Dian Hanson

Since TASCHEN released The Great American Pin-up, international interest in this distinctly American art form has increased exponentially. Paintings by leading artists such as Alberto Vargas, George Petty, and Gil Elvgren that sold for $ 2,000 in 1996 are going for $ 200,000 and more today. Pin-up—drawings, paintings, and pastels of an idealized female face and figure intended for public display—was produced between 1920 and 1970 for calendars, magazine covers, and centerfolds. The majority of original paintings were discarded by publishers and calendar companies after printing, making the surviving art that much more precious.

From the end of World War II until the mid-1960s, exciting things were happening in American architecture. Emerging talents were focusing on innovative projects that integrated at once modern design and low-cost materials. The trend was most notably embodied in the famous Case Study House Program, a blueprint for modern habitation championed by the era’s leading American journal, Arts & Architecture.

The complete facsimile of the ambitious and groundbreaking Arts & Architecture was published by TASCHEN in 2008 as a limited edition. This new curation—directed and produced by Benedikt Taschen—brings together all the covers and the highlights from the first five years of the legendary magazine, with a special focus on the Case Study House Program and its luminary pioneers including Neutra, Schindler, Saarinen, Ellwood, Lautner, Eames, and Koenig.

A celebration of the first brave years of a politically, socially and culturally engaged publication, this special selection is also a testimony to one of the most unique and influential events in the history of American architecture.

Mike Caveney
Magic has enchanted humankind for millennia, evoking terror, laughter, shock, and amazement. Once persecuted as heretics and sorcerers, magicians have always been conduits to a parallel universe of limitless possibility—whether invoking spirits, reading minds, or inverting the laws of nature by sleight of hand. Long before science fiction, virtual realities, video games, and the Internet, the craft of magic was the most powerful fantasy world man had ever known. As the pioneers of special effects throughout history, magicians have never ceased to mystify us by making the impossible possible.

Reuel Golden
The kind of fame and success The Rolling Stones have achieved in their almost 60-year career is without parallel; their most famous riffs and catchiest lyrics are indelibly engraved in our collective memory. With their mesmerizing on- and off-stage presence, the Stones set the standard for how a rock band should sound, pose, pout, and behave. They were the first to instinctively understand that what you looked like was as important as the music, and that photography had a vital role in promoting that image. “The clothes and the hair are always impeccable,” describes author Luc Sante. “They were playing themselves, but with such consistent finesse you knew they were instinctively aware of the camera and how good they will look in the photos.” Unsurprisingly many of the greatest photographers in the history of the medium wanted to take their picture.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Featuring more than 800 artworks from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this groundbreaking book - organized by thematic keywords rather than the usual chronological or geographical categories, and drawing upon analytics from The Met's online Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History - offers fresh, unconventional ways of engaging with visual culture. Beyond the wealth of illustration, more than 160 engaging curatorial essays place the works in wider contexts, while a foldout, detachable timeline offers further perspective."

In I Love You, Mario Testino presents a celebration of weddings. A beginning in life -that is also a culmination and a public promise - captured by a unique photographic point of view which shows beauty not only in emotion and tradition, but in the complete intimacy of shared joy.

Featuring essays by the illustrious fashion designer Carolina Herrera and party expert Riccardo Lanza, the book traces Testino's memories of many iconic moments and many unknown ones, captured in the privacy of close friendship and family. Unparalleled access unveils the secret, the tender, the wild and the festive of such celebrations, some of which can be considered the most talked-about unions of the past four decades.

Over a century after his death, Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) still startles with his unabashed eroticism, dazzling surfaces, and artistic experimentation. This monograph gathers all of Klimt’s major works alongside authoritative art historical commentary and privileged access to the artist’s archive. With top quality illustration, including new photography of the celebrated Stoclet Frieze, the book follows Klimt through his prominent role in the Secessionist movement of 1897, his candid rendering of the female body, and his lustrous “golden phase” when gold leaf brought a shimmering tone and texture to such beloved works as The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also known as The Woman in Gold.

For the last ten years, Steven Heller and Julius Wiedemann have traced the latest developments in illustration across the globe—and for all those who thought digital heralded the end of an era, they’re here to set the record straight.

There were extraordinary eras before mass media changed our viewing habits, back in the day when illustration was the most primary means of illuminating the word on paper, to today when we get our words and images on screens as small as a watch face. And in this environment, today’s designers and artists are holding their own brilliantly. Illustration is more free and varied than ever, and it is ubiquitous in all kinds of media from paper to screen, books, packages, clothing, cars, and restaurants.

This book celebrates the sheer quality, diversity, intensity, comedy, vivacity, and exceptionality of the work being created by illustrators right now. From veteran artists like Brad Holland, whose oblique and metaphorical paintings for the New York Times’ op-ed section revolutionized illustrative content in the 1970s, to up-and-coming stars like Robin Eisenberg, her pastel-skinned alien belles cruising in spaceships on indie-rock album covers, the 100 artists in this collection are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, but they represent a compelling snapshot of the styles, techniques, and use of color by artists across the world. We dare you to pick your favorites.

Designing private residences has its own very special challenges and nuances for the architect. The scale may be more modest than public projects, the technical fittings less complex than an industrial site, but the preferences, requirements, and vision of particular personalities becomes priority. The delicate task is to translate all the emotive associations and practical requirements of “home” into a workable, constructed reality.

Santiago Arau
This project is a photographic chronicle of the Valley of Mexico, also known as Anahuac Valley: the broad region that included the lakes of Chalco, Xochimilco and Texcoco. The book contains around 200 photographs, taken by Santiago Arau between 2015 and 2023, in order to explore the architectural heritage of the Valley of Mexico – its geography and culture – and represent the state of said heritage at the present.