The Power Of Prints

Metropolitan Museum of Art curators William M. Ivins and A. Hyatt Mayor assembled one of the world's greatest collections of prints, from Renaissance masterpieces to popular and ephemeral works. Celebrating the power of prints not only as aesthetic objects but also as rich sociohistorical documents and peerless tools of communication, Ivins and Mayor expanded our appreciation of prints as the most democratic art form: functional, cost-effective works that disseminate information and bring pleasure to a wide audience. Their populist approach—collecting across the full spectrum of the medium, from the exquisite to the everyday, and writing about prints in accessible language—delivered prints from the province of scholars and collectors to the general public and transformed notions of how art reaches the masses. The first comprehensive exploration of the lives, careers, theories, and influence of Ivins and Mayor, this book also showcases more than 125 exceptional prints that represent the breadth and depth of their acquisitions, including works by Mantegna, Düaut;rer, Callot, Rembrandt, Goya, Whistler, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Cassatt. Included in this volume are biographical essays elucidating the two curators' achievements and catalogue entries that quote Ivins's and Mayor's pithy remarks about the featured artworks. The Power of Prints is a fitting tribute to the groundbreaking work of two scholars who revolutionized the study of a vast area of art history.

Discusses the significance and history of printmaking and evaluates 700 prints.

Take a close-up look at far-out fabric designs from the 1960s in full, cool colors. All the orange, hot pink, and sky blue the era's most fertile imaginations could conjure. Featured are more than 300 striking swatches from top couture houses in Paris and Milan, bold flower prints on silk, cotton, and the acetates and polyesters that helped shape fashion's most eye-popping era.

Print, in the early modern period, could make or break power. This volume addresses one of the most urgent and topical questions in early modern history: how did European authorities use a new medium with such tremendous potential? The eighteen contributors develop new perspectives on the relationship between the rise of print and the changing relationships between subjects and rulers by analysing print’s role in early modern bureaucracy, the techniques of printed propaganda, genres, and strategies of state communication. While print is often still thought of as an emancipating and disruptive force of change in early modern societies, the resulting picture shows how instrumental print was in strengthening existing power structures. Contributors: Renaud Adam, Martin Christ, Jamie Cumby, Arthur der Weduwen, Nora Epstein, Andreas Golob, Helmer Helmers, Jan Hillgärtner, Rindert Jagersma, Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba, Nina Lamal, Margaret Meserve, Rachel Midura, Gautier Mingous, Ernesto E. Oyarbide Magaña, Caren Reimann, Chelsea Reutchke, Celyn David Richards, Paolo Sachet, Forrest Strickland, and Ramon Voges.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30-1569) was a remarkable draftsman and designer of prints as well as a great painter. His independent drawings and designs for engravings and etchings, which were carried out by the leading printmakers of his day, have fascinated scholars and the general public alike since they were created. They have recently been the subject of research that has given rise to a reevaluation of the parameters of Bruegel's oeuvre. The new scholarship has been brought to bear in the texts of the present volume, which accompanies a major exhibition of 140 of Bruegel's prints and drawings to be shown at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, from May to August 2001 and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from September to December 2001. An international group of experts discusses the new Bruegel who has emerged from recent studies, in essays on the artist's life, his contributions as a draftsman and as a printmaker, the survival of his art, and his relationship to the humanism of his day. They also illuminate his genius in entries on all the works in the exhibition. Every work is illustrated and rich comparative illustrations are included. Provenances an