British Museum Press
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Hiroshige
Hiroshige was one of Japan's most talented, prolific and popular artists. Famed for his landscapes, he was also a great observer of nature with a visionary approach to colour and brushwork. His legacy continues to influence and inspire artists today.
Over a career spanning four decades, the prolific Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) produced thousands of landscape and nature prints, hundreds of paintings commissioned by the samurai elite, as well as many illustrated books. His work appealed to every stratum of society. While some of his landscape prints, such as Evening Snow - Kanbara and Ohashi - Evening Rain, are well-known examples of Japanese art, the full range of his output is less familiar.
Hiroshige came from a samurai family, but he crossed social boundaries and devoted himself to depicting popular customs and the world around him. His work is distinguished by an air of gentle grace and decorum, perhaps arising partly from his steady temperament. His calm artistic vision sustained his contemporaries through the uncertainties of daily life and changing times. A great colourist, he stands out for discovering a subtle lyricism in the experience of travel, and a bond between people and the natural world.
Featuring highlights from leading private collections of Hiroshige prints, alongside works by Hiroshige and other artists from the British Museum's outstanding collection of Japanese art and from other major collections, this lavishly illustrated new publication celebrates one of the world's most accomplished artists.
Picasso - printmaker
Picasso was one of the most creative and experimental talents ever to explore the medium of print. This book charts his career as a printmaker, which was characterised by close collaboration with skilled printers, through which extraordinary artworks were produced.
Picasso was one of the most creative and experimental talents ever to explore the medium of print. This book charts his career as a printmaker, which was characterised by close collaboration with skilled printers, through which extraordinary artworks were produced.
Together with a stunning selection of works on paper by Picasso, it also includes sculptures, drawings and prints by other artists and cultures of the kind that inspired Picasso. His prints often demonstrate his keen sense of belonging to an artistic lineage stretching back to antiquity (stemming from his kinship with the Mediterranean world of his birthplace, Málaga), as well as great artists of the past such as Raphael, Rembrandt and Ingres. One section explores the contradictions and controversies relating to Picasso's relationships with his wives and lovers. The focus on Picasso as a printmaker will argue for the importance of this activity in his long artistic career, and his continued relevance as one of the most creative and experimental talents ever to explore the medium of print.
Silk Roads
A richly illustrated publication that explores the networks of contacts and exchanges spanning Afro-Eurasia from 500 to 1000 ce, highlighting how the movement of people, objects and ideas shaped cultures and histories.
The term ‘Silk Road’ conjures a range of romantic images. Camel caravans crossing desert dunes. Merchants trading silk and spices. Far-flung commerce between ‘East’ and ‘West’. The reality was far richer.
Focusing on a defining period between 500 and 1000 CE, this beautifully illustrated book reimagines the Silk Roads as a web of interlocking networks linking Asia, Africa and Europe, from Japan to Ireland, from the Arctic to Madagascar.
It tells a remarkable story of people, objects and ideas flowing in all directions, through the traces these journeys left behind – including ceramics from Tang China recovered from a shipwreck in the Java Sea, sword-fittings set with Indian garnets buried in England, and a selection of letters and legal texts from a synagogue in Cairo revealing a Jewish community’s links from India to al-Andalus. Woven throughout, encounters with various peoples active on the Silk Roads, from seafarers to Sogdians, Aksumites and Vikings, reveal the human stories, innovations and transfers of knowledge that emerged, shaping cultures and histories across continents centuries before the formation of today’s globalised world.
Michelangelo: the last decades
Tracing the final 30 years of Michelangelo’s career, this book examines how the great master used art and faith to explore the common human experience of ageing in a rapidly changing world.
Michelangelo was not the isolated, tortured genius of artistic legend but a man who maintained a close circle of friends and associates into old age. His late drawings, letters and poetry offer powerful insights into his psychology, reflecting his Catholic faith, his commanding intellectual engagement, and his hope for eternal life. Built on the British Museum’s extraordinary collection of drawings, this book explores Michelangelo’s relationships and late creativity to go beyond the towering Renaissance master known today.
Reflections: contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa
Reflections: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa brings together an extraordinary collection of work from the British Museum for the first time. The contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa is rich and vibrant. Whether living in their countries of birth or in diaspora, the featured artists are part of the globalised world of art. Here we see artists responding to and making work about their present, histories, traditions and cultures, reflecting on a part of the world that has experienced extraordinary change in living memory.
The British Museum has been acquiring the work of Middle Eastern and North African artists since the 1980s, and the collection - principally works on paper - is one of the most extensive in the public sphere. Collected within the context of a museum of history, the works offer insights into the nature of civil societies, the complex politics of the region, and cultural traditions in their broadest sense, from the relationship with Islamic art, to the deep engagement with literature.
The introduction to the book by curator Venetia Porter explores the history of the collection and the works included. The essential framework for understanding the politics and context within which the artists are working is provided by Charles Tripp's essay. The works are grouped into seven chapters, each beginning with a short introduction. The authors explore the selection within themes such as faith, abstraction and the female gaze.
Celts - Art and Identity
The real and imagined legacy of the ancient Celts has shaped modern identities across the British Isles and retains a powerful hold over the popular imagination. Furthermore, Celtic art is one of Europes great artistic traditions, with the skills of Celtic craftspeople standing alongside the best of the ancient and medieval worlds. But who were the Celts? Recent research and new archaeological discoveries are continuing to transform our understanding of the idea of the Celts a subject involving much controversy and academic debate since the late 1990s. Drawing on the latest scholarship, the authors explore how the Celts have been defined differently from ancient times to the modern day, by people with different perspectives and agendas. They look, too, at what is meant by Celtic art, from its origins c.500 BC in western Europe, through its transformations and revivals in the Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods, to its rediscovery in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are over 250 remarkable objects that have been selected from the collections of the British Museum, the National Museums of Scotland and other key European museums to richly illustrate the narrative and highlight the artistic accomplishments of craftspeople through the centuries. Here are iconic, intricately decorated masterpieces as well as less well-known fixtures and fittings; items of warfare and adornment; the ceremonial and the utilitarian.
Symbols of Power: Ten Coins that Changed the World
Money has always been a subject of interest, today more so than ever. For centuries it has performed a key role around the globe most obviously in trade and the economy, but also in the development of national identities, religions and the spread of empire. Introduced as measurements of weight to serve the most basic of functions, these currencies have changed appearance and meaning throughout the ages and developed into complex monetary units we know today. This engaging book tells the story of ten of the world's most important currencies and reveals how each and every one of them ha s helped shape the world we live in. With a brief but informative biography of each of the currencies, it reveals where and how each originated, the various roles they performed, and how they spread, survived and changed over the years. Some may have fallen into disuse but they might also have been revived in new and unexpected forms, and in different locations. Charting the rise and fall of each, the book will look at how the movements, developments and designs of currencies can highlight broader themes of history such as the characteristics of empire, trade and migration and the personalities of kings and rulers and how they can be identified as barometer s for the political fortunes of a nation. Packed full of facts and interesting stories, and thoughtfully illustrated with images from the British Museum and beyond, Old Gold to New Money is an illuminating account of world currencies and the crucial role they play in our world.
Vypredané
11,50 €
One God
The first millennium in Egypt saw a transition from an ancient pantheon of pagan gods to the one God of the three Abrahamic faiths. Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities were established in succession and peacefully co-existed for long periods of time periodically interrupted by conflict and violence, each faith responding to pre-existing traditions by either rejecting earlier artistic ideas or by adapting and assimilating them. Due to its arid climate, Egypt preserves a unique range and abundance of evidence providing insights into the emergence and establishment of new religions, their relationship to each other and the pagan past. Over 300 objects have been specially selected for this publication, drawing on the significant collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the British Museum and reflecting the rich cultural diversity of the Nile Valley from the first to the twelfth century AD. Through beautiful works of art, including jewellery, painted panels, textiles, sculpture, calligraphy, manuscripts, glass and ceramics, we gain a better understanding of the lives of ordinary and extraordinary people in this important period in Egyptian history. The book also reveals the different types of sacred buildings - synagogue, church, and mosque - and explains their architectural history and dissemination in Egypt.
Vypredané
37,95 €
Surviving Desires: Making and Selling Jewellery in the American Southwest
Surviving Desires: Making and Selling Jewellery in the American Southwest
Vypredané
52,00 €
Cats: The British Museum
Cats were first domesticated - or, more likely, noticed a warm fireside and chose to domesticate themselves - many thousands of years ago. Over the centuries they have performed a useful role as pest controllers, but much more as friends and companions of humans. This delightful illustrated anthology includes a selection of the many poems, anecdotes and quotations about cats, which have been written over the centuries.
Vypredané
14,95 €
Birds: The British Museum
Each striking image in this beautiful anthology is matched with a poem about the same species. Some were composed by our best-loved writers – including Shakespeare, Chaucer and Tennyson – and others have been selected from less familiar or even anonymous voices around the world. The endless variety of birds, their freedom of sky, land and water, and especially their song have also inspired writers through the ages.
Vypredané
14,95 €
Icons
The painted panels made for use in Byzantine and Orthodox churches and for prayers at home are perhaps the most effective and enduring form of religious art ever developed, and also perhaps one of the most mysterious. The peaceful, clear imagery found within them can be appreciated on both a religious and a secular level. This book will look at icons in the context of the history of Christianity and examine all aspects of the production and power of this distinctive art form. Based on an analysis of British Museum examples that have been carefully studied by restorers, Robin Cormack explains how icons were made, framed and displayed. He explores their subject matter, showing how scenes can be identified and how the iconography developed over the centuries and examining the role of portraiture. Icons is illustrated mainly with Cretan, Greek and Russian examples from the British Museum, which holds Britain's foremost collection of icons.
Vypredané
20,50 €
Watches
The British Museum watch collection is unsurpassed anywhere in the world, and tells the story of the watch which spans an incredible 500 years. Within the collection are examples ranging from sixteenth-century early stack freed watches made in south Germany to exquisite decorative watches of the seventeenth century. Everyday watches from the eighteenth century and precision-made chronometers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are included, as are examples from the modern era. All the major makers of Europe and America will be represented, including Thomas Tompion, whose reputation stretched far and wide even in his own time, and the Swiss-born Abraham Louis Breguet, who lived and worked in Paris supplying the best that money could buy to the crown heads and aristocratic families of the western world. In contrast to the high precision of the horological giants, the Museum has a growing collection of wristwatches, including those with automatic winding systems. There are also extensive collections of pin-pallet lever watches made for the mass market during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by companies such as Waterbury and Ingersoll. The collections are brought up to the minute with the inclusion of early examples of electro-mechanical watches and the quartz revolution.
Vypredané
22,95 €
Sex on Show
The Greeks and Romans were not shy about sex. Drinking cups, oil-lamps and walls were decorated with scenes of seduction and sexual intercourse which make the modern viewer blush; models of penises were worn around the neck or hung from doorways. In classical Greece, statues of erect penises served as boundary-stones and signposts. In Rome, marble satyrs and nymphs grappled in gardens. How are we to make sense of this abundance of sexual imagery? Were these images seductive, shocking, humorous? Were they about sex or love? And what and how do we learn from them? Sex on Show answers these questions by embracing ancient attitudes to religion, politics, sex and gender to examine how the ancient saw themselves and their world. Covering the sixth century BC to the fourth century AD, as well as some Neoclassical art from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Sex on Show uses detailed visual analysis to bring new insights to Greek and Roman culture and to the meaning of erotic imagery, past and present. This is not simply a book about sexual practice or social history. It is a visual history about what it meant and still means to stare sex in the face.
Vypredané
31,99 €
5000 Years of Tiles
5000 Years of Tiles is the essential, single - volume colour compendium of tile art and production around the world, from ancient times to the present day. Over 350 beautiful colour illustrations showcase an incredible range of tile arts, including the first fired roof tiles in ancient Greece in the third millennium BC, English medieval floor pavements from Clarendon Palace, figural tiles from China, richly patterned Iznik tiles from the Islamic world and stylized ceramic tiles of the Arts and Crafts movement. Placing the tiles firmly in their historical and cultural context, this richly illustrated book highlights the continuity and diversity of tiles, examining how tile art in one time and place has inspired and rejuvenated those in others. The function and form of this versatile art is examined in stunning detail, from floors to roofs, stoves to bathrooms, cathedrals to metro stations to reveal a fascinating history of design, colour and decoration.
Vypredané
31,99 €