Painter, sculptor, writer, film-maker, and all-round showman Salvador Dali (1904 - 1989) was one of the twentieth century’s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics. One of the first artists to apply the insights of Freudian psychoanalysis to art, he is celebrated in particular for his surrealist practice, with such conceits as the soft watches or the lobster telephone, now hallmarks of the surrealist enterprise, and of modernism in general. Dali frequently described his paintings as "hand-painted dream photographs". Their tantalizing tension and interest resides in the precise rendering of bizarre elements and ... |
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The unfading popularity of Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) attests not only to the particular appeal of his luxuriant painting but also to the universal themes with which he worked: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death. The son of a goldsmith, Klimt created surfaces of ornate and jewel-like luminosity which show influence of both Egyptian and Japanese art. Through paintings, murals, and friezes, his work is defined by radiant color, fluid lines, floral elements, and mosaic-like patterning. With a number of subjects dealing with sensuality and desire as well as anxiety and despair, all this iridescence is also suffused ... |
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Italian-born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 - 1564) was a tormented, prodigiously talented, and God-fearing Renaissance man. His manifold achievements in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and engineering combined body, spirit, and God into visionary masterpieces that changed art history forever. Famed biographer Giorgio Vasari considered him the pinnacle of Renaissance achievement. His peers called him simply Il Divino (the divine one). This book provides the essential introduction to Michelangelo with all the awe-inspiring masterpieces and none of the queues and crowds. With vivid illustration ... |