From the Los Angeles riots to the Columbine High School massacre, Americans witnessed events and purchased items that reflected the best and worst of the decade. Bill Clinton’s presidency was in jeopardy, the digital age had erupted, and Silicon Valley was affecting everyone on the planet. Meanwhile nudity and sex ruled the pages of magazines, selling everything from haute couture to fragrances and microwave ovens. Nirvana entertained Generation X while the “Greatest Generation” considered purchasing a Probe and something called a Hummer.
Super Soakers and the game consoles Game Boy and PlayStation were the new toys, as Super Mario World, Gran Turismo, and Sonic the Hedgehog were warping the minds of young people everywhere. Luxury brands were in demand: shoppers coveted a Gucci bag, a Louis Vuitton tote, a Hermes scarf, or a Prada frock. TWA and Continental Airlines still flew the airways and Volkswagen reimagined the Beetle. It was a decade that seemed
Nike and Virgil Abloh reinvigorated 10 icons of sneaker history
In 2016, sportswear manufacturer Nike and fashion designer Virgil Abloh joined forces to create a sneaker collection celebrating 10 of the Oregon-based company’s most iconic shoes. With their project The Ten—which reimagined icons like Air Jordan 1, Air Max 90, Air Force 1, and Air Presto, among others—they reinvigorated sneaker culture.
Virgil Abloh’s designs offer deep insights into engineering ingenuity and burst with cultural cachet. Drawing on the genius of the original shoe using lettering, ironic labels, collage, and sculpting techniques, Abloh played with language and sculptural elements to construct new meaning. Inspired by the wit of Dadaism, architectural theory, and avant-garde happenings, he analyzed what makes each shoe iconic and deconstructed it into an artistic assemblage, making each shoe into a piece of industrial design, a readymade sculpture, and a wearable all at once.
ICONS traces Abloh’s investigative, creative process through documentation of the prototypes, original text messages from Abloh to Nike designers, and treasures from the Nike archives. We find Swooshes sliced away from Air Jordans and reapplied with tape or thread, Abloh’s typical text fragments in quotation marks on Air Force 1, and All Stars cut into pieces. We take a look behind the scenes and witness Abloh’s DIY approach, which gave each model in the Off-WhiteTM c/o Nike collection its own unique touch. His deconstructive vocabulary is reflected in the Swiss binding, which showcases an open spine and discloses the production of the book.
The book documents Abloh’s cooperative way of working and reaffirms the power of print. For its design Nike and Abloh partnered with the acclaimed London-based design studio Zak Group. Together they conceived a two-part compendium, equal parts catalog and conceptual toolbox. The first part of the book presents a visual culture of sneakers while a lexicon in the second part defines the key people, places, objects, ideas, materials, and scenes from which the project grew. Texts by Nike’s Nicholas Schonberger, writer Troy Patterson, curator and historian Glenn Adamson, and Virgil Abloh himself frame the collaborative work within fashion and design history. A foreword by Hiroshi Fujiwara places the project within the historical continuum of Nike collaborators.
The art of astrology, from ancient science to modern-day practice
From the beginning of human history, individuals across cultures and belief systems have looked to the sky for meaning. The movement of celestial bodies and their relation to our human lives has been the central tenant of astrology for thousands of years. The practice has both inspired reverence and worship, and deepened our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
While modern-day horoscopes may be the most familiar form of astrological knowledge, their lineage reaches back to ancient Mesopotamia. As author Andrea Richards recounts in Astrology, the second volume in TASCHEN’s Library of Esoterica series, astronomy and astrology were once sister sciences: the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid at Giza was built to align with constellations, Persian scholars oversaw some of the first observatories, and even Galileo cast horoscopes for the Medicis. But with the Enlightenment and the birth of exact science, the practice moved to places where mystery was still permitted, inspiring literature, art, and psychology, and influenced artists and thinkers such as Goethe, Byron, and Blake. Later movements like the Theosophists and the New Agers, would thrust the practice into the mainstream.
Edited by Jessica Hundley, this vibrant visual history of Western astrology is the first ever compendium of its kind, exploring the symbolic meaning behind more than 400 images, from Egyptian temples and illuminated manuscripts to contemporary art from across the globe. Works by artists from Alphonese Mucha and Hilma af Klint to Arpita Singh and Manzel Bowman are sequenced to mirror the spin of the planets and the wheel of the zodiac. With a foreword by legendary astrologer Susan Miller and wisdom from new interviews with astrologers like Robert Hand, Jessica Lanyadoo, and Mecca Woods, Astrology celebrates the stars and their mysterious influence on our everyday lives.
The King of Rock ’n’ Roll is born
The making of Elvis, behind the scenes
“Elvis who?” was photographer Alfred Wertheimer’s response when, in early 1956, an RCA Victor publicist asked him to photograph an up-and-coming crooner from Memphis. Little did Wertheimer know that this would be the job of his life: just 21 years old, Elvis Presley was—as we now know—about to become a legend.
Trailing Presley like a shadow, Wertheimer took nearly 3,000 photographs of Presley that year, creating a penetrating portrait of a man poised on the brink of superstardom. Extraordinary in its intimacy and unparalleled in its scope, Wertheimer's Elvis project immortalized a young man in the very process of making history.
Elvis and the Birth of Rock and Roll collects Wertheimer’s most remarkable Elvis shots from that magical year, along with a selection of his historic 1958 pictures of the star being shipped off to an army base in Germany. Each chapter is illustrated with a poster by Hatch Show Print, one of the oldest letterpress print shops in America, which created many early Elvis posters in the 1950s.
The most comprehensive retrospective of Renoir’s work
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (1841–1919) timelessly charming paintings still reflect our ideals of happiness, love, and beauty. Derived from our large-format volume, the most comprehensive retrospective of his work published to date, this compact edition examines the personal history and motivation behind the legend. Though he began by painting landscapes in the Impressionist style, Renoir found his true affinity in portraits, after which he abandoned the Impressionists altogether. Though often misunderstood, Renoir remains one of history’s most well-loved painters—undoubtedly because his works exude such warmth, tenderness, and good spirit.
In an incisive text tracing the artist’s career and stylistic evolution, Gilles Néret shows how Renoir reinvented the painted female form, with his everyday goddesses and their plump contours, rounded hips and breasts. Renoir’s later phase, marked by his return to the simple pleasure of the female nude in his Bathers series, was his most innovative and stylistically influential, and would inspire such masters as Matisse and Picasso.
With a complete chronology, bibliography, photos, sketches, and brilliant reproductions, this is the essential work of reference on this enduring master artist.
Shots from the world’s greatest collection of Polaroid images
The Polaroid Corporation’s photography collection is the greatest portfolio of Polaroid images in the world. Begun by Polaroid founder Edwin Land and photographer Ansel Adams, the collection now includes some 23,000 images by hundreds of photographers throughout the world, including pieces by the likes of David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and Jeanloup Sieff.
The Polaroid Book dives into these archives, paying tribute to a medium that continues to defy the digital age. Like an oversized Polaroid film pack, this collection curates works by luminaries and unknowns alike, celebrating the boundless possibilities that develop inside the white borders of the original instant photograph.
A Mountain Tour of the Alps
The Alps are Europe’s biggest and greatest mountain range. Formed millions of years ago, they became a popular destination for travelers in the late eighteenth century – first for adventurers and explorers, then for artists and writers, and finally for everyone who wanted to spend summer in the fresh air of this wonderful scenery or take part in winter sports. Angelika Taschen has followed in their footsteps and collected the finest hotels in the Alpine nations of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Italy.
They include the Kranzbach near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, built for a British aristocrat, Gasthof Hirschen in the Bregenzerwald, where art-loving visitors have been welcomed since 1755, and the Seehof near Salzburg with its emphasis on contemporary art and fine cuisine. The journey goes to Waldhaus Sils in Sils Maria, where many creative guests have found inspiration, to the Schatzalp in Davos, which Thomas Mann immortalized in literature in “The Magic Mountain”, and to picturesque bed & breakfasts with a personal touch such as Brücke49 in Vals and Maison Bergdorf in Interlaken.
High above Chamonix, mountaineers have stayed overnight for more than 140 years at Refuge du Montenvers with its view of the Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in France. In the exclusive Megève, too, which Baroness Noémie de Rothschild put on the tourist map, travelers experience the Alps à la française in the chalet hotel L’Alpaga; and a bit of Italian dolce vita is provided by stunning addresses in the South Tyrol such as the Ottmangut in Merano, Villa Arnica in Lana with its nostalgic atmosphere, and Pension Briol near Barbiano, constructed in 1928 in the Bauhaus style and extended in 2021 with the addition of two extremely modern buildings.
The movies that shaped the 2010s
Cinema has likely never been written off so often. In the decade of the 2010s, it is true, much has changed – both in how we watch movies, and in how we see ourselves. Social media and the internet have shaped a new understanding of the self and the world. As streaming services multiplied our viewing options and video games offered alluring realities of their own, the big screen faced serious competition. Even before the usual delays between theatrical release and further distribution became ever shorter, movies often found themselves downgraded to mere “content”, to be clicked at on colorful screen tiles. Are all that remain to cinema its cult of celebrity, blockbusters, and computer-animated visual effects?
Quite the contrary – even a cursory glance at our anthology reveals a cinema that is surprisingly diverse, dynamic, and above all alive and kicking, resulting in a decade that was anything but boring, monotonous, and doomed to extinction. And in all honesty: Would you really be satisfied watching all the films compiled here purely via streaming? The movie theater remains a place of yearning, and our book lets you feel its powerful breath.
Each of the 100 most compelling movies of the decade is discussed in detail by editor Jürgen Müller and his team of authors, and illustrated with a wealth of visual material. The volume also includes biographies of actors and directors, box-office takings, background information, and a comprehensive list of Oscar® winners from 2012 to 2021. For Jürgen Müller and Philipp Bühler in their wide-ranging introduction, Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) offers the perfect metaphor for the contradictions and ambivalences of contemporary cinema. This volume is a new milestone for all cineastes and movie lovers!
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