From the beginning of human history, individuals across cultures and belief systems have looked to the sky for meaning. The movement of celestial bodies and their relation to our human lives has been the central tenant of astrology for thousands of years. The practice has both inspired reverence and worship, and deepened our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. While modern-day horoscopes may be the most familiar form of astrological knowledge, their lineage reaches back to ancient Mesopotamia. As author Andrea Richards recounts in Astrology, the second volume in Taschen's Library of Esoterica ... |
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From the moment Star Wars burst onto the screen in 1977, audiences have been in equal parts fascinated and appalled by the half-man / half-machine hybrid Darth Vader. In 1999, creator George Lucas began the story of how Anakin Skywalker grew up to train as a Jedi under Obi-Wan Kenobi, found love with the Queen of Naboo, Padme Amidala, before turning to the dark side of his nature and becoming more machine than man. After driving the development of nascent digital technology, George Lucas perceived how he could create new creatures and new worlds on a grander scale than ever before. He created the first digital ... |
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Fall under the spell of Gustav Klimt. Over a century after his death, Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) still startles with his unabashed eroticism, dazzling surfaces, and artistic experimentation. In this neat, dependable monograph, we gather all of Klimt's paintings alongside authoritative art historical commentary and privileged archival material from Klimt's own archive to trace the evolution of his astonishing oeuvre. With top-quality illustration, including new photography of the celebrated Stoclet Frieze, the book follows Klimt through his prominent role in the Secessionist movement of 1897, his ... |
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Zaha Hadid was a revolutionary architect, who for many years built almost nothing, despite winning critical acclaim. Some even said her audacious, futuristic designs were unbuildable. During the latter years of her life, Hadid's daring visions became a reality, bringing a unique new architectural language to cities and structures as varied as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, hailed by The New York Times as the most important new building in America since the Cold War; the MAXXI Museum in Rome; the Guangzhou Opera House in China; and the London 2012 Olympics Aquatics Centre. At the time of her ... |
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Anguished art: The tortured talents of a post-Impressionist master. Today, the works of Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890) are among the most well-known and celebrated in the world. In Sunflowers, The Starry Night, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, and many, many paintings and drawings beyond, we recognize an artist uniquely dexterous in the portrayal of mood and place through paint, pencil, charcoal, or chalk. Yet as he was deploying the lurid colors, emphatic brushwork, and contoured forms that would subsequently make his name and inspire generations of expressionist artists, van Gogh battled not only the disinterest of ... |
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40th Anniversary Edition. ... Antoni Gaudi merged Orientalism, natural forms, and new materials into a Modernista aesthetic that made Barcelona a mecca for architecture fans. With new photography, plans, Gaudi's drawings, and a complete appendix of his works including unfinished projects, this book takes us into the proud Catalonian's unique worldview. Freedom of form with the Dante of architecture. The life of Antoni Gaudi (1852 - 1926) was full of complexity and contradictions. As a young man he joined the Catalonian nationalist movement and was critical of the church; toward the end of his life he devoted ... |
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From the eccentric museum La Specola in Florence comes this amazing collection of waxworks depicting human anatomy in all its dazzling complexity. A selection of wax bodies and body part and organ studies from the museum's collection is presented here; from skeletons to vein structures, organs to nerves, and arteries to the delicate pores of the skin, the human body is mapped out in meticulous and exacting detail. Texts explaining the human anatomy in layperson's terms and exploring the historical and cultural significance of the wax figures complete this total body experience. This book is from the Bibliotheca ... |
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A century after his death, Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) still startles with his unabashed eroticism, dazzling surfaces, and artistic experimentation. This monograph gathers all of Klimt's major works alongside authoritative art historical commentary and privileged access to the artist's archive. With top quality illustration, including new photography of the celebrated Stoclet Frieze, the book follows Klimt through his prominent role in the Secessionist movement of 1897, his candid rendering of the female body, and his lustrous golden phase when gold leaf brought a shimmering tone and texture to ... |
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Among the few women artists who have transcended art history, none had a meteoric rise quite like Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907 - 1954). Her unmistakable face, depicted in over fifty extraordinary self-portraits, has been admired by generations; along with hundreds of photographs taken by notable artists such as Edward Weston, Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo, Nickolas Muray, and Martin Munkácsi, they made Frida Kahlo an iconic image of 20th century art. After an accident in her early youth, Frida became a painter of her own free will. Her marriage to Diego Rivera in 1929 placed her at the forefront of an artistic ... |
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Magic has enchanted humankind for millennia, evoking terror, laughter, shock, and amazement. Once persecuted as heretics and sorcerers, magicians have always been conduits to a parallel universe of limitless possibility-whether invoking spirits, reading minds, or inverting the laws of nature by sleight of hand. Long before science fiction, virtual realities, video games, and the Internet, the craft of magic was the most powerful fantasy world man had ever known. As the pioneers of special effects throughout history, magicians have never ceased to mystify us by making the impossible possible. This book celebrates more ... |
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Изданието е триезично - на английски, немски и френски език. ... A lifelong devotee of ancient Egyptian and Oriental culture, the French author, artist, and scholar Achille-Constant-Théodore-Émile Prisse d'Avennes (1807 - 1879) is famed as one of the most influential Egyptologists, long before the discipline was even properly established. Prisse first embarked on his explorations in 1836, documenting sites throughout the Nile Valley, often under his Egyptian pseudonym, Edris Effendi. Prisse's first publication of notes, drawings, and squeezes (a kind of frottage) came in the form of Les Monuments é ... |
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Over 200 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and conceptual pieces trace the story of modern art's innovation and adventure. With explanatory texts for each work, and essays introducing each of the major modern movements, this is an authoritative overview of the ideas and the artworks that shook up standards, assaulted the establishment, and trailblazed new ideas. A blow-by-blow account of groundbreaking modernism. Most art historians agree that the modern art adventure first developed in the 1860s in Paris. A circle of painters, whom we now know as Impressionists, began painting pictures with rapid, loose brushwork. ... |
