Books by Gilles Néret
Dalí (Basic Art)
by Gilles Néret
Painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and all-round showman Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was one of the 20th century’s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics. One of the first artists to apply the insights of Freudian psychoanalysis to art, he is celebrated in particular for his surrealist practice, with such conceits as the soft watches or the lobster telephone, now hallmarks of the surrealist enterprise, and of modernism in general.
Dalí frequently described his paintings as “hand-painted dream photographs.” Their tantalizing tension and interest resides in the precise rendering of bizarre elements and incongruous arrangements. As Dalí himself explained, he painted with “the most imperialist fury of precision,” but only “to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality.”
Revolutionizing the role of the artist, the mustache-twirling Dalí also had the intuition to parade a controversial persona in the public arena and, through printmaking, fashion, advertising, writing, and film, to create work that could be consumed and not just contemplated on a gallery wall.
This book explores both the painting and the personality of Dalí, introducing his technical skill as well as his provocative compositions and challenging themes of death, decay, and eroticism.
Copies
No copies available.
Renoir
by Gilles Néret, Peter H. Feist
One of the leading lights of the Impressionist movement, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) remains a towering figure in art history with enduring public appeal. Sun-kissed, charming, and sensual, his work shows painting at its most lighthearted and luminous, while championing the plein air and color innovations of his time.Renoir’s oeuvre was prolific, with some several thousand works in his lifetime. Much influenced by forerunners such as Courbet, Degas, Manet, Delacroix, he worked with contemporary peers such as Monet to explore fresh uses of color and brushwork, rendering texture and depth with different-hued daubs. Drawn to intimate and tender human scenes, his subjects include lovers, mothers, and numerous nudes.As his career progressed, Renoir investigated different styles and techniques, shifting away from the feathery Impressionist touch to a more robust, classical corporeality, sometimes called his “Ingres period,” and later to monumental pieces such as The Bathers. From the abundant output of his lengthy career, this essential artist introduction selects key Renoir works to explore his innovations in the art of painting, as much as his traditions in pursuit of beauty, harmony, and the female form.
Copies
No copies available.
Renoir
by Gilles Néret, Peter H. Feist
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 forms, rounded hips and breasts. Renoir’s later phase, marked by his return to the simple pleasure of the female nude in his baigneuses 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.
Copies
No copies available.
Klimt
by Gilles Néret
The unfading popularity of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) attests not only to the particular appeal of his luxuriant painting but also to the universal themes with which he worked: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death.
The son of a goldsmith, Klimt created surfaces of ornate and jewel-like luminosity which show the influence of both Egyptian and Japanese art. Through paintings, murals, and friezes, his work is defined by radiant color, fluid lines, floral elements, and mosaic-like patterning.
With subjects ranging from sensuality and desire to anxiety and despair, all this iridescence is also suffused with feeling. Klimt’s numerous images of women, characterized by curvaceous forms, tender flesh, red lips, and flushed cheeks, were particularly charged with passion, at a time when such frank eroticism was still taboo in Viennese upper-middle-class society.
This book presents a selection of Klimt’s work, introducing his pictorial world of decoration and desire, as well as his influence on artists to come.
About the series
Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:
a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
a concise biography
approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions
Copies
No copies available.
Renoir. 40th Ed.
by Gilles Néret
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.
Copies
-
$30.00
Michelangelo
by Diane Stanley, Hugo Chapman, Gilles Néret
An attractive introduction to the drawings by master draftsman Michelangelo
Michelangelo (1475–1564) is a giant in the history of art. The versatility of his artistic skill was extraordinarily wide: apart from being a sculptor, painter, and draftsman, he was also an architect and a poet. In all of his works, it is the beauty, perfection, and virtuosity of execution that continues to inspire and endure.
Central to all of Michelangelo’s artistic endeavors were his drawings, in which his creative ideas originated, evolved, and were perfected. This handsome book takes a fascinating tour of the artist’s drawings by looking at highlights––ranging from unfinished sketches to delicate, refined studies––all of which are located in the exceptional collection of the British Museum. Included are studies of some of Michelangelo’s most famous works such as the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Judgement.
With an introductory essay on the artist’s life and key works, and beautiful color reproductions of the drawings, this book provides an indispensable foundation for understanding Michelangelo’s art, his creative genius, and his unparalleled gift as a draftsman.
Copies
No copies available.
Michelangelo
by Diane Stanley, Hugo Chapman, Gilles Néret
With her thoroughly researched, lively narrative and superbly detailed illustrations, Diane Stanley has captured the life of the artist Michelangelo, who towered above the late Renaissance—and whose brilliance in architecture, painting, and sculpture amazes and moves us to this day.
Michelangelo had a turbulent, quarrelsome life. He was obsessed with perfection and felt that everyone--from family members to his demanding patrons—took advantage and let him down. His long and difficult association with Pope Julius II yielded his greatest masterpiece, the radiant paintings in the Sistine Chapel, and his most disastrous undertaking, the monumental tomb that caused the artist frustration and heartache for forty years.
Children's Books 2000-NY Public Lib., Books for Youth Editor's Choice 2000 (Booklist), Lasting Connections 2000 (Book Links), Best Books 2000 (School Library Journal), Top 10 Youth Art Books 2000 (Booklist), and Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies 2001, National Council for SS & Child. Book Council
Copies
No copies available.
Michelangelo
by Diane Stanley, Hugo Chapman, Gilles Néret
Italian-born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564) was a tormented, prodigiously talented, and God-fearing Renaissance man. His manifold achievements in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and engineering combined body, spirit, and God into visionary masterpieces that changed art history forever. Famed biographer Giorgio Vasari considered him the pinnacle of Renaissance achievement. His peers called him simply “Il Divino” (“the divine one”).This book provides the essential introduction to Michelangelo with all the awe-inspiring masterpieces and none of the queues and crowds. With vivid illustration and accessible texts, we explore the artist’s extraordinary figuration and celebrated style of terribilità (momentous grandeur), which allowed human and biblical drama to exist in compelling scale and fervor. Through the power hubs of Renaissance Italy, we take in his major commissions and phenomenal capacity for compositional schemes, whether the famous Medici library in Florence, or the extraordinary 500-square-meter ceiling (1508–1512) in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.From the towering David to the aching grief and faith of The Pietà and the vivid drama of the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment, this is a succinct, dependable reference to a true giant of art history and to some of the most famous artworks in the world.
Copies
No copies available.
Erotica Universalis: From Pompeii to Picasso
by Gilles Néret
From the dawn of time, ever since Adam and Eve, all artists of every age—whether the Egyptian, Greek, or Roman artists of Antiquity, or more recent famous names such as Rembrandt, Courbet, Degas, or Picasso—have succumbed to their fantasies, obsessions, and libido and produced erotic works that the censors have taken good care to keep from the public.
For Erotica Universalis, we surface from the subterranean realms of the museums to enter those of our national and private libraries. Here we discover that not only most of our famous writers, such as Ovid, Aretino, Voltaire, Verlaine, or Maupassant, wrote erotic texts that bordered on indecency, but also that great artists like Boucher, Fragonard, Dalí, or Matisse were inspired to provide suitable illustrations for these naughty books. For this new hardcover edition of the classic 1995 best seller, we have culled highlights from our Erotica Universalis collection.
About the series
Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!
Copies
No copies available.
Dalí. The Paintings (Bibliotheca Universalis)
by Robert Descharnes, Gilles Néret
Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was one of the century’s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics―and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting, approaching the subconscious with extraordinary sensitivity and imagination.
This publication presents the artist’s painted oeuvre. After many years of research, Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret finally located the paintings of this highly prolific artist. Many of the works had been inaccessible for years―in fact so many that almost half the illustrations in this book had rarely been seen in public.
About the series
Bibliotheca Universalis ― Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!
Copies
-
$30.00
Dalí. the Paintings
by Robert Descharnes, Gilles Néret
At the age of six, Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) wanted to be a cook. At the age of seven, he wanted to be Napoleon. "Since then," he later said, "my ambition has steadily grown, and my megalomania with it. Now I want only to be Salvador Dalí, I have no greater wish." Throughout his life, Dalí was out to become Dalí: that is, one of the most significant artists and eccentrics of the 20th century.
This weighty volume is the most complete study of Dalí's painted works ever published. After years of research, Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret located painted works by the master that had been inaccessible for years-so many, in fact, that almost half the featured illustrations appear in public for the first time in this book.
More than a catalogue raisonné, this book contextualizes Dalí's oeuvre and its meanings by examining contemporary documents, from writings and drawings to material from other facets of his work, including ballet, cinema, fashion, advertising, and objets d'art.
The study is divided into two parts: the first examines Dalí's beginnings as an unknown artist. We witness how the young Dalí deployed all the isms-Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism, Fauvism, Purism and Futurism-with playful mastery, and how he would borrow from prevailing trends before ridiculing and abandoning them. The second part unveils the conclusions of Dalí's lifelong inquiries, as well as the great legacy he left in works such as Tuna Fishing (1966/67) or Hallucinogenic Toreador (1970). It includes previously unpublished homages to Velázquez or Michelangelo, painted to the same end as the variations on past masters done by his contemporary, Picasso.
We discover how, motivated by the desire to tease out the secrets of great works and become a Velázquez of the mid-20th century, Dalí became Dalí.
Copies
No copies available.
Manet
by Gilles Néret
Lampooned during his lifetime for his style as much as his subject matter, French painter Édouard Manet (1832-1883) is now considered a crucial figure in the history of art, bridging the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Manet's work combined a painterly technique with strikingly modern images of contemporary life, centered on the urban Paris experience. He recorded the city's parks, bars, and cabarets, often delighting in the frisson of underground or provocative content. The Paris salon rejected his Déjeuner sur l'herbe with its juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman, while the steady gaze and unabashed pose of the prostitute Olympia, a very modern reworking of Titian's Venus of Urbino, caused a society scandal.
This richly illustrated book introduces Manet's work and his uniquely influential combination of Realism, Impressionism, and reworked Old Masters that would become paradigms of a brave new world for generations of modernists to come.
Copies
No copies available.
Peter Paul Rubens, 1577-1640 The Homer of Painting
by Gilles Néret
There are over 1,000 catalogued works by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the 16th-century flag bearer for Baroque drama, movement, and sensuality. This essential introduction takes in the most important works from this astonishingly prolific oeuvre to explore Rubens's influences and innovations, and his remarkable visual, and art historical, impact.
The richly illustrated survey takes in Rubens's portraits, landscapes, and historical paintings, as well as his famed and bountiful nudes. Along the way, we examine the artist's astonishing technique and his deft ability to depict narrative in a compelling and legible visual form, whether an erotic mythological scene or a tender biblical story. This remarkable artistic bravura is placed in context both within Rubens's long art historical legacy through Van Dyck, Velázquez, and beyond, and his other talents as a classical scholar, diplomat, and knight.
Copies
No copies available.