Written and illustrated by master wood engraver Barry Moser, this primer on the art of wood engraving is filled with valuable knowledge including how to prepare a printing block; how to think in the medium's properties of line, shape, and ink; and ho...

In 1860 James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and Joanna Hiffernan (1839-1886) met and began a significant professional and personal relationship. Hiffernan posed as a model for many of Whistler's works, including his controversial Symphony in White pai...

Amedeo Modigliani experimented with sculpture and drawing, but is primarily known for his paintings of nudes and portraits characterized by elongated figures, faces, and necks. He began painting in his youth in Italy before moving to Paris in 1906, d...

The artist has been a privileged figure in the modern age, embodying ideals of personal and political freedom and self-fulfillment. Does it matter who gets to be an artist? And do our deeply held beliefs stand up to scrutiny? "Making the Modern Artis...

Between 1667 and 1792, the artists and amateurs of the Acade mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris lectured on the Academie's "conferences", foundational documents in the theory and practice of art. These texts and the principles they embod...

"The Hermitage Cookbook" is a hymn to the unity of material world seen through the prism of art, literature, ethnographic observations and historical documents. The book covers a wide range of culinary recipes – ancient, national, family and royal. A...

Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), like all ambitious artists, imitated eminent predecessors. What set him apart was his lifelong and multifaceted focus on Michelangelo Buonarroti – the master of the previous age. Bernini's Michelangelo is the first co...

During his lifetime, Durer found tremendous success as a painter and printmaker, taking commissions from prominent figures such as Frederick the Wise and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. His drawings and studies reveal his interest in human proportio...

Theodor Adorno's famous aesthetic theory was not merely a theory of the aesthetic; it also made a wider claim about the aesthetic implications of all theory. At the same time we have to deal with aesthetic objects and events in which an aesthetic the...

From its birth in the 7th century through modern times, the Islamic religion has inspired glorious works of art. This stunning book includes more than four hundred reproductions of treasures of Islamic art that span the world: from southern Europe, a...