The Arts: General Issues Books

Contrary to popular opinion, New Zealand Fashion didn't begin in the late 1990s when four designers were sent to the London catwalks and created a stir with their stylish dark garments. Its history is in fact a long and rich one, and no one tells it better than the team of Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, Cla...

See the world of Bleach in a blast of color! This art book contains Tite Kubo's vibrant illustrations, including art from Volumes 1-19 of the series, as well as an annotated art guide and some extra character information!

In 2008 the famous painter Don Binney completed a suite of 24 absolutely charming coloured pencil drawings of Auckland's West Coast, from Huia to Te Henga (Bethells). They are evocative of the coast so many New Zealanders love and they are magnificent works in themselves. They are accompanied by tex...

'Great art has dreadful manners...' Simon Schama observes at the start of his epic exploration of the power, and whole point, of art. 'The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things, visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. ...

From the author of "Wreck This Journal," an interactive guide for exploring and documenting the art and science of everyday life. Artists and scientists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways, by observing, collecting, documenting, analyzing, and comparing. In this cap...

Why would a very smart New York investment banker pay twelve million dollars for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No.5 1948 sell for $140 million? And why does a leather jacket with silver chain attached, tossed in a corner and titled 'No...

This text provides a richly evocative exploration of Russia, its culture and people. Vast in scale and woven though with extraordinary stories and characters, it ranges from the splendour of 18th-century St Petersburg to the power of Stalinist propaganda, from folk art to the magic rituals of Asiati...

The Land of the Long White Cloud is now the land of White Cloud Worlds. There, leading edge fantasy meets the utter brilliance and technical skill of a unique group of New Zealand based artists, whose works are influencing our popular culture - through movies like Lord of the Rings, Avatar and Distr...

This perennially popular genre always attracts the most visionary artists, and this book showcases the creme de la creme of contemporary science fiction painters, illustrators and creators, whether established professionals, or brave new talents forging into the future. All aspects of classic scienc...

The Dinka have a connoisseur's appreciation of the patterns and colours of the markings on their cattle. The Japanese tea ceremony is regarded as a performance art. Some cultures produce carving but no drawing; others specialize in poetry. Yet despite the rich variety of artistic expression to be fo...

While the collected writings of many major 20th-century artists, including Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell and Ad Reinhardt, have been published, Mark Rothko's writings have only recently come to light, beginning with the critically acclaimed "Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art". Rothko's other...

The Future of Fantasy Art brings together the finest, freshest, and most exciting talents in the world of fantasy illustration. Artists from around the world—from China and Singapore to the United States and Europe—are represented in this exciting volume, which focuses on the newest ...

From London to Beijing to New York, art sales are booming, and the art world receives the sort of breathless media attention once reserved for celebrities and royals. In "Seven Days in the Art World", Sarah Thornton, a brilliant young sociologist, looks at all aspects of buying, selling, and creatin...

Why would a smart New York investment banker pay twelve million dollars for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No.5 1948 sell for $140 million? 'The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shar'k is the first book to look at the economics of the modern ...

Louise Bourgeois is among the most prominent contemporary sculptors. Strongly influenced by surrealism, abstract expressionism, and minimalism, her work focuses on the exploration of her psyche. A recurring theme is her troubled childhood and difficult relationship with her father. Despite early suc...

Bursting with expert information on all your dog training needs, but small enough to fit in your pocket or hold in one hand, this is the perfect quick-reference guide for anyone wanting to train their dog to be friendly and well-behaved. Condensed here in Collins Gem Dog Training is all the essentia...

This work provides a 12-week course that guides the reader through the process of recovering their creative self. It aims to dispel the "I'm not talented enough" conditioning that tends to hamper the creativity of many people. With the basic principle that creative expression is the nat...

This book is all about an art form that aims to be unsettling and has its roots in the 20th Century. Some people make a connection between dark art and gothic subculture, others simply associate it with the metaphysical, the disturbing or the nightmarish. However you perceive it, this art form is no...

Luxury and art have never been more closely linked than they are in these early years of the twenty-first century. Virtually all the world's major luxury houses have associated themselves with contemporary art through sponsorships, commissions, or foundations, and these points of exchange nourish th...

"The Covers Collection" celebrates 75 years of DC Comics history by showcasing hundreds of their most famous covers - including 100 full-size posters that are perforated and ready-to-frame. Arranged in chronological order, each poster honors a milestone in DC Comics history with a full-pag...

“Jonathan Kellerman has assembled a stellar cast of guitars that serves not only the history and craft of the great luthiers but also whets the appetite for all of us who are mad about guitars. Long may he collect.”–Andy Summers, from the Introduction For thirty-five years,...

This blackest of comedies set in the international art scene finally comes to the big screen, with a star-studded cast, including Gillian Anderson, Alan Cumming, Christopher Lee and Heather Graham. A satirical novel of great black humour, "Boogie Woogie" plunges deep into the dark exces...

"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surro...

'Art and Photography' surveys a rich and important history, from the 1960s to the 21st century. Arranged thematically, it presents works by the most significant international artists who have explored and extended the boundaries of photography. This influential body of work by over 160 artists over ...

Students of fantasy art who open this book will learn how to imagine and draw a wide variety of mythical characters to illustrate legends, myths, and fables. Author Matt Dixon presents both ideas and techniques for creating fantasy characters, demonstrating how to pose them correctly, and give them ...

A collection of 60 drawings by Todd James, each complete unto itself and also representing a potential painting. Each has been created specifically for this book and each is of a piece with James' larger concerns: American excess as represented by the forms and fictions of sexuality, the ravages of ...

Daring exploits and astounding achievements were common for two 19th century adventurers--John Lloyd Stephens, a New York lawyer and best-selling author, and Frederick Catherwood, a London architect and renowned topographical artist. Separately, these explorers covered much of the same ground, touri...

A pioneer in the international studio glass movement, Erwin Eisch helped establish the medium in Europe with his distinctively distorted glass vessels and imaginative sculptures of mold-blown glass. His works--which also include paintings, drawings, and vitreographic prints--are important as well fo...

With a career spanning almost sixty years, Gerhard Richter is among the most prominent painters of the twentieth and twenty-first century, well-known for his monumental abstract and photo-realistic works. But beyond the many instantly recognizable paintings, relatively little is still known about ho...

Hear the name Andy Warhol and what comes most immediately to mind are iconic images of Campbell's soup cans, the Velvet Underground's ubiquitous banana cover art, and quirky color-adjusted panels of pop icons, including Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and Marilyn Monroe. But Warhol was also a ski...

The Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich houses one of the finest and most famous collections of drawings and prints in Germany, with holdings of around 400,000 works ranging from the fifteenth century to modernity. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum in New Yor...

Much like Alice Liddell in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass, " multimedia artist Clifford Ross looks beyond the natural world to uncover another world bound only by the imagination, in which images are reversed and landscapes reimagined in ravishing color. A digital visionary, Ross uses me...

Founded in 1847, Franz Mayer of Munich is one of the world's foremost studios for mosaics and stained glass. Dedicated to the restoration of historic works as well as the execution of contemporary projects for artists and architects worldwide, the family-owned company is widely lauded for its commit...

"Neuromedia" is an innovative examination of shared territories in neurobiological anatomy, physiology and media art. It reveals how scientists investigate perception and behaviour at the molecular, cellular and systems level. It demonstrates how interpretative forms of media art can help to demysti...

From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon endured one of the most protracted and bloody civil wars of the twentieth century. Sune Haugbolle's 2010 book chronicles the battle over ideas that emerged from the wreckage of that war. While the Lebanese state encouraged forgetfulness and political parties created sectar...

"Milk and Honey: Contemporary Art in California" highlights new work by contemporary artists who are aesthetically and regionally joined through a variety of mediums and demographics. By showcasing unknown and emerging artists alongside established icons who all call California home, "Milk and Honey...

Behind the closed door of the contemporary artist 's studio is a hidden world of images those artworks from the distant or near past that have animated, troubled, consoled, or inspired the artists of today. This book reveals that hidden world, presenting an intimate guide to the imaginations of toda...

The art book that has introduced millions of people around the globe to art An accessible, informative and fun A - Z guide to artists from medieval times to the present day Updated and expanded with 100 new works, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, video, installations and performance art...