Showing titles in History & Criticism

The Royal Collection is one of the most wide-ranging collections of art and artefacts in the world, and it provides an intriguing insight into the minds of the monarchs who have assembled it. In this series, BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz examines dozens of these unique objects, in a quest to "use the collection as a prism through which to better understand the art of being a monarch". From intimate portraits to epic tapestries, from the Coronation pen to the Investiture sword, each has an absorbing history.

In this brief treatise, Professor Rookmaaker explores the value of art in the Kingdom of God. He asks, what is the God-given purpose of our talents? What of those talents whose only contribution is beauty? He insightfully examines the spiritual crisis in current art, the effect of a meaning vacuum on art and society as a whole. He admonishes Christian artists (and us all) to "weep, pray, think, and work" as our means of seeking the Kingdom of God, and his encouragement kindles our spirits and moves us, in our art, whatever our art, to do the truth.

Al final del audiolibro deviene la música de un río ancho y calmo que nos arrastra junto con los objetos que expresan la cultura del mundo hacia un océano apacible de remansadas sensaciones y conocimientos. Un acierto pleno y una obra que, estoy seguro, va a ocupar un lugar importante en la bibliografía del tema.

Henri Matisse was one of the most important and beloved artists of the 20th century, rivalled only by his friend and competitor Pablo Picasso. Hilary Spurling's The Unknown Matisse and Matisse the Master were together heralded as the definitive biography of the artist, and Matisse the Master went on to win the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 2005. This essential abridged edition of The Life reveals the origins of Matisse's astonishing talent, provides a unique insight into his life and work and places him at the front rank of those who made art modern.

Qu'est-ce que l'art ? Comment s'est-il constitué et défini à travers l'histoire ? Quels rapports entretient-il avec la philosophie ?

This audiobook is a tour guide to the best art, music, movies, and literature of Western Civilization. In just a few hours you will become an intermediate level scholar of great paintings, and music...The emphasis is on ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Bible art, Renaissance art, Catholic counter reformation, and the Victorian age for paintings.

Descubra el primer gran estilo artístico europeo, desde los ostrogodos y Carlomagno hasta su propagación por Europa a través del Camino de Santiago. Adéntrese en el recóndito mundo del arco de medio punto.... Conozca el arte románico, el primer estilo artístico preeminentemente cristiano en el que se agruparon el arte romano, germánico, bizantino, visigodo, y mozárabe. Con Breve historia del Románico el oyente conocerá el desarrollo de la sociedad, el arte y la cultura a lo largo de la Alta Edad Media.

An anthology of essays and reviews by the eminent art historian and writer, Edward Lucie-Smith. The articles cover a broad span, from the Italian Renaissance of Giotto and Antonello da Messina, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, progressing to Rubens, Velázquez, and Ingres, with essays on William Hogarth, John Constable, and John Everett Millais for British art. With the experience of his landmark publications on modern art, which remain in print, the author sweeps the listener on a fabulous journey of perception.

Fragile Cargo will share the as-yet-untold story of the brave people who saved China's art from the ravages of the Second World War, undertaking a perilous journey across the vast country in order to protect these fragile treasures. After the end of the war, and the beginning of the Communist regime, the Forbidden City curators were each faced with a stark choice: remain with their rescued artefacts in China, or flee with them to Taiwan. Depending on their choice, the curators' fates took startlingly different, sometimes heart-breaking turns.

Nella ricerca di Massimo Recalcati nei territori della psiche, da decenni l'arte occupa un posto centrale. È a essa, e in particolare alla pittura, che Recalcati torna continuamente, immergendosi nella profondità della dimensione creativa per mettere alla prova e temprare gli strumenti teorici della psicanalisi lacaniana.

Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Turner by Franny Moyle, read by John Sackville. J. M. W. Turner is Britain's most famous landscape painter. Yet beyond his artistic achievements, little is known of the man himself and the events of his life: the tragic committal of his mother to a lunatic asylum, the personal sacrifices he made to effect his stratospheric rise and the bizarre double life he chose to lead in the last years of his life.

Hidden Hands tells the stories of the artisans, artists, scribes and readers, patrons and collectors who made and kept the beautiful, fragile objects that have survived the ravages of fire, water and deliberate destruction to form a picture of both English culture and the wider European culture of which it is part. Without manuscripts, she shows, many historical figures would be lost to us, as well as those of lower social status, women and people of colour, their stories erased and the remnants of their labours destroyed.

Of all the self-doubting people in the world, nobody, it seems, doubts themselves more than creative people. Whether creating code for a new application, painting a mural, forging a new way forward in business, or writing a book, creatives tend to suffer from more self-doubt than other humans. Because, while creativity is demanded, it is rarely respected. Many fear the power of creative influence because they fear the unknown.

The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills - artificial and real - and in the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century.

Based on years of archival research and on interviews with hundreds of Warhol's surviving friends, lovers and enemies, Warhol traces the artist's path from his origins as the impoverished son of Eastern European immigrants in 1930s Pittsburgh, through his early success as a commercial illustrator and his ground-breaking pivot into fine art, to the society portraiture and popular celebrity of the '70s and '80s, as he reflected and responded to the changing dynamics of commerce and culture.

In 1882, there was an artistic explosion of creativity in Europe. To a poor girl, Maria, and her alcoholic, prostitute mother, Sien, in The Hague, Netherlands, that didn't mean much until one winter evening when her mother brought Vincent Van Gogh to their home. Before his stint in Paris with the bohemian painters of his day, Van Gogh tried for a family life while learning the trade of art. Seminary school was a failure, and his cousin, Klee, had rejected his romantic advances.

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom was the runaway most-discussed novel of 2010, an ambitious and searching engagement with life in America in the 21st century. Now, a new collection of Franzen’s non-fiction brings fresh demonstrations of his vivid, moral intelligence, confirming his status not only as a great American novelist but also as a master noticer, social critic, and self-investigator. In Farther Away, which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, the writer returns with renewed vigour....

In Albert & the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Dürer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Dürer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions.

La saga des Médicis, sous la plume du grand Dumas. Les Médicis sont une des familles les plus riches et les plus influentes de Florence. Des ressources financières considérables leur permirent d'investir dans l'architecture, la sculpture, la peinture mais aussi dans la collection de pierres précieuses et d'objets d'orfèvrerie. La maison de Médicis est apparue, au XIIe siècle, au sein de la République de Florence, et devient, au XVIe siècle, la famille régnant sur le grand-duché de Toscane.

In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn gathered a remarkable collection of works by schizophrenic patients that would astonish and delight the world. The Prinzhorn collection, as it was called, inspired a new generation of artists, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. What the doctor could not have known, however, was that these works would later be used to prepare the ground for mass-murder.