THIS SIDE OF PARADISE: BODY AND LANDSCAPE IN LOS ANGELES PHOTOGRAPHS

By Jennifer A. Watts and Claudia Bohn-Spector

Los Angeles, a sprawling, multi-ethnic city on the edge of a continent, conjures up imagery as seductive and contradictory as the place itself. Equal parts glamour and cataclysm, sunshine and noir, few cities have provoked visual representation as insistently as LA. This Side of Paradise explores the synergistic relationship between the city and photography from the mid-nineteenth century to the present through the key themes of landscape and the body. Eschewing the traditional, chronological approach to the subject, this stunning book encompasses the full spectrum of documentary, commercial and artistic imagery, shedding new light on both LA and the photographic practices within it. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this stimulating and wide-ranging survey includes images by Carleton Watkins, Edward Weston, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Garry Winogrand, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Herb Ritts, John Baldessari, Catherine Opie and many others.

239 pages, hardcover

 Item# 9781858944340

WAS $75.00

NOW $37.50

SENSATION & SENSIBILITY

By Ann Bermingham

Late in his career Thomas Gainsborough became preoccupied with the theme of the cottage door, and he created a group of paintings and drawings that show rustic figures clustered around the open door of a cottage set in a deeply wooded landscape. Often seen as exemplars of the rural idyll, these works were among the first landscape paintings to reflect the eighteenth-century aesthetic of sensibility. As a way of seeing, sensibility valued nature for its innocence and simplicity, and images, such as Gainsborough’s cottage subjects, for their power to move the viewer.
This lovely book brings together the cottage door paintings and essays that discuss Gainsborough’s departure from the more naturalistic style of his earlier career and that place his new concern with sentimentalism and artificiality in the context of sensibility and the growing interest in expressive, even sensational, visual spectacles. To this end, contributors to the volume investigate new viewing practices associated with sensibility, the meaning of the cottage for Gainsborough and his contemporaries, the artist’s creation of affecting landscapes through the use of peasant subjects, and his theatrical treatment of these subjects in order to heighten his viewers’ emotional responses.

208 pages, softcover

ITEM# 0300110022 

WAS $39.95

NOW $19.97

A PASSION FOR PERFORMANCE: SARAH SIDDONS AND HER PORTRAITISTS
by Robyn Asleson, Shelley Bennet, and Mark Leonard

This book features three essays exploring the life and career of the English actress Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) who was renowned for her majestic beauty and impassioned performances. This volume contains fifty-six portraits of Siddons including works by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Romney along with a chronology of the actress' life.
144 pages, softcover

ITEM# 0892365579 

WAS $24.95

NOW $12.47

THE ROSE: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

By Peter Harkness

Roses are treasured for many reasons, as flowers of captivating beauty, for their sweet fragrance, their fascinating history and as symbols of fidelity, nationhood, and love. This book explores the links that tie the simple wild roses of nature to the earliest roses of civilization and tells how the dedication of horticulturists from many nations has brought into being the full-petaled beauties of today. Using historical botanical illustrations rarely seen and engaging text, The Rose: An Illustrated History takes you on a journey through the disciplines of history, botany, exploration and art to arrive at a new appreciation of these cherished beauties.

336 pages, hardcover

ITEM# 1552977870

Suggested Retail $60.00

OUR PRICE $35.00

Attributed to Fernao Vaz Dourado.  1570.

Southeast China, Japan, East Indies.

Dimensions 24" x 20"

Limited to stock on hand.

ITEM# DEPT3  WAS $25.00

NOW $15.00 

Attributed to Fernao Vaz Dourado.

1570. Western Mediterranean,

Europe, and Northern Africa.

Dimensions 24" x 20"

Limited to stock on hand.

ITEM# DEPT3  WAS $25.00

 NOW $15.00