Whether you're thinking of getting a tattoo or just want to see to what lengths others have gone in decorating their bodies, this is the book to check out.
1000 Tattoos explores the history of the art worldwide via designs and photos--from 19th-century engravings to tribal body art, from circus ladies of the '20s to classic biker designs.
About the series
Bibliotheca Universalis -- Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe
Incredibly Strange Films is a functional guide to important territory neglected by the film-criticism establishment, spotlighting unhailed directors -- Hershell Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer, Larry Cohen, Ray Dennis Steckler, Ted V. Mikels and others -- who have been critically consigned to the ghettos of gore and sexploitation films. In-depth interviews focus on philosophy while anecdotes entertain as well as illuminate theory. The guide includes biographies, genre overviews, filmographies, bibliography, quotations, an A-Z of film personalities, lists of recommended films, sources, index, as well ... View More...
First published 20 years ago, Modern Primitives is still called "the bible of the tattooing-piercing underground." Here is a celebratory reprinting, complete with a new introduction by original editor/publisher V. Vale. Also added is a new community section, where current practitioners have been invited to have their cards displayed. Modern Primitives was the first book to investigate not only the "how" but also the "why" of body modification practices. It reaches far back into history to multiform cultural traditions to illuminate one of today's most wide-spread youth culture visual signifier... View More...
Like hardly any other artist of his generation, Wolfgang Tillmans has shaped our perception of the world. From early portraits of his friends to still lifes, travel shots, nudes, landscape and sky photographs, to his abstract work, Tillmans has created a multitude of iconic works in his unmistakable visual language, opening up new paths and possibilities for both photography and contemporary art. In 2000 he was the first photographer and the first non-British person to receive the renowned Turner Prize.His first volume for TASCHEN (1995) shows the young generation of the 1990s, of which Tillma... View More...
Anni Albers (1899 - 1994) was one of the most influential textile designers of the 20th century. Born in Berlin, in 1922 she became a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar, where she met her husband, Josef Albers. From 1933 to 1949 Albers taught at Black Mountain College. The fifteen essays gathered here illustrate Anni Albers's concept of design as the pursuit of wholeness -- "the coalition of form answering practical needs and form answering aesthetic needs." This beautifully illustrated book addresses the artistic and practical concerns of modern design and considers the ever-changing role of th... View More...
The first installment of the tattoo collection that became a publishing phenomenonOccasionally a book is published that reveals a subculture you never dreamt existed. More rarely, that book goes on to become a phenomenon of its own. The 2004 publication of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia was such a phenomenon, spawning two further volumes and alerting a fascinated readership worldwide to the extraordinary and hermetic world of Russian criminal tattoos (David Cronenberg, for example, made regular use of the Encyclopaedia during the making of his 2007 movie Eastern Promises). Now, Fuel... View More...
Danzig Baldaev's father was an academic, an ethnologist who found himself imprisoned under Soviet rule as an enemy of the people. In fact much of Baldaev's family moved through the Soviet prison system, while he became a guard. At his father's suggestion, Danzig used his access to document and study the tattoos that were pervasive among the truly criminal portion of the prison population, the vory v zakonye, or legitimate thieves, a semi-professional class who kept their own brutal laws. During his 30 years supervising inmates in St. Petersburg's notorious Kresty Prison, Baldaev recorded more ... View More...
The Atrocity Exhibition is J.G. Ballard's most complex, disturbing work, with fabulous photos by Ana Barrado and artwork by Phoebe Gloeckner. View More...
Based on the BBC television series, John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.' 'But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.' John Berger's Ways of Seeing is o... View More...
This beautiful book presents the extraordinary work of the iconic American outsider artist in a new critical light, locating him as a major figure in the history of contemporary art. Self-taught and working in isolation until his death in 1973, Henry Darger realized an elaborate fantasy world of remarkable beauty and strangeness through hundreds of paintings and an epic written narrative. Angel-like Blengins with butterfly wings, natural catastrophes, innocent girls, and murderous soldiers all appear in Darger's scenes, which are reproduced in this book in double-page and gatefold illustration... View More...
Legendary American tattoo artist Ed Hardy's groundbreaking tattoos, flash, drawings, and artworks are gathered together for the first time in one brash book. Ed Hardy's (b. 1945) unique vision spans decades, creating an indelible mark on popular culture. Accompanying a major exhibition, this profusely illustrated survey of his life in art traces his inspirations, rooted both in traditional American tattooing of the first half of the twentieth century and in the imagery of Japan's ukiyo-e era. Hardy, raised in Southern California, became intrigued with tattoo art at the age of ten, setting up s... View More...
Tattoos have gone from badges of rebellion to fashion statements fully absorbed into mainstream culture. They are enjoying a renaissance, with graphic designers and artists creating specialty tattoos for a growing audience, unleashing a revival of interest in the bawdy vintage tattoo. Old school tattoos are being rediscovered (sometimes ironically, sometimes not) by a new generation. Originally embraced by rebels, sailors, and gangsters, these tattoos--broken hearts, naked girls, floral motifs, and maritime emblems--are now showing up on the fashion runway and in music videos. This book chroni... View More...
In this warm and vibrant work of memoir and criticism, a young writer forges a friendship with Philip Guston, one of the most influential and controversial painters of the twentieth century and the subject of Philip Guston Now, a much-discussed retrospective upcoming in several major museums. The late paintings of Philip Guston have had a profound influence on painters today; only the altogether different work of Andy Warhol can be said to have had a comparable impact. As time has passed and Guston's star has risen, it has been forgotten how scandalous and crude these paintings, with their car... View More...
This volume of drawings and photographs completes the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia trilogy. Danzig Baldaev's unparallelled ethnographic achievement, documenting more than 3,000 tattoo drawings, was made during a lifetime working as a prison guard. His recording of this esoteric world was reported to the KGB, who unexpectedly supported him, realizing the importance of being able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images on their bodies. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics and alcohol... View More...
In Ideas and Integrities Buckminster Fuller describes the revolutionary designs and concepts he has pioneered - among them the geodesic dome, the Dymaxion world map, the Dymaxion 4-D house, the Dymaxion 4-D automobile, and the countless other structures and creations that have changed the face of America and the world. And he sets forth his amazing and challenging ideas for the world of the future - ideas that would revolutionize everything from university education to bathroom design, ideas that, above all, demonstrate how we can and must make far more imaginative and efficient use of the res... View More...
For Fuller, nature is the most exquisite technology we know; and what underlies all of his work is the quest to uncover nature's fundamental principles--in order to foster their manifestation as a pattern integrity 'for successfully regenerating all life aboard our planetary spaceship.' -Jaime Lawrence Snyder, Lars M ller Fuller Series EditorThe work of R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) is among the most extraordinary and inventive in 20th-century design and architecture, not least for its incorporation of a range of intellectual and technical disciplines. Fuller described himself as an "engin... View More...
Garbage Pail Kids--a series of collectible stickers produced by Topps in the 1980s--combined spectacular artwork and over-the-top satire. The result was an inspired collaboration between avant-garde cartoonists and humorists including Art Spiegelman, Mark Newgarden, John Pound, Tom Bunk, and Jay Lynch. A new generation of fans continues to embrace this pop-culture phenomenon as Garbage Pail Kids stickers are still being published. Now, for the first time, all 206 rare and hard-to-find images from Series 1 through 5 are collected in an innovative package, along with a special set of four limite... View More...
This book provides fresh insight into and a deep appreciation of the life and art of Tove Jansson (1914-2001), one of the most original, influential, and perennially enjoyed illustrators of the twentieth century. In this volume Paul Gravett examines Jansson's highly successful Moomin books, as well as her interpretations of classics such as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark, and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.Born in Helsinki among Finland's Swedish-speaking minority, Jansson was brought up with a love for making art and stories in a supportive, artis... View More...
