But had this bold and spirited beauty really descended into prostitution, drunkenness, and early death--or did her life, hidden from history, take a different course altogether? Eunice Lipton's search for the answer combines the suspense of a detective story with the revelatory power of art, peeling off layers of lies to reveal startling truths about Victorine Meurent--and about Lipton herself.

    The writings include text from the infamous performances that brought her to the Supreme Court in Finley vs. NEA, a battle that became a mainstay of the culture wars and which has made Finley an icon in the struggle for freedom of speech. Included in this volume will be the never before published, Obie Award-winning The American Chestnut for which she received a Guggenheim; such works as We Keep Our Victims Ready, A Certain Level of Denial, The Return of the Chocolate Smeared Woman, and an excerpt from her forthcoming film Shut Up and Love Me. Also appearing will be previously unpublished short stories, photos, artwork, and an essay on censorship. In 1998 Finley was named Woman of the Year by MS. magazine; she posed for Playboy the following year. She has appeared in numerous films including Philadelphia, and will soon be directing her own first feature film, Shut Up and Love Me, produced by Forensic Films. She has recorded albums including a collaboration with Sinead O'Connor. Finley is a regular on Politically Incorrect and can be seen giving her opinions on Exhale, a new show hosted by Candace Bergen on Oxygen. She will be hosting The Naked Players, a "nude Candid Camera" as well as Shock Video, both on HBO. Finley has written four books: Shock Treatment, Enough Is Enough, Living It Up, and Pooh Unplugged. "We need Finley: she doesn't duck the bullets, she keeps her eyes peeled on the artillery aimed at women, and she continues to push against her own boundaries as an artist" -- MS. Magazine

    In her early nineties, she generously shared her hospitality and wisdom with writer Malte Herwig, who started out as an interviewer but found himself drawn into the role of pupil as Gilot, whom he called “a philosopher of joy,” introduced him to different ways of seeing the world.

    From the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent and Savonarola to the splendour of the papal Rome; the tormented life of a Renaissance genius.

    These paintings are among the central attractions for millions of tourists who visit these museums each year. Carefully selected works evoke the glorious light of the French countryside, quiet gardens, and seaside retreats. Includes such popular paintings as Woman with a Parasol, The Japanese Footbridge, and Houses of Parliament, Sunset.

    Burns was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Andover and Harvard, and went on to teach English at the Loomis School, a boarding school for boys in Windsor, Connecticut. During World War II, he was stationed in Africa and Italy, and worked mainly in military intelligence. His first novel, The Gallery (1947), based on his wartime experiences, is a critically acclaimed novel and one of the first to unflinchingly depict gay life in the military. The Gallery sold half a million copies upon publication, but never again would Burns receive that kind of critical or popular attention. Dreadful follows Burns, from his education at the best schools to his final years of drinking and depression in Italy. With intelligence and insight, David Margolick examines Burns’s moral ambivalence toward the behavior of American soldiers stationed with him in Naples, and the scandal surrounding his second novel, Lucifer with a Book, an unflattering portrayal of his experiences at Loomis.

    Freud—once dubbed "the Ingres of existentialism"—has almost single-handedly redefined the figurative painting of our time. No other living artist possesses his ability to paint the texture and thinness of skin over flesh, and his distinctive portraits have a haunting quality that makes them impossible to forget. This volume, with over one hundred superb reproductions of his greatest paintings, pays tribute to one of the most original and accomplished artists of the twentieth century.

    Blessed with an unerring eye, he tackles a myriad of subjects with wit, poetry, and perspicacity, examining and questioning the art before him while reveling in the power and beauty of language. His writing springs from a desire to be understood by all readers, and a determination to help them engage with art of every kind.Covering subjects drawn from a broad canvas of the history of art—from ancient Greece, Mexico, and Byzantium, through Raphael, Rubens, and Rembrandt, to Bruce Nauman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and John Currin—the writings collected here seek out with precision and economy the essence of the individual artist or work under discussion, but they never lose sight of the bigger picture: What is beauty? What does it mean to be an American artist? What can the art we produce and admire tell us about ourselves?With an imaginative introduction—twenty questions, each one posed to Schjeldahl by a different artist or writer—this collection will appeal to anyone who considers the experience of art, and of writing on art, an invitation to a voyage.Coverage includes:     • large-scale exhibitions at leading institutions around the world     • shows at private galleries     • profiles of prominent members of the art world     • personal accounts of time spent with artists     • the influences of museum spaces on our experience of art

    Vermeer left no record of his method and indeed we know almost nothing of the man nor of how he worked. But by a close and illuminating study of the paintings Steadman concludes that Vermeer did use the camera obscura and shows how the inherent defects in this primitive device enabled Vermeer to achieve some remarkable effects--the slight blurring of image, the absence of sharp lines, the peculiar illusion not of closeness but of distance in the domestic scenes. Steadman argues that the use of the camera also explains some previously unexplainable qualities of Vermeer's art, such as the absence of conventional drawing, the pattern of underpainting in areas of pure tone, the pervasive feeling of reticence that suffuses his canvases, and the almost magical sense that Vermeer is painting not objects but light itself.Drawing on a wealth of Vermeer research and displaying an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtleties of the work itself, Philip Steadman offers in Vermeer's Camera a fresh perspective on some of the most enchanting paintings ever created.

    His talent soon caught the eye of 16th-century rulers, and he moved on to the imperial courts of Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolf II in Prague, where he created the scenes for his Seasons. In Arcimboldo's allegorical paintings, Spring appears as a young man composed entirely of flowers, Summer as a composition of fruits, Autumn as a head made of grapes, and Winter as a gnarled old man twined with ivy. Arcimboldo remained true to the allegorical principles informing the artistic and philosophical world view of the 16th century. His paintings are not only full of references to ancient classical gods and goddesses, but above all they reflect the courtly cosmos of the art chambers and wonder cabinets in which countless exotic and bizarre objects were housed. With the decline of this allegorical world vision between the Renaissance and Mannerism, Arcimboldo was forgotten- only to be rediscovered by modern artists.

    Soon she finds herself drawn unwillingly into the tumultuous London art world, populated by exiled Russian oligarchs, avaricious Sheikas, desperate auctioneers and unscrupulous dealers, all scheming to get their hands on her painting - a lost eighteenth-century masterpiece called ‘The Improbability of Love’. Delving into the painting’s past, Annie will uncover not just an illustrious list of former owners, but some of the darkest secrets of European history – and in doing so she might just learn to open up to the possibility of falling in love again.

    Among significant mid-century interiors, none are more celebrated yet underpublished as the homes created by architects and interior designers for themselves. This collection of newly commissioned photographs presents the most compelling homes by influential mid-century designers, such as Russel Wright, George Nakashima, Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eva Zeisel, among others. Intimate as well as revelatory, Williamson’s photographs show these creative homes as they were lived in by their designers: Walter Gropius’s historic Bauhaus home in Massachusetts; Albert Frey’s floating modernist aerie on a Palm Springs rock outcropping; Wharton Esherick’s completely handmade Pennsylvania house, from the organic handcarved staircase to the iconic furniture. Personal and breathtaking by turn—these homes are exemplary studies of domestic modernism at its warmest and most creative.

    Since the foundation of the modern discipline of art history in Germany in the late eighteenth century, debates about art and its histories have intensified. Historians, philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists among others have changed our notions of what art history has been, is, and might be. The Art of Art History is a unique guide to understanding art history through a critical reading of the field's most innovative and influential texts over the past two centuries. Each section focuses on a key issue: aesthetics, style, history as an art, iconography and semiology, gender, modernity and postmodernity, deconstruction and museology. More than thirty readings from writers as diverse as Winckelmann, Kant, Gombrich, Warburg, Panofsky, Heidegger, Lisa Tickner, Meyer Schapiro, Jacques Derrida, Mary Kelly, Michel Foucault, Rosalind Krauss, Louis Marin, Margaret Iversen, and Nestor Canclini are brought together, and Donald Preziosi's introductions to each topic provide background information, bibliographies, and critical elucidations of the issues at stake. His own concluding essay is an important and original contribution to scholarship in the field.Contents:Art history : making the visible legible by Donald PreziosiReflections on the imitation of Greek works in painting and sculpture by Johann Joachim WinckelmannWinckelmann divided : mourning the death of art history by Whitney DavisPatterns of intention by Michael BaxandallWhat is enlightenment? ; The critique of judgement by Immanuel KantPhilosophy of fine art by G.W.F. HegelPrinciples of art history by Heinrich Wölfflin"Form," nineteenth-century metaphysics, and the problem of art historical description by David SummersStyle by Meyer SchapiroStyle by Ernst GombrichLeading characteristics of the late Roman "Kunstwollen" by Alois RieglImages from the region of the Pueblo Indians of North America by Aby WarburgWarburg's concept of "Kulturwissenschaft" and its meaning for aesthetics by Edgar WindRetrieving Warburg's tradition by Margaret IversenSemiotics and iconography by Hubert DamischSemiotics and art history : a discussion of context and senders by Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson"Et in Arcadia ego" : Poussin and the elegiac tradition by E. PanofskyToward a theory of reading in the visual arts : Poussin's "The Arcadian shepherds" by Louis MarinSculpture in the expanded field by Rosalind KraussWhat is an author? by Michel FoucaultThe allegorical impulse : toward a theory of postmodernism by Craig OwensMapping the postmodern by Andreas HuyssenThe art historical canon : sins of omission by Nanette SalomonSexuality andbyin representation : five British artists by Lisa TicknerNo essential femininity by Mary Kelly and Paul SmithPostfeminism, feminist pleasures, and embodied theories of art by Amelia JonesThe temptation of new perspectives by Stephen MelvilleThe origin of the work of art by Martin HeideggerThe still life as a personal object : a note on Heidegger and van Gogh by Meyer SchapiroRestitutions of the truth in pointing ["pointure"] by Jacques DerridaOrientalism and the exhibitionary order by Timothy MitchellThe art museum as ritual by Carol DuncanInventing the "postcolonial" : hybridity and constituency in contemporary curating by Annie E. CoombesRemaking passports : visual thought in the debate on multiculturalism by Néstor García CancliniThe art of art history by Donald Preziosi

    L. Aronson.Richard Avedon was arguably the world's most famous photographer--as artistically influential as he was commercially successful. Over six richly productive decades, he created landmark advertising campaigns, iconic fashion photographs (as the star photographer for Harper's Bazaar and then Vogue), groundbreaking books, and unforgettable portraits of everyone who was anyone. He also went on the road to find and photograph remarkable uncelebrated faces, with an eye toward constructing a grand composite picture of America.Avedon dazzled even his most dazzling subjects. He possessed a mystique so unique it was itself a kind of genius--everyone fell under his spell. But the Richard Avedon the world saw was perhaps his greatest creation: he relentlessly curated his reputation and controlled his image, managing to remain, for all his exposure, among the most private of celebrities.No one knew him better than did Norma Stevens, who for thirty years was his business partner and closest confidant. In Avedon: Something Personal--equal parts memoir, biography, and oral history, including an intimate portrait of the legendary Avedon studio--Stevens and co-author Steven M. L. Aronson masterfully trace Avedon's life from his birth to his death, in 2004, at the age of eighty-one, while at work in Texas for The New Yorker (whose first-ever staff photographer he had become in 1992).The book contains startlingly candid reminiscences by Mike Nichols, Calvin Klein, Claude Picasso, Renata Adler, Brooke Shields, David Remnick, Naomi Campbell, Twyla Tharp, Jerry Hall, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bruce Weber, Cindy Crawford, Donatella Versace, Jann Wenner, and Isabella Rossellini, among dozens of others.Avedon: Something Personal is the confiding, compelling full story of a man who for half a century was an enormous influence on both high and popular culture, on both fashion and art--to this day he remains the only artist to have had not one but two retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during his lifetime. Not unlike Richard Avedon's own defining portraits, the book delivers the person beneath the surface, with all his contradictions and complexities, and in all his touching humanity.

    “A tantalizing whodunit” (Boston Globe) and a “riveting, wonderfully vivid account [that] takes you into the underworld of obsessed art detectives, con men, and thieves” (Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting), The Gardner Heist is true crime history at its most spellbinding.