'Mother lies prone on an ironing board under a basket of fruit suspended from the ceiling, while a young couple - the girl in a ball dress, the man stripped to the waist in waders - are frantically changing light bulbs; through a street window at the back a policeman spies on this domestic scene in a posture of frozen astonishment...You see the author at full stretch when the police burst in and embark on a lunatic investigation involving four characters who all see the facts in a totally different light, and pounce on every ambiguous word to shoot off in their own direction: the dialogue operates like a railway junction with a madman switching over the points.' Irving Wardle in The Times.

    Introducing art in its international context, this accessible book explores core issues about how art is made, interpreted, and displayed, without any of the unnecessary terminology. Divided into themes, A Short Book About Art presents new ways of thinking about the relationship between artists and their work, as well as fresh comparisons between works of art from different periods and places. Thought-provoking and stimulating, it is the ideal companion for anyone who wants to learn about art without a dictionary in their hands.

     Working alongside skilled photographers, Rockwell acted as director, carefully orchestrating models, selecting props, and choosing locations for the photographs -- works of art in their own right -- that served as the basis of his iconic images. Readers will be surprised to find that many of his most memorable characters -- the girl at the mirror, the young couple on prom night, the family on vacation -- were friends and neighbors who served as his amateur models. In this groundbreaking book, author and historian Ron Schick delves into the archive of nearly 20,000 photographs housed at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Featuring reproductions of Rockwell's black-and-white photographs and related full-color artworks, along with an incisive narrative and quotes from Rockwell models and family members, this book will intrigue anyone interested in photography, art, and Americana.

    She has photographed rarely seen sites from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature security and religion. This index examines subjects that, while provocative or controversial, are currently legal. The work responds to a desire to discover unknown territories, to see everything. Simon makes use of the annotated-photograph's capacity to engage and inform the public. Transforming that which is off-limits or under-the-radar into a visible and intelligible form, she confronts the divide between the privileged access of the few and the limited access of the public. Photographed with a large format view camera (except when prohibited), Simon's 70 color plates form a seductive collection that reflects and reveals a national identity. In addition to this monograph, there is also an exhibition of Simon's work opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2007.

    But for how long?Are New York City's local merchants a dying breed or an enduring group of diehards hell bent on retaining the traditions of a glorious past? According to Jim and Karla Murray the influx of big box retailers and chain stores pose a serious threat to these humble institutions, and neighborhood modernization and the anonymity it brings are replacing the unique appearance and character of what were once incredibly colorful streets.Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York is a visual guide to New York City's timeworn storefronts, a collection of powerful images that capture the neighborhood spirit, familiarity, comfort and warmth that these shops once embodied.

    A compendium of the life and work of Maxfield Parrish, it is an essential part of a Parrish library. For the collector, the publisher has included a value guide to some of the products that bear Parrish images. Examples of Parrish's most famous book illustrations are shown, including selections from Mother Goose in Prose and the Arabian Nights. Also included are his famous magazine covers-from Life, Collier's, Harper's Weekly, etc., as well as all the landscapes that he painted for Brown and Bigelow, who reproduced them as calendars every year from 1936 to 1963. One of the highlights of the book is the chapter on Parrish's technique, examining in depth his materials, favorite methods, and unique way of painting. In addition, there is a lengthy excerpt from an unpublished manuscript by Maxfield Parrish, Jr., explaining step-by-step his father's glazing technique and use of photography in his work. This definitive study also contains numerous revealing excerpts from Parrish's unpublished correspondence with family, friends, and clients.

    Hilarious and beautifully produced, this is a visual feast which will delight and entertain Noel's many impassioned fans."Growing up in the jungles of India there was no need for drawing or painting. I would sometimes arrange ants into primitive still lives or scratch out portraits onto the trunks of trees. Things changed when I was 11, a lame tiger who owned a stationery shop gave me the keys to his stock room, I would roll around in acrylic and oil pastels in reverie, licking canvases and tucking coloured pencils into my wild hair. It was here I learned how to draw and paint well enough to be accepted into Croyden Art College. There, Dexter Dalwood (Turner Prize nominee) taught me and after two years under his supreme tutelage and much hard graft he advised me to become a comedian." —Noel Fielding

    What followed was a whirlwind childhood spent among art and artists in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Gabrielle grew up in a home full of the most celebrated artists of the day: Rothko, de Kooning, Tinguely, Giacometti, and Christo, among others.Poignant and candid, Unstill Life is a daughter’s memoir of the art world and a larger-than-life father known to the world as Mr. Modern Art. Selz offers a unique window into the glamour and destruction of the times: the gallery openings, wild parties and affairs that defined one of the most celebrated periods in American art history. Like the art he loved, Selz’s father was vibrant and freewheeling, but his enthusiasm for both women and art took its toll on family life. When her father left MoMA and his family to direct his own museum in California, marrying four more times, Selz’s mother, the writer Thalia Selz, moved with her children into the utopian artist community Westbeth. Her parents continued a tumultuous affair that would last forty years.Weaving her family narrative into the larger story of twentieth-century art and culture, Selz paints an unforgettable portrait of a charismatic man, the generation of modern artists he championed and the daughter whose life he shaped.

    

    Minutes to Midnight is the ambitious photographic record of that adventure, in which Parke presents a proud but uneasy nation struggling to craft its identity from different cultures and traditions. Minutes to Midnight merges traditional documentary techniques and imagination to create a dark visual narrative portraying Australia with a mix of nostalgia, romanticism and brooding realism. This is not a record of the physical landscape but of an emotional one. It is a story of human anxiety and intensity which, although told from Australia, represents a universal human condition in the world today.

    She has since become one of our most respected authors of verse.Schnackenberg's first three books, collected in Supernatural Love, show the thrilling evolution of a unique voice in today's letters. From an early mastery in which precision and heartbreak are inseparable, her poetry accelerates book by book through the searching, dense, and metaphysical imagery--as well as the cascading syntax--which have become her signature. Whether we are witnessing her classic portrait of Darwin in his last year or discovering the vertiginous brillance of her elegy for the Byzantine monuments of Ravenna, we find in Schnackenberg gemlike poems offered as visionary documents, unmistakable in their glittering range and passion--and never the same twice.

    . . Nazarian writes clean and true prose . . ."--Publishers Weekly"Set in an alternate Renaissance Europe, this series opener by Russian-born Nazarian combines the stylistic manner of a folktale with the trappings of an epic fantasy, one driven by compassion rather than heroics.... Fans of period fantasy and those who like stories that feel like fairy tales should appreciate this skillful novel by the twice Nebula Award-nominated author of Dreams of the Compass Rose and The Duke in His Castle."--Library Journal"I really enjoyed the rich, complex and highly unusual storytelling in the Cobweb Bride. Nazarian does an excellent job of painting the Renaissance world of her alternate reality and bringing in interesting twists of fantasy to the story.... Everything about this story that was fresh and new. I loved the premise it was built on and I loved the story itself. The characters are rich, multi-dimensional, and so easy to get to know and identify with. I am really looking forward to reading the next book in the trilogy when it comes out and in finding out more about what happens to the characters that still have a mission to carry out and how the story eventually resolves by the end of the trilogy. I recommend this book to readers of YA, lovers of fantasy, alternate-history, and alternate-reality. It was a terrific read."--Tracy M. Riva, Midwest Book Review"Cobweb Bride is astonishing and captivating; a lush fantasy of imagery and magical realism. The visuals are illustrated by the author's lyrical and metaphoric writing. Every chapter and scene revels in this mortal coil, surrounded by an expansive collage of characters immersed in a plot as rich and decadent as a Verdi opera.... The vibrancy of Ms. Nazarian's writing is sheer kaleidoscopic visualization. The folkloric-fable twists and turns recount shavings from the mythos of Hades and Persephone without boring you with a full-blown serving of predictability. The romance is as subtle as it is grim, with glimmers of hope taking us further to our doom--perhaps.... The overall tone is introspective, hauntingly quiet with elements of horror-fantasy that are as provocative as the works of Tanith Lee and Storm Constantine."--Patrice, Romantic Historical Reviews , a 5-Star Top Pick Many are called... She alone can save the world and become Death's bride. COBWEB BRIDE is a history-flavored fantasy novel with romantic elements of the Persephone myth, about Death's ultimatum to the world. What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them? In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary "pocket" of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill... Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness... Her skin is cold as snow... Her eyes, frozen... Her gaze, fiercely alive...

    In this respect, his photographs can be seen as prefiguring the New Color photographers of the 1970s. The Canadian photographer worked largely with Kodachrome slide film for over 50 years, and only in the past decade has technology allowed him to make archival pigment prints that match the exceptional color and intensity of the Kodachrome slide, making this an excellent time to reevaluate and reexamine his work.This book brings together over 230 images, many never before reproduced, and features essays by acclaimed authors David Campany, Hans-Michael Koetzle and artist Jeff Wall. Fred Herzog is the most comprehensive publication on this important photographer to date.

    He has also appeared in numerous independent films and made his New York Stage debut in the acclaimed MCC production of Small Engine Repair.Keegan was given his first camera at age nine, and began a lifelong study and pursuit of photography. life.love.beauty is a selection of photographs taken since his childhood. It's a photo journey through the life of an intensely creative soul whose expression finds various forms: in acting, in poems and stories, lyrics and music, but above all in photography. This book's content resonates in the commonality we all share on our own journeys while unveiling an inside look into a world that very few experience.Organized into three broad groups-life, love, and beauty-the book ranges over the public and private side of Keegan Allen and his world. A child of Hollywood, whose father was also an actor and his mother a painter, Keegan roams freely through that realm, photographing his fellow actors on set, behind the scenes; and recording the amazed, gleeful, sometimes weeping fans that flock to his television and career related events.Allen also has an eye for the anonymous and the unexpected: the woman gazing dreamily from the balcony of a run-down hotel; the rifle-toting dog walker who seems to have emerged from the 19th century; the performers and denizens of Venice Beach and also the streets of New York, some of them chasing the dream of fame, others having long-since abandoned it; the little boy amid in the crowd in an enormous airport; portraits of lovers kissing on subways, in parks, and on the streets. Traveling from California to New York to Paris and back, as well as through the American west, he finds beauty in both urban and rural places: from large-scale landscapes to glimpses of light transforming what it touches.Keegan's poems, stories, captions and musings, song lyrics, and journal pages complement the photographs on this journey. He provides an account of growing up just off the Sunset Strip, coming into his own as an actor/artist, dealing with public recognition while maintaining a very private life, falling in and out of love, and acknowledging the influence of his family, friends, fans, and loved ones.life.love.beauty is an unusually intimate and revealing book: a delight for anyone who values photography, and a gift for the many fans who already follow Keegan's career.Keegan's real passion comes through in both his photographs and candid story telling in this unique photo-journal.

    This epic tale of faith, hope, and selfless heroism is illuminated by the stunning illustrations of Terryl Whitlatch, the principal creature designer for the Star Wars prequels, and is brought to dynamic life by the storytelling of screenwriter and author David Michael Wieger.Bo-hibba is a remote island in a faraway time and place that is populated by animals who are at once fantastic and startlingly real. The island's survival is threatened by the Long Winter, and not even the High Priest's ancient ceremony of renewal can put an end to the suffering from the hunger and the cold.Katook, a small but courageous young lemur, lives in the village of Kattakuk. When he dares to enter a forbidden area on the island and witnesses a shocking act, the outraged priests banish him from the island forever. Forced to journey across the vast sea in search of a new home, Katook encounters great perils and marvels on his quest and undergoes profound tests of trust and friendship. At last, he finds the place where the secret of the Long Winter is revealed and where he must confront his greatest fear if he is to save his family and his island home.Like such classic works of fantasy as Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," Rien Poortvliet's "Gnomes," C. S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia," Brian Jacques's "Redwall" series, and Brian Froud's "Faeries," "The Katurran Odyssey" creates a mythic world imbued with beauty, adventure, and transcendent imagination.