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Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball's Greatest Forgotten Player
By Jeremy Beer. 2019
Buck O&’Neil once described him as &“Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one.&” Among experts he is…
regarded as the best player in Negro Leagues history. During his prime he became a legend in Cuba and one of black America&’s most popular figures. Yet even among serious sports fans, Oscar Charleston is virtually unknown today. In a long career spanning from 1915 to 1954, Charleston played against, managed, befriended, and occasionally fought men such as Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Jesse Owens, Roy Campanella, and Branch Rickey. He displayed tremendous power, speed, and defensive instincts along with a fierce intelligence and commitment to his craft. Charleston&’s competitive fire sometimes brought him trouble, but more often it led to victories, championships, and profound respect. While Charleston never played in the Major Leagues, he was a trailblazer who became the first black man to work as a scout for a Major League team when Branch Rickey hired him to evaluate players for the Dodgers in the 1940s. From the mid‑1920s on, he was a player‑manager for several clubs. In 1932 he joined the Pittsburgh Crawfords and would manage the club many consider the finest Negro League team of all time, featuring five future Hall of Famers, including himself, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, and Satchel Paige. Charleston&’s combined record as a player, manager, and scout makes him the most accomplished figure in black baseball history. His mastery of the quintessentially American sport under the conditions of segregation revealed what was possible for black achievement, bringing hope to millions. Oscar Charleston introduces readers to one of America&’s greatest and most fascinating athletes.Let's Play Two: The Legend of Mr. Cub, the Life of Ernie Banks
By Ron Rapoport. 2019
The definitive and revealing biography of Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks, one of America's most iconic, beloved, and misunderstood baseball…
players, by acclaimed journalist Ron Rapoport. Ernie Banks, the first-ballot Hall of Famer and All-Century Team shortstop, played in fourteen All-Star Games, won two MVPs, and twice led the Major Leagues in home runs and runs batted in. He outslugged Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Mickey Mantle when they were in their prime, but while they made repeated World Series appearances in the 1950s and 60s, Banks spent his entire career with the woebegone Chicago Cubs, who didn't win a pennant in his adult lifetime. Today, Banks is remembered best for his signature phrase, "Let's play two," which has entered the American lexicon and exemplifies the enthusiasm that endeared him to fans everywhere. But Banks's public display of good cheer was a mask that hid a deeply conflicted, melancholy, and often quite lonely man. Despite the poverty and racism he endured as a young man, he was among the star players of baseball's early days of integration who were reluctant to speak out about Civil Rights. Being known as one of the greatest players never to reach the World Series also took its toll. At one point, Banks even saw a psychiatrist to see if that would help. It didn't. Yet Banks smiled through it all, enduring the scorn of Cubs manager Leo Durocher as an aging superstar and never uttering a single complaint. Let's Play Two is based on numerous conversations with Banks and on interviews with more than a hundred of his family members, teammates, friends, and associates as well as oral histories, court records, and thousands of other documents and sources. Together, they explain how Banks was so different from the caricature he created for the public. The book tells of Banks's early life in segregated Dallas, his years in the Negro Leagues, and his difficult life after retirement; and features compelling portraits of Buck O'Neil, Philip K. Wrigley, the Bleacher Bums, the doomed pennant race of 1969, and much more from a long-lost baseball era.The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922-1968
By William Feaver. 2019
The first biography of the epic life of one of the most important, enigmatic and private artists of the 20th…
century. Drawn from almost 40 years of conversations with the artist, letters and papers, it is a major work written by a well-known British art critic. Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is one of the most influential figurative painters of the 20th century. His paintings are in every major museum and many private collections here and abroad. William Feaver's daily calls from 1973 until Freud died in 2011, as well as interviews with family and friends were crucial sources for this book.Freud had ferocious energy, worked day and night but his circle was broad including not just other well-known artists but writers, bluebloods, royals in England and Europe, drag queens, fashion models gamblers, bookies and gangsters like the Kray twins. Fierce, rebellious, charismatic, extremely guarded about his life, he was witty, mischievous and a womanizer. This brilliantly researched and well written book begins with the Freuds' life in Berlin, the rise of Hitler and the family's escape to London in 1933 when Lucian was 10. Sigmund Freud was his grandfather and Ernst, his father was an architect. In London in his twenties, his first solo show was in 1944 at the Lefevre Gallery. Around this time, Stephen Spender introduced him to Virginia Woolf, at night he was taking Pauline Tennant to the Gargoyle Club, owned by her father and frequented by Dylan Thomas; he was also meeting Sonia Orwell, Cecil Beaton, Auden, Patrick Leigh-Fermor and the Aly Khan, and his muse was a married femme fatale, 13 years older, Lorna Wishart. But it was Francis Bacon who would become his most important influence and the painters Frank Auerbach and David Hockney, close friends. On Freud's first trip to Paris in 1946 he met the artists Picasso, Giacometti, Andre Breton, Alexander Calder and Balthus. Next was a trip to Greece then trips to the south of France with the Graham Sutherlands. More shows followed in London and Paris and Kenneth Clark tried to buy a painting in 1947 for the Tate, Alfred Barr did buy one for MoMa in 1948, the year Freud married his first wife Kitty Garman Epstein, the daughter of the famous sculptor, Jacob Epstein. In 1952 he eloped with Lady Caroline Blackwood to Paris where they married in 1953; there were two girls from the first marriage but he had twelve other children from his many liasons. This is an extremely intimate, lively and rich portrait of the artist, full of gossip and stories recounted by Freud to Feaver about people, encounters, and work. Freud's art was his life—"my work is purely autobiographical"—and he usually painted only family, friends, lovers, children, though there were exceptions like the famous small portrait of the Queen. With his later portraits, the subjects were often nude, names were never given and sittings could take up to 16 months, each session lasting five hours but subjects were rarely bored as Freud was a great raconteur and mimic. This book is a major achievement, a tour de force that reveals the details of the life and innermost thoughts of the greatest portrait painter of our time. Volume I has 41 black and white integrated images, and 2 eight-page color inserts.The Great Book of Philadelphia Sports Lists (Completely Revised and Updated Edition)
By Glen Macnow, Big Daddy Graham. 2019
When it comes to sports talk, no city has more to say than Philadelphia.With their 2007 The Great Book of…
Philadelphia Sports Lists, WIP sports radio hosts Glen Macnow and Big Daddy Graham compiled dozens of sports lists to stir up dialog and debate within the buzzing Philadelphia sports community (and beyond).A lot has happened in Philly sports since 2007 -- the Phillies' 2008 World Series win; the Eagles' record-breaking 2017 season, now-famous Philly Special play, and Super Bowl LII victory over the Patriots; the Sixers' "Trust the Process" campaign; and, of course, Gritty -- so now Glen and Big Daddy are back with dozens of new lists to keep the conversation fresh, ranking things like:The most overrated and underrated players in Philly sports historyThe top 10 Philadelphia sports quotesThe 10 worst Eagles draft picks everThe greatest duos in Philly sports historyThe 10 best sports movies set in PhiladelphiaThe worst bosses in Philly sports historyand much more!Leonardo da Vinci: La biografía
By Walter Isaacson. 2017
El aclamado autor de los best sellers Steve Jobs y Einstein nos vuelve a cautivar con la vida del genio…
más creativo de la historia en esta fascinante biografía. Basándose en las miles de páginas de los cuadernos manuscritos de Leonardo y nuevos descubrimientos sobre su vida y su obra, Walter Isaacson teje una narración que conecta el arte de Da Vinci con sus investigaciones científicas, y nos muestra cómo el genio del hombre más visionario de la historia nació de habilidades que todos poseemos y podemos estimular, tales como la curiosidad incansable, la observación cuidadosa y la imaginación juguetona. Su creatividad, como la de todo gran innovador, resultó de la intersección entre la tecnología y las humanidades. Despellejó y estudió el rostro de numerosos cadáveres, dibujó los músculos que configuran el movimiento de los labios y pintó la sonrisa más enigmática de la historia, la de la Mona Lisa. Exploró las leyes de la óptica, demostró como la luz incidía en la córnea y logró producir esa ilusión de profundidad en la Última cena. La habilidad de Leonardo da Vinci para combinar arte y ciencia -esplendorosamente representada en el Hombre de Vitruvio- continúa siendo la regla de oro de la innovación. La apasionante vida de este gran hombre debe recordarnos la importancia de inculcar el conocimiento, pero sobre todo la voluntad contagiosa de cuestionarlo: ser imaginativos y pensar de manera diferente.Oscar of the Waldorf
By Karl Schriftgiesser. 2018
The present volume is the biography of Oscar Tschirky (1866-1943), known throughout the world as Oscar of the Waldorf, who…
worked as maître d’hôtel of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City from 1893 to 1943. The book contains many recollections devoted to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and its founder, George C. Boldt, and his wife, Louise Kehrer Boldt.Richly illustrated throughout with black and white photographs.Mrs Delany: A Life
By Clarissa Campbell Orr. 2019
The first comprehensive biography of Mary Granville Delany – the artist and court insider whose flower collages, in particular, continue…
to inspire widespread admiration Mrs Delany is best remembered for her captivating paper collages of flowers, but her artistic flourishing came late in life. This nuanced, deeply researched biography pulls back the lens to place Delany’s art in the broader context of her family life, relationships with royalty, and her endeavor to live as an independent woman. Clarissa Campbell Orr, a noted authority on the eighteenth century court, charts Mary Delany’s development from a young woman at the heart of elite circles to beloved godmother and celebrated collagist. Orr traces the varied connections Mary Delany fostered throughout her life and which influenced her intellectual and artistic development: she was friends with prominent figures such as Methodist leader, John Wesley, composer G. F. Handel, the writer Jonathan Swift, and England’s leading patron of science, Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. Mrs Delany reveals its subject to be far more than a widow befriended by George III and Queen Charlotte; she is, instead, restored to her proper place in the era’s aristocratic society –and as a ground-breaking artist.The Queen Next Door: Aretha Franklin, An Intimate Portrait (Painted Turtle)
By Linda Solomon. 2019
"Aretha was private. I respected this and she trusted me." Linda Solomon met Aretha Franklin in 1983 when she was…
just beginning her career as a photojournalist and newspaper columnist. Franklin’s brother and business manager arranged for Solomon to capture the singer’s major career events—just as she was coming back home to Detroit from California—while Franklin requested that Solomon document everything else. Everything. And she did just that. What developed over these years of photographing birthday and Christmas parties in her home, annual celebrity galas, private backstage moments during national awards ceremonies, photo shoots with the iconic pink Cadillac, and more was a friendship between two women who grew to enjoy and respect one another. The Queen Next Door: Aretha Franklin, An Intimate Portrait is a book full of firsts as Solomon was invited not only to capture historical events in Aretha’s music career showcasing Detroit but to join in with the Franklin family’s most intimate and cherished moments in her beloved hometown. From performance rehearsals with James Brown to off-camera shenanigans while filming a music video with the Rolling Stones, from her first television special to her first time performing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, to her last performance with her sisters at her father’s church and her son’s college graduation celebration. In the book’s afterword, Sabrina Vonne' Owens, Franklin’s niece, honors her aunt, a woman who was an overwhelming supporter of civil rights, women’s rights, and fundraising campaigns that helped to benefit her hometown. There was a time in her career—when Franklin was more in demand than ever before—when she insisted that if someone wanted her to perform, they had to come to Detroit. During this time all of her major concerts, national television specials, music videos, and commercials would happen in Detroit. Aretha Franklin showed her respect for the people in the city who championed her from the very beginning when she started singing as a young girl in the church choir. Franklin used to say, "I am the lady next door when I am not on stage." The Queen Next Door offers fans a personal and unseen look at an extraordinary woman in her most natural moments—both regal and intimate—and highlights her devotion to her family and her hometown Detroit—"forever and ever."Chance of a Lifetime
By Evelina Ribeiro Craven. 2019
Evelina's drawings and paintings are said to be intriguing and different. People who see them cannot understand how she creates…
all that out of the blue. Although creativity exists in everybody, there are still people who usually claim they cannot draw a line to do any drawing. But this book shows us the journey towards that and how hard it is to bring out images we have in our unconscious mind, projecting them into works of art, plus the efforts to produce. Evelina always wanted to go abroad and study in Europe but could only do that after being married and having children somehow later in life than anticipated. Initially, she worked as a biochemist at a Brazilian university for about 20 years, then there was an opportunity for her to study for a PhD abroad, as she always wanted. This was the pivot of all changes in her life, which culminated with her divorce, remarriage, change of profession, studying for a BA in Arts and adopting a new approach to life altogether. As she wished to create a different work - innovative, reflecting her personality, a unique work - she embarked on a process of creativity and development, a complete approach to life, for example, through hard work with drawings, which this book is about. Associated with that, the reader will get enthralled with descriptions of life in Brazil, some socio-economic aspects of the author's life since early ages from rich surroundings while with her father's family, in contrast with her mother's poverty-stricken family way of living as a widow with five children. After reading this book, one will reflect on how life depends on opportunity and the efforts to make the best of that. We can always change life if and when we want to. That is why the title of this book is 'Chance of a Lifetime', because it comes and goes; when it happens, one has to grab it, making the best possible.Michael Snow: Lives and Works
By James King. 2019
A biography of Canada’s greatest living artist. Michael Snow is rightly recognized as the greatest living Canadian artist, and he…
is also acknowledged as one of the most significant figures in Canadian art history. In a productive, lengthy career, he has, in a wide variety of genres, asked (and often answered) some of the most vexing and important issues in the history of art. During his career, the notion of what constitutes a work of art has undergone many changes, and he has been in the forefront of defining these changes. In many ways, he is the visual artist as intellectual: his images are vibrant and compelling but so are the ideas behind them. Ultimately, his work is about perception. What do we really see when we look at a work of art? What is the act of looking all about? What exactly is a work of art? Michael Snow: Lives and Works is a personal and intimate portrait of an artist who has helped shaped the face of Canadian art in our time.Injichaag: Anishinaabe Poetics in Art and Words
By Rene Meshake. 2019
This book shares the life story of Anishinaabe artist Rene Meshake in stories, poetry, and Anishinaabemowin “word bundles” that serve…
as a dictionary of Ojibwe poetics. Meshake was born in the railway town of Nakina in northwestern Ontario in 1948, and spent his early years living off-reserve with his grandmother in a matriarchal land-based community he calls Pagwashing. He was raised through his grandmother’s “bush university,” periodically attending Indian day school, but at the age of ten Rene was scooped into the Indian residential school system, where he suffered sexual abuse as well as the loss of language and connection to family and community. This residential school experience was lifechanging, as it suffocated his artistic expression and resulted in decades of struggle and healing. Now in his twenty-eighth year of sobriety, Rene is a successful multidisciplinary artist, musician and writer. Meshake’s artistic vision and poetic lens provide a unique telling of a story of colonization and recovery. The material is organized thematically around a series of Meshake’s paintings. It is framed by Kim Anderson, Rene’s Odaanisan (adopted daughter), a scholar of oral history who has worked with Meshake for two decades. Full of teachings that give a glimpse of traditional Anishinaabek lifeways and worldviews, Injichaag: My Soul in Story is “more than a memoir.”Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright
By Paul Hendrickson. 2019
From the award-winning and nationally best-selling author of Hemingway's Boat and Sons of Mississippi--an illuminating, pathbreaking biography that will change…
the way we understand the life, mind, and work of the premier American architect.Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this masterful biography: the Wright who was haunted by his father, about whom he told the greatest lie of his life. And this, we see, is the Wright of many other neglected aspects of his story: his close, and perhaps romantic, relationship with friend and early mentor Cecil Corwin; the eerie, unmistakable role of fires in his life; the connection between the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and the murder of his mistress, her two children, and four others at his beloved Wisconsin home by a black servant gone mad. In showing us Wright's facades along with their cracks, Hendrickson helps us form a fresh, deep, and more human understanding of the man. With prodigious research, unique vision, and his ability to make sense of a life in ways at once unexpected, poetic, and undeniably brilliant, he has given us the defining book on Wright.How has today’s society changed because of Sandy Koufax, Tom Brady, or Tiger Woods? How have courtrooms and the law…
changed because of the tragic loss of a No. 1 NBA Draft Pick and a NASCAR driver? And what effect did Magic Johnson’s announcement regarding his HIV diagnosis have on the NBA and testing across the nation? Dr. Jonathan Gelber has compiled a list of impactful injuries and tragedies in Tiger Woods's Back and Tommy John’s Elbow: Injuries and Tragedies That Transformed Careers, Sports, and Society and the ripple effect they have had on players across several different sports and on society in general. Among the athletes featured in this book are:• Tommy John and how the surgery that bears his name may have led to a youth injury epidemic • Dale Earnhardt and how his devastating crash led to new rules and safety concerns for NASCAR and changes in privacy laws • Lyle Alzado and how the conversation on steroids was driven underground • Len Bias and how his death shaped today's drug laws • And many more!De puertas adentro (Memorias Y Biografías/taurus Ser.)
By Amalia Avia. 2004
Estas apasionantes memorias son la crónica de la transformación política, social y cultural española a lo largo del siglo XX…
a través de la vida de una maravillosa artista. Amalia Avia, figura esencial en el arte contemporáneo en España, nos abrió en estas memorias las puertas de una vida llena de contrastes, teñida de tonos oscuros pero también de luces brillantes, que se inició en Madrid, a comienzos de los años treinta, en el seno de una familia burguesa. Su primera infancia tuvo el país en guerra como fondo. La posguerra, el luto y los desfiles triunfantes inauguraron un periodo de tristeza y desconcierto y, también, una nueva etapa en el pequeño pueblo manchego en el que pasó diez años. Con firmes pinceladas realistas, la autora retrata el enorme contraste de su vida madrileña y el medio rural en los años cuarenta en el que se desarrolló su adolescencia: el culto a los muertos, los días de costura, iglesia, juegos, lectura y excursiones al monte, la cocina, la cosecha, el ganado, la matanza y las fiestas populares constituyen fascinantes relatos de memoria histórica. La vuelta a Madrid y su formación como pintora en el estudio Peña marcaron un periodo muy fértil. Su relación con otros artistas y escritores, el matrimonio con Lucio Muñoz, sus primeras exposiciones, el Círculo de Bellas Artes, la maternidad, los viajes y la oposición al Régimen marcaron el sendero que culminaría en la apertura del país a la democracia y en la madurez de Amalia Avia como mujer y como pintora. Reseñas:«Amalia Avia logró inscribirse con luz propia en la historia del arte español del siglo XX. Sus memorias no solo son un testimonio precioso sobre su propia vida y la de su generación, sino también la revelación de su rica y compleja intimidad.»Francisco Calvo Serraller, El País «Amalia Avia es la pintora de las ausencias, la amarga cronista del por aquí pasó la vida marcando su amargura e inevitable huella de dolor, como en las novelas de los maestros rusos del XIX.»Camilo José Cela «Amalia Avia fue la cronista melancólica, en grises, de un cierto Madrid de toda la vida, ese Madrid de los portales, de las tiendas antañonas, de las tabernas, de las tascas, de los garajes. Sus memorias son excelentes.»Juan Manuel Bonet «Sus memorias podrían ser un cuadro. Nada extraño si consideramos que su autora es pintora, y de las buenas. Ha elegido la sinceridad que, aliada con la sencillez, traza un retrato no ya de sí misma, sino de una etapa de la vida española que perteneció a muchos que, sin duda, se reconocerán a través de ella.»Trinidad De León-Sotelo, ABCAmazing & Extraordinary Facts - Da Vinci (Amazing & Extraordinary)
By Cynthia Phillips, Shana Priwer. 2011
A unique collection of surprising revelations and quirky stories about one of the most amazing people ever to have lived.…
This engaging volume reveals Da Vinci's phenomenal accomplishments, including mathematical discoveries, investigating the secrets of the human body, inventing a robot and even his plans to divert the entire Arno River!Abner Doubleday, Young Baseball Pioneer (Childhood of Famous Americans Series)
By Montrew Dunham. 1965
The Light Years: A Memoir
By Chris Rush. 2019
The Light Years is a joyous and defiant coming-of-age memoir set during one of the most turbulent times in American…
history"This stunningly beautiful, original memoir is driven by a search for the divine, a quest that leads Rush into some dangerous places . . . The Light Years is funny, harrowing, and deeply tender." —Kate Tuttle, The L.A. Times"Rush is a fantastically vivid writer, whether he’s remembering a New Jersey of 'meatballs and Windex and hairspray' or the dappled, dangerous beauty of Northern California, where 'rock stars lurked like lemurs in the trees.' Read if you loved… Just Kids by Patti Smith." —Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly“As mythic and wild with love, possibility, and danger as the decades it spans, you’ll read The Light Years with your breath held. Brutal, buoyant and wise to the tender terror of growing up, Chris Rush has written a timeless memoir of boyhood in the American wilderness.” —Emma Cline, author of The GirlsChris Rush was born into a prosperous, fiercely Roman Catholic, New Jersey family. But underneath the gleaming mid-century house, the flawless hostess mom, and the thriving businessman dad ran an unspoken tension that, amid the upheaval of the late 1960s, was destined to fracture their precarious facade. His older sister Donna introduces him to the charismatic Valentine, who places a tab of acid on twelve-year-old Rush’s tongue, proclaiming: “This is sacrament. You are one of us now.”After an unceremonious ejection from an experimental art school, Rush heads to Tucson to make a major drug purchase and, still barely a teenager, disappears into the nascent American counterculture. Stitching together a ragged assemblage of lowlifes, prophets, and fellow wanderers, he seeks kinship in the communes of the west. His adolescence is spent looking for knowledge, for the divine, for home. Given what Rush confronts on his travels—from ordinary heartbreak to unimaginable violence—it is a miracle he is still alive.The Light Years is a prayer for vanished friends, an odyssey signposted with broken and extraordinary people. It transcends one boy’s story to perfectly illustrate the slow slide from the optimism of the 1960s into the darker and more sinister 1970s. This is a riveting, heart-stopping journey of discovery and reconciliation, as Rush faces his lost childhood and, finally, himself.A portrait of empire through the biographies of a Native American, a Pacific Islander, and the British artist who painted…
them both Three interconnected eighteenth-century lives offer a fresh account of the British Empire and its intrusion into Indigenous societies. This engaging history brings together the stories of Joshua Reynolds and two Indigenous men, the Cherokee Ostenaco and the Raiatean Mai. Fullagar uncovers the life of Ostenaco, tracing his emergence as a warrior, his engagement with colonists through war and peace, and his eventual rejection of imperial politics during the American Revolution. She delves into the story of Mai, his confrontation with conquest and displacement, his voyage to London on Cook’s imperial expedition, and his return home with a burning ambition to right past wrongs. Woven throughout is a new history of Reynolds, growing up in Devon near a key port in England, becoming a portraitist of empire, rising to the top of Britain’s art world and yet remaining ambivalent about his nation’s expansionist trajectory.De Traidor a Herói: O falsificador de Vermeer que enganou a Holanda e os nazis
By Lázaro Droznes. 2018
A incrível história de Han van Meegeren, o pintor holandês que criou falsos Vermeers, enganou os seus pares holandeses, vendeu…
um quadro a Herman Goering e, finalmente, acabou por confessar as suas falsificações para escapar à pena de morte, quando foi acusado de alta traição. Após o julgamento, tornou-se um herói nacional por ter defraudado os nazis. Han van Meegeren era um ointor holandês que, durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, pintou Vermeers melhores que os originais, enganando toda a comunidade das artes e até Herman Goering, acabando, no final, por confessar ser um falsificador para se livrar da acusação de alta traição, por ter tido negócios com o inimigo da nação. Esta ficção dramatizada baseia-se na história impresssionante de Han van Meegeren, durante os anos 1930s e a Segunda Guerra Mundial, quando conseguiu criar e vender seis falsos quadros de Vermeer e dois de Franz Hals por cerca de 100 milhões de dólares em valores atualizados. Um dos Vermeers foi comprado por Herman Goering, a nsegunda pesssoa mais importante na hierarquia do Terceiro Reich. No final da Segunda Guerra Mundial, van Meegeren foi acusado de traição ao seu país e viu-se obrigado a confessar as falsificações para salvar a sua própria vida. Esta confissão abalou a comunidade da pintura holandesa e mundial como um terramoto, já que os quadros falsificados tinham sido aceites unanimemente. Um deles, "Cristo em Emaús", era até considerado a melhor obra pintada por Vermeer. Esta ficção, baseada em eventos reais, conduz-nos a uma reflexão sobre o conceito da autenticidade na arte e a validade dos conceitos tradicionais de verdade e de beleza: um quadro deixa de ser belo quaArt and Rivalry: The Marriage of Mary and Christopher Pratt
By Carol Bishop-Gwyn. 2019
The unauthorized biography of Canada's most famous artist couple and the rivalry that drove them.She painted as if with pure…
light, radiant colours making quotidian kitchen scenes come alive with sublimated drama. He painted like clockwork, each stroke precise and measured with exquisite care, leaving no angle unchecked and no subtlety of tone unattended. Some would say Mary Pratt was fire and Christopher, ice. And yet Newfoundland's Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera (or Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner...) presented their marriage as a portrait of harmony and balance. But balance off the canvas rarely makes great art, and the Pratts' art was spectacular. As a youth at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Mary pursued her future husband, a prodigious art talent, and supported his determination to study painting instead of medicine. They married and removed themselves to a Newfoundland outport where his painting alone provided the means to raise a family. But as Mary's own talents became evident and she sought her own hours at the easel, when not raising their four children, and as rumours of Christopher's affair with a young model spread, the Pratts' harmonious exterior slowly cracked, to scandal in Newfoundland and fascination across the country. A marriage ended, and gave way to a furious competition for dominance in Canadian art.