Book American Art and Architecture (World of Art) - Thames and Hudson

This survey presents the complete history of American art and architecture from the 17th century to the latest installations and video works. It includes all major American artists and works, as well as discusses and illustrates dozens of building types, from the earliest colonial houses and churches to the most spectacular modernist and postmodernist shops, museums, train stations, and iconic skyscrapers. The characteristics of different periods are identified, highlighting the forms, techniques, and styles that distinguish works as distinctly American. It explores how American artists and architects adopted and diverged from European models to create their own language, and Lewis demonstrates how this language ultimately dominated the rest of the world.

The author skillfully integrates discussions of both buildings and artworks, revealing common social and aesthetic concerns underlying them. Vernacular, religious, secular, and corporate architecture appear alongside painting, sculpture, photography, and new media art.

The Thames & Hudson publishing house was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their greatest passion and mission was to create a “museum without walls” and to make the world of art and leading scientific research accessible to a broad audience. To reflect international perspectives, the company’s name combined the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, the other west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New.

Today, still an independent, family-run publisher, Thames & Hudson is one of the world’s leading publishers of illustrated books, with over 2000 titles in print. It publishes high-quality collectible books across all areas of visual creativity: fine arts, applied arts, decorative arts, performing arts, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and music, as well as archaeology, history, and popular culture. It is also expanding its list of children’s books. Headquartered in London with a sister company in New York and branches in Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Paris, another subsidiary, Interart, distributes English-language books in France.

History of the Thames & Hudson brand

Walter Neurath was born in Vienna in 1903. In 1938, he left his hometown—where he ran an art gallery and published illustrated books—for London. Initially, he worked as a production director at Adprint, a brand founded by Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foges. Neurath and Foges developed an innovative concept of what is now called book packaging (or co-publishing), where book ideas are developed, ordered, produced, and sold to publishers operating in different markets and languages to create large editions and reduce unit production costs. Neurath’s concept was the first of many innovations introduced to the publishing world through Thames & Hudson.

Seeking to continue packaging {collectible books|books} in a second edition and recognizing the need to amortize the high costs of producing illustrated books, Neurath founded his own publishing company with offices in London and New York in autumn 1949. Eva Neurath, who arrived in London from Berlin in 1939, was a co-founder.

Of the ten titles published on Thames & Hudson’s first list in 1950, *English Cathedrals*, with photographs by Martin Hürlimann, was the first and most successful. The firm’s strong belief in the longevity of books has remained evident, with titles remaining in print until 1971. Also in the first year, Albert Einstein’s *Out of My Later Years* was published, an early indicator of the program’s scope. As the list gradually expanded from ten titles in 1950 to 144 in 1955, the company moved its offices from High Holborn and, in 1956, relocated to a Georgian townhouse at Bloomsbury Street 30, near Bedford Square, becoming the epicenter of book publishing in London. The manufacturing facility remained at this address, eventually expanding to five buildings by 1999, when it returned to High Holborn.

In 1958, Thames and Hudson launched one of the most renowned series, *World of Art*, which became the foundation of a highly diverse list. Characterized by pocket-sized editions and black covers, the series expanded in just seven years to include 49 titles. Nearly 60 years later, the series boasts over 300 titles, which, according to Christopher Frayling, are “stained with paint copies in every art school in the country.”

Other important series that added depth and prestige to the list include *Ancient People and Places*, edited by Glyn Daniel, who since the 1950s contributed to pioneering interest in archaeology, both in book form and on television. Over 34 titles have been published in the series over 34 years. The large-format *Great Civilizations* series, published in 1961, featured contributions from renowned scholars such as Alan Bullock, Asa Briggs, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A. J. P. Taylor, and John Julius Norwich.
After building one of the most important publishing houses in Europe in less than two decades, Walter Neurath died in 1967 at the age of 63. Sculptor Henry Moore wrote that “his death was a loss to our cultural life.” Sir Herbert Read noted that Neurath “more than anyone else was responsible for the revolution in art publishing” and was “one of those rare entrepreneurs who successfully combine business acumen with idealism.” Eva Neurath became chairwoman. Walter’s son, Thomas, who joined the company in 1961 with his sister Constance, became managing director; Constance later served as artistic director for several decades. Both Thomas and Constance remain on the Thames & Hudson board, as do Thomas’s daughters, Johanna and Susanna.
From producing the first commercial edition of *The Book of Kells* to the triumphant publication of the six-volume *Vincent van Gogh - Letters*, from technical innovations like “French folds” to the controversial documentation of graffiti art in *Subway Art*, Thames and Hudson has always been at the forefront, both culturally and in production techniques.

2016 marked the beginning of an extraordinary new chapter for the company, announcing publishing partnerships with two of the world’s most important museums: the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The world of art and scholarship remains at the heart of Thames & Hudson’s publishing program, which remains true to its core principle: providing a “museum without walls.”
Today, Thames & Hudson is a recognizable international brand, a symbol of British publishing. Its catalog includes thousands of fascinating titles. Many of these are prestigious collectible editions.

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