Excerpts from the original Anne Morrow Lindbergh bestseller on love, happiness, solitude, and contentment.

    Six weeks later he made landfall on the coast of Chile and, after a chance meeting, embarked on a 1000-mile cruise southwards to survey channels and fjords in Patagonia, one of the last uncharted areas in the world. From Chile he sailed north on the Humboldt current, then west through the tropics on the return passage to New Zealand, arriving home some 18 months after he had left.

    At the height of his fame, he was the artist as royalty: incalculably wealthy, universally idolized−and wholly isolated.   In this stunning critical assessment, John Berger−one of this century's most insightful cultural historians−trains his penetrating gaze upon this most prodigious and enigmatic painter and on the Spanish landscape and very particular culture that shaped his life and work. Writing with a novelist's sensuous evocation of character and detail, and drawing on an erudition that embraces history, politics, and art, Berger follows Picasso from his childhood in Malaga to the Blue Period and Cubism, from the creation of Guernica to the pained etchings of his final years. He gives us the full measure of Picasso's triumphs and an unsparing reckoning of their cost−in exile, in loneliness, and in a desolation that drove him, in his last works, into an old man's furious and desperate frenzy at the beauty of what he could no longer create.

    Cultural Studies. In the new INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC, VOL. 1, the editors push way beyond the cheesy TV-celebs-do-pop-faves LP's beloved by garden-variety music cultists. Less a practical guide than a treatise on the philosophical underpinnings of such ephemeria. -- Rolling Stone.

    These different ways of describing and interpreting art are the methodologies of artistic analysis, the divining rods of meaning. Regardless of a work’s perceived difficulty, an art object is, in theory, complex. Every work of art is an expression of its culture (time and place) and its maker (the artist) and is dependent on its media (what it’s made of). The methodologies discussed here—formal analysis, iconology and iconography, Marxism, feminism, biography and autobiography, psychoanalysis, and structuralism—reflect the multiplicity of meanings in an artistic image.

    Here is the first book on this essential subject, the product of years of study by one of the world's great teachers of drawing and an artist of international renown, Burne Hogarth.Hogarth begins with the simplist kind of light and shade, showing how a dark silhouette on white paper can communicate form and space. He then shows how the silhouette is transformed into three dimensions with the addition of minimal light - the highlight.Following these instructory chapters, Hogarth devotes a separate chapter to each of the given basic categories of light and shade: single-source light; double-source light; flat, diffused light; moonlight; and sculptural light. In these chapters Hogarth illustrates the effects of these different kinds of light on a variety of subjects and examines both natural and artificial light sources.Moving on to more complex lighting effects, Hogarth explains spatial light - how light and shade can create a sense of "near and far"; environmental light - the effects of weather, time of day, and the changing of seasons; textural light - how light reveals the surface qualities of forms that range from rough stone to silk and satin draperies; transparent light - the effects passing through transparent materials like glass and water, and translucent substances like moving water or sailcloth; fragmentation light - the disrupted light we see in such subjects as fire, rain, and flying snow; radiant light - the intense light we see when we look into the light source itself, which may range from the sun to a candle flame; and finally the various kinds of expressive light invented by the artist - such as the symbolic and mystic light of religious art, or the paterns of light and shade that convey a mood or a psychological state.Burne Hogarth illustrates every effect of light and shade with brilliant drawings in pencil, charcoal, carbon, pen and ink, and brush and ink, encouraging the reader to experiment with diverse drawing media.Dynamic Light and Shade is an essential volume for everyone who draws and paints.

    Throughout Europe and America, artists and intellectuals banded together to portray women as static and unindividuated beings who functioned solely in a sexual and reproductive capacity, thus formulating many of the anti-feminine platitudes that today still constrain women's potential. Bram Dijkstra's Idols of Perversity explores the nature and development of turn-of-the-century misogyny in the works of hundreds of writers, artists, and scientists, including Zola, Strindberg, Wedekind, Henry James, Rossetti, Renoir, Moreau, Klimt, Darwin, and Spencer. Dijkstra demonstrates that the most prejudicial aspects of Evolutionary Theory helped to justify this wave of anti-feminine sentiment. The theory claimed that the female of the species could not participate in the great evolutionary process that would guide the intellectual male to his ultimate, predestined role as a disembodied spiritual essence. Darwinists argued that women hindered this process by their willingness to lure men back to a sham paradise of erotic materialism. To protect the male's continued evolution, artists and intellectuals produced a flood of pseudo-scientific tracts, novels, and paintings which warned the world's males of the evils lying beneath the surface elegance of woman's tempting skin. Reproducing hundreds of pictures from the period and including in-depth discussions of such key works as Dracula and Venus in Furs, this fascinating book not only exposes the crucial links between misogyny then and now, but also connects it to the racism and anti-semitism that led to catastrophic genocidal delusions in the first half of the twentieth century. Crossing the conventional boundaries of art history, sociology, the history of scientific theory, and literary analysis, Dijkstra unveils a startling view of a grim and largely one-sided war on women still being fought today.

    Comes with an enclosed, supportive DVD-ROM The Louvre is the world's most visited art museum, with 8.5 million visitors annually, and houses the most celebrated and important paintings of all time. For the first time ever, The Louvre: All the Paintings collects all 2,981 paintings currently on display in the permanent collection in one beautifully curated volume. Organized and divided into the four main painting collections of the museum— the Italian School, the Northern School, the Spanish School, and the French School— the paintings are then presented chronologically by the artist's date of birth.Four hundred of the most iconic and significant paintings are illuminated with 300-word discussions by art historians Anja Grebe and Vincent Pomarède on the key attributes of the work, what to look for when viewing the painting, the artist's inspirations and techniques, biographical information on the artist, the artist's impact on the history of art, and more. All 2,981 paintings are fully annotated with the name of the painting and artist, the date of the work, the birth and death dates of the artist, the medium that was used, the size of the painting, the Louvre catalog number, and the room in the Louvre in which the painting is found. The DVD-ROM is easily browsable by artist, date, school, art historical genre, or location in the Louvre. This last feature allows readers to tour the Louvre and its contents room by room, as if they were actually walking through the building.

    The art and architecture, the cityscape, riverbanks, and the unparalleled quality of daily life are part of the equation.But the city’s allure derives equally from hidden sources: querulous inhabitants, a bizarre culture of heroic negativity, and a rich historical past supplying enigmas, pleasures and challenges. Rarely do visitors suspect the glamor and chic and the carefree atmosphere of the City of Light grew from and still feed off the dark fountainheads of riot, rebellion, mayhem and melancholy—and the subversive literature, art and music of the Romantic Age.Weaving together his own with the lives and loves of Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, Charles Baudelaire, Balzac, Nadar and other great Romantics Downie delights in the city’s secular romantic pilgrimage sites asking , Why Paris, not Venice or Rome—the tap root of "romance"—or Berlin, Vienna and London—where the earliest Romantics built castles-in-the-air and sang odes to nightingales? Read A Passion for Paris: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light and find out.

    More than twenty-four hours passed before museum officials realized she was gone. The prime suspects were as shocking as the crime: Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, young provocateurs of a new art. As French detectives using the latest methods of criminology, including fingerprinting, tried to trace the thieves, a burgeoning international media hyped news of the heist.No story captured the imagination of the world quite like this one. Thousands flocked to the Louvre to see the empty space where the painting had hung. They mourned as if Mona Lisa were a lost loved one, left flowers and notes, and set new attendance records. For more than two years, Mona Lisa’s absence haunted the art world, provoking the question: Was she lost forever? A century later, questions still linger.Part love story, part mystery, Vanished Smile reopens the case of the most audacious and perplexing art theft ever committed. R. A. Scotti’s riveting, ingeniously realized account is itself a masterly portrait of a world in transition. Combining her skills as a historian and a novelist, Scotti turns the tantalizing clues into a story of the painting’s transformation into the most familiar and lasting icon of all time.

    The crews of no other vessels experienced so high a degree of personal engagement with the enemy.” — Robert Bulkley Robert Bulkley’s definitive history of patrol torpedo boats in World War Two is exceptionally detailed, meticulously researched, and is a must-read for any naval enthusiast. Bulkley joined the PT division of the Navy in 1941, and immediately fell in love with the small and deadly weaponized boat. After V-J Day, 1945, the Navy continued Bulkley’s commission and asked him to write the official history of PT boats in WWII — At Close Quarters: PT Boats in the United States Navy is the groundbreaking result. In At Close Quarters, Bulkley uses the fastidious records kept by the US Navy to compile a book which serves as not just a record of the role of the PT boat's role in WWII but also as a lesson to future military and naval scholars. Best-known as the boat that future president John F. Kennedy commanded in the Pacific Theater in WWII, popular interest in PT boats has grown substantially since they first emerged as brilliant boats in naval engagements throughout the war. Bulkley provides a detailed account of the origins and history of PT boats, from the part they played in WWI to the improvements and developments made to their design prior to WWII. He analyses the role of PT boats in some of the major sea battles in the Pacific, opening with Pearl Harbor, through to their involvement in the Mediterranean, the D-Day operations in the English Channel as well as the Solomons campaign and the conquest of New Guinea. “The thorough and competent account herein of over-all PT boat operations in World War II, compiled by Captain Robert Bulkley, a distinguished PT boat commander, should therefore prove of wide interest. The widest use of the sea, integrated fully into our national strength, is as important to America in the age of nuclear power and space travel as in those stirring days of the birth of the Republic.” — President John F Kennedy “An invaluable history of WWII PT-Boat operations worldwide.” — Pacific Wrecks “This thorough and objective account of the operations of PT boats in the U.S. Navy in World War II was prepared in the year after V-J Day by an officer who served in them through most of the war in the far reaches of the Pacific. He knew and loved these small, fast craft with hornet sting. They played their part with zest in the far reaching, powerful Navy team. He gave to the research into the records, into the memories of other participants, and to the writing itself the same zest. As a result he produced a shipshape manuscript.” — Rear Admiral Ernest McNeill Eller Robert J. Bulkley, a retired USNR captain now deceased, commanded PT boats in the southwest Pacific, mostly in New Guinea and the Philippines, from June 1942 to the war's end. This work was first published in 1962, three years before Captain Bulkley passed away

    For over three decades, on both sides of the Atlantic, Tynan was at the hot center of the theater and film worlds. He knew everybody, and everybody wanted to know him. His diaries-so resplendent with griefs and gossip-bear superb witness to the fame he courted and the price he paid for it.

    From his early family life in Ivancice right through to his final days in Prague, it delves into every aspect of his career as it developed. Next, beginning with his earliest Parisian posters for the actress Sarah Bernhardt, the second half of the book focuses on Mucha's most intense period of productivity in Paris, and documents his success as an avant-garde artist. Exploring his many decorative panels and commercial posters as well as his illustrations for books and magazines, it takes an in-depth look at his changing artistic styles of the period and reveals his sources of inspiration. The informative text goes hand-in-hand with stunning reproductions of Mucha's most stirring and iconic works, from his "Gismonda" poster of 1894 to his "The Moon and the Stars" series of decorative panels of 1902.Featuring over 150 of his most important graphic works, Alphonse Mucha: Masterworks is the perfect gateway to learning more about this versatile artist - one who was truly successful in producing both commercial pieces and 'high art'. It is an ideal read for those with little knowledge of Mucha as well as those looking to learn more.

    LUCIFER HIMSELF IS THE STAR OF THIS BOOK, WHICH CONTAINS IMAGES OF HIM THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF ART. ETCHINGS, WOODCUTS, PAINTINGS, ILLUSTRATIONS, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND ADVERTISEMENTS FEATURING OF THE DEVIL, BY THE LIKES OF DA VINCI, BOSCH, PIERRE ET GILLES, GIGER, AND MANY MORE, POPULATE THE PAGES OF THIS SUPREMELY "EVIL" BOOK.

    Very touching, page turner.