Arts, Architecture & Design Books

Things in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Personal items deteriorate. Yet today's researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that physically sense, adapt, and...

For a century and a half, women have been proving their passion and talent for building and, in recent decades, their enrollment in architecture schools has soared. Yet the number of women working as architects remains stubbornly low, and the higher one...

An unprecedented survey of the origins and evolution of Chinese architecture, from the last millennia BCE to todayThroughout history, China has maintained one of the world's richest built civilizations. The nation's architectural achievements range from...

Magical Mathematics reveals the secrets of fun-to-perform card tricks--and the profound mathematical ideas behind them--that will astound even the most accomplished magician. Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham provide easy, step-by-step instructions for each...

Before the nineteenth century, instrumental music was considered inferior to vocal music. Kant described wordless music as "more pleasure than culture," and Rousseau dismissed it for its inability to convey concepts. But by the early 1800s, a dramatic...

A facsimile edition of the artist's fascinating working notebooksBrooklyn-born Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) was one of the most important artists of the 1980s. A key figure in the New York art scene, he inventively explored the interplay between words...

This lavishly illustrated volume is the first major global history of ornament from the Middle Ages to today. Crossing historical and geographical boundaries in unprecedented ways and considering the role of ornament in both art and architecture,...

The first history of Frank Lloyd Wright's exhibitions of his own work--a practice central to his career More than one hundred exhibitions of Frank Lloyd Wright's work were mounted between 1894 and his death in 1959. Wright organized the majority of these...

This is a cultural history of mathematics and art, from antiquity to the present. Mathematicians and artists have long been on a quest to understand the physical world they see before them and the abstract objects they know by thought alone. Taking...

The love of books in the Jewish tradition extends back over many centuries, and the ways of interpreting those books are as myriad as the traditions themselves. Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink offers the first full survey of Jewish illuminated...

A fun and stunningly illustrated introduction to the art of linear optimizationLinear optimization is a powerful modeling method for discovering the best solution to a problem among a set of available alternatives. It is one of today's most important...

This richly illustrated book provides an anthology and summation of the work of one of the world's leading historians of Chinese painting and calligraphy. Wen Fong helped create the field of East Asian art history during a distinguished five-decade...

Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the social landscape. Reds, Whites, and Blues examines the...

Architecture is distinguished from other art forms by its sense of function, its localized quality, its technique, its public and nonpersonal character, and its continuity with the decorative arts. In this important book, Roger Scruton calls for a return...

In this wide-ranging and authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history.Synthesising and...

Science on Stage is the first full-length study of the phenomenon of "science plays"--theatrical events that weave scientific content into the plot lines of the drama. The book investigates the tradition of science on the stage from the Renaissance to...

The international controversy over who "owns" antiquities has pitted museums against archaeologists and source countries where ancient artifacts are found. In his book Who Owns Antiquity?, James Cuno argued that antiquities are the cultural property of...

A provocative case for historical ambiguity in architecture by one of the field's leading theorists.Conceptions of modernity in architecture are often expressed in the idea of the zeitgeist, or 'spirit of the age,' an attitude toward architectural form...

The Mind's Eye focuses on the relationships among art, theology, exegesis, and literature--issues long central to the study of medieval art, yet ripe for reconsideration. Essays by leading scholars from many fields examine the illustration of theological...

When Georgia O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917, she was instantly drawn to the stark beauty of its unusual architectural and landscape forms. In 1929, she began spending part of almost every year painting there, first in Taos, and subsequently in...

A beautifully illustrated examination of the women artists whose inspired search for artistic integrity and equality influenced Expressionist avant-garde culture.Women Artists in Expressionism explores how women negotiated the competitive world of modern...

Few sources reveal the life of the ancient Romans as vividly as do the houses preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. Wealthy Romans lavished resources on shaping their surroundings to impress their crowds of visitors. The fashions they set were taken up...

In this classic guide, the foremost Wagner expert of our century discusses ten of Wagner's most beloved operas, illuminates their key themes and the myths and literary sources behind the librettos, and demonstrates how the composer's style changed from...

In this book Jean-Jacques Nattiez, well-known for his pioneering work in musical semiology, examines both music, and discourse about music, as products of human activity that are perceived in varying ways by various cultures. Asking such questions as...

The classic work on Gothic religious architecture, now with added illustrations and a new section by the author on rose windowsNo other monument of a culture so radically different from our own is as much a part of contemporary life as the Gothic...

This revised edition incorporates the additions and corrections recorded by Erwin Panofsky until the time of his death in 1968. Gerda Panofsky-Soergel has updated the commentary in the light of new material, and the bibliography that she has prepared...

Bzier Vol.1 is an inspirational survey of today's leading practicing vector illustrators. It offers a unique insight into the creative approaches and practices of artists at the forefront of their craft.

This book contains both English and Russian text. Robert Bremner has carefully compiled this collection of fascinating and candid interviews by Australia's most internationally performed classical composer, Julian Cochran, republished to delight a new...

This catalogue is a companion to the annual exhibition which celebrates another year in Australia's unique, vibrant and fearless tradition of political cartooning. No politician, party or policy is safe from the nation's best cartoonists; witty, powerful...

John Glover is Australia's most distinguished early colonial artist and the only nineteenth-century painter to have had a successful career in Europe before migrating. He arrived from Britain to convict Tasmania in 1831 aged 64. Why did he, in old age,...

Spowers & Syme celebrates the artistic friendship of Melbourne artists Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme. Their prints, drawings and paintings remarkable for their expressive energy capture the zeitgeist of the interwar years. This beautifully...

Cressida Campbell celebrates the career of an exceptional Australian colourist who has worked between painting and printmaking for over forty years. Combining keen observation with formal design, Campbell uses an innovative technique to create woodblock...

The year 2021 marks the centenary of the birth of Australian artist Jeffrey Smart, an artist with a distinctive vision whose work enables us to see the world around us afresh. This publication celebrates and commemorates this significant anniversary...

Printed: Images by Australian artists 1942-2020 traces the history of printmaking by Australian artists during an era of dramatic changes in Australian society and the visual arts. Arranged in three sections, it begins with the innovative wartime policy...

Joan Mitchell: Worlds of colour is the first exhibition in Australia to explore the work of this North American artist, surveying the series of prints that she created at Tyler Graphics in 1981 and 1992.Born in Chicago, Mitchell emerged in the early...

Stories for Ways and Means features original "grown up" story collaborations by some of this era's most compelling storytellers from the worlds of music and contemporary art.Ten years ago Jeff Antebi, the founder of music publisher Waxploitation, had an...

A rich vein of the artist's mature work, depicting the foundations of landscape and placeFrom the mid-1860s until shortly before his death, Paul Czanne (18391906) created 27 canvases that take rock formations as their principal subjects. This is the...

Princeton's Great Persian Book of Kings presents the first comprehensive examination of a beautifully decorated yet relatively unknown manuscript of the Shahnama (Book of Kings), created in 158990 in the flourishing cultural center of Shiraz. Held by...

The Princeton University Art Museum's collection of Spanish drawings includes masterworks by artists such as Jusepe de Ribera (15911652), Bartolom Esteban Murillo (16171682), Francisco Goya (17461828), Pablo Picasso (18811973), and Salvador Dal...

The essays in More than One examine sequentiality and serialism in the practice of photography from the medium's earliest years to the present. Contributors explore nuances of syntax and sense raised by works like photographic albums, books, thematic...

The music's still playing, fifty years on...It is 1965, and John, Paul, George and Ringo have lost themselves. Beatlemania is at its peak and the boys are overwhelmed by screaming fans, more money than they can count, and fame beyond their...

Wabi sabi, the quintessential Japanese design aesthetic, is quickly gaining popularity around the world. Taken from the Japanese words wabi, which translates to less is more, and sabi, which means attentive melancholy, wabi...

William Kluba, author, takes an in-depth look at the origins of inspiration and ideas, to help us better understand where creativity comes from in our bodies and minds, and to understand how this intangible force translates into artistic expression. This...

Since the beginning of time, there has been struggle. The epic clash of being against being. Tyrannosaurus Rex vs. Triceratops. Giant Squid vs. the Sperm Whale. The Circle vs. the Square. This is a chronicling of some of the greatest...

First published in 1948, Mechanization Takes Command is an examination of mechanization and its effects on everyday life. A monumental figure in the field of architectural history, Sigfried Giedion traces the evolution and resulting philosophical...

The Swiss Otto Knzli (born in 1948) revolutionised modern jewellery design and is regarded as 'one of the most intelligent and atthe same time most critical artists in the world of jewelry' (Ralph Turner: The New Jewelry, 1985/1994). Over the course of...

Tropical Style presents thirty-five contemporary houses, apartments and resorts that evoke the essence of "Malaysian Style" - a combination of indigenous cultural forms, foreign influences, natural building materials, local craftsmanship and adaptations...

A paleoartist is an illustrator who specialises in the science and art of reconstructing ancient animals and their world. In "Dinosaur Art," ten of the top contemporary paleoartists reveal a selection of their work and exclusively discuss their working...