ARTES

While anchoring his practice in the traditions of antiquity and the Renaissance, Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) paved the way for modern sculpture. From a very early stage, he was interested in movement, the expression of the body, chance effects, and the incomplete fragment. It was these elements that gave shape, and the impression of life, to such famous works as The Kiss and The Thinker.

Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-1960 is the first major museum exhibition to investigate the early work of one of the best-known American artists of the twentieth century. Co-organized by Colby College Museum of Art and Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the exhibition will include approximately ninety works from the artist's fruitful and formative early career, many never before seen by the public. The show and accompanying catalog will include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints which reveal an artist, even in the earliest stages of his career, with a keen interest in visual culture, culling--with a critical eye--from a wide range of sources. These inspirations were the essential but little-known precursors to the artist's later sourcing of comic books and advertisements. Likewise, his exploration of abstraction, just before the artist's abrupt turn to Pop Art in 1961, straddles the line between unabashed lyricism and wry critique of second-generation Abstract Expressionism. The catalog, with new scholarship by leading experts in the field, provides a new understanding of Lichtenstein's influential techniques of appropriation and offers the opportunity to more fully assess the artistic and cultural dynamism of postwar America.

This is the first book to be published on one of the greatest American designers of the 20th Century, who was as famous for his work in film as for his corporate identity and graphic work. With more than 1,400 illustrations, many of them never published before and written by the leading design historian Pat Kirkham, this is the definitive study that design and film enthusiasts have been eagerly anticipating. Saul Bass (1920-1996) created some of the most compelling images of American post-war visual culture. Having extended the remit of graphic design to include film titles, he went on to transform the genre. His best known works include a series of unforgettable posters and title sequences for films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder. He also created some of the most famous logos and corporate identity campaigns of the century, including those for major companies such as AT&T, Quaker Oats, United Airlines and Minolta. His wife and collaborator, Elaine, joined the Bass office in the late 1950s. Together they created an impressive series of award-winning short films, including the Oscar-winning Why Man Creates, as well as an equally impressive series of film titles, ranging from Stanley Kubrick s Spartacus in the early 1960s to Martin Scorsese s Cape Fear and Casino in the 1990s. Designed by Jennifer Bass, Saul Bass's daughter and written by distinguished design historian Pat Kirkham who knew Saul Bass personally, this book is full of images from the Bass archive, providing an in depth account of one of the leading graphic artists of the 20th century.

Después de que Egon Schiele (1890-1918) se librara de la sombra de su mentor y modelo a seguir, Gustav Klimt, solo tuvo diez años para inscribir su característico estilo en los anales de la historia moderna antes de que la gripe española se cobrara su vida. Siendo como era un niño prodigio muy consciente de su propia genialidad y un provocador empedernido, esto no resultó ser un gran desafío para él. Sus figuras demacradas y estiradas, su representación radical de la sexualidad y sus autorretratos en los que se mostraba con expresiones faciales macilentas que rayaban la genialidad y la locura, no tenían la calidad decorativa de los himnos de amor, sexualidad y anhelante devoción de Klimt. En vez de ello, la obra de Schiele expresaba una franqueza brutal que disgustaría y cambiaría la sociedad vienesa de forma irreversible. Aunque más tarde sus creaciones fueron tildadas de «degeneradas» y durante un tiempo prácticamente cayeron en el olvido, influyeron en varias generaciones de artistas, desde Günter Brus y Francis Bacon hasta Tracey Emin. Hoy día, su obra, entonces incomprendida, sigue alcanzando precios exorbitantes en el mercado internacional del arte. Publicada por primera vez en una edición XL, esta monografía está ahora disponible en una versión más abreviada y compacta para celebrar el 40 aniversario de TASCHEN, y presenta las pinturas y dibujos que rememoran la prolífica última década de la vida de Schiele. Las obras, muchas de ellas expresamente fotografiadas para la edición XL, van acompañadas de ensayos que presentan la vida y la obra del maestro austriaco para situarlo en el contexto del expresionismo europeo y para examinar su extraordinario legado.

Una selección de las series que han marcado un hito y han cambiado el panorama audiovisual de los últimos años. Y con ellas algunas de las curiosidades más sosrprendentes de un género que parece augurar una larga y saludable vida.

A global shift from fright to endearment is happening, and the world is falling in love with sharks as risk of their endangerment increases. Mike Coots, who was nearly killed by a tiger shark as a teenager and has since dedicated his life to capturing and sharing sharks’ beauty and indispensable role in a healthy ocean, gets up close and very personal with the magnificent creatures, presenting his unique perspective through portraits exposing both their brawn and their brains. Traveling the world (Hawaii, Mexico, New Zealand, Bahamas, and Maldives), free diving and scuba diving, often with no cage, Coots has recorded Tigers, Great Hammerheads, rare Oceanic White Tips, Lemons, Silvertips, Caribbean Reef Sharks, and massive Great Whites, as big as fourteen feet in length.