Elected the architectural book of the year by the International Artbook and Film Festival in Perpignan, France, Frédéric Chaubin’s Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed explores 90 buildings in 14 former Soviet Republics. Each of these structures expresses what Chaubin considers the fourth age of Soviet architecture, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990.
Contrary to the 1920s and 1950s, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, architects went far beyond modernism, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba Sanatorium, Yalta), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Palace of Weddings, Tbilisi). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to Suprematist influence (Prometheus youth camp, Bogatyr). Then comes the “speaking architecture” widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Crematorium, Kiev), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Institute of Scientific Research, Kiev), a political center watching you like Big Brother (House of Soviets, Kaliningrad).
In their puzzle of styles, their outlandish strategies, these buildings are extraordinary remnants of a collapsing system.In their diversity and local exoticism, they testify both to the vast geography of the USSR and its encroaching end of the Soviet Union, the holes in a widening net. At the same time, they immortalize many of the ideological dreams of the country and its time, from an obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of identity.
First advertised as a “mind-stretching experience,” Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth stunned the cinema world. A tour-de-force of science fiction as art form, the movie brought not only hallucinatory visuals and a haunting exploration of contemporary alienation, but also glam-rock legend David Bowie in his lead role debut as paranoid alien Newton.
Based on Walter Tevis’s 1963 sci-fi fable of the same title, The Man Who Fell to Earth follows alien Newton from his arrival on earth in search of water; his transition to wealthy entrepreneur, leveraging the advanced technologies of his native planet; his sexual awakening with the young Mary-Lou; and then the discovery of his alien identity, his imprisonment, abandonment, and descent into alcoholism. Throughout, Roeg coaxed a beguiling performance from his cast, presenting not only Bowie in ethereal space-traveler glory, but also pitch-perfect supporting performances from Candy Clark, Rip Torn, and Buck Henry.
TASCHEN’s The Man Who Fell to Earth presents a plenitude of stills and behind-the-scenes images by unit photographer David James, including numerous shots of Bowie at his playful and ambiguous best. A fresh introductory essay explores the shooting of the film and its lasting impact, drawing upon an exclusive interview with David James, who brings first-hand insights into the making of this sci-fi masterwork.
The fantastical vision of Hieronymus Bosch's twenty paintings and eight drawings have secured him a place as one of the most cult artists in history.
With full spreads and carefully curated details, this book offers the complete, haunting Bosch world, exploring the full reach and compelling inventions of his genius as well as his disturbing imagination.
Alongside Bosch's hybrid creatures, nightmarish scenarios and his religious and moral framework, art historian and Bosch expert Stefan Fischer reveals the most important themes and influences in these cryptic, mesmerizing masterpieces.
It started in 1978 with an ordinary coffee shop near Kyoto. Word spread that the waitresses wore no panties under their miniskirts. Similar establishments popped up across the country. Men waited in line outside to pay three times the usual coffee price just to be served by a panty-free young woman.
Within a few years, a new craze took hold: the no-panties “massage” parlor. Increasingly bizarre services followed, from fondling clients through holes in coffins to commuter-train fetishists. One particularly popular destination was a Tokyo club called “Lucky Hole” where clients stood on one side of a plywood partition, a hostess on the other. In between them was a hole big enough for a certain part of the male anatomy.
Taking the Lucky Hole as his title, Nobuyoshi Araki captures Japan's sex industry in full flower, documenting in more than 800 photos the pleasure-seekers and providers of Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood before the February 1985 New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act put a stop to many of the country's sex locales. Through mirrored walls, bed sheets, the bondage and the orgies, this is the last word on an age of bacchanalia, infused with moments of humor, precise poetry, and questioning interjections.
Part design history, part trip down musical memory lane, this anthology of Jazz album artwork is above all a treasure trove of creative and cultural inspiration. Spanning half a century, it assembles the most daring and dynamic Jazz cover designs that helped make and shape not only a musical genre but also a particular way of experiencing life.
From the 1940s through to the decline of LP production in the early 1990s, each chosen cover design is distinct in the way it compliments the energy of the album's music with its own visual rhythms of frame, line, text, and form. To satisfy even the most demanding of music geeks, each record is accompanied by a fact sheet listing performer and album name, art director, photographer, illustrator, year, label, and more.
The autor
Joaquim Paulo is a consultant for major labels and directs a number of radio stations in Portugal. He started collecting vinyl at 15, and flies to London, Paris, New York and São Paulo to enrich his collection of over 25,000 LPs. He lives and works in Lisbon and dedicates his free time to recovering old and rare recordings.
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606-1669) stands as one of the most important painters in Western art, but nowhere else do we encounter his inimitable talent more so than in his drawings and etchings. Hinged upon experimentation and expressive line work, they garnered him unparalleled recognition from his contemporaries.
Each portrait or quotidian scene is elevated by his masterful treatment of light, shadow, and hatching. There is another world to be accessed within Rembrandt’s etchings—one that dwells within the intangibilities of moody midnight contemplation and the twilit countryside, these elusive moments fixed to the page with every stroke. Meanwhile, Rembrandt’s drawings display his emotional state with a candor unseen in other works. Using pen and brush, silverpoint and charcoal as well as colored chalks and ink, he drew on various types of paper which he also sometimes dyed beforehand.
Commemorating the 350th anniversary of the artist’s death, this stunning XXL monograph is the first-ever collection gathering Rembrandt’s complete works on paper. Through the 708 drawings, brilliantly printed in color for the first time, and 314 etchings in pristine reproductions, we discover Rembrandt’s keen eye, deft hand, and boundless depth of feeling like never before; and above all, we witness that he was far more than just a painter.
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