You have to keep things close to your chest and be aware of what’s really important: the work, not everything around it. If you have faith in the work, then the people will come … it’s an artistic imperative, it has nothing to do with public perception or career or any of that crap. "The name, Swans, it’s synonymous with who I am, but it’s how it’s achieved and it’s achieved by people—those people need to have total commitment to making this sound and to making it utterly incisive and uncompromising. The work is everything and it has to—at least at the time—appear, to me, to be stellar. That’s the prerequisite. It’s an intangible thing where it really speaks and has some truth within it."—Michael Gira Over a span of some three and a half decades, Michael Gira’s Swans have risen from chaotic origins in the aftermath of New York’s No Wave scene to become one of the most acclaimed rock-orientated acts of recent years. The 1980s’ infamous ‘loudest band on the planet’ morphed repeatedly until collapsing exhausted, broken, and dispirited in the late 1990s. Swans returned triumphantly in 2010 to top end-of-year polls and achieve feted status among fans and critics alike as the great survivors and latter-day statesmen of the underground scene. Throughout, Gira’s desire has remained to create music of such intensity that the listener might forget flesh, get rid of the body, exist as pure energy—transcendent—inside of the sound. Through these pages, the musicians responsible tell the tale of one of the most significant bands of the US post-punk era. Drawing on more than 125 original interviews, Swans: Sacrifice And Transcendence is the ultimate companion to Swans and their work from the 1980s to the present day.

    Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it." —Annie LeibovitzAnnie Leibovitz describes how her pictures were made, starting with Richard Nixon's resignation, a story she covered with Hunter S. Thompson, and ending with Barack Obama's campaign. In between are a Rolling Stones Tour, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, The Blues Brothers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Haring, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Patti Smith, George W. Bush, William S. Burroughs, Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth. The most celebrated photographer of our time discusses portraiture, reportage, fashion photography, lighting, and digital cameras.

    In both subject and sound, it was like nothing else on the radio. It defied the cynicism and apathy of Generation X; it challenged the aesthetic expectations for a "pop song" (or even a "protest song"), fusing blues, opera, rock and gospel; and it demanded accountability in an era of corporate greed, globalization and environmental indifference. A massive hit globally (reaching #1 in over fifteen countries), it wasn't even offered as a single in the United States. Yet nearly two decades later, it stands as one of Jackson's greatest artistic achievements. In this groundbreaking monograph, author Joseph Vogel details the song's context and evolution from its inception in Vienna in 1988, to its release and reception in 1995, to Jackson's final live performance in Munich in 1999. Based on original research, including interviews with the song's key participants, Earth Song: Inside Michael Jackson's Magnum Opus offers a fascinating reassessment of this prophetic musical statement.

    Images from Ryden's acclaimed Japanese Snow Yak Show are reproduced in large 11" x 14" format, & include many detail images & drawings. Features all of the works, as well as photographs of the work on display.

    Yet five years later, Cheryl, Kimberley, Nadine, Nicola, and Sarah have come a long way indeed. With a record-breaking 16 consecutive Top 10 singles (including three number ones), four platinum albums, and record sales in excess of 4.2 million in the UK alone, they are loved by the masses, critically aacclaimed by the broadsheets, and have been nominated for a Brit. Now the girls have seized the opportunity to share the story of their success. Giving a personal insight into their childhoods, their love interests, their struggle for recognition, their party lifestyle, and their rock solid friendships with each other, this book charts the girls' ride from relative obscurity to international superstardom, with plenty of style advice and celebrity gossip along the way. Fun, fiesty, drop-dead gorgeous, immensely successful, and the life and soul of the party, Girls Aloud have literally millions of adoring fans in the UK. Packed full of never-before-seen pics and lavishly illustrated throughout, this book is a must-read for them all.

    R. B. Kitaj’s proposal, made in 1976, that there was a “substantial School of London” was essentially correct but it caused confusion because it implied that there was a movement or stylistic group at work, when in reality no one style could cover the likes of Francis Bacon and also Bridget Riley.Modernists and Mavericks explores this period based on an exceptionally deep well of firsthand interviews, often unpublished, with such artists as Victor Pasmore, John Craxton, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj, Euan Uglow, Howard Hodgkin, Terry Frost, Gillian Ayres, Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Frank Bowling, Leon Kossoff, John Hoyland, and Patrick Caulfield. But Martin Gayford also teases out the thread weaving these individual lives together and demonstrates how and why, long after it was officially declared dead, painting lived and thrived in London. Simultaneously aware of the influences of Jackson Pollock, Giacometti, and (through the teaching passed down at the major art school) the traditions of Western art from Piero della Francesca to Picasso and Matisse, the postwar painters were bound by their confidence that this ancient medium could do fresh and marvelous things, and explored in their diverse ways, the possibilities of paint.

    This version of the Beatles legend smoothed the rough edges and filled in the fault lines, and for more than forty years this manicured version of the Beatles story has sustained as truth - until now.The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for -- a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves -- and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll.Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where -- amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills -- the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at Abbey Road Studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe...all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music.It is all here, raw and right: the highs and the lows, the love and the rivalry, the awe and the jealousy, the drugs, the tears, the thrill, the magic never again to be repeated. Open this book and begin to read -- Bob Spitz's masterpiece is, at long last, the biography the Beatles deserve.

    With his gorgeous, successful wife, Jenny, his country pile, and gold discs hanging in his plush bathroom, he seems to have it all. But all is not well between Jenny and Solomon; as her business continues to grow, her affection for her husband begins to diminish, and soon divorce is on the cards. To try and win Jenny back, Solomon throws his bruised heart into trying out for a reality TV show that turns lapsed pop acts into opera singers. The ace up his sleeve is an eccentric octogenarian opera coach he employs to get ahead of the competition but, to his surprise, Solomon learns far more than how to improve the quality of his vibrato; especially when his coach asks Solomon to duet with newly single Samantha... Sex, Drugs & Opera is the debut novel of Tears for Fears musician, Roland Orzabal.

    It is a candid retrospective of the extraordinary success achieved, and the prices that had to be paid.“After ‘Snowbird’ hit, I was swept up like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and catapulted into a strange new universe … If I thought for a moment that I was really in control of events, I was deluded.” Anne MurrayAn unflinching self-portrait of Canada’s first great female recording artist, All of Me documents the life of Anne Murray, from her humble origins in the tragedy-plagued coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, to her arrival on the world stage. Anne recounts her story: the battles with her record companies over singles and albums; the struggle with drug- and alcohol-ridden band members; the terrible guilt and loneliness of being away from her two young children; her divorce from the man who helped launch her career, Bill Langstroth; and the deaths of two of her closest confidantes. The result is a must-read autobiography by Canada’s beloved songbird.

    Author Biography: Mark Blake is a veteran journalist who has written for many international music magazines.

    Dear, simple mother, in her terrible clothes, and the twins, got up with more thought for economy than for beauty! I shopped extravagantly with them. The youngsters wanted to see everything in New York; but mother, despite all of those hard, lonely years in our rough country and the many interesting things for her to do and see in New York-- mother wanted nothing better than to stay with the baby.

    He stood for Modernism but he also embodied tradition. His pictures polarized and divided the art-loving world. The press and general public alike were split over the question: For or against Klimt? This monograph explores Klimt’s oeuvre with particular emphasis upon such contemporary voices. With a complete catalogue of his paintings, including new photographs of the Stoclet Frieze commissioned exclusively for this book, it examines the reactions to Klimt’s work throughout his career. Subjects range from Klimt’s portrayal of women to his adoption of landscape painting. The theory that Klimt was a man of few words who rarely put pen to paper is also dispelled with the inclusion of 179 letters, cards, writings, and other documents from the artist.Contributing authors: Evelyn Benesch, Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Rainald Franz, Anette Freytag, Christoph Grunenberg, Hansjörg Krug, Susanna Partsch, Angelina Pötschner, and Michaela ReichelThe Editor and Author:Tobias G. Natter is an internationally acknowledged expert on art in “Vienna around 1900.” For many years he worked at the Austrian Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, latterly as head curator. He also worked as guest curator at the Tate Liverpool, the Neue Galerie New York, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Schirn in Frankfurt am Main, and the Jewish Museum in Vienna. From 2006 to 2011, he directed the Vorarlberg Museum in Bregenz, and from 2011 to 2013 was director of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. In 2014 he founded Natter Fine Arts, which specializes in assessing works of art and developing exhibition concepts. He is the author of TASCHEN’s Gustav Klimt: The Complete Paintings; Art for All: The Colour Woodcut in Vienna around 1900; and Egon Schiele: The Complete Paintings, 1909–1918.Details:Gustav Klimt: The Complete PaintingsTobias G. NatterHardcover with fold-outs, 29 x 39.5 cm, 676 pagesISBN 978-3-8365-2795-8Edition: EnglishSUZY MENKES:“Surely TASCHEN’s Klimt: The Complete Paintings. Each unfolding page — with its strokeable surface of intense paintwork and its meld of Byzantine imagery and Venetian mosaics — brings to life the exotic eroticism of an exceptional artist.”

    

    Rockwell senior, who said he depicted life “as I would like it to be,” chronicled iconic visions of American life: the Thanksgiving turkey, soda fountains, ice skating on the pond, and small-town boys playing baseball-not to mention the beginning of the civil rights movement. Now, the best-selling collection of Rockwell’s most beloved illustrations, organized by decade, is available in a refreshed edition. With more than 150 images-oil paintings, watercolors, and rare black-and-white sketches--this is an uncommonly faithful Rockwell treasury. The original edition has sold nearly 200,000 copies.

    Featuring a collection of images from the studios' own vaults, this book looks at the 'creature features' which continue to influence filmmakers today.