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Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation.
E.H. Gombrich · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorArt and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
Rudolf Arnheim · 485 pages
Since its first publication in 1954, this work has established itself as a unique classic. It applies the approaches and findings of modern psychology to the study of art: it describes the visual process that takes place when people create- or look at- works in the various arts, and explains how the eye organizes visual material according to definite psychological laws. Fresh in thought, clean in
Van Gogh: The Life
Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith · 953 pages
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Edward R. Tufte · 197 pages
The classic book on statistical graphics, charts, tables. Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relat
After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History
Arthur C. Danto · 272 pages
Man and His Symbols
C.G. Jung, Joseph L. Henderson, Aniela Jaffe, Jolande Jacobi, Marie-Louise von Franz · 320 pages
Excerpt from back cover: "This book, which was the last piece of work undertaken by Jung before his death in 1961, provides a unique opportunity to assess his contribution to the life and thought of our time, for it was also his first attempt to present his life-work in psychology to a non-technical public...What emerges with great clarity from the book is that Jung has done immense service bot
Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation
Gilles Deleuze · 209 pages
Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas
Charles Harrison, Paul Wood · 1,288 pages
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
Christopher W. Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel · 1,171 pages
Alexander and his co-authors present us with over two hundred (roughly 250) "patterns" that they believe must be present in order for an environment to be pleasing, comfortable, or in their words, "alive." The patterns start at the most general level -- the first pattern, "Independent Regions," describes the ideal political entity, while another of my favorite patterns, "Mosaic of Subcultures," de
The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers
T.J. Clark · 338 pages
Paris in the 1860s and 1870s was supposedly a centre of modern life. This book argues that the art of Manet and his contemporaries was an attempt to give form to that modernity.
About Looking
John Berger · 198 pages
This successor to John Berger's Ways of Seeing, written over the last ten years, searches for meaning within and beyond what is looked at. Why do zoos disappoint children? Why do we take snapshots of those we love? How do the media use photographs of agony? When an animal looks us in the eyes, what does that look mean? Berger describes how a sixteenth-century masterpiece he saw in the 1960s com
The Poetics of Space
Gaston Bachelard · 241 pages
This book is another of the French philosopher's explorations into the meaning and being of art.
History of Beauty
Umberto Eco, Girolamo De Michele · 438 pages
From the Publisher: What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? So begins Umberto Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today. While closely examining the development of the visual
The Power of Art
Simon Schama · 448 pages
Taking eight famous painters and their great masterpieces, this book takes you back to the intense moment in history when these works were conceived and born. In each case the artist is backed into a corner, and given a chance to confound his rivals, enemies and critics.
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin · 45 pages
"An attempt by literary critic Walter Benjamin to analyze the changed experience of art in modern society."--Page 4 of cover.
Architecture: Form, Space, & Order
Francis D.K. Ching · 446 pages
The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Dawn of the Renaissance
Johan Huizinga · 344 pages
The Critique of Aesthetic Judgement (Critique of Judgement 1)
Immanuel Kant · 339 pages
Rembrandt, 1606-1669: The Mystery of the Revealed Form
Michael Bockemuhl · 96 pages
Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Wassily Kandinsky · 92 pages
A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his o
The Image of the City
Kevin Lynch · 194 pages
What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion--imageability--and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The
Interaction of Color
Josef Albers · 81 pages
Josef Albers' "Interaction of Color" is a masterwork in twentieth-century art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers' unique ideas of colour experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience. Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edi