This book offers definitions of the techniques, processes, and materials used in the production of postclassical European sculpture. Concise and readable explanations of the technical terms most frequently encountered by the museum-goer are presented in an easily portable format. With numerous illustrations drawn from the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum - most of them in color - this volume will be indispensable to all readers wishing to increase their enjoyment and understanding of European sculpture.
The J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of European sculpture featured in this volume ranges in date from the late fifteenth century to the very early twentieth and includes a wide variety of media: marble, bronze, alabaster, terracotta, plaster, wood, ivory, and gold. The earliest sculpture represented is the mysterious Saint Cyricus by Francesco Laurana; the latest is a shield-like portrait of Medusa by the eccentric Italian sculptor Vincenzo Gemito. Among the more than forty works included in this handsomely illustrated volume are sculptures by Antico (Bust of a Young Man); Cellini (a Satyr designed for Fontainebleau); Giambologna (a Female Figure that may represent Venus); Bernini (Boy with a Dragon); and Carpeaux (Bust of Jean-Léon Gérôme). Well represented here is the Museum’s splendid collection of Mannerist and early Baroque bronzes, including such masterpieces as Johann Gregor van der Schardt’s Mercury and two superb works by Adriaen de Vries: Juggling Man and Rearing Horse. These works are indicative of the extraordinary quality of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of post-Classical European sculpture.
This is an accessible historical and technical guide to the materials and techniques of European sculpture, based on the collections at the V&A. Casting, carving, and modeling practices are explored from medieval times onwards. Each chapter concentrates on a specific material or category. Beautiful color photography highlights the works and illustrates contemporary workshop practices.
What is maiolica? What is the difference between hard-paste and soft-paste porcelain. What is a piatto da pompa? This book offers definitions of these and other terms related to the techniques, processes, and materials used in the making of ceramics in Europe from the Middle Ages throughout the beginning of the twentieth century. Concise and readable explanations of the technical terms most frequently encountered by the museum-goer, accompanied by numerous illustrations of works from the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Museum, are presented in an easily portable volume. The fourth in a series of "Looking at" books co-published with the British Museum Press, this guide will be invaluable to all those wishing to increase their understanding and enjoyment of ceramics.
The Art of Looking Up surveys spectacular ceilings around the globe that have been graced by the brushes of great artists including Michelangelo, Marc Chagall and Cy Twombly. From the floating women and lotus flowers of the Senso-ji Temple in Japan, to the religious iconography that adorns places of worship from Vienna to Istanbul, all the way to bold displays like the Chihuly glass flora suspended from the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas: this book takes you on a tour of the extraordinary artworks that demand an alternative viewpoint. History of art expert Catherine McCormack guides you through the stories behind the artworks – their conception, execution, and the artists that visualised them. In many cases, these artworks also make bold but controlled political, religious or cultural statements, revealing much about the society and times in which they were created. Divided by these social themes into four sections – Religion, Culture, Power and Politics – and pictured from various viewpoints in glorious colour photography, tour the astounding ceilings of these and more remarkable locations: Vatican Palace, Rome, Italy Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, UK Louvre Museum, Paris, France Dali Theatre-Museum, Figueres, Catalonia Museum of the Revolution, Havana, Cuba Capitol Building, Washington, DC, USA Four eight-page foldout sections showcase some of the world's most spectacular ceilings in exquisite detail. First and foremost, this is a visual feast, but also a desirable art book that challenges you to seek out fine art in more unusual places and question the statements they may be making.
Influenced by a revival of interest in Greco-Roman ideals and sponsored by a newly prosperous merchant class, fifteenth-century artists produced works of astonishingly innovative content and technique. The International Gothic style of painting, still popular at the beginning of the century, was giving way to the influence of Early Netherlandish Flemish masters such as Jan van Eyck, who emphasized narrative and the complex use of light for symbolic meaning. Patrons favored paintings in oil and on wooden panels for works ranging from large, hinged altarpieces to small, increasingly lifelike portraits. In the Italian city-states of Florence, Venice, and Mantua, artists and architects alike perfected existing techniques and developed new ones. The painter Masaccio mastered linear perspective; the sculptor Donatello produced anatomically correct but idealized figures such as his bronze nude of David; and the brilliant architect and engineer Brunelleschi integrated Gothic and Renaissance elements to build the self-supporting dome of the Florence Cathedral. This beautifully illustrated guide analyzes the most important people, places, and concepts of this early Renaissance period, whose explosion of creativity was to spread throughout Europe in the sixteenth century.
Artists have long been stimulated and motivated by the work of those who came before them—sometimes, centuries before them. Interviews with 120 international contemporary artists discussing works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection that spark their imagination shed new light on art-making, museums, and the creative process. Images of works from The Met collection appear alongside images of the contemporary artists' work, allowing readers to discover a rich web of visual connections that spans cultures and millennia.
The notion that the practice of abstraction was confined to Western Europe while a stereotyped form of figuration defined the art of the Eastern bloc continues to dominate art historical accounts of public sculpture of the post-war period. This book offers a number of alternative readings, and demonstrates strategic uses of figuration and abstraction across East and West. Encompassing sites of memory (including war memorials and Holocaust memorials), state, civic and corporate sculpture, as well as temporary and unexecuted projects, the book shows that persuasive advocates of figuration were to be found in the West, while in the East imaginative experiments in abstraction were proposed in the name of Social Realism. Presenting fresh insights into sculptural practice in the period between 1945 and 1968, this book brings together a wide range of authors, some of whom have never before been published in English. Their essays are complemented by extracts from documentary texts, which give a flavour of contemporary debates, and a biographical section includes entries on many sculptors who will be unfamiliar to an English-speaking audience.
Although one of the newer collections in the Getty Museum, sculpture occupies an important place in the Museum’s acquisition efforts. For the first time, the entire sculpture collection is catalogued in a book designed for scholars and students of sculpture. Reproductions of each piece are accompanied by text that identifies the sculptor, the medium, the dimensions, and the year the work was created.
