The world’s greatest magicians from the Middle Ages to the 1950s
Magic has enchanted humankind for millennia, evoking terror, laughter, shock, and amazement. Once persecuted as heretics and sorcerers, magicians have always been conduits to a parallel universe of limitless possibility—whether invoking spirits, reading minds, or inverting the laws of nature by sleight of hand. Long before science fiction, virtual realities, video games, and the Internet, the craft of magic was the most powerful fantasy world man had ever known. As the pioneers of special effects throughout history, magicians have never ceased to mystify us by making the impossible possible.
This book celebrates more than 500 years of the stunning visual culture of the world’s greatest magicians. Featuring more than 750 rarely seen vintage posters, photographs, handbills, and engravings as well as paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and Bruegel among others, The Magic Book traces the history of magic as a performing art from the 1400s to the 1950s. Combining sensational images with incisive text, the book explores the evolution of the magicians’ craft, from medieval street performers to the brilliant stage magicians who gave rise to cinematic special effects; from the 19th century’s golden age of magic to groundbreaking daredevils like Houdini and the early 20th century’s vaudevillians.
Although it only lasted three turbulent years, the afterburn of the Blaue Reiter (1911–1914) movement exerted a tremendous influence on the development of modern European art. Named after a Kandinsky painting, The Blue Rider, this loose band of artists, grouped around Russian émigré Wassily Kandinsky and German painter Franz Marc, sought to reject establishment standards and charge into a new artistic unknown.
Articulating spiritual values and concerns in an era of rapid industrialization, the artists of the Blaue Reiter were connected by a shared interest in painting, woodcuts, and prints, as well as the symbolic values of color and spontaneous approaches to artwork. Key pieces such as Franz Marc’s Blue Horse I (1911), Kandinsky’s Picture with a Black Arch (1912), and August Macke’s Woman in a Green Jacket (1913) reveal varying subjects, but all channel distorted perspectives, crude lines, and an emphatic, expressionist use of color.
The Case Study House program (1945–1966) was an exceptional, innovative event in the history of American architecture and remains to this day unique. The program, which concentrated on the Los Angeles area and oversaw the design of 36 prototype homes, sought to make available plans for modern residences that could be easily and cheaply constructed during the postwar building boom.
The program’s chief motivating force was Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza, a champion of modernism who had all the right connections to attract some of architecture’s greatest talents, such as Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen. Highly experimental, the program generated houses that were designed to redefine the modern home, and had a pronounced influence on architecture—American and international—both during the program’s existence and even to this day.
TASCHEN brings you a retrospective of the entire program with comprehensive documentation, brilliant photographs from the period and, for the houses still in existence, contemporary photos, as well as extensive floor plans and sketches.
From Azzedine Alaïa, Cristóbal Balenciaga, and Coco Chanel to Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent, and Vivienne Westwood, more than a century’s worth of fashion greats are celebrated in this new edition of Fashion Designers A–Z.
An accessibly priced and updated volume features photographs of hundreds of garments selected from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) museum's permanent collection. Elegant gowns from the turn of the century, Mondrian-style minimalist chic, and everything inbetween. Each of these works of art is chosen not only for its beauty but also for exemplifyingthe unique philosophy, skill, and aesthetics of each of the featured designers.
In her introductory essay, the museum’s director and chief curator, Valerie Steele, writes about the rise of the fashion museum and the emergence of the fashion exhibition as a popular and controversial phenomenon. The foreword is contributed by international style maven Suzy Menkes, texts by the museum’s curators help shine historical light on each label and garment pictured, and beautifully drawn portraits by the artist Robert Nippoldt pay homage to the creators behind them.
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