This highly entertaining exploration of art, history, and commerce reveals how 30 masterpieces made the journey from image to icon. How did paintings such as the Mona Lisa and The Scream achieve worldwide recognition? Why do certain artworks populate T-shirts, mugs, calendars, and advertising? Witty and well researched, this accessible exploration of visual and pop culture reveals how particular works of art have become part of the collective imagination. Readers will learn that Myron's Discobolus only became widely known when used to promote the Olympics, that Leonardo's Last Supper was one of the first paintings to be mass-reproduced, that the Mona Lisa became a celebrity only after being stolen from the Louvre, and that Girl with a Pearl Earring was deemed a minor Vermeer until it became the subject of a bestselling novel. Ranging from classical to contemporary, traveling through the Renaissance, Surrealism, and abstraction, Mona Lisa to Marge offers insights that are in turn thought provoking and surprising. Generously illustrated, it features the original artworks as well as the cartoons, ads, book and album covers, and everyday objects they inspired. The book will open readers' eyes to the artistic images that have become universal touchstones--and the fascinating stories of how and why they got there.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 144

Dimensions: 196 x 238 mm

Publication Date: 25-02-2014

Portraiture is one of the oldest and most studied genres of art. While most scholars will look at a painting's composition, style, and themes, often questions remain unanswered-who were these people and why were they painted? This entertaining book reveals the identities and lives of some of the most famous characters that populate art history-from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Readers will learn how the fifteen-year-old subject of da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine nearly destroyed a marriage; that van Dyck's depiction of Prudence in wild clothes is actually one of the most controversial aristocrats of the seventeenth century; and that Francis Bacon's character George Dyer was a man he met in a Soho nightclub. These and other stories behind works by Picasso, Klimt, Rubens, Warhol, and dozens of other artists show how portraiture remains one of the most enthralling genres. Based on art scholarship and conveyed in an accessible tone, these fascinating tales of power, lust, intrigue, jealousy, vengeance, and romance will help readers understand masterpieces of art history in an entirely new light.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 208

Dimensions: 200 x 260 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2020