National Network for Equitable Library Service

This provocative book is a tractate-a treatise-on beauty in Japanese art, written in the manner of a zuihitsu, a free-ranging assortment of ideas that "follow the brush" wherever it leads. Donald Richie looks at how perceptual values in Japan were drawn from raw nature and then modified by elegant expressions of class and taste. He explains aesthetic concepts like wabi, sabi, aware, and yugen, and ponders their relevance in art and cinema today.

At the end of the Great War, to protect his village from the Spanish flu epidemic, a priest commissions an Italian painter to decorate the local church with a fresco dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The painter is to choose, among four local women all named Mary, a model for his work. Superstition collides with desire, and lies are unmasked.

Even before its completion in 1839, John James Audubon's Birds of America was recognized as a masterpiece of both art and natural science; a great scientist of the day called it the "most magnificent monument which has ever been raised to ornithology." Roger Tory Peterson and Virginia Marie Peterson's modern edition of the Birds of America, published with the full endorsement and cooperation of the National Audubon Society, is itself an acknowledged classic. Now, for the first time, it is available as an e-book.

A New York Times Notable Book: This national bestseller is a vivid biography of the meteoric rise and tragic death of art star Jean-Michel Basquiat Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat was the Jimi Hendrix of the art world. In less than a decade, he went from being a teenage graffiti artist to an international art star; he was dead of a drug overdose at age twenty-seven. Basquiat's brief career spanned the giddy 1980s art boom and epitomized its outrageous excess. A legend in his own lifetime, Basquiat was a fixture of the downtown scene, a wild nexus of music, fashion, art, and drugs.

A visionary survey of urbanism from the Middle Ages to the late 1930s, with a new introduction by Thomas Fisher Considered among the greatest works of Lewis Mumford-a prolific historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and longtime architecture critic for the New Yorker-The Culture of Cities is a call for communal action to "rebuild the urban world on a sounder human foundation." First published in 1938, this radical investigation into the human environment is based on firsthand surveys of North American and European locales, as well as extensive historical and technologic

Most people can name some famous artists and recognize their best-known works. But what's behind all that painting, drawing, and sculpting' What was Leonardo da Vinci's snack of choice while he painted Mona Lisa's mysterious smile' Why did Georgia O'Keeffe find bones so appealing' Who called Diego Rivera "Frog-Face"' And what is it about artists that makes both their work and their lives so fascinating-to themselves, to their curious neighbors, and to all of us' This book presents the humor and the tragedy in twenty artists' lives as no biography has done before.

Mark Rothko's iconic paintings are some of the most profound works of twentieth-century Abstract Expressionism. This collection presents fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's color field period (1949-1970) alongside essays by Rothko's son, Christopher Rothko, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator of painting and sculpture Janet Bishop.

Drawn from Life offers bite-size lessons that will help anyone master the classic practice of life drawing. Over 100 pieces of art by contemporary artists illustrate fundamentals such as line, contour, and color, plus surprising and innovative techniques that will take your drawings to the next level. Showcasing a wide range of styles and methods, this is a refreshing new guide to a timeless art form.

Frank Lloyd Wright's groundbreaking designs, innovative construction techniques, and inviting interiors continue to astound and inspire generations of architects and nonarchitects alike. The only comprehensive collection of Wright-designed buildings open to the public in the United States and Japan, Wright Sites has been revised and expanded to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the architect's birth in June 1867.

Curious about constructions' Inside this book, you'll come face-to-face with 50 incredible structures, including: a fire-breathing octopus sculpture; the skateboard ramp you'd need to jump the Great Wall of China; a whole community of tree houses in Costa Rica; and a lifesize X-Wing Starfighter built of Legos. These and many more fascinating accounts of constructions both fantastically useful and gloriously unnecessary await inquisitive readers, aspiring engineers, and anyone who ever looked at a skyscraper and thought, "Yeah, but what if it had a roller coaster on top'"