art landscape

Softcover. London, Tate Publishing, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 224 pages illustrated in color. J.M.W. Turner was a fascinating and enigmatic figure. Both astonishingly prolific and extraordinarily innovative, he is widely seen as the greatest British landscape painter of them all, anticipating and surpassing the Impressionists in his dramatic interpretations of the effects of light and color. "The Turner Book" goes beyond the usual interpretations of the artist, revealing the extraordinary self-belief and ambition that allowed him to continue steadfastly with his experimentation in the face of hostile critical attack. The book examines in detail key works and the techniques by which Turner realized them and features revealing extracts from his notebooks, travel journals and poetry. Beautifully illustrated with both famous and unknown works and ranging over the entire course of the artist's career, this is the essential guide to Turner's life and work. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, University of Washington Press , 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 229 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. At first glance it may appear that this volume is one more in a line of celebratory tributes to the power of the industry, full of the colorful advertisements and optimistic tributes to the railroad as the builder of civilization across a majestic landscape. Nearly every page contains an illustration that invites quick perusal. But the text skillfully interprets the images and balances the story that railroads originally told about the region, one that boosted their properties and promoted settlement and travels along their lines . . . . The authors have effectively distilled a large body of historiography into one readable and engaging volume. Clean.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 253 pages, color illustrations. Bibliography and index. Thomas Chimes is one of the most important artists to emerge in Philadelphia since World War II. Tracing the stylistic evolution of Chimes's idiosyncratic art, this book presents a long-overdue survey of his five-decade career: canvases combining landscape imagery with symbols such as crucifixes (late 1950s-mid-1960s); mixed-media constructions set within finely crafted metal boxes (late 1960s-early 1970s); his best-known works, a series of forty-eight intimate sepia-toned panel portraits of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers and artists that are placed within oversized wood frames (1973-78); and the enigmatic 'white paintings' of the past two decades.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 144 pages. In a series of breathtaking canvases, painted principally in the Catskill Mountains, Cole portrayed vast spaces, awesome horizons, and vibrant color. Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, traces Cole's development and explores the Romantic theories that guided his thinking and informed his vision. Superb color reproductions bring Cole's paintings to life, revealing the America that once was. 111 illustrations, 67 in full color, 91/2 x 11". Mild sunning to dust jacket spine. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 416 pages. In this definitive biography, Justin Wolff places Benton in the context of his tumultuous historical moment-as well as in the landscapes and cultural circles that inspired him. Thomas Hart Benton-with compelling insights into Benton's art, his philosophy, and his family history-rescues a great American artist from myth and hearsay, and provides an indelibly moving portrait of an influential, controversial, and often misunderstood man.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 284 pages, color and b&w illustrations.Often featuring lighthouses, bridges, or quaint country homes, Thomas Kinkade's soft-focus landscapes have permeated American visual culture during the past twenty years, appearing on everything from Bibles to bedsheets to credit cards. Kinkade sells his work through his shopping-mall galleries, QVC, the Internet, and Christian stores. He is quite possibly the most collected artist in the United States. While many art-world and academic critics have dismissed him as a passing fad or marketing phenomenon, the contributors to this collection do not. Instead, they explore his work and its impact on contemporary art as part of the broader history of American visual culture. They consider Kinkade's imagery and career in relation to nineteenth-century Currier and Ives prints and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, the collectibles market and the fine-art market, the Thomas Kinkade Museum and Cultural Center, and "The Village at Hiddenbrooke," a California housing development inspired by Kinkade's paintings. The conceptual artist Jeffrey Vallance, the curator of the first major museum exhibition of Kinkade's art and collectibles, recounts his experiences organizing that show. All of the contributors draw on art history, visual culture, and cultural studies as they seek to understand Kinkade's significance for both art and audiences. Along the way, they delve into questions about beauty, class, kitsch, religion, and taste in contemporary art. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Norman, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 315 pages, b&w illustrations. Spine slightly cocked. Pictorial dust jacket with light sunfading to spine; edge wear and light rubbing near extremities. Clean text.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 265 pages illustrated in b&w. From Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody's Fool, comes Three Rocks, a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic strip Nancy. But this graphic novel is about more than a single comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception to 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers--a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve. Nancy is hailed as the "perfect" comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape--just enough to communicate environment to the reader. This distillation is exemplary of the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, a comic strip about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip--the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New Mexico, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 276 pages. Combining images from early masters and well-known fine art photographers with text and observations from noted writers, this is one of a kind book. It provides stimulating perspectives on Santa Fe's transformation over the last 160 years, presenting a historical and contextual perspective on the important role photography has played in documenting and shaping Santa Fe's image. Includes selected images from more than one hundred noted photographers.

Hardcover. Boston/London, Walker Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Haunting and deeply moving - a beautifully illustrated, fictionalized account of a formative time in the life of the teenage girl who wrote our most enduring horror story. Long before Mary Shelley published her Gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein, in 1818, at the age of nineteen, she shared fireside ghost tales at the home of family friends in Scotland. It was there that the headstrong girl - orphaned by her mother, spurned by her stepmother, and sent away by her father - spent two of her happiest teenage years. The brooding Scottish landscape and warm family atmosphere so influenced the author's life and art that some believe her famous novel took root there. To illuminate this period in Mary Shelley's life, Sharon Darrow skillfully spins fiction from fact. Her words are masterfully matched by Angela Barrett's exquisite, atmospheric, authentically detailed illustrations. The result is a rich tapestry of stories within stories - those told, those written, and more extraordinary, those lived. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Univ of Louisiana at Lafayette, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 80 pages. Over the past eight years, Tina Freeman has photographed the Louisiana wetlands and Arctic and Antarctic glaciers. In Lamentations, Freeman pairs images from each place in a series of diptychs that address climate change, ecological balance, and the connectedness of things across time and space. Lamentations demonstrates how the rising waters along the coast of Louisiana are both visually and physically connected to the melting glaciers at the poles, despite the separation of vast distances. Freeman's work makes plain the crucial, threatening, and global dialogue between water in two physical states. Lamentations is published to accompany an exhibition of the same name, organized by and presented at the New Orleans Museum of Art, September 11, 2019 to February 22, 2020. Text was provided by Tina Freeman, Russell Lord, Brent Goehring, and Jady Surrounding along with a forward by Susan M. Taylor.

Softcover. Yonkers, NY, Hudson River Museum, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 125 pages, b&w illustrations. Light rubbing to wrappers. Else a very clean, tight copy. Issued in conjunction with a 1984 exhibition of drawings by Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900). With an essay by Elaine Evans Dee and foreword by Rick Beard. The annotated and illustrated catalogue presents 107 works. This is the only publication that examines in detail the preparatory studies of this master Hudson River School artist. Shows Church's drawings that were intended to provide preliminary detail for his oil paintings. The extensive notations on the drawings themselves are clear evidence of this intent. This provides a special insight into the processes of artistic creation as employed by one of 19th century American's greatest landscape painters.

Softcover. Yonkers, NY, Hudson River Museum, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 125 pages, b&w illustrations. Light rubbing to wrappers. Else a very clean, tight copy. Issued in conjunction with a 1984 exhibition of drawings by Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900). With an essay by Elaine Evans Dee and foreword by Rick Beard. The annotated and illustrated catalogue presents 107 works. This is the only publication that examines in detail the preparatory studies of this master Hudson River School artist. Shows Church's drawings that were intended to provide preliminary detail for his oil paintings. The extensive notations on the drawings themselves are clear evidence of this intent. This provides a special insight into the processes of artistic creation as employed by one of 19th century American's greatest landscape painters.

Hardcover. Madison WI, Borderland Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The title comes from the cover image, a building named as such. "Created as a poetic and visual journey, spans twenty-five years and four continents. These striking photographs capture 'found text': The sometimes mysterious, occasionally humorous, often cryptic presence of words in the everyday landscape. In Koch's lyrical sequencing, the images reveal obscure and eccentric voices in their various and distinctive roles on the daily stage of the world around us.

Hardcover. Madison WI, Borderland Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The title comes from the cover image, a building named as such. "Created as a poetic and visual journey, spans twenty-five years and four continents. These striking photographs capture 'found text': The sometimes mysterious, occasionally humorous, often cryptic presence of words in the everyday landscape. In Koch's lyrical sequencing, the images reveal obscure and eccentric voices in their various and distinctive roles on the daily stage of the world around us.

Hardcover. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 71 pages. Illustrated throughout in color. Essay by Kevin J. Avery. "The wide variety of selections from Frederic Edwin Church's collection of his own paintings shows the master in all phases of his career, in sketches and finished paintings, depicting the breadth of his subjects and the high technical skills that established him as an eminent and influential artist in his own time. As works he held on to or reacquired and kept in his house during his lifetime, they embody the heart of his artistic vision and convey a deeply personal slant. As pictures he hung and lived with at Olana, they tell the larger story of that extraordinary place and are as illuminating when seen in context as on their own."

Hardcover. UK, David & Charles, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 128 pages in color. "Look over the shoulder" of Trevor Chamberlain and find out how an award-winning watercolorist interprets the fleeting effects of weather, light, and atmosphere in his work. See superb reproductions of landscape, marine and coastal, townscape, figure, and interior paintings, and understand the artist's approach to painting them. It's almost as if you're watching Chamberlain in action as you learn by example. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Thames and Hudson, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, blue cloth with bright silver titles to spine. Published to accompany 2013/14 Exhibition at National Maritime Museum. 288 pages with Foreword by Keven Fewster, Introduction, 7 Chapters, Notes, Bibliography, Credits and Index. Large collection of color plates. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Aperture, 1st US, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 104 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Published in Italian in 1955, and now available for the first time in the English language, Un Paese captures in photographs and in spoken testimony the essential experience of daily life in Luzzara. It presents a series of intense portraits, graceful landscapes, and images of everyday objects. Paul Strand's photographs are carefully distilled, deeply powerful; they contain the flavors and the rhythms of an entire culture crystallized in a single village. Zavattini successfully synthesizes text and image, aligning with the new cinematic trend of the day, a movement known as Italian neorealism. Their Luzzara is an ordinary village, neither overly picturesque nor greatly unusual, yet it is a town sustained by a grounded humanity and a profound love for the land by its people.

Hardcover. Birmingham UK, Washington Green Fine Art Publishing Company, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, oblong,128 pages. Full color plates throughout. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket and slight rubbing on bottom spine of covers.

Hardcover. University of South Carolina Press, Supreme Council, Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 269 pages. " ...a fascinating journey through the history of Scottish Rite in America. This comprehensive pictorial history provides valuable insights into the critical role masons have played throughout our nation's history." b/w, sepia, & color plates throughout. In Valley of the Craftsmen, the story of "higher degree" Freemasonry is depicted through portraits, official papers, material objects, photographs, buildings, and stagecraft. Featuring many previously unpublished images, Valley of the Craftsmen begins with rare illustrations of the English and French philosophical sources that were projected upon an American landscape vitalized and transformed by the concept of fraternity. The story is framed by American popular culture and the serious private effort of individual men in small towns and expansive cities who were intent on developing a moral life in service to their communities. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. This lavishly illustrated book establishes the towering influence of the scientist Victor Regnault (1810-1878) in the earliest decades of photography, a period of experimentation ripe with artistic, commercial, and scientific possibility. Regnault has a double significance to the early history of photography, as the first leader of the Societe Francaise de Photographie (S.F.P.) and as the maker of more than two hundred calotype (paper negative) portraits and landscapes. His photographic and scientific careers intersected a third field with his appointment in 1852 as director of the Sevres porcelain works.Readers are treated to Regnault's own beguiling pastoral, garden, and forest scenes; striking portraits of the scientists and artists in his circle of friends; quirky images of acoustic experiments; and an insider's view of the Sevres porcelain works. Regnault's richly varied photographs also encompass perhaps the most extensive group of family portraits in early photography, and his romanticized landscapes reflect a moment when the rural outskirts of Paris were being aggressively suburbanized and industrialized.

Hardcover. Columbia OH, Ohio State University Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 368 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to corners. While "freaks" have captivated our imagination since well before the nineteenth century, the Victorians flocked to shows featuring dancing dwarves, bearded ladies, "missing links," and six-legged sheep. Indeed, this period has been described by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson as the epoch of "consolidation" for freakery: an era of social change, enormously popular freak shows, and taxonomic frenzy. Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain, edited by Marlene Tromp, turns to that rich nexus, examining the struggle over definitions of "freakery" and the unstable and sometimes conflicting ways in which freakery was understood and deployed. As the first study centralizing British culture, this collection discusses figures as varied as Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man"; Daniel Lambert, "King of the Fat Men"; Julia Pastrana, "The Bear Woman"; and Laloo "The Marvellous Indian Boy" and his embedded, parasitic twin. The Victorian Freaks contributors examine Victorian culture through the lens of freakery, reading the production of the freak against the landscape of capitalist consumption, the medical community, and the politics of empire, sexuality, and art. Collectively, these essays ask how freakery engaged with notions of normalcy and with its Victorian cultural context.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 1997, Book: N, Softcover, 119 pages. Ultimately, Viewing Olmsted is a savvy and thought-provoking, yet diminutive picture book. The collaboration of three brilliant photographers under the sponsorship of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, it guides the reader down three highly personal, present day tours of legendary parks designed by Olmsted, the patron saint of American landscape architecture. Happily, though, its readers are left to intellectually fend for themselves as to meanings or implications of Frederick Olmsted's work, genius, and lasting influence as the man who designed such famous spaces as Central Park. Academics and artists will appreciate the fresh visual perspectives offered on the man's legacy, the sometimes soothing, sometimes haunting nature-by-design retreats for the urban soul. Those with more than a passing interest in the ways in which man interacts with his `natural' surroundings will appreciate vistas evocative of place rather than time. To the authors' credit, the book raises more questions than it answers, and is of a scale to fit neatly into a travel case. Far from definitive, the book is, nevertheless, a must have for architects, landscape architects, photographers, and Olmsted aficionados.