New Arrivals-August 2021

We have some exciting new titles on THE BLUE HOUSE shelves


David Hockney: A Chronology 40th Ed.

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.

Pop artist, painter of modern life, landscape painter, master of color, explorer of image and perception? for six decades, David Hockney has been known as an artist who always finds new ways of exploring the world and its representational possibilities.


Jamie Hewlett 40th Ed.

From the legendary Tank Girl to live-action animations with Gorillaz, a Chinese contemporary opera to an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, artist Jamie Hewlett is one of the most energetic figures of contemporary pop culture.

This special edition celebrating TASCHEN’s 40th anniversary updates Hewlett’s first major monograph with around 30 brand new pieces. The book illustrates his thrilling creative journey with more than 400 artworks from the Tank Girl era through Gorillaz and up to the present day. Through stories, characters, strips, and sketches, this title traces Hewlett’s exceptional capacity for invention and celebrate a polymath artist who refuses to rest on his laurels, or to be pigeonholed into a particular practice.


The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 1921–1968. 40th Ed.

One of the most creative minds of the 20th century, Walt Disney created a unique and unrivaled imaginative universe. Like scarcely any other classics of cinema, his astonishing collection of animated cartoons revolutionized storytelling on screen and enchant to this day across geographies and generations.

With extensive research conducted through the historical collections of the Walt Disney Company, as well as private collections, editor Daniel Kothenschulte curates some of the most precious concept paintings and storyboards to reveal just how these animation triumphs came to life.

Each of the major animated features that were made during Walt’s lifetime—including PinocchioFantasiaDumboBambiCinderellaPeter Pan, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians—is given its own focus chapter, without forgetting less-familiar gems such as the experimental short films of the Silly Symphonies series and under-appreciated episodic musical films such as Make Mine Music and Melody Time.


Bauhaus

In a fleeting 14-year period between two world wars, Germany’s Bauhaus School of Art and Design changed the face of modernity. With utopian ideas for the future, the school developed a pioneering fusion of fine art, craftsmanship, and technology.

Some 550 illustrations including architectural plans, studies, photographs, sketches, and models record not only the realized works but also the leading principles and personalities of this idealistic creative community.


1000 Record Covers

Record covers are a sign of our life and times. Like the music on the discs, they address such issues as love, life, death, fashion, and rebellion. For music fans the covers are the expression of a period, of a particular time in their lives. 

This edition of Record Covers presents a selection of the best rock album covers of the 60s to 90s from music archivist, disc jockey, journalist, and former record-publicity executive Michael Ochs’s enormous private collection. Both a trip down memory lane and a study in the evolution of cover art, this is a sweeping look at an underappreciated art form.


Chinese Propaganda Posters

Chairman Mao, portrayed as a stoic superhero, appeared in all kinds of situations, flanked by strong, healthy, ageless men and “masculinized” women and children wearing baggy, sexless, drab clothing. The goal of each poster was to show the Chinese people what sort of behavior was considered morally correct and how great the future of Communist China would be if everyone followed the same path toward utopia by uniting together.

This book brings together a selection of colorful propaganda artworks and cultural artifacts, many of which are now extremely rare.


The Golden Age of DC Comics

In June of 1938, Action Comics debuted with a new kind of comic-book character on its cover: a costumed man with two identities, who possessed extraordinary strength and powers—a man able to protect the public when ordinary measures would not do. He was not the first super hero, but the Man of Steel would become the prototype for all super heroes thereafter.


Ai Weiwei: 40th Ed.

As his personal circumstances move in constant flux,  Ai Weiwei remains a cultural magnet. Renowned for his political activism and social media activity almost as much as for his social interventions, contemporary approach to the readymade, and knowledge of Chinese traditional crafts, Ai’s fame extends throughout and beyond the art world.

With behind-the-scenes studio pictures, production shots, and numerous statements derived from exclusive interviews with Ai, we gain privileged access to the artist’s process, influences, and importance.


1000 Chairs

More than any other piece of furniture, the chair has been subjected to the wildest dreams of the designer. The particular curve of a backrest, or the twist of a leg, the angle of a seat or the color of the entire artifact; each element reflects the stylistic consciousness of an era.

This dedicated compendium displays each chair as pure form, along with biographical and historical information about the pieces and their designers. An illuminating tome for design aficionados and an essential reference for collectors!


Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed

“One of the most splendid of recent architectural publications and a revelation. It illustrates late Soviet public buildings almost entirely unknown in the West.”

-Apollo Magazine

In their puzzle of styles, their outlandish strategies, these buildings are extraordinary remnants of a collapsing system.In their diversity and local exoticism, they testify both to the vast geography of the USSR and its encroaching end of the Soviet Union, the holes in a widening net. At the same time, they immortalize many of the ideological dreams of the country and its time, from an obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of identity.


The Star Wars Archives. 1977–1983. 40th Ed.

Star Wars exploded onto our cinema screens in 1977, and the world has not been the same since. After watching depressing and cynical movies throughout the early 1970s, audiences enthusiastically embraced the positive energy of the Star Wars galaxy as they followed moisture farmer Luke Skywalker on his journey through a galaxy far, far away.

Complete with script pages, production documents, concept art, storyboards, on-set photography, stills, and posters, this is the authoritative exploration of the original saga as told by its creator.