Monographs & Artists

This expanded and revised edition celebrates the work of Ghanaian artist El Anatsui by exploring the artist's life and the trajectory of his remarkable career. El Anatsui: Art and Life by Susan Mullin Vogel is the essential resource on the Ghanaian...

The product of more than 30 years of research, this astounding and authoritative volume reveals the political metaphors underpinning El Anatsui’s magnificent abstract sculpture Authored by two acclaimed scholars, Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, this...

 A book highlighting the work of pioneering Black printmaker, sculptor, and activist Elizabeth Catlett. Accomplished printmaker and sculptor, avowed feminist, and lifelong activist Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) built a remarkable career around...

Vincent van Gogh boarded the last train from The Hague to Hoogeveen on Tuesday, September 11, 1883. He stays there for several weeks, then moves to Nieuw-Amsterdam/Veenoord and visits Zweeloo. The landscape makes a deep impression on him. Everywhere...

The Flemish Primitive artist Hans Memling (c. 1435–1494), who played a crucial role in early Netherlandish painting, is inextricably associated with Bruges. Among his most impressive creations are the St John Altarpiece and the St Ursula Shrine, which he...

This is the first book about Hokuei - one of the most intriguing artists ever in kabuki-actor prints Lavishly illustrated with over 300 images, it brings the world of kabuki alive in fascinating detail The book includes a fully illustrated and annotated...

Afterglow brings together the known memorial paintings by Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) for the first time, unveiling how Church returned to the medium of landscape throughout his career to create solace in times of loss. This book presents new...

The first monograph on the work of celebrated and influential Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu Wangechi Mutu's remarkable body of work touches on such issues as sexuality, ecology, politics, and the rhythms and chaos that govern the world. Her...

 The most comprehensive book yet on this inspired, inventive chronicler of the African American experience. Alabama-born, Chicago-based Kerry James Marshall is one of the most exciting artists working today. Critically and commercially acclaimed,...

This is the first comprehensive monograph on acclaimed painter Amy Sherald, whose distinctive style of simplified realist portraiture features African American subjects rendered against colorful monochrome backdrops or in everyday settings. Sherald rose...

Tender yet compelling, Johnson's portraits of herself, her friends and her relatives are touchstones of Black figuration. A founding member of the Black British Arts Movement, Claudette Johnson (born 1959) creates large-scale drawings of Black people...

Surveying 30 years of Henry Taylor’s work in painting, sculpture and installation, this comprehensive monograph celebrates a Los Angeles artist widely appreciated for his unique aesthetic, social vision and freewheeling experimentation. Taylor’s...

In her large-scale oil paintings, New York-based artist Jordan Casteel (born 1989) takes up questions of Black subjectivity and representation by examining the gestures, spaces and forms of nonverbal communication that underpin portraiture. “There is a...

 "Black women's heads of hair are galaxies unto themselves, solar systems, moonscapes, volcanic interiors." —Elizabeth Alexander, from the Introduction Using advertising photographs of black women (and men) drawn from vintage issues of Ebony and...

New paintings from Wiley that examine how nature is depicted and symbolized in Japanese art This striking volume presents a new body of work by American painter Kehinde Wiley, who is best known for his vibrant portraiture of Black people that subverts...

Wright on The star pieces of America’s greatest architect A building by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) is at once unmistakably individual and evocative of an entire era. Notable for their exceptional harmony with their environment, as well as for their...

 Published to mark the 250th anniversary of Caspar David Friedrich's birth, the most thorough Friedrich retrospective in many years. Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) is renowned as the Romantic painter par excellence, his works icons of an age of...

The hauntingly beautiful work of Germany’s most renowned Romantic painter springs to life in the pages of this beautifully produced overview featuring famous and lesser-known works in full and in detail.Considered one of the most important figures...

Arguably the greatest artist of the Baroque period, Peter Paul Rubens was an accomplished painter and draftsman, as well as a valued diplomat. This accessible examination of his life and work looks at every aspect of Rubens's oeuvre; from his...

A hairless, ghostly figure on a bridge. The sky orange-red above him.  His hands raised to his ears, his mouth wide in a haunting wail. In  painting The Scream, Edvard Munch created Mona Lisa for our times. The shriek of his iconic figure...

In our imaginings of Paris, painter and graphic artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) has no small role to play. In his prints, posters, paintings, and drawings, the artist immortalized the city’s Belle Époque nightlife and put the northern...

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...

Like Dreamers Do The lyrical mark-making of a modern maestro With a career spanning seven decades, Catalan-born Joan Miró (1893–1983) was a polymath giant of modern art, producing masterworks across painting, sculpture, art books, tapestry, and ceramics,...

Christina Ramberg (1946–1995) first gained renown for her acrylic-on-board paintings from the 1960s and 1970s that feature stylized fragments of female figures. Often associated with Chicago Imagism, Ramberg’s distinct linear approach was informed by a...

This edition reprints Keisai Eisen and Utagawa Hiroshige's legendary series The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, a stunning representation of the historic route between Edo and Kyoto. This vivid tapestry of 19th-century Japan is in equal parts a...

William Morris was a polymath designer, writer, artist, and social activist, associated with England's Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as well as Arts and Crafts movement. His prolific design work included tiles, embroidery, tapestries, wallpaper, and carpets...

Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) was a clerk in the Paris customs service who dreamed of becoming a famous artist. At the age 49, he decided to give it a try. At first, Rousseau’s bright, bold paintings of jungles and exotic flora and fauna were dismissed as...

A key figure in the international avant-garde, Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was at once an extraordinary painter and leading art theoretician whose influence resonates to this day. Coining the term “Neo-plasticism”, he pursued a style of painting composed...

Enter a world of ravishing light and color. English Romanticist J. M. W. Turner transformed the essence of landscape painting from serene contemplative scenes to pictures pulsating with life, as if the sun itself were gleaming out of his canvases...

Renowned for his distinctive, elongated female nudes, Amedeo Modigliani is a legend of early modernism. His unique figuration corresponded to his own personal idea of beauty, but drew upon a rich variety of visual influences, including contemporary...

Struggling artist turned icon of the modern, urban experience, Edward Hopper is most famed for his haunting nocturnal diner scene Nighthawks. This book introduces his mastery of place, mood, and melancholy through vivid color juxtapositions; stark,...

The definitive collection of Robert Mapplethorpe’s flower photographs in a sophisticated new edition. Robert Mapplethorpe is one of the twentieth century’s most important artists, known for his ground-breaking and provocative work. He studied painting,...

A revised edition of this classic survey that presents a thorough overview of Georgia O’Keeffe’s life and work.  Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) was a major figure in American art for seven decades. Throughout that long and...

At first glance, Walton Ford’s large-scale, highly detailed watercolors of animals recall the prints of 19th-century illustrators John James Audubon and Edward Lear. A closer look reveals a complex and disturbingly anthropomorphic universe, full of...

“I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but I still don’t invent the whole of painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made—but to be untangled—in the real world.” —Vincent van Gogh to Émile Bernard The painter and poet Émile Bernard’s...

In just two decades, Raphael Santi painted his way to legendary greatness. This essential introduction to the artist we know simply as Raphael presents the mastery of figures, forms, and space hat secured his place not only alongside Michelangelo and...

A new study of Mary Cassatt that explores the centrality of work to both her inventive technical practice and her distinctive approach to modern subjects.    In her sensitive depictions of the social, intellectual, and professional lives of...

Through essays, photo-essays, and a conversation between Black designer Stephen Burks (b. 1969) and the late cultural critic bell hooks, this book contextualizes Burks’s wide-ranging work while exploring design’s influence on politics, society, and...

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. Literally meaning “pictures of the floating world,” ukiyo-e was a particular woodblock print genre of art that flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries...

Berthe Morisot won over the Impressionists with her talent and became the first woman of the group alongside Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley. Likewise, she was heralded by the greatest writers of her time; in this tribute to her, an anthology...

Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise: His Final Months offers a unique and impressive overview of the paintings and drawings that Vincent van Gogh created during the last seventy days of his life. He produced no fewer than seventy-four paintings and over thirty...

This book offers a long-overdue reassessment of the career of the Parisian-born artist Marie Laurencin (1883–1956), who moved seamlessly between the Cubist avant-garde and lesbian literary and artistic circles, as well as the realms fashion,...

In freewheeling 1920s Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse captivated as a nightclub performer, sold out gallery showings of her paintings, starred in Surrealist films, and shared drinks and ideas with the likes of Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp. Her...

One hundred and fifty years ago, Vincent van Gogh fell under the enticing spell of Japanese printmaking while working in Paris. He bought over six hundred Japanese prints and displayed them in his studio as inspiration. Van Gogh admired the prints’...

A beautiful and delightfully handy art book that is designed to inspire, this collection of 150 beautifully reproduced Vincent Van Gogh images makes a stylish gift. His writings have been edited and selected to create an enlightening, uplifting, and...

Exquisite Dreams is the first full account of the art and life of Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012). Rather than only focusing on her well-known surrealist paintings, this book gives equal weight to Tanning’s lesser-known but equally powerful sculptures,...

Discover the latest and the greatest of Japan’s manga scene. This  revised and updated edition features classic maestros like Osamu Tezuka  (creator of Astro Boy) and Katsuhiro Otomo (creator of Akira) as well as  the most exciting...

Exploring the art and life of this important American artist whose work bridged the gaps between abstraction, feminism, and Blackness Howardena Pindell: Reclaiming Abstraction is a fascinating examination of the multifaceted career of artist, activist,...

'Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul.' Vincent van Gogh saw nature and art as inseparably linked. In The Healing Power...

From his earliest pointillist-influenced paintings to this mature and playful paper cut-outs; from enormous, ebullient murals to reverent stained glass--Henri Matisse was renowned for his dramatic use of color and fluid draftsmanship. Thirty of Matisse's...

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the...

Pioneering Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander is one of the most influential artists working today. Sikander is widely celebrated for expanding and subverting miniature painting to explore gender roles and sexuality, cultural identity, racial...

Presenting recently rediscovered drawings, Life and Death explores what it means for an artist to picture their own death, in both the context of Wyeth’s late career and contemporary American art. This volume presents for the first time a recently...

In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century. Funny Weather brings together a career’s...

John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in...

For Marc Chagall (1887–1985), painting was an intricate tapestry of dreams, tales, and traditions. His instantly recognizable visual language carved out a unique early 20th-century niche, often identified as one of the earliest expressions of psychic...

Good design, like good storytelling, brings ideas to life. The latest book from award-winning writer Ellen Lupton is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services...

Offers a unique personal perspective on the journey of collecting  American art and antiques Start with House, Finish with a Collection is the story of how a couple's use of American art and antiques evolved  from furnishing a house into a...

Many scholars have called Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay on women artists the first real attempt at a feminist history of art. In her revolutionary essay, Nochlin refused to answer the question of why there had been no “great women...

In the late eighteenth century, mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner devised a standardized color scheme that allowed him to describe even the subtlest of chromatic differences with consistent terminology. His scheme was then adapted by an Edinburgh...

Discover the audacious futurism of Zaha Hadid. As the first woman to win both the Pritzker Prize for architecture and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal,  Hadid broke the rules and re-defined the game, despite some saying her  designs were unbuildable...

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 structures...

Even in his unrealized projects, Le Corbusier redefined modern living, synthesizing functionalism, expressionism, and expansive urban thinking  from Switzerland to Chandigarh, India. This book provides a succinct  introduction to his...

Over the course of his artistic career, Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) transformed not only his own style, but the course of art history. From early figurative and landscape painting, he went on to pioneer a  spiritual, emotive, rhythmic use of color...

Shimmering, pulsating color masses characterize the Abstract Expressionist masterpieces of Mark Rothko. Like no other artist in his generation, Rothko developed his own stylistic vocabulary, creating ceiling-high canvases that were to be experienced as...

Painter, and Marxist activist, Diego Rivera was not just the husband of Frida Kahlo.  He is renowned as much for his active politics as for his monumental mural paintings. This introduction explores his unique and visionary renderings of a modern...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Active from the late 1700s through the early twentieth century, the Peale family was America’s first artistic dynasty. This overview of the art of the Peales presents more than 160 works in a variety of media from the renowned collection of the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This book accompanied an exhibition of the same name held at the  Philadelphia Museum of Art upon the completion of conservation of  Pontormo's famous portrait of Duke Alessandro de' Medici. Centering on that painting and Agnolo Bronzino's...

To explore the Tarot is to explore ourselves, to be reminded of the  universality of our longing for meaning, for purpose and for a  connection to the divine. This 600-year-old tradition reflects not only a  history of seekers, but our...

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,...

This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art. As mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have...

This volume offers an intriguing glimpse into the world of late medieval  martial arts, from wrestling to fencing with the longsword to the  subtle tricks that could be employed when jousting on horseback. Using  superb details of lively...

  "Everything  important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase," Duchamp  said in 1952: finally that suitcase is available to all. One of the most important and enigmatic  pieces of modernist art, Boîte-en-valise...

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 the art world...

Matthew Affron (Author) With contributions by Cécile Debray, Alexander Kauffman, Michael R. Taylor, and John Vick This book offers an engaging and accessible introduction to one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most enigmatic artists, Marcel...

Edited by Carlos Basualdo 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...

Michael R. Taylor (Author) with essays by Andrew Lins, Melissa S. Meighan, and Beth A. Price, Ken Sutherland, Scott Homolka, and Elena Torok In his early thirties, Marcel Duchamp convinced everyone that he had abandoned making art in favor of playing...

Out of print for a number of years, this facsimile of Marcel Duchamp’s Manual of Instructions was prepared by the artist for the disassembly of Étant donnés in his New York studio and its reassembly at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. First published more...

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...

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...

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 into revolutionary...

Edited by Hyunsoo Woo; with essays by Insoo Cho, Hongkyung Kim, Woollim Kim, So-hyun Kwon, Dongsoo Moon, Unsok Song, and Hyunsoo Woo and a chronology by Rose E. Lee Treasures from Korea is the first major publication outside of Korea to survey the...

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,...

Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) (Author) Handbook of visual experience: An exploration of symbols and their meanings throughout history The Book of Symbols combines original and incisive essays about particular symbols with...

Jack Lindsey(Author) with essays by Edward C. Carter ll, Richard S. Dunn, and Richard Saunders Focusing on Philadelphia's prominent role in the history of Colonial America, this exhibition catalogue surveys the decorative and fine arts produced during...

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...