art history

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 311 pages, 394 illustrations including 41 tipped-in color plates. Small previous owner's embossed mark on title page, otherwise like new in a bright dust jacket. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO SIZE & WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. NY, Dover, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 160 pages. Harrison Fisher's portraits of healthy, poised, active, and confident women set the standard for the concept of American beauty during the early years of the twentieth century. The artist enjoyed enormous popularity from 1905 to 1920, serving as a judge in nationwide beauty contests and maintaining a celebrity status that was unparalleled for an illustrator. This original publication recaptures the images that made Fisher famous, compiling his very best black-and-white and color illustrations for Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Ladies Home Journal as well as for books and other publications. The successors to the stylish Gibson Girls created by Charles Dana Gibson, Fisher's idealized women reflect an aspirational degree of wealth and social ease. They ride horses, play tennis, swim, go motoring in newfangled automobiles, and graciously bask in the admiration of attractive young men. These century-old images from a moment in our country's cultural history will appeal to enthusiasts of graphic art and illustration as well as to students of American art and popular culture.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 182 pages, hardcover illustrated in color and b&w. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Accompanies a major exhibition at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, reveals that great design and great style were consistent elements in the work of American's best fashion designers. Patricia Mears introduces many great forgotten figures, as well as many familiar names: work by lesser-known figures such as Jessie Franklin Turner, Ronaldus Shamask, and Charles Kleibecker is discussed alongside pieces by more celebrated creators, such as Halston and Charles James; work by designers of the past is juxtaposed with that of present-day designers such as Rick Owens, Yeolee Teng, and Maria Comejo.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 182 pages, hardcover illustrated in color and b&w. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Accompanies a major exhibition at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, reveals that great design and great style were consistent elements in the work of American's best fashion designers. Patricia Mears introduces many great forgotten figures, as well as many familiar names: work by lesser-known figures such as Jessie Franklin Turner, Ronaldus Shamask, and Charles Kleibecker is discussed alongside pieces by more celebrated creators, such as Halston and Charles James; work by designers of the past is juxtaposed with that of present-day designers such as Rick Owens, Yeolee Teng, and Maria Comejo.

Hardcover. Kansas City, Hallmark Cards, 2nd Ed., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, one of a series from the hallmark Photographic Collection celebrating the history and art of photography. Blue gilt stamped cloth over boards, 590 pages, Notes, Bibliography, Index, 499 illustrations, including 448 in tritone, 48 in full-color, and 3 in duotone. Bright, clean copy. This new edition is nearly fifty percent larger than the first. The entire text has been revised, and a great number of new artists, images, and themes have been added.

Hardcover. Raleigh NC, TwoMorrows Publishing, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy pictorial boards, 263 pages illustrated in color. This 1945-49 volume covers the comic book industry during the aftermath of World War II, when scores of writers and artists returned from foreign battlefields to resume their careers. It was a period when readers began turning away from the escapist entertainment offered by super-heroes in favor of other genres, like the grittier, more brutal crime comics. It was a time when Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Young Romance, inaugurating a golden age of romance comics. And it was during this five-year period that Timely and National Comics capitalized on the popularity of Westerns, that Bill Gaines plotted a new course for EC Comics in the wake of his father's death, and that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first sued for the rights to Superman. These are just a few of the events chronicled in this exhaustive, full-color hardcover, further documenting the ACBC series' cohesive, linear overview of the entire landscape of comics history! Like new.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 570 pages. An in-depth history of the American comic strip. From the Civil War era art of Thomas Nast, to the moral panic of the 1950's, the 'Super Hero Boom' of the 60's and 70's, to the rise of complex story telling in graphic novel format. 570 pages with Index, 6-1/2" X 9-1/2". Remainder dot on top of text block, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Clarkson N Potter , 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 132 pages, 78 b&w illustrations, 12 in color. Clean, tight copy. Dust jacket shows wear, closed short tears, small pieces gone from edges.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University , 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Catalogue of an exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery, 10 November 1989 - 3 January 1990. Hardcover, 8.75 x 11 inches, 126 pages, illustrated, annotated.

Softcover. New York, Robert Miller Gallery , 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non paginated. Softcover. Extensive color photographs throughout. Illustrated end papers and paste downs. Creasing to covers, otherwise clean, tight copy. An autobiographical and transitional work, American Family explores the various roles Renee Cox has assumed throughout her life: Catholic schoolgirl, wife, mother, woman who knows and shows her sexual pleasure, and black woman artist contesting an art history that has all but excluded her race. A cross between Diary of a Mad Housewife and The Sensual Woman, American Family is a veritable minefield of taboos, revealed by the miscegenated family album and the erotic display of the artist's own beautiful body. Compartmentalized into sections called Family Room, Erotica, and the Salon, American Family accompanied an exhibition which included a video projection, large scale Cibachrome prints mounted on aluminum, a series of smaller black-and-white diptychs and triptychs, as well as photographs culled from the artist's own family album.Essay by Jo Anna Isaak.

Softcover. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 62 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. 70 photographs from the collection of Patricia McCabe. Christie's Auction Catalogue for the Auction that took place in New York on April 14, 2010. An amazing collection of rare Penn images from an assistant who worked with him.

Hardcover. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 272 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. A tight copy. Christopher Felver has collected over 240 photographs from tours and encounters with musicians over the past 25 years. From Doc Watson to John Cage and Mavis Staples to Sonny Rollins, this collection celebrates the tapestry and diversity of musical styles that make up the American sonic landscape.

Hardcover. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 228 page, illustrated throughout with 126 plates in b&w. Lightly bumped corners and mild shelf-wear, else a clean, tight copy. Artists include: James McNeill Whistler, Joseph Pennell, Albert Sterner, Margaret Lowengrund, Tatyana Grosman, June Wayne, George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Rockwell Kent, and others.

Softcover. US, Laurence King Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 186 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light edgewear to wrappers, else a clean, tight copy. This is the first comprehensive survey of Modernist graphic design as it emerged in America in the period from 1920 and 1960 in various media--advertising, information design, brand identity, magazine design, book design, and posters. It examines the great works which by mid-century had defined American graphic design. The book begins with a section devoted to the emergence of Modernism and its major historical influence, such as European avant-garde movements, popular culture, educational innovations such as the Bauhaus School, architecture, industrial design, and photography. The heart of the book includes the key works of mid-century Modernism as it matured into a fully-formed American style, bringing together such great names as Alexey Brodovitch, Lester Beall, Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Will Burtin, and Alvin Lustig. The final section looks at the impact of and reactions to this new movement as graphic design in America matured in the 1960s and beyond.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1970, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 243 pages, 150 b&w plates. Illustrated covers, perfect binding, divided into seven sections organized by historical period, profusely illustrated with b&w plates. Mild rubbing to covers, very minor markings to bottom of page block, front top right corner creased; otherwise a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, The Fine Arts Society, 1st, 1907, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 376 pages, hardcover. Decorated boards with gilted top text block. Illustrated by Elizabeth M. Chettle. Homes and memorials of the founders of Virginia, the New England states, and Pennsylvania. Also includes the universities of Harvard and Yale, the first president of the United States and other illustrious Americans. Fading and edgewear to spine. Light bumping to corners with mild fraying. Moderate spotting to text block edges. Weak spine at front endpapers. Unmarked. A clean copy.

Hardcover. Hanover NH, University Press of New England, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright duct jacket, 251 pages, b&w illustrations. For years, designers, educators, and community administrators have clamored for a book that will highlight the problems with contemporary playgrounds, tender sorely needed strategies with which to redress them, and stimulate national debate about today's crisis of undervalued public space. Susan Solomon's groundbreaking and marvelously illustrated American Playgrounds is that book. Since the 1970s, Solomon maintains, American playgrounds have degenerated into irrelevance as cultural artifacts and educational tools. Imbedded in Solomon's text is a frank indictment of American attitudes that are stunted by a heavy-handed emphasis on safety that limits the nature of play and the vitality of places for public assembly. During the past decade an elite few American architects, landscape architects, and sculptors, including Stanley Saitowitz, Walter Hood, and Mary Miss, have pioneered the restoration of aesthetic and developmental values to play areas for young people. Solomon appraises these success stories and proposes fresh and urgent remedies that blend excellent design principles, innovative planning, and affordability-a vision for the future of the playground in America. Supplementing her impeccable command of primary and secondary sources with hundreds of hours of interviews with designers and clients, the author confronts a seriously under-developed topic with powerful and complex arguments rich in social history, law, theories of play and childhood, and urbanism. Readers will be inspired-and equipped-to take up the gauntlet of advocacy for superior American playgrounds. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Woodstock, New York, The Overlook Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, Encyclopedic volume featuring the historical evolution of American homes. Hardcover, 320 pages. Over 1000 black/white illustrations, including architectural plans for each variety of home discussed. Cloth bound book is in near fine condition, only flaw on the dust jacket is a small blue ink stain on the front.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st pbk, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 282 pages. 113 color plates, 47 in b&w. The painters who came to be known as the Hudson River School - Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and others - found inspiration in our young country's natural wonders and were the first to paint many of its still-wild vistas. As America was settled and the wilderness receded, their successors - most notably Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran - carried their quest for the sublime to the Far West, communicating its breathtaking grandeur in brilliant views of Rocky Mountain peaks, roaring waterfalls, and vast canyons. Within a single generation these artists established the dramatic approach to American landscape painting that is celebrated in this stirringly beautiful book. The freshness of their vision, the intensity of their invention, and the energy of their execution were all born of the urgency these artists sensed in the life of America itself. Clean copy. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Chicago, Rand McNally , 1st Thus, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Non-paginated. Hardcover. Black & white cartoons by Gaar Williams. Dust jacket with chipping along edges - jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Clean, unmarked pages.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press;, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 208 pages. An authoritative guide to the world's greatest typographers, spanning the history of printThis handsomely illustrated volume features a comprehensive listing of outstanding type designers from around the world, ranging from Johann Gutenberg (c. 1394-1468) to the present day. Arranged alphabetically by designer, the book features the work of more than 260 figures in type design, many of whom are among the field's most renowned--including Morris Fuller Benton, Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Claude Garamond, Eric Gill, Frederic W. Goudy, Bruce Rogers, and Hermann Zapf--as well as entries on lesser-known designers whose contributions to typography are substantial. Entries are illustrated by examples of the designers' work taken from posters, private press editions, magazine covers, book designs, and rare archival specimens. An A-Z of Type Designers also features eight essays by leading contemporary typographers Jonathan Barnbrook, Erik van Blokland, Clive Bruton, John Downer, John Hudson, Jean Francois Porchez, Erik Spiekermann, and Jeremy Tankard. These authors discuss different aspects of contemporary type design, including typeface revivals, font piracy, and designing fonts for corporate identities.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press;, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 208 pages. An authoritative guide to the world's greatest typographers, spanning the history of printThis handsomely illustrated volume features a comprehensive listing of outstanding type designers from around the world, ranging from Johann Gutenberg (c. 1394-1468) to the present day. Arranged alphabetically by designer, the book features the work of more than 260 figures in type design, many of whom are among the field's most renowned--including Morris Fuller Benton, Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Claude Garamond, Eric Gill, Frederic W. Goudy, Bruce Rogers, and Hermann Zapf--as well as entries on lesser-known designers whose contributions to typography are substantial. Entries are illustrated by examples of the designers' work taken from posters, private press editions, magazine covers, book designs, and rare archival specimens. An A-Z of Type Designers also features eight essays by leading contemporary typographers Jonathan Barnbrook, Erik van Blokland, Clive Bruton, John Downer, John Hudson, Jean Francois Porchez, Erik Spiekermann, and Jeremy Tankard. These authors discuss different aspects of contemporary type design, including typeface revivals, font piracy, and designing fonts for corporate identities.

Softcover. San Diego CA, San Diego Museum of Art, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 86 pages, b&w illustrations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 35-36) and index. In 1916, George Wesley Bellows, a successful painter at the height of his artistic power, turned his considerable talent to the graphic medium of lithography. Over the next nine years, until his untimely death in January 1925, Bellows created nealry 200 lithographs - an impressive body of work unparalleled in the history of American art. While some of these lithographs appeared as illustrations in contemporary periodicals , and others were graphic versions of drawings and paintings he had previously made, the majority stood as independent works. Their subjects and styles span the breadth of Bellows's artistic vision. Light sticker residue to front cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1966, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with faded spine. Anthology of writings by American journalist, poet and Communist activist. Includes portions of "Insurgent Mexico" and "Ten Days That Shook the World,"as well as stories, articles, documents, poetry and drama. Illustrated with photos. Text in English with introductory section in Russian. 299 pages, b&w illustrations. No date but indicates "2.6.66" Clean copy.