Book picks similar to
Basquiat: Boom for Real by Dieter Buchhart
art
biographies
nonfiction
exhibition-catalogues
Damn! Why Did I Write This Book?
Jayson "JTG" Paul - 2015
In this compilation all focused around the four letter word that has ended more wrestling careers than steroids, pills and alcohol combined: HEAT!HEAT: A dark cloud that follows a wrestler after a personal conflict or misunderstanding between two individuals or more backstage.JTG will take you, the reader, on a journey, from the beginning of his career, to the final curtain call; sharing stories on how he battled Heat from day one. Join JTG on this epic pilgrimage through this blazing inferno that was his career, while managing to piss off more people for writing this book!!!
The Gypsy Code: The true story of a violent game of hide and seek at the fringes of society
Mike Woodhouse - 2019
Then he caught a group of travellers stealing from his warehouse. A car chase, petrol bombing and court case later, and everything had changed.A marked man, Mike was forced to leave everything behind and move to the Peak District for a fresh start. But his old life was never far behind and when he fell for Rhoda, a Romany Gypsy, kin to the very people he was hiding from, he knew he wouldn't be safe for much longer . . .The Gypsy Code is a story of secret identity, revenge and forbidden love that's perfect for fans of Running with the Firm, Undercover and Soldier Spy.
The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon
Gary Tillery - 2009
Cynical Idealist reveals, for the first time, the spiritual odyssey of this extraordinary man. Out of a turbulent life, from his troubled, working-class childhood throughout his many roles -- Beatle, peace advocate, social activist, househusband -- Lennon managed to fashion a philosophy that elevates the human spirit and encourages people to work, individually and collectively, toward a better world. Like Socrates, Lennon wanted to stimulate people to think for themselves. "There ain't no guru who can see through your eyes," he sings in "I Found Out." Cynical Idealist beautifully articulates this and the other lessons John Lennon passed along through his songs and through the example of his life.
Art Sex Music
Cosey Fanni Tutti - 2017
. . shortly before he was arrested for indecent exposure, and whose work continues to be held at the vanguard of contemporary art.And it is the story of her work as a pornographic model and striptease artiste which challenged assumptions about morality, erotica and art.Art Sex Music is the wise, shocking and elegant autobiography of Cosey Fanni Tutti.
Patti Smith 1969-1976
Judy Linn - 2011
I felt protected in the atmosphere we created together. We had an inner narrative, producing our own unspoken film, with or without a camera." -Patti Smith, from her afterword Like a scene in Godard's Vivre sa vie or Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, Patti Smith posed for the lens of a young photographer, Judy Linn. It was 1969, some years before Patti Smith entered the arena of rock and roll. Smith was a struggling poet, harboring a romantic ideal of the collaborative possibilities between an artist and model- a dream happily fulfilled within this intimate and high-spirited body of work. Linn's images of Smith range from the vulnerable to the iconic. Focusing on shifting influences and spotlighting her profound relationships with artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Shepard, Linn has captured Smith like no one else, in the grainy atmosphere of a bygone New York. Judy Linn's photographs document the blooming of an enduring friendship and the evolution of two unique artists: gritty and visionary, fragile and tough.Praise for Patti Smith 1969-1976:"a striking new book, Patti Smith: 1969-1976 (out March 1) . . . collects photographs of the coolly photogenic star taken by her talented friend Judy Linn during the same time Kids describes. They're wonderfully composed shots of Smith looking like the star of a Godard film of her own making. The pictures show her fully ready for a closeup that would cement her boho image just a few years later, on the iconic cover of her first album, Horses, shot, of course, by Mapplethorpe himself." -New York Daily News "Here is Smith's acclaimed 2010 memoir, Just Kids, come to life-the shrines to Bob Dylan, the dress up-and the photos strike the same wistful note; as Smith writes in her afterword: 'once upon a time, we were young and beautiful and anyone we imagined we could be.'" -Publishers Weekly"Anticipating a new generation's excitement for Smith and Mapplethorpe, their friend Judy Linn has published a new book of her photographs, Patti Smith 1969-1976, that centers on the era covered in Just Kids, the time before Patti and Robert were famous. The book's a nice visual testament to their friendship, but it's also a bible of good clothing, an early record of one of the most stylish couples of all time." -The Fader.com"Linn's collection of photographs is the perfect complement to Smith's National Book Award-winning memoir, Just Kids . . . like Smith's memoir, the photos-uninterrupted by titles, captions, or any other text-serve two purposes: they tell the story of young artists finding their voice and style and serve as a love letter to '70s New York, four decades later." -Flavorwire.com
Shotgun Angels: My Story of Broken Roads and Unshakeable Hope
Jay Demarcus - 2019
You'll follow his intensely personal journey through big breaks and broken dreams, desperate dashboard prayers, and limelight glories. Along the way, you'll find the same constant source of strength that he has--hope that is powerful enough to hold you up through whatever trials come your way.
Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art
Phoebe Hoban - 1997
Phoebe Hoban's Basquiat, the first biography of this charismatic figure, charts the trajectory from the artist's troubled childhood to his volatile passage through the white art world of dealers and nouveau-riche collectors, chronicling the meteoric success and overnight burnout that made him an instant art-world myth.As much the portrait of an era as the portrait of an artist, Basquiat is an incisive expose of the eighties art market that paints a vivid picture of the rise and fall of the graffiti movement, the East Village art scene, and the out-of-control auction houses. Ten years after the artist's death, Basquiat resurrects both the painter and his time.
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock
Gene Odom - 2002
Naming their band after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee Senior High School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiring musicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties, and bars throughout the South. During the next decade Lynyrd Skynyrd grew into the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful of the rock bands to emerge from the South since the Allman Brothers. Their hits “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama” became classics. Then, at the height of its popularlity in 1977, the band was struck with tragedy --a plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant and two other band members.Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock is an intimate chronicle of the band from its earliest days through the plane crash and its aftermath, to its rebirth and current status as an enduring cult favorite. From his behind-the-scenes perspective as Ronnie Van Zant’s lifelong friend and frequent member of the band’s entourage who was also aboard the plane on that fateful flight, Gene Odom reveals the unique synthesis of blues/country rock and songwriting talent, relentless drive, rebellious Southern swagger and down-to-earth sensibility that brought the band together and made it a defining and hugely popular Southern rock band -- as well as the destructive forces that tore it apart. Illustrated throughout with rare photos, Odom traces the band’s rise to fame and shares personal stories that bring to life the band’s journey. For the fans who have purchased a cumulative 35 million copies of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s albums and continue to pack concerts today, Lynyrd Skynyrd is a celebration of an immortal American band.From the Hardcover edition.
Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli
Annie Cohen-Solal - 2009
Now Annie Cohen-Solal, author of the hugely acclaimed Sartre: A Life (“an intimate portrait of the man that possesses all the detail and resonance of fiction”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times), recounts his incalculably influential and astonishing life in Leo and His Circle. After emigrating to New York in 1941, Castelli would not open a gallery for sixteen years, when he had reached the age of fifty. But as the first to exhibit the then-unknown Jasper Johns, Castelli emerged as a tastemaker overnight and fast came to champion a virtual Who’s Who of twentieth-century masters: Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, and Twombly, to name a few. The secret of Leo’s success? Personal devotion to the artists, his “heroes”: by putting young talents on stipend and seeking placement in the ideal collection rather than with the top bidder, he transformed the way business was done, multiplying the capital, both cultural and financial, of those he represented. His enterprise, which by 1980 had expanded to an impressive network of satellite galleries in Europe and three locations in New York, thus became the unrivaled commercial institution in American art, producing a generation of acolytes, among them Mary Boone, Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian, and Tony Shafrazi. Leo and His Circle brilliantly narrates the course of one man’s power and influence. But Castelli had another secret, too: his life as an Italian Jew. Annie Cohen-Solal traces a family whose fortunes rose and fell for centuries before the Castellis fled European fascism. Never hidden but also never discussed, this experience would form the core of a guarded but magnetic character possessed of unfailing old-world charm and a refusal to look backward—traits that ensured Castelli’s visionary precedence in every major new movement from Pop to Conceptual and by which he fostered the worldwide enthusiasm for American contemporary art that is his greatest legacy. Drawing on her friendship with the subject, as well as an uncanny knack for archival excavation, Annie Cohen-Solal gives us in full the elegant, shrewd, irresistible, and enigmatic figure at the very center of postwar American art, bringing an utterly new understanding of its evolution.
That's Me in the Corner: Adventures of an ordinary boy in a celebrity world
Andrew Collins - 2007
This charmingly funny, self-deprecating resumé of an ordinary man’s career to date and current life in the celebrity bear pit is penned by the author of the Sunday Times-bestselling Where Did It All Go Right?
Who Killed John Lennon?: The lives, loves and deaths of the greatest rock star
Lesley-Ann Jones - 2020
They Don't Play Hockey in Heaven: A Dream, A Team, and My Comeback Season
Ken Baker - 2003
. . colorful descriptions make this a fun read." -Los Angeles Times "One of the best sports books of the year." -Booklist Ken Baker wanted nothing more than to play ice hockey with the pros-until a brain tumor cut his dreams short while in college. After surgery and several years of rehab, Baker, who in high school was a top prospect for the U.S. Olympic team, put his successful journalism career on hold to attempt the seemingly impossible: a comeback. He moved away from his family to become the third-string goalie for the Bakersfield Condors, an AA-level minor-league team in the dusty oil town of Bakersfield, California. At the age of thirty-one, Baker became the oldest rookie in all of pro-hockey, facing 100-m.p.h. slap shots and long bus rides, hostile fans and cheap motel rooms, body bruises, and battle-worn teammates. From his visit to an NHL training camp to his first nerve-rattled minutes as a pro, Baker joins the rookies who still dream of making it to the Show, the veterans long past their prime, and the obsessive fans who keep them going. When the season is over, Baker's pro-hockey adventure ends up teaching him nearly everything he will ever need to know about life.
The Kenneth Williams Letters
Kenneth Williams - 1994
Following the bestselling publication of 'The Kenneth Williams Diaries', the devastating self-portrait of one of our most loved and complex performers is completed with this selection of his letters.
The Phish Book
Phish - 1998
The first and only authorized book about the band, The Phish Book is an extraordinary verbal and visual chronicle of a year in the life of Phish, featuring extensive interviews with the four band members--Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, and Page McConnell--conducted by writer Richard Gehr, who also serves as guide to the history, mythology, musical context, and unique audience-band relationship in which the Vermont quartet flourishes. While it contains many of the trappings of other lavish rock monuments--including more than two hundred pieces of previously unpublished art and photography from the band's private archive--The Phish Book elevates the form by means of an innovative roundtable-style discussion format. Richard Gehr and Phish use the events of 1997 as a jumping-off point from which the band members free-associate about themselves, their music, and the dedicated and colorful community that springs up wherever they perform. Beginning with the backstage scene at Boston's Fleet Center on New Year's Eve, 1996, The Phish Book explores the band's earliest days in Burlington, Vermont; their musical influences, which include James Brown, Frank Zappa, and the Grateful Dead; their legendary Halloween shows; the two European and two American tours the group undertook in 1997; the stories behind their 1996 studio album, Billy Breathes, and the following year's live Slip Stitch and Pass; life onstage and off; the sixty-thousand-fan Maine campout and art project known as the Great Went; and the experimental recording and performing techniques that informed the band's most recent studio album, The Story of the Ghost. More than a retrospective journal of the group's evolution, The Phish Book is a glorious snapshot of a band much bigger than its parts and at the height of its collective power.
Def Leppard: The Definitive Visual History
Ross Halfin - 2011
This fully authorized visual history of the band follows them from the new wave of British heavy metal to their massive Pyromania and Hysteria albums to the sustained power of their records and tours today. Legendary rock photographer Ross Halfin has been shooting Def Leppard since 1978, and his candid and definitive pictures have helped capture and shape the image of the band. Def Leppard includes more than 450 classic and unseen photographs, along with text from Halfin and stories and commentary by the band members and others. The book's publication coincides with the release of an all-new Def Leppard album in the spring and a worldwide tour in the summer.