Essential Titles For Your Classroom
We are at the service of South African schools to provide media for their art, design, drama or literature syllabus, and also facilitate the research, sourcing and informal mentorships for work experience in a practicing arts institution.
We have compiled a list of special titles that your classroom should have sitting on its shelves!
Basquiat – 40th Anniversary Edition
R450
Basquiat’s expressive style was based on raw figures, integrated with words and phrases. His work is inspired by a pantheon of luminaries from jazz, boxing and basketball, with references to arcane history and the politics of street life. When asked about his subject matter, Basquiat answered “royalty, heroism and the streets.”
Drawing as Therapy – Know yourself through art
R400
One of the difficulties about how our minds work is that we often cannot quite clearly see or know what is inside our minds. Art therapists have a longstanding tradition of prescribing image-making to prompt expression of feelings, often by asking people to draw, paint, or sculpt “how you feel.” It is one of the fundamental approaches in the field that distinguishes art therapy from verbal techniques that ask people to simply talk about their emotions. Author Erica Jong once wrote that imagery is a form of emotional shorthand.
This could be interpreted to mean that while we may use paragraphs of prose to describe an emotional experience, images allow us to communicate simply and directly. At its core, art therapy embraces the paradigm that creating images cuts to the chase when it comes to expressing feelings. The point is not to draw well, but to draw with authenticity. This is specifically a book for people who think they can’t draw.
Kahlo
R270
In literal or metaphorical self-portraiture, Frida Kahlo looks out at the viewer with an audacious glare, rejecting her destiny as a passive victim and rather intertwining expressions of her experience into a hybrid, real-surreal language of living: hair, roots, veins, vines, tendrils and fallopian tubes. Many of her works also explore the Communist political ideals which Kahlo shared with her husband Diego Rivera. The artist described her paintings as “the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself.”
This book introduces the rich body of Frida Kahlo’s work, exploring her unremitting determination as an artist, and her significance as a painter, feminist icon, and pioneer of Latin American culture.
Vitamin D3 – Today’s Best Contemporary Drawing
R1400
Over the past 50 years, drawing has been elevated from a supporting role to a primary medium, ranking alongside painting as a central art form. Since the publication of Vitamin D (2005) and D2 (2013), contemporary artists have continued to explore drawing’s possibilities – from intimate to large-scale works, with a diversity of mark-making processes and materials. Vitamin D3 showcases more than 100 such artists, nominated by more than 70 international art experts.
Drawing and Painting: Materials and Techniques for Contemporary Artists
R500
Bursting with practical techniques, engaging artist profiles and inspirational galleries, Drawing and Painting combines an authoritative, ‘category killer’ approach with a contemporary aesthetic, guaranteed to appeal to all artists. Covering everything from pen and ink to oils and acrylics, photographs and artwork accompany step-by-step techniques, while profiles of contemporary artists provide insight into various working methods, materials and techniques. Acknowledging the growing interest in digital tools as a medium, information is provided throughout the book on how effects can be created using Smart Pens, tablets and apps.
Ai Weiwei – 40th Anniversary Edition
R450
This monograph explores each of Ai Weiwei’s career phases, up until his release from Chinese custody. It features extensive visual material to trace Weiwei’s development from his early New York days right through to his recent practice. Focuses include his international breakthrough in the early 2000s, his porcelain sunflower seeds installation in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, his response to the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, and his police detention in 2011. With behind-the-scenes studio pictures, production shots, and numerous statements derived from exclusive interviews with Weiwei, we gain privileged access to this important artist’s thinking, process and influences.
Basquiat
R270
Basquiat’s work drew upon diverse sources and media to create an original and immediate artistic vocabulary, biting with critique against structures of power and racism. His practice merged abstraction and figuration, poetry and painting; while his influences spanned Greek, Roman and African art, French poetry, jazz, and the work of artistic contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Cy Twombly. The results are vivid, visceral mixtures of words, African emblems, cartoonish figures, daubs of bold color and beyond.
Akademie X – Lessons In Art + Life
R530
Akademie X: Lessons in Art + Life brings together a faculty of artists and writers from across the globe, including high profile art educators such as Marina Abramovic, Carol Bove, Mark Dion, Olafur Eliasson, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Miranda July, Bob Nickas, Raqs Media Collective, Neo Rauch, John Stezaker, Richard Wentworth and Christopher Williams.
Each of these ‘tutors’ has provided a unique lesson that aims to provoke, inspire and stimulate. Lively, entertaining and poignant, the contributors draw on their extensive experience in the contemporary art world to share previously untold stories and identify the crucial things they wish they’d known at the start of their careers.
Their advice ranges from practical considerations about making art and managing professional relationships, to ideological perspectives on the nature of learning and the state of art education in the 21st century. Many also propose ‘assignments’ to spark creative thinking and the entries are illustrated with visually compelling art works to engage and inspire the reader.
David Hockney – 40th Anniversary Edition
R450
This special edition has been newly assembled from the two volumes of the David Hockney: A Bigger Book monograph to celebrate TASCHEN’s 40th anniversary. Hockney’s life and work is presented year by year as a dialogue between his works and voices from the time period, alongside reviews and reflections by the artist in a chronological text, supplemented by portrait photographs and exhibition views. Together they open up new perspectives, page after page, revealing how Hockney undertakes his artistic research, how his painting develops, and where he finds inspiration for his multifaceted work.
Compendium of Taxi Art Books Educational Supplements
This Compendium brings together all thirteen supplements from the TAXI Art Books series on contemporary South African artists. Each chapter contains an introduction to the artist, worksheets and conceptual and practical projects, fact files, glossaries and bibliography. Learners and teachers are encouraged to draw on their own resources of imagination and experience and, through discussion, collaboration and reflection, understand the artist’s work and try a variety of art-making exercises. The Compendium includes valuable material on how to conduct research, write art essays, avoid plagiarism, keep a visual diary and do art presentations.
R280
Drawing People – The Human Figure in Contemporary Art
R550
The act of drawing has long been considered the foundation of an artistic education, and the life class essential to the formation of an artist’s style and technique. Yet, in the contemporary art world, drawing is increasingly regarded as a medium in its own right, and the figure as a subject for ongoing exploration well beyond the sketchbook. Drawing People is a thoughtful and beautifully illustrated survey of the most compelling and inventive drawings of the human form being produced today. An introduction places the medium of drawing in its historical context, discussing its intersection with photography, painting, collage and illustration. Five chapters – Body, Self, Personal Lives, Social Reality and Fictions – include short introductions outlining each theme, followed by commentaries on individual artists exploring their style, ideas and techniques, accompanied by finely reproduced images of their recent work.
Gustav Klimt – Drawings and Paintings
R360
A century after his death, Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) still startles with his unabashed eroticism, dazzling surfaces and artistic experimentation. In this neat, dependable monograph, we gather all of Klimt’s major works alongside authoritative art historical commentary and privileged archival material from Klimt’s own archive to trace the evolution of his astonishing oeuvre.
Styles, Schools and Movements
Modern art has come to be defined by its styles, schools and movements. The more than three hundred collected here provide an indispensable introduction to the major developments in Western painting, sculpture, architecture and design during one of the most dynamic and exciting periods in art history.
Over one hundred main entries are presented in broadly chronological order, from Impressionism and Cubism to Sound Art, Internet Art and Art Photography in the 21st century.
A foldout timeline shows at a glance how the evolution of art corresponds with historical events, providing a thorough overview of the whole period.
R250