Here are 68 books that Chardin fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a historian and writer who strives to combine the history of science and medicine, the study of visual culture, and cultural history in my work. Although I hated being dragged round art galleries and museums as a child, something must have stuck, laying the foundations for my interest in using images and artefacts to understand both the past and the present. Since the early 1990s I’ve been writing about portraits, how they work, and why they are important—I remain gripped by the compelling ways they speak to identity. It was a privilege to serve as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in London between 2001 and 2009.
This book is simply brilliant. I first read it in the 1980s and return to it often for inspiration and to remind myself of its piercing lucidity. Beautifully written, clear, thoughtful, and direct, it expresses a way of looking at art and visual culture that can be applied to other times and places. Baxandall explores the social relationships and practices out of which works of art emerge, connecting the way paintings look with the society in which they were made. He robustly criticises simplistic approaches to the art of the past and shows how we can think differently and understand more. I have deep admiration for Michael Baxandall, whose writings encourage readers to reflect on their own visual skills and habits, how and where they have acquired them.
This book is both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting, and a primer in how to read social history out of the style of pictures. It examines the commercial practice of the early Renaissance picture, trade in contracts, letters, and accounts; and it explains how the visual skills and habits evolved in the daily life of any society enter into its painters' style. Renaissance painting is related for instance to experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels.
This second edition contains an appendix, the original Latin and Italian texts referred to throughout the book, giving the student…
I’m a historian and writer who strives to combine the history of science and medicine, the study of visual culture, and cultural history in my work. Although I hated being dragged round art galleries and museums as a child, something must have stuck, laying the foundations for my interest in using images and artefacts to understand both the past and the present. Since the early 1990s I’ve been writing about portraits, how they work, and why they are important—I remain gripped by the compelling ways they speak to identity. It was a privilege to serve as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in London between 2001 and 2009.
A Fortunate Man is deeply moving by virtue of combining words and images to evoke the life of a General Practitioner in rural England, a man prone to depression, who took his own life 15 years later. The black and white photographs of the doctor, his patients, and the landscape in which they lived, perfectly match the poetic prose to capture the day-to-day existence of a man totally committed to his patients and their well-being. It’s an outstanding example of the power of photography when complemented by text to convey the complexities of lives, communities, and healing. The doctor truly dwelt among the people he treated and knew about every aspect of their lives. This book bears eloquent witness to a form of medical practice that has largely disappeared.
In 1966 John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall.
Sassall is a fortunate man - his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, the line between his life and his work is happily blurred.
In A Fortunate Man, Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr reveal with extraordinary intensity the life of a remarkable man. It is a portrait of one selfless individual and the rural community for which he became the hub. Drawing on psychology, biography and medicine A Fortunate Man is a…
I’m a historian and writer who strives to combine the history of science and medicine, the study of visual culture, and cultural history in my work. Although I hated being dragged round art galleries and museums as a child, something must have stuck, laying the foundations for my interest in using images and artefacts to understand both the past and the present. Since the early 1990s I’ve been writing about portraits, how they work, and why they are important—I remain gripped by the compelling ways they speak to identity. It was a privilege to serve as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in London between 2001 and 2009.
Published by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., this beautifully produced and generously illustrated book contains essays on many aspects of portraiture with special emphasis on the USA. Portraits are fascinating; there is just so much to say about the ways in which materials such as paper, stone, metal, and canvas, ink, crayon, and paint can conjure up a human being. Nations, institutions, professions, families, and individuals all make use of portraits to affirm their positions, persuade those who view them of their worth, and shape forms of remembrance. The essays are relatively short, which encourages readers to browse, read a contribution and then come back often to look as well as read more about one of the most extraordinary forms of visual culture that has ever been produced.
Explores new approaches to portraying identity and the human face and figure, through works from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's collections and other institutions. Is there more to portraiture than eyes meeting eyes? Beyond the Face: New Perspectives on Portraiture presents sixteen essays by leading scholars who explore the subtle means by which artists - and subjects - convey a sense of identity and reveal historical context. Examining a wide range of topics, from early caricature and political vandalism of portraits to contemporary selfies and performance art, these studies challenge our traditional assumptions about portraiture. By probing the diversity and…
I’m a historian and writer who strives to combine the history of science and medicine, the study of visual culture, and cultural history in my work. Although I hated being dragged round art galleries and museums as a child, something must have stuck, laying the foundations for my interest in using images and artefacts to understand both the past and the present. Since the early 1990s I’ve been writing about portraits, how they work, and why they are important—I remain gripped by the compelling ways they speak to identity. It was a privilege to serve as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in London between 2001 and 2009.
London’s British Museum, with its massive and diverse collections, is world famous and the story of its foundation and early years in the eighteenth century sheds light on the histories of collecting, knowledge, and exploration. More than twenty essays were assembled to celebrate the opening of the Enlightenment Gallery in the King’s Library after years of research and refurbishment. These essays draw readers into the people, the objects, and the ideas that shaped this important and influential institution. The book is lavishly illustrated with gorgeous photographs of paintings and statues, coins, fossils, china, and much more—a wonderful way to grasp the museum’s stupendous holdings and also to understand better the controversies it has engendered.
The extraordinary companion to the British Museum's 250th anniversary exhibition. Opened in 1753 as the world's first public museum, the British Museum epitomized the Age of Enlightenment's dream of a rational universe. Indeed, in many ways the museum was the age's most potent instrument: the incarnation of a world that could be parsed, classified, and comprehended through the physical observation of objects, all in the name of reason, progress, and civic improvement.
In this lavishly illustrated volume, published to coincide with a new permanent exhibit, the museum's centrality to the Enlightenment enterprise is explored through the stunning breadth and variety…
In the “meme-ification” of the world, the long-form version of learning and practicing skills is getting lost. True discovery happens after a thorough and deep understanding of the subject. Truth is a multilayered, complex exploration that is hard to sum up in a single sentence.
This book offers the technical breakdown of painting in grisaille. I only know of a few books that cover it and this one was written by an amazing painter! This was the common practice of Bouguereau and Gerome and is thoroughly explained in this particular volume as well and the rendering of planar “facets.” The practice of grisaille is an important phase in painting. The separation of color and form is partly why so many of the “masters” had such control over form and value.
This instructive volume introduces not only the techniques of oil painting but also the underlying principles of figure drawing. Written by a distinguished Pre-Raphaelite painter, portraitist, and book illustrator, the treatment begins by explaining the construction of the figure, head, and limbs. Succeeding chapters illustrate these teachings with examples of images by the Old Masters, including paintings from the Italian, Dutch, Spanish, French, and British schools. The Birmingham Daily Post pronounced this volume "probably the most useful handbook for art students that has yet been published." Students at every level of expertise will benefit from its discourses on light and…
I am attracted to people and ideas that bridge the internal and external life through their art and writing. I was driven to pursue art history and psychoanalysis for this reason. In one field, we have the external object as the center of inquiry, and in the other, the Self. These books all inspired me to see the world through a new lens.
Morgan illuminates and analyzes the visual culture of religion that scholars have neglected to consider seriously. His lyrical and incisive deep dive into the visual aspects and social contexts of a broad range of case histories, including religious Americana, opens up the “field” of visuality beyond the object itself and to the phenomenology of seeing.
'Sacred gaze' denotes any way of seeing that invests its object - an image, a person, a time, a place - with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious traditions. His lively, innovative book explores how viewers absorb and process religious imagery and how their experience contributes to the social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality. Ranging widely from thirteenth-century Japan and eighteenth-century Tibet to contemporary America, Thailand, and Africa, "The Sacred Gaze" discusses the religious functions of images and the tools viewers use to interpret…
I'm currently an Honorary Fellow in Social Theory at the University of York, U.K. For more than five decades I've been working to promote more reflexive perspectives in philosophy, sociology, social theory, and sociological research. I've written and edited many books in the field of social theory with particular emphasis upon questions of culture and critical research in the expanding field of visual culture. Recent projects include Interpreting Visual Culture(with Ian Heywood), The Handbook of Visual Culture, and an edited multi-volume textbook to be published by Bloomsbury,The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture. The passion to understand the thought and visual culture of both the ancient and modern world continues to inform my work.
On Photographyis Sontag’s attempt to develop the thought of Barthes, Benjamin, and others and apply the resultant perspective to the critical understanding of the fundamental role of photography in modern life. The book is constructed as a series of interconnected essays, each of which explores the moral and dialectical character of photographic interventions. Photography embodies the moral ambiguity of human activity: the camera claims to deliver truth but is essentially selective and partial; photography reveals and conceals the real; the photograph is an artificial mode of representation but claims to provide a `picture’ of life that can only be captured through the camera.
This ambiguous ontology of the image impacts upon both the act of image-making and the interpretive task of reading and understanding the image. With modern photography the viewer is constituted in a dual movement of separation (and alienation) and connectivity (and communality). Photographic engagement constitutes, so…
'The most original and illuminating study of the subject.' The New Yorker
Photographs are everywhere. From high art to family albums to legal evidence, they capture and document the world around us. And whether we use them to expose, reveal or remember, they hold an enduring power.
In this essential and revelatory volume, Susan Sontag confronts important questions surrounding the power dynamics between photographer and subject, the blurred boundary between lived events and recreated images, and the desires that lead us to record our lives.
'Complex and contradictory... one of America's greatest public intellectuals' Observer
I'm currently an Honorary Fellow in Social Theory at the University of York, U.K. For more than five decades I've been working to promote more reflexive perspectives in philosophy, sociology, social theory, and sociological research. I've written and edited many books in the field of social theory with particular emphasis upon questions of culture and critical research in the expanding field of visual culture. Recent projects include Interpreting Visual Culture(with Ian Heywood), The Handbook of Visual Culture, and an edited multi-volume textbook to be published by Bloomsbury,The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture. The passion to understand the thought and visual culture of both the ancient and modern world continues to inform my work.
Crary’s work provides a theoretical and empirically informed synthesis of the work of theorists like Berger, Debord, Baudrillard, Barthes, and Sontag. Like these earlier writers, the technological transformations of visual culture are at the heart of the social transformations of the modern world. To understand modernity is thus first to make sense of its visual logics, procedures, and practices. This general argument allowed the author to enter the granular historical details of how seeing and 'observation’ have become essential to the concerns of modern life. What he calls 'techniques of the observer’ are in fact the core sensory apparatus that has helped to shape the institutions and practices of modern life.
What can be visualized is correlated to the technical affordances and historical development of representational practices. This makes technologies of the visual central to social analysis. Some of the most powerful drivers of modern life are thus linked to…
Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory of the society of the spectacle.
In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity.
Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing…
I have always loved to draw ever since my Dad used to sit drawing with me at the kitchen table when I was little. At Art School we had to spend the first six weeks doing a daily life drawing class before being allowed to pick up a paintbrush! I then studied graphic design setting up my own business, at a time when, without computers, drawing was essential for presenting layout and design. Nowadays, I’m constantly instilling in my students the importance of drawing and sketching. Having been a professional artist all my working life, drawing has been a fundamental element in every way, and all the way.
In this 376-page drawing “bible”, all aspects of drawing are covered in great detail, from portraits and figure studies to still life and landscapes. After the first chapter on materials and equipment, Giovanni illustrates the bone structure, musculature, and features of the head, hands, and feet using pencil, ink, and charcoal. It’s the most comprehensive approach I’ve seen in any portrait book.
Further chapters on shadows, shading, composition, sketching, perspective, and aerial perspective are also extremely helpful. This book is a mine of information, and one I turn to when in need of technical know-how for portraiture.
This is an essential book for anyone learning to draw, or wishing to improve their drawing. Starting with the basics of drawing techniques, Civardi gives expert advice on drawing portraits, the clothed figure, hands and feet and scenery, finishing with a section on the importance of light and shade. Civardi's technical advice and practical tips, accompanied by his own outstanding drawings, make this an invaluable resource for any artist.
Previously published as Giovanni Civardi's Complete Guide to Drawing (9781844482061) and now includes The Nude (9781844482443).
I grew up in a family of artists and then went to art school, so I have been thinking visually my entire life. I have always collected random, inspiring books with both words and images. I love being able to pick up a book and read a chapter at a time or flip through it for visual inspiration. I keep some of my favorite books at my bedside just because they give me comfort. There are so many more books I could recommend in the category I have chosen!
Be sure not to let the title deceive you, though. It is useful for artists at all levels because it is a place to refresh basic skills. To see in a very clear way how to draw a man standing is super helpful no matter where you are in your art practice.
If you aim to draw fantastical caricatures or very realistically, this book breaks it all down for you so that you can hit the ground running in your own personal style.
This inspiring book makes drawing in a realistic style easier than you may think and more fun than you ever imagined!
Authors Mark and Mary Willenbrink (Watercolor for the Absolute Beginner) cover it all-from choosing materials and the correct way to hold your pencil, to expert advice on the tricky stuff, like getting proportions and perspective right, drawing reflections, and designing strong compositions. (It's not as scary as it sounds...not with Mark and Mary as your guide!)
At the heart of this book, a series of fun, hands-on exercises help you practice and perfect your strokes-24 mini-demos lead up to…
