Art Architecture Photography Books

If you dream your swimming pool as a mediterranean paradise, well, this is the book to look for. Exquisite pictures expose exotic pools accompanied by dramatic views on mediterranean coasts. The author provides brief explanations on materials, landscapes and, best of all, square footage, which I find very helpful. I personally was hoping for tropical themes and landscapes, and even "smaller" pools in "smaller" patios/backyards. So, most of the scenes exposed in this book do not apply to my particular situation. However, if I was to mimic a mediterranean look for my pool or patio, I'd find this book quite inspirational.

Thank You.

This book was full of wonderful scenery but it was not helpful in providing ideas about how to landscape an exsisting site. This was more an armchair travel book, not helpful in designing our own space.

Since 1968 Marcus Binney and photographer Alex Starkey have been producing regular articles on the country houses and places and stately homes of Europe and the UK for Country Life magazine. This book describes the challenges of photographing these houses, both in Black and White and colour. Photos that you take for granted have a lot more art and skill involved in producing them than is readily apparent - especially if you haven't tried to take these sort of photos yourself. ( I have, and they never look as good as what you see in this book)

This is a wonderful book and covers 25 houses. The photos are a mixture of black and white and colour. All pictures are beautiful and sharp and printed on high quality glossy art paper. The houses range from Castello di Guarene in Piedmont, Palazzo Albrizzi in Venice, Schloss Bruhl in Cologne, Chateau de Bussy-Rabutin in Burgundy, Hotel de Lauzun in Paris and Skoloster in Sweden as just an example of a few.

Some of the houses/castles covered in this book only have a few photos, while others are up to 4 or 5 pages long. Sometimes you wish for colour pictures, but not all these photos were originally taken with colour film, and even when printed in black and white all these pictures are of excellent quality. The text for each house gives you some of the background history of it, but unfortunately doesn't tell you if the house is open to the public today - or even still intact with its contents (some of these photos are decades old)

Country Life magazine today continues its regular articles on the Country Houses of both the UK and Europe, and it is lovely to see the best of their archives being printed in these books. The great Country Houses of Europe are one of the great wonders of the world and usually represent some to the best of preserved artistic endeavour over the centuries if you take your time to search them out. This book stands out from the crowd for the unusual range of houses covered and as a snapshot of some of the more outstanding examples.

This book is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Perfect condition and rapid delivery. Excellent service.

This was also added to my design collection of southwest decorating at its best. This is a very enjoyable book I always look at this for more items for another project. Or just to enjoy what someone else has done to make their living environment lovely.

I purchased this for my 7.75 year old boy who loves to draw. He loves the book and it has helped him greatly in his drawings.

Just with all of Hart's books this book cover is misleading.You look at the cover and think I'm really going to learn something and you read the book and get disappointed.He only shows the finnished step.He doesn't show the steps on how to get to the finnished step.Instead of describing how he draws it he gives you a history on each car.I'm sorry but telling a person the car history doesn't show them how to draw the car.I'm starting to think that Hart's books aren't very good.

Well written and incredible drawings. Anybody who likes to move around in something with a motor will love this book. Of course most kids who love cars grow up into adults who love cars. I enjoyed this book as much as my 13 year old son.

This is a great little book. Like a lot of guys, I love fast cars and this book was a pleasure to read and study with. Lots of practice and my techniques have improved greatly. This book is well worth the modest cover price.

Having been in the web industry for some time, I thought I'd purchase this book to possibly increase my design skills.

Apart from the samples at the back, this book came across as very basic to me. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has experience in this area, rather, those who are looking to get into web developement/design.

I was initially attracted to this book by it's colorful cover and beautiful full color pages with 500 illustrations. Then, as I read through it, I realized that the author knows a lot about color theory and design.

The great thing is that unlike most books on color, he doesn't get overly detailed and overly scientific. He presents all the relevant information about color and how to use it to more effectively design your websites.

Another great part of this book is the gallery of "featured" websites. There are some 300 websites that he has pictures of that show some of the very best websites on the web. This is very inspirational.

This book is ideal for web designer who does not have visual art or art background. It gives a good amount of details about choosing color. If you are expert in web coding like html, css, javascript, this books gives you best to choose perfact color for your design.
I recommend this book. It's like "good-to-have" kind of book.

The first few chapters are filled with technical information on color. I found the explanations to be helpful reminders of how color works. The side-by-side screen shots of the differences in GIF and JPEG settings were also very useful as well as the comparisons between Mac and PC monitor views. However, I found the 300 website examples to be the most inspiring. I'm sure they will be great for brainstorming color combinations and styles. Not only are some great designs pictured, but the author's comments on each site's color usage made me realize WHY the colors look good together.

I like the previous review that said this was a metric ton of a book. Yes, it is -- I carried it around for a semester when I was taking a 20th century art class. Lots of color plates and tons of black and white illustrations, and it is printed on very high quality paper (which is why it's so heavy.) It provides a good, reasonably readable survey of what was going on in art from just before the modernist movement up to almost the present day. If you want to acquaint yourself with a broad survey of modern art including all the media, this would be a good one to consider.

This is the best art history book around; I got it in college in a course by Dr. Donald Kuspit at S.U.N.Y@ Stony Brook I have this book from 1990 and still to this day I use it as a reference. There is no stone left unturned with this book about modern art. I suggest it for all artists, students and professionals who are in the art field and for everyone who wants a good book on this subject. It is the best one out there!
~Duke Crescent of Deviantart

Since first published in 1968, this book has widely used as textbook. As a text, artwork could be explained in various ways. Gombrich¡¯s ¡®Story of Art¡¯, for example, focuses on the interaction between the visual art and its time. Since the book deals with the entire time span of Western visual art, that kind of approach would be better suited to inform readers what and how was the artwork in those times. So distant from our time is it that it¡¯s hard to understand the meaning of the work without referring historical context of the work. All the text presume its reader (or audience). And reader or audience reads the text according to the established convention of the time. The conventions to read the work were so different from ours. But when it comes to the contemporary art, things are more complicated. Robert Hughes¡¯ ¡®The Shock of the New¡¯ follows the line of the contextual explanation. Hughes paints not detailed picture of modernism but overall characterization from bird¡¯s eye view. Thus he didn¡¯t touch all the works canonized. It¡¯s more adequate to make a consistent impression of modernism. However, this book was intended to inform the reader the encyclopedic knowledge on Western visual art from the 19th century to postmodernism. Moreover, the coverage of the book is not restricted to the painting but includes sculpture, architecture, and photography. With that kind of coverage and time span dealt with, one can¡¯t benefit from time¡¯s filtering out like Gombrich¡¯s. to be a coherent text as a history, the author cannot but take the view that ¡®artwork tells itself¡¯. The accounts of this book is focused on teaching the reader how to listen to the voice of artwork. With in-depth analysis of distinguished works one by one, you could learn how to listen. But you can ask: to get such an eye, should I swim through heap of paper (yep it¡¯s bulky) and thousands of pictures? As for art, you can take pleasure with art as much as you know classics. Therefore, the encyclopedic approach of this book is reasonable. And that, it¡¯s not boring at all to follow through explaining artworks one by one. Like other arts, visual art has its convention to interpret text which varies from age to age. One should learn how to read it. This book is a good guidebook to practice and learn how to read artwork. With closing the last page, you could overview the history of visual art since the 19th century and enjoy viewing artwork. And that, you could boast your good taste to your friends ;)

I just completed a 20th century art course here in Southern California with this book as the chosen textbook. I would consider it at the medium to advanced level. It was much cheaper on Amazon than the college bookstore or the museum store! Like the title of this review suggests, the authors were pre-occupied with their knowlege of uncommon words in the English Language. I would never encourage the "Dumbing down of America" but the word usage in this book is to the point of distraction. The new Oxford Essential Business and Office Dictionary makes it a point in it's forward to point out that usage like this is superfluous. Er, I mean needless. The reproduction is outstanding and the physical structure is very good. I have every intention of making this book part of my permanent collection. And yes, agreeing with the other reviewers above, it is heavy. But hey, with a few extra sit-ups and one or two extra laps and you'll be just fine.
Mike

"History of Modern Art" is, in my opinion, the very best general overview of modern art (i.e., the last 125-150 years or so) published to this date.

Although it is intended to be a textbook, the format and writing make the tome sufficient as a great general reference and a very good read. The illustrations are excellent, although I wish there were more color reproductions.

Anyone who enjoys fine art should have this book in their personal library.