Books like The Essential by Abrams

Anthony Bourdain tells the candid, behind‑the‑pan stories of his rise from dishwasher to celebrated chef, mixing culinary insight with personal anecdotes.

On Food and Cooking offers a definitive, science‑backed look at ingredients, techniques and the history of eating, with updated explanations and rich illustrations for chefs and home cooks alike.

The Art of Fermentation is a definitive guide that translates the science, history, and practical techniques of fermentation into clear, step‑by‑step instructions for beginners and experts alike.

The Flavor Bible is a definitive culinary reference that teaches chefs and home cooks how to season ingredients for maximum flavor, drawing on the expertise of leading chefs and offering thousands of ingredient pairings.

An inside look into the life of Andy Warhol through his own diary entries, offering rare insights into his artistic world, personal relationships and the cultural scene of his era.

Briefly examines the life and work of the nineteenth-century Dutchman who was one of the greatest artists of all time.

"This book explores the relation of abstract art to nature. Traditional picturing and sculpture are based on conventions of resemblance between the work and that which it is a representation "of". Abstract works, in contrast, adopt alternative modes of visual representation, or break down and reconfigure the mimetic conventions of pictorial art and sculpture. Obviously this means that abstract art takes many different forms. However, this diversity should not mask some key structural features; these center on two basic relations to nature (understanding nature in the broadest sense to comprise the world of recognisable objects, creatures, organisms, processes, and states of affairs). The first involves abstracting from nature, to give selected aspects of it a new and extremely unfamiliar appearance. The second involves abstract art as the affirmation of a relatively unconstrained natural creativity that issues in new, autonomous forms that are not constrained by mimetic conventions. (Such creativity is often attributed to the power of the unconscious.)The book contains three categories of essays: 1) those on classical modernism (Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky, Arp, early American abstraction), 2) those on post-war abstraction (Pollock, Still, Newman, Smithson, Noguchi, Arte Povera, Michaux, postmodern developments), and 3) those of a broader art historical and philosophical scope"--

An eloquent personal exploration by a close friend, Robert Motherwell: What Art Holds is an essential addition to the literature on the artist and his work. Richly illustrated with pieces spanning his career - including twenty-one color platesthe book also includes never-before-published photographs of the artist himself. Mary Ann Caws discusses the artist's paintings, drawings, and collages in relation to the wide variety of American and European literature and philosophy Motherwell saw as central to his art. In a progression of critical meditations, Caws looks closely at series of his works, such as In Plato's Cave and Night Music, and at such great individual pieces as Gift, her inquiry gracefully encompassing the writings of Frost, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Kierkegaard, Stevens, and Garcia Lorca. Her reflections are grounded in an essential agreement with Motherwell that his work was a continuum: that his life and art were a matter of process, journey, and becoming, shaped by a willingness to experiment and to start over. Always returning to the uniquely American themes of openness and possibility in the artist's work, Caws explores Motherwell's use of series, his bold color combinations representing such complex issues as solitude and death, and the idea of giving and receiving seen in his technique of collage. The book concludes with five thoughtful interviews between Caws and Motherwell, published here for the first time, featuring discussions of the artist's relationship to surrealism, to Joseph Cornell, and to Mallarme. Infused with the special knowledge derived from a personal communion with Robert Motherwell's art, Mary Ann Caw's work will be an immeasurable source of discovery for lovers of both art and literature.

This extraordinary book pairs two major talents of our time, the painter/sculptor/printmaker Jasper Johns and the physician/novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton. Since it first appeared in 1977, Michael Crichton's Jasper Johns has been considered the preeminent study of one of America's foremost living artists. Abrams is proud now to publish this completely revised, expanded, and updated version of a modern classic. Jasper Johns has often been called an "artist's artist." In his use of found objects and commonplace imagery, he creates tantalizing, intellectually demanding works of unparalleled originality and uncommon beauty. His new work, with its puns, optical illusions, and embedded images ranging from George Ohr pots to the Isenheim Altarpiece to Picasso etchings, has attracted an unprecedented level of intense critical attention. Here Michael Crichton, author of The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Rising Sun, among other bestsellers, brings to bear his own extraordinary gifts, particularly his analytic skill and his superior abilities as narrator and storyteller. Crichton, who has known Johns and collected his work for more than twenty years, offers a dazzling succession of intimate glimpses of Johns' potent and seemingly contradictory aspects, many of them highlighted by interviews with the artist, his dealers, and distinguished contemporary critics. He also conducts a powerful, sensitive, and wide reaching critique of Johns' work - and in so doing offers an intriguing investigation into the very nature of the artistic response. Accompanying Crichton's text are 186 black-and-white illustrations, including works by Johns, photographs of him, and comparative examples. Then comes a spectacular display of 231 paintings, prints, sculptures, and drawings by Jasper Johns, ranging from his earliest pieces to his most recent works, some forty years later. Of these, 128 are reproduced in duotone and 103 in full color, including six magnificent foldout pages - the most lavish view of the artist's work ever assembled between book covers. Meticulous scholarship supports this presentation of Jasper Johns by Michael Crichton in every respect. Notes, a selected bibliography, and an index of illustrated works complete this extraordinary volume - a book for the layman, for the art specialist, and for all who love contemporary art.