This Art Now 25th anniversary special edition brings together recent work and biographical information for over 80 of today's most influential artists, forming a broad and vibrant spectrum of the work that has shaped the art world in recent years.

Featured artists include: Matthew Barney, Maurizio Cattelan, John Currin, Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, Rineke Dijkstra, Douglas Gordon, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Hirschhorn, Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Sharon Lockhart, Won Ju Lim, Paul McCarthy, Mariko Mori, Sarah Morris, Vik Muniz, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Albert Oehlen, Chris Ofili, Gabriel Orozco, Jorge Pardo, Elizabeth Peyton, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Luc Tuymans, Jeff Wall, and Andrea Zittel.

TASCHEN's 25th anniversary - Special edition!

 

Who could possibly have forecast on New Year's Eve 1899 that, one hundred years later, painting and sculpture would be only options, not prerequisites? The term "art" has been defined and redefined so many times over the last 100 years that it has gained entirely new social, political, and technological meanings.

A unique world full of pathos, poetry, humour and enchantment

 

Marc Chagall, who died in 1985 at the age of 97, was without doubt one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. In his paintings he created a unique world full of pathos, poetry, humour and enchantment, drawing on vivid memories of Vitebsk, his birthplace and childhood home in today`s republic of Belarus. He was clearly influenced by Byzantine and Russian icon painting and folk art, but wished his own mythologigal floating figures and symbolism to be interpreted freely.

Treasures from the ancient land of the Pharaohs

The art of ancient Egypt that has been handed down to us bears no names of its creators, and yet we value the creations of these unknown masters no less than the works of later centuries, such as statues by Michelangelo or the paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. The present volume introduces a series of such masterpieces, ranging from the Old Kingdom, or the 3rd millennium B.C., to the Late Period in the 9th century B.C. The works in question are sculptures, reliefs, sarcophagi, murals, masks, and decorative items, most of them now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but some occupying places of honor as part of the world cultural heritage in museums such as the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Egyptian Museum in Berlin and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

During the first two decades of the 20th century, many artists famously experimented with nonrepresentational expression. Taking cues from ideas hinted as by artists such as El Greco, Goya, Van Gogh, and Munch, Expressionists sought to transform reality rather than depict it in any sort of literal fashion. Egon Schiele, Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky are among Expressionism`s most famous exponents.

Otherworldly works

This book brings together a colorful mixture of various works focusing on themes of the fantastic and surreal, starting with Böcklin's "Toteninsel" and including Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, Hans Bellmer`s dolls, the Australian painter Sidney Nolan, Giger's monsters, Cattelan's pope, and the Chapman brothers` hybrids, as well as surreal painting from Magritte and Delvaux, the mystical and sensual work of Gustav Klimt, and Frida Kahlo`s dreamlike self-portraits.

About the Series:

TASCHEN portfolios feature high quality prints that beg to be framed. Tucked in each portfolio are 14 large-format reproductions, each with a brief description. Guaranteed to brighten any day, they also make great gifts for art lovers!

The Italian avant-garde

Inspired by the development of Cubism, the Futurist movement was founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, along with painters Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, and Gino Severini. The school, which celebrated technology and the mechanical era, was comprised of painters, sculptors, designers, architects, and writers. Motion and machines were two main themes of this movement, which attacked the bastions of establishment and sparked controversy by its glorification of war and support of Fascism. Experimenting with movement, and speed, and abstract light and color, the Futurists developed approaches and techniques that were revolutionary at the time, and in retrospect one can see that the Futurists influenced other avant-garde art movements, most notably Russian Constructivism.

The earliest Gothic art dates back to mid-12th century France, from which it spread throughout Western Europe through the 15th century. The Gothic style, which dominated the European aesthetic for four centuries, was prominent both in architecture, especially cathedrals and churches, and the arts—painting, sculpture, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, and frescoes. Predominantly religious, Gothic art was dark and emotional, marked by intensity and logical formalism. The later Gothic period, known as the International Style, was a precursor to the Renaissance.

The 18th century`s Neoclassicist movement, with its white marble sculptures inspired by the art of the ancient world, has helped Greek art to remain vivid in our memories even today. But the reality of ancient art was entirely different, as surfaces were in fact much more brut. As author Michael Siebler points out, recent findings have revealed that the seemingly perfect bodies of statues and sculptures were very often painted in flamboyant colors and ornaments. Thus ancient Greek art combined a high level of classical identity with an equal amount of sensuality. Despite being viewed in a new light, the beauty of the works of art persists.

On April 15th, 1874, in the Parisian studio of photographer Nadar, was the opening of the first group exhibition that was uninhibited by government interference and the dictates of an official selection committee. This date has gone down in the annals of art history because it marks the birth of the Impressionism. Impressionistic paintings now rank among the most popular works of art and are the pride of any museum or collection worldwide. However, in 1874 the public response to the exhibition, and to Impressionist painting, was not adoration but rather shock and even outrage. The Impressionists and the succeeding Neo-Impressionists were avant-gardist and revolutionary, paving the way for modern art. Present-day viewers, hardly realizing this revolutionary potential, can be content to enjoy the aesthetic of light and color.

The secrets of the unconscious and the labyrinths of the mind

The Vienna of the Belle Epoque - of Sigmund Freud, Otto Wagner, Mahler and Schönberg - has prompted the admiration of the whole world for the quality and diversity of its cultural and artistic life. And Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was without doubt its defining and most fascinating painter.

In the mid-60s, artists in the USA and Europe began planning works for sites outside the narrow boundaries of galleries and museums. It began with ephemeral enhancements or traces left in deserted landscapes, in the deserts of America, or in the moors of Scotland. Following this were spectacular earthen sculptures of gigantic proportions, some of which are still in the process of completion today. One distinguishing feature of Land Art is its critical preoccupation with the tradition of sculpture. Sculpture can now be an earthwork excavation, a field of metal poles, a buried hut, a trace in the grass, or even a book. Another of the movement's special characteristics is its emphasis on site-specific, outdoor works intended to lastingly alter our perception of places, and to set new parameters in art production and reception.

Founded as a backlash against abstract expressionism, minimalism was characterized by simplified, stripped-down forms and materials used to express ideas in a direct and impersonal manner. By presenting objects as simple objects, minimal artists sought to communicate without referring to expressive or historical themes. This critical movement, which began in the 1960s and branched out into land art, performance art, and conceptual art, is still a major influence today.

Artists have always been early adopters of emerging media technologies, from Albrecht Dürer and his use of the printing press in the 16th century to Nam June Paik’s experiments with video in the 1960s. In 1994, the advent of the Internet as a popular medium catalyzed a global art movement that began to explore the cultural, social, and aesthetic possibilities of such new communication technologies as the Web, video surveillance cameras, wireless phones, hand-held computers, and GPS devices. This book addresses New Media art as a specific art historical movement, focusing not only on technologies and forms but also on thematic content and conceptual strategies. New Media art often involves appropriation, collaboration, and the free sharing of ideas and expressions, and frequently addresses the political ramifications of technology around issues of identity, commercialization, privacy, and the public domain. Many New Media artists are profoundly aware of their art historical antecedents, making reference to Dada, Pop Art, Conceptual art, Performance art, and Fluxus.

Pop artists of the 1960s, heralded by the Great Andy Warhol, commented on everything from mainstream media to consumer society to advertising to product packaging with colorful and often comical works. Pop Art`s profound influence on contemporary art and culture remains prominent today. Nowhere else can you find so much Pop Art in such a compact, stylish book!

Art history's most important movements and genres 

 

Art imitates life in the work of the realists. Through painting, photography, and sculpture, 20th century realists invoke reality in works that capture what Freud called "the uncanny"-the inexplicable strangeness of something which seems at once real and not real.

The rebirth of culture

 

Art as we know it today could not exist had not the revolutionary work of the Renaissance artists paved the way. Widely considered the most important and influential movement in the history of fine arts, literature, architecture, and science, the Renaissance marked the emergence of Western civilization from the Middle Ages into the modern era. Beginning in the 14th century in Italy, the movement spread throughout Europe by the late 15th century, the main centers of fine art activity being in Florence, the Low Countries, and Germany. For the first time, art became intellectual; influenced by humanism, artists experimented with secular subjects and revived classical antiquity. Advances in anatomy and geometry produced more realistic depictions in terms of space and perspective for the Italians, while new oil painting techniques made their mark in Flemish painting and woodcuts and engravings were the specialties of the Germans.

About the Series:
TASCHEN portfolios feature high quality prints that beg to be framed. Tucked in each portfolio are 14 large-format reproductions, each with a brief description. Guaranteed to brighten any day, they also make great gifts for art lovers!

The dramatic style of the 18th century 

 

Emerging out of Baroque as a more relaxed style, Rococo was dominant in interiors, decorative art, and painting throughout Europe in the 18th century. With sentiment and emotion prevailing over reason, Rococo was a dramatic and theatrical style. In the Parisian art world, gallant scenes by Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard predominated, along with the delicate still lifes and genre paintings of Chardin. In Venice, we find the magnificent cityscapes and veduta of Canaletto and Guardi, along with Tiepolo's brilliantly illuminated ceiling frescos. London society celebrated portraitists of stature such as Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Reynolds, while in Southern Germany and Austria, pious images of celestial serenity created by Asam and Troger spanned the church ceilings.