Max Beckmann is widely acknowledged as one of Germany's leading twentieth-century artists. A figurative painter throughout his career, Beckmann depicted the world around him with an unparalleled intensity. His art emerges directly from his experiences of the First and Second World Wars, the political upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of Nazism, exile in Amsterdam and his final emigration to the United States. By capturing the objects and events that surrounded him, Beckmann hoped to grasp the deeper mysteries underlying human existence. He perceived and painted the world as a vast stage, at once real and magical, upon which his own life and the traumas of contemporary history were closely intertwined. "On My Painting" can give a valuable insight into understanding his work. It was composed in 1938 at a crucial juncture in Beckmann's life, just a year after he was included the "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Nazi Germany. It was read by him at the opening of the "Twentieth Century German Art" exhibition. With an introduction by Mayen Beckmann, the artist's granddaughter, and an afterword by Sean Rainbird.

In 1809 the little-known artist William Blake held an exhibition of 16 paintings in a private house in Soho in the west end of London. Works inspired by Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and John Milton's "Paradise Lost" sat alongside biblical scenes and Arthurian legend. The exhibition was not a success; the only review in the press was extremely unfavourable and few of the public came. One of those who did was the poet Charles Lamb, who later described the pictures as 'hard, dry, yet with grace', and the catalogue that accompanied the show as 'mystical and full of vision'. It is this catalogue that Tate Publishing are once again making available. In it, the scale and range of Blake's ambition are made plain, along with his theories on painting, his unsparing critiques of other artists and some extraordinary insights into the working of his mind. The only detailed writing on art that remains to us by Blake, it throws light on all his subsequent artistic enterprises, including the illuminated books for which he is perhaps most famous. Part commentary and part manifesto, his catalogue is as radical as it is in places eccentric (he claims at one point to have been transported in a "vision" back to the classical world). Fully illustrated in colour with reproductions of surviving works originally in the exhibition, the book includes an illuminating essay by leading authority on British art Martin Myrone, Lead Curator of Pre-1800 Art at Tate Britain, making it an essential purchase for all of those wanting to know more.

'Every page is a window open in Heaven … interwoven designs companion the poems, and gold and yellow tints diffuse themselves over the page like summer clouds. The poems [of Song of Innocence] are the morning song of Blake's genius.' - W.B. Yeats'Blake sang of the ideal world, of the truth of the intellect, and of the divinity of imagination … The only writer to have written songs for children with the soul of a child … he holds, in my view, a unique position because he unites intellectual sharpness with mystic sentiment.' - James JoyceSong of Innocence and of Experience is a rare and wonderful book, its seeming simplicity belying its visionary wisdom. Internationally recognised as a masterpiece of English literature, it also occupies a key position in the history of western art.This unique edition of the work allows Blake to communicate with his readers as he intended, reproducing Blake's own illumination and lettering from the finest existing example of the original work. In this way readers can experience the mystery and beauty of Blake's poems as he first created them, discovering for themselves the intricate webs of symbol and meaning that connects word and image.Each poem is accompanied by a literal transcription, and the volume is introduced by the renowned historian and critic, Richard Holmes. The poems are narrated by novelist and critic, Adam Mars-Jones.This beautiful edition of Song of Innocence and of Experience will be essential for those familiar with Blake's work, but also offers an ideal way into his visionary world for those encountering Blake for the first time.

"Creative Confession" brings together three short critical texts written by Paul Klee, one of the most distinctive artists of the early twentieth century. Reflective and often lyrical, the essays exemplify Klee's artistic thinking and his relationship with the creative process.Entitled "Graphic Art" (published as Creative Confession, 1920), "Ways of Nature Study" (1923) and "Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art" (1928), the texts arch into each other through a number of common and overlapping concerns: the alliance between what Klee terms his graphic art, nature, and abstraction, and the role of the artist in this triumvirate; the notion of genius, equating creativity with Genesis as well as nature; and the importance of the process as well as the outcome of art. The practical function of these writings was to draw a wider public into a dialogue that Klee was already having with the world around him through his art. Indeed, he said Art does not reproduce what is visible, instead it makes it visible, and it is with this philosophy that he talks us through his own creative confessions. With a postscript by Matthew Gale, Head of Display at Tate Modern, on the origins and context of the essays, this compact new edition is a must for any Klee fan, as well as those wishing to explore Modern artistic ideas.

I am deeply terrified by the obsessions crawling over my body, whether they come from within me or from outside. I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. I, myself, delight in my obsessions.'Yayoi Kusama is one of the most significant contemporary artists at work today. This engaging autobiography tells the story of her life and extraordinary career in her own words, revealing her as a fascinating figure and maverick artist who channels her obsessive neuroses into an art that transcends cultural barriers. Kusama describes the decade she spent in New York, first as a poverty stricken artist and later as the doyenne of an alternative counter-cultural scene. She provides a frank and touching account of her relationships with key art-world figures, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Donald Judd and the reclusive Joseph Cornell, with whom Kusama forged a close bond. In candid terms she describes her childhood and the first appearance of the obsessive visions that have haunted her throughout her life. Returning to Japan in the early 1970s, Kusama checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo where she resides to the present day, emerging to dedicate herself with seemingly endless vigour to her art and her writing. This remarkable autobiography provides a powerful insight into a unique artistic mind, haunted by fears and phobias yet determined to maintain her position at the forefront of the artistic avant-garde. In addition to her artwork, Yayoi Kusama is the author of numerous volumes of poetry and fiction, including The Hustler's Grotto of Christopher Street, Manhattan Suicide Addict and Violet Obsession.

In February and March of 1849, the "Illustrated London News" carried a series of announcements about the works of the painter John Martin being exhibited at the British Institution, the third of which included an account of his early life. On the 17 March the paper received a long letter from the artist, reproduced here in full, in which he demands a right of reply. Their article is, he claims, "so unfortunate a tissue of errors from beginning to end, that it can only have the effect of misleading your readers." Martin's brief autobiography makes fascinating reading. Beginning with his youth in Newcastle where he was apprenticed to a coach-builder, it recounts his initial struggles in London and the eventual recognition accorded to his vast, apocalyptic landscape painting and stunning engravings, ending with the civic works he devoted himself to in later years. The reader is left in awe of Martin's determination and drive.With an introduction by Martin Myrone, Lead Curator of Pre-1800 British Art at Tate Britain, this engaging book provides many new insights into the work of this extraordinary painter of sublime landscapes and the times in which he lived.

Henry Spencer Moore (1898-1986) was arguably the most influential British sculptor of the twentieth century. Brought up in Castleford in Yorkshire, Moore ended his life completing commissions for large-scale public sculptures in countries around the world. The scale of Moore's success in later life has tended to obscure the radical nature of his achievement. Rejecting the influence of his teachers and inspired by works from other cultures he saw in museums, Moore championed direct carving, evolving abstract sculptures derived from the human body. He was involved in the modernist Seven and Give Society and later in Unit One. Written by Henry Moore in the 1930s, these three powerful, polemical texts lay out his ideas about sculpture, calling for truth to materials, openness to other sculptural traditions and understanding of the importance of scale. Illustrated with archival photographs and with an introduction by his daughter Mary Moore, this book gives new insights into Moore's working methods and inspiration and speaks directly to artists today.

A central figure in pop art, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was one of the most significant and influential artists of the later twentieth century. In the 1960s he began to explore the growing interplay between mass culture and the visual arts, and his constant experimentation with new processes for the dissemination of art played a pivotal role in redefining access to culture and art as we know it today. • At the height of his fame, Warhol claimed he was "abandoning" painting, shifting his practice towards a commitment to the theoretically limitless channels ofpublishing, film, fashion, music, and broadcasting. It was this "transmission" of art and radical ideas that embodied his ethical conviction that "art should be for everyone". • Stephanie Straine is Assistant Curator at Tate Liverpool, and specialises in American art of the 1960s. Her lively yet authoritative text provides the perfect introduction to the life and work of a pioneering artist whose legacy extends into the digital age.

An innovatory exploration of art and visual culture. Through carefully chosen themes and topics rather than through a general survey, the volumes approach the process of looking at works of art in terms of their audiences, functions and cross-cultural contexts. While focused on painting, sculpture and architecture, it also explores a wide range of visual culture in a variety of media and methods. "1000-1600: Medieval to Renaissance" includes essays on key themes of Medieval and Renaissance art, including the theory and function of religious art and a generic analysis of art at court. Explorations cover key canonical artists such as Simone Martini and Botticelli and key monuments including St Denis and Westminster Abbey, as well as less familiar examples.The first of three text books, published by Tate in association with the Open University, which insight for students of Art History, Art Theory and Humanities. Introduction Part 1: Visual cultures of medieval Christendom 1: Sacred art as the Bible of the Poor' 2: Sacred architecture, Gothic architecture 3: Sacred in secular, secular in sacred: the art of Simone Martini 4: To the Holy Land and back again: the art of the Crusades Part 2: The shifting contexts of Renaissance art 5: Art at court 6: Botticelli 7: Did women patrons have a Renaissance? Italy 1420-1520 8: From Candia to Toledo: El Greco and his art

An innovatory exploration of art and visual culture. Through carefully chosen themes and topics rather than through a general survey, the volumes approach the process of looking at works of art in terms of their audiences, functions and cross-cultural contexts. While focused on painting, sculpture and architecture, it also explores a wide range of visual culture in a variety of media and methods. "1600-1850 Academy to Avant-Garde" interrogates labels used in standard histories of the art of this period (Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classicism and Romanticism) and examines both established and recent art-historical methodologies, including formalism, iconology, spectatorship and reception, identity and difference. Key topics include Baroque Rome, Dutch Painting of the Golden Age, Georgian London, the Paris Salon, and the impact of the discovery of the South Pacific.The second of three text books, published by Tate in association with the Open University, which insight for students of Art History, Art Theory and Humanities. Introduction Part 1: City and country 1600-1760 1: Bernini and Baroque Rome 2: Meaning and interpretation: Dutch painting of the golden age 3: The metropolitan urban renaissance: London 1660-1760 4: The English landscape garden 1680-1760 Part 2: New worlds of art 1760-1850 5: Painting for the public 6: Canova, Neo-classicism and the sculpted body 7: The other side of the world 8: Inventing the Romantic artist

An innovatory exploration of art and visual culture. Through carefully chosen themes and topics rather than through a general survey, the volumes approach the process of looking at works of art in terms of their audiences, functions and cross-cultural contexts. While focused on painting, sculpture and architecture, it also explores a wide range of visual culture in a variety of media and methods. "1850-2010: Modernity to Globalisation" includes essays which engage directly with topical issues around art and gender, globalisation, cultural difference and curating, as well as explorations of key canonical artists and movements and of some less well-documented work of contemporary artists. The third of three text books, published by Tate in association with the Open University, which insight for students of Art History, Art Theory and Humanities. Introduction: stories of modern art Part 1: Art and modernity 1:Avant-garde and modern world: some aspects of art in Paris and beyond c.1850-1914 2: Victorian Britain: from images of modernity to the modernity of images 3: Cubism and Abstract Art revisited 4: Modernism in architecture and design: function and aesthetic Part 2: From modernism to globalisation 5: Modernism and figuration 6: From Abstract Expressionism to Conceptual Art: a survey of New York art c.1940-1970 7: Border crossings: installations, locations and travelling artists 8: Global dissensus: art and contemporary capitalism

JMW Turner is one of the greatest artists Britain has ever produced. His watercolours, with their extraordinary effects of shifting light and dramatic skyscapes, are especially highly regarded. For the first time, the secrets of Turner's technique are revealed, allowing present-day watercolourists to learn from his achievements.This book combines unrivalled knowledge of Turner's working methods from Tate curators and conservators with practical advice from some of the world's most respected watercolour experts. Twenty-two thematic exercises are illustrated with Turner's works. Expert contemporary watercolourists explain, step-by-step, how to paint a similar composition, learning from Turner's techniques. Packed with invaluable information, from the materials Turner used to achieve the masterpieces we know and love today, to the modern materials the twenty-first-century watercolour artist will need.Backed by the authority of Tate, the world centre for Turner scholarship, with a glossary of technical terms, this is an invaluable resource both for lovers of Turner's art and of watercolour painting.