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Showing 141 - 160 of 1110 items
By Nancy Harrison, Gregory Copeland, Ellen Labrecque. 2015
Born in Wisconsin in 1867, Frank Lloyd Wright became obsessed with a set of building blocks his mother had given…
to him on his ninth birthday. He grew up to become the father of organic architecture and the greatest American architect of all time, having designed more than 1,100 buildings during his lifetime. These included private homes - such as the stunning Fallingwater, churches, temples, a hotel, and the world-famous Guggenheim Museum in New York City. When asked how he could create so many designs, he answered, "I can't get them out fast enough." Frank Lloyd Wright was a man ahead of his time who could barely keep up with his own ideas!By Rosemary Sullivan. 1991
"The price of life is pain, since the price of comfort is damnation." Sensuously beautiful, intensely passionate, generous to a…
fault — and one of the century's most brilliant writers of poetic prose — Elizabeth Smart carved her own destiny through sheer determination, strength and perserverance. In By Heart, the first biography of Smart, Rosemary Sullivan recounts the author's childhood in Ottawa as the second daughter of an affluent and well-connected family. Inspired by romantic notions of rebellion, Smart rejected what she perceived to be a colonistic literary community and entered a long period of self-imposed exile, desperate to escape family and country, and willing to sacrifice both wealth and propriety in favour of freedom. During her frequent trips to Europe, New York, California and Mexico, Smart came to know many of the important writers of the day, including W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Lawrence Durrell. While browsing in a London bookstore, she discovered the poetry of George Barker and instantly fell in love with the married poet. They met. Thus began one of the most intense, extraordinary and scandalous love affairs of our time. Their passionate and troubled relationship inspired Smart's By Grand Central Station, I Sat Down and Wept, which critic Brigid Bronphy has called one of the world's half dozen masterpieces of poetic prose. Partly because of the difficulties in single-handedly raising the four children she had with George Barker, and partly because of her own lack of confidence, it would be thirty-two years before Smart published a second novel. By Heart explores the career of a woman writer in the 1940s: the struggle to speak when silence is seductive, the battle against a profound sense of inadequacy, the release and elation that comes out of the pain of writing. The life of Elizabeth Smart is a story of extremes, of life as the supreme fiction. As Smart asks in her final journals, "Can I be contented with my lot? Well, I danced."By Adam Begley. 2017
A dazzling, stylish biography of a fabled Parisian photographer, adventurer, and pioneer.A recent French biography begins, Who doesn't know Nadar?…
In France, that's a rhetorical question. Of all of the legendary figures who thrived in mid-19th-century Paris—a cohort that includes Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Gustave Courbet, and Alexandre Dumas—Nadar was perhaps the most innovative, the most restless, the most modern.The first great portrait photographer, a pioneering balloonist, the first person to take an aerial photograph, and the prime mover behind the first airmail service, Nadar was one of the original celebrity artist-entrepreneurs. A kind of 19th-century Andy Warhol, he knew everyone worth knowing and photographed them all, conferring on posterity psychologically compelling portraits of Manet, Sarah Bernhardt, Delacroix, Daumier and countless others—a priceless panorama of Parisian celebrity. Born Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, he adopted the pseudonym Nadar as a young bohemian, when he was a budding writer and cartoonist. Later he affixed the name Nadar to the façade of his opulent photographic studio in giant script, the illuminated letters ten feet tall, the whole sign fifty feet long, a garish red beacon on the boulevard. Nadar became known to all of Europe and even across the Atlantic when he launched "The Giant," a gas balloon the size of a twelve-story building, the largest of its time. With his daring exploits aboard his humongous balloon (including a catastrophic crash that made headlines around the world), he gave his friend Jules Verne the model for one of his most dynamic heroes. The Great Nadar is a brilliant, lavishly illustrated biography of a larger-than-life figure, a visionary whose outsized talent and canny self-promotion put him way ahead of his time.By Nancy Harrison, Kirsten Anderson, Gregory Copeland. 2014
Best known for his screen prints of soup cans and movie stars, this shy young boy from Pittsburgh shot to…
fame with his radical ideas of what "art" could be. Working in the aptly named "Factory," Warhol's paintings, movies, and eccentric lifestyle blurred the lines between pop culture and art, ushering in the Pop Art movement and, with it, a national obsession. Who Was Andy Warhol? tells the story of an enigmatic man who grew into a cultural icon.By Molly Mullin. 2001
In the early twentieth century, a group of elite East coast women turned to the American Southwest in search of…
an alternative to European-derived concepts of culture. In Culture in the Marketplace Molly H. Mullin provides a detailed narrative of the growing influence that this network of women had on the Native American art market--as well as the influence these activities had on them--in order to investigate the social construction of value and the history of American concepts of culture. Drawing on fiction, memoirs, journalistic accounts, and extensive interviews with artists, collectors, and dealers, Mullin shows how anthropological notions of culture were used to valorize Indian art and create a Southwest Indian art market. By turning their attention to Indian affairs and art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she argues, these women escaped the gender restrictions of their eastern communities and found ways of bridging public and private spheres of influence. Tourism, in turn, became a means of furthering this cultural colonization. Mullin traces the development of aesthetic worth as it was influenced not only by politics and profit but also by gender, class, and regional identities, revealing how notions of "culture" and "authenticity" are fundamentally social ones. She also shows how many of the institutions that the early patrons helped to establish continue to play an important role in the contemporary market for American Indian art. This book will appeal to audiences in cultural anthropology, art history, American studies, women's studies, and cultural history.By Ed Young, Libby Koponen. 2011
By Jean Fritz. 2001
Fritz (And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?) again calls upon her informal yet informative style to spotlight a scintillating sliver…
of history, recounted in two related tales. Her narrative opens as the ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci, earns a commission from the duke of Milan to create a sculpture to honor the duke's father a bronze horse three times larger than life. Though this creative genius spent years on the project, he died without realizing his dream and, writes Fritz, "It was said that even on his deathbed, Leonardo wept for his horse." The author then fast-forwards to 1977: an American named Charles Dent vows to create the sculpture and make it a gift from the American people to the residents of Italy. How his goal was accomplished (alas, posthumously) makes for an intriguing tale that Fritz deftly relays. Talbott's (Forging Freedom) diverse multimedia artwork includes reproductions of da Vinci's notebooks, panoramas revealing the Renaissance in lavish detail and majestic renderings of the final equine sculpture. Talbott makes creative use of the book's format a rectangle topped by a semi-circle: the rounded space by turns becomes a window through which da Vinci views a cloud shaped like a flying horse; the domed building that was Dent's studio and gallery; and a globe depicting the route the bronze horse travels on its way from the U.S. to Italy. An inventive introduction to the Renaissance and one of its masters.By Richard Brookhiser. 2003
The author of several books on the US founding fathers portrays the politics and pleasure-loving life of the rarely credited…
draftsman of the Constitution's final form and author of its "We the people" preamble, during the American and French Revolutions. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)By Lucy O'Brien. 1969
Material Girl . . . Immaculate sexpot . . . Superstar . . . Mother . . . Kabbalah enthusiast…
. . . For three decades she has defied categorization. . . . She remains one of our greatest living pop icons. Here is the groundbreaking biography that finally solves the mystery at the heart of Madonna's chameleonlike existence. Drawing upon scores of candid interviews with producers, musicians, collaborators, lovers, and friends, Lucy O'Brien's Madonna: Like an Icon explores the complex personality and legendary drive that have made Madonna the most famous female pop artist of our time. From her mother's premature death to Madonna's dynamic arrival on the New York club scene, from "Like a Virgin" to Evita and beyond, every stage of this dazzling star's life and career is brilliantly illuminated--the stereotypes deconstructed, the lies exposed, the artist examined, the legend celebrated.By Dmitry Samarov. 2014
"Funny, touching, observant, philosophical, sad, world-weary, artful and wonderful are the stories that pepper this book. There has never been…
a cab driver like Dmitry Samarov and, since he's given up for keeps late-night for-hire driving, there never will be."--Rick Kogan, hall-of-fame reporter for the Chicago Tribune"With his gorgeous pen and ink drawings and funny, tragic, and all too true stories, Samarov's chronicle of his adventures as a Chicago taxi driver is by far the best ride you'll ever take in a cab."--Wendy MacNaughtonDmitry Samarov's illustrated memoir captures encounters with drunken passengers, overbearing cops, unreasonable city bureaucracy, his fellow cabdrivers, a few potholes, and other unexpectedly beautiful moments. Accompanied by dozens of Samarov's original artworks--composed during traffic jams, waits at the airport, and lulls in his shifts--the stories in Where To? provide a street-level view of America from the perspective of an immigrant painter driving a cab for money.Dmitry Samarov was born in Moscow, USSR, in 1970. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1978. He got in trouble in first grade for doodling on his Lenin Red Star pin and hasn't stopped doodling since. After a false start at Parsons School of Design in New York, he graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. Upon graduation he promptly began driving a cab--first in Boston, then after a time, in Chicago.By Brian Clegg. 2003
Back in thirteenth-century Europe, in the early years of the great universities, learning was spiced with the danger of mob…
violence and a terrifyingly repressive religious censorship. Roger Bacon, a humble and devout English friar, seems an unlikely figure to challenge the orthodoxy of his day - yet he risked his life to establish the basis for true knowledge.Born c.1220, Bacon was passionately interested in the natural world and how things worked. Such dangerous topics were vetoed by his Order, and it was only when a new Pope proved sympathetic that he began compiling his encyclopaedia on everything from optics to alchemy - the synopsis took a year and ran to 800,000 words and he was never to complete the work itself. Sadly, the enlightened Pope died, and Bacon was tried as a magician and incarcerated for ten years. Legend transformed Bacon into a sorcerer, 'Doctor Mirabilis', yet he taught that all magic was based on fraud, and his books were the first flowering of the scientific thinking that would transform our world. He advanced the understanding of optics, made geographical breakthroughs later used by Columbus, predicted everything from horseless carriages to the telescope, and stressed the importance of mathematics to science, a significance ignored for 400 years. His biggest contribution was to insist that a study of the natural world by observation and exact measurement was the surest foundation for truth. Clegg uncovers the realities of life in a medieval university and friary, setting out the shadowy facts of Bacon's life alongside his writings. The result is both a fascinating biography and a picture of the age.By Carol Sabbeth. 2011
Vincent van Gogh's admiration for and departure from Impressionism and his relationships with the other enthusiastic, like-minded artists who ultimately…
formed the Post-Impressionist movement are explained and explored in this collection of art activities for kids. Debunking the persistent stereotype of the mad pauper who cut off his ear, van Gogh is revealed as the serious boy who loved nature and reading and spoke four languages; the young man who took great satisfaction in the study of art, his successful career as a gallery salesman, and the "brotherhood of artists" he helped to create; and the increasingly troubled and ill man who cared deeply for family and friends and tried in vain to recover. Through a series of fun and creative projects, such as a Starry Night Peep Box, a Pointillist Sailboat, and a Japanese Fold-out Album, kids will be exposed to such art as van Gogh's vibrant landscapes, Paul Signac's Mediterranean Sea images in dazzling dots, and Paul Gauguin's tropical landscapes in unnatural colors. Aspiring young artists and history buffs will learn whether or not these famous painters always got along, how they helped each other in the process, and what made Post-Impressionist art unlike anything ever painted.By Tom Kupsh. 2008
In addition to hundreds of whimsical welded sculptures, Tom Every poured most of his effort into the Forevertron, the world's…
largest sculpture built by a single person, and in the process, he discovered his alter ego: Dr. Evermor. With the full participation of Tom and Eleanor Every, Every's amazing life is keenly documented, including never published family photos, sketches, and personal memories, producing a detailed portrait of a unique self-taught artist. From a very early age, Every collected, modified, and resold cast-off industrial material. His work as a salvager led him to Alex Jordan Jr., creator of the House on the Rock. When the time is right (and only Dr. Evermor will know when) the famous, enigmatic scientist will climb the winding staircase of the Forevertron and enter its egg-shaped travel chamber, power up the dynamos and flip on the thrusters, and fly away on a "highball to heaven," propelled by an electromagnetic lighting force beam. Or so the story goes. Anyone who has spent time at the elaborate visionary environment created by Tom Every has heard some variation of the Evermor myth. Lesser known is the story behind the story, the fascinating history of this one-of-a-kind creative spirit.By Bennard B Perlman. 1982
The Galerie des Modes has been called the "most beautiful collection in existence on the fashions of the 18th century."…
Published over a 10-year period, its plates were elegantly drawn, accurately engraved, and exquisitely hand colored. Here are 64 of the finest plates, reproduced faithfully from the originals and selected by costume historian Stella Blum.By Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett. 1989
In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the bestselling classic is introduced to a new generation-with an added preface by Warhol's…
diarist and long-time friend, Pat Hackett, contemplating Warhol's lasting cultural impact. This international literary sensation turns the spotlight on one of the most influential and controversial figures in American culture. Filled with shocking observations about the lives, loves, and careers of the rich, famous, and fabulous, Warhol's journal is endlessly fun and fascinating. Spanning the mid-1970s until just a few days before his death in 1987, THE ANDY WARHOL DIARIES is a compendium of the more than twenty thousand pages of the artist's diary that he dictated daily to Pat Hackett. In it, Warhol gives us the ultimate backstage pass to practically everything that went on in the world-both high and low. He hangs out with "everybody": Jackie O ("thinks she's so grand she doesn't even owe it to the public to have another great marriage to somebody big"), Yoko Ono ("We dialed F-U-C-K-Y-O-U and L-O-V-E-Y-O-U to see what happened, we had so much fun"), and "Princess Marina of, I guess, Greece," along with art-world rock stars Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Salvador Dali, and Keith Haring. Warhol had something to say about everyone who crossed his path, whether it was Lou Reed or Liberace, Patti Smith or Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra or Michael Jackson. A true cultural artifact, THE ANDY WARHOL DIARIES amounts to a portrait of an artist-and an era-unlike any other.By Sally Mann. 2015
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARThe New York Times, Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle,…
Vogue, NPR, Publishers Weekly, BookPage A revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann. In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder." In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.By S E Stewart, Louise Duguay. 2015
In the first part of the twentieth century few women in western Canada had careers as artists—Pauline Boutal had three:…
23 years as a fashion illustrator for the Eaton’s catalogue for the graphic design company, Brigden’s of Winnipeg, 27 years as the Artistic Director at the Cercle Molière Theatre and 70 years as a visual artist. Born in Brittany in 1894, Boutal painted in a traditional style and trained at the Winnipeg School of Art, the Cape Cod School of Art, and at l'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, France. She left an important legacy of portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and illustrations as well as theatre sets and costume designs. This English translation of Louise Duguay’s award-winning "Pauline Boutal: Destin d'artiste 1894–1992" shares the story of an important artist who lived an exceptional life. Today a great number of Boutal’s works can be found in major private and corporate collections across Canada. For her contribution to the French culture and theatre in Canada, Boutal was awarded numerous prestigious prizes, including the Order of Canada. In addition to thousands of sketches, illustrations, and paintings, Boutal also left a rich legacy of letters, speeches and interviews at the Centre du Patrimoine Canadien. Drawing on these sources, Louise Duguay has created a work that honours the best of biography and autobiography.By Audrey Niffenegger, Anne Truitt. 1961
All three of Anne Truitt's artist's journals in one e-volume, the illuminating, inspiring record of a woman's reconciliation of the…
call of creative work with the demands of daily life--with a new introduction by Audrey Niffenegger.Anne Truitt kept a journal throughout her adult life, from her early years as one of the rare, celebrated women artists in the early 60s, through her midlife as an established artist, and into older age when she was, for a time, the director of Yaddo, the premier artists' retreat in Saratoga. She was always a deep, astute reader, and a woman who grappled with a range of issues--moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and spiritual. While working intensely on her art, she watches her own daughters journey into marriage and motherhood, meditates on criticism and solitude, and struggles to find a balance in life. "Balance not stability is the source of security," she says. Anne Truitt re-creates a life in which domestic activities and the needs of children and friends are constantly juxtaposed against the world of color and abstract geometry to which she is drawn in her art.By Audrey Niffenegger, Anne Truitt. 1921
A classic work for artists of all kinds, about reconciling the call of creative work with the demands of daily…
life, now with a new introduction by Audrey Niffenegger.Renowned American artist Anne Truitt kept this illuminating and inspiring journal over a period of seven years, determined to come to terms with the forces that shaped her art and life. Within its beautifully written pages, you will come to know a woman whose range of sensitivity--moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and spiritual--is remarkably broad. She recalls her childhood on the eastern shore of Maryland, her career change from psychology to art, and her path to making sculptures so finely painted that they would "set color free in three dimensions." She reflects on the generous advice of other artists, watches her own daughter's journey into motherhood, meditates on criticism and solitude, and struggles to express her vision. Resonant and true, encouraging and revelatory, Anne Truitt guides herself--and us--through a life in which domestic activities and the needs of children and friends are constantly juxtaposed against the world of color and abstract geometry to which she is drawn in her art. A rare window on the workings of a creative mind, Daybook showcases an extraordinary artist whose insights generously and succinctly illuminate the artistic process.By Random House. 2016
On a dark night in Provence in December 1888 Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is an act…
that has come to define him. Yet for more than a century biographers and historians seeking definitive facts about what happened that night have been left with more questions than answers. In Van Gogh's Ear Bernadette Murphy sets out to discover exactly what happened that night in Arles. Why would an artist at the height of his powers commit such a brutal act of self-harm? Was it just his lobe, or did Van Gogh really cut off his entire ear? Who was the mysterious "Rachel" to whom he presented his macabre gift? Murphy's investigation takes us from major museums to the moldering contents of forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing the world in which Van Gogh moved--the madams and prostitutes, café patrons and police inspectors, his beloved brother, Theo, and his fellow artist and house guest Paul Gauguin. With exclusive revelations and new research about the ear and about Rachel, Bernadette Murphy proposes a bold new hypothesis about what was occurring in Van Gogh's heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to a woman's doorstep that fateful night. Van Gogh's Ear is a compelling detective story and a journey of discovery. It is also a portrait of a painter creating his most iconic and revolutionary work, pushing himself ever closer to greatness even as he edged towards madness--and the one fateful sweep of the blade that would resonate through the ages.