Rubens of the Northern School alone show the importance of this artistic period. Rich in images encompassing the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, this work offers a complete insight into this passionate period in the history of art.
By Klaus H. Carl, Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781683259152
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
The Baroque period lasted from the beginning of the 17th-century to the middle of the 18th-century. Baroque art was artists’ response to the Catholic Church’s demand for solemn grandeur following the Council of Trent, and through its monumentality and grandiloquence, it seduced the great European courts. Amongst the Baroque arts, architecture has, without doubt, left the greatest mark in Europe: the continent is dotted with magnificent Baroque churches and palaces, commissioned by patrons at the height of their power. The works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini of the Southern School and Peter Paul Rubens of the Northern School alone show the importance of this artistic period. Rich in images encompassing the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, this work offers a complete insight into this passionate period in the history of art.
By Charles Bayet
POD ISBN: 9781683259169
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
For more than a millennium, from its creation in 330 A.D. until its fall in 1453, the Byzantine Empire was a cradle of artistic effervescence that we are only beginning to rediscover. Endowed with the rich heritage of Roman, Eastern and Christian cultures, Byzantine artists developed an architectural and pictorial tradition, marked by symbolism, whose influence extended far beyond the borders of the Empire. Today, Italy, Northern Africa, and the Near East preserve the vestiges of this sophisticated artistic tradition, with all of its mystical and luminous beauty.
The magnificence of the palaces, churches, paintings, enamels, ceramics and mosaics from this civilisation guarantees Byzantine art’s powerful influence and timelessness.
By Charles Bayet
POD ISBN: 9781646995257
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
For more than a millennium, from its creation in 330 A.D. until its fall in 1453, the Byzantine Empire was a cradle of artistic effervescence that we are only beginning to rediscover. Endowed with the rich heritage of Roman, Eastern and Christian cultures, Byzantine artists developed an architectural and pictorial tradition, marked by symbolism, whose influence extended far beyond the borders of the Empire. Today, Italy, Northern Africa, and the Near East preserve the vestiges of this sophisticated artistic tradition, with all of its mystical and luminous beauty.
The magnificence of the palaces, churches, paintings, enamels, ceramics and mosaics from this civilisation guarantees Byzantine art’s powerful influence and timelessness.
By John Shannon Hendrix
POD ISBN: 9781646994243
215.9 x 270 mm – 256 pages
This book explains and celebrates the richness of English churches and cathedrals, which have a major place in medieval architecture. The English Gothic style developed somewhat later than in France, but rapidly established its own architectural and ornamental codes. The author, John Shannon Hendrix, classifies English Gothic architecture in four principal stages: the Early English Gothic, the Decorated, the Curvilinear, and the Perpendicular Gothic. Several photographs of these architectural testimonies allow us to understand the whole originality of Britain during the Gothic era, in Canterbury, Wells, Lincoln, York, and Salisbury. English Gothic architecture is a poetic one, speaking both to the senses and to the spirit.
By Klaus H.Carl
POD ISBN: 9781646995424
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
La peinture académique désigne la peinture créée sous l’influence de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture inaugurée en 1648. Philippe de Champaigne, peintre académique majeur du XVIIe siècle français, a dispensé plusieurs conférences à ce sujet. Elles sont illustrées par de nombreuses peintures, du XVIIe siècle à la fin du XIXe siècle. Ces discours ont permis de fixer les canons de l’Académie, dont les caractéristiques sont la pureté, l’harmonie et la simplicité. Ces mêmes lignes directrices se retrouvent dans les pays d’Europe qui voient apparaître des Académies au cours des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Académie de Saint-Luc à Rome, Royal Academy of Arts à Londres par exemple). Cette peinture atteint son paroxysme à la fin du XIXe siècle, avec les peintres dits « pompiers » qui, appliquant fidèlement les règles classiques, affrontent l’approche moderne des impressionnistes.
By Guillaume Apollinaire, Dorothea Eimert, Anatoli Podoksik
POD ISBN: 9781683259183
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: five young women that changed modern art forever. Faces seen simultaneously from the front and in profile, angular bodies whose once voluptuous feminine forms disappear behind asymmetric lines – with this work, Picasso revolutionised the entire history of painting. Cubism was thus born in 1907. Transforming natural forms into cylinders and cubes, painters like Juan Gris and Robert Delaunay, led by Braque and Picasso, imposed a new vision upon the world that was in total opposition to the principles of the Impressionists. Largely diffused in Europe, Cubism developed rapidly in successive phases that brought art history to all the richness of the 20th-century: from the futurism of Boccioni to the abstraction of Kandinsky, from the Suprematism of Malevich to the Constructivism of Tatlin.
Linking the core text of Guillaume Apollinaire with the studies of Dr Dorothea Eimert, this work offers a new interpretation of modernity’s crucial moment and permits the reader to rediscover, through their biographies, the principal representatives of the movement.
By Guillaume Apollinaire, Dorothea Eimert, Anatoli Podoksik
POD ISBN: 9781646995264
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: five young women that changed modern art forever. Faces seen simultaneously from the front and in profile, angular bodies whose once voluptuous feminine forms disappear behind asymmetric lines – with this work, Picasso revolutionised the entire history of painting. Cubism was thus born in 1907. Transforming natural forms into cylinders and cubes, painters like Juan Gris and Robert Delaunay, led by Braque and Picasso, imposed a new vision upon the world that was in total opposition to the principles of the Impressionists. Largely diffused in Europe, Cubism developed rapidly in successive phases that brought art history to all the richness of the 20th-century: from the futurism of Boccioni to the abstraction of Kandinsky, from the Suprematism of Malevich to the Constructivism of Tatlin.
Linking the core text of Guillaume Apollinaire with the studies of Dr Dorothea Eimert, this work offers a new interpretation of modernity’s crucial moment and permits the reader to rediscover, through their biographies, the principal representatives of the movement.
By Ashley Bassie
POD ISBN: 9781683259220
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Emil Nolde, E.L. Kirchner, Paul Klee, Franz Marc as well as the Austrians Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele were among the generation of highly individual artists who contributed to the vivid and often controversial new movement in early 20th-century Germany and Austria: Expressionism. This publication introduces these artists and their work.
The author, art historian Ashley Bassie, explains how Expressionist art led the way to a new, intense, evocative treatment of psychological, emotional and social themes of the early 20th-century. The book examines the developments of Expressionism and its key works, highlighting the often intensely subjective imagery and the aspirations and conflicts from which it emerged while focusing precisely on the artists of the movement.
By Ashley Bassie
POD ISBN: 9781683259220
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Emil Nolde, E.L. Kirchner, Paul Klee, Franz Marc as well as the Austrians Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele were among the generation of highly individual artists who contributed to the vivid and often controversial new movement in early 20th-century Germany and Austria: Expressionism. This publication introduces these artists and their work.
The author, art historian Ashley Bassie, explains how Expressionist art led the way to a new, intense, evocative treatment of psychological, emotional and social themes of the early 20th-century. The book examines the developments of Expressionism and its key works, highlighting the often intensely subjective imagery and the aspirations and conflicts from which it emerged while focusing precisely on the artists of the movement.
By Victoria Charles, Klaus H. Carl
POD ISBN: 9781683259237
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Développé à travers l’Europe pendant plus de 200 ans, l’art gothique est un mouvement qui trouve ses racines dans la puissante architecture des cathédrales du nord de la France. Délaissant la rondeur romane, les architectes commencèrent à utiliser les arcs-boutants et les voûtes en berceau brisé pour ouvrir les cathédrales à la lumière. Période de bouleversements économiques et sociaux, la période gothique vit aussi le développement d’une nouvelle iconographie célébrant la Vierge, à l’opposé de la thématique terrifiante de l’époque romane. Riche de changements dans tous les domaines (architecture, sculpture, peinture, enluminure, etc.), l’art gothique s’effaça peu à peu face à la Renaissance italienne.
By Nathalia Brodskaïa
POD ISBN: 9781683259305
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
While Impressionism marked the first steps toward modern painting by revolutionising an artistic medium stifled by academic conventions, Post-Impressionism, even more revolutionary, completely liberated colour and opened it to new, unknown horizons. Anchored in his epoch, relying on the new chromatic studies of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Georges Seurat transcribed the chemist’s theory of colours into tiny points that created an entire image. With his heavy strokes, Van Gogh illustrated the midday sun, while Cézanne renounced perspective. Rich in its variety and in the singularity of its artists, Post-Impressionism was a passage taken by all the well-known figures of 20th-century painting – it is here presented, for the great pleasure of the reader, by Nathalia Brodskaïa.
By Nathalia Brodskaïa
POD ISBN: 9781646995332
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
While Impressionism marked the first steps toward modern painting by revolutionising an artistic medium stifled by academic conventions, Post-Impressionism, even more revolutionary, completely liberated colour and opened it to new, unknown horizons. Anchored in his epoch, relying on the new chromatic studies of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Georges Seurat transcribed the chemist’s theory of colours into tiny points that created an entire image. With his heavy strokes, Van Gogh illustrated the midday sun, while Cézanne renounced perspective. Rich in its variety and in the singularity of its artists, Post-Impressionism was a passage taken by all the well-known figures of 20th-century painting – it is here presented, for the great pleasure of the reader, by Nathalia Brodskaïa.
By Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781683259329
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
By Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781646995356
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
By Robert de la Sizeranne
POD ISBN: 9781683259336
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
In Victorian England, with the country swept up in the Industrial Revolution, the Pre-Raphaelites, close to William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement, yearned for a return to bygone values. Wishing to revive the pure and noble forms of the Italian Renaissance, the major painters of the circle such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, in opposition to the academicism of the time, favoured realism and biblical themes over the affected canons of the 19th-century. This work, with its captivating text and rich illustrations, describes with enthusiasm this singular movement which notably inspired Art Nouveau and Symbolism.
By Robert de la Sizeranne
POD ISBN: 9781646995349
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
In Victorian England, with the country swept up in the Industrial Revolution, the Pre-Raphaelites, close to William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement, yearned for a return to bygone values. Wishing to revive the pure and noble forms of the Italian Renaissance, the major painters of the circle such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, in opposition to the academicism of the time, favoured realism and biblical themes over the affected canons of the 19th-century. This work, with its captivating text and rich illustrations, describes with enthusiasm this singular movement which notably inspired Art Nouveau and Symbolism.
By Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781683259121
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
At the beginning of the 20th-century, trends started to emerge that began to diverge from a naturalistic conception of reality and set out to explore beneath the mere superficial appearance of things. Throughout, the author shows that, regardless of the multitude of stylistic backgrounds in individual Western countries, everywhere, realisation that a work of art was no longer made in the spirit of the old aesthetics of imitation as if taken from nature, but rather rises from its own independent dimension of existence. A work of art is now autonomous.
In this book, the author traces and analyses the origins and the history of abstract art as well as iconic movements and groundbreaking visionaries in an original and exciting way.
By Jean Capart, Elie Faure, Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781683259213
205 x 260 mm – 76 pages
Egyptian art is perhaps the most impersonal that exists. The artist effaces himself. But he has such an innate sense of life, a sense so directly moved and so limpid that everything of life which he describes seems defined by that sense, to issue from the natural gesture, from the exact attitude, in which one no longer sees stiffness. His impersonality resembles that of the trees bowing in the wind with a single movement and without resistance, or that of the water which wrinkles into equal circles all moving in the same direction.
From afar, Egyptian art seems changeless and forever like itself. From nearby, it offers, like that of all the other peoples, the spectacle of great evolutions, of progress toward freedom of expression, of researches in imposed hieratism. Egypt is so far from us that it all seems on the same plane. One forgets that there are fifteen or twenty centuries, the age of Christianity — between the “Seated Scribe” and the great classic period, twenty-five or thirty centuries, fifty, perhaps — twice the time that separates us from Pericles and Phidias — between the pyramids and the Saite school, the last living manifestation of the Egyptian ideal.
By Klaus H. Carl, Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781683259343
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Deriving from the French word rocaille, in reference to the curved forms of shellfish, and the Italian Barocco, the French created the term Rococo. Appearing at the beginning of the 18th-century, it rapidly spread to the whole of Europe. Extravagant and light, Rococo responded perfectly to the spontaneity of the aristocracy of the time. In many aspects, this art was linked to its predecessor, Baroque, and it is thus also referred to as late Baroque style. While artists such as Tiepolo, Boucher and Reynolds carried the style to its apogee, the movement was often condemned for its superficiality. In the second half of the 18th-century, Rococo began its decline. At the end of the century, facing the advent of Neoclassicism, it was plunged into obscurity. It had to wait nearly a century before art historians could restore it to the radiance of its golden age, which is rediscovered in this work by Klaus H. Carl and Victoria Charles.
By Klaus H. Carl, Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781646995370
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Deriving from the French word rocaille, in reference to the curved forms of shellfish, and the Italian Barocco, the French created the term Rococo. Appearing at the beginning of the 18th-century, it rapidly spread to the whole of Europe. Extravagant and light, Rococo responded perfectly to the spontaneity of the aristocracy of the time. In many aspects, this art was linked to its predecessor, Baroque, and it is thus also referred to as late Baroque style. While artists such as Tiepolo, Boucher and Reynolds carried the style to its apogee, the movement was often condemned for its superficiality. In the second half of the 18th-century, Rococo began its decline. At the end of the century, facing the advent of Neoclassicism, it was plunged into obscurity. It had to wait nearly a century before art historians could restore it to the radiance of its golden age, which is rediscovered in this work by Klaus H. Carl and Victoria Charles.
By Eugenie Strong, Elie Faure
POD ISBN: 9781683259350
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
By Victoria Charles, Klaus H. Carl
POD ISBN: 9781683259367
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
In art history, the term Romanesque art distinguishes the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th-century. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work reclaims the importance of this art which is today often overshadowed by the later Gothic style.
By Victoria Charles, Klaus H. Carl
POD ISBN: 9781646995387
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
In art history, the term Romanesque art distinguishes the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th-century. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work reclaims the importance of this art which is today often overshadowed by the later Gothic style.
By Léon Rosenthal
POD ISBN: 9781683259374
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Romanticism was a reaction against the Neoclassicism that invaded the 19th-century, and marked a veritable intellectual rupture. Found in the writings of Victor Hugo and Lord Byron among others, its ideas are expressed in painting by Eugène Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich and William Blake. In sculpture, François Rude indicated the direction this new artistic freedom would take, endowing his work with a movement and expression never previously seen.
By retracing the different stages of its evolution, this book offers a study of the different aspects of the Romantic movement. Thanks to a thorough and in-depth analysis, the reader can understand in its entirety this movement which revolutionised the era.
By Léon Rosenthal
POD ISBN: 9781646995394
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Romanticism was a reaction against the Neoclassicism that invaded the 19th-century, and marked a veritable intellectual rupture. Found in the writings of Victor Hugo and Lord Byron among others, its ideas are expressed in painting by Eugène Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich and William Blake. In sculpture, François Rude indicated the direction this new artistic freedom would take, endowing his work with a movement and expression never previously seen.
By retracing the different stages of its evolution, this book offers a study of the different aspects of the Romantic movement. Thanks to a thorough and in-depth analysis, the reader can understand in its entirety this movement which revolutionised the era.
By Nathalia Brodskaïa
POD ISBN: 9781683259404
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Born at the dawn of the 20th-century, Fauvism burst onto the artistic scene at the 1905 Salon d’Automne with great controversy by throwing bright, vibrant colours in the face of artistic convention. Fuelled by change, artists like Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck searched for a new chromatic language by using colour out of its habitual context. Freed from the strict technique advocated by the École des Beaux-Arts, they used colour as their main resource, their only standard seen in flat tints, saturating their stunning paintings. The author invites us to experience this vivid artistic evolution that, although encompassing a short amount of time, left its mark on the path to modernity.
By Nathalia Brodskaïa
POD ISBN: 9781646991907
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Born at the dawn of the 20th century, Fauvism burst onto the artistic scene at the 1905 Salon d’Automne with great controversy by throwing bright, vibrant colours in the face of artistic convention. Fuelled by change, artists like Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck searched for a new chromatic language by using colour out of its habitual context. Freed from the strict technique advocated by the École des Beaux-Arts, they used colour as their main resource, their only standard seen in flat tints, saturating their stunning paintings. The author invites us to experience this vivid artistic evolution that, although encompassing a short amount of time, left its mark on the path to modernity.
By Albert Kostenevich
POD ISBN: 9781646991914
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
By Victoria Charles, Klaus H. Carl
POD ISBN: 9781646991921
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Asymbol of modernity, the Viennese Secession was defined by the rebellion of twenty artists who were against the conservative Vienna Künstlerhaus’ oppressive influence over the city, the epoch, and the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire. Influenced by Art Nouveau, this movement (created in 1897 by Gustav Klimt, Carl Moll, and Josef Hoffmann) was not an anonymous artistic revolution. Defining itself as a “total art”, without any political or commercial constraint, the Viennese Secession represented the ideological turmoil that affected craftsmen, architects, graphic artists, and designers from this period.
Turning away from an established art and immersing themselves in organic, voluptuous, and decorative shapes, these artists opened themselves to an evocative, erotic aesthetic that blatantly offended the bourgeoisie of the time. Painting, sculpture, and architecture are addressed by the authors and highlight the diversity and richness of a movement whose motto proclaimed “for each time its art, for each art its liberty” – a declaration to the innovation and originality of this revolutionary art movement.
By Nathalia Brodskaïa
POD ISBN: 9781646992263
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
By Nathalia Brodskaïa
POD ISBN: 9781683259251
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
«I paint what I see and not what it pleases others to see.» What other words than these of Édouard Manet, seemingly so different from the sentiments of Monet or Renoir, could best designate the movement of Impressionism? Without a doubt, this singularity was explained when, shortly before his death, Claude Monet wrote: “I remain sorry to have been the cause of the name given to a group the majority of which did not have anything Impressionist.”
In this work, Nathalia Brodskaïa examines the contradictions of this late 19th-century movement through the paradox of a group who, while forming a coherent ensemble, favoured the affimation of artistic individuals. Between academic art and the birth of modern, non-figurative painting, the road to recognition was long. Analysing the founding elements of the movement, the author follows, through the works of each of the artists, how the demand for individuality gave rise to modern painting.
By Elie Faure, Klaus H. Carl
POD ISBN: 9781683259244
205 x 260 mm – 76 pages
Greek art, at the very moment that it was breaking up in depth, was scattering over the whole material surface of Hellenic antiquity. After the movement of concentration that had brought to Athens all the forces of Hellenism, a movement of dispersal began, which was to carry from Athens to southern Italy, to Sicily, to Cyrenaica, Egypt, the Islands, and Asia Minor the passion and, unfortunately, the mania, for beautiful things—in default of creative genius. Dilettantism and the diffusion of taste multiply and at the same time weaken talent. It is the Hellenistic period, perhaps the richest in artists and in works of art that history has to show, but possibly, also, one of the poorest in power of emotion.
The ideal of the Greek is wisdom. He also has a strong feeling for what is just, but what is beautiful and what is true is to the same degree the object of his passion. He finds in each of these ideas the echoes of the other two, and completes, tempers, and broadens each one through the others. Phidias is in Pythagoras, and Socrates is in Phidias.
The “Greek miracle” was necessary. The whole ancient world had prepared, had willed its coming. During the fruitful silence when the Dorians were “accumulating within themselves the strength of their soil, Egypt and Assyria kept their lead. But they were discouraged and stricken by the cold of age. They were to become the initiators of the Hellenic Renaissance, as they had been the guides for the childhood of the peoples of the Archipelago. Greek Art, the perfume of the Greek soul, is preserved until our time, through Pompeii.
By Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781683259282
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
In the arts, Neoclassicism is a historical tradition or aesthetic attitude based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity. The movement started around the 18th-century, age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th-century The general credo associated with the aesthetic attitude of Classicism was that art had to be rational and therefore morally better. Neoclassicists also believed that art should be cerebral, not sensual and therefore characterised by clarity of form, sober colours and shallow space. It was a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and a desire to return to the perceived “purity” of the arts of Rome.
The important artists of the movement include the sculptors Antonio Canova, Jean-Antoine Houdon and Bertel Thorvaldsen, and the painters J.A.D. Ingres, Jacques-Louis David and Anton Raphael Mengs.
By Victoria Charles, Klaus H. Carl
POD ISBN: 9781683259367
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
In art history, the term Romanesque art distinguishes the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th-century. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work reclaims the importance of this art which is today often overshadowed by the later Gothic style.
By Victoria Charles, Klaus H. Carl
POD ISBN: 9781683259367
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
In art history, the term Romanesque art distinguishes the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th-century. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work reclaims the importance of this art which is today often overshadowed by the later Gothic style.
By Georges BERNANOS
POD ISBN: 9781646991938
185 x 230 mm – 352 pages
Empires are born. Empires reach their peak. Empires die, but leave their mark through their architecture and
artistic achievements. From these specks of dust of memory, 40 centuries of history shape our world of the 21st century. The power of ancient Egypt was followed by the influence of Greece, which brought the Persian East together in the conquests of Alexander the Great. After Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, Rome became the power that ruled part of the world, finally dying out in the fall of the Byzantine Empire on 29 May 1453. The authors take the reader on a journey through time and space and highlight the succession of these civilisations that rubbed shoulders, even fought against each other and led us towards a more enlightened humanity.
By Evgueny Kovtun
POD ISBN: 9781646992270
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
The Russian Avant-Garde was born at the turn of the twentieth century in pre-revolutionary Russia. The intellectual and cultural turmoil had then reached a peak and provided fertile soil for the formation of the movement. For many artists influenced by European art, the movement represented a way of liberating themselves from the social and aesthetic constraints of the past. It was these Avant-Garde artists who, through their immense creativity, gave birth to abstract art, thereby elevating Russian culture to a modern level.
Such painters as Kandinsky, Malevich, Goncharova, Larionov, and Tatlin, to name but a few, had a definitive impact on twentieth-century art.
By Nathalia Brodskaia, Viorel Rau
POD ISBN: 9781683259275
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Naive art first became popular at the end of the 19th-century. Until that time this form of expression, created by untrained artists and characterised by spontaneity and simplicity, enjoyed little recognition from professional artists and art critics. Influenced by primitive arts, naive painting is distinguished by the fluidity of its lines, vivacity, and joyful colours, as well as by its rather clean-cut, simple shapes.
Naive art is represented by such artists as Henri Rousseau, Séraphine de Senlis, André Bauchant, and Camille Bombois. This movement has also found adherents abroad, including such prominent artists as Joan Miró, Guido Vedovato, Niko Pirosmani, and Ivan Generalic.
By Nathalia Brodskaia
POD ISBN: 9781646995318
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Naive art first became popular at the end of the 19th-century. Until that time this form of expression, created by untrained artists and characterised by spontaneity and simplicity, enjoyed little recognition from professional artists and art critics. Influenced by primitive arts, naive painting is distinguished by the fluidity of its lines, vivacity, and joyful colours, as well as by its rather clean-cut, simple shapes.
Naive art is represented by such artists as Henri Rousseau, Séraphine de Senlis, André Bauchant, and Camille Bombois. This movement has also found adherents abroad, including such prominent artists as Joan Miró, Guido Vedovato, Niko Pirosmani, and Ivan Generalic.
By Natalia Brodskaya
POD ISBN: 9781683259381
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Arriving with a bang on the post-World War I scene, the Surrealists proclaimed a revolution of thought and creation, insisting on breaking away from the past and a world that had been left in ruins. This refusal to integrate into bourgeois society was also a leitmotiv of the Dada movement, a rebellious trait that led André Breton to say that Dadaism was “a machine had not thought to come up with new perspectives. It was this comment that gave birth to Surrealism. The Surrealists frequently collaborated with Dada artists on intellectual levels for which exclusivity had often become the general rule.
In his descriptions of the Surrealists as part of a force of absolute resistance, the author approaches the movement in an exciting and original way. Balanced between provocation and cultural revolution, weren’t the Surrealists most of all the products of creative individualism in this period buffeted by history?
By Natalia Brodskaya
POD ISBN: 9781646995417
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
The Dada movement and then the Surrealists appeared in the First World War aftermath with a bang: revolution of thought, creativity, and the wish to break away from the past and all that was left in ruins. This refusal to integrate into the Bourgeois society lead Georg Grosz to remark of Dada, “it’s the end of-isms.” Breton asserted that Dada does not produce perspective, “a machine which functions full steam, but where it remains to be seen how it can feed itself.” Surrealism emerged amidst such feeling. These artists often changed from one movement to another. They were united by their superior intellectualism and the common goal to break from the norm. Describing Dada with its dynamic free-thinkers, and the Surrealists with their aversive resistance to the system, the author brings a new approach which strives to be relative and truthful. Provocation and cultural revolution: Dada and the Surrealists, aren’t they above all just a direct product of creative individualism in this unsettled period?
By Alfred Hunt
POD ISBN: 9781683259398
205 x 260 mm – 72 pages
Symbolism appeared in France and Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the 20th-century. The Symbolists, fascinated with ancient mythology, attempted to escape the reign of rational thought imposed by science. They wished to transcend the world of the visible and the rational in order to attain the world of pure thought, constantly flirting with the limits of the unconscious.
The French Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, the Belgians Fernand Khnopff and Félicien Rops, the English Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the Dutch Jan Toorop are the most representative artists of the movement.
By Nathalia Brodskaïa
POD ISBN: 9781646995400
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
Symbolism appeared in France and Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the 20th-century. The Symbolists, fascinated with ancient mythology, attempted to escape the reign of rational thought imposed by science. They wished to transcend the world of the visible and the rational in order to attain the world of pure thought, constantly flirting with the limits of the unconscious.
The French Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, the Belgians Fernand Khnopff and Félicien Rops, the English Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the Dutch Jan Toorop are the most representative artists of the movement.
By Elizabeth Miller
POD ISBN: 9781646991365
215.9 x 270 mm; 224 pages
Transylvanian mystique and legendary hauntedness surround the most infamous Bram Stoker’s protagonists, forming a legacy that allows the myth to continue into modern times, maintaining a cultish following, yet broadening to a general fascination. Intrigued by evil and gore, Stoker developed a literary presence that was effortlessly translated to screen by the likes of Murnau, Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Francis Ford Coppola. Dracula became such an obsession as it embodied a taboo subject matter: the desire for blood and sex.
Filled with extraordinary pictures of the Count, his literary companions, and the movie idols, this is a treasure only to be read by daylight!
By Victoria Charles
POD ISBN: 9781646995363
215.9 x 270 mm – 200 pages
In utter contrast to the obscurity of the medieval period which preceded it, the rapid and unexpected arrival of the Renaissance conquered Europe during the 14th to the 16th centuries. Placing man at its centre, the actors of this illustrious movement radically altered their vision of the world and refocused their aesthetic pursuits towards anatomy, perspective, and the natural sciences. Creator of numerous talents, the Renaissance offered the history of art great names such as Botticelli, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, whose glorious masterpieces still today hang on the walls of museums the world over.
By Charmian Mezentseva, JP. A. Calosse
POD ISBN: 9781646994236
215.9 x 270 mm; 256 pages
This ambitious work allows the reader to discover the art of engraving in Europe from the 15th to the 16th century. The engravings of the Renaissance masters are considered models of artistic perfection, often studied and frequently copied.