"Illustration: A Visual History is a survey of the art form by the foremost historian of graphic design and a celebrated designer/illustrator, joins the authors' companion volume Graphic Style as an indispensable resource for anyone interested in art, design, and popular culture. Heller and Chwast's rich chronicle of well over a century of illustration covers the so-called Golden Age to the current Bronze Age and celebrates illustration - long deemed a second cousin to fine art - as a significant popular art that is often more visible, recognizable, and memorable than "higher arts."" "Covering illustration from the Industrial Revolution, which made printing possible for mass consumption, to the digital age, which has transformed publishing into a desktop affair, Heller and Chwast's approach uses two complementary ways of presenting the story of the field: style and form. Through this unique perspective, Victorian, Art Deco, Postmodern, Punk, and Digital styles, as well as political, satiric, absurdist, and erotic forms, are deftly illuminated in order to reveal visual mannerisms, quirks, and tics that define representative drawn, painted, and digitized objects. Key individuals who helped to alter these styles through their distinct personas are examined and placed in historical context."--Jacket.
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