Book picks similar to
Seurat: A Biography by John Rewald
art-history
hardback
artist-georges-seurat
art
Overwhelming Odds
Susan O'Leary - 2004
The book unveils a truth of universal importance, namely, by helping others in need we can become their miracles.
Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper
Harriet Scott Chessman - 2001
The story is told by Mary’s sister Lydia, as she poses for five of her sister’s most unusual paintings, which are reproduced in, and form the focal point of each chapter. Ill with Bright’s disease and conscious of her approaching death, Lydia contemplates her world with courageous openness, and asks important questions about love and art’s capacity to remember.
Prince: A Private View
Afshin Shahidi - 2017
He collaborated with Prince longer than any other photographer. Afshin was the only photographer allowed to shoot the legendary 3121 private parties in Los Angeles that became the most sought after invitations in Hollywood; some of those photos are included in this book.Prince: A Private View compiles photographer Afshin Shahidi’s work into a journey through Prince's extraordinary life. With never-before-seen photos, it is the ultimate collection of shots of Prince. Brief, but complete and rich, stories about Shahidi and Prince’s collaboration and time together are alternately incisive, personal, and even funny.
Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter's Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy
Elizabeth Rynecki - 2016
But the art transformed from familiar to extraordinary in her eyes after her grandfather, Moshe's son George, left behind journals detailing the loss her ancestors had endured during World War II, including Moshe's art. Knowing that her family had only found a small portion of Moshe's art, and that many more pieces remained to be found, Elizabeth set out to find them.Before Moshe was deported to the ghetto, he entrusted his work to friends who would keep it safe. After he was killed in the Majdanek concentration camp, the art was dispersed all over the world. With the help of historians, curators, and admirers of Moshe's work, Elizabeth began the incredible and difficult task of rebuilding his collection.Spanning three decades of Elizabeth's life and three generations of her family, this touching memoir is a compelling narrative of the richness of one man's art, the devastation of war, and one woman's unexpected path to healing.
Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
Mark Dery - 2018
Some even call him the Grandfather of Goth.But who was this man, who lived with over twenty thousand books and six cats, who roomed with Frank O'Hara at Harvard, and was known--in the late 1940s, no less--to traipse around in full-length fur coats, clanking bracelets, and an Edwardian beard? An eccentric, a gregarious recluse, an enigmatic auteur of whimsically morbid masterpieces, yes but who was the real Edward Gorey behind the Oscar Wildean pose?He published over a hundred books and illustrated works by Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Edward Lear, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Hilaire Belloc, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, Gilbert & Sullivan, and others. At the same time, he was a deeply complicated and conflicted individual, a man whose art reflected his obsessions with the disquieting and the darkly hilarious.Based on newly uncovered correspondence and interviews with personalities as diverse as John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, and Anna Sui, Born to be Posthumous draws back the curtain on the eccentric genius and mysterious life of Edward Gorey.
Mind Over Matter, Revised Edition: The Images of Pink Floyd
Storm Thorgerson - 1997
The images of Pink Floyd album sleeves and the artwork they contain are the subject of Mind over Matter, a first-hand look at the music business and a consideration of where art ends and commerce begins.'
Vermeer: A View of Delft
Anthony Bailey - 2001
In 1653, the twenty-one-year-old son of an innkeeper, the artist Jan Vermeer, registered as a master painter with the city's Guild. Vermeer married well, had many children, and enjoyed a respectable local reputation as a painter until his death in 1675. But it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that his genius was widely appreciated. Today, Vermeer's thirty-five paintings are regarded as masterpieces.In Vermeer, Anthony Bailey presents a compelling portrait of Vermeer's life and character, long lost in history. Bailey re-creates the atmosphere of the times, introduces Vermeer's contemporaries, and portrays his domestic life in vibrant detail. Drawing on period documents and his own intense curiosity, Bailey sheds light on the science and artistry behind the glorious, almost mystical, paintings. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Vermeer will stand as the classic work on Vermeer for years to come.
Steve McQueen
William Claxton - 2000
But the star of such films as The Great Escape, Love with the Proper Stranger, Nevada Smith, The Getaway, and Papillon was largely a mystery off-screen. These photos, taken over a six-year period during the 1960s by one of the actor's best friends, show the hidden McQueen: tender, sensitive, and unpredictable.
Takashi Murakami
Takashi Murakami - 2007
Drawing from street culture, high art, and traditional Japanese painting, Murakami takes the contemporary art trend of mixing high and low to an unprecedented level (critics call him the new Warhol), producing original paintings and sculptures as well as mass-produced consumer objects such as toys, books, and most famously, a line of handbags for Louis Vuitton. A committed supporter and spokesperson for Japanese artists and a powerful commentator on postwar culture and society, Murakami has organized influential exhibitions of Japanese art as well as a biannual art fair in Tokyo. Murakami has positioned himself as a new type of artist for the twenty-first century: a hybrid of creator, entrepreneur, and cultural ambassador.In conjunction with the first major retrospective of his work, Murakami traces Murakami’s global impact socially, culturally, and art historically. Essays focus on Murakami’s early works, which were based on a social critique of Japan’s rampant consumerism; the development of his characters; his work with anime, fantasy; otaku culture; and his engagement with global pop culture. Representing output from original works of art to mass-produced multiples, the catalogue also considers the implications of Murakami’s working methods within the tradition of the Western avant-garde.
A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War
David Boyd Haycock - 2009
From diverse backgrounds, they met at The Slade in London between 1908 and 1910, in what was later described as the school’s “last crisis of brilliance.” Between 1910 and 1918 they loved, talked, and fought; they admired, conspired, and sometimes disparaged each others’ artistic creations. They created new movements; they frequented the most stylish cafés and restaurants and founded a nightclub; they slept with their models and with prostitutes; and their love affairs descended into obsession, murder, and suicide.
Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation
Robert Wilson - 2013
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Dolley Madison, Henry James as a boy with his father, Horace Greeley, Edgar Allan Poe, the Prince of Wales, and Jenny Lind were among the dignitaries photographed in Mathew Brady's studio. But it was during the Civil War that he became the founding father of what is now called photojournalism and his photography became an enduring part of American history.The Civil War was the first war in history to leave a detailed photographic record, and Mathew Brady was the war's chief visual historian. Previously, the general public had never seen in such detail the bloody particulars of war--the strewn bodies of the dead, the bloated carcasses of horses, the splintered remains of trees and fortifications, the chaos and suffering on the battlefield. Brady knew better than anyone of his era the dual power of the camera to record and to excite, to stop a moment in time and to draw the viewer vividly into that moment.He was not, in the strictest sense, a Civil War photographer. As the director of a photographic service, he assigned Alexander Gardner, James F. Gibson, and others to take photographs, often under his personal supervision; he also distributed Civil War photographs taken by others not employed by him. Ironically, Brady had accompanied the Union army to the first major battle at Bull Run, but was so shaken by the experience that throughout the rest of the war he rarely visited battlefields, except well before or after a major battle. The famous Brady photographs at Antietam were shot by Gardner and Gibson.Few books about Brady have gone beyond being collections of the photographs attributed to him, accompanied by a biographical sketch. MATHEW BRADY will be the biography of an American legend--a businessman, an accomplished and innovative technician, a suave promoter, a celebrated portrait artist, and, perhaps most important, a historian who chronicled America during its finest and gravest moments of the 19th century.
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art: N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, James Wyeth
James H. Duff - 1987
This comprehensive collection is now in a paperback identical to the original clothbound edition. 130 color, 54 black-and-white illustrations.
Vincent Van Gogh
Pierre Cabanne - 1960
This monograph follows Van Gogh between 1886 and 1890, from Holland to Paris, where his palette was brightened with impressionistic colour, to Arles and his still-mysterious friendship with Gauguin.
Shirley Temple: American Princess
Anne Edwards - 1988
Edwards tells how a curly haired moppet captured America, single-handedly kept a major studio alive, and outearned the U.S. president. 24 pages of photos.