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One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 One of Five Books Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 Shortlisted for…
the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize An original and revealing portrait of the misunderstood French Post-Impressionist artist. Paul Gauguin’s legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved. Self-taught, Gauguin became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and graphics. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French Colonialism. Gauguin fought for the rights of Indigenous people, exposing French injustices and corruption in the local newspaper and acting as advocate for the Tahitian people in the French colonial courts. His unconventional career and bold, breathtaking art influenced not only Vincent van Gogh, but Matisse and Picasso. Wild Thing upends much of what we thought we knew about Gauguin through new primary research, including the resurfaced manuscript of Gauguin’s most important writing, the untranslated memoir of Gauguin’s son, and a sample of Gauguin’s teeth that disproves the pernicious myth of his syphilis. In the first full biography of Paul Gauguin in thirty years, Sue Prideaux illuminates the extraordinary oeuvre of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde. The result is “a brilliantly readable and compassionate study of Gauguin—not just as a painter, sculptor, carver and potter, but as a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach” (Artemis Cooper, Spectator).
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post &“A definitive and ideal biography—pound for pound, one of…
the sleekest and most judicious I&’ve ever read.&” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times A critical darling, Crumb is the first biography of Robert Crumb—one of the most profound and influential artists of the 20th century—whose frank and meticulously rendered cartoons and comics inspired generations of readers and cartoonists, from Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel.Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, delivers a &“gripping and essential account&” (The Boston Globe) of how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact. Braiding biography with &“cultural history and criticism...that honors the complexity of [its] subject, even, perhaps particularly, when it gets ugly&” (Los Angeles Times), Crumb is the story of a richly complex life at the forefront of both the underground and popular cultures of post-war America. Including forty-five stunning black-and-white images throughout and a sixteen-page color insert featuring images both iconic and obscure, Crumb spans the pressures of 1950s suburban America and Crumb&’s highly dysfunctional early family life; the history of comics and graphic satire; 20th-century popular music; the world of the counterculture; the birth of underground comic books in 1960s San Francisco with Crumb&’s Zap Comix; the economic challenges and dissolution of the hippie dream; and the path Robert Crumb blazed through it all. Written with Crumb&’s cooperation, this fascinating, rollicking book takes in seven decades of Crumb&’s iconic works, including Fritz the Cat, Weirdo, and his adaptation of The Book of Genesis and &“floats Crumb on the rapids of his times&” (Harper&’s Magazine), capturing, in the process, the essence of an extraordinary artist.