This series delves into the vibrant world of art and the ideas that shaped it, with each volume exploring pivotal concepts and influential figures. It offers an engaging introduction to complex artistic theories and movements, making them accessible to a broad audience. This collection is perfect for art enthusiasts, students, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of creativity and its intellectual foundations.
In this new monograph, the latest in Phaidon’s Art & Ideas series, Wayne Franits examines the work of Vermeer within the framework of his times, one of the most intellectually creative periods in this history of art. Written in a lively and accessible style, and incorporating the latest scholarship on the artist, Franits provides fresh insights into many of Vermeer’s most famous works, uncovering the creative process behind them and their wealth of meanings.
The book offers an insightful introduction to the Baroque and Rococo periods, exploring the art and architecture across Europe, South America, and Asia from 1570 to 1780. It delves into the unique characteristics and cultural significance of these artistic movements, providing a comprehensive understanding of their impact on various regions during this transformative era.
Cubism remains perhaps the single most important development in the history of twentieth-century art. It was the creation of just two artists - Georges Braque, a Frenchman, and Pablo Picasso, a Spaniard - between the years 1907 and 1914. Working alongside each other in Paris, then the artistic capital of the world, they invented a way of making pictures and sculptures that broke with conventions established 500 years earlier in the Renaissance. Their new art drew on the ruptures that had taken place in the previous decade (especially the work of Paul Cézanne) and also on their new ways of seeing non-Western art. Cubism was an idea of such power and flexibility that it spread across Europe and America with astonishing speed. Its enthusiasts include many great names in modern art such as Juan Gris, Fernand Léger and Marcel Duchamp. Cubism penetrated artistic activity far beyond painting and sculpture; it reinvigorated architecture, graphic design, music and poetry, and transformed the possibilities of photography and film. This exciting book covers the full range of its influence.
Focusing on Jacques-Louis David's dual role as both a participant and chronicler of the French Revolution, the book delves into his evolution during Napoleon's rise, highlighting his glorifying artworks. It offers a comprehensive examination of David's career, character, and shifting relationships with patrons, providing a fresh analysis enriched with new insights into his life and artistic contributions.
William Hogarth (1697-1764) is certainly one of the most versatile, innovative and celebrated of all British artists. He lived at a time when Britain was emerging as an increasingly urbanized, commercialized and aggressively imperial power. Like many other artists, he exploited and benefited from these changes in British society. Among his contemporaries, it was Hogarth who commented most brilliantly on society - both positively and negatively. His work celebrates the benefits of commerce, politeness and patriotism while simultaneously focusing on the corruption, hypocrisy and prejudice they brought in their wake. In paint and in print we are shown the two contrasting sides of modernity. This book explores and explains the dramatic duality within Hogarth's work, and in doing so gives us a greater sense of the contradictions and complexities that existed within eighteenth-century British society.
What is art? Must it be a unique, saleable luxury item? Can it be a concept that never takes material form? Or an idea for a work that can be repeated endlessly? Conceptual art favours a vivid engagement with such questions. It can take many photographs, videos, posters, billboards, charts, plans and, in particular, language itself. Tony Godfrey has written the first ever clear, extensive, concise and informative account of this fascinating phenomenon.
From an early age Goya was anxious to preserve a record of his life, but few
of his writings have survived and his most personal records appear in his
letters. Goya's surviving letters reveal a highly emotional man, prepared to
state his feelings as passionately to the authorities of a Cathedral as to a
close friend.
