Cabinets of Curiosities Mauries Patrick Thames&Hudson

The best-selling Chanel Catwalk was the first book to gather every Chanel collection ever created by Karl Lagerfeld in a single volume. Now fully updated to include Lagerfeld’s final collections for the house and those of his right-hand and successor, Virginie Viard, this revised edition includes twenty-eight new collections. This definitive publication features a concise history of Karl Lagerfeld and Virginie Viard’s time at Chanel as well as brief biographical profiles of each designer. The collections (from Haute Couture and Ready-to-Wear to Cruise and Metier d’arts) are organized chronologically. Each one is introduced by a short text unveiling its influences and highlights and illustrated with carefully curated catwalk images, showcasing hundreds of spectacular clothes, details, accessories, beauty looks and set designs – and of course the top fashion models who wore them on the runway

The first-ever translation of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead of Sobekmose-fully illustrated and explained by a leading Egyptologist, offering fascinating insights into one of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world • The Book of the Dead of Sobekmose, in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, is one of the most important surviving examples of ancient Egyptian Books of the Dead. Such "books"-actually papyrus scrolls-were composed of traditional funerary texts, including magic spells, which were thought to assist the deceased on their journeys into the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians believed in an underworld fraught with dangers that needed to be carefully navigated, from the familiar, such as snakes and scorpions, to the extraordinary: lakes of fire to cross, animal-headed demons to pass, and the ritual Weighing of the Heart, whose outcome determined whether or not the deceased would be born again into the afterlife for eternity

A new translation of Giorgio Vasari's Life of Raphael, fully illustrated, that presents Vasari's appealing narrative with new precision • Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, written in 1550 and 1568, is a classic text of cultural history. This monumental assembly of artists' lives from Giotto to Michelangelo paints a vivid picture of the progression of art in the hands of individual masters • This illustrated stand-alone edition of Vasari's Life of Raphael offers a new translation of this rich and remarkable life, elegantly rendering Vasari's literary text in modern terms. A work of authoritative skill and precision, this new translation preserves Vasari's exciting narrative, alongside beautifully reproduced color illustrations

A beautiful and dynamic new way of looking at the work of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest painters, inventors, and scientists of all time • Experience the most famous Renaissance artist and inventor in a brand-new way. Courtney Watson McCarthy has crafted many brilliant pop-up books, featuring artists like Antoni Gaudi? and Salvador Dali?, and Leonardo Pop-Ups is the most dynamic yet. McCarthy showcases a variety of pop-ups showing off Da Vinci's many talents; beyond his famous Renaissance paintings, Da Vinci has also been called the father of paleontology and architecture, and has been credited with the inventions of such diverse machines as the helicopter, the parachute, and the tank • Featuring many of Da Vinci's most enduring artworks, both as illustrations and pop-ups, including The Vitruvian Man, The Last Supper, and, of course, the Mona Lisa, Leonardo Pop-Ups also includes Da Vinci's self-portrait, an overview of his architectural designs, and inventions such as a flapping ornithopter

A dazzling selection of Van Gogh's most famous paintings, as well as some lesser-known masterpieces, many drawn from the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam • Nearly 130 years after his death, Vincent van Gogh continues to exert a powerful fascination over viewers and historians. This superb book offers readers a selection of the artist's most unforgettable canvases, as well as some lesser-known examples, many drawn from the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam • The volume explores the works in the context of Van Gogh's short but brilliant career, in which frequent spells of isolation were paired with lively engagement with his peers and the popular ideas of his time. Additionally, Van Gogh's continuous stream of letters written to family and friends-one of the most important archival resources of nineteenth-century art-provides a narrative thread around which this study develops

The art and architecture of Egypt during the age of the pharaohs capture the imagination of the modern world. Vivid, graceful forms decorating monuments that emanated ambition and authority spark our wonder about this distant culture. Ever youthful and elegant men and women encounter odd, animal-headed gods and monsters amid scenes of work and leisure, in a paradise of plain, bright colours, where hieroglyphic texts hint at grand ideas • The tombs and temples of ancient Egypt reveal how art and monumental building first flowered at the heart of civilization. Among the great creative achievements of ancient Egypt we discover a set of constant forms: archetypes in art and architecture that state clearly and concisely the contemporary view of authority, divinity, beauty and meaning

This is a smart and succinct guide to the rich tradition of Japanese mythology, from the earliest recorded legends of Izanagi and Izanami, their divine offspring and the creation of Japan, to medieval tales of vengeful ghosts, through to the modern-day reincarnation of ancient deities as the heroes of mecha anime. While many around the world love Japan’s cultural exports, few are familiar with Japan’s unique mythology - enriched by Shinto, Buddhism and regional folklore • Mythology remains a living, evolving part of Japanese society, and the ways in which the people of Japan understand their myths are very different today even from a century ago, let alone over a millennium into the past. Offering much more than any competing overview of Japanese mythology, The Japanese Myths not only retells the ancient stories but also considers their place within the patterns of Japanese religions, culture and history, helping readers to understand the deep links between past and present in Japan, and the ways these myths live and grow

What makes Scottish art Scottish? In this now classic text, Murdo Macdonald explores the distinctive characteristics of Scottish art over the centuries - such as the heritage of Celtic design with it's emphasis on intricate pattern; the importance of the landscape, particularly the Highlands and the sea; and a close connection with France. It ranges from the earliest art to survive - Neolithic standing stones - through the art of the Picts and Gaels, and the tumultuous centuries of the Reformation, to the great flowering of Scottish art in the Enlightenment. The final chapters focus closely on art produced since 1900, with succinct and revealing analyses of the Scottish Colourists and the major figures of contemporary art in all media. Masterpieces from the Book of Kells to paintings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Joan Eardley are illustrated in full colour, and such key works are set in a clearly explained historical context throughout

Rasem Badran's influence is rapidly spreading throughout the developing world. Covering the full spectrum from urban planning to individual residences, his work is human-scaled, responsive to it's environment and meets the social and cultural requirements of the people who use it. He is often seen as the natural successor to the seminal Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy • This volume provides a thorough overview of Badran's work, bringing together the architect's own dramatic collection of drawings, plans and photographs, many seen here for the first time • A comprehensive chronology of Badran's work completes this fascinating survey of one of the most influential and revolutionary architects of our time

Unperson is one of the first photo books of North Korean Defectors. The 15 intimate portraits and the stories of the brave people who decided to take that chance to flee to South Korea. The road to South Korea is dangerous and can take years with the many different borders of Mongolia, Laos, Thailand, and China. The people fleeing are filled with the fear of being arrested and sent back to labour camps. Once they arrive in South Korea, they often struggle to find a new identity, lost between their North Korean past and South Korean future. Tim Franco travelled to the crossing points, aiming to capture the diversity of landscape that is the background of North Korean defection. He chose to use an 8x10 camera with Polaroid film to capture each defector

This sweeping overview of Rembrandt's extraordinary achievement as a draughtsman fills a gap in the otherwise enormous literature on the artist. Beautifully illustrated, mostly in colour, the more than 150 drawings - culled from a corpus of some 800 - are discussed in detail. The drawings span Rembrandt's entire productive life as an artist, from early self-portraits in the 1620s to late drawings from the 1660s of the victim of an execution, a state coach, and historical and mythological images. The scope of the book allows readers to delve into the very broad range of Rembrandt's oeuvre of drawings

Fulfilling a need for an accessible, affordable introduction to a subject of sustained and growing significance in contemporary culture, this volume in the World of Art series redefines contemporary Chinese art in the last forty years since the end of China's Cultural Revolution, placing it in the context of unprecedented cultural, political and urban transformation • This book offers neither an art historian's chronological review of Chinese art in post-Mao China, nor does it join the debate of previous terminologies coined by art critics; instead, it provides the most up to date understanding of contemporary Chinese art through original research and informed curatorial perspectives on the selected representative work, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, installation, video, performance and participatory art