- ART: African
- ART: American
- ART: Art & Politics
- ART: Asian
- ART: Australian & Oceanian
- ART: Caribbean & Latin American
- ART: Ceramics
- ART: Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions
- ART: Conservation & Preservation
- ART: Criticism & Theory
- ART: European
- ART: Folk & Outsider Art
- ART: General
- ART: History
- ART: Individual Artists
- ART: Middle Eastern
- ART: Mixed Media
- ART: Popular Culture
- ART: Prints
- ART: Sculpture & Installation
- ART: Study & Teaching
- ART: Subjects & Themes
- ART: Techniques
- 100 Details
- 100 Details offers Clark's personal responses to details of paintings in the National Gallery in London. The result resembles a walk through a glorious art collection with a critic of astounding eye and intellect at our side.
- Paperback 1990
- Ad Usum: To Be Used
- Ad Usum is the catalogue of the retrospective exhibit of celebrated Mexican artist Pedro Reyes mounted at the Carpenter Center and organized by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. This is the first volume entirely dedicated to the works of Reyes, who is considered to be one of the most innovative and radical young Mexican artists.
- Paperback
- African Art in Detail
- This book opens with the question: What is African art? The answer is a brilliantly colorful and detailed look at the myriad materials and genres, forms and meanings, cultural contexts and expressions that comprise artistic traditions across this vast and varied continent. Viewing artworks in their contexts—ancient and modern, urban and rural, western and eastern, decorative and functional—the book is nothing less than a virtual tour of African culture.
- Hardcover 2010
- American Colonial Painting
- Hardcover
- Ancient American Art in Detail
This latest title in a strikingly beautiful series of collectable books turns our attention to the rich variety of art from the Ancient Americas. Beginning by asking what constitutes Ancient American art, Colin McEwan contextualizes this art in its complexity of form and meaning. The beauty of the smallest details is magnified and contextualized through accompanying essays written by experts in Ancient American art.
- Hardcover 2009
- Ancient Cyprus
- Paperback
- Arab-Byzantine Coins
- This illustrated handbook presents a concise history of the development of the coinage of the early Arab caliphate in the seventh century. The historical introduction, which includes descriptions of all the basic types, is followed by a summary catalogue of the recently acquired collection of Arab-Byzantine coins at Dumbarton Oaks.
- Paperback 2009
- Arrest and Movement
- The beauty of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Cretan art is shot through with oddity. However much we are fascinated by the ancient works, we find ourselves wondering what precisely the artists meant when they rendered objects and indicated spatial relations the way they did. Arrest and Movement is the only book to analyze pre-Greek art in terms of issues such as space and narrative. It is a landmark book that will bring to students and museum-goers deeper understanding of this eloquent but seemingly eccentric art.
- Paperback
- Art Matters
- In the face of a great work of art, we so often stand mute, struck dumb. Is this a function--perhaps the first and foremost--of aesthetic experience? Or do we lack the words to say what we feel? Countering current assumptions that art is valued only according to taste or ideology, Peter de Bolla gives a voice--and vocabulary--to the wonder art can inspire. Working toward a better understanding of what it is to be profoundly moved by a work of art, he forces us to reconsider the importance of art works and the singular nature and value of our experience of them.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2003
- Art of Ancient Egypt
- From the awesome grandeur of the Great Pyramids to the delicacy of a face etched on an amulet, the power of ancient Egyptian art persists to this day. Spanning three thousand years, this illustrated history offers a thorough and delightfully readable introduction to the artwork.
- Paperback 2008
- The Art of Ancient Egypt
- What did art, and the architecture that housed it, mean to the ancient Egyptians? Why did they invest such vast wealth and effort in its production? These are the puzzles Gay Robins explores as she examines the objects of Egyptian art--the tombs and wall paintings, the sculpture and stelae, the coffins, funerary papyri, and amulets--from its first flowering in the Early Dynastic period to its final resurgence in the time of the Ptolemies.
- Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 2000
- The Art of Small Things
- This richly illustrated book celebrates the art of the miniature, but also looks beyond it at the many aspects of "small worlds"--in particular, their capacity to evoke responses that far exceed their physical dimensions. Mack explores the talismanic, religious, or magical properties with which miniatures are often imbued. Considering a wide range of objects, he examines the use of the miniature form in various cultural contexts.
- Hardcover 2008
- The Arts in Boston
In this lively and informed book, Bernard Taper, a writer for the New Yorker, scrutinizes the social and economic characteristics of the arts in Boston, seeking specific answers to the questions: What might be done to foster, strengthen, enrich, and invigorate the arts? What can make them more meaningful to a larger segment of the community?
- Hardcover 1970 / Paperback
- Arts of Impoverishment
- Paperback / Hardcover
- Assyrian Sculpture
- For almost three centuries, until 612 B.C., the small kingdom of Assyria dominated the Middle East. The story of those years was recorded in stone on the walls of a succession of royal palaces. These sculptures, offering eyewitness views of a long-lost civilization, were not rediscovered until the nineteenth century.and the finest collection is now preserved at the British Museum. This book is both a richly illustrated history of Assyrian sculpture in general and a guide to the outstanding collections of the British Museum.
- Paperback 1999
- At Home in the Studio
- This engaging cultural history examines the emergence of a professional identity for American women artists. By focusing on individual sculptors, painters, and illustrators, Prieto gives us a compelling picture of the prospects and constraints faced by women artists in the United States from the late eighteenth century through the 1930s.
- Hardcover 2001
- Audubon: Early Drawings
- In 1805, Jean Jacques Audubon fled revolutionary violence in both Haiti and France to take refuge in frontier America. Ten years later, John James Audubon was an American citizen whose desire to “become acquainted with nature” led him to reinvent himself as a naturalist and artist. The drawings he made during this crucial decade, of specimens he collected in France and in America, are published together here for the first time in large format and full color.
- Hardcover 2008
- Bathers, Bodies, Beauty
- Linda Nochlin explores the contradictions and dissonances that mark experience as well as art. Her book confronts the issues posed in representations of the body in the art of impressionists, modern masters, and contemporary realists and post-modernists. In many ways a personal book, Bathers, Bodies, Beauty brings to bear a lifetime of looking at, teaching, talking about, wrestling with, loving, and hating art to reveal and complicate the visceral experience of art.
- Hardcover 2006
- Beginning with a Bang! From Confrontation to Intimacy
- Beginning with a Bang! features the shift between the explosive and experimental moment in the Argentine art scene of the 1960s, and the current scene emerging after the extreme crises in Argentina during the last 40 years. The exhibition catalogue brings together a historical section as well as information of performance-based actions and sound and video works by Argentine contemporary artists.
- Paperback 2008
- The Berenson Archive
- Hardcover 1965
- Bernard Berenson
- Who was Bernard Berenson, this supreme connoisseur of Italian Renaissance painting? The answers are to be found in the day-to-day record of his life as he lived it.Samuels, having spent twenty years studying the thousands of letters and other manuscripts, presents his story in absorbing detail.
- Hardcover
- Bernard Berenson
- Critic, arbiter of taste, renowned authority on Renaissance painting and oracle to millionaire art collectors, Bernard Berenson was the most formidable presence in the art world for more than thirty years. Four decades of his life are unfolded in this compelling book.
- Hardcover 1979 / Paperback
- Beyond Surface Appeal
Two essays and a set of original diagrams consider the parameters of the “something beyond” in James Carpenter’s projects. Photographs and extended captions from Carpenter complete this book’s documentation of key projects.
- Paperback 2009
- Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture
- Traditionally the "Chinese body" was approached as a totality and explained by sweeping comparisons of the differences that distinguished Chinese examples from their Western counterparts. Recently, scholars have argued that we must look at particular examples of Chinese images of the body and explore their intrinsic conceptual complexity and historical specificity. This book describes a more complex picture of how the visual culture of the body and face in China has served to depict the living, memorialize the dead, and present the unrepresentable in art.
- Hardcover 2004
- Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, Volume 6
The combined Dumbarton Oaks and Fogg collection of Byzantine seals is one of the largest in the world, containing 17,000 specimens. Volume 6 in the catalogue presents the seals of emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople. More than 250 seals are illustrated and accompanied—where appropriate—by a full commentary regarding each specimen’s date, biographical information on its owner, peculiarities of orthography, and iconographic features.
- Hardcover 2009
- Charles Sheeler and Cult of the Machine
- Charles Sheeler (1886-1965) was one of the most noted American painters and photographers to embrace the iconography of the machine. But was he high priest or heretic in the religion of mass production and technology that dominated his era? Karen Lucic considers this intriguing question while telling us Sheeler's story, and showing us how Sheeler produced images of extraordinary aesthetic power that provocatively confirmed America's technological and industrial prestige in vivid detail.
- Paperback
- Chinese Art in Detail
- Drawing on the British Museum's extensive collection, Chinese Art in Detail explores the traditional hierarchy of materials and techniques reaching back as far as the Han Dynasty in the third century B.C. in the history and character of the works under scrutiny, this sumptuously illustrated book conveys an understanding of Chinese art in all its great variety, its simplicities, its complexities, its splendors, and its mysteries of craft and inspiration reaching back to Neolithic times.
- Hardcover 2006
- Chinese Calligraphy
- This is the classic introduction to Chinese calligraphy. In nine richly illustrated chapters Chang explores the aesthetics and the technique of this art in which rhythm, line, and structure are perfectly embodied. He measure the slow change from pictograph to stroke to the style and shape of written characters by the great calligraphers. It is a superb appreciation of beauty in the movement of strokes and in the patterns of structure--and an inspiration to amateurs as well as professionals interested in the decorative arts.
- Paperback 1974
- Christian Art
- What makes works of art Christian? And what, as such, distinguishes them from other works? These are the questions at the center of this book, which is at once a sumptuously illustrated survey of Christian art across space and time and a probing study of what "Christian art" really means, how it functions, where it arises, and whom it serves.
- Hardcover 2007
- Classic-Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz
- This book explores the diverse traditions and dynamic interactions along the Mexican Gulf lowlands at the height of their cultural florescence. Best known for their elaborate ball game rituals and precocious inscriptions with long-count dates, these cultures served as a critical nexus between the civilizations of highland Mexico and the lowland Maya, influencing developments in both regions.
- Hardcover 2008
- Cleopatra and Rome
- In this beautifully illustrated book, we experience the synthesis of Cleopatra's and Rome's defining moments through surviving works of art and other remnants of what was once an opulent material culture. This culture best chronicles Cleopatra's legend and suggests her subtle but indelible mark on the art of imperial Rome at the critical moment of its inception.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2009
- The Column of Antoninus Pius
- Hardcover 1973
- The Compelling Image
- Paperback
- The Craft of Ivory
- This booklet is an examination of the nature of ivory, both as substance of certain consistent characteristics as well as material of varying availability treated by craftsmen in various and peculiar ways. The framework of this approach is defined by the geographical and chronological limits of the ivories at Dumbarton Oaks.
- Paperback 1985
- Cycladic Art
- In the light of current knowledge about early life in the islands, the author draws upon the impressive and remarkably comprehensive collection of Early Cycladic sculptures and other works in the British Museum, supplemented by striking examples from major American and Greek collections, to illustrate the development and increase our enjoyment of Early Cycladic art.
- Paperback 1989
- The Dada Painters and Poets
- The Dada Painters and Poets offers the authentic answer to the question "What is Dada?" This incomparable collection of essays, manifestos, and illustrations was prepared by Robert Motherwell with the collaboration of some of the major Dada figures: Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, and Max Ernst among others. Here in their own words and art, the principals of the movement create a composite picture of Dada--its convictions, antics, and spirit.
- Paperback 1989
- David to Corot
- The Harvard University Art Museums hold one of the world's finest collections of early nineteenth-century drawings; the nearly 500 works reproduced in this catalogue include the most significant groups of drawings outside France by the masters of the age--David, Gericault, Ingres, Delacroix, and Prud'hon. Although familiar to scholars, the collection has never been the subject of a comprehensive catalogue, and many of the drawings are published here for the first time.
- Hardcover 1996
- David to Delacroix
- This renowned study follows the evolution of French painting from the Revolution through the Napoleonic era. Beginning with David's revolutionary classicism, Friedlaender scrutinizes the work of early–nineteenth–century artists against the background of their times.
- Paperback
- De Stijl 1917-1931
- Here is the essential book on De Stijl, one of the longest lived and most influential of modern art movements. H. L. C. Jaffé recounts the history of this abstract movement, explains its artistic goals and practice, delineates its utopian ideology, and describes the special qualities of De Stijl painting, sculpture, architecture, and design.
- Paperback 1986
- Decorated Book Papers
- Decorated Book Papers, first published in 1942, remains one of the standard works on its subject. Loring, a collector and maker of decorated papers, explores the extensive history and use of decorated papers in the book arts. Appendices are devoted to the art of marbling, the preparation of paste papers, and a listing of some early makers of decorated paper.
- Hardcover 2008
- Degas
- Paperback
- Designs on the Heart
- In this book, Karal Ann Marling looks at Grandma Moses as a cultural phenomenon of the postwar period and explores the meaning of her subject matter--and her astonishing fame. Between the cultural ephemera, folklore, song, and history embedded in Moses' paintings and the potent advertising shorthand for Americana that her images rapidly became, this book reveals the widespread longing for the memories, comforts, and small victories of a mythic, intimate American past tapped by the phenomenon of Grandma Moses.
- Hardcover 2006
- Dignity and Decadence
The starting point for Richard Jenkyn’s latest work is his contention that the Victorian age, which we think of as the great age of Gothic, was so shot through with the influence of the classical past that we should instead think of Victorian art and architecture as the continuing flow of two stylistic streams—the Gothic and the classical, side by side.
- Hardcover 1992
- Dogs
- The juxtaposition and explanation of images as diverse as Greek pottery, Victorian jewelry, Assyrian sculpture, and Japanese netsuke, illuminates our understanding of the place of dogs in human society around the world. This book explores these cultural expressions and reflections of our deep and long-standing interest in dogs.
- Hardcover 2008
- Dumbarton Oaks
- Dumbarton Oaks houses the extraordinary art collection begun by Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss. In this book the museum publishes the specialist collections in Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, along with examples from the Blisses’ superb European collection, for the first time.
- Paperback 2008
- Dumbarton Oaks Papers 61
- This latest volume of Dumbarton Oaks Papers focuses in part on literary and historical texts: historicism in Byzantine thought and literature; the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, encompassing the First Crusade and the Armenian diaspora; and a reappraisal of the satirical prose work Mazaris’s Journey to Hades.
- Hardcover 2008
- Dumbarton Oaks Papers 62
- This volume begins with a substantial investigation of the murder of several members of the imperial family during the summer of 337, following the death of Constantine. Among others, are two major articles devoted to well-known Byzantine illustrated manuscripts, the ninth-century Sacra Parallela and the fourteenth-century collection of theological works by the emperor John VI Kanta-kouzenos.
- Hardcover 2009
- Early Celtic Art
- Paperback
- Early Mughal Painting
- Beach traces, with an abundance of captivating illustrations, the evolution of the Mughal style. While acknowledging the influence of Akbar the Great's interests and changing tastes, he shows that many of the new tendencies were evident during the short reign of Akbar's father, the Emperor Humayun, whose role as patron of the arts is thereby reassessed. Beach also stresses the traditionalism of the individual painters, who only gradually changed their concepts and compositions in response to foreign influences and to imperial taste.
- Hardcover 1987
- The Economy of Prestige
- This is a book about one of the great untold stories of modern cultural life: the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature and the arts. James F. English documents the dramatic rise of the awards industry and its complex role within what he describes as an economy of cultural prestige.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2008
- Egyptian Painting
- This book surveys the whole range of Egypian painting, illustrated chiefly by the wealth of material in the British Museum. Jamesexamines the material used by the ancient painters and explains the conventions and methods which governed some great artists, whose work should be valued in its own right as well as for its incomparable record record of Egyptian life 3000 years ago.
- Paperback
- Emancipatory Action
- This volume is based on the exhibition of Paula Trope at the Americas Society (NYC) made in conjunction with Harvard University's Cultural Agency Initiative. Contemporary Brazilian artist Paula Trope has acquired recent notice for the pin-hole photography she creates together with the "Meninos da Rua" (street children) in Rio de Janeiro, of which she is not really the "author" but its facilitator, instructor, and curator.
- Paperback
- Enigma Variations
- In a steamy colonial city, an eccentric Frenchman offers for sale an extraordinary collection of primitive art. The two anthropologists called in to appraise the pieces for the national museum quickly find themselves in a world where the boundaries of authenticity and deception blur in the tropical heat.
- Paperback 1997 / Hardcover 1998
- Ethnic Sculpture
- This book covers the vast field of sculpture produced by traditional societies of the non-Western world. The sculptures range from the delicate and affectionate ivory carvings of the Eskimo hunters of the Arctic to the dignified King figures of the Bakuba people of Central Africa.
- Paperback 1985
- The First Emperor
- Standing guard around the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi, the ranks of a terra-cotta army bear silent witness to the power of the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, who unified China in 221 BCE. Six thousand warriors and horses make up the army, while chariots, a military guard, and a command post complete the host. A new look at one of the most spectacular finds in the annals of archaeology, this book also considers its historical and archaeological context, and the extensive research carried out since its discovery in 1974.
- Hardcover 2007
- Florence
- Nestled in the Apennines, cradle of the Renaissance, home of Dante, Michelangelo, and the Medici, Florence is unlike any other city in its extraordinary mingling of great art and literature, natural splendor, and remarkable history. Intimate and grand, learned and engaging, Michael Levey's Florence renders the city in all of its madness and magnificence.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
- Florentine Painting and its Social Background
An eminent art historian gives us here a full account of the history of Florentine art in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries as well as a stimulating exploration of questions about the social content of art.
- Paperback 1986
- Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self
Since his death in April 12 Francis Bacon has been acclaimed as one of the very greatest of modern painters. Yet most analyses of Bacon actually neutralize his work by discussing it as an existential expression and as the horrifying communication of an isolated individual—which simply transfers the pain in the paintings back to Bacon himself. This study is the first attempt to account for the pain of the viewer.
- Paperback / Hardcover
- Francis Calley Gray and Art Collecting for America
- Hardcover 1986
- Friends of Interpretable Objects
- Tamen's concern is to show how inanimate objects take on life through their interpretation--notably, in our own culture, as they are collected and housed in museums. It is his claim that an object becomes interpretable only in the context of a "society of friends." Thus, he suggests, our inveterate tendency as human beings to interpret the phenomenal world gives objects not only a life but also a society.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2004
- From Egypt to Babylon
- For those who believe that globalization is a purely modern phenomenon, this book holds a startling and absorbing lesson. Readers are immersed in a world of exotic empires and states as they waxed and waned and interacted in a period of extraordinary internationalism—all before the rise of the Persian Empire.
- Hardcover 2008
- Fu Shan's World
- For 1,300 years, Chinese calligraphy was based on the elegant art of Wang Xizhi (A.D. 303-361). But the seventeenth-century emergence of a style modeled on the rough, broken epigraphs of ancient bronzes and stone artifacts brought a revolution in calligraphic taste. By the eighteenth century, this led to the formation of the stele school of calligraphy, which continues to shape Chinese calligraphy today. A dominant force in this school was the eminent calligrapher and art theorist Fu Shan (1607-1685). Because his work spans the late Ming-early Qing divide, it is an ideal prism through which to view the transformation in calligraphy.
- Hardcover 2003
- George Washington Slept Here
- Hardcover 1988
- Gold
- In tracing the history of gold through the ages, this beautiful book showcases the multifarious uses to which the precious metal has been put. Drawing on her own long experience investigating the art and science of metallurgy, Susan La Niece guides readers through the rich history of gold. In detailed images and descriptive text, her book shows us gold over the millennia as coinage, jewelry and ornamentation, high-status vessels, and grave goods; as gifts of distinction, and as radiant symbols in rituals of magic and worship.
- Hardcover 2009
- Graceland
- He wasn't articulate on the subject of himself, but when he created his dream house Elvis Presley spoke volumes. What the mansion says of Elvis, and what it says to--and of--the millions of fans who make the journey there each year, is what Graceland is about.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1997
- Greek Architecture and Its Sculpture
- From Athens and Arcadia on one side of the Aegean Sea and from Ionia, Lycia, and Karia on the other, this book brings together some of the great monuments of classical antiquity--among them two of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the later temple of Artemis at Ephesos and the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos. With 250 photographs and specially commissioned line drawings, the book comprises a monumental narrative of the art and architecture that gave form, direction, and meaning to much of Western culture.
- Hardcover 2007
- Greek Vases
- Paperback
- Hadrian
- Even in the panoply of Roman history, Hadrian stands out. This book moves beyond the familiar image of Hadrian to offer a new appraisal of this Emperor’s contradictory personality, his exploits and accomplishments, his rule, and his military role, against the backdrop of his twenty-one-year reign.
- Hardcover 2008
- Harvard Art Museum Handbook
- With some 280,000 objects, the Harvard Art Museum is the largest university art museum in the United States. This first handbook of the collections surveys their full scope, from early-Egyptian bronzes and Chinese ceramics to contemporary paintings and prints.
- Paperback 2008
- Hindu Art
- In a survey that stretches back to prehistory, Blurton discusses the religious, cultural, and historical influences that figure in Hindu art. Tracing its evolution, he shows how Hindu art has come to embrace widely varying styles, reflecting differences between regions from Nepal to Afghanistan, from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh.
- Paperback / Hardcover
- His Other Half
- Hardcover 1991 / Paperback 1992
- The History of Surrealism
- The History of Surrealism, first published in French in 1944 and in English in 1965, has become a classic. It is both lucid and authoritative--by far the best overall account of this complex movement. Nadeau traces the evolution of Surrealism, bringing to life its many internal debates about politics and art. He relates the movement to its intellectual and artistic environment. And he provides the statements and manifestos of Breton, Aragon, Tzara, and others.
- Paperback
- Horses
- The remarkable relationship between people and horses has been evoked in art from the beginning of the bond between them. In this beautifully illustrated book, Catherine Johns explores the horse in art from the ancient world to the modern era. From the Horse of Selene to Persian miniatures and prints by Duerer, Stubbs, and Hokusai, this book will inform, entertain, and delight horse lovers and all readers interested in this inspiring animal and its profound contribution to human culture.
- Hardcover 2007
- Icons
- Byzantine and Russian Orthodox icons are perhaps the most enduring form of religious art ever developed--and one of the most mysterious. This book provides an accessible guide to their story and power. Illustrated mostly with Cretan, Greek, and Russian examples from the British Museum, which houses Britain's most important collection, the book examines icons in the context of the history of Christianity, as well as within the perspective of art history.
- Hardcover 2007
- The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume I, From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire
- Hardcover
- Indian Art in Detail
- The rich and diverse cultures of India are represented in exquisite detail in this book, which begins with a simple question: what is Indian art? Each thematically organized chapter delves into such topics as religion and myth, epics, festivals, courtly and village life, and the natural world. The gorgeous close-ups of paintings, textiles, and sculptures in metal, ivory, and wood illuminate the aesthetics and workmanship, as well as recurrent motifs that are distinctly Indian.
- Hardcover 2007
- Interpreting Cézanne
- Hardcover 1988
- Islamic Art in Detail
- This richly illustrated book allows readers to identify the elements and themes of Islamic art forms, and to examine them in works of painting and metalwork, in calligraphy and manuscripts, ceramics, glass, wood, and ivory.
- Hardcover 2006
- Japanese Art in Detail
- Beginning by asking, "What is Japanese art?" this book supplies an answer so broad in its reach, so rich in detail, and so extensively illustrated that it gives a reader not just a true picture but also a fine understanding of Japanese art. Arranged thematically, the book includes chapters on nature and pleasure, landscape and beauty, all framed by the themes of serenity and turmoil, the two poles of Japanese culture ancient and modern.
- Hardcover 2006
- John Singleton Copley
- Hardcover 1966
- Leaves from Paradise
- A pair of leaves recently acquired by Houghton Library presents an opportunity to examine the illuminated sequence composed in honor of John the Evangelist. The richly decorated fragments promise to transform our understanding of the special place of Christ’s “beloved disciple” in 14th-century art, liturgy, theology, and mysticism.
- Paperback 2008
- The Lewis & Clark Collection Postcard Book
- The Peabody Museum's Lewis and Clark collection is a set of magnificent objects long thought to be the only surviving ethnographic items acquired by Lewis and Clark during their epic exploration of the American West. This exquisite postcard book contains photographs of eleven of the finest pieces in the collection, interleafed with informative discussions of the objects, their collection histories, and significance. It commemorates the ongoing bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
- Paperback 2005
- Lighting in Early Byzantium
- This book is the first general survey of lighting in Byzantium. The first part of the book discusses the technology and types of lighting devices and explains their decorative symbolism and social function. The second half illustrates this narrative by drawing on a Dumbarton Oaks exhibition.
- Paperback 2009
- Lipstick Traces
- Greil Marcus, author of Mystery Train, widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. "I am an antichrist!" shouted singer Johnny Rotten-where in the world of pop music did that come from? Looking for an answer, with a high sense of the drama of the journey, Marcus takes us down the dark paths of counterhistory, a route of blasphemy, adventure, and surprise.
- Hardcover 1989 / Paperback 1990
- The Lyric Journey
- Poetic paintings--works done in response to lyric poems or as pictorial equivalents to them--compose a major category of East Asian art. In this beautifully illustrated book James Cahill, looks at three exemplary traditions in this genre.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 2002
- Manet's Silence and the Poetics of Bouquets
- A sense of stillness and silence pervades Manet's painting. It is this silence that James Rubin explores in this book. Applying J. L. Austin's notion of the performative, which bridges the gap between language and action or between the painted image and its social effect, Rubin goes beyond past theorists to describe the curious ways in which Manet's paintings act upon us.
- Paperback 1995 / Hardcover
- Mannerism
- Paperback
- Marbled and Paste Papers
- Facsimile Edition
- Loring, author of Decorated Book Papers, was also a skilled maker of marbled and paste papers. Her recipe book has been preserved in the Rosamond B. Loring Collection of Decorated Papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University. This facsimile edition is accompanied by an essay by Sidney E. Berger commenting on the recipes and analyzing Loring's materials and techniques.
- Paperback 2007
- Master Drawings of the Italian Renaissance
- A beautifully designed selection of the finest Italian Renaissance drawings from the British Museum, the Louvre and other French public collections, giving remarkable insight into the creative processes of some of the greatest artists in history.
- Hardcover 2007
- Merry Christmas!
- It wouldn't be Christmas without the "things." How they came to mean so much, and to play such a prominent role in America's central holiday, is the tale told in this delightful and edifying book. In a style characteristically engaging and erudite, Karal Ann Marling, one of our most trenchant observers of American culture, describes the outsize spectacle that Christmas has become.
- Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2001
- Mosaics as History
- Over the past century, exploration and serendipity have uncovered mosaic after mosaic in the Near East--maps, historical images and religious scenes that constitute a treasure of new testimony from antiquity. In their complex language, G. W. Bowersock finds historical evidence, illustrations of literary and mythological tradition, religious icons, and monuments to civic pride. Attending to one of the most evocative languages of the ages, his work reveals a fusion of cultures and religions that speaks to us across time.
- Hardcover 2006
- The Naked Gaze
- This volume focuses on tropes of visuality and gender to reflect on shifting understandings of the significance of Chineseness, modernity, and Chinese modernity. Through detailed readings of narrative works by eight authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the study identifies three distinct constellations of visual concerns corresponding to the late imperial, mid-twentieth century, and contemporary periods, respectively.
- Hardcover 2009
- Niche
- Niche tells the story of an artist who meets a scientist and through the encounter makes a hypothesis: If the artist became a stem cell and then divided into a neuron, would he discover the meaning of intelligence? Edwards and Cantor introduce a new fiction genre—the novel catalogue—to coincide with the opening of the new art and design innovation center in Paris, Le Laboratoire. The novel catalogue fictionalizes the creative process of an exhibition season which opens with the artistic outcome of an experiment between Fabrice Hyber, a French artist, and Robert Langer of MIT.
- Paperback 2008
- Olympic Sculpture Park for the Seattle Art Museum
- Envisioned as a new urban model for sculpture parks, the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park is located on the city’s last undeveloped waterfront property—a nine-acre industrial site sliced by train tracks and an arterial road. The park not only brings art outside the museum walls but also brings the park itself into the landscape of the city. This study offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the city and explore some hypotheses about the wider meaning of an urban design project.
- Paperback 2008
- On the Study of Indian Art
Serious study of the art of India began only in the nineteenth century. This small volume provides a masterly overview of the scholarship of the past century and a half.
Mr. Chandra's purpose is twofold: to help present–day students understand their scholarly heritage, and to encourage them to re-examine their own methods and assumptions.
- Hardcover 1983
- Pacing the World
- This extensively illustrated book is the first full-length study of the Canadian-born sculptor David Rabinowitch. Whitney Davis closely analyzes six groups of works produced by Rabinowitch between 1963 and the present, and explores Rabinowitch's relations to the work of modern painters and sculptors as well as his involvement with the wider history of art.
- Paperback 1997 / Hardcover
- Painting outside the Lines
- In a work that brings new insights, and new dimensions, to the history of modern art, David Galenson examines the careers of more than 100 modern painters to disclose a fascinating relationship between age and artistic creativity.
- Hardcover 2002
- The Parthenon Sculptures
- The Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum are unrivaled examples of classical Greek art, an inspiration to artists and writers since their creation in the fifth century BCE. A superb visual introduction to these wonders of antiquity, this book offers a photographic tour of the most famous of the surviving sculptures from ancient Greece, viewed within their cultural and art-historical context.
- Hardcover 2008
- Pattern and Person
- In Classical China, crafted artifacts offered a material substrate for abstract thought as graphic paradigms for social relationships. Focusing on the fifth to second centuries B.C., Martin Powers explores how these paradigms continued to inform social thought long after the material substrate had been abandoned. Historically, Pattern and Person traces the evolution of personhood in China from a condition of hereditary status to one of achieved social role and greater personal choice.
- Hardcover 2006
- Poetry and Painting in Song China
- During the Song dynasty (960-1278), some members of China's elite found an elegant and subtle means of dissent: landscape painting. By examining literary archetypes, the titles of paintings, contemporary inscriptions, and the historical context, Alfreda Murck shows that certain paintings expressed strong political opinions--some transparent, others deliberately concealed. She argues that the capacity of painting's systems of reference to allow scholars to express dissent with impunity contributed to the art's vitality and longevity.
- Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2002
- Political Landscape
- Little in the landscape remains untouched by human hands, and every touch, from the simplest ditch to the most intricate monument, reveals a political decision or design. This is how Martin Warnke, one of Germany's leading art historians, looks at landscape in this book, which leads to a new way of seeing nature as we have appropriated, represented, and transformed it over time. Covering nearly a thousand years and most of western Europe, he provides a compelling summary history of modern humanity's ill-fated attempt to master nature.
- Hardcover 1995 / Paperback 1996
- Primitivism in Modern Art
- This now classic study maps the profound effect of primitive art on modern, as well as the primitivizing strain in modern art itself. Robert Goldwater describes how and why works by primitive artists attracted modern painters and sculptors, and he delineates the differences between what is truly primitive or archaic and what intentionally embodies such elements.
- Paperback 1986
- A Principality of its Own
- This collection of critical essays examines distinctive moments of the Americas Society's visual art program and its impact on the formation of a Latin American market in the United States. Founded in 1965, the Americas Society has played a pivotal role in Latin American art, from Pre-Colombian to modernism. A Principality of Its Own explores the achievements and experiments that modeled the institution from the Cold War to the present.
- Paperback 2007
- Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 47, Spring 2005
- Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.
- Paperback 2005
- Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 48, Autumn 2005
- Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.
- Paperback 2005
- Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 49/50, Spring/Autumn 2006
- Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.
- Paperback 2006
- Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 51, Spring 2007
- Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.
- Paperback
- Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 52, Fall 2007
- Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.
- Paperback 2008
- Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 53/54, Spring and Autumn 2008
- Among other articles, this double volume includes: The value of forgery, Jonathan Hay; Affective operations of art and literature, Ernst van Alphen; Betty’s Turn, Stephen Melville.
- Paperback 2008
- Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 55/56, Absconding
- Paperback 2009
- Roman Britain, Second Edition
- The four centuries during which the Roman presence in Britain rose, flourished, and then declined changed every aspect of life. This revised and updated edition of Roman Britain outlines with clarity and authority this critical period of history, and illustrates it fully with pictures of the surviving objects of the period, largely from the incomparable collections of the British Museum.
- Paperback 1997
- Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder
- Helsinger here explores the profound changes Ruskin induced in the way nineteenth-century viewers looked at nature and at art. She argues that Ruskin transformed the artist- or poet-oriented aesthetics of romanticism into a beholder- or reader-oriented criticism. Combining critical attention to Ruskin's prose with her own wide-ranging scholarship, Helsinger places Ruskin's perceptual reforms within previously unexplored intellectual and cultural contexts.
- Hardcover 1982
- Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825
- This elegant new book created by a team of leading historians in collaboration with The New York Public Library traces Russia's development from an insular, medieval, liturgical realm centered on Old Muscovy, into a modern, secular, world power embodied in cosmopolitan St. Petersburg. Featuring eight essays and 120 images from the Library's distinguished collections, it is both an engagingly written work and a striking visual object.
- Paperback 2003 / Hardcover 2003
- Sappho in the Making
- This book offers the first interdisciplinary and in-depth study of the cultural practices and ideological paradigms that conditioned the politics of the "reading" of Sappho's songs in the early and most pivotal stages of her reception. Yatromanolakis investigates visual representations and ancient texts in their synchronic and diachronic multilayeredness to trace the discursive nexuses that defined the making of "Sappho" in the late archaic, classical, and early Hellenistic periods.
- Paperback 2008
- Sassetta
- Sassetta, the subtle genius from Siena, revolutionized Italian painting with an altarpiece for the small Tuscan town of Borgo San Sepolcro in 1437–1444. This book solves the three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of this masterwork’s reconstruction and, on a firm scientific foundation, restores it to its vivid historical context.
- Hardcover 2009
- The Sculpture of India, 3000 B.C.-A.D. 1300
- This exhibition catalogue has been written by one of the world's leading experts on Indian art. He provides an introductory survey of Indian sculpture over the ages--its various styles and schools and diverse idioms--followed by illuminating analyses of the individual works.
- Hardcover 1985
- The Shape of Content
- Hardcover 1957 / Paperback 1992
- Silver
- The curious course of silver through human history unfolds in this rich and engaging book, accompanied by striking illustrations from the British Museum. From the practical aspects of working silver to its role in magic, myth, and ritual in cultures as disparate as the Vikings and the Bedouins of North Africa, this exquisite book offers a full and fitting reflection of this precious metal’s power to move us.
- Hardcover 2009
- Studio Works 12
- The aim of Studio Works is to capture the essential character of the design studio experience at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Studio Works 12 features outstanding GSD student work from school years 2005–2006 and 2006–2007, along with material documenting exhibitions, research seminars, and thesis projects.
- Paperback 2008
- The Theory of the Avant-Garde
- Convinced that all aspects of modern culture have been affected by avant-garde art, Poggioli explores the relationship between the avant-garde and civilization. Historical parallels and modern examples from all the arts are used to show how the avant-garde is both symptom and cause of many major extra-aesthetic trends of our time, and that the contemporary avant-garde is the sole and authentic one.
- Hardcover 1965 / Paperback 1981
- Thomas Eakins
- Hardcover
- Thresholds of the Sacred
- From the walls and curtains of first-century Judaism to the tramezzo of Renaissance Italy, screens of various shapes and sizes have been used to separate the sacred from the secular. Drawn from papers presented at a recent Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies symposium, this volume provides insightful new research on the history of the iconostasis.
- Hardcover 2007
- Toulouse-Lautrec
- This catalogue documents a collection of 24 black and white reproductions of book covers and brochures illustrated by Toulouse-Latrec housed in the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts at the Houghton Library. This is a sequel to Philip Hofer's A Bestiary by Toulouse-Lautrec.
- Paperback 2005
- Traditions of Japanese Art
- Hardcover 1970
- Tsars and Cossacks
- Ukrainian Cossacks used icon painting to investigate their relationship not only with God but also their relationship with the Russian tsar. In this groundbreaking study, Serhii Plokhy examines the political and religious culture of Ukrainian Cossackdom, as reflected in the Cossack-era paintings, icons, and woodcuts. By encouraging the iconography to "speak," Tsars and Cossacks enriches our understanding of Ukrainian iconography as well as Russian imperial political culture.
- Paperback 2003
- Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926
- This first volume shows that even as a young man Benjamin possessed astonishing intellectual range and depth. His topics here include poetry and fiction, drama, philosophy, history, religion, love, violence, morality, mythology, painting, and much more. He is as compelling and insightful when musing on riddles or children's books as he is when dealing with weightier issues such as symbolic logic or epistemology.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 2004
- Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, part 1, 1927-1930
- In the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, Benjamin emerged as the most original public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of the Selected Writings is now available in paperback in two parts. In Part 1, Benjamin is represented by two of his greatest literary essays, "Surrealism" and "On the Image of Proust," as well as by a long article on Goethe and a generous selection of his wide-ranging commentary for Weimar Germany's newspapers.
- Paperback 2005
- Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, part 2, 1931-1934
- Volume 2 of the Selected Writings is now available in paperback in two parts. Part 2 contains, in addition to the important longer essays, "Franz Kafka," "Karl Kraus," and "The Author as Producer," the extended autobiographical meditation "A Berlin Chronicle," and extended discussions of the history of photography and the social situation of the French writer, previously untranslated shorter pieces on such subjects as language and memory, theological criticism and literary history, astrology and the newspaper, and on such influential figures as Paul Valery, Stefan George, Hitler, and Mickey Mouse.
- Paperback 2005
- Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938-1940
- This volume ranges from studies of Baudelaire, Brecht, and the historian Carl Jochmann to appraisals of photography, film, and poetry. At their core is the question of how art adapts to survive and thrive in an age of violence and repression. The book is remarkable for its inquiry into the nature of "the modern," for its ideas about the transmogrification of art and the radical discontinuities of history, and for its examples of humane life and thought in the midst of barbarism.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2006
- The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
- Benjamin’s famous “Work of Art” essay sets out his boldest thoughts—on media and on culture in general. This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the “Work of Art” essay—the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin’s observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting.
- Paperback 2008
- Working Space
- Here is a rare opportunity to view painting through the discerning eyes of one of the world's foremost abstract painters. Stella uses the crisis of representational art in sixteenth-century Italy to illuminate the crisis of abstraction in our time. Professionals, students, collectors and all lovers of art will find Stella's non-traditional evaluations of the masters' work controversial and his fresh concepts wonderfully provocative.
- Hardcover 1986 / Paperback 1986
- Worthy Monuments
- Choosing the art museums of provincial France in the previous century as a paradigm, Sherman reaches toward an understanding of the museum's place in modern society by exploring its past. He uses an array of previously unstudied archival sources as evidence that the museum's emergence as an institution involved not only the intricacies of national policy but also the political dynamics and social fabric of the nineteenth-century city.
- Hardcover 1989