A new version of a Phaidon classic published in 1937, this evocative and fascinating book, now issued as a paperback, presents 500 of the world's greatest self-portraits, arranged in a simple chronological sequence from ancient times to the late twentieth century. 'The mirror, above all the mirror is our teacher' wrote Leonardo da Vinci. Portraits are an endless source of fascination, responding as they do to the basic human impulse to look at faces and try to see into the character behind them. Self-portraits have the added fascination that comes from looking into the mirror and trying to study one's own face. Taking its inspiration from the classic Phaidon volume published in 1937 with the same title, this book presents an uninterrupted sequence of 500 self-portraits, in chronological order from ancient Egypt to the late twentieth century. The challenge of creating their own likeness has proved irresistible to artists, and included here are powerful and evocative works by many of the world's greatest painters and sculptors, including Durer, Rembrandt, Picasso and Andy Warhol. Each image is both a work of art and a study in psychology and self-perception.. Presented without commentary, these works speak for themselves — a compelling collection for every student of art and human nature.

«Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is one of the most popular artists of the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. A founding member of the Viennese Secession and a leader of the Art Nouveau movement, Klimt was an innovator who achieved success with large decorative schemes as well as smaller portraits and paintings. He is admired for his sensuous images of women and for his original vision, producing images such as «Love», «The Three Ages of Man» and «The Kiss».»

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was a boldly original painter who led a short and violent life. The powerful realism of his figures upset many of his contemporaries, and their power to shock remains undiminished. This book, providing a biography, presents all his most famous masterpieces, each with a commentary. The introduction gives an account of his wayward life and his artistic development. Controversial in his own lifetime, and neglected after his death, Caravaggio has re-emerged both as a great master and as something of a cult figure, the subject of a notable film by Derek Jarman.

«Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) is one of the most popular of all old master painters. His views of Venice and London are much celebrated and admired. Canaletto began his career as a scene-painter with his father and his early work, such as the Architectural Capriccio of 1723, reflects this training. Unlike most of his fellow artists, Canaletto was interested in depicting the world around him, but he was more than a mere recorder of the amazing scenery of Venice or of Georgian England. He had the power, in the words of one of his contemporaries, to paint so that «the eye is deceived and truly believes it is the real thing it sees», and his insight and technical skills were so dazzling that it was thought he must rely on some sort of optical apparatus. His first views of Venice were painted around 1725 for Stefano Conti of Lucca. Soon after he came into contact with Joseph Smith, British Consul in Venice, who was to become his most important patron. Through Smith's influence, he came to England between about 1746 and 1756 during which time he painted many London scenes including views of Westminster Bridge, Whitehall, the Old Horse Guards, St James's Park and Somerset House as well as views of Warwick Castle and Eton College.»

This lavishly illustrated monograph of the great British landscapist John Constable (1776-1837) presents a definitive survey of the painter's life and works. Jonathan Clarkson offers a comprehensive assessment of Constable's oeuvre, from his earliest line drawings to his last masterpieces, including pencil drawings, quick outdoor oil sketches, painstakingly worked studio canvases, and less well-known portraits. Born the son of a miller, merchant, and gentleman farmer in the small village of East Bergholt, Suffolk, it was not immediately obvious that John Constable would pursue a career in the art world. However, the young Constable became a keen amateur landscape painted, inspired by the rural surroundings of his beloved Bergholdt home. With the encouragement of local wealthy connoisseur Sir George Beaumont, whose collection introduced the artist to such masters of landscape as Claude Lorrain, and an allowance from his father, Constable was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 1799. There he studied the work of such masters as Lorrain, Gainsborough, and Ruisdael and developed his own style of meticulous observation of natural detail combined with contemporary artistic theory. Upon leaving the Academy, Constable rejected a financially rewarding position as a drawing master in favor of sketching and painting in the English countryside for nearly ten years. He spent his time in pursuit of an honest yet coherent and dignified 'natural' style, and pioneered the revolutionary practice of making finished paintings outdoors, direct from nature. Commercial success came with Constable's decision to exhibit large works at the British Institution. These 'six-footers', which secured his position among the greatest British painters of his age, included such enduringly famous canvases as The Hay Wain. In this new monograph Clarkson looks at these grand paintings with a fresh view, investigating what we can actually see in them. Set against the rapidly changing way of life in nineteenth-century Britain, Constable's paintings are both portraits of a disappearing world and reflections of his belief that 'painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.' Since his death, Constable has been condemned for presenting a willfully inauthentic vision of the early nineteenth-century English countryside, which was ravaged by unemployment, crime, and intense poverty in the years following the Napoleonic wars. However, his importance for Realism and for painting as a practice in itself cannot be underestimated. Clarkson draws attention to Constable's direct influence on landscape painters as well as figurative artists from his own time to the present, citing examples such as Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach.

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) was an artist of the Northern Renaissance, remarkable for the range and versatility of his work. His woodcuts and engravings made him famous throughout Europe and he is still one of the most brilliant printmakers of all time. As an oil painter, Durer was equally successful at religious and secular subjects, producing magnificent altarpieces and powerful portraits. His drawings and watercolours are impressive for the diversity of their subject matter and the varied media in which they were produced. The son of a Hungarian goldsmith, Durer grew up in Nuremberg, a town half-way between the Netherlands and Italy, and he found inspiration in the work of painters of both these major artistic centres of his time. But rather dm simply imitating what others were doing, Durer was very much an innovator; he is the first artist who is known to have painted a self-portrait and to have done a landscape painting of a specific scene. This book contains some of his best loved works, including The Young Hare and Praying Hands.

This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology.

«Stanley Kubrick (USA, 1928-99) was a master who took the art of filmmaking further than any other contemporary director, a creative perfectionist whose work now fascinates new generations. He started out as a photographer before moving into film noir aged barely 25, after which the power and originality of his work soon brought him box-office success. In the 1960s, he lived and worked in London, away from the scandal caused by his adaptation of Lolita (1962) and from the major studios, from which, uniquely, he was able to wrest total control of his films. He made only a dozen features in 50 years, each of which displays an extraordinary degree of technical and aesthetic invention. From the sci-fi 2001: «A Space Odyssey» (1968) onwards, each of his masterpieces explores new genres and controversial topics, such as Vietnam («Full Metal Jacket», 1987), violence («A Clockwork Orange», 1971), horror («The Shining», 1980) and sexuality («Eyes Wide Shut», 1999).»

«Monsieur Lambert» is the unmistakably French story of a group of regulars at a Parisian bistro, who see each other for lunch every day, without fail. They are creatures of habit, eating the same set meals on the same day, week in and week out. One day, however, one of their group, Monsier Lambert, does not turn up at the usual time, and the other regulars soon turn to speculating as to the reasons for the sudden and unexpected changes in their fellow diner — it surely must be because of a woman, they conclude. Why else would Monsieur Lambert not appear until twenty to two on one day, but already be eating his main course by the time the rest of them arrive for lunch the very next day? Why does he develop a taste for terrine, a dish he has previously always despised? The diners are right: Lambert has indeed met a wonderful woman, Florence. This revelation changes everything, and instead of discussing football and politics as usual, the other diners in the bistro start reminiscing about women they have loved and lost, about passionate affairs in their past, all the while continuing to take a keen interest in Monsieur Lambert and his Florence. Can this new state of affairs continue? After all, women come and go, but football has always been, and will always be, a part of their lives.»

This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology.

This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology.

«Woody Allen (USA, b. 1935) has been a major comic director since the 1970s. Writer, director and actor, his self-portrayal as a neurotic, intellectual, sex-obsessed, Jewish New Yorker seeking comfort in psychoanalysis brought him immense popular success and acknowledged status as a writer («Manhattan», 1979; and «Deconstructing Harry», 1997). In the 2000s, he left New York to work in Europe, winning over a new audience with fresh inspiration and young actors, including Scarlett Johansson in «Match Point» (2005) and «Vicky Cristina Barcelona» (2008).»

«For more than a century the comic book has been one of our most familiar, yet least appreciated popular art forms. As vehemently criticized as it is passionately defended, it has evolved from humble beginnings into a graphically sophisticated and culturally revealing medium. At a time when vintage comics are fetching huge prices at auction, this book traces the history of the medium from comic papers for kids, through the underground «comix» movements of the 1960s and '70s, to the glossy book-format «graphic novels» of today. Organized thematically, it investigates comic art's varied genres — including humour, adventure, underground and alternative — and charts the rise, fall and rise of the medium. In so doing, Roger Sabin highlights the careers of the creators behind some of the best-known characters in modern fiction — from Superman to Sid the Sexist, Tintin to Tank Girl. He examines not only the stars and «first wave» of comic art but also the names who are currently providing comics with a new lease of life, taking such familiar material as the manic clowning of Leo Baxendate («The Beano»), the observational adventure of Frank Hampson («Eagle»), the bombastic power-plays of Jack Kirby («The Incredible Hulk») and the underground scatology of Robert Crumb («Zap»), as well as less well-known themes and names: the surreal 1950s retro of Dan Cloves («Eightball»), the gothic superheroics of Todd McFarlane («Spawn»), the inspired lunacy of Chris Donald»

Katsushika Hokusai (1769-1849) was one of the greatest of the Japanese print designers, painters and book illustrators, and by far the most famous Asian artist in the West. This richly illustrated monograph provides an overview of the master's life and works in all media. Comprising introductory essays, seven chapters embracing Hokusai's entire career and some 700 illustrations, it presents and analyses a large selection of Hokusai's finest works in all media, covering his whole career and giving a scholarly and up-to-date interpretation of the artist and his significance. This big and beautiful book presents a comprehensive survey of the work of one of Japan's greatest and most influential artists, together with a collection of essays that focus on a key aspects of the master's career. The book opens with an introductory essay by Gian Carlo Calza presenting an overview of the changing world Hokusai was born into and lived through. This is followed by a series of essays by distinguished Western and Japanese scholars that present new research on a range of crucial areas of interest in Hokusai studies. These provide a context for the core of the book, which forms a retrospective.

The series has always been highly regarded for its insight and authority, providing an invaluable introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each volume contains an introductory essay, forty-eight full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white.

This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology.

Medieval manuscripts, with their cold and painted decoration and miniatures, are counted among the great glories of Western civilization. Images from them can be seen everywhere, from greeting cards and wrapping paper to facsimiles. This text offers an introduction to the whole subject of making books, from the Dark Ages to the invention of printing and beyond. The author describes the differing circumstances in which manuscripts were created, from the earliest monastic Gospel Books to university textbooks, secular romances, Books of Hours and classical texts for humanist bibliophiles. The variety of manuscrips and their illumination is revealed, and many fundamental questions discussed — who wrote the books, what texts they contained, who read them, how they were made and what purposes they served.

While the history of photography is a well-established canon, much less critical attention has been directed at the phenomenon of the photobook, which for many photographers is perhaps the most significant vehicle for the display of their work and the communication of their vision to a mass audience. In the second of two volumes, both co-edited by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, the history of the photobook is brought fully up to date. This volume covers company photobooks, artists' photobooks, photobooks that have been compiled by editors (rather than photographers), as well as the most recent photobooks, which chronicle contemporary life. This study provides an important corrective to the traditional history of photography. The selection of photographers made by Badger and Parr challenges the popular canon, and their survey of the history of the photobook reveals a secret web of influence and interrelationships between photographers and photographic movements around the world. The book is divided into a series of thematic chapters, each featuring a general introductory text providing background information and highlighting the dominant political and artistic influences on the photobook in the period, followed by more detailed discussion of the individual photobooks. The chapter texts are followed by spreads and images from over 200 books, which provide the central means of telling the history of the photobook. Chosen by Parr and Badger, these illustrations show the most artistically and culturally important photobooks in three dimensions, with the cover or jacket and a selection of spreads from the book shown.

«This book grew out of an exhibition that was organized by the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, in 2005. With the show, Shafrazi paid homage to a seminal display of Warhol's portraits that took place at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1979-80. Titled «Andy Warhol: Portraits of the 1970s» the Whitney exhibition presented for the first time a large array of the commissioned portraits that the artist began in the early 1970s as a way to offset the cost of multiplying activities at the Factory. Shafrazi's exhibition included many of the portraits shown in the original Whitney exhibition as well as others. This volume takes Shafrazi's exhibition even further, nearly doubling the number of works shown.Art historians and critics have long neglected this body of Warhol's work, preferring to discuss and study the more iconic Lizzes and Marilyns or Campbell's Soup Cans of the 1960s. Many of the portraits in this book have rarely been seen before. For example, the book will include, in addition to the famous portraits of Jackie, Marlon Brando, or Dennis Hopper, images that Warhol made of actors Bill Murray and Meryl Streep, of fellow artists Donald Judd, Cy Twombly, and Joseph Kosuth, of royal family members such as Princess Diana and Princess Caroline, and of lesser-known socialites and art patrons. This book includes an essay by Robert Rosenblum, who also contributed to the Whitney's original exhibition catalogue, a text by renowned art historian and Warhol expert Carter Ratcliff, and an introduction by Tony Shafrazi.»

«Robert Capa (1913-1954), one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century and a founding member of the Magnum photographic agency, had the mind of a passionate and committed journalist and the eye of an artist. His lifework, consisting of more than 70,000 negative frames, constitutes an unparalleled documentation of a crucial twenty-two-year period (1932-1954) encompassing some of the most catastrophic and dramatic events of the last century. This book represents the most definitive selection of Robert Capa's work ever published, a collection of 937 photographs selected by Capa's brother, Cornell Capa (himself a noted Life photographer), and his biographer, Richard Whelan, who meticulously re-examined all of Robert Capa's contact sheets to compile this master set of images. This book opens with a biographical introduction illustrated with rare photographs of Capa, and closes with a chronology of his life. The main body of the book presents this definitive collection of 937 of Robert Capa's most important pictures. The photographs, arranged in chronological order and accompanied by commentaries and identifying captions, constitute an in-depth survey of Robert Capa's finest work over the entire course of his career. The pictures reveal the dramatic shifts in location and subject matter that Capa experienced from day to day, representing the trajectory of his life — from war-torn Spain to Picasso on a sunny beach in France; from carousing with Ernest Hemingway in London to Capa's historic images of the Allied landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy in 1944. The book design groups together pictures that constitute a story — for example, the Popular Front rallies in Paris in 1936, or the U.S. Army's entry into Sicily in 1943 — in order to maintain the original coherence of the work. Embodying the spirit of his photographs, Robert Capa's life itself was adventurous, romantic, and tragic. Born in Hungary in 1913, he hoped to become a journalist but was forced to flee to Berlin at the age of seventeen because of his leftist political sympathies. When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Capa fled to Paris, the city that would become his home on and off for most of his life. It was there that he met Andre Kertesz, who became a mentor to Capa and introduced him to the extraordinary potential of the 35mm Leica camera as a tool for reportage. Capa also met two other photographers during his early years in Paris: Henri Cartier-Bresson and David «Chim» Szymin, with whom he founded Magnum, the co-operative photo agency, in 1947 along with George Rodger and William Vandivert. For the rest of his life, Capa would devote much of his time to guiding the operations of the Magnum offices in Paris and New York. Throughout the 1930s and World War II, Capa was present at many of the twentieth century's defining events and moments. His first assignment came in 1932, when he was working as a darkroom assistant at Delphot, the important Berlin photo agency. The agency's director, recognizing Capa's talent, lent him a camera and sent him to Copenhagen to photograph exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky giving a speech to Danish students. From there, Robert Capa went on to photograph the Spanish Civil War, when he made his famous «Falling Soldier» picture showing a Republican soldier collapsing just after being shot. Capa reported on the increasing political tensions in Europe in the mid-1930s, including the Popular Front demonstrations in France, and on the presidential elections in Mexico in 1940 before being accredited by the U.S. Army as a war correspondent for Life. After documenting Londoners' stalwart survival of the Blitz, he went on to cover battles on many of the major fronts in North Africa, Sicily, mainland Italy, France, and Germany. In one of his most famous assignments, Capa landed with the first wave of American troops on Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Wading into the frigid water behind amphibious tanks, and dodging machine gun and rifle bullets, Capa shot 36 exposures before his hands were shaking so badly that he could not insert another roll into the camera. In an ironic twist of fate, a Life darkroom attendant damaged all but eleven of Capa's negatives. After the war, he did various stories for travel magazines and worked on writing projects with friends such as John Steinbeck and the noted journalist Theodore H. White. He also went to Israel several times to document the conflict and co-operation in the founding of the new nation. Capa's last assignment would be a trip to Vietnam to cover the French Indochina War: he was killed when he accidentally stepped on a Vietminh antipersonnel mine in the countryside on May 25, 1954. Though perpetually broke, Capa lived a glamorous life — through a combination of charm, luck, and talent (and an uncontrollable penchant for gambling), he frequented a wealthy circle of celebrities and cultural figures. He fell in love with Ingrid Bergman; was friends with Ernest Hemingway, the director John Huston, and other writers and directors; spent many an afternoon at the racetracks, and enjoyed all-night poker games. Seen together, however, the pictures in this book transcend the specific situations they portray to stand as timeless images of the human condition at its most terrible and inspiring; they are monuments to the strength of the human spirit.»