Book picks similar to
Shirin Neshat by Marina Abramović


art
art-books
nonfiction
biographies-memoirs

Lulu in Hollywood


Louise Brooks - 1982
    Eight autobiographical essays by Brooks, on topics ranging from her childhood in Kansas and her early days as a Denishawn and Ziegfeld Follies dancer to her friendships with Martha Graham, Charles Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, and others are collected here. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1982.

Vitamin P₂: New Perspectives in Painting


Barry Schwabsky - 2011
    Since its publication, a whole new generation of painters has emerged, some inspired by the artists who appeared in that book, others taking cues from new sources.? Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting introduces this new wave of painters to the world.The vast medium of painting continues to be a central pillar of artistic practice, and Vitamin P2 presents the outstanding artists who are currently engaging with and pushing the boundaries of the medium. Over 80 international critics, artists and curators have nominated the 115 artists who have made a fresh, unique or innovative contribution to recent painting. All of the artists in Vitamin P2 have recently emerged onto the international scene, and none appeared in the first Vitamin P.An introduction by Barry Schwabsky, who also wrote the introduction for Vitamin P, provides a broad overview of recent developments in the medium while also looking towards its future.

Norman Rockwell


Thomas S. Buechner - 1970
    A study of the artist and illustrator, Norman Rockwell, which reproduces 600 of his best illustrations, providing a panorama of nearly 60 years of American social history.

In the Name of Honour: A Memoir


Mukhtar Mai - 2006
    While certainly not the first account of a female body being negotiated for honor in a family, this time the survivor had bravely chosen to fight back. In doing so, Mai single-handedly changed the feminist movement in Pakistan, one of the world's most adverse climates for women. By July 2002, the Pakistani government awarded her the equivalent of 8,500 U.S. dollars in compensation money and sentenced her attackers to death — and Mukhtar Mai went on to open a school for girls so that future generations would not suffer, as she had, from illiteracy.In this rousing account, Mai describes her experience and how she has since become an agent for change and a beacon of hope for oppressed women around the world. Timely and topical, "In the Name of Honor" is the remarkable and inspirational memoir of a woman who fought and triumphed against exceptional odds.

Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye


Rudolf Arnheim - 1954
    Gestalt theory and the psychology of visual perception form the basis for an analysis of art and its basic elements.

Wisdom: 50 Unique and Original Portraits


Andrew Zuckerman - 2008
    To create profound, honest, and truly revealing portraits of these luminaries, Zuckerman has captured their voices, their physical presence, and the written word. The resulting book and film - included here on a DVD - provide an extraordinary legacy for the generations that follow, and a timeless portrait of the common experiences that unite us all.

True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney


Lawrence Weschler - 2008
    Weschler chronicles Hockney's protean production and speculations, including his scenic designs for opera, his homemade xerographic prints, his exploration of physics in relation to Chinese landscape painting, his investigations into optical devices, his taking up of watercolor—and then his spectacular return to oil painting, around 2005, with a series of landscapes of the East Yorkshire countryside of his youth. These conversations provide an astonishing record of what has been Hockney's grand endeavor, nothing less than an exploration of "the structure of seeing" itself.

Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure


Seema Yasmin - 2020
    A collection of riveting, inspiring, and stereotype-shattering stories that reveal the beauty, diversity, and strength of Muslim women both past and present.Tired of seeing Muslim women portrayed as weak, sheltered, and limited, journalist Seema Yasmin reframes how the world sees them, to reveal everything they CAN do and the incredible, stereotype-shattering ways they are doing it.Featuring 125 full-color illustrations by illustrator Fahmida Azim throughout, Muslim Women Are Everything is a celebration of the ways in which past and present Muslim women from around the world are singing, dancing, reading, writing, laughing, experimenting, driving, and rocking their way into the history books.Forget subservient, oppressed damsels--say hello to women who are breaking down barriers using their art, their voices, and their activism, including:Tesnim Sayar from Denmark, a Muslim goth-punk who wears a red tartan mohawk on top of her hijabAmerican superstar singer SZA, who sings alongside Rihanna and writes songs forBeyonc�Nura Afia, CoverGirl's first hijabi ambassadorIlhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, America's first Muslim congresswomenIlyana Insyirah, a hijaab-wearing scuba-diving midwife from Australia Showcasing women who defy categorization, Muslim Women Are Everything proves that to be Muslim and a woman is to be many things: strong, vulnerable, trans, disabled, funny, entrepreneurial, burqa or bikini clad, and so much more.

Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship


Jack D. Flam - 2003
    They have become cultural icons, standing not only for different kinds of art but also for different ways of living. Matisse, known for his restraint and intense sense of privacy, for his decorum and discretion, created an art that transcended daily life and conveyed a sensuality that inhabited an abstract and ethereal realm of being. In contrast, Picasso became the exemplar of intense emotionality, of theatricality, of art as a kind of autobiographical confession that was often charged with violence and explosive eroticism. In Matisse and Picasso , Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death.

Life Itself


Roger Ebert - 2011
    He has been reviewing films for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and was the first film critic ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. He has appeared on television for four decades, including twenty-three years as cohost of Siskel & Ebert at the Movies.In 2006, complications from thyroid cancer treatment resulted in the loss of his ability to eat, drink, or speak. But with the loss of his voice, Ebert has only become a more prolific and influential writer. And now, for the first time, he tells the full, dramatic story of his life and career.Roger Ebert's journalism carried him on a path far from his nearly idyllic childhood in Urbana, Illinois. It is a journey that began as a reporter for his local daily, and took him to Chicago, where he was unexpectedly given the job of film critic for the Sun-Times, launching a lifetime's adventures.In this candid, personal history, Ebert chronicles it all: his loves, losses, and obsessions; his struggle and recovery from alcoholism; his marriage; his politics; and his spiritual beliefs. He writes about his years at the Sun-Times, his colorful newspaper friends, and his life-changing collaboration with Gene Siskel. He remembers his friendships with Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Oprah Winfrey, and Russ Meyer (for whom he wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and an ill-fated Sex Pistols movie). He shares his insights into movie stars and directors like John Wayne, Werner Herzog, and Martin Scorsese.This is a story that only Roger Ebert could tell. Filled with the same deep insight, dry wit, and sharp observations that his readers have long cherished, this is more than a memoir-it is a singular, warm-hearted, inspiring look at life itself."I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."-from LIFE ITSELF

Just the Funny Parts: ... And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking Into the Hollywood Boys' Club


Nell Scovell - 2018
    For more than thirty years, writer, producer and director Nell Scovell worked behind the scenes of iconic TV shows, including The Simpsons, Late Night with David Letterman, Murphy Brown, NCIS, The Muppets, and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, which she created and executive produced.  In 2009, Scovell gave up her behind-the-scenes status when the David Letterman sex scandal broke. Only the second woman ever to write for his show, Scovell used the moment to publicly call out the lack of gender diversity in late-night TV writers’ rooms. “One of the boys” came out hard for “all of the girls.” Her criticisms fueled a cultural debate. Two years later, Scovell was collaborating with Sheryl Sandberg on speeches and later on Lean In, which resulted in a worldwide movement.Now Scovell is opening up with this fun, honest, and often shocking account. Scovell knows what it’s like to put words in the mouths of President Barack Obama, Mark Harmon, Candice Bergen, Bob Newhart, Conan O’Brien, Alyssa Milano, and Kermit the Frog, among many others. Through her eyes, you’ll sit in the Simpson writers’ room… stand on the Oscar red carpet… pin a tail on Miss Piggy…bond with Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy… and experience a Stephen King-like encounter with Stephen King.Just the Funny Parts is a fast-paced account of a nerdy girl from New England who fought her way to the top of the highly-competitive, male-dominated entertainment field. The book delivers invaluable insights into the creative process and tricks for navigating a difficult workplace. It's part memoir, part how-to, and part survival story. Or, as Scovell puts it, “It’s like Unbroken, but funnier and with slightly less torture.”

Girl Culture


Lauren Greenfield - 2002
    In Girl Culture, she combines a photojournalists sense of story with fine-art composition and color to create an astonishing and intelligent exploration of American girls. Her photographs provide a window into the secret worlds of girls social lives and private rituals, the dressing room and locker room, as well as the iconic subcultures of the popular clique: cheerleaders, showgirls, strippers, debutantes, actresses, and models. With 100 hypnotic photographs, 20 interviews with the subjects, and an introduction by foremost historian of American girlhood Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Greenfield reveals the exhibitionist nature of modern femininity and how far it has drifted from the feminine ideologies of the past.

Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained


August Kleinzahler - 2004
    We witness scenes of passionate, even violent intensity that give rise to meditations on eros and literature, the solitariness of travel, and the poetics of place.These individual pieces, most of which first appeared in The London Review of Books and won an international cult following, are by turns "poignant, surreal, down home and lyrical, a mixture of qualities that inheres in his language with uncommon delicacy and effect" (Leonard Michaels). Together they make up an intellectual and emotional autobiography on the run. The book's final section, about Kleinzahler's adored, doomed older brother, is unforgettable, and since its appearance last year in the LRB, has already entered the literature as one of the most moving contemporary memoirs.

Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems


Fatema Mernissi - 2001
    Now, in Scheherazade Goes West, Mernissi reveals her unique experiences as a liberated, independent Moroccan woman faced with the peculiarities and unexpected encroachments of Western culture. Her often surprising discoveries about the conditions of and attitudes toward women around the world -- and the exquisitely embroidered amalgam of clear-eyed autobiography and dazzling meta-fiction by which she relates those assorted discoveries -- add up to a deliciously wry, engagingly cosmopolitan, and deeply penetrating narrative.

Biltmore Estate


Ellen Erwin Rickman - 2005
    Created in the 1890s by George Washington Vanderbilt, a member of one of America's wealthiest families, the estate combined a 250-room French Renaissance-style chateau with 125,000 acres of gardens, forests, and working farms. Biltmore House served as Vanderbilt's primary residence for almost 20 years. After Mr. Vanderbilt's death in 1914, life at Biltmore continued for his wife Edith and daughter Cornelia. In 1930, Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil and her husband, Hon. John Francis Amherst Cecil, opened Biltmore House--the largest private home in the United States--to the public, firmly establishing the Asheville area as a major tourist destination.