Coffee Table Books

419 books

$20.00

by Jacob Baal-Teshuva (Author)Resisting interpretation or classification, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was a prominent advocate for the artist's consummate freedom of expression. Although identified as a key protagonist of the Abstract Expressionist movement, first formed in New York City, Rothko rejected the label and insisted instead on "a consummated experience between picture and onlooker." Following a repertoire of figurative works, Rothko developed his now iconic canvases of bold color block...

$20.00

by Reinhard Steiner (Author)With his graphic style, figural distortion, and defiance of conventional standards of beauty, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was a pioneer of Austrian Expressionism and one of the most startling portrait painters of the 20th century. Mentored by Gustav Klimt, Schiele dabbled in a glittering Art Nouveau style before developing his own much more gritty and confrontational aesthetic of sharp lines, lurid shades, and mannered, elongated figures. His prolific portraits and se...

$60.00

by Gestalten (Editor), Cam Honan (Editor)Long-distance trekking, short day trips out of town, an extended weekend escapade; the first series installment of our bestselling Wanderlust has it all.Experienced outdoor enthusiasts and those lacing-up their boots for their first time: prepare to hike the diverse American landscape. Whether aiming to conquer epic expeditions, or simply complete a day hike to recharge, paths of every size await the intrepid wayfarer in Wanderlust USA, a book that ser...

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by Michael Bockemühl (Author)In the work of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) lies an impact akin to a sudden acquisition of sight. His landscapes and seascapes scorch the eye with such ravishing light and color, with such elemental force, it is as if the sun itself were gleaming out of the frame. Appropriately known as "the painter of light," Turner worked in print, watercolor, and oils to transform landscape from serene contemplative scenes to pictures pulsating with life. He anchor...

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by Pierre Restany (Author)Vivid color, organic forms, and a loathing of straight lines were just a few stalwart characteristics in the unique practice of Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000). A non-conformist hero, the artist, architect, and activist left a blazing trail of imagination and ideas in buildings, paintings, manifestos, initiatives, and more. Hundertwasser's best-known work is considered by many to be the Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna, a structural synthesis of the vitality and u...

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by Norbert Wolf (Author)Sharp angles, strange forms, lurid colors, and distorted perspectives are classic hallmarks of Expressionism, the twentieth century movement that prioritized emotion over objective reality. Though particularly present in Germany and Austria, the movement's approach flourished internationally and is today hailed as one of the most influential shifts in art history. With leading groups Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), and key players such as...

$80.00

by Rainer Zerbst (Author)The life of Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) was full of complexity and contradictions. As a young man he joined the Catalonian nationalist movement and was critical of the church; toward the end of his life he devoted himself completely to the construction of one single spectacular church, La Sagrada Familia. In his youth, he courted a glamorous social life and the demeanor of a dandy. By the time of his death in a tram accident on the streets of Barcelona his clothes were s...

$20.00

by Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy (Author)With Salvador Dalí as its figurehead, the great ship of Surrealism traversed the turbulent seas of the early 20th century with sails billowing with dreams and desires. Inspired by the psychoanalytical practice of Sigmund Freud, the Surrealists championed the unconscious as the domain of truth, uninhibited by the standards or expectations of society. With techniques ranging from hypnotism to nocturnal walks to automatic writing, the likes of André Breton, Max...

$20.00

by Hajo Düchting (Author)Over the course of his artistic career, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) transformed not only his own style, but the course of art history. From early figurative and landscape painting, he went on to pioneer a spiritual, emotive, rhythmic use of color and line and is today credited with creating the first purely abstract work. As much a teacher and theorist as he was a practicing artist, Kandinsky's interests in music, theater, poetry, philosophy, ethnology, myth, and th...

Case Study Houses. the Complete CSH Program 1945-1966 - Hardcover

$100.00

by Elizabeth A. T. Smith (Author), Peter Gössel (Editor), Julius Shulman (Photographer)The Case Study House program (1945-66) 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 motivati...

Alfred Hitchcock. the Complete Films - Hardcover

$40.00

by Paul Duncan (Editor)The name Alfred Hitchcock is synonymous with suspense--that is to say, masterful, spine-tingling, thrilling, shocking, excruciating, eye-boggling suspense. With triumphs such as Rebecca, Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho, Hitchcock (1899-1980) fashioned a new level of cinematic intrigue and fear through careful pacing, subtlety, and suggestiveness. This complete guide traces Hitchcock's life and career from his earliest silent films right through to his last picture in 1...

The Dog in Photography 1839-Today - Hardcover

$25.00

by Raymond Merritt (Author)In celebration of the world's favorite animal, we bring you over 400 photographs of or about dogs. With pictures from the 19th century to today, the collection includes works by Man Ray, Eric Fischl, Wolfgang Tillmans, Donna Ruskin, Fatima NeJame, Vincent Versace, and of course Elliott Erwitt and William Wegman. Together, their pictures, unique in style but united in canine affection, are testimony if ever there was one that dogs are not only best friends, but also ...

$35.00

by Ray Mock (Author)Banksy in New York offers a first-hand account of his residency: the defacement and removal of his pieces, reactions from neighbors and building owners and interactions between Banksy's fans and foes. The author draws on his extensive knowledge of street art and graffiti in New York to assess the impact of Banksy's work from a cultural and art-historical perspective. Mock is as much a fan as a critic of the artist's work and delivers his account in the form of a personal ...

History of Information Graphics - Hardcover

$80.00

by Sandra Rendgen (Author), Julius Wiedemann (Editor)In the age of big data and digital distribution, when news travel ever further and faster and media outlets compete for a fleeting slice of online attention, information graphics have swept center stage. At once nuanced and neat, they distill abstract ideas, complex statistics, and cutting-edge discoveries into succinct, compelling, and masterful designs. Cartographers, programmers, statisticians, designers, scientists, and journalists have...

William Blake. Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. the Complete Drawings - Hardcover

$40.00

by Maria Antonietta Terzoli (Author), Sebastian Schütze (Author)Celebrated around the world as a literary monument, The Divine Comedy, completed in 1321 and written by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), is widely considered the greatest work ever composed in the Italian language. The epic poem describes Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, representing, on a deeper level, the soul's path towards salvation. In the last few years of his life, Romantic poet and artist William Blake (17...

$20.00

by Adele Schlombs (Author)Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. Literally meaning "pictures of the floating world," ukiyo-e was a particular woodblock print genre of art that flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries. Subjects ranged from the bright lights and attractions of Edo (modern-day Tokyo), to spectacular natural landscapes. In the West, Hiroshige's prints became exemplary of the Japonisme that swept through Europe and defined t...

$25.00

by Taschen (Editor)"Girls, Gags & Giggles," ran publisher Robert Harrison's recipe for dishing up pin-up to the American male. Men loved his tasty dishes, a mixture of strippers and starlets dressed in outfits so fetishistic no one noticed they were never nude. While other magazines delivered the girl next door, Harrison's publications banked on bad girls in satin and leather, fishnet stockings, and six-inch heels performing slapstick stunts straight from the burlesque stage. Harrison lur...

Dennis Hopper. Photographs 1961-1967 - Hardcover

$100.00

by Jessica Hundley (Author), Victor Bockris (Author), Walter Hopps (Author)During the 1960s, Dennis Hopper carried a camera everywhere--on film sets and locations, at parties, in diners, bars and galleries, driving on freeways and walking on political marches. He photographed movie idols, pop stars, writers, artists, girlfriends, and complete strangers. Along the way he captured some of the most intriguing moments of his generation with a keen and intuitive eye. A reluctant icon at the epicen...

Homes for Our Time. Contemporary Houses Around the World - Hardcover

$80.00

by Philip Jodidio (Author)Across small cottages and lavish villas, beach houses and forest refuges, discover the world's finest crop of new homes. This cutting-edge global digest features such talents as Shigeru Ban, MVRDV, and Marcio Kogan alongside up-and-coming names like Aires Mateus, Xu Fu-Min, Vo Trong Nghia, Desai Chia, and Shunri Nishizawa. Here, there are homes in Australia and New Zealand, from China and Vietnam, in the United States and Mexico, and on to less expected places like E...

Racinet. the Complete Costume History - Hardcover

$100.00

by Françoise Tétart-Vittu (Author)Originally published in France between 1876 and 1888, Auguste Racinet's Le Costume historique was in its day the most wide-ranging and incisive study of clothing ever attempted. Covering the world history of costume, dress, and style from antiquity through to the end of the 19th century, the six volume work remains completely unique in its scope and detail. This TASCHEN reprint presents Racinet's exquisitely precise color illustrations, as well as his delight...

$21.60

by Klaus Honnef (Author)An encounter with Gerhard Richter, the German artist who widened horizons in the relationship between painting and reality. From early photographic paintings, along with his famous RAF cycle, to late abstract paintings, experiencing Richter's work always offers us the unexpected and unseen. Where he once set out to liberate the medium from ideological ballast, today, faced with the overwhelming presence of digital images, he shows us the unsurpassed impact and intensit...

$25.00

by Julius Wiedemann (Editor)Following up on the best-selling Bibliotheca Universalis logo manual, this second volume focuses on corporate identity. In a globalized world, more and more symbols convey values such as trust, quality, or reliability. This catalog comprehensively breaks down how texts, images, and ideas are condensed into distinctive brands. From airlines and groceries, sportswear and computers, museums, and magazines, to car brands, music labels, pharmaceuticals, and internet p...

Photo Icons. 50 Landmark Photographs and Their Stories - Hardcover

$25.00

by Hans-Michael Koetzle (Author)Photographs have a strange and powerful way of shaping the way we see the world. The most successful images enter our collective consciousness, defining eras, making history, or simply touching something so fundamentally human and universal that they have become resonant icons all over the globe. To explore this unique influence, Photo Icons puts some of the most important photographic landmarks under the microscope. From some of the earliest photography, such ...

Bob Willoughby. Audrey Hepburn. Photographs 1953-1966 - Hardcover

$70.00

by Bob Willoughby (Photographer)In his distinguished career as a Hollywood photographer, Bob Willoughby captured Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Fonda, but remains unequivocal about his favorite subject: Audrey Kathleen Ruston, later Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston, best known as Audrey Hepburn. Willoughby was called in to shoot the new starlet one morning shortly after she arrived in Hollywood in 1953. It was a humdrum commission for the portraitist often credited with having perf...

$25.00

by Sven Kirsten (Author)Urban islands and bamboo hideaways set the stage for a pop culture phenomenon like no other. In mid-century America, the imaginative appeal of Tiki penetrated fashion, music, eating, drinking, and architecture. In handy Bibliotheca Universalis format, Tiki Pop traces the development of Tiki as romantic vision and cultural appropriation. Follow Tiki from James Cook's first Pacific Island expeditions, through Gauguin's exotic paintings, Hollywood jungle fantasies, and el...

$36.00

by Middleton A. Harris (Editor), Ernest Smith (Editor), Morris Levitt (Editor)A new edition of the classic New York Times bestseller edited by Toni Morrison, offering an encyclopedic look at the black experience in America from 1619 through the 1940s with the original cover restored. "I am so pleased the book is alive again. I still think there is no other work that tells and visualizes a story of such misery with seriousness, humor, grace and triumph."--Toni Morrison Seventeenth-century ske...

Marvel Comics Library. Spider-Man. 1962-1964 - Hardcover

$80.00

by Ralph Macchio (Author), Steve Ditko (Illustrator), Stan Lee (Illustrator)When Stan Lee first pitched the idea of Spider-Man in 1962, his boss was full of objections: People hate spiders. Teenagers aren't lead characters; they're sidekicks. He should be glamorous and successful, not a friendless loser. But Stan persisted and Martin Goodman let him give the unlikely hero a tryout in Amazing Fantasy, which was already slated for cancellation. With Spider-Man on the cover, No. 15 shot to the t...

Ando. Complete Works 1975-Today - Hardcover

$30.00

by Philip Jodidio (Author)Discover the master of Modernist simplicity, Tadao Ando. Bringing our XXL-sized tribute to a smaller, more convenient format, this collection spans the architect's entire career--including new projects like the Shanghai Poly Grand Theater and the Roberto Garza Sada Center in Monterrey, Mexico--and profiles each structure through photographs and... Number of Pages: 512 Publication Date: September 22, 2020

$30.00

by Rainer Zerbst (Author)Antoni Gaudí merged Orientalism, natural forms, and new materials into a unique Modernista aesthetic that put Barcelona on the global architecture map. With brand-new photography, plans and drawings by Gaudí himself, as well as an extensive appendix of all his works including furniture and unfinished projects, this book takes us through the... Number of Pages: 512 Illustrated: Yes Publication Date: July 06, 2020

$100.00

by Stefan Fischer (Author)An exhaustive exploration of one of art history's most mysterious masters, Hieronymus Bosch. This monograph, based on the XXL edition which saw TASCHEN commission new photography of recently restored works, unravels his oeuvre through accessible texts, a special chapter on The Garden of Earthly Delights, a fold-out of The Last Judgment, and... Number of Pages: 300 Publication Date: April 17, 2020

The Computer. a History from the 17th Century to Today - Hardcover

$80.00

by Jens Müller (Author)The story of the evolution of machines in computer history is full of the disruptive innovations that have led to today's world. From the early beginnings of computing to the bulky mainframe to the personal computer era, we now live in an almost entirely digital age. The Computer explores steps from the first ideas of a calculating machine in the 19th century and early experiments with autonomous driving in the 1920s to oversized office computers in the 1950s to laptop...

Resident Dog (Volume Two): Incredible Dogs and the International Homes They Live in - Hardcover

$55.00

by Nicole England (Author)As an architecture photographer, Nicole England found that the shoots she enjoyed the most were the ones where dogs were present - nothing lightens the mood like a nonchalant pup. However imposing the architecture, some doggy hijinks can immediately bring an element of sociability and fun. With this in mind, Nicole set about setting up her Instagram, Resident Dog, and now this book, Resident Dog [Volume Two], which showcases over 25 of the world's most amazing houses...