New title in the Flame Tree Blank Notebook collection, combining beautiful art with high-quality production, with blank pages, a pocket at the back and two ribbon bookmarks. Perfect as a gift, or an essential personal choice for writers, note takers, artists and list makers. A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are embossed and foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list and robust ivory text paper. THE ARTIST. Johannes Vermeer, was a pivotal figure of the Dutch Golden Age. Girl with a Pearl Earring depicts the fresh-faced beauty of a young woman, simply but strikingly adorned in a turban and luminous pearl. Her intimate and direct gaze enhances the energy of the portrait and offsets the dark, understated colour scheme. An enigmatic and seductive atmosphere swirls around her, while the subject remains forever still for the viewer to admire. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

A complex and fascinating question is why do humans have such strong emotional reactions and human connections to art? Why do viewers become scared, even haunted for days, by a movie monster they know doesn't exist? Why do humans become enthralled by distorted figures and scenes that aren't realistic? Why do viewers have emotional attachments to comic book characters? The answer lies in that, while humans know art is human made artifice, they view and decipher art using the same often nonconscious methods that they use to view and decipher reality. Looking at how we perceive reality shows us how we perceive art, and looking at how we perceive art helps show us how we perceive reality. Written by the prominent art historian and philosopher Cycleback, this book is a concise introduction to understanding art perception, covering key psychological, cognitive science, physiological and philosophical concepts.

Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.

Accompanying CD-ROM provides short film clips that reinforce the key concepts and topics in each chapter.

In a riveting, groundbreaking narrative, Russell Shorto tells the story of New Netherland, the Dutch colony which pre-dated the Pilgrims and established ideals of tolerance and individual rights that shaped American history. "Astonishing . . . A book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past." --The New York Times When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its records–recently declared a national treasure–are now being translated. Russell Shorto draws on this remarkable archive in The Island at the Center of the World, which has been hailed by The New York Times as “a book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past.” The Dutch colony pre-dated the “original” thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.

Figuring the past" geeft een nieuwe kijk op kostuumdrama's die aan het begin van deze eeuw gemaakt zijn en onderzoekt de manieren waarop de hedendaagse cinema het historische verleden herschept. De auteur verkent de relatie tussen visuele motieven en culturele representaties in een aantal belangrijke films van onder anderen James Ivory, Martin Scorsese en Jane Campion. Door te kijken naar de maniëristische voorkeur voor citatie, detail en stilering, pleit de auteur voor een esthetiek van fragmenten en figuren die centraal staan in de historische kostuumdrama's als een0internationaal genre. In gedetailleerde casestudies worden drie belangrijke kenmerken van het genre - het huis, het tableau en de brief - in relatie gebracht met de veranderende begrippen van visuele stijl, melodrama en geslacht.

In this sweeping history, bestselling author Amy Chua explains how globally dominant empires—or hyperpowers—rise and why they fall. In a series of brilliant chapter-length studies, she examines the most powerful cultures in history—from the ancient empires of Persia and China to the recent global empires of England and the United States—and reveals the reasons behind their success, as well as the roots of their ultimate demise. Chua's analysis uncovers a fascinating historical pattern: while policies of tolerance and assimilation toward conquered peoples are essential for an empire to succeed, the multicultural society that results introduces new tensions and instabilities, threatening to pull the empire apart from within. What this means for the United States' uncertain future is the subject of Chua's provocative and surprising conclusion.

"Will computers ever think like humans?" "Not if they're well designed." Mixing academic essay, anti-art philosophy, unsettling memoir and wry wit, Noise Music is a profoundly complex and open-ended collage covering a plethora of topics including psychology of information processing, consciousness, science, time, perception, art theory and criticism, morals, mental illness, the human condition, artificial intelligence, cognitive biases, language and communication. However, at its core the book is about the limits of human knowledge and understanding due to how minds and senses work. Going hand in hand with the philosophy, the aleatory narrative and miscellaneous scope expects readers to critique and expand beyond their conventional aesthetic modes of thinking and, in the end, makes the book itself "unsolvable."

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list and robust ivory text paper, printed with lines THE ART. Late 19th- and early 20th-century books on the topics of a variety of hobbies and pastimes are the subjects of this print from the Bodleian Libraries. Richly illustrated covers adorn the rows of shelves, featuring titles such as Playing the Game! A Public School Story, Stirring Stories for Boys and For School and Country. HE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

"Learning about visual illusions and how they work show us that reality and human perception of reality are different things," writes art historian David Cycleback in Conceits. Written as a fractured assortment of short pieces, the book is a mind bending look at peculiarities, curiosities and limitations of human thought and perception. Traversing psychology, physiology, science, art and philosophy, just a few of the thought-provoking topics include visual and optical illusions, mirages, the psychology of hitting a baseball, catch-22s in art and communication, the psychology of numeral systems, limitations of science, blind spots of logic and common everyday misperceptions of reality.