Book picks similar to
Devi: The Great Goddess: Female Divinity in South Asian Art by Vidya Dehejia


art
_inde-et-asie-du-sud
anthropology-and-religion
genre_fairy-folktales_myth_fables

Writings on Art


Mark Rothko - 2002
    Rothko’s other written works have yet to be brought together into a major publication. Writings on Art fills this significant void; it includes some 90 documents—including short essays, letters, statements, and lectures—written by Rothko over the course of his career. The texts are fully annotated, and a chronology of the artist’s life and work is also included. This provocative compilation of both published and unpublished writings from 1934--69 reveals a number of things about Rothko: the importance of writing for an artist who many believed had renounced the written word; the meaning of transmission and transition that he experienced as an art teacher at the Brooklyn Jewish Center Academy; his deep concern for meditation and spirituality; and his private relationships with contemporary artists (including Newman, Motherwell, and Clyfford Still) as well as journalists and curators. As was revealed in Rothko’s The Artist’s Reality, what emerges from this collection is a more detailed picture of a sophisticated, deeply knowledgeable, and philosophical artist who was also a passionate and articulate writer.

Lorca: A Dream of Life


Leslie Stainton - 1998
    Drawing on fourteen years of research; more than a hundred letters unknown to prior biographers; exclusive interviews with Lorca's friends, family, and acquaintances; and dozens of newly discovered archival material, Stainton has brought her subject to Life as few writers can. She describes his carefree childhood in rural Andalusia; his residencies in Madrid and Granada, then in New York, Havana, and Buenos Aires; his potent interaction with other Spanish artists, such as Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, and the composer Manuel de Falla; and, finally, Stainton shows how Lorca's marginal political activity during the Spanish Civil War still cost him his life.Throughout, Stainton meticulously but unobtrusively relates the oeuvre to the life. Her biography is quickly becoming the standard one-volume work on the poet.

The Christ of India: The Story of Saint Thomas Christianity


George Burke - 2016
    And his disciple, Saint Thomas, who was the apostle of India, built upon the foundation of that connection. The result is that unique form of Christianity known as Saint Thomas Christianity.In The Christ of India, Abbot George Burke presents the growing evidence that Jesus spent much of his "Lost Years" in India and Tibet, and reveals the philosophical unity of Jesus' teachings with the Eternal Way of Truth known in India as Sanatana Dharma. The history of Saint Thomas Christianity from the times of Jesus and Saint Thomas to the present day is also outlined.The Christ of India: The Story of Saint Thomas Christianity includes the following:The Christ of India, about the Essene roots of Jesus and the early Christians; the spiritual training of Jesus; The "lost years" of Jesus, with much information never before gathered together in one place; Jesus' return to the West, and how his teachings were misunderstood; Jesus return to India after his resurrection; and much more.The Apostle of India, about how Jesus' apostle Saint Thomas went to India, and how the Christianity which grew up in India had a totally unique character compared to elsewhere in the world; the history of Saint Thomas Christianity in India and the story of mission from the Church of India to America in the 1800's and what happened to it.Basic Beliefs of Saint Thomas Christianity, and The Saint Thomas Christian View of Dharma You will learn about the Tibetan adn Indian manuscripts which proved Jesus lived in the "East" and the efforts to suppress the news of their discovery.You will learn about the Indian Saint Thomas Christian bishop of the 18th century who taught karma and reincarnation, who later became a wonderworking saint revered by Christians, Hindus, and Muslims alike.Those who find themselves attracted to both Jesus and the Dharma of India will find this book fascinating and illuminating.

Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel


Annie Cohen-Solal - 2013
    . . . A rewarding close-up of Rothko’s . . . experience as a Jewish immigrant.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Mark Rothko, one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century, was born in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in 1903. He immigrated to the United States at age ten, taking with him his Talmudic education and his memories of pogroms and persecutions in Russia. His integration into American society began with a series of painful experiences, especially as a student at Yale, where he felt marginalized for his origins and ultimately left the school. The decision to become an artist led him to a new phase in his life. Early in his career, Annie Cohen-Solal writes, “he became a major player in the social struggle of American artists, and his own metamorphosis benefited from the unique transformation of the U.S. art world during this time.” Within a few decades, he had forged his definitive artistic signature, and most critics hailed him as a pioneer. The numerous museum shows that followed in major U.S. and European institutions ensured his celebrity. But this was not enough for Rothko, who continued to innovate. Ever faithful to his habit of confronting the establishment, he devoted the last decade of his life to cultivating his new conception of art as an experience, thanks to the commission of a radical project, the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. Cohen-Solal’s fascinating biography, based on considerable archival research, tells the unlikely story of how a young immigrant from Dvinsk became a crucial transforming agent of the art world—one whose legacy prevails to this day.About Jewish Lives: Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present. In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.More praise for Jewish Lives: “Excellent.” – New York times “Exemplary.” – Wall St. Journal “Distinguished.” – New Yorker “Superb.” – The Guardian

Rose Valland: Resistance at the Museum


Corinne Bouchoux - 2006
    After risking her life spying on the Nazis, day after day for four long years, Rose lived to fulfill her destiny: locating and returning tens of thousands of works of art stolen by the Nazis during their occupation of France. Yet her remarkable story, like much of her personal life, has remained unknown to the broad public…until now. This book, written by French Senator Corinne Bouchoux, was originally published in France in 2006. Ms. Bouchoux’s interest goes far beyond the wartime service of Rose Valland by delving into her personal life and post-war work to provide important insights about this fascinating and determined woman. Her research also proved helpful in confirming my understanding of the intense relationship between Rose Valland and the man who shared her wartime destiny, Monuments officer Lt. James Rorimer. The absence of books about Rose Valland in the English language has, until now, left us wondering how this ordinary woman mustered such courage to do extraordinary things even when, after the war, many in her own country simply wanted the story of Nazi looting to fade away and with it, Rose Valland’s contribution to history. It has therefore been an honor to translate and publish Corinne Bouchoux’s book and make it available to a much larger audience." - adapted from the book's forward written by Robert M. Edsel, author of The Monuments Men

The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art


Sebastian Smee - 2016
    The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary--one who was equally ambitious but possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses.Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant-garde. Jackson Pollock's uninhibited style of "action painting" triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning. After Pollock's sudden death in a car crash, de Kooning assumed Pollock's mantle and became romantically involved with his late friend's mistress. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain's most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity. Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen.Each of these relationships culminated in an early flashpoint, a rupture in a budding intimacy that was both a betrayal and a trigger for great innovation. Writing with the same exuberant wit and psychological insight that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for art criticism, Sebastian Smee explores here the way that coming into one's own as an artist--finding one's voice--almost always involves willfully breaking away from some intimate's expectations of who you are or ought to be.Praise for The Art of Rivalry"Gripping . . . Mr. Smee's skills as a critic are evident throughout. He is persuasive and vivid. . . . You leave this book both nourished and hungry for more about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas."--The New York Times"With novella-like detail and incisiveness [Sebastian Smee] opens up the worlds of four pairs of renowned artists. . . . Each of his portraits is a biographical gem. . . . The Art of Rivalry is a pure, informative delight, written with canny authority."--The Boston Globe"Bacon liked to say his portraiture aimed to capture 'the pulsations of a person.' Revealing these rare creators as the invaluable catalysts they also were, Smee conveys exactly that on page after page. . . . His brilliant group biography is one of a kind." --The Atlantic "Perceptive . . . Smee is onto something important. His book may bring us as close as we'll ever get to understanding the connections between these bristly bonds and brilliance."--The Christian Science Monitor"In this intriguing work of art history and psychology, The Boston Globe's art critic looks at the competitive friendships of Matisse and Picasso, Manet and Degas, Pollock and de Kooning, and Freud and Bacon. All four relationships illuminate the creative process--both its imaginative breakthroughs and its frustrating blocks."--Newsday

The House Girl


Tara Conklin - 2013
    Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell. New York City, 2004. Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in an elite law firm, is given a difficult, highly sensitive assignment that could make her career: she must find the "perfect plaintiff" to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves. It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine's would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit - if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl's faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina's mother die? And why will he never speak about her? Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice.

Tulip Fever


Deborah Moggach - 1999
    Everywhere men are seduced by the fantastic exotic flower. But for wealthy merchant Cornelis Sandvoort, it is his young and beautiful wife, Sophia, who stirs his soul. She is the prize he desires, the woman he hopes will bring him the joy that not even his considerable fortune can buy.Cornelis yearns for an heir, but so far he and Sophia have failed to produce one. In a bid for immortality, he commissions a portrait of them both by the talented young painter Jan van Loos. But as Van Loos begins to capture Sophia's likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist. As the portrait unfolds, so a slow dance is begun among the household's inhabitants. Ambitions, desires, and dreams breed a grand deception--and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax.In this richly imagined international bestseller, Deborah Moggach has created the rarest of novels--a lush, lyrical work of fiction that is also compulsively readable. Seldom has a novel so vividly evoked a time, a place, and a passion.

Seeds of War (The Lilboox Mahabharata Book 1)


Somdip Datta - 2020
    This book is best enjoyed in a color kindle device or the android app. This volume covers the origin of the Kuru and Panchala kingdoms, the early history of the Kuru Kings, and the inspiring story of the river’s son. In Kuru the rivalry between cousins takes an ugly turn, while in Panchala an enraged King seeks vengeance.

Philosophies of India


Heinrich Robert Zimmer - 1951
    The foundations of the Buddhist Tantras are discussed and the Tantric presentation of divinity; the preparation of disciples and the meaning of initiation; symbolism of the mandala-palace Tantric ritual and the twilight language. This section explores the Tantric teachings of the inner Zodiac and the fivefold ritual symbolism of passion. The bibliographical research contains an analysis of the Tantric section of the Kanjur exegesis and a selected Western Bibliography of the Buddhist Tantras with comments.

The East Indiaman


Ellis K. Meacham - 1968
    From the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, from Calcutta to Canton, the Company ships were famous for their speed and daring. The "Bombay Buccaneers" who sailed them were the stuff of legend.For Percival Merewether, 1806 would be a year to remember. For in January of that year he was promoted from First Lieutenant to become the junior Captain in the Company’s Service and given the command of his first ship - the "Rapid."Armed with ten 9-pounders, the "Rapid" was a match for any pirate ship that crossed its bows, and in it Captain Merewether was to spend as action-packed and eventful a first year as any ambitious young sea-farer could have wished.Merewether had quick wits and daring to match his ambition. And with mutinies, diplomatic intrigues and skirmishes with the French to occupy him, he soon found that he needed both qualities as never before...About the Author: Ellis K. Meacham (1913-1998) was a Commander in the US Naval Reserve serving as a gunnery officer in the Pacific during the Second World War. He was an attorney in Chattanooga from 1937 to 1972, when he became a judge in the Chattanooga Municipal Court. He won the "Friends of American Writers Major Award in Fiction" in 1969 for THE EAST INDIAMAN.

A Piece of the World


Christina Baker Kline - 2017
    He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden." To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.As she did in her beloved smash bestseller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America’s history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.

Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art's Meaning in Contemporary Society 1970s-1990s


Linda Weintraub - 1996
    Today artists routinely dissolve the old boundaries of art by creating works that neither hang on walls nor adorn pedestals, and often willfully overturn conventions of aesthetic value, permanence and optical reward. Curator and educator Weintraub has researched and/or interviewed 35 prominent radical artists and here explores their common concerns, creative processes and media. Devoting one essay to each artist, Weintraub offers a primer for museum and gallery goers who may be confronting such works for the first time, discussing Andres Serrano's photo of a crucifix submerged in urine, the half ton of dirty clothes Christian Boltanski piled on a museum floor worn by children of the Holocaust, Janine Antoni's mammoth blocks of chocolate and lard, Chuck Close's computer art and David Hammon's detritus constructions.

Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life


Roxana Robinson - 1989
    "A profoundly human treatment of O'Keeffe and all the people who figured prominently in her life."-- "Los Angeles Times"

Path of Fire and Light, Vol. 1: Advanced Practices of Yoga


Swami Rama - 1986
    Practical information on the advanced practices of yoga presented in straightforward language.