Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Valentin Serov
Among the “young peredvizhniki” who joined the World of Art group, the most brilliant portraitist was Valentin Serov. Like many of his contemporaries, he delighted in painting out of doors, and some of his most appealing portraits – such as Girl with Peaches, Girl in Sunlight and In Summer - owe their naturalness to their setting or to the interplay of sunlight and shadows. Indeed, Serov regarded them as “studies” rather than portraits, giving them descriptive titles that omitted the sitter's name. The subject of Girl with Peaches – painted when Serov was only twenty-two – was in fact Mamontov's daughter Vera. The model for In Summer was Serov's wife. When only six years old, S...
Bikini Story
It was in 1946 that the world first came to hear of a coral atoll in the Marshall Islands called Bikini. The following year, French couturier Louis Réard borrowed the name and applied it to a bathing costume for women. Breaking from decades of conformity, Réard dared to ‘undress’ women’s bodies in order to better emphasize what remained clothed - albeit in tiny wisps of material. By taking up the bikini as popular beachwear, women also found themselves thinking differently about their bodies. An ideal of perfection was reinforced by the appearance on the cinema screen of stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and Ursula Andress, all of whom were featured in bikinis that accent...
Gay Art
This book is not a panegyric of homosexuality. It is a scientific study led by Professor James Smalls who teaches art story . His works examines the process of creation and allows one to comprehend the contribution of homosexuality to the evolution of emotional perception. In a time when all barriers have been overcome, this analysis offers a new understanding of our civilisation's masterpieces.
Vincent van Gogh by Vincent van Gogh - Volume 1
Vincent van Gogh’s life and work are so intertwined that it is hardly possible to see his pictures without reading in them the story of his life, a life which has been described so many times that it is by now the stuff of legend. Van Gogh is the incarnation of the suffering, the misunderstood martyr of modern art, the emblem of the artist as an outsider. “When one lives with others and is bound by feelings of affection, then one realises that one has a reason for living, that one may not be utterly worthless and expendable, but is perhaps good for something, since we need one another and are journeying together as compagnons de voyage. But our proper sense of self-esteem is also highly dependent upon our relationship with others. A prisoner who is condemned to solitude, who is prevented from working, etc., will in the long run, especially if the run is too long, suffer from the effects as surely as one who has gone hungry too long. Like everyone else, I need friendly or affectionate relationships or intimate companionship, and am not made of stone or iron like a pump or a lamppost…”
Ivan Shishkin
Russian countryside is some of the world’s most lovely, from the celebrated explosions of wild flowers that fill its forests in the spring, to the icy winter tundra that defeated the advances of Napoleon and Hitler, and provided the backdrop for the drama of many of Russian literature’s celebrated scenes. And no one immortalized it better than Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), a Russian landscape painter. In this comprehensive work of scholarship, Irina Shuvalova and Victoria Charles make a thorough examination of Shishkin’s work.
Naive Art
Naive art first became popular at the end of the 19th century. Until that time, this form of expression, created by untrained artists and characterised by spontaneity and simplicity, enjoyed little recognition from professional artists and art critics. Influenced by primitive arts, naive painting is distinguished by the fluidity of its lines, vivacity, and joyful colours, as well as by its rather clean-cut, simple shapes. Naive art counts among it artists: Henri Rousseau, Séraphine de Senlis, André Bauchant, and Camille Bombois. This movement has also found adherents abroad, including such prominent artists as Joan Miró, Guido Vedovato, Niko Pirosmani, and Ivan Generalic.
The Story of Lingerie
What is the social merit or purpose of all those bras and panties on perfectly sculpted bodies that we see spread across billboards and magazines? Many women indulge in lingerie to please men. Yet, ever since Antiquity, women have always kept lingerie hidden away under outer garments. Thus, lingerie must be more than erotic bait. Authors Muriel Barbier and Shazia Boucher have researched iconography to explore the relationship of lingerie to society, the economy and the corridors of intimacy. They correlate lingerie with emancipation, querying whether it asserts newfound freedoms or simply adjusts to conform to changing social values. The result is a rigorous scientific rationale spiced with a zest of humour. And the tinier lingerie gets, the more scholarly attention it deserves.
Art of the Devil
“The Devil holds the strings which move us!” (Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, 1857.) Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer... the Devil has many names and faces, all of which have always served artists as a source of inspiration. Often commissioned by religious leaders as images of fear or veneration, depending on the society, representations of the underworld served to instruct believers and lead them along the path of righteousness. For other artists, such as Hieronymus Bosch, they provided a means of denouncing the moral decrepitude of one’s contemporaries. In the same way, literature dealing with the Devil has long offered inspiration to artists wishing to exorcise evil through images, especially the works of Dante and Goethe. In the 19th century, romanticism, attracted by the mysterious and expressive potential of the theme, continued to glorify the malevolent. Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, the monumental, tormented work of a lifetime, perfectly illustrates this passion for evil, but also reveals the reason for this fascination. Indeed, what could be more captivating for a man than to test his mastery by evoking the beauty of the ugly and the diabolic?
Expressionism
Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Emil Nolde, E.L. Kirchner, Paul Klee, Franz Marc as well as the Austrians Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele were among the generation of highly individual artists who contributed to the vivid and often controversial new movement in early twentieth-century Germany and Austria: Expressionism. This publication introduces these artists and their work. The author, art historian Ashley Bassie, explains how Expressionist art led the way to a new, intense, evocative treatment of psychological, emotional and social themes in the early twentieth century. The book examines the developments of Expressionism and its key works, highlighting the often intensely subjective imagery and the aspirations and conflicts from which it emerged while focusing precisely on the artists of the movement.
Homosexuality in Art
This book is not a panegyric of homosexuality. It is a scientific study led by Professor James Smalls who teaches art history in the prestigious University of Maryland, Baltimore county. The author attempts to highlight the sensibility particular to homosexuals in creation, and abandons all classical cliches and sociological approaches. This book examines the process of creating and allows one to comprehend the contribution of homosexuality to the evolution of emotional perception. In a time when all barriers have been broken, this analysis offers a second look and a new understanding of our civilization's masterpieces.
