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Taiwan's specific situation in Asia is the source of its thorn past. Situated in the South East of China, Taiwan was at the crossroads of many maritime routes and squeezed between its neighbors, China and Japan. After centuries of foreign occupation, Taiwan has a unique history. Taiwan, Art and Civilization sheds light on Taiwan's beautiful scenery as well as its colorful history in the form of a true initiatory trip. Through magnificent illustrations, Taiwan reveals its secret beauty, its fauna and flora intertwined with its unique architecture. Home of the traditional and the modern, the gorgeous island is also the home of a very dynamic artistic scene. One thus fully grasps why the Portuguese named her Ilha Formosa, beautiful island.

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Surrealists appeared in the aftermath of World War I with a bang: revolution of thought, creativity, and the wish to break away from the past and all that was left in ruins.This refusal to integrate into the bourgeois society was also a leitmotiv of Dada artists, and André Breton asserted that Dada does not produce perspective. Surrealism emerged amidst such feeling. Surrealists and Dada artists often changed from one movement to another.They were united by their superior intellectualism and the common goal to break free from the norm. Describing the Surrealists with their aversive resistance to the system, the author brings a new approach which strives to be relative and truthful. Provocation and cultural revolution: aren’t Surrealists after all just a direct product of creative individualism in this unsettled period?

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Men’s fashion, particularly the trends involving undergarments, was once reserved for the elite; today it has become democratised, clear proof of social progress.The aestheticism of the body so highly valued by the Greeks seems to have regained a prominent place in the masculine world. Mirroring the evolution of society’s values, the history of underwear also highlights the continuous, dancing exchange that exists between women’s styles and men’s fashion. Undergarments are concealed, flaunted, stretched or shortened, establishing a game between yesterday’s illicit and today’s chic and thereby denouncing the sense of disgrace that these simple pieces of clothing used to betray. In this work, Shaun Cole endeavours to re-establish for the first time, through well-researched socio-economic analysis, the importance of men’s underwear in the history of costume from ancient times to today. A reflection of technological progress, this study is full of surprises and powerful reflections on man’s relationship with his body.

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Abandoning a French look on the subject, Mrs. Bossan, the author, develops her study with a dichotomous vision: that of time that touches the history of mankind and that of geography and sociology, which lead to an almost ethnographic analysis. The author dissects the shoe and all that surrounds it: from its history to painting and literature. After this book, it will be difficult to publish a book with a more complete treatment of the subject. Illustrated with an iconography that is exceptional both for its aestheticism and the pieces chosen, this book is a reference for historians, sociologists and for the fashion victims and designers…

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From the 18th century to the 20th, this book gives a panorama of Russian painting not equalled anywhere else. Russian culture developed in contact with the wider European influence, but retained strong native intonations. It is a culture between East and West, and both influences in together. The book begins with Icons, and it is precisely Icon-painting which gave Russian artist their peculiar preoccupation with ethical questions and a certain kind of palette. It goes on the expound the duality of their art, and point out the originality of their contribution to world art. The illustrations cover all genres and styles of painting in astonishing variety. Such figures as Borovokovsky, Rokotov, Levitsky, Brullov, Fedatov, Repin, Shishkin and Levitan and many more are in these pages.

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They met in 1928, Frida Kahlo was then 21 years old and Diego Rivera was twice her age. He was already an international reference, she only aspired to become one. An intense artistic creation, along with pain and suffering, was generated by this tormented union, in particular for Frida. Constantly in the shadow of her husband, bearing his unfaithfulness and her jealousy, Frida exorcised the pain on canvas, and won progressively the public’s interest. On both continents, America and Europe, these commited artists proclaimed their freedom and left behind them the traces of their exceptional talent. In this book, Gerry Souter brings together both biographies and underlines with passion the link which existed between the two greatest Mexican artists of the twentieth century.

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It is impossible to reflect upon Frederic Remington’s art without thinking of the merely human elements. Remington became interested in the American Indian, probably because he became interested in the active, exciting life of the American Great Plains. The Indian appealed to him not in any histrionic way, not as a figure stepped out from the pages of Hiawatha, but just as a human subject. Remington hit upon this truth when he travelled west. What he found there was majesty that he did not make, solely, an affair of Indians in war paint and feathers. Remington knew how the light of the moon or of the stars is diffused, how softly and magically it envelops the landscape. There is a sort of artistic honesty in his nocturnal studies. He never set out to be romantic or melodramatic, just to develop his affinity and closeness to nature. The beauty of the painter’s motive, too, has communicated itself in his technique. His grey-green tones fading into velvety depths take on transparency, and in his handling of form he uses a touch as firm as need be. The determining influence in his career was that of the creative impulse, urging him to deal in the translation of visible things into pictorial terms.

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Urban realism, snow-covered streets of New York, boxing matches, children on the banks of a river, the painters of the Ash Can School preferred realistic images. Their paintings are a true hymn to noise and sensations. This unconventional movement enabled the birth of a true national artistic identity which broke free from the establishment. The Ash Can School resolutely promoted the affirmation of the modernist current of American art. Edward Hopper, who was a student of Robert Henri, embraced the principles of this movement and brought them to another level.

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Born in 1912, in a small town in Wyoming, Jackson Pollock embodied the American dream as the country found itself confronted with the realities of a modern era replacing the fading nineteenth century. Pollock left home in search of fame and fortune in New York City. Thanks to the Federal Art Project he quickly won acclaim, and after the Second World War became the biggest art celebrity in America. For De Kooning, Pollock was the “icebreaker”. For Max Ernst and Masson, Pollock was a fellow member of the European Surrealist movement. And for Motherwell, Pollock was a legitimate candidate for the status of the Master of the American School. During the many upheavals in his life in Nez York in the 1950s and 60s, Pollock lost his bearings – success had simply come too fast and too easily. It was during this period that he turned to alcohol and disintegrated his marriage to Lee Krasner. His life ended like that of 50s film icon James Dean behind the wheel of his Oldsmobile, after a night of drinking.

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Music is not only a pleasure for the ear, it is the echo of the heartbeat, breath and desire. Professor Döpp revisits music as the catalyst for dance, love and sex. From the music sheet to dance and through instruments, music is the expression of our profound desires and most violent passions. The text revisits the history of music and art from the dances of the first men to pop and electronic music and through belly dance. Music and Eros take us on a time-travelling journey to discover the interaction of music and sex.

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