Taschen

Peaking in the 1960s, Pop Art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, the role of the artist, and of what constituted an artwork.Focusing on issues of materialism, celebrity, and media, Pop Art drew on mass-market sources, from advertising...

Painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and all-round showman Salvador Dali (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...

The great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/31-1569) was an astoundingly inventive painter and draftsman, who made his art historical mark with beautiful, evocative landscapes as well as religious subjects, both notable for their vernacular language and attention to everyday, contemporary life.Immersing himself in rural or...

Photographer, writer, publisher, and curator Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was a visionary far ahead of his time. Around the turn of the 20th century, he founded the Photo-Secession, a progressive movement concerned with advancing the creative possibilities of photography, and by 1903 began publishing Camera Work, an avant-garde magazine devoted to...

Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Curiosities is one of the 18th century's greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time.Though it was common for men of his profession to collect natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Seba (1665-1736) had a passion that led him far...

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...