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The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris
By Marc Petitjean. 2020
This intimate account offers a new, unexpected understanding of the artist’s work and of the vibrant 1930s surrealist scene. In…
1938, just as she was leaving Mexico for her first solo exhibition in New York, Frida Kahlo was devastated to learn from her husband, Diego Rivera, that he intended to divorce her. This latest blow followed a long series of betrayals, most painful of all his affair with her beloved younger sister, Cristina. In early 1939, anxious and adrift, Kahlo traveled from the United States to France—her only trip to Europe and the beginning of a unique period of her life when she was enjoying success on her own. Now, for the first time, this previously overlooked part of her story is brought to light in exquisite detail. Marc Petitjean takes the reader to Paris, where Kahlo spends her days alongside luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Dora Maar, and Marcel Duchamp. Using Kahlo’s whirlwind romance with the author’s father, Michel Petitjean, as a jumping-off point, The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris provides a striking portrait of the artist and an inside look at the history of one of her most powerful, enigmatic paintings.Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love
By Naomi Wolf. 2020
Minnie Pearl’s Diary
By Minnie Pearl. 2020
Sarah Ophelia Colley, takes on her well-known alter ego Minnie Pearl to write a quaint diary in her inimitable Southern…
Country style.“Dear Folks:Up to now, you’ve only heard what she could tell on the air. But at last she’s been persuaded to give us her secret diary—writ by hand.We asked her for some information “to put on the outside of the book” and this is what she sent us:BIRTHPLACE: Grinder’s Switch, 3 miles west of Centerville (not even a wagon greasin’). Population 300 folks; 350 dogs.DATE OF BIRTH: Age is a relative matter and that’s her trouble—too many relatives—she’s in her early fifties—young enough to wink at the fellers; too old to have them wink back.FAMILY: Minnie has a brother, a sister, Uncle Nabob, Aunt Ambrosy, Coz Elmer, etc., etc., etc.SCHOOLING: Minnie Pearl went all the way through Grinder’s Switch Elementary School—several times.CHILDHOOD ACTIVITIES: She enjoyed carefree life at Grinder’s Switch, early interest in fellers, kissing games, coon hunts, possum hunts, kissing games, swimming in Duck River, watching the train go through, kissing games.LATER ACTIVITIES: She participates—invited or not—in all activities at Grinder’s Switch with heavy emphasis on efforts to snare a husband. She is the social leader of Grinder’s Switch, showing keen interest in ice cream socials, church socials, and any other parties where they play games, especially kissing games. B(u )y now!”The Passionate Years
By Caresse Crosby. 2020
A mad, amusing, and revealing look at Paris in the twenties and at the people Caresse Crosby knew—Hemingway, F. Scott…
Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, James Joyce, Picasso, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Lawrence of Arabia, and a host of others. In a single day, a visitor to the Crosby home outside of Paris might have found Salvador Dali at work in one room, Douglas Fairbanks Senior playfully swinging from the rafters, and D. H. Lawrence sunning himself by the pool.“In her autobiography Mrs. Crosby has added a valuable footnote to the literary history of our time....She tells some amazingly good stories. Her account of Lindbergh’s arrival in Paris is a superb piece of straight reporting and her description of a Quatre Arts ball at which she won first prize for reasons that cannot be mentioned in a family newspaper is funny and sad at the same time. Her fostering of unknown or otherwise unpublishable writers (Crane, Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, among others) through the Black Sun Press can now be seen clearly for the important project it was.—The New York Times“The Passionate Years becomes immediately an essential document of its era. Also it is an entertaining book.”—New York Herald TribuneThe Story of a Hypnotist
By Kurt Singer, Dr Franz Polgar. 2020
"Dr. Franz Polgar (April 18, 1900 - June 1979) was a renowned psychologist, hypnotist, lecturer and entertainer. Born in city…
of Enying, Hungary, he earned a PhD in Psychology from the University of Budapest. In his 1951 autobiography Polgar claimed that he had served as Sigmund Freud's "medical hypnotist" (Polgar's term) in 1924 and had worked in close association with Freud for six months and had assisted in the treatment of Freud's patients. He immigrated to the United States in 1935 and honed his hypnotism skills by working in speakeasy bars in New York City. He married his wife, Lillian, in 1938 and she became his booking and publications manager. They had two children, Julian and Risa."My Captain America: A Granddaughter's Memoir of a Legendary Comic Book Artist
By Megan Margulies. 2020
A finely wrought coming-of-age memoir about the author&’s relationship with her beloved grandfather Joe Simon, cartoonist and co-creator of Captain…
America.In the 1990s, Megan Margulies&’s Upper West Side neighborhood was marked by addicts shooting up in subway stations, frequent burglaries, and the &“Wild Man of 96th Street,&” who set fires under cars and heaved rocks through stained glass church windows. The world inside her parents&’ tiny one-bedroom apartment was hardly a respite, with a family of five—including some loud personalities—eventually occupying the 550-square-foot space. Salvation arrived in the form of her spirited grandfather, Daddy Joe, whose midtown studio became a second home to Megan. There, he listened to her woes, fed her Hungry Man frozen dinners, and simply let her be. His living room may have been dominated by the drawing table, notes, and doodles that marked him as Joe Simon the cartoonist. But for Megan, he was always Daddy Joe: an escape from her increasingly hectic home, a nonjudgmental voice whose sense of humor was as dry as his farfel, and a steady presence in a world that felt off balance. Evoking New York City both in the 1980s and &’90s and during the Golden Age of comics in the 1930s and &’40s, My Captain America flashes back from Megan&’s story to chart the life and career of Rochester-native Joe Simon, from his early days retouching publicity photos and doing spot art for magazines, to his partnership with Jack Kirby at Timely Comics (the forerunner of Marvel Comics), which resulted in the creation of beloved characters like Captain America, the Boy Commandos, and Fighting American. My Captain America offers a tender and sharply observed account of Megan&’s life with Daddy Joe—and an intimate portrait of the creative genius who gave us one of the most enduring superheroes of all time.Body of Clay, Soul of Fire: Richard Bresnahan and the Saint John's Pottery
By Matthew Welch, Richard Bresnahan. 2001
"Body of Clay, Soul of Fire" will delight art lovers, potters, and collectors, as well as everyone who is interested…
in Japanese and Benedictine traditions. Richard Bresnahan is a preeminent American potter and an ambassador for the natural environment. Reared on a farm in North Dakota, he graduated from Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and apprenticed as a potter in Japan. Returning to Saint John's, where he is an artist in residence, he built a massive wood-burning kiln, which, with its innovative flame flues and water channels, dwarfs all other North American kilns. By digging his own clay, using local seeds and hulls as glazing materials, and firing with deadfall, Bresnahan also practices a brand of environmentalism worthy of his Benedictine surroundings.The Architecture of Andrew Thomas Taylor: Montreal's Square Mile and Beyond
By Susan Wagg. 2013
By the year 1900, architect Andrew Taylor had designed Bank of Montreal branches across the continent and much of McGill…
University, helped found the McGill School of Architecture, and played a critical role in creating the first professional organization for Quebec architects. In The Architecture of Andrew Thomas Taylor, Susan Wagg presents a groundbreaking study of the life and work of a major figure in nineteenth-century Canadian architecture. Born in Edinburgh and trained in Scotland and England, Taylor spent two decades in Canada between 1883 and 1904, designing some of Montreal's most iconic landmarks. Wagg places his career amidst the wealth of opportunities provided by Canada's high society and captains of industry. Taylor's Canadian relatives, Montreal's powerful Redpath family, brought him into contact with the small group of financiers and entrepreneurs who controlled Canada's destiny. With the support of such influential patrons as Sir William Macdonald and the Bank of Montreal, Taylor successfully confronted dramatic changes in building technology as iron and steel were increasingly used and buildings grew ever taller. He innovatively adapted English and American styles to the Canadian environment, designing structures distinctively suited to their place in history. Positioning Taylor's extensive designs within the context of his time, The Architecture of Andrew Thomas Taylor firmly establishes his work as a cornerstone of Canadian architecture.Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin
By Janice N. Harrington. 2016
A biographical reflection on the art and life of Horace H. Pippin-the best-known African-American artist of his time-Primitive is a…
critique on current perceptions surrounding African-American folk art, as well as the absence of key African-American history in present-day curricula. Award-winning poet Janice Harrington connects readers with a fascinating, odds-defying artist, all while underscoring the human need for artistic expression.Frida Kahlo: and Other Conversations (The Last Interview Series)
By Frida Kahlo. 2020
Frida Kahlo's legacy continues to grow in the public imagination in the nearly fifty years since her "discovery" in the…
1970s. This collection of conversations over the course of her brief career allows a peek at the woman behind the hype. And allows us to see the image of herself she carefully crafted for the public.Frida Kahlo is now an icon. In the decades since her death, Kahlo has been celebrated as a proto-feminist, a misunderstood genius, and a leftist hero, but during her lifetime most knew her as ... Diego Rivera's wife. Featuring conversations with American scholar and Marxist, Bertram D. Wolfe, and art critic Raquel Tibol, this collection shows an artist undervalued, but also a woman in control of her image. From her timid beginnings after her first solo show, to a woman who confidently states that she is her only influence, the many faces of Kahlo presented here clearly show us the woman behind the "Fridamania" we know today.Young Rembrandt: A Biography
By Onno Blom. 2019
A captivating exploration of the little-known story of Rembrandt’s formative years by a prize-winning biographer. Rembrandt van Rijn’s early years…
are as famously shrouded in mystery as Shakespeare’s, and his life has always been an enigma. How did a miller’s son from a provincial Dutch town become the greatest artist of his age? How in short, did Rembrandt become Rembrandt? Seeking the roots of Rembrandt’s genius, the celebrated Dutch writer Onno Blom immersed himself in Leiden, the city in which Rembrandt was born in 1606 and where he spent his first twenty-five years. It was a turbulent time, the city having only recently rebelled against the Spanish. There are almost no written records by or about Rembrandt, so Blom tracked down old maps, sought out the Rembrandt family house and mill, and walked the route that Rembrandt would have taken to school. Leiden was a bustling center of intellectual life, and Blom, a native of Leiden himself, brings to life all the places Rembrandt would have known: the university, library, botanical garden, and anatomy theater. He investigated the concerns and tensions of the era: burial rites for plague victims, the renovation of the city in the wake of the Spanish siege, the influx of immigrants to work the cloth trade. And he examined the origins and influences that led to the famous and beloved paintings that marked the beginning of Rembrandt’s celebrated career as the paramount painter of the Dutch Golden Age. Young Rembrandt is a fascinating portrait of the artist and the world that made him. Evocatively told and beautifully illustrated with more than 100 color images, it is a superb biography that captures Rembrandt for a new generation.Just Like Rube Goldberg: The Incredible True Story Of The Man Behind The Machines
By Sarah Aronson. 2019
Discover how Rube Goldberg followed his dreams to become an award-winning cartoonist, inventor, and even an adjective in the dictionary…
in this inspiring and funny biographical picture book. Want to become an award-winning cartoonist and inventor? Follow your dreams, just like Rube Goldberg! From a young age, Rube Goldberg had a talent for art. But his father, a German immigrant, wanted Rube to have a secure job. So, Rube went to college and became an engineer. But Rube didn’t want to spend his life mapping sewer pipes. He wanted to follow his passion, so Rube got a low-level job at a newspaper, and from there, he worked his way up, creating cartoons that made people laugh and tickled the imagination. He became known for his fantastic Rube Goldberg machines—complicated contraptions with many parts that performed a simple task in an elaborate and farfetched way. Eventually, his cartoons earned him a Pulitzer Prize and his own adjective in the dictionary. This moving biography is sure to encourage young artists and inventors to pursue their passions.Goya: A Portrait of the Artist
By Janis Tomlinson. 2020
The first major English-language biography of Francisco Goya y Lucientes, who ushered in the modern eraThe life of Francisco Goya…
(1746–1828) coincided with an age of transformation in Spanish history that brought upheavals in the country's politics and at the court which Goya served, changes in society, the devastation of the Iberian Peninsula in the war against Napoleon, and an ensuing period of political instability. In this revelatory biography, Janis Tomlinson draws on a wide range of documents—including letters, court papers, and a sketchbook used by Goya in the early years of his career—to provide a nuanced portrait of a complex and multifaceted painter and printmaker, whose art is synonymous with compelling images of the people, events, and social revolution that defined his life and era.Tomlinson challenges the popular image of the artist as an isolated figure obsessed with darkness and death, showing how Goya's likeability and ambition contributed to his success at court, and offering new perspectives on his youth, rich family life, extensive travels, and lifelong friendships. She explores the full breadth of his imagery—from scenes inspired by life in Madrid to visions of worlds without reason, from royal portraits to the atrocities of war. She sheds light on the artist's personal trials, including the deaths of six children and the onset of deafness in middle age, but also reconsiders the conventional interpretation of Goya's late years as a period of disillusion, viewing them instead as years of liberated artistic invention, most famously in the murals on the walls of his country house, popularly known as the "black" paintings.A monumental achievement, Goya: A Portrait of the Artist is the definitive biography of an artist whose faith in his art and his genius inspired paintings, drawings, prints, and frescoes that continue to captivate, challenge, and surprise us two centuries later.De Kooning: An American Master
By Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan. 2004
Willem de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, a true “painter’s painter” whose protean…
work continues to inspire many artists. In the thirties and forties, along with Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he became a key figure in the revolutionary American movement of abstract expressionism. Of all the painters in that group, he worked the longest and was the most prolific, creating powerful, startling images well into the 1980s. The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture. Ten years in the making, and based on previously unseen letters and documents as well as on hundreds of interviews, this is a fresh, richly detailed, and masterful portrait. The young de Kooning overcame an unstable, impoverished, and often violent early family life to enter the Academie in Rotterdam, where he learned both classic art and guild techniques. Arriving in New York as a stowaway from Holland in 1926, he underwent a long struggle to become a painter and an American, developing a passionate friendship with his fellow immigrant Arshile Gorky, who was both a mentor and an inspiration. During the Depression, de Kooning emerged as a central figure in the bohemian world of downtown New York, surviving by doing commercial work and painting murals for the WPA. His first show at the Egan Gallery in 1948 was a revelation. Soon, the critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas Hess were championing his work, and de Kooning took his place as the charismatic leader of the New York school—just as American art began to dominate the international scene. Dashingly handsome and treated like a movie star on the streets of downtown New York, de Kooning had a tumultuous marriage to Elaine de Kooning, herself a fascinating character of the period. At the height of his fame, he spent his days painting powerful abstractions and intense, disturbing pictures of the female figure—and his nights living on the edge, drinking, womanizing, and talking at the Cedar bar with such friends as Franz Kline and Frank O’Hara. By the 1960s, exhausted by the feverish art world, he retreated to the Springs on Long Island, where he painted an extraordinary series of lush pastorals. In the 1980s, as he slowly declined into what was almost certainly Alzheimer’s, he created a vast body of haunting and ethereal late work. This is an authoritative and brilliant exploration of the art, life, and world of an American master. Pulitzer Prize WinnerMaterial: Making and the Art of Transformation
By Nick Kary. 2020
A master craftsperson explores the ways in which working with our hands reveals the essence of both our humanity and…
our relationship with the natural, material world In our present age of computer-assisted design, mass production and machine precision, the traditional skills of the maker or craftsperson are hard to find. Yet the desire for well-made and beautiful objects from the hands (and mind) of a skilled artisan is just as present today as it ever has been. Whether the medium they work with is wood, metal, clay or something else, traditional makers are living links to the rich vein of knowledge and skills that defines our common human heritage. More than this, though, many of us harbor a deep and secret yearning to produce something – to build or shape, to imagine and create our own objects that are imbued not only with beauty and functionality, but with a story and, in essence, a spirit drawn from us. Nick Kary understands this yearning. For nearly four decades he has worked on commission to make fine, distinctive furniture and cabinets from wood, most of it sourced near his home, in the counties of South West England. During this time, he has been both a teacher and a student; one who is fascinated with the philosophy and practice of craft work of all kinds. In Material, Kary takes readers along with him to visit some of the places where modern artisans are preserving, and in some cases passing on, the old craft skills. His vivid descriptions and eye for detail make this book a rich and delightful read, and the natural and cultural history he imparts along the way provides an important context for understanding our own past and the roots of our industrial society. Personal, engaging, and filled with memorable people, landscapes and scenes, Material is a rich celebration of what it means to imagine and create, which in the end is the essence of being human, and native to a place. As Kary puts it, “Wood and words, trees and people, material and ethereal – it is here I love increasingly to dwell.”Horacio Quiroga y Alfonsina Storni: Amor, locura y muerte
By Fernando Klein. 2020
Una investigación histórica con el pulso de novela que revela un amor –hasta ahora poco conocido– entre Horacio Quiroga y…
Alfonsina Storni. Con rigor histórico y pluma de novelista Fernando Klein nos pinta Montevideo, Buenos Aires, la selva misionera, personajes, y un amor en un tiempo fermental en ambas orillas del Plata. Alfonsina Storni una mujer de apariencia frágil de carácter fuerte y resuelto, inteligencia y fuerza de mujer viva, enamorada de la vida y de la muerte, y sobre todo de la libertad, con una pluma que enfrentó a una sociedad hipócrita y Horacio Quiroga un hombre marcado por la genialidad y la tragedia con mil vidas: dandy, naturalista, motor intelectual de una generación, excelso escritor, apasionado de la vida, coinciden en un camino marcado por la pasión carnal e intelectual. En 1916 –bajo la sombra de la Gran Guerra que atormentaba el mundo, en un Buenos Aires y Montevideo con el encendido de sus primeras luces que brillarán en las siguientes décadas– Horacio y Alfonsina construirán una historia de amor que será un remanso para los fantasmas de la locura y la depresión que sobrevuela esos corazones y mentes. Horacio Quiroga y Alfonsina Storni. Amor, locura y muerte es una reconstrucción histórica y documentada, pero también una novela donde Fernando Klein suelta la pluma y nos dibuja un paisaje bucólico lleno amor, locura y muerte. A través de estas páginas el lector podrá adentrarse en una época, un tiempo, la literatura y una sociedad a través de los ojos y corazones de dos referentes de la cultura rioplatense.Golem Girl: A Memoir
By Riva Lehrer. 2020
The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a…
society afraid of strange bodies&“Golem Girl is luminous; a profound portrait of the artist as a young—and mature—woman; an unflinching social history of disability over the last six decades; and a hymn to life, love, family, and spirit.&”—David Mitchell, author of Cloud AtlasWhat do we sacrifice in the pursuit of normalcy? And what becomes possible when we embrace monstrosity? Can we envision a world that sees impossible creatures?In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. At the time, most such children are not expected to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to "fix" her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured.Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark—it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits—inventing an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. Each portrait story begins to transform the myths she&’s been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal.Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva's work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human.Priase for Golem Girl&“Lehrer&’s story is a revelation of an inner subjective life—full of tragedy, love, and creativity—pushing against the external social stigmas, cultural narratives, and prejudices surrounding disability. She admits a felt kinship with other &“monsters&” because their bodies were also &“built by human hands,&” but unlike them, she is her own purpose, her own meaning, her own unstoppable golem.&”—Stephen Asma, author of On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst FearsJourney to the Maghreb and Andalusia, 1832: The Travel Notebooks and Other Writings
By Eugène Delacroix. 2019
In 1832, Eugène Delacroix accompanied a French diplomatic mission to Morocco, the first leg of a journey through the Maghreb…
and Andalusia that left an indelible impression on the painter. This comprehensive, annotated English-language translation of his notes and essays about this formative trip makes available a classic example of travel writing about the "Orient" from the era and provides a unique picture of the region against the backdrop of the French conquest of Algeria.Delacroix’s travels in Morocco, Algeria, and southern Spain led him to discover a culture about which he had held only imperfect and stereotypical ideas and provided a rich store of images that fed his imagination forever after. He wrote extensively about these experiences in several stunningly beautiful notebooks, noting the places he visited, routes he followed, scenes he observed, and people he encountered. Later, Delacroix wrote two articles about the trip, "A Jewish Wedding in Morocco" and the recently discovered "Memories of a Visit to Morocco," in which he shared these extraordinary experiences, revealing how deeply influential the trip was to his art and career. Never before translated into English, Journey to the Maghreb and Andalusia, 1832 includes Delacroix’s two articles, four previously known travel notebooks, fragments of two additional, recently discovered notebooks, and numerous notes and drafts. Michèle Hannoosh supplements these with an insightful introduction, full critical notes, appendices, and biographies, creating an essential volume for scholars and readers interested in Delacroix, French art history, Northern Africa, and nineteenth-century travel and culture.Come Look With Me: The Artist at Work
By R. Sarah Richardson. 2006
COME LOOK WITH ME: THE ARTIST AT WORK introduces children to twelve magnificent works of art. More importantly, it offers…
both children and adults a whole new way of encountering any work of art, one which engages the imagination as much as the eye. Well suited for both individual and classroom use, THE ARTIST AT WORK pairs quality art reproductions with thought-provoking questions, encouraging children to learn through visual exploration and interaction. Thoughtful text introduces the world and work of the artist, making the most of a child's natural curiosity.We Flew over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold
By Faith Ringgold. 2005
In We Flew over the Bridge, one of the country’s preeminent African American artists—and award-winning children’s book authors—shares the fascinating…
story of her life. Faith Ringgold’s artworks—startling “story quilts,” politically charged paintings, and more—hang in the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and other major museums around the world, as well as in the private collections of Maya Angelou, Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey. Her children’s books, including the Caldecott Honor Book Tar Beach, have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. But Ringgold’s path to success has not been easy. In this gorgeously illustrated memoir, she looks back and shares the story of her struggles, growth, and triumphs. Ringgold recollects how she had to surmount a wall of prejudices as she worked to refine her artistic vision and raise a family. At the same time, the story she tells is one of warm family memories and sustaining friendships, community involvement, and hope for the future.