Monographs

Few artists tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840–1926) to capture light itself on canvas. The painter of whom Cézanne said “only  an eye, but my God what an eye!” he stayed true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting...

It was a dappled and daubed harbor scene that gave Impressionism its  name. When Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet was exhibited in April  1874, critics seized upon the work’s title and its loose stylistic rendering of light and motion...

American Furniture, 1650–1840: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art is the first publication dedicated to one of the finest collections of its type in the country. Best known for furniture by artisans from Philadelphia and southeastern...

Claude Monet’s extensive work is revealed in numerous images. He was a  painter who like no other moved perception to the center of his artistic  activities. Nature became his own studio. This resulted in fascinating landscapes of different...

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was the first female representative of Impressionism. Her early works are mostly watercolors and pastels, but she later progressed to oils.  She developed a technique of transcribing her drawings onto her canvases and then...

Few painters are as well-known and admired as Cézanne. His work focuses  on subjects popular since the Renaissance: portraiture, figure studies,  landscapes, and still lifes. However, the way the artist transformed  these traditional...

Eliot Porter masterfully created color photographs of the New England woods to pair with the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Both Porter and Thoreau, although they lived a century apart, worked endlessly to  preserve nature and protect it from man...

A beautifully produced gift book for gardeners and art lovers everywhere: a selection of Vincent van Gogh’s garden and flower paintings and drawings. Vincent van Gogh never owned a garden, but throughout his career he painted and drew outdoor...

A beautifully produced book for art lovers and nature enthusiasts illuminating van Gogh’s belief that painting should “celebrate the finest qualities of nature” Vincent van Gogh felt a profound empathy with the natural environment and...

From majestic desertscapes to magnified lilies and irises, survey the unique and luminous oeuvre of Georgia O’Keeffe, a seminal figure in modern American art and radical pioneer of abstraction. This book  follows the artist through her pioneering...

The father of impressionists, Camille Pissarro, was groundbreaking for  the modern age. Whether it was painting or graphics, impressionism or  pointillism, portraits or the worker genre—his work was extraordinarily  versatile and full of...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir put people into the center of his painting. His compositions showed people embracing the pleasures of life, dancing, and  enjoying outings in Paris. He created special atmospheres full of  summer warmth and lightness,...

Hiroshige is one of the most important artists of the Japanese woodblock  print and is considered a master of “ukiyo-e,” the “pictures of the  floating world.” His evocative illustrations show mainly landscapes and  scenes from the capital...

The artistic work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) is  considered a milestone of international modernism and the climax of  German Expressionism. This volume documents the development of the  multi-faceted oeuvre from the epoch-making...

This captivating collection of Vincent van Gogh’s letters opens a window into the mind of one of history’s greatest artists. Giving rare insight into his complicated relationships with family, friends, and other fellow artists, the letters...

"The subject impresses by its simplicity: a solitary traveler and his lean hound making way in hilly dunes, a remnant of a tumble-down fence and almost formless clouds." Jacob van Ruisdael's landscapes are lonely, distant views with only the occasional...

Meet Vincent van Gogh, one of the most famed tragic figures of 19th‑century art. This lush tome collects all his 871 paintings, alongside writings and essays, charting the life and work of a master who continues to tower over art. Today, the works of...

Misunderstood during his lifetime and branded as “the crazy man with the  red hair," Vincent van Gogh is one of the most famous artists of all  time. As one of the founders of modern art he created a unique body of  work, against all odds,...

George Eastman’s career developed in a particularly American way. The founder of Kodak progressed from a delivery boy to one of the most important industrialists in American history, and a crucial innovator in photographic history. Eastman died in 1932,...

This comics biography of one of the greatest sculptors who ever lived is brought to life by a collaboration with the Rodin Museum and includes a preface by its director. It views the artist's story through the eyes of the three women who shared his life,...

Almost Lost Arts features the stories of 20 artisans who have devoted their lives to preserving traditional techniques.  From globe makers and book menders to cassette tape manufacturers and  neon sign makers, the profiled artisans represent a...

By Susan Gray Detweiler, with an introduction by David L. Barquist The china used by First Families, both at the White House and in their private homes, reveals a fascinating story of culture and society as they have evolved in the United States since...

 A joyful collaboration between old friends David Byrne and Maira Kalman, American Utopia offers readers an antidote to cynicism, bursting with pathos, humanism, and hope, it features his words and lyrics brought to life with more than 150 of her...

The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums encompasses over 2,500 of the world’s rarest pigments. Museum director Edward Forbes started the collection at the turn of the 20th century, in order to preserve...

Kathleen A. Foster (Author) and Mark Tucker (Author) Thomas Eakins is acknowledged as one of the preeminent American painters of the 19th century. As a young artist in 1875 he prepared a monumental painting for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia...

In examining his entire oeuvre, the book celebrates the artist's ongoing  love affair with everyday life-domestic, natural, and architectural.  Found throughout Wyeth's work, these objects form patterns that  illuminate core themes and...

Enjoy a rare glimpse into the actions of a working artist. Beginning in 1970, Anni Albers filled her graph-paper notebook regularly until 1980. This previously unpublished document of her working process contains intricate drawings for her large body of...

In a compact, reader-friendly format, this volume traces a spectacular history of queer life and creativity in the modern age. It traces the rich visual legacy of art's relationship to Queer culture, from the emergence of homosexuality as an identity in...

This lavishly illustrated and super-condensed history of world art is  the perfect gift for any art lover. A pocket-sized book bursting with  900 illustrations, it takes the reader from the beginnings of art in  prehistory to the...

While it is considered by many artists to be a pure and simplistic form of expression, abstract art is also often thought of as vague or exceedingly theoretical. This new installment in the Art Essentials  series demystifies the concept and history...

It is often forgotten just how provocative and unsettling impressionist canvases seemed when they were first exhibited in 1874. Critics,  professional artists, and gallery visitors alike were shocked to  encounter the unorthodox paintings on...

Art lovers can list history’s most important art objects, but what many  don’t know are the dramatic, funny, and sometimes bizarre stories behind  these most famous works. Spanning the last 500 years of art history,  this book revisits...

Modern Art guides the reader through individual movements  from Impressionism to Conceptual Art, situated within five broader  chronological eras. Starting with Impressionism in 1860, art historian  Amy Dempsey explains the essentials of...

Pop Art refers to a post-war movement connecting art with  popular culture. Billboard signs, comic books, and movie stars were just  some of the subjects chosen by pop artists, such as Andy Warhol, Roy  Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and...

Street art is a phenomenon and subculture movement that reaches from the darkest urban backstreets to the most glamorous international art  fairs. Despite having earned a place in the canon of twentieth-century  art history, its qualifications...

Surrealism was launched as a literary and artistic movement by French  poet Andre Breton in 1924, and by the time of his death in 1966 it had  become one of the most popular and recognizable art movements of the  twentieth century...

Iconography, or the study of symbols—be they animals, artifacts, plants,  geometric shapes, or gestures—is an essential aspect of interpreting  art. One of the most consistent features of human society throughout  time has been the use of...

By Flavia Frigeri In 1971, in an essay that has now become one of the touchstones of feminist art history, Linda Nochlin raised the question heard round the world: “Why have there been no great women artists?” Since the 1970s, as a result of this kind of...

Cats, cats, and more cats! Expressive or aloof, affectionate or enigmatic, cats have complicated characters that make them compelling artists' muses. Artful Cats explores the quirky and charming relationships of artists with their cats in 130 rarely seen...

This first installment in Skira and Jack Shainman Gallery's five-volume  publication project on Barkley L. Hendricks (1945–2017) presents for the  first time the artist's works on paper. These images—of flowers and  plants, bananas, a...

Our lives are filled with objects. Everyday things used in everyday settings, they are our constant companions. As such, writes Soetsu Yanagi, they should be made with care and built to last, treated with respect and even affection. They should be...

By Dorothea Tanning Fourteen years ago, the artist Dorothea Tanning published Birthday, a collection of reminiscences. Now she has expanded it into a memoir of her journey through the last century as confidant, collaborator, and muse to some of its most...

By Paul Franklin Brancusi & Duchamp: The Art of Dialogue explores the  aesthetic dialogue between Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) and Marcel  Duchamp (1887–1968), two of the most inimitable artists of the 20th  century. Brancusi and...

In 1956, TIME magazine called him one of the defining “form-givers of the 20th century.”  Today, Marcel Breuer remains a locus classicus of modernism for architects and designers alike.  From his landmark tubular furniture to “binuclear”...

This important publication offers the  first in-depth exploration of contemporary artist Bruce Nauman's  monumental works Contrapposto Studies, I through VII and Contrapposto  Studies, i through vii of 2015/2016. The book surveys Nauman's...

Imagine life in Edo, Tokyo, from the 17th-19th century. In the early modern period there were many Ukiyo-e shops which sold woodblock prints displaying then-current styles and fashions much like our fashion photography and magazines today. Each Ukiyo-e...

Cats were illustrated in manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages, often in exquisite detail and frequently accompanied by their natural prey, mice. Medieval cats were viewed as treasured pets, as fearsome mousers, as canny characters in fables, as...

Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley (Author), Peggy A. Olley (Author) with an essay by Jeffrey A. Cohen This handsome book explores in depth a group of stunning painted and gilded furniture designed by the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, best known for...

Suzanne Ramljak(Author) with an introduction by Darrel Sewell Published to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, Crafting a Legacy showcases the Museum’s burgeoning collection of contemporary American crafts...

Carlos Basualdo (editor) with essays by Carlos Basualdo, Olena Chervonik, Richard Fletcher, Emily Greenwood, and Nicola Del Roscio This revelatory publication provides a comprehensive and multifaceted account of Cy Twombly’s masterpiece Fifty Days at...

Cy Twombly's first visit to Italy as a  young man ignited a lifelong passion for classical culture that is  everywhere present in his art. Taking on myths and heroes as personal  guides, he created a psychologically complex dialogue with...

Salvador Dalí (1904-89) was one of the most controversial and paradoxical artists of the twentieth century. He was initially influenced by Impressionism and Cubism, but  subsequently became involved with the Surrealists, the most revolutionary...

Dutch earthenware has a universal reputation and is represented in the ceramic collections of the great museums. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a comprehensive collection of Delft blue and white and polychrome earthenware. The collection contains a...

By Lisa Minardi, with an interview by Ann Percy Among the most beloved forms of American folk art, fraktur is a Germanic tradition of decorated manuscripts and printed documents noted for its use of bold colors and whimsical motifs. This publication...

By Janis Mink  When is a urinal no longer a urinal? When Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) declared it to be art. The uproar that greeted the French artist’s Fountain  (1917), a porcelain urinal installed in a gallery, sent shock waves  through...

By Helen Molesworth In this essay, curator Helen Molesworth  pinpoints the significance of the return of the handmade in the later  years of Duchamp’s oeuvre, positioning this paradigmatic shift away from  the readymade as the focal point...

The creative duo Charles Eames and Ray Kaiser Eames transformed the visual character of America. Though best known for their furniture, the husband and wife team were also forerunners in architecture, textile design, photography, and film.   The...

Edvard Munch is the most important Scandinavian artist and a pioneer of  Expressionism. With him, the existential fear, the loneliness of man,  and the unpredictability of his feelings are drawn into art. With a novel and experimental painting...

An eccentric exhibitionist, Egon Schiele documented the discord of his  time in furious paintings of people and self-portraits. Schiele’s  artistic universe is ready to be rediscovered with these many  illustrations of drawings,...

Carlos Basualdo (Editor, Contributor), Anna Mecugni (Editor, Contributor), Timothy Rub (Foreword), Katherine Sachs (Contributor), Joseph J. Rishel (Contributor), Peter Barberie (Contributor), Erica F. Battle (Contributor), Adrianne O. Bratis...

Encounters with Modern Art chronicles the formation of a distinguished collection of early 20th-century art through the reminiscences of Nannette F. Rothschild. Tales of extensive dealings and evolving friendships with artists, dealers, fellow...

Take an intimate promenade through Paris with some 500 images from Eugène Atget. Down main streets and side streets, through courtyards, arcades, and the city’s 20 arrondissements, we find a unique portrait of a beloved city and the making...

Acclaimed as the “father of skyscrapers,” the quintessentially American icon Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect of aspiration. He believed in giving cultivated American life its fitting architectural equivalent and applied his idealism to...

Of all the riches of the sixteenth-century European  nobleman, none spoke more powerfully of his heroism, wealth, and taste  than his armor, clothing, and weapons. Drawing on the Victoria and  Albert Museum’s popular arms and armor...

Foreword by Kathy Halbreich. lizabeth Carpenter (Editor). Hayden Herrera (Contributor) , Elizabeth Carpenter(Contributor), Victor Zamudio-Taylor(Contributor) Few artists have captured the public's imagination with the force of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo...

By Ann Temkin, Gabriel Orozco and David Sylvester In 1993 Gabriel Orozco removed a lengthwise section of a Citroën DS and reconnected the two sides, making the car’s fleet form look lighter yet. Orozco continues his experimentations with perceptions of...

Editor: Joseph J. Rishel The notion of a golden age set in an earthly paradise has long kindled the human imagination. Virgil envisioned such a place of bucolic pleasures—erotic and unsullied, sometimes shadowed by blunted desires and doubts—in his...

In a monumental oeuvre spanning more than forty years, Penone has  explored and expanded our understanding of what constitutes sculpture  through the interplay between the human body, nature, and art. His work  represents a poetic...

By H. Kristina Haugland One of the most admired women in the world, Grace Kelly (1929–1982) is remembered for her beauty, poise, and style. Her “fairy-tale” wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956 was one of the most celebrated of the century. To...

The  contemporary art world has been challenged and invigorated by outsider  art--works by self-taught practitioners who, by definition, have little  to do with mainstream art production, but are nonetheless actively  engaged with the...

"The Lady in Gold" was not his only painting!  Gustav Klimt, the most controversial artist of his time, enjoys incomparable  popularity to date. This book offers a fascinating insight into the  extensive work of this remarkable artist...

Fall under the spell of Gustav Klimt. A century after his death, the Viennese artist still startles with his unabashed eroticism, dazzling surfaces, and artistic experimentation. Master of 19th-century Viennese art and pioneer of the Secessionist...

 A visual and literary feast, The History of Chivalry and Armour  is a study of medieval knights in all their grandeur, fully displaying  their instruments of siege, ornaments, and entertainments. Reproduced  from a rare...

His Great Wave off Kanagawa is the most famous work in  East Asian art. Hokusai, a self-confessed eccentric and obsessive,  created with his pictures of the floating world a veritable encyclopedia  of Japanese daily life and thus became a...

This comprehensive reconstruction and interpretation of Louise and Walter Arensberg’s groundbreaking collection of modern and pre-Columbian art takes readers room by room, wall by wall, object by object through the couple’s Los Angeles home...

By Anne Monahan West Chester, PA's own Horace Pippin was arguably the most successful African American artist of his day. Pippin (1888–1946) taught himself to paint in the 1930s and quickly  earned international renown for depictions of World War I,...

An irreverent book of radically honest advice by renowned fashion arbiter and legendary window dresser Simon Doonan. Through  his unconventional wisdom and singular storytelling, Simon Doonan is  the ideal instructor to help readers find - and...

This engaging book offers an introduction to and overview of armor in  Europe from the Middle Ages through the 17th century, focusing in  particular on the 16th century when plate armor reached its peak of  stylistic beauty and functional...

The perfect gift book for people who see faces everywhere. A funky, funny, gift book with a twist. The psychological impulse to discern faces in random patterns on inanimate objects is known as pareidolia. It has brought us the Virgin Mary on a cheese...

By Felice Fischer, with Kyoko Kinoshita; with essays by Jonathan Chaves, Sadako Ohki, and Shimatani Hiroyuki Ike Taiga (1723–1776) and his wife, Tokuyama Gyokuran (1727–1784), were preeminent artists in eighteenth-century Japan. This landmark book—the...

This book showcases highlights from the Dietrich American Foundation, established in 1963 by H. Richard Dietrich Jr. and focused on 18th-century American fine and decorative arts. Essays explore the formation of the collection and its many areas of...

By Felice Fischer and Kyoko Kinoshita The Kano lineage of painters—the most important in Japan—was established in the late fifteenth century by Kano Masanobu (1434–1530) and continued for nearly 400 years. Originally limited to successive generations of...

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is fortunate to have a collection of Italian drawings that encompasses a broad sweep of Italy’s art history, from the Renaissance to Futurism to the contemporary, and includes works by such famed artists as Batoni,...

More than ninety objects, painted in vibrant colors that have survived half a millennium with undiminished brilliance, are reproduced in color and in black and white. Together they represent the various shapes, ornamentation, ambitious compositions, and...

The Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon with no Western equivalent,  one where breathtaking landscapes exist alongside blush-inducing  erotica; where demons and otherworldly creatures torment the living; and  where sumo wrestlers,...

Spanning over 60 years of Jasper Johns’s (b. 1930) prolific career, this spectacular publication is the most comprehensive and definitive study of the artist’s work to date. Written by noted Johns expert Roberta Bernstein, the book explores...

By Andrea Kettenmann The arresting paintings of Frida Kahlo were in many ways expressions of trauma. Through a near-fatal road accident at the age of 18, failing health, a turbulent marriage, miscarriage and childlessness, she transformed the afflictions...

Darielle Mason (Author) with essays by Pika Ghosh, Katherine Hacker, Darielle Mason, Anne Peranteau, and Niaz Zaman This first book-length study on kantha published outside of South Asia focuses on two premier collections.  One assembled by the...

German printmaker Kathe Kollwitz (1867–1945) is known for her unapologetic social and political imagery; her representations of grief, suffering, and struggle; and her equivocal ideas about artistic and political labels. This volume explores Kollwitz’s...

You saw Woman in Gold, this is the perfect introduction to the man who created her. Gustave Klimt (1862-1918) was one of the most brilliant artists of the Austrian avant-garde. Admired for his sensual images of women and for his powerful and original...

The knight is the supreme warrior of the Middle Ages. Fully armored and mounted on a magnificent charger, he seems invincible. Honor and  glory await him as, guided by the chivalric code, he fights with lance  and sword. This carefully...

This is the fascinating story William Marshal who negotiated the  brutal realities of medieval warfare and the conflicting demands of  chivalric ideals, and who against the odds defeated the joint French and  rebel forces in arguably the...

This elegant monograph was published on the occasion of the opening of the new galleries of South Asian art, October, 2016. Two shrine hangings, called pichhwais, and depicting scenes from the life of Krishna were a focal point of the new galleries...

Edited by Anna Vallye; With contributions by Christian Derouet, Maria Gough, et al. With his landmark 1919 painting The City, Fernand Léger (1881–1955) inaugurated a vitally experimental decade during which he and others redefined the practice of...

More than 300 photographs by Lewis W. Hine, whose trailblazing documentary images of early 20th-century working conditions helped to transform United States labor laws. This book covers all eras of Hine’s work, including his pictures of  child...

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s David Lebe (b. 1948) pushed the boundaries of photography, creating nuanced and visually complex images using innovative techniques. Often enhancing his prints with hand-coloring, Lebe made experimental pinhole photographs,...

By Peter Barberie, with an essay on the photographic materials by Beth A. Price and Ken Sutherland Renowned for his alluring and provocative photographs of the monuments, interiors, streets, and people of Paris and its environs, Eugène Atget carefully...

Louise Bourgeois was one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century and photographer Jean-François Jaussaud met her for the first time in 1994 at her studio in Brooklyn. But it was not before she had interrogated him about every aspect of his life...

Louise Bourgeois' tapestry and needlepoint work deals with reparation in  both a literal and metaphorical sense. In many of the works, fragmented  tapestries are pieced together and repaired to create new sculptural  forms. The recurring...