When is a urinal no longer a urinal? When Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) declared it to be art. The uproar that greeted the French artist’s Fountain (1917), a porcelain urinal installed in ...
With a career spanning seven decades, Catalan-born Joan Miró (1893–1983) was a polymath giant of modern art, producing masterworks across painting, sculpture, art books, tapestry, and ...
Albertus Seba’s unrivalled catalog of animals, insects and plantsThe Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is one of the 18th century’s greatest natural history achievements and remains ...
Tom’s iconic images of hypermasculine military menWhen we think Tom of Finland we first picture muscular, macho young men in military gear. Tom’s vision of masculine perfection wa...
Tom’s take on policemen and criminalsTom’s taste for police officers and felons—and for sexual tension between the two—developed late in his career. “I’ve ...
As a boy, Tom’s first crush was a strapping young farmhand who worked the fields around his family home. Finland is a land of tough physical men, catching fish in the icy sea; cutting logs in...
Leather-clad outlaws with power between their legsIn 1953 Marlon Brando donned a black leather Perfecto motorcycle jacket, military cap, denim jeans, and engineer boots to portray Johnny, sne...
Pivotal paintings of modernityLampooned during his lifetime for his style as much as his subject matter, French painter Édouard Manet (1832–1883) is now considered a crucial figu...
Absurdity against the establishmentEmerging amid the brutality of World War I, the revolutionary Dada movement took disgust with the establishment as its starting point. From 1916 until the m...
Fernando Botero is an artist with his own style. For more than six decades, the Colombian’s “Boterismo” technique has captured collectors, institutions, and public spaces worldwid...
Playthings From the Past For the PresentUp until the 20th century, children’s play was not a subject that demanded much attention. While objects that entertained children have been pres...
Volume two of the definitive exploration [br]of the [i]Star Wars[/i] galaxyFrom the moment Star Wars burst onto the screen in 1977, audiences have been in equal parts fascinated and appalled ...
Sebastião Salgado traveled the Brazilian Amazon and photographed the unparalleled beauty of this extraordinary region for six years: the forest, the rivers, the mountains, the people who liv...
A comprehensive look at hundreds of graphic worksThrough the turbulent passage of time, graphic design—with its vivid, neat synthesis of image and idea—has distilled the spirit of...
From Snow White to Cinderella, Rapunzel to Rumpelstiltskin, the Brothers Grimm bequeathed a canon of stories which have become literary and childhood classics. The most widely read story collection...
One of the greatest pioneers in the history of architectureAcclaimed as the “father of skyscrapers,” the quintessentially American icon Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) was an...
The roaring twenties in BerlinIt was the decade of daring Expressionist canvases, of brilliant book design, of the Bauhaus total work of art, of pioneering psychology, of drag balls, cabaret,...
Only 20 paintings and eight drawings are confidently assigned to Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516) but in their fantastical visions they have secured his place as one of t...
Over 150 of the best photos from the original volume are now in this compact book. From Betty Grable to Bettie Page, the greatest legs of the 20th Century are here, shot by Irving Klaw, Bunny Yeage...
Discover a world of decorative ideas with this compendium of history’s most elegant patterns and ornamental designs.The World of Ornament brings together the two greatest encyclop...