A most unusual collection of natural specimens
Albertus Sebas Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is one of the 18th centurys greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time. Though scientists of his era often collected natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Albertus Seba (1665-1736) was unrivaled in his passion. His amazing collection of animals, plants and insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime. In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned illustrations of every specimen and arranged the publication of a four-volume catalog-from strange and exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, birds, and butterflies, as well as fantastic beasts, such as a hydra and a dragon.
Sebas scenic illustrations, often mixing plants and animals in a single plate, were unusual even for the time. The more peculiar creatures from the collection-some of them now extinct-were as curious in Sebas day as they are today.
This reproduction is taken from a rare, hand-colored original. The introduction supplies background information about the fascinating tradition to which Sebas curiosities belonged.
The authors:
Irmgard Musch, born in 1967, studied art history, history and classical archaeology in Mainz and Berlin. Her Ph.D. thesis from 1999 examines Johann Jakob Scheuchzers Kupfer-Bibel, a richly illustrated scientific commentary on the Bible from the early 18th century. She has published on art of the 18th and 20th century, scientific illustrations and Kunstkammer pieces.
Jes Rust, born 1963, completed his studies in geology, palaeontology and zoology at Gottingen and Kiel. His thesis dealt with the evolution of fossil snails living in the fresh and brackish waters of prehistoric Greece. His assistantship at the Institute of Zoology in Gottingen between 1993 and 1999 was followed by his appointment in 2001 as professor of invertebrate palaeontology and insect phylogeny at the University of Bonn.
Rainer Willmann holds a chair in zoology at Gottingen University, is director of its Zoological Museum, and is co-founder of its Centre for Biodiversity and Ecology Research. A specialist in phlogenetics and evolution, he conducts research into biodiversity and its history.
Journey through the U.S. space programs fascinating pictorial history
On October 1, 1958, the worlds first civilian space agency opened for business as an emergency response to the Soviet Unions launch of Sputnik a year earlier. Within a decade, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, universally known as NASA, had evolved from modest research teams experimenting with small converted rockets into one of the greatest technological and managerial enterprises ever known, capable of sending people to the Moon aboard gigantic rockets and of dispatching robot explorers to Venus, Mars, and worlds far beyond. In spite of occasional, tragic setbacks in NASAs history, the Apollo lunar landing project remains a byword for American ingenuity; the winged space shuttles spearheaded the International Space Station and a dazzling array of astronomical satellites and robotic landers, and Earth observation programs have transformed our understanding of the cosmos and our home worlds fragile place within it.
Throughout NASAs 60-year history, images have played a central role. Who today is not familiar with the Hubble Space Telescopes mesmerizing views of the universe or the pin-sharp panoramas of Mars from NASAs surface rovers? And who could forget the photographs of the first men walking on the Moon?
This compact edition is derived from our XL edition, which was researched in collaboration with NASA, and gathers hundreds of historic photographs and rare concept renderings, scanned and remastered using the latest technology. Texts by science and technology journalist Piers Bizony, former NASA chief historian Roger Launius, and best-selling Apollo historian Andrew Chaikin round out this comprehensive exploration of NASA, from its earliest days to its current development of new space systems for the future.
The NASA Archives is more than just a fascinating pictorial history of the U.S. space program. It is also a profound meditation on why we choose to explore space and how we will carry on this grandest of all adventures in the years to come.
Sebastiao Salgado on the traces of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest
Sebastiao Salgado traveled the Brazilian Amazon and photographed the unparalleled beauty of this extraordinary region for six years: the forest, the rivers, the mountains, the people who live there-an irreplaceable treasure of humanity.
Salgado visited a dozen indigenous tribes that exist in small communities scattered across the largest tropical rainforest in the world. He documented the daily life of the Yanomami, the Ashaninka, the Yawanawa, the Suruwaha, the Zoe, the Kuikuro, the Waura, the Kamayura, the Korubo, the Marubo, the Awa, and the Macuxi-their warm family bonds, their hunting and fishing, the manner in which they prepare and share meals, their marvelous talent for painting their faces and bodies, the significance of their shamans, and their dances and rituals.
Sebastiao Salgado has dedicated this book to the indigenous peoples of Brazils Amazon region: My wish, with all my heart, with all my energy, with all the passion I possess, is that in 50 years time this book will not resemble a record of a lost world. Amazonia must live on.
The mysterious genius who transformed European art
Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), was a legend even in his own lifetime. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: Violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run.
This work offers a comprehensive reassessment of Caravaggios entire ?uvre with a catalogue raisonne of his works. Each painting is reproduced in large format, with recent, high production photography allowing for dramatic close-ups with Caravaggios ingenious details of looks and gestures.
Five introductory chapters analyze Caravaggios artistic career from his early struggle to make a living, through his first public commissions in Rome, and his growing celebrity status. They look at his increasing daring with lighting and with a boundary-breaking naturalism which allowed even biblical events to unfold with an unprecedented immediacy before the viewer.
Sneaker Freakers epic guide to the ultimate sneaker collectors
Simon Woody Wood, founder and editor-in-chief of Sneaker Freaker magazine, has spent the last two decades analyzing the global cult of footwear fanatics. That experience directly inspired Worlds Greatest Sneaker Collectors, a stonking 752-page journey into the priceless stockpiles and obsessive minds of prominent aficionados.
From Tokyo to New York, via London, Philadelphia, Melbourne, and Stjordal, no crumbled midsole is left unturned as over 2,500 vintage classics, unique athlete SMUs, unobtainable samples, handmade 1-of-1 prototypes, stratospherically priced colabs, and Player Exclusives and game-worn Jordans with multi-million-dollar price tags are lauded with gusto. The endless quest for Holy Grails is both blessing and curse as our collectors fiend, scheme, and dream of the one shoe they dont yet own!
Glossy portraits are augmented with a series of informative How-to guides stuffed with pro tips on sneaker photography, storage, insurance, cleaning, and avoiding the counterfeit curse. The expertise is priceless. The stories will entertain for days as we seek out the fundamentals of what it means, and takes, to define yourself as a true collector.
From the archives of cinematic genius
In 1968, when Stanley Kubrick was asked to comment on the metaphysical significance of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he replied: Its not a message I ever intended to convey in words. 2001 is a nonverbal experience… I tried to create a visual experience, one that directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content.
Now available as part of our Bibliotheca Universalis series, The Stanley Kubrick Archives borrows from the directors philosophy. From the opening sequence of Killers Kiss to the final frames of Eyes Wide Shut, it allows the masterful visuals of Kubricks films to impress through a sequence of compelling, mesmerizing stills. We uncover Kubricks creative process through fascinating archival material, including set designs, sketches, correspondence, documents, screenplays, drafts, notes, and shooting schedules.
Accompanying the visual and archival material are essays by noted Kubrick scholars, articles written by and about Kubrick, and a selection of Kubricks best interviews. The result is a visual, archival, and scholarly journey through masterworks of 20th-century cinema and the meticulous mind of the director behind them.
Louis Isadore Kahn and a luminous modernist language
Louis Isadore Kahn (1901-1974) treated each building like a temple. Across the United States, in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Israel, his designs combined the sleek, utilitarian surfaces of modernism with a devotion to geometric forms and a reverence for natural light that suffused his stuctures with a monumental and breathtaking spirituality.
This essential introduction brings together 17 of Kahns most important buildings across his cultural, governmental, religious, and residential repertoire. Plans, views, descriptions, and quality photographs trace the context and development of each project, while an introductory essay explores Kahns unique architectural ideology and his legacy as one of the most important 20th-century American architects since Frank Lloyd Wright.
Through Kahn masterworks, such as the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, or Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, well explore Kahns his back to basics grammar inspired by ancient sites in Italy, Greece, and Egypt; and his unique vocabulary of mass, void, and light that suffused the International Style with a near-celestial luminescence.
A survey of Japans contemporary architecture scene
Japans contemporary architecture has long been among the most inventive in the world, recognized for sustainability and infinite creativity. No fewer than eight Japanese architects have won the Pritzker Prize.
Since Osaka World Expo 70 highlighted contemporary forms, Japan has been a key player in global architecture. Tadao Andos geometry put Japanese building on the map, bridging East and West. After his concrete buildings, figures like Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban, and Kazuyo Sejima pioneered a more sustainable approach. Younger generations have taken new directions, in harmony with nature, traditional building, and an endless search for forms.
Presenting the latest in Japanese building, this book links this unique creativity to Japans high population density, modern economy, long history, and continual disasters in the form of earthquakes. Accepting ambiguity, constant change, and catastrophe is a key to understanding how Japanese architecture differs from that of Europe or America.
This compact edition highlights 37 architects and 53 exceptional projects by Japanese masters-from Tadao Andos Shanghai Poly Theater, Shigeru Bans concert hall La Seine Musical, SANAAs Grace Farms, Fumihiko Makis 4 World Trade Center to Takashi Suos much smaller sustainable dental clinic. An elaborate essay traces the building scene from the Metabolists to today, showing how the interaction of past, present, and future has earned contemporary Japanese architecture worldwide recognition.
A decade marked by adventures in futurism
Published annually from 1906 until 1980, Decorative Art, The Studio Yearbook was dedicated to the latest currents in architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, glassware, textiles, metalware, and ceramics. Since the publications went out of print, the now hard-to-find yearbooks have become highly prized by collectors and dealers.
This volume spotlights the futuristic, experimental aesthetic of the 1970s. After the revolutions of the 60s, the world of design and architecture became an increasingly exciting and fast-moving hotbed of ideas, rife with vehemently opposing schools and movements. In many ways it was a more extreme era for design than the previous decade.
Experimentalism was everywhere, and many projects, thought not practical, were forward-thinking visions of a new kind of decorative art and design. Various groups advocated returning to natural methods, rejecting style in favor of craft or pushing the logic of industrial living to its concrete, high-rise extreme. Decorative Art 1970s includes the work of the decades brightest stars, such as Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Luigi Colani, Achille Castiglioni, Kisho Kurokawa, Norman Foster, Richard Meier, and Theo Crosby.
The life and work of Glasgow School pioneer Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Scottish architect, designer, and painter Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was one of the earliest pioneers of modern architecture and design. While he did not receive much recognition in his hometown of Glasgow during his lifetime, his bold new blend of simplicity and poetic detail inspired modernists across Europe.
Mackintoshs avant-garde approach embraced a variety of media as well as fresh stylistic devices. His multi-faceted oeuvre incorporated architecture, furniture, graphic design, landscapes, and flower studies. He embraced strong lines, elegant proportions, and natural motifs, combining an adventurous dose of japonisme with a modernist sensibility for function. He preferred bold black typography, restrained shapes, and tall, generous windows suffusing rooms with light.
Much of his work was collaborative practice with his wife, fellow artist Margaret Macdonald. The couple made up half of the loose Glasgow collective known as The Four; the other two were Margarets sister, Frances, and her husband, Herbert MacNair. On the continent, the Glasgow Style was met with delight. In Italy, Germany, and, in particular, Austria, artists of the Viennese Secession and Art Nouveau drew much from its rectilinear yet lyrical forms.
In this introductory book, we take in Mackintoshs practice across art, architecture, and design to explore his particular combination of the statuesque and sensual and its vital influence on modernist expression across Europe. Featured projects include his complete scheme for the Willow Tea Rooms and the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art, widely considered Mackintoshs masterwork.
A photographic homage to our planet
In Genesis, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen. -Sebastiao Salgado
On a very fortuitous day in 1970, 26-year-old Sebastiao Salgado held a camera for the first time. When he looked through the viewfinder, he experienced a revelation: suddenly life made sense. From that day onward-though it took years of hard work before he had the experience to earn his living as a photographer-the camera became his tool for interacting with the world. Salgado, who always preferred the chiaroscuro palette of black-and-white images, shot very little color in his early career before giving it up completely.
Raised on a farm in Brazil, Salgado possessed a deep love and respect for nature; he was also particularly sensitive to the ways in which human beings are affected by their often devastating socio-economic conditions. Of the myriad works Salgado has produced in his acclaimed career, three long-term projects stand out: Workers (1993), documenting the vanishing way of life of manual laborers across the world; Migrations (2000), a tribute to mass migration driven by hunger, natural disasters, environmental degradation and demographic pressure; and this new opus, GENESIS, the result of an epic eight-year expedition to rediscover the mountains, deserts and oceans, the animals and peoples that have so far escaped the imprint of modern society-the land and life of a still-pristine planet. Some 46% of the planet is still as it was in the time of genesis, Salgado reminds us. We must preserve what exists. The GENESIS project, along with the Salgados Instituto Terra, are dedicated to showing the beauty of our planet, reversing the damage done to it, and preserving it for the future.
Over 30 trips-traveled by foot, light aircraft, seagoing vessels, canoes, and even balloons, through extreme heat and cold and in sometimes dangerous conditions-Salgado created a collection of images showing us nature, animals, and indigenous peoples in breathtaking beauty. What does one discover in GENESIS? The animal species and volcanoes of the Galapagos; penguins, sea lions, cormorants, and whales of the Antarctic and South Atlantic; Brazilian alligators and jaguars; African lions, leopards, and elephants; the isolated Zoe tribe deep in the Amazon jungle; the Stone Age Korowai people of West Papua; nomadic Dinka cattle farmers in Sudan; Nenet nomads and their reindeer herds in the Arctic Circle; Mentawai jungle communities on islands west of Sumatra; the icebergs of the Antarctic; the volcanoes of Central Africa and the Kamchatka Peninsula; Saharan deserts; the Negro and Jurua rivers in the Amazon; the ravines of the Grand Canyon; the glaciers of Alaska... and beyond. Having dedicated so much time, energy, and passion to the making of this work, Salgado calls GENESIS my love letter to the planet.
The Paintings of Frida Kahlo
Among the women artists who have transcended art history, none had a meteoric rise quite like Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). Her unmistakable face, depicted in over fifty extraordinary self-portraits, has been admired by generations; along with hundreds of photographs taken by notable artists such as Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo, Nickolas Muray, and Martin Munkacsi, they made Frida Kahlo an icon of 20th century art.
After an accident in her early youth, Frida became a painter. Her marriage to Diego Rivera in 1929 placed her at the forefront of an artistic scene not only in the cultural Renaissance of Mexico, but also in the United States. Her work garnered praise from the poet Andre Breton, who added the Mexican painter to the ranks of international surrealism and exhibited her work in Paris in 1939 to the admiration of Picasso, Kandinsky, and Duchamp.
We access the intimacy of Fridas affections and passions through a selection of drawings, pages from her personal diary, and an extensive illustrated biography featuring photos of Frida, Diego, and the Casa Azul, Fridas home and the center of her universe.
This book allows readers to admire Frida Kahlos paintings like never before, including unprecedented detail shots and famous photographs. It presents pieces in private collections and reproduces works that were previously lost or have not been exhibited for more than 80 years.
The revolutionary architects life and work in an updated monograph
Zaha Hadid (1950 — 2016) was a revolutionary architect. For years, she was widely acclaimed and won numerous prizes despite building practically nothing. Some even said her work was simply impossible to build. Yet, during the latter years of her life, Hadids daring visions became a reality, bringing a new and unique architectural language to cities and structures such as the Port House in Antwerp, the Al Janoub Stadium near Doha, Qatar, and the spectacular new airport terminal in Beijing.
By her untimely death in 2016, Hadid was firmly established among architectures finest elite, working on projects in Europe, China, the Middle East, and the United States. She was the first female architect to win both the Pritzker Prize for architecture and the prestigious RIBA Royal Gold Medal, with her long-time Partner Patrik Schumacher now the leader of Zaha Hadid Architects and in charge of many new projects.
Based on the massive TASCHEN monograph, this book is now available in an accessible edition covering Hadids complete works, including ongoing projects. With abundant photographs, in-depth sketches, and Hadids own drawings, the volume traces the evolution of her career, spanning not only her most pioneering buildings but also the furniture and interior designs that were integrated into her unique, and distinctly 21st-century, universe.
A celebration of all that is brave and audacious in her work.