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Qusayr ?Amraby Garth Fowden
University of California Press 2004; US$ 65.00From the stony desolation of Jordan's desert, it is but a step through a doorway into the bath house of the Qusayr 'Amra hunting lodge. Inside, multicolored frescoes depict scenes from courtly life and the hunt, along with musicians, dancing girls, and naked bathing women. The traveler is transported to the luxurious and erotic world of a mid-eighth-century Muslim Arab prince. For scholars, though, Qusayr 'Amra, probably painted in the 730s or 740s, has proved a mirage, its concreteness dissolved by doubts about date, patron, and meaning. This is the first book-length contextualization of the mysterious monument through a compelling analysis of its iconography and of the literary sources for the Umayyad period. It illuminates not only the way... more...
Jewish book art between Islam and Christianityby K. Kogman-Appel
BRILL 2004; US$ 204.00This book discusses the decoration types of Sephardic illuminated Bibles. Unlike illuminated Passover manuscripts from the same period with their rich figurative and narrative picture cycles, Bibles are almost exclusively aniconic. Whereas the former borrow heavily from Christian art, the Bibles are entirely indebted to Islamic culture. The volume elaborates in particular on the cultural history of the decorative motifs and types of ornamentation in an era of cultural transition in Iberia and culture struggle within Spanish Jewry. The first two chapters describe the cultural, social and artistic background in which the Bibles were produced, whereas the other chapters describe the works of the different schools and discuss them within different... more...
Mediaeval Manichaean Book Artby Zsuzsanna Gulácsi
BRILL 2005; US$ 199.00This volume is a pioneer study focused on a corpus of 89 fragments of exquisitely illuminated manuscripts that were produced under the patronage of the Turkic-speaking Uygurs in the Turfan region of East Central Asia between the 8th and 11th centuries CE. Through detailed analyses and interpretations aided by precise computer drawings, the author introduces an important group of primary sources for future comparative research in Central Asian art, mediaeval book illumination, and Manichaean studies. more...
Ornamental Wall Painting in the Art of the Assyrian Empireby Pauline Albenda
BRILL 2004; US$ 136.00This study provides the archaeological record and pictorial documentation of ornamental wall painting produced for Assyrian royal residences. It examines the changing trends in the decorative designs and selection of motifs, some with symbolic meaning. Many illustrations are from the excavation reports. more...
Illuminating the Border of French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270-1310by Lisa Moore Hunt
Routledge 2006; US$ 70.00This study first examines the marginal repertoire in two well-known manuscripts, the Psalter of Guy de Dampierre and an Arthurian Romance, within their material and codicological contexts. This repertoire then provides a template for an extended study of the marginal motifs that appear in eighteen related manuscripts, which range from a Bible to illustrated versions of the encyclopedias of Vincent de Beauvais and Brunetto Latini. Considering the manuscript as a whole work of art, the marginalia?s physical relationship to nearby texts and images can shed light on the reception of these illuminated books by their medieval viewers. more...
Scenic Art for the Theatreby Susan Crabtree; Peter Beudert
Elsevier 2004; US$ 50.95This new full color edition is significantly up-dated to new interviews with "old masters" and successful "divas" of the industry, up-dated safety tips, and additional insights into the business of scenic design. Expanded to include a new chapter dedicated to painting techniques, the book will now feature detailed step-by-step descriptions of common two-dimensional painting techniques. Wood graining, marble and stone, and brick painting are few examples of the new techniques to be covered. *New interviews with "old masters" and successful "divas" of the industry * Insights into the business of scenic design * A new chapter dedicated to painting techniques and detailed step-by-step descriptions of common two-dimensional painting techniques... more...
Old Masters, New Worldby Cynthia Saltzman
Penguin Group Inc. 2008; US$ 12.99A spellbinding account of the rapacious pursuit of the most exquisite paintings in the world In the Gilded Age, newly wealthy and culturally ambitious Americans began to compete for Europe's extraordinary Old Master pictures, causing a major migration of art across the Atlantic. Old Masters, New World is a backstage look at the cutthroat competition, financial maneuvering, intrigue, and double-dealing often involved in these purchases, not to mention the seductive power of the ravishing paintings that drove these collectors-including financier J. Pierpont Morgan, sugar king H. O. Havemeyer, Boston aesthete Isabella Stewart Gardner, and industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Packed with stunning reproductions, this is an ideal gift book for... more...
Frida Kahloby John Morrison
Infobase Publishing 2003; US$ 30.00The immense emotional and physical wounds Kahlo suffered in her difficult life, due in part to a tragic streetcar accident and marriage to fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera, inspired her paintings. more...
Art in Reproductionby Robert Verhoogt
Amsterdam University Press 2007; US$ 65.00This illuminating study examines the cultural meaning of artistic reproduction in a refreshingly new context through its consideration of how three artists managed the reproduction of their work. more...
Arab Paintingby Anna Contadini
BRILL 2007; US$ 147.00Arab painting, preserved mainly in manuscript illustrations of the 12th to 14th centuries, is here treated as an artistic corpus fully deserving of appreciation in its own terms, and not as a mere precursor to Persian painting. The book assembles papers by a distinguished list of scholars that illuminate the variety of material that survives in scientific as well as literary manuscripts. Because of the contexts in which the paintings appear, a major theoretical concern is, precisely, the relationship of painting to text. It rejects earlier scholarly habits of analysing paintings in isolation, and proposes the integration of text and image as a more satisfactory framework within which to elucidate the characteristics and functions of this impressive... more...









