Library

The Unicorn Tapestries in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Adolfo Salvatore CavalloThe unicorn tapestries are one of the most popular attractions at The Cloisters, the medieval branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Traditionally known as The Hunt of the Unicorn, this set of seven exquisite and enigmatic tapestries was likely completed between 1495 and 1505. The imaginatively conceived scenes―displaying individualized faces of the hunters and naturalistically depicting the flora and fauna of the landscape―are beautifully captured in silk, wool, and metal yarns.

Written by one of the world’s leading authorities on medieval textiles and illustrated with many lovely color reproductions, The Unicorn Tapestries traces the origins of the tapestries as well as possible interpretations of their symbolic meaning. This is an essential book for any lover of medieval art and textiles.

The Shape of Design

Frank ChimeroThe Shape of Design is a short, accessible book about the creative process and the intersection of storytelling, craft and improvisation. The Shape of Design is a map of the road where we dance rather than a blueprint of it. It strives to investigate the opportunities of exploring the terrain, and it values stepping back from the everyday concerns of designing. It attempts to impose a meaningful distance in order to patterns in the work and assess the practice as a whole. One can observe, from this distance, two very fundamental things about design that are easy to miss in the midst of all of this movement. First, design is imagining a future and working toward it with intelligence and cleverness. We use design to close the gap between the situation we have and the one we desire. Second, design is a practice built upon making things for other people. We are all on the road together. These two things dictate our relationship to the world and our bond to one another. They form the foundations of the design practice, so our work should revolve around these truths.

Sol LeWitt: 100 Views

Susan Cross, Denise MarkonishPublished to accompany MASS MoCA’s landmark installation of LeWitt’s innovative wall drawings, this book celebrates the artist and his illustrious 50-year career.

Color by Betty Edwards: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors

Betty EdwardsMillions of people have learned to draw using the methods of Dr. Betty Edwards's bestseller The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Now, much as artists progress from drawing to painting, Edwards moves from black-and-white into color. This much-awaited new guide distills the enormous existing knowledge about color theory into a practical method of working with color to produce harmonious combinations.

Using techniques tested and honed in her five-day intensive color workshops, Edwards provides a basic understanding of how to see color, how to use it, and-for those involved in art, painting, or design-how to mix and combine hues. Including more than 125 color images and exercises that move from simple to challenging, this volume explains how to:

see what is really there rather than what you "know" in your mind about colored objects
perceive how light affects color, and how colors affect one another
manipulate hue, value, and intensity of color and transform colors into their opposites
balance color in still-life, landscape, figure, and portrait painting
understand the psychology of color
harmonize color in your surroundings

While we recognize and treasure the beautiful use of color, reproducing what we see can be a challenge. Accessibly unweaving color's complexity, this must-have primer is destined to be an instant classic.

The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Betty EdwardsWhen Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was first published in 1979, it hit the New York Times bestseller list within two weeks and stayed there for more than a year. In 1989, when Dr. Betty Edwards revised the book, it went straight to the Times list again. Now Dr. Edwards celebrates the twentieth anniversary of her classic book with a second revised edition.

Over the last decade, Dr. Edwards has refined her material through teaching hundreds of workshops and seminars. Truly The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, this edition includes: the very latest developments in brain researchnew material on using drawing techniques in the corporate world and in educationinstruction on self-expression through drawingan updated section on using colordetailed information on using the five basic skills of drawing for problem solving

Translated into thirteen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world's most widely used drawing-instruction guide. People from just about every walk of life—artists, students, corporate executives, architects, real estate agents, designers, engineers—have applied its revolutionary approach to problem solving. The Los Angeles Times said it best: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is "not only a book about drawing, it is a book about living. This brilliant approach to the teaching of drawing . . . should not be dismissed as a mere text. It emancipates."

Sol LeWitt: The Well-Tempered Grid

Sol Lewitt, Christianna Bonin, Erica DiBenedetto, Charles HaxthausenSol LeWitt: The Well-Tempered Grid is the first exhibition to focus on the centrality of the grid in LeWitt’s art. The exhibition focuses on LeWitt’s use of the grid as a generative matrix for his artistic production over the span of nearly five decades, from 1960 until his death in 2007. Inspired by his first encounter with the work of photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the late 1950s, LeWitt began experimenting with a loosely structured grid in several large oil paintings of 1960, based on the Muybridge motif of a running man. By 1962 he had simplified his use of this format to exclude figurative elements, and by 1964 he was making his first wall-mounted grid structures. When LeWitt made his first wall drawings in 1968 he used the grid as the underlying structural principle. Thereafter, grids became a pervasive matrix in all of the media in which LeWitt worked—three-dimensional “structures,” drawings and gouaches on paper, photographic cycles, artist’s books, furniture and wall drawings. Fully illustrated with 95 color images (and a plate section), the book includes three essays, including Charles W. Haxthausen on LeWitt’s relationship to the grid and classical music, especially Bach; Christianna Bonin on LeWitt’s relationship to Richard Serra and the wall drawing; and Erica DiBenedetto on LeWitt’s 1980 artist’s book, Autobiography, a publication consisting solely of 1,101 photographs of LeWitt’s New York studio, organized over 128 pages in nine-part grids.

Gentle Genius: Story of Mendelssohn

George R. Marek

Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt

Veronica RobertsA fascinating glimpse into the friendship of two acclaimed artists, which reveals the great extent to which they influenced each other’s work and lives

Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt formed a close friendship between the late 1950s and Hesse’s death in 1970. Converging Lines celebrates this friendship and offers an illuminating look at their close-knit New York circle. Whereas previous scholarship has examined LeWitt’s impact on Hesse, this is the first publication to demonstrate that the artists influenced each other’s art and lives in reciprocal and profound ways.

Richly documented, this book includes a personal recollection by Lucy R. Lippard, a distinguished American art writer and critic who was a close friend of both artists. Also included are reproductions of 39 postcards LeWitt wrote to Hesse during his international travels, along with a poignant five-page letter that he sent Hesse, attesting to his belief in her talent; a previously unpublished interview from 2001 with LeWitt about his relationship with Hesse; and an illustrated chronology drawing upon interviews, photographs, and primary documents from the time. Shedding new light on the careers and personal lives of Hesse and LeWitt, this publication explores the deep connections between two of the 20th century’s most important artists.

The Essential Lighting Manual for Photographers, Revised Edition

Chris WestonFully revised—and now in paperback!

* Quick-reference guide plus detailed diagrams for every lighting situation

* Updated equipment and the latest techniques

* Replaces ISBN 978-2-940361-28-1 / 2-940361-28-2

Let there be light! And let photographers everywhere discover how to use it, control it, master it. Organized thematically by types of lighting and lighting technique, this fully revised edition of a classic explores portrait, landscape, and close-up photography. Methods of metering light to get the best exposure, using natural light versus artificial light, low-light and night photography, and creative techniques, plus a detailed guide to studio lighting equipment, truly make this the essential guide to lighting. And now photographers can take this handy paperback edition everywhere, for quick reference in any situation.

Color in Art

Stefano ZuffiEvery color has many aspects, many variations, and many meanings. Red, for instance, can mean passion, or suffering, or anger. How are these aspects represented in works of art from Titian and Bosch to Matisse and Warhol? Painters use colors to convey a message as much as they do for surface appeal. In design and fashion, color is omnipresent as well, but incredibly varied in its significance. This fascinating book focuses on the most important colors in art—red, blue, yellow, black, white, green, and gold—and looks at them through some 200 beautifully printed works.

Praise for Color in Art:

“Art historian Zuffi’s introductory survey of color throughout (mostly Western) art history spans millennia while sharing entertaining stories about the range of moods and meanings that color can convey in art.” —Publishers Weekly