Books published by Getty Trust Publications

The Middle East played a critical role in the development of photography as a new technology and an art form. Likewise, photography was instrumental in cultivating and maintaining Europe's distinctively Orientalist vision of the Middle East. This book explores the interplay between 19th-century photography and Europe's vision of the Middle East.

Presents an introduction to the use of controlled vocabularies. This book presents readers with a "how-to" guide to building controlled vocabulary tools, and indexing cultural materials with terms and names from controlled vocabularies, and how to use vocabularies in search engines and databases to enhance discovery and retrieval online.

Focuses on all known aspects of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman cults and rituals. This title delivers both a sweeping overview and an in-depth investigation from Homeric times (1000 BCE) to late Roman times (AD 400). It explores festivals and religious links to neighbouring societies.

What is a pyxis? Who was the Amasis Painter? How did Greek vases get their distinctive black and orange colours? This volume offers definitions and descriptions of these and many other Greek vase shapes, painters and techniques encountered in museum exhibitions and publications.

Drawing on a range of materials, this title interprets Robert's artworks as harbingers of a modern appetite for self-destruction: the paintings are examined as expressions of the pleasures and perils of a risk economy.

An illustrated look at the evolution of the photographic work of Ed Ruscha - the quintessential Los Angeles artist. It features 38 Ruscha plates and an essay that traces the evolution of the artist's thinking about his photographs initially as the means to end, and eventually as works of art in and of themselves.

An illustrated reevaluation of the seminal architectural manifesto Learning from Las Vegas. It explores the significance of this controversial publication by situating it in the artistic, architectural, and urbanist discourse of the 1960s and '70s, and by evaluating the book's enduring influence of visual studies and architectural research.

Demonstrates Sicily's essential role in the development of the ancient Mediterranean world. This title focuses on the watershed period between 480 BC and the Roman conquest of Syracuse in 212 BC - a time of great social and political ferment.

Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most talented and successful artists working in 17th-century Europe. During his illustrious career as a court painter and diplomat, he expressed a fascination with exotic costumes and headdresses. This title presents an exploration of the mystery that surrounds of Ruben's most well-known and intriguing drawings.

This text discusses a 14th-century Armenian manuscript, introducing its illuminators and examining its place in Western European, Byzantine and Islamic artistic traditions. The volume reproduces 60 pages of the manuscript, which is in the collection of the UCLA.

A collection of images from one of Japan's most important early photographers. It focuses on traditional architecture, scenic views, and subjects associated with Japanese culture, such as national festivals, military tableaux, ritual customs, costumed geisha, and flowers.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries first modern, public museums of art appeared throughout Europe, setting a standard for nature of such institutions that has made its influence felt to present day. This book includes chapters on fifteen of the earliest major examples, from Capitoline Museum in Rome, opened in 1734, to Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

Eliot Porter was a pioneer in use of colour photography. His work also became a powerful visual argument for environmental conservation. Possessing a gift for close observation, Porter explored new ways of depicting nature, building blinds in trees so he could study his avian subjects at closer vantage.

Louis Lumiere is perhaps best known for his seminal role in the invention of cinema, but his most important contribution to the history of photography was the autochrome. This book treats the technology of the autochrome, including the technical challenges of plate fabrication, described in detail, and a thorough account of autochrome manufacture.

A re-examination of the importance and legacy of provenance in the history of art. It goes beyond the narrow definition of the term provenance, which addresses only the bare facts of ownership and transfer, to explore ideas about the origins and itineraries of objects, consider the historical uses of provenance research.

Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative post-World War II Italian artists. This title presents a technical study in English of this important painter and an informative overview of Fontana's life and work.

Offers investigation of the material and philosophical aspects of conserving contemporary art. This title gives a comprehensive overview of the many considerations faced by the conservator of modern and contemporary art.

Drawn from a range of works in the Getty Museum's collection, this title explores gardens on many levels, from the literary Garden of Love and the biblical Garden of Eden to courtly gardens of the nobility, and reports on the many activities - both reputable and scandalous - that took place there.

Gathers more than 65 texts that have been influential in the development of thinking about the conservation of cultural heritage, from antiquity to the present day. This title includes John Evelyn's 17th-century tract on air pollution in London and the founding manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings by William Morris.

Argues that art should address a broad audience and explains the painter's responsibility to his spectators. This book explains how - even if the archbishop did not succeed in reforming the arts - Paleotti's treatise constituted one last synthesis of art as a reading of creation and salvation history, and "sacred" art as a vehicle of devotion.

Offers fresh insights into the evolution of the forms and meanings of Roman art. The author offers a cultural history of the functions of the visual arts, the messages that these images carried, and the values that they affirmed in late Republican Rome and the Empire.

Photography and leisure go hand in hand. Although cameras are part of our everyday lives, we are never more likely to take a picture or to be photographed than when we are at play. This title traces the relationship between the growing importance of leisure over the years and the part that photography has played in changing how we see ourselves.

Herb Ritts (1952-2002) was a Los Angeles-based photographer who established an international reputation for distinctive images of fashion models, nudes, and celebrity portraits. This book traces the life and career of the iconic photographer through a selection of photographs and two insightful essays.