McCahon Country by Justin Paton

$75.00 NZD

Category: General

'My painting tells you where I am at any given time, where I am living and the direction I am pointing in.' - Colin McCahon. McCahon (1919-1987) is widely recognised as an outstanding figure in twentieth century art whose ground-breaking work over four decades changed the way we see this country, while engaging intensely with questions of faith, mortality, belonging and the power of art. In this landmark new book, published in association with Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki on the 100th anniversary of McCahon's birth, celebrated writer and curator Justin Paton takes readers on a journey through the landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand, as the artist loved and painted it. From Otago to Canterbury, Takaka to Taranaki, Muriwai to Northland and many more places in between, Paton brings his curator's eye to a selection of nearly 200 of McCahon's paintings and drawings, including iconic and beloved works and others never before published, presented in fifteen themed sections offering fresh perspectives on McCahon's abiding concerns. In elegant, responsive and deeply compelling prose, the author traces McCahon's travels through New Zealand, charts his remarkable development as a painter and thinker, explores his deepening engagement with Maori culture and environmental issues, and reveals his vision of the land as a source of light, peace and spiritual sustenance. A book to introduce new viewers to McCahon's vision and to enlarge the view for those who know the work well, McCahon Countryilluminates the beauty, spiritual urgency and enduring power of McCahon's artworks. Above all, it shows the reader how McCahon's paintings get us looking at the world we live in with new eyes. 'McCahon is not only New Zealand's most significant or important artist. He is our most soulful artist, our most searching. He asks the most of art and the world it renders. One hundred years since his birth, he still wants to know what we should believe in and where we belong.' - Justin Paton ...Show more

Gottfried Lindauer's New Zealand: The Maori Portraits (Paperback Edition) by Ngahiraka Mason and Zara Stanhope (editors)

$59.99 NZD

Category: NZ non-fiction

An exquisite piece of art publishing that showcases Bohemian artist Gottfried Lindauer’s New Zealand in 75 plates and detailed contextual essays. From the 1870s to the early twentieth century, the Bohemian immigrant artist Gottfried Lindauer travelled to marae and rural towns around New Zealand and – c ommissioned by Māori and Pākehā – captured in paint the images of key Māori figures. For Māori then and now, the faces of tūpuna are full of mana and life. Now this definitive book on Lindauer’s portraits of the ancestors collects that work for New Zealanders.The book presents 67 major portraits and 8 genre paintings alongside detailed accounts of the subject and work, followed by essays by leading scholars that take us inside Lindauer and his world: from his artistic training in Bohemia to his travels around New Zealand as Māori and Pākehā commissioned him to paint portraits; his artistic techniques and deep relationship with photography; Henry Partridge’s gallery of Lindauer works on Queen Street in Auckland where Māori visited to see their ancestors; and the afterlife of the paintings in marae and memory. For Māori, the faces that look out from Lindauer’s portraits are tribal leaders and family members. They are tohunga and politicians. They are ancestors and friends. Gottfried Lindauer met Maori tūpuna at the most basic level of human connection by capturing their likeness. This book returns the ancestors and the artist to the people. ...Show more

Auckland Museum - Director's Choice by David Gaimster

$20.00 NZD

Category: General

- Auckland Museum houses the world's leading collection of Maori taonga (treasures) and, reflecting Auckland's place as the world's largest Polynesian city, multiple traditional and contemporary arts from throughout the Pacific region - The Museum's natural history and documentary heritage holdings are among the most extensive in the southern hemisphere - New photography showcases the key items in the collection in exquisite detail - Part of the successful Director's Choice series Auckland Museum, founded in 1852, just 12 years after New Zealand became a British colony, was the nation's first public museum. From the outset the Museum was encyclopedic in its collecting of 'specimens illustrative of the Natural History of New Zealand - also, Weapons, Clothing, Implements of New Zealand, and the Islands of the Pacific'. Starting in a farm cottage, the Museum is now one of the most important in Oceania. Dominating the central Auckland landscape, its monumental Greek Revival building is one of the visual icons of the city. The building is also a memorial to the war dead of the Auckland province, hence the Museum's full title, Auckland War Memorial Museum. Auckland Museum houses the world's leading collection of Maori taonga (treasures) and, reflecting Auckland's place as the world's largest Polynesian city, multiple traditional and contemporary arts from throughout the Pacific region. The Museum's director, David Gaimster, explores this extraordinary collection, each item with its own compelling backstory. ...Show more

Colour Your Own Medieval Alphabet by British Library

$25.00 NZD

Category: Design

A medieval A to Z with letters from the collections of the British Library to colour in Before the invention of the printing press, books were written out by hand, and were priceless objects. The most precious books were illuminated with gold or with bright colours. Initial letters were often highlighte d either as decoration or to mark an important passage. This new colouring book is packed with a series of intricate letters carefully selected from the extensive collection of the British Library. The letters are sourced from medieval charters and seals, historical and literary manuscripts, from Homer to the Codex Sinaiticus, from Beowulf to Chaucer, and from Magna Carta to the papers of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Each of the original letters is reproduced in colour, so that you can decide whether you prefer to choose your own colours, or to use the colours that the artist intended. With key facts about each of the letters and their source, this is the perfect book for history buffs and colouring-in fans alike.   Top of page   ...Show more

Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester

$42.00 NZD

Category: General

The extraordinarily revealing interviews with Francis Bacon conducted over a period of 25 years by the distinguished art critic David Sylvester amount to a unique statement by Bacon on his art and on art in general. In the book, a classic of its kind, Bacon considers the problems of realism and sheds ne w light on aspects of his life. With a rare and brilliant use of language, Bacon talks about his aims as a painter and ways in which he works, responding always with vivacity and candour to Sylvester's searching questions. Bacon's obsessive effort to record and re-create the human form, his practice of making variation on old masters' painting and on photographs, his dependence on chance, and his views about the way in which his work has been interpreted are only some of the many subjects discussed and investigated in depth during these historic encounters. ...Show more

A History of Pictures : From the Cave to the Computer Screen by David Hockney

$70.00 NZD

Category: General

The making of pictures has a history going back perhaps 100,000 years to an African shell used as a paint palette. Two-thirds of it is irrevocably lost, since the earliest images known to us are from about 40,000 years ago. But what a 40,000 years, explored here by David Hockney and Martin Gayford in a brilliantly original book. They privilege no medium, or period, or style, but instead, in 16 chapters, discuss how and why pictures have been made, and insistently link 'art' to human skills and human needs. Each chapter addresses an important question: What happens when we try to express reality in two dimensions? Why is the 'Mona Lisa' beautiful and why are shadows so rarely found in Chinese, Japanese and Persian painting? Why are optical projections always going to be more beautiful than HD television can ever be? How have the makers of images depicted movement? What makes marks on a flat surface interesting? Energized by two lifetimes of looking at pictures, combined with a great artist's 70-year experience of experimentation as he makes them, this profoundly moving and enlightening volume will be the art book of the decade. ...Show more

Art Thieves, Fakers and Fraudsters: A New Zealand Story by Penelope Jackson

$40.00 NZD

Category: artists biographies

Art crime is soaring. Every year as much as $10 billion worth of artworks are stolen. Many more are vandalised, damaged or destroyed. Added to this is a flourishing world of fakes and forgeries, often sold for millions of dollars and hanging in the world's most prestigious galleries. If you think this i s happening only in Paris, London and New York, prepare to be surprised as art curator Penelope Jackson reveals the underbelly of the New Zealand art world.  ...Show more

Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania by edited by Karl Chitham, Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai, Damian Skinner

$85.00 NZD

Category: General | Reading Level: near fine

A major new history of craft that spans three centuries of making and thinking in Aotearoa New Zealand and the wider Moana (Pacific). It tells the previously untold story of craft in Aotearoa New Zealand, and proposes a new idea of craft - one that acknowledges Pakeha, Maori and wider Moana histories of making, so that the connections, as well as the differences and tensions, can be identified and explored. ...Show more

Digital Photography Month by Month by Tom Ang

$48.00 NZD

Category: photography

From photographing a dewdrop in spring to a beautiful winter frost, follow your hobby throughout the year with renowned photographer Tom Ang. Whatever your level of expertise or type of camera, from the best digital SLRs on the market right down to camera phones, you'll find tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your shots. Now in its third edition, and fully updated with the latest developments in technology and equipment, this book will teach you everything you need to know to take great photographs that convey a sense of time, place and atmosphere. Packed with "how to" advice and projects to keep you snapping throughout the year, Digital Photography Month by Month is an inspiring and practical guide to taking beautiful photos whatever the season and weather conditions. ...Show more

Flora - An Artistic voyage through the world of plants by Sandra Knapp

$60.00 NZD

Category: General

Through botanical paintings and insightful essays, 'Flora' examines the fascinating history of plants and flowers. Over 20 plant families are profiled, including cacti, daffodils, iris, magnolia, poppies, roses, tulips and waterlilies...Throughout history, plants have affected our lives, even shaping so cieties. Holland's infamous tulip craze is legendary. The 17th century spice trade was so profitable that stevedores who unloaded nutmeg from the boats had to wear coveralls without pockets since a single nutmeg was worth a fortune...The natural history of plants is itself an engrossing topic. The book covers how plants have adopted remarkable behaviours for survival in a variety of harsh habitats. One such plant is the dead horse arum, a putrid-smelling plant that adapted to compete with dead birds to attract pollinating carrier flies...Plants that gardeners now take for granted could once be found only in remote and hostile regions. 'Flora' tells the remarkable stories of the adventurous botanist explorers who braved disease, slave traders, war, jungles and other dangers to collect plants now grown commonly in our own gardens...These pages are graced with hundreds of stunning colour illustrations selected from the vast collection of original botanical paintings archived at The Natural History Museum, London. ...Show more

HI KONNICHIWA

$35.00 NZD

Category: General

Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights by Hans Belting

$33.00 NZD

Category: General

Few paintings inspire the kind of intense study and speculation as Garden of Earthly Delights, the world famous triptych by Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch. The painting has been interpreted as a heretical masterpiece, an opulent illustration of the Creation and a premonition of the end of the wor ld. In this book, renowned art historian Hans Belting offers a radical reinterpretation of the work, which he sees not as apocalyptic, but utopian, portraying how the world would exist had the Fall not happened. Taking readers through each panel, Belting discusses various schools of thought and explores Bosch's life and times. This fascinating study is an important contribution to the literature and theory surrounding one of the world's most enigmatic artists. ...Show more