The Encyclopaedia of Illustration [antikvár]

The progress of the art of book illustration through the ages discloses a wealth of visual information that reflects a broad range of human experience and activity. The objective of this new collection of drawings, engravings, woodcuts and etchings is to provide a taste of this visual feast. Assembled here are more than 5000 different images of every mood and character, from the grotesque to the decorative, from the factual to the fantastic and from the comic to the absurd. Of interest to the designer, illustrator and nonprofessional alike, this book is your own convenient and exciting archive of ideas from around the world. From mediaeval Japanese woodcuts to American advertising in the twentieth century, representing a wide spectrum of period and style, here is an extensive compilation that is more than a reference work. Rather than order the work chronologically it was thought more helpful to arrange it into sixteen simple groupings defined by activity or subject. Inside these chapters we have mixed opposing styles and periods to highlight the salient features of each. The book has been designed to make reference enjoyable. You might want to know, for instance, how artists have pictured all types of people; the genius, the gambler, the troubadorand the malefactor.What do people look like relaxing or at play? Working in the factory or in the fields? What tools do they use? How might they dress? And finally what sort of world do they inhabit, from its greatest buildings to its smallest creatures? 4 Whether you are working on a brief or just looking for the pleasure of it. our aim is that you will be entertained and inspired. What is illustration? Was it ever anything more than pictures in books? In one sense all art is illustration, whether of a specific event, seen or imagined, or even of a mood or an idea or a concept. If we think of illustration as an extension of the ideogram we can see that both writing and drawing have their origins in it. Illustration pre-dates the written word.The ideogram was a receptacle of human experience, a means of expediting access to a common meaning.The earliest illustration was still intended, even up until the Renaissance, for those who could not read. Before the evolution of writing illustration was the text. Afterwards it would remain largely in the shadow of it. during the Renaissance, so it would seem an appropriate point at which to begin a very brief history of illustration. The Renaissance, which was really a movement of artists and scholars, was characterised by a weakening grip on affairs by the church and the increasing authority of science.The rise of theoretical science grew from a desire to understand and explain the world. It demanded new textbooks with clear, factual information illustrated with scientifically accurate diagrams and figures. In 1543, the year of the publication of Copernican theory, a young lecturer in surgery at the University of Padua published perhaps the greatest textbook in the history of medicine. Vesalius' "De Humani Corporis fabrica libri Septem" embodies the unique relationship between art and learning in Renaissance Europe. Scientifically correct and artistically excellent, it describes each part of the human body, its structure and function in relation to the others. The "Fabrica", published when the art of printing was not fully one hundred years old, is thought one of its most beautiful products. (Bottom C.239) One year earlier in 1542 the German botanist Fuschius published a florilegium with the title "De Historia Stirpum". Herbáis generally were important because of the medicinal properties of plants. But apart from the individual and exceptional efforts of artists like Dürer and Da Vinci, botanical Illustration had hitherto been limited. Usually is was confined to a schematic representation of a single vertical stem with two or three stylised leaf shapes on either side. Weiditz, in Brufel's herbal of 1530. was the first to draw recognizable species, but the most beautiful of the herbáis in English is Johnson's 1633 edition of "Gerard's Herbal". The borders of the page are used as a framework to support a rigorous internal logic and coherence of design and the drawings, which never foresake their naturalism, are exceptionally bold and beautiful. (Bottom R.278) Good examples of animals well drawn during the Renaissance can be found in "Icones Animalum" printed in Zurich irv 1554 by Conrad Gesner. (Bottom R.313) Although the historical data are scanty we know that the art of wood engraving began in China as early as the sixth century and spread thence to Korea and later Japan. In the early seventeenth century there appeared in Japan a school of genre painting called the Ukiyo-e. One artist from this school, Moronobu, was the first Japanese to make extensive use of the woodcut when he innovated theYehon or picture book. Book illustration reflects its age and culture. It can be scientific, instructive, documentary, imaginative and purely decorative. It is a modern concept to differentiate between illustrations in terms of function and quality. In the Renaissance most books, whatever the subiect.were illustrated with the same artistry and imagination.The first illustrated book proper appeared Woodcutting conceives the image in linear terms in much the same way that drawing defines the image In black on a white ground.The effect of space relies on the width of the black lines which in woodcut are all of an equal density. Simply put, the wider the line the nearer it looks and vice versa. In woodcut there could be no half tones to create the illusion of distance.