Welcome to an alarming book. In it Matthew Collings, known for his TV programmes and books about new art, tells you how to look at the old masters. Of course you can look at them however you like. But this book gives you some art historical facts as the context for what you're looking at - Collings gives you the resources you need, in order to make sense of what you're seeing. And he gets you to think for yourself. In art culture today all you hear about are literal meanings, about subject matter and ideas. Matt Collings objects to the droning repetition of that stuff. He looks to the past for a different model of art, one where the surface, the form, the look of something, is part of the idea, maybe even the main thing. We can't have the past back as a complete package, of course. That would be mad. But we can find critical principles in it that we can use to make something better out of our own time. The key figures he has chosen are Titian, Rubens, Velasquez and Hogarth. The first three stand for the highest that painting can go - rich, free, flowing, grand. In art historical terms, this is the 'painterly' stream of art. The last one didn't punch quite so high, but in him Collings sees a principle of adapting your understanding and admiration for what seems higher and greater than yourself - the achievements of the past - to your own sense of what is alive and real.Matthew Collings' new book gives a unique approach to the paintings of the past.

The Art of Ballpoint art pack includes a wide variety of creative, ballpoint technique exercises and prompts to get you started. Learn pen art now!

"J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) is widely regarded as the greatest painter Britain has ever produced. Despite the many books and exhibitions that have been devoted to him, there is one aspect of his extraordinary oeuvre that has never been thoroughly examined. Uniquely in the history of European art, he took on all comers, past and present, that he considered worthy of a challenge, creating his own images in their styles. These works were both acts of homage and a sophisticated form of art criticism, demonstrating his understanding of great art and his ability to equal or better the most celebrated exponents of the landscape tradition. No artist, however revered, was considered beyond challenge. This unique habit is clearly a key to understanding Turner's art, yet the issue is one that has so far never been thoroughly addressed on Turner and on British art of the 18th and 19th centuries. In "Turner and the Masters" leading authorities explore this fascinating aspect of his career, revealing new detail on the debts and rivalries that shaped his work in often unexpected ways. Accompanying a major touring exhibition that brings together works by Turner with masterpieces by Claude, Canaletto, Ruisdael, Van de Velde, Poussin, Rubens and Rembrandt, as well as by Turner's contemporaries including Constable and Bonnington, this book firmly positions Turner in the company of the greatest painters of all time. The contributors include Guillaume Faroult, Sarah Monks, Martin Myrone, Kathleen Nicholson, Philippa Simpson and Ian Warrell." --Book Jacket.

Drawing on some sixty works and for the first time, the Museo del Prado will jointly present the most important paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola (ca. 1535-1625) and Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614). The two artists achieved recognition and fame among their contemporaries for and despite their status as female painters. Both were able to break away from the prevailing stereotypes assigned to women in relation to artistic practice and the deep-rooted scepticism regarding women's creative and artistic abilities.The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will present the work of these two women, whose artistic personalities were to some extent obscured over the course of time but who in the last thirty years have once again aroused the interest of specialists and the general public.

Essays by American and Dutch scholars and museum curators explore the collecting and reception of seventeenth-century Dutch painting in America, from the colonial era through the Gilded Age to today.

Explores the work, methods, and themes of leading contemporary artists

DIVIn Unfree Masters, Matt Stahl examines recording artists' labor in the music industry as a form of creative work. He argues that the widespread perception of singers and musicians as free individuals doing enjoyable and fulfilling work obscures the realities of their occupation./div