From them emerged the first major modern art dealer. It was 1947, and the art world would never be the same. From the early days on 57th Street, to the rise of SoHo in the 60s, to the emergence of Chelsea as the hotbed of art galleries, we see the meteoric rise and the devastating falls of the most renowned dealers: Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, Arne Glimcher, and Iwan Wirth. With unparalleled access, the longtime Vanity Fair reporter tells us the story of contemporary art through the people who coddled, supported, and funded the likes of Jeff Koons, and Cy Twombly.It's a story of backstabbing, betrayals, fruitful partnerships, genius, and ever larger sums of money. The world of contemporary art is inextricable from the wild wealth and naked financial opportunism that surrounds it.

    This book, the permanent embodiment of Edward Steichen's monumental exhibition, reproduces all of the 503 images that Steichen described as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world. Photographs made in all parts of the world, of the gamut of life from birth to death. A classic and inspiring work, The Family of Man has been in print for more than 40 years. The New York Times once wrote that it symbolizes the universality of human emotions. First produced by a magazine publisher and sold by the hundreds of thousands on newsstands and in airport shops, The Family of Man has been in more recent years published by the Museum. It has been continuously in print since 1955; the present thirtieth-anniversary edition was prepared from original photographs with all new duotone plates in 1986.

    Fresh, unstaged, and full of poetry and humor, his photographs portray everyday people (in everyday places, doing everyday things) frozen in time, unwittingly revealing fleeting personal emotions in a public context. Doisneau's gift was the ability to seek out and capture, with humanity and grace, those little epiphanies of everyday Parisian life. This book traces Doisneau's life and career, providing a wonderful introduction to the work of this seminal photographer.

    Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, pulls back the curtain on his career for the first time.Rising from humble roots as the son of an antiques dealer, Wittman built a twenty-year career that was nothing short of extraordinary. He went undercover, usually unarmed, to catch art thieves, scammers, and black market traders in Paris and Philadelphia, Rio and Santa Fe, Miami and Madrid.In this memoir, Wittman relates the stories behind his recoveries of priceless art and antiquities: The golden armor of an ancient Peruvian warrior king. The Rodin sculpture that inspired the Impressionist movement. The headdress Geronimo wore at his final Pow-Wow. The rare Civil War battle flag carried into battle by one of the nation’s first African-American regiments.The breadth of Wittman’s exploits is unmatched: He traveled the world to rescue paintings by Rockwell and Rembrandt, Pissarro, Monet and Picasso, often working undercover overseas at the whim of foreign governments. Closer to home, he recovered an original copy of the Bill of Rights and cracked the scam that rocked the PBS series Antiques Roadshow.By the FBI’s accounting, Wittman saved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art and antiquities. He says the statistic isn’t important. After all, who’s to say what is worth more --a Rembrandt self-portrait or an American flag carried into battle? They're both priceless.The art thieves and scammers Wittman caught run the gamut from rich to poor, smart to foolish, organized criminals to desperate loners.  The smuggler who brought him a looted 6th-century treasure turned out to be a high-ranking diplomat.  The appraiser who stole countless heirlooms from war heroes’ descendants was a slick, aristocratic con man.  The museum janitor who made off with locks of George Washington's hair just wanted to make a few extra bucks, figuring no one would miss what he’d filched.In his final case, Wittman called on every bit of knowledge and experience in his arsenal to take on his greatest challenge: working undercover to track the vicious criminals behind what might be the most audacious art theft of all.

    Before reaching the tender age of thirty, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) had already sculpted David and Pieta, two of the most famous sculptures in the entire history of art. Like fellow Florentine Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was a shining star of the Renaissance and a genius of consummate virtuosity. His achievements as a sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and architect are unique- no artist before or after him has ever produced such a vast, multi-faceted, and wideranging oeuvre. Only a handful of other painters and sculptors have attained a comparable social status and enjoyed a similar artistic freedom. This is demonstrated not only by the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel but also by Michelangelo's monumental sculptures and his unconventional architectural designs, whose forms went far beyond the accepted vocabulary of his day. Such was his talent that Michelangelo was considered a demigod by his contemporaries and was the subject of two biographies during his lifetime. Adoration of this remarkable man's work has only increased on the intervening centuries. Following the success of our XL title Leonardo da Vinci, TASCHEN brings you this massive tome that explores Michelangelo's life and work in more depth and detail then ever before. The first part concentrates on the life of Michelangelo via an extensive and copiously illustrated biographical essay; the main body of the book presents his owrk in four parts providing a complete analytical inventory of Michelangelo's paintings, sculptures, buildings and drawings. Grorgeous, full page reproductions and enlarged details bring readers up close to the works. This sumptuous tome also takes account, to a previously unseen extent, of Michelangelo's more personal traits and circumstances, such as his solitary nature, his thirst for money and commissions, his miserliness, his immense wealth, and his skill as a property investor. In addition, the book tackles the controversial issue of the attribution of Michelangelo drawings, an area in which decisions continue to be steered by the interests of the art market and the major collections. This is the definitive volume about Michelangelo for generations to come.

    They reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the twenties and thirties, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Their diversity announces the end of Soviet Union. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes of the widening net, architects revisited all the chronological periods and styles, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba sanatorium), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Tbilisi wedding palace). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to its suprematist influence (Promethee). Then comes the speaking architecture widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Kiev crematorium), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Kiev institute), a political center watching you like a Big Brother (Kaliningrad House of Soviet). This puzzle of styles testifies to all the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of privacy and it also outlines the geography of the USSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before bringing the country to its end.

    One is Barack Obama. The other is Ben Rhodes.The World As It Is tells the full story of what it means to work alongside a radical leader; of how idealism can confront reality and survive; of how the White House really functions; and of what it is to have a partnership, and ultimately a friendship, with a historic president.A young writer and Washington outsider, Ben Rhodes was plucked from obscurity aged 29. Chosen for his original perspective and gift with language, his role was to help shape the nation’s hopes and sense of itself. For nearly ten years, Rhodes was at the centre of the Obama Administration – first as a speechwriter, then a policymaker, and finally a multi-purpose aide and close collaborator.Rhodes puts us in the room at the most tense and poignant moments in recent history: starting every morning with Obama in the Daily Briefing; waiting out the bin Laden raid in the Situation Room; reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran; leading secret negotiations with the Cuban government; confronting the resurgence of nationalism that led to the election of Donald Trump.This is the most vivid portrayal yet of Obama’s presidency. It is an essential record of the last decade. But it also shows us what it means to hold the pen, and to write the words that change our world.

    Often architectural treasures in themselves, they were constructed in styles that befitted the riches they stored, from Neoclassical temples to Baroque palaces to Jeffersonian athaeneums. Both public in purpose and intensely private in feel, they have served the noble role of preserving and disseminating that key cultural artifact of mankind - the book - and in doing so, their role has been central to the nourishment and development of the world's great civilizations. To this day the great libraries of the world remain extraordinary environments for scholarship and enlightenment." "Here, for the first time, architectural photographer Guillaume de Laubier takes the reader on a privileged tour of twenty-three of the world's most historic libraries, representing twelve countries and ranging from the great national monuments to scholarly, religious, and private libraries: the baroque splendor of the Institut de France in Paris; the Renaissance treasure-trove of the Riccardiana Library in Florence; the majestic Royal Monastery in El Escorial, Spain; the hallowed halls of Oxford's Bodleian Library; and the New York Public Library, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece. Also included are the smaller abbey and monastic libraries - often overlooked on tourist itineraries - each containing its own equally important collections of religious and philosophical writings, manuscripts, and church history. Through color photography one can marvel at the grandeur of the great public libraries while relishing the rare glimpses inside scholars-only private archives." The accompanying text by journalist and translator Jacques Bosser traces the history of libraries from the Renaissance to the present day, vividly describing how they came to serve the famous men of letters of centuries past and the general public of the ni

    Packed with wonderfully entertaining and often outrageous speculations about the nature of art, truth, and value, the world-renowned art forger--who died mysteriously before this book was published--details secrets of his techniques.

    Every year millions of people come to see Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, which is the largest fresco painting on earth in the holiest of Christianity's chapels; yet there is not one single Christian image in this vast, magnificent artwork.The Sistine Secrets tells the fascinating story of how Michelangelo embedded messages of brotherhood, tolerance, and freethinking in his painting to encourage "fellow travelers" to challenge the repressive Roman Catholic Church of his time."Driven by the truths he had come to recognize during his years of study in private nontraditional schooling in Florence, truths rooted in his involvement with Judaic texts as well as Kabbalistic training that conflicted with approved Christian doctrine, Michelangelo needed to find a way to let viewers discern what he truly believed. He could not allow the Church to forever silence his soul. And what the Church would not permit him to communicate openly, he ingeniously found a way to convey to those diligent enough to learn his secret language."—from the PrefaceBlech and Doliner reveal what Michelangelo meant in the angelic representations that brilliantly mocked his papal patron, how he managed to sneak unorthodox heresies into his ostensibly pious portrayals, and how he was able to fulfill his lifelong ambition to bridge the wisdom of science with the strictures of faith. The Sistine Secrets unearths secrets that have remained hidden in plain sight for centuries.

    A visually arresting reference for art lovers and students, it provides a truly comprehensive worldwide gazeteer of paintings organized chronologically by date of completion. Each entry includes the history of the painting, information about the artist or artistic movement, the current location of the painting (all are on view to the public), as well as other details. The works are also indexed by artist and by title, making for easy cross-referencing. Included are popular paintings, key works that are the most breathtaking for their extraordinary power and beauty, paintings that were turning points in the history of art, and rediscovered masterpieces, making 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die an art museum in its own right.

    The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.Chernobyl was also a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, and, with it, the United States’ victory in the Cold War. For Moscow, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With a total cost of 18 billion rubles—at the time equivalent to $18 billion—Chernobyl bankrupted an already teetering economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies. The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told—until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy.

    We see how these brilliant minds get to work, the choices they have to make: rebuffing convention, stealing (or secreting away) time from the pull of husbands, wives, children, obligations, in order to create their creations.From those who are the masters of their craft (Eudora Welty, Lynn Fontanne, Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie Curie) to those who were recognized in a burst of acclaim (Lorraine Hansberry, Zadie Smith) . . . from Clara Schumann and Shirley Jackson, carving out small amounts of time from family life, to Isadora Duncan and Agnes Martin, rejecting the demands of domesticity, Currey shows us the large and small (and abiding) choices these women made--and continue to make--for their art: Isak Dinesen, "I promised the Devil my soul, and in return he promised me that everything I was going to experience would be turned into tales," Dinesen subsisting on oysters and Champagne but also amphetamines, which gave her the overdrive she required . . . And the rituals (daily and otherwise) that guide these artists: Isabel Allende starting a new book only on January 8th . . . Hilary Mantel taking a shower to combat writers' block ("I am the cleanest person I know") . . . Tallulah Bankhead coping with her three phobias (hating to go to bed, hating to get up, and hating to be alone), which, could she "mute them," would make her life "as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water" . . . Lillian Hellman chain-smoking three packs of cigarettes and drinking twenty cups of coffee a day--and, after milking the cow and cleaning the barn, writing out of "elation, depression, hope" ("That is the exact order. Hope sets in toward nightfall. That's when you tell yourself that you're going to be better the next time, so help you God.") . . . Diane Arbus, doing what "gnaws at" her . . . Colette, locked in her writing room by her first husband, Henry Gauthier-Villars (nom de plume: Willy) and not being "let out" until completing her daily quota (she wrote five pages a day and threw away the fifth). Colette later said, "A prison is one of the best workshops" . . . Jessye Norman disdaining routines or rituals of any kind, seeing them as "a crutch" . . . and Octavia Butler writing every day no matter what ("screw inspiration"). Germaine de Staël . . . Elizabeth Barrett Browning . . . George Eliot . . . Edith Wharton . . . Virginia Woolf . . . Edna Ferber . . . Doris Lessing . . . Pina Bausch . . . Frida Kahlo . . . Marguerite Duras . . . Helen Frankenthaler . . . Patti Smith, and 131 more--on their daily routines, superstitions, fears, eating (and drinking) habits, and other finely (and not so finely) calibrated rituals that help summon up willpower and self-discipline, keeping themselves afloat with optimism and fight, as they create (and avoid creating) their creations.

    In 1972, the 13-year-old Woodman made a black-and-white photograph of herself sitting at the far end of a sofa in her home in Boulder, Colorado. Her face is obscured by her hair, light radiates from an unseen source behind her out at the viewer through her right hand. This photograph typifies much of what would characterize Woodman's work to come: a semi-obscured female form merging with or flailing against a somewhat bare and often dilapidated interior. In an oeuvre of around 800 photographs made in just nine years, Woodman performed her own body against the textures of wallpaper, door frame, baths and couches, radically extending the Surrealist photography of Man Ray, Hans Bellmer and Claude Cahun and creating a mood and language all her own. In the 30 years since her untimely death, Woodman has gained a following among successive generations of artists and photographers, a testament to her work's undeniable immediacy and enduring appeal Amid a renewed intensification of interest in Francesca Woodman, this volume is published for a major touring exhibition of her photographs and films at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. Containing many previously unpublished photographs, it is the definitive Francesca Woodman monograph.Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) was born in Denver, Colorado, to the well-known artists George and Betty Woodman. In 1975 she attended the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 1979 she moved to New York, to attempt to build a career in photography. In 1981, at the age of 22, she committed suicide.

    A short illustrated survey of the use of photography in contemporary art since the mid-1980s.