Paintings on Stone examines a fascinating tradition long overlooked by art historians-stone surfaces used to create stunning portraits, mythological scenes, and sacred images. Written by an international team of scholars, the catalogue reveals the significance of these paintings, their complex meanings, and their technical virtuosity. Using a technique perfected by Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547), 16th-century Italian artists created compositions using stone surfaces in place of panel or canvas. The practice of using stone supports continued to engage European artists and patrons well into the 18th century. This volume reveals the beauty of these works and examines the complexity of using materials such as slate, marble, alabaster, lapis lazuli, and amethyst. Illustrated with more than one hundred examples with essays on topics ranging from importing stone to its relationship to alchemy, Paintings on Stone will become the essential reference on this little-studied practice.Accompanies a major exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum from October 25, 2020 to January 17, 2021

Transform ordinary stones into colorful works of art. Full-color illustrations accompany step-by-step instructions for creating 30 different themes: trees, flowers, animals, mandalas, geometric patterns, marine and holiday motifs, more.

A sweeping history of premodern architecture told through the material of stone Spanning almost five millennia, Painting in Stone tells a new history of premodern architecture through the material of precious stone. Lavishly illustrated examples include the synthetic gems used to simulate Sumerian and Egyptian heavens; the marble temples and mansions of Greece and Rome; the painted palaces and polychrome marble chapels of early modern Italy; and the multimedia revival in 19th-century England. Poetry, the lens for understanding costly marbles as an artistic medium, summoned a spectrum of imaginative associations and responses, from princes and patriarchs to the populace. Three salient themes sustained this “lithic imagination”: marbles as images of their own elemental substance according to premodern concepts of matter and geology; the perceived indwelling of astral light in earthly stones; and the enduring belief that colored marbles exhibited a form of natural—or divine—painting, thanks to their vivacious veining, rainbow palette, and chance images.

In the past hundred years, haiku has gone far beyond its Japanese origins to become a worldwide phenomenon—with the classic poetic form growing and evolving as it has adapted to the needs of the whole range of languages and cultures that have embraced it. This proliferation of the joy of haiku is cause for celebration—but it can also compel us to go back to the beginning: to look at haiku’s development during the centuries before it was known outside Japan. This in-depth study of haiku history begins with the great early masters of the form—like Basho, Buson, and Issa—and goes all the way to twentieth-century greats, like Santoka. It also focuses on an important aspect of traditional haiku that is less known in the West: haiku art. All the great haiku masters created paintings (called haiga) or calligraphy in connection with their poems, and the words and images were intended to be enjoyed together, enhancing each other, and each adding its own dimension to the reader’s and viewer’s understanding. Here one of the leading haiku scholars of the West takes us on a tour of haiku poetry’s evolution, providing along the way a wealth of examples of the poetry and the art inspired by it.

"From the author of Arshile Gorky, a major biography of the great American sculptor that redefines his legacy"--

For crafters of all ages and abilities comes 50 colorful mandala designs to paint on stones.

In the deep and colorful sandstone canyons west of the Rockies, along river corridors of northern Colorado, and inscribed on rock outcroppings of the Colorado Plateau, the rock art of ancient and historic inhabitants of the West is an enduring record of past ideas and practices. This first integrated analysis of rock art styles throughout the western Colorado region, dating from pre-A.D. 1 to the middle of the twentieth century, bring together information from earlier studies and presents new information to shed light on how various cultures developed and interacted over time and in diverse geographical settings. Sally Cole traces connections between art on canyon walls, rock shelters, and bolders and designs on pottery, basketry, and other artificts, placing the art in cultural context. This book surveys the cultural history and rock art traditions of Archaic hunters and gatherers, Anasazi, Fremont, Navajo, Eastern Shoshoni, and Ute peoples. regions of special interest include Mesa Verde and the Four Corners area, the Uncompahgre Plateau, Dinosaur National Monument and the canyons of the Green and Yampa rivers, and the Canyonlands of Utah and Colorado. An abundance of drawings, photographs, and maps illustrate the text and reveal the diversity of rock art forms and settings in the West.