Mucha is most famous for his Sarah Bernhardt posters and his magnificent decorative panels such as "The Seasons," works that continue to grow in popularity, despite the indifferent quality of most modern reproductions. To graphic artists and commercial designers, Mucha is praised for the innovative stylebooks that pioneered the use of Art Nouveau in commercial packaging, design, and ornament. But the primary element in all of Mucha's artistic endeavors — his evocative, highly original draftsmanship — has never been adequately surveyed.This collection of 70 high-quality illustrations — six in black-and-white and nine in full color — offers the first and only comprehensive survey of Mucha's drawings, and as such, provides a unique insight into the aesthetic qualities that were fundamental to all of the artist's work. Reproduced directly from his original drawings, these works span Mucha's entire career and include sketches for his famous book and magazine illustrations, preliminary sketches for paintings, advertising and packaging art, studies for stylebooks, etc. Famous examples include "The Seasons," full-color drawings for the complete set, plus a preliminary charcoal sketch for "Autumn"; St. Louis World's Fair poster, full-color lithograph and preliminary pencil sketch; Sarah Bernhardt, four works in India ink, pencil, etc.; and "Documents décoratifs" and "Figures décoratives," studies from Mucha's two innovative stylebooks.Naturally, many of these drawing are interesting because they reveal the initial thoughts for famous works but most basically these drawings show that Mucha's draftsmanship — highly admired, even by the cantankerous Whistler — was the brilliant underpinning of his entire craft.

    After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.

    There is no question that Robert Frank's The Americans is the most famous and influential photography book ever published. It was 1959 when the book first came out: a series of deceptively simple photographs that Frank took on a trip through America in '55 and '56, pictures of normal people, everyday scenes: lunch counters, bus depots, cars, and the stangely familiar faces of people we don't quite know but have seen somewhere. They are pictures that saw the "American way of life" as we hadn't yet quite been able to see it ourselves, photographs that condensed the entire life of a nation in classic images that still speak to us today, forty years and several generations later.

    In the detached, back-fence gossip style he was famous for, Warhol tells all—the ultimate inside story of a decade of cultural revolution.

    An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.

    Friends since early childhood, they have supported each other in bad times and good. But their families are bound together by more than friendship, and secrets from the past threaten to make their lives even more difficult. The local cotton mill has provided work for Ruby and Grace since they were nine years old, and now years later both girls find themselves the object of attention from the mill owner's sons. As times grow harder, and money ever scarcer, Grace becomes involved in campaigns against poverty and injustice, while Ruby is tempted into prostitution. The two girls are searching for something that could take them far away . . . But what price will they pay to find it?If you like books by Katie Flynn and Dilly Court, you'll love Val's heartwarming stories of triumph over adversity.

    

    The Samurai spirit, Bushido, is an integral component of Japanese tattooing that is traced through the imagery and interpersonal dynamics of this veiled subculture. The eloquent text is based largely on Takahiro Kitamura's experiences as client and student of the famed Japanese tattoo master, Horiyoshi III. Over 200 beautiful photos by Jai Tanju capture the breathtaking tattoo artistry of Horiyoshi III. Five original, unpublished prints by Horiyoshi III, like those in his acclaimed book, 100 Demons of Horiyoshi III, are included here. Bushido: Legacies of the Japanese Tattoo is certain to fascinate everyone with an interest in tattoo culture.

    It has been inspired by the scientific ferment that swept through Britain at the end of the 18th century, and which Holmes now radically redefines as 'the revolution of Romantic Science'.

    The quantity of clothes recorded in the inventories taken in 1600 would seem to suggest sheer vanity, but a survey of work carried out in the Wardrobe of Robes throughout the reign reveals a different picture. It is one of careful organisation and economy. This copiously annotated work is illustrated with photographs of portraits, miniatures, tomb sculptures, engravings, woven textiles and embroideries. Two indexes are provided, the first of paintings, persons, places, and events, while the second, partly a glossary, enables the reader to quickly trace information on fashionable dress and accessories. An invaluable reference for students of the history of dress and embroidery, for social historians, for art historians working in the field of portraiture, and those with a general interest in the period. Case-bound in cloth with dust jacket.

    . . A superb outing from a gifted young critic that will spark joy in many readers." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review“Less is more”: Everywhere we hear the mantra. Marie Kondo and other decluttering gurus promise that shedding our stuff will solve our problems. We commit to cleanse diets and strive for inbox zero. Amid the frantic pace and distraction of everyday life, we covet silence-and airy, Instagrammable spaces in which to enjoy it. The popular term for this brand of upscale austerity, “minimalism,” has mostly come to stand for things to buy and consume. But minimalism has richer, deeper, and altogether more valuable gifts to offer.Kyle Chayka is one of our sharpest cultural observers. After spending years covering minimalist trends for leading publications, he now delves beneath this lifestyle's glossy surface, seeking better ways to claim the time and space we crave. He shows that our longing for less goes back further than we realize. His search leads him to the philosophical and spiritual origins of minimalism, and to the stories of artists such as Agnes Martin and Donald Judd; composers such as John Cage and Julius Eastman; architects and designers; visionaries and misfits. As Chayka looks anew at their extraordinary lives and explores the places where they worked-from Manhattan lofts to the Texas high desert and the back alleys of Kyoto-he reminds us that what we most require is presence, not absence. The result is an elegant new synthesis of our minimalist desires and our profound emotional needs.

    Lucey illuminates four extraordinary women painted by the iconic high-society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny intuition, Sargent hinted at the mysteries and passions that unfolded in his subjects’ lives.Elsie Palmer traveled between her father’s Rocky Mountain castle and the medieval English manor house where her mother took refuge, surrounded by artists, writers, and actors. Elsie hid labyrinthine passions, including her love for a man who would betray her. As the veiled Sally Fairchild—beautiful and commanding—emerged on Sargent’s canvas, the power of his artistry lured her sister, Lucia, into a Bohemian life. The saintly Elizabeth Chanler embarked on a surreptitious love affair with her best friend’s husband. And the iron-willed Isabella Stewart Gardner scandalized Boston society and became Sargent’s greatest patron and friend.Like characters in an Edith Wharton novel, these women challenged society’s restrictions, risking public shame and ostracism. All had forbidden love affairs; Lucia bravely supported her family despite illness, while Elsie explored Spiritualism, defying her overbearing father. Finally, the headstrong Isabella outmaneuvered the richest plutocrats on the planet to create her own magnificent art museum.These compelling stories of female courage connect our past with our present—and remind us that while women live differently now, they still face obstacles to attaining full equality.

    This book provides a solid image of Escher as he saw himself--not as an 'artist' but as an artisan, a graphic artist with heart and soul, obsessed by contrasts and possessed by a unique creativity.

    Suggesting a series of questions to ask when looking at a painting this will help develop a critical understanding of art.

    In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story.