Thoughts on Design
1947 · 95 pages
Beauty and utility generate each other, Paul Rand argues, and the designer's job is fusing idea with image. He pulled European modernism into American advertising and made the trade take design seriously.
★ 4.5
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Painted Word
1975 · 106 pages
Modern painting had become an illustration of theory, Wolfe argued, invisible without the words. He named the three critics who ruled taste in New York, and the art world came after him howling.
★ 5.1
The Shock of the New
The Hundred-Year History of Modern Art--Its Rise, Its Dazzling Achievement, Its Fall
1980 · 444 pages
Modern art's century, from the Eiffel Tower to the moment modernism became the official culture it once attacked. Hughes explains what Picasso and Pollock were after in plain, unhurried English.
★ 5.9