The Renaissance holds an undying place in our imagination, itsgreat heroes still our own, from Michelangelo and Leonardo to Danteand Chaucer. This period of profound evolution in European thoughtis credited with transforming the West from medieval to modern andproducing the most astonishing outpouring of artistic creation theworld has ever known. But what was it? In this masterly work, theincomparable Paul Johnson tells us. He explains the economic,technological, and social developments that provide a backdrop tothe age’s achievements and focuses closely on the lives and worksof its most important figures. A commanding short narrative of thisvital period, The Renaissance is also a universally profoundmeditation on the wellsprings of innovation.

The world of the fashionista is brought to vivid life with 101introductory lessons on such topics as how a designer anticipatescultural trends and "sees" the fashion consumer, the workings ofthe fashion calendar, the ways a designer collection is conceived,the manufacture of fabric, fashion illustration, and more. Illustrated in the distinctly unique packaged style of thebestselling101 THINGS I LEARNED IN ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL, this newbook on fashion design will be a perfect book for any fashionschool wannabe, a recent graduate, or even a seasonedprofessional.

Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is now universallyacclaimed: museums pride themselves on his paintings, crowds flockto his retrospectives. His work shows art at its mostlight-hearted, sensual and luminous. Renoir never wanted anythingugly in his paintings, nor any dramatic action. "I like pictureswhich make me want to wander through them when it's a landscape,"he said, "or pass my hand over breast or back if it's a woman."Renoir's entire oeuvre is dominated by the depiction of women.Again and again he painted "these faunesses with their poutinglips" (Mallarme) and invented a new image of feminity.

随着移动通信技术的不断发展和普及，人们对移动对象管理的需求越来越迫切。移动对象管理成为数据库研究领域的一个热门方向，它在许多领域都展现了广阔的应用前景。《移动对象管理:模型、技术与应用》比较系统地介绍了移动对象管理的相关内容，即移动对象管理模型（包括移动对象建模、移动对象更新、移动对象索引等），移动对象管理技术（包括移动对象查询、移动对象预测、移动数据不确定性研究等），移动对象管理应用（包括动态交通导航、动态交通网络、移动对象聚类分析、位置隐私保护等）。 《移动对象管理:模型、技术与应用》总结了国内外有关移动数据管理的研究工作和具有代表性的关键技术，并较详细地介绍了作者近年来的一些研究成果，具有较大的参考价值。 《移动对象管理:模型、技术与应用》的读者对象为高等院校计算机专业

The moral of this book is that behind every great engineeringsuccess is a trail of often ignored (but frequently spectacular)engineering failures. Petroski covers many of the best knownexamples of well-intentioned but ultimately failed design in action-- the galloping Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which you've probably seentossing cars willy-nilly in the famous black-and-white footage),the collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways -- andmany lesser known but equally informative examples. The line ofreasoning Petroski develops in this book were later formalized intohis quasi-Darwinian model of technological evolution in TheEvolution of Useful Things , but this book is arguably the moreilluminating -- and defintely the more enjoyable -- of these twotitles. Highly recommended.

These free-wheeling, often exhilarating dialogues—which grewout of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Talks—are an exchange betweentwo of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture: DanielBarenboim, internationally renowned conductor and pianist, andEdward W. Said, eminent literary critic and impassioned commentatoron the Middle East. Barenboim is an Argentinian-Israeli and Said aPalestinian-American; they are also close friends. As they range across music, literature, and society, they openup many fields of inquiry: the importance of a sense of place;music as a defiance of silence; the legacies of artists from Mozartand Beethoven to Dickens and Adorno; Wagner’s anti-Semitism; andthe need for “artistic solutions” to the predicament of the MiddleEast—something they both witnessed when they brought young Arab andIsraeli musicians together. Erudite, intimate, thoughtful andspontaneous, Parallels and Paradoxes is a virtuosiccollaboration.

This illustratedsurvey of the work of Modigliani shows how he was regarded bycontemporaries as the very definition of a Parisian bohemian.Modigliani's style is seen as having roots in antiquity or Africa,and the text also brings to life the Parisian art scene of theearly 20th century.

The old certainties of the Cold War have been swept away by the new tide of detente that has washed over the superpowers. But even if international superpower relations have changed, human nature has not altered very much. The new powder keg is the Middle East where this adventure story is set. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Famed for his modern art and rendering of human, animal and still life compositions, this is a celebration of the works of Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero.

This landmark book enlightens amateur and professionalmusicians about a way of practicing that transforms a sometimesfrustrating, monotonous, and overly strenuous labor into anexhilarating and rewarding experience. Acclaimed pianist andteacher Madeline Bruser combines physiological and meditativeprinciples to help musicians release physical and mental tensionand unleash their innate musical talent. She offers practicaltechniques for cultivating free and natural movement, a keenenjoyment of sounds and sensations, a clear and relaxed mind, andan open heart and she explains how to Prepare the body and mind to practice with ease Understand the effect of posture on flexibility andexpressiveness Make efficient use of the hands and arms Employ listening techniques to improve coordination Increase the range of color and dynamics by using lesseffort Cultivate rhythmic vitality Perform with confidence, warmth, and freedom

This volume examines the sculptures and drawings of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Few music lovers realize that the arrangement of notes ontoday’s pianos was once regarded as a crime against God and nature,or that such legendary thinkers as Pythagoras, Plato, da Vinci,Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and Rousseau played a role inthe controversy. Indeed, from the time of the Ancient Greeksthrough the eras of Renaissance scientists and Enlightenmentphilosophers, the relationship between the notes of the musicalscale was seen as a key to the very nature of the universe. In this engaging and accessible account, Stuart Isacoff leads usthrough the battles over that scale, placing them in the context ofquarrels in the worlds of art, philosophy, religion, politics andscience. The contentious adoption of the modern tuning system knownas equal temperament called into question beliefs that hadlasted nearly two millenia–and also made possible the music ofBeethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, and all who followed. Filledwith original insights, fascinating anecdotes, and portraits ofsome of th

In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocativeguide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's mostwidely read cultural commentators tells the story of the rise ofthe classical recording industry from Caruso's first notes to theheyday of Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Callas, and von Karajan. Lebrechtcompellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached itsend point-but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. Itis, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form,analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini,Callas, Rattle, the Three Tenors, and Charlotte Church. It is thestory of how stars were made and broken by the record business; howa war criminal conspired with a concentration-camp victim to createa record empire; and how advancing technology, boardroom wars,public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation shaped the musicalbackdrop to our modern lives. The book ends with a suitable shrineto classical recording: the author's critical selectio

Book De*ion "Nineteen forty-six was agood time — perhaps the best time — in the twentieth century. Thewar was over and there was a terrific sense of coming back, ofrepossessing life. Rents were cheap, restaurants were cheap, and itseemed to me that happiness itself might be cheaply had." Broyard made his first bid for happiness by moving in with a youngpainter, the difficult and challenging Sheri Donatti — a protegeeof Anais Nin — who never wore underpants and who "embodied the newtrends in art, sex, and psychosis." Broyard tells their story; byturns comic and poignant, while describing along the way hismeetings with Caitlan and Dylan Thomas, Delmore Schwartz, DwightMacDonald, Maya Deren, William Gaddis, and other writers andartists just beginning their careers. He opens a bookstore onCornelia Street ("If it hadn't been for books we would have beenentirely at the mercy of sex. Books steadied us, they gave usgravity."). He goes to the New School and listens to Eric Fromm,Karen Horney and Meyer Shap

Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico(1888-1978)was hugely influential in the early years of the Surrealist movement.His paintings during the teens in Paris,where he moved in 1911,caused such a stir that such important figures as Picasso and Paul Eluard immediately praised them.This phase of his work,which he later termed pittura metafisica(metaphysical painting)was marked by dramatic compositions involving sharp perspective,striking shadows,geometrical planes,voids of space,and a general feeling of anxiety and loneliness;the sense of absurdity evoked by the mannequin-like figures in almost nightmarish landscapes seemed to suggest a Freudian expression of the unconscious.After 1930,De Chirico turned to a more classical style of painting and continued in the same vein for the rest of his career;his later work was widely criticized,especially by the Surrealists who had so admired his early paintings.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the most typical and the most individual Impressionist painter. His long life he dedicated to a pictorial exploration of the sensations which reality, and in particular landscape, offer the human eye. But while Monet the painter was faithful and persevering in the pursuit of his motifs, his personal life followed a more restless course. Parisian by birth, he discovered plein-air painting as a youth in the provinces, where one of his homes, Argenteuil, has come to represent the artistic flowering and official establishment of Impressionism as a movement, with Monet as its creative leader. In his endeavor to capture the ever-changing face of reality, Monet went beyond Impressionism and thereby beyond the confines of self-contained panel painting: in Giverny he painted the Poplars, Grain Stacks and Rouen Cathedral series in which he addressed one motif in constantly new variations. Here, too, Monet laid out the famous garden with its water-lily pond which he was to paint on huge canv

Best known for his fetes galantes such as the famousPelerinage a l'ile de Cythere, Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) was amajor proponent in the revival of the Baroque style and theformation of the Rococo movement. Watteau was inspired by thetheater and in particular the commedia dell'arte, hence elaboratelycostumed actors, dancers, and musicians were recurrent subjects; hewas also fond of bucolic scenes and portraiture. Infused withromance, drama, and joie de vivre, Watteau's paintings depict aidyllic world of pleasure and entertainment.Every book in"Taschen's Basic Art Series" features: a detailed chronologicalsummary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural andhistorical importance of the artist; approximately 100 colorillustrations with explanatory captions; and, a concisebiography.

Antonio Stradivari (1644—1737) was a perfectionist whosesingle-minded pursuit of excellence changed the world of music. Inthe course of his long career in the northern Italian city ofCremona, he created more than a thousand stringed instruments;approximately six hundred survive, their quality unequalled by anysubsequent violin-maker. In this fascinating book, Toby Fabertraces the rich, multilayered stories of six of these peerlesscreations–five violins and a cello–and the one towering artist whobrought them into being. Blending history, biography, meticulousdetective work, and an abiding passion for music, Faber takes usfrom the salons of Vienna to the concert halls of New York, andfrom the breakthroughs of Beethoven’s last quartets to the firstphonographic recordings. This magnificent narrative invites us toshare the life, the intrigue, and the incomparable beauty of theworld’s most marvelous stringed instruments.