Books about Grotesque from Amazon.com

Draw the stuff of which nightmares are made. If you harbor a love of imagery most foul, of demons and monsters and devils of all sorts ... then welcome to the book from hell. Within its pages lurk sadistic orcs, flesh-eating zombies, blood-thirsty dragons, unholy monstrosities and dreaded beasts of legend and lore.

If you dare to open this book and unleash such horror, venture forth and learn everything a good monster-maker needs to know:

• How to spawn a loathsome range of creatures, step by gruesome step: Humanoid Monsters * Reptiles and Aquatic Creatures * Winged Beasts * Quadrupeds and More * in 29 demonstrations.
• Masterful techniques for drawing the massive biceps of the Gaki, the jagged tentacles of the Leviathan, the wicked curved claws of the Hellhound, blood-dripping fangs, putrefied decaying wounds and other deadly features and really gross details.
• Tips for making your creatures even creepier with the skillful use of point-of-view, iconic and action poses, color and shadow.

Hell Beasts will empower you to bring forth the sinister beings that lurk in the deepest, darkest shadows of your imagination. Summon them to claw at bedroom windows and wreak havoc in the dreams of your unsuspecting audience for years to come..
Price: $2.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This art book captures 30 years in the career of Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. The subject matter ranges from apocalyptic landscapes with towering edifices and zombie-like figures, to scenes of ghostly calm. His haunting, surreal works convey a sense of mystery and are often disturbingly dark..
Price: $15.38 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"From the moment I got to Auschwitz I was completely detached. I disconnected my heart and intellect in an act of self-defense, despair, and hopelessness " With these words Sara Nomberg-Przytyk begins this painful and compelling account of her experiences while imprisoned for two years in the infamous death camp. Writing twenty years after her liberation, she recreates the events of a dark past which, in her own words, would have driven her mad had she tried to relive it sooner. But while she records unimaginable atrocities, she also richly describes the human compassion that stubbornly survived despite the backdrop of camp depersonalization and imminent extermination.

Commemorative in spirit and artistic in form, Auschwitz convincingly portrays the paradoxes of human nature in extreme circumstances. With consummate understatement Nomberg-Przytyk describes the behavior of concentration camp inmates as she relentlessly and pitilessly examines her own motives and feelings. In this world unmitigated cruelty coexisted with nobility, rapacity with self-sacrifice, indifference with selfless compassion. This book offers a chilling view of the human drama that existed in Auschwitz.

From her portraits of camp personalities, an extraordinary and horrifying profile emerges of Dr. Josef Mengele, whose medical experiments resulted in the slaughter of nearly half a million Jews. Nomberg-Przytyk's job as an attendant in Mengle's hospital allowed her to observe this Angel of Death firsthand and to provide us with the most complete description to date of his monstrous activities.

The original Polish manuscript was discovered by Eli Pfefferkorn in 1980 in the Yad Vashem Archive in Jerusalem. Not knowing the fate of the journal's author, Pfefferkorn spent two years searching and finally located Nomberg-Przytyk in Canada. Subsequent interviews revealed the history of the manuscript, the author's background, and brought the journal into perspective..
Price: $10.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Master artist H.R. Giger guides us through the grimly beautiful world of his unconscious The large-scale format of this intriguing book permits close inspection of 184 of Giger's detailed nightmare visions. When combined with commentary, the result is a rare and revelatory grand tour of a master artist's life and psyche. 184 photographs, 160 in color. Size D.ng in Heavy Metal and Locus..
Price: $39.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From our most celebrated writer of the psychological thriller comes this nerve-wracking yet eerily
beautiful work of erotic obsession and madness In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her
psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting--a maximum-security hospital for the criminally
insane. Beautiful and headstrong, Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant
and magnetic sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic
rage. But Stella's knowledge of Edgar's crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that
ensues--a passion that will consume Stella's sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around
her..
Price: $2.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This pocket-size catalogue of the American artist Joel-Peter Witkin's inimitable work includes a selection of more than 50 astonishing photographs, a collection that expresses the artist's unique point of view on an extraordinary segment of humanity. Witkin's powerful and transgressive images are renowned for their depiction of outsiders including dwarves, transsexuals, hermaphrodites and physically deformed people. They are equally appreciated for their high aesthetic refinement, referencing classical paintings, Baroque art, Surrealism and other genres including still lifes and religious episodes. Witkin has said that his vision and sensibility were initiated by an episode he witnessed as a small child--a car accident in front of his house in which a little girl was decapitated. He has also said that problems in his family were an influence: his Jewish father and Catholic mother parted over religious differences..
Price: $11.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A lavish survey of the grotesque style in European painting and decoration, from Roman times to the late nineteenth century.

In the fifteenth century, the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea were discovered in Rome. The first explorers to enter the interior of this spectacular palace complex had the sensation of finding themselves in a series of grottoes, and this is why the fanciful frescoes and floor mosaics discovered there were called "grotesques."

A fashionable form of ornamentation in ancient Rome, grotesques consist of loosely connected motifs, often incorporating human figures, birds, animals, and monsters, and arranged around medallions filled with painted scenes. Fifteenth-century artists such as Perugino, Signorelli, Filippino Lippi, and Mantegna copied the ancient Roman examples; the most famous use of the style was Raphael's Loggie in the Vatican Palace, which became immensely famous and influential all over Europe.

This magnificently illustrated book covers the entire history of the grotesque in European art, from its Roman origins through the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century. It illuminates how grotesque decoration was transformed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into arabesque, chinoiserie, and singeries, and how it continued in the nineteenth century, leading eventually to Art Nouveau. 250 color illustrations..
Price: $56.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]