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	Greece - From Mycenae to the Parthenon Click picture to look inside This book is a comprehensive introduction to the architecture of perfect harmony and proportion, taking us through all the important architectural sites in ancient Greece. From the superb mausoleum of Mausolus in Halicarnassus, stop by the shrine to Apollo at Delphi with its famous oracle, or pass through the imposing Lion Gate in Mycenae. Editor: Henri Stierlin Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822812250 Published: 2001 Softcover: 240 x 300 mm, 240 pages Price: £6.99


	The Roman Empire Click picture to look inside Covers all the major Roman amphitheatres and arenas, temples and baths, aqueducts and fortresses, but also Pompeii and Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. Monumental in scale and technically highly developed, the architecture that produced the forums, baths, and aqueducts of the Roman Empire still dazzles us today. This volume deals with Roman architecture in Italy, France, Spain, the Rhineland and North Africa. Starting with Villanova and Etruscan culture, it includes the major buildings of the late Roman Republic and principally those of the Empire. Pompeii, the Golden House of Nero, Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, and the Diokletian baths among many more, are considered. This volume describes an architectural history that interprets the entire Roman culture rather than merely describing its buildings, offering a new and exciting contribution to the history of Roman Architecture. Author: Henri Stierlin Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822817783 Published: 2002 Softcover: 240 x 300 mm, 240 pages Price: £6.99


	Leonardo Click picture to look inside One of the most fully achieved human beings who has ever lived, Leonardo remains the quintessential Renaissance genius. Creator of the world's most famous painting, scientist, philosopher, builder, he is credited with defining the accomplishments of the great flowering in human consciousness. And yet, so wide-ranging and prolific were his interests that he brought hardly any major undertaking to a final end. If Leonardo seems so modern, it is perhaps because of his non-speciality, his magpie mind and curiosity, and his thousands of notes and sketches. In these pages he would anticipate some of the great discoveries and inventions that would follow him, from key points in anatomy through to plans for armoured military vehicles, planes, helicopters and submarines. As well as all that, Leonardo also managed to advance numerous artistic techniques, and implicated a complex psychology into his paintings of the 'Last Supper' and the enigmatic 'La Gioconda', or 'Mona Lisa'. Famous horseman, rival to Michelangelo, military engineer to the Borgias, he died in 1519, in a chateau given him by the King of France. Author: Frank Zöllner Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822859796 Published: Softcover: 185 x 230 mm, 96 pages Price: £4.99


	Michelangelo Click picture to look inside During the Renaissance, great artists from Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli to Michelangelo and Raphael transformed the history of art, attaining to ever closer imitation of nature whilst altering it to their taste. From their art, ambiguous beings were born, half man, half woman; female breasts were planted on male busts and a young man's gaze peeped out beneath the eyelids of a Madonna. From his earliest youth, Michelangelo never ceased to suffer, and thereby to create. He attempted to reconcile the apparently conflicting forces that inhabited him: earthly passions and fear of God. Hence the edifice devoted to beauty, celestial and infernal alike, that Michelangelo raised to the glory of God. It has no equivalent nor descendance. His predecessors aspired to Heaven through faith alone; Michelangelo sought to rise through the contemplative exaltation of beauty. His passions found expression in the human body as it emerged from the Creator's hand. And they did so even on the ceiling of a papal chapel: the Sixtine. This exposed him to a chorus of derision from prudish critics, who accused him of exhibiting paganism in a place of religion, and who clothed his immodest Titans in painted 'breeches'. It was Michelangelo's curse to remain a colossus outside and apart from his time. Author: Gilles Néret Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822859761 Published: Softcover: 185 x 230 mm, 96 pages Price: £4.99


	Picasso Click picture to look inside 'I wanted to be a painter, and I became Picasso,' declared Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in an apt survey of a triumphant career. He had good grounds for the confidence palpable in his statement, for in the history of 20th century art, his name stands out over all the others. In Picasso's paintings, drawings, lithographs, ceramics and sculptures, he was tirelessly inventive and innovative, exhibiting an aesthetic bravado that kept him one step ahead of his contemporaries. From subject matter to new forms and techniques to new media, Picasso got there first. The Spanish artist's enormous output, from the eight-year-old's beginnings to the late work of a man of ninety-one, is surely one of the most diverse and creatively energetic in the whole history of art, and it is no exaggeration to see him as the genius of the century. This study is a thorough review of Picasso's entire oeuvre, from the early Blue and Rose Periods, through the analytic and synthetic cubism and classicist phase of the all the way up to the art of the old savage Picasso. Author: Carsten-Peter Warncke Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822823775 Published: 2003 Flexicover: 196 x 245 mm, 240 pages Price: £9.99


	Degas Click picture to look inside 'No art could be less spontaneous than mine. Inspiration, spontaneity, temperament are unknown to me. One has to do the same subject ten times, even a hundred times over. In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement' - Edgar Degas In terms of both theme and technique, the key to understanding the early work of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is classical painting. Although he was eventually associated with the Impressionists and even participated in their joint exhibitions, Degas never adopted a purely Impressionist approach. Degas' work, reflecting an extremely personal and psychological perspective, emphasizes the scenic or concentrates on the detail. Thus, Degas' painting is often discussed with reference to the rise of short-exposure photography. Thematically, nature proved less interesting to the artist than the life and inhabitants of the modern metropolis. Degas primarily sought his motifs in ballet salons, at the race track or circus, or in bedrooms - but dancers always remained his favorite theme. Author: Bernd Growe Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 382281136X Published: 2002 Softcover: 185 x 230 mm, 96 pages Price: £4.99


	Dürer Five full centuries lie between us and the life of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). His ability to represent a subject with an absolute fidelity to every detail seemed miraculous to his contemporaries, and still astounds us now: we need only think of his water colours of plants and animals. In addition, Dürer was the first painter to devote such close attention to the art of the self-portrait - no artist before him painted as many. The works by Dürer collected in this book show the full range of this artist's unique genius. Author: John Berger Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822885754 Published: 1996 Softcover: 185 x 230 mm, 96 pages Price: £4.99


	Van Gogh Click picture to look inside 'This man will either go insane or leave us all far behind,' prophesied the great Impressionist Camille Pissarro. The man was Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), a vicar's son born at Groot-Zundert near Breda in Holland, who at that time was struggling to find buyers for his paintings. Van Gogh did indeed go at least to the brink of insanity. And he has long been recognised as one of the greatest modern artists. Van Gogh, who followed a variety of professions before becoming an artist, was a solitary, despairing and self-destructive man his whole life long. This richly illustrated study follows the artist from the early gloom-laden paintings in which he captured the misery of peasants and workers in his home parts, through the bright and colourful paintings in Paris, to the work of his final years under a southern sun in Arles, where he at last found the light that produced the unmistakable van Gogh style. At Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise, in the feverish burst of creative energy that marked the last two and a half years of his life, he produced the 463 paintings on which his immortality rests. Van Gogh craved recognition during his lifetime but was denied it till after his self-inflicted death. Today he is universally seen as one of the great forerunners of 20th century painting, and one of the tragic masters of art. Authors: Rainer Metzger and Ingo F. Walther Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822820105 Published: 2003 Flexicover: 196 x 245 mm, 256 pages Price: £9.99


	Monet Click picture to look inside Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the most typical and the most individual Impressionist painter. His long life was dedicated to a pictorial exploration of the sensations that reality, and in particular landscape, offers the human eye. But while Monet the painter was faithful and persevering in the pursuit of his motifs, his personal life followed a more restless course. Parisian by birth, he discovered plein-air painting as a youth in the provinces, where one of his homes, Argenteuil, has come to represent the artistic flowering and official establishment of Impressionism as a movement, with Monet as its creative leader. In his endeavor to capture the ever-changing face of reality, Monet went beyond Impressionism and thereby beyond the confines of self-contained panel painting: in Giverny he painted the Poplars, Grain Stacks and Rouen Cathedral series in which he addressed one motif in constantly new variations. Here, too, Monet laid out the famous garden with its water lily pond which he was to paint on huge canvases well into the 1920s. He thereby sought to render not reality as objectively experienced, but rather that which takes place 'between the motif and the artist'. In their open, merely tenuously representational structure and impressive scale, Monet's water lily paintings - created long before the currents of the contemporary avant-garde - point the way to the developments of the future. Author: Christoph Heinrich Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822859729 Published: 2000 Softcover: 185 x 230 mm, 96 pages Price: £4.99


	Rubens Click picture to look inside Renowned among his contemporaries as one of the foremost painters of his era, Flemish baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) practically revolutionized northern European art. A shrewd businessman, international ambassador, passionate scholar, devout Catholic, and loving family man, Rubens - fluent in six languages - cared about nothing more than painting, and thus devoted his life to it. Combining Flemish realism with classical themes influenced by the Renaissance, Rubens caught the attention of all of Europe and helped put his native Antwerp on the map. His very profitable workshop of accomplished artists, one of whom was Van Dyck, completed over 2000 works under his supervision. Author: Gilles Néret Publisher: Taschen ISBN: 3822828858 Published: 2004 Softcover: 185 x 230 mm, 96 pages Price: £4.99


	European Folk Art Designs Traditional motifs from Austria, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Switzerland and other European countries include scores of charming designs incorporating florals, wildlife and human figures in folk costumes. Publisher: Dover Publications Author: Marty Noble ISBN: 0486437574 Published: 2004 Paperback: 64 pages, 210 x 279 mm Price: £9.95


	World Music (vol. 1) - Africa, Europe and the Middle East World Music Volume 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East has full coverage of everything from Congolese soukous to Greek rembetika, and biographies from Thomas Mapfumo to Cheb Khaled to the Afro Celt Sound System. Includes more than 80 articles from expert contributors, focusing on the popular and roots music live and on disc. Extensive discographies for each country, with biography notes on nearly 2000 musicians and reviews of the best available CDs. Publisher: Rough Guides ISBN: 1858286352 Published: 1999 Paperback: 781 pages Price: £17.99

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