50's Series – serie

When it emerged in the 1950s, the Pop Art movement presented a challenge to fine art with its incorporation of images from television, newspapers, and advertising. Artists used humor, provocation, and garish gestures to help dissolve the barriers between high and low culture. Over time, Pop Art developed into one of the most influential movements of the 20th century and many of its works have achieved iconic status. This introduction to Pop Art focuses on fifty of the movement's most important works, and covers every major artist of the style, including David Hockney, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol. Each work is featured on a beautifully illustrated double-page spread. An informative text highlights the work's classic characteristics as well as unusual aspects, its significance in the Pop Art movement and its influence on the history of contemporary art, and art in general. Including brief biographies of each artist, this book is a beautifully illustrated survey of Pop Art.

The heyday of the Art Nouveau style was relatively short, spanning the decades immediately before and after 1900. However it was a tremendously important period, not only for its radical shift away from the academic and romantic movements of the late 19th century, but also for its embrace of nature and natural forms. This authoritative, accessible and beautifully illustrated book explores fifty of the most important works of the Art Nouveau style. From Mackmurdo's jacket design of Christopher Wren's City Churches to Sykes' sculpture, The Spirit of Ecstasy, each work is presented in double-page spreads that chronologically trace Art Nouveau's development and breadth-from architecture, Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, and from graphic arts, Toulouse-Lautrec's poster advertising the Divan Japonais, to home decor, lamps by Tiffany and Daum Freres and to painting, Munch's Madonnas and Walter Crane's Neptune's Horses. Each entry includes a full-page illustration and concise explanatory texts. An introductory essay on the history and legacy of Art Nouveau, along with brief biographies of the artists featured in the book, making this a comprehensive yet compact reference work.