By the time she returned to her home country in 1973, she had established herself as a leader of New York’s avant-garde movement, known for creating happenings and public orgies to protest the Vietnam War and for the polka dots that had become a trademark of her work. Her sculptures, videos, paintings, and installations are to this day included in major international exhibitions.Available for the first time in English, Infinity Net paints a multilayered portrait of this fascinating artist. Taking us from her oppressive childhood in postwar Japan to her present life in the psychiatric hospital where she voluntarily stays—and is still productive—Kusama’s autobiography offers insight into the persona of mental illness that has informed her work. While she vibrantly describes the hallucinatory episodes she experiences, her tale is punctuated by stories of her pluck and drive in making her artistic voice heard. Conveying the breadth and ambition of her own work, Kusama also offers a dazzling snapshot of 1960s and 1970s New York City and her encounters with its artists—she collaborates with Andy Warhol, shares an apartment with Donald Judd, and becomes romantically entangled with Joseph Cornell. Replete with the sense of the sheer necessity within an artist to create, Infinity Net is an energetic and juicy page-turner that offers a glimpse into Kusama’s exhilarating world.

    During the heyday of the American circus from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s, traveling circuses performed for audiences of up to 12,000-14,000 per show, employed as many as 1,600 men and women, and crisscrossed the country on 20,000 miles of railroad in one season alone. The spectacle of death-defying daredevils, strapping super-heroes and scantily-clad starlets, fearless animal trainers, and startling freaks gripped the American imagination, outshining theater, vaudeville, comedy, and minstrel shows of its day, and ultimately paved the way for film and television to take root in the modern era. Long before the Beat generation made ""on the road"" expeditions popular, the circus personified the experience and offered many young Americans the dream of adventure, reinvention, excitement, and glamour.

    Hockney’s extensive research led him to conclude that artists such as Caravaggio, Velázquez, da Vinci, and other hyperrealists actually used optics and lenses to create their masterpieces.In this passionate yet pithy book, Hockney takes readers on a journey of discovery as he builds a case that mirrors and lenses were used by the great masters to create their highly detailed and realistic paintings and drawings. Hundreds of the best-known and best-loved paintings are reproduced alongside his straightforward analysis. Hockney also includes his own photographs and drawings to illustrate techniques used to capture such accurate likenesses. Extracts from historical and modern documents and correspondence with experts from around the world further illuminate this thought-provoking book that will forever change how the world looks at art.Secret Knowledge will open your eyes to how we perceive the world and how we choose to represent it.

    This visual narrative of astonishing sensitivity brings to light an until-now-unpublished collection of hundreds of snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied of contexts, both private and public.Taken when male partnerships were often illegal, the photos here were found at flea markets, in shoe boxes, family archives, old suitcases, and later online and at auctions. The collection now includes photos from all over the world: Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Greece, Latvia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Serbia. The subjects were identified as couples by that unmistakable look in the eyes of two people in love - impossible to manufacture or hide. They were also recognized by body language - evidence as subtle as one hand barely grazing another - and by inscriptions, often coded.Included here are ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, photo strips, photomatics, and snapshots - over 100 years of social history and the development of photography.In these delight-filled pages, couples in love tell their own story for the first time at a time when joy and hope - indeed human connectivity - are crucial lifelines to our better selves. Universal in reach and overwhelming in impact, Loving speaks to our spirit and resilience, our capacity for bliss, and our longing for the shared truths of love.

    An award-winning war correspondent for twenty-five years (she’s never had a female editor) Lamb reports two wars—the “bang-bang” war and the story of how the people behind the lines live and survive. At the same time, since men usually act as the fighters, women are rarely interviewed about their experience of wartime, other than as grieving widows and mothers, though their experience is markedly different from that of the men involved in battle. Lamb chronicles extraordinary tragedy and challenges in the lives of women in wartime. And none is more devastating than the increase of the use of rape as a weapon of war. Visiting warzones including the Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Bosnia, and Iraq, and spending time with the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar, she records the harrowing stories of survivors, from Yazidi girls kept as sex slaves by ISIS fighters and the beekeeper risking his life to rescue them; to the thousands of schoolgirls abducted across northern Nigeria by Boko Haram, to the Congolese gynecologist who stitches up more rape victims than anyone on earth. Told as a journey, and structured by country, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields gives these women voice. We have made significant progress in international women’s rights, but across the world women are victimized by wartime atrocities that are rarely recorded, much less punished. The first ever prosecution for war rape was in 1997 and there have been remarkably few convictions since, as if rape doesn’t matter in the reckoning of war, only killing. Some courageous women in countries around the world are taking things in their own hands, hunting down the war criminals themselves, trying to trap them through Facebook. In this profoundly important book, Christina Lamb shines a light on some of the darkest parts of the human experience—so that we might find a new way forward. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields is as inspiring and empowering is as it is urgent, a clarion call for necessary change.

    Tolkien, whose timeless fantasy classics have literally taken readers to another place.And what a place it is! The Middle-earth so graphically depicted in The Hobbit, The Rings Trilogy, and The Silmarillion is a breathtaking world of misty valleys and craggy tors, placid lakes and raging rivers, steamy bogs and glad green glades -- a magical kingdom inhabited by such unforgettable characters as the Great Goblin, Smaug the dragon, and the great wizard Gandolf. Small wonder this wonderland has provided such a rich source of inspiration for artists!In this book nine talented painters contribute powerful interpretations of Middle-earth, each one accompanied by the text that inspired it. Artists include Inger Edelfeldt, Tony Galuidi, Roger Garland, Robert Goldsmith, Michael Hague, John Howe, Alan Lee, Ted Nasmith, and Carol Emery Phenix.

    Nearly as frequently, he wrote dense and joyful letters to his wife, Clara Westhoff, expressing his dismay before the paintings and his ensuing revelations about art and life.Rilke was knowledgeable about art and had even published monographs, including a famous study of Rodin that inspired his New Poems. But Cézanne's impact on him could not be conveyed in a traditional essay. Rilke's sense of kinship with Cézanne provides a powerful and prescient undercurrent in these letters -- passages from them appear verbatim in Rilke's great modernist novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Letters on Cézanne is a collection of meaningfully private responses to a radically new art."Rilke makes the feeling and views around great art real, weaving into his letters the indescribable thing that gives us beauty, truth, pleasure."--HELEN FRANKENTHALER, Art & Antiques"[These letters] are themselves extraordinarily peaceful and concentrated, seeping with the sense and recognition of Cézanne's colors, in nature as on canvas, colors which seem a part of Rilke himself, of the words and paper."--JOHN BAYLEY, The New York Review of Books

    At least, that is, in the world of Magritte. And who wouldn't want to believe in that world, or at least take pleasure in the ability to recognize parts of it in our own? One of the most charming and beloved of the surrealists, Rena Magritte took a light, witty paintbrush and created a world both familiar and not--but always recognizable in our dreams. His plays on semiotics, identity, the idea of woman, the possibilities inherent in objects, and the idea that everything was not necessarily what it seemed--or what it was supposed to be--are celebrated here in an intelligent retrospective monograph, featuring more than 150 paintings, sculptures, objects, and works on paper. The organization of this catalogue paints Magritte as an innovator, and an artist who has had significant influence on contemporary creators. Accompanying essays, including an introduction by Alain Robbe-Grillet, inventor of the nouveau roman, consider Magritte's influence on modern and contemporary art. Magritte's relationships with his surrealist contemporaries Louis Scutenaire and Andra Breton, and the art dealers Edward James and Alexandre Iolas, are each revealed through individual art historical texts and a selection of unpublished letters. An illustrated chronology is included as well. This catalogue is published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris.

    By bridging the gap between feminist hashtags and scholarly texts, these essays bring feminism into clear focus.Published in partnership with Girl Up, the UN Foundation's adolescent girl campaign, contributors include Hollywood superstars like Saoirse Ronan, activists like Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter, and even fictional icons such as Bridget Jones.Every woman has a different route to their personal understanding of feminism. This empowering collection shows how a diverse group of women found their voice, and it will inspire others to do the same.

    It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison's oeuvre.

    In this visual ode to all things bookish, readers will get lost in page after page of beautiful contemporary art, photography, and illustrations depicting the pleasures of books. Artwork from the likes of Jane Mount, Lisa Congdon, Julia Rothman, and Sophie Blackall is interwoven with text from essayist Maura Kelly, bestselling author Gretchen Rubin, and award-winning author and independent bookstore owner Ann Patchett. Rounded out with poems, quotations, and aphorisms celebrating the joys of reading, this lovingly curated compendium is a love letter to all things literary, and the perfect gift for bookworms everywhere.

    Fearlessly revealing their shattered hearts and crushed egos; their indiscretions and indignities; their delusions, desperation, and disappointments, these talented writers capture the dark side of love in prose ranging from comic to poetic, poignant to cringe-inducing. Also featuring three cartoon/ graphic essays as a sixteen-page color insert, this anthology is perfect for anyone who’s ever loved and lost.

    Best-selling author Erica Jong here turns her attention to the fantastical and factual world of witchcraft. In beguiling poetry and prose, she looks at the figure of the witch both as historical reality and as archetype - as evil crone and full-breasted seductress, as a lingering vestige of a primeval religion and a projection of fear of the unknown. Joseph A. Smith's powerful, haunting illustrations enliven each page, as Jong investigates the witch as a survivor of the age of sorcery, as a scapegoat for male-dominated church-state politics, as a remarkable natural healer, and as a hexer without peer. Real recipes for love potions and flying lotions, along with formulas for spells and incantations, make this book a rich journey of mystery and delight. Available in paperback for the first time, Witches has been a favorite since it was published more than 20 years ago - a testament to the enduring fascination with the myths and truths about these intriguing figures.

    And rightly so. The marriage of LaChapelle’s vivid, high-octane images with graphic artist, Tadanori Yokoo’s supersaturated designs make for an astonishing physical object. The reissue of this now classic, long out-of-print volume showcases all the lollipop giddiness of the original now lavishly reproduced in a larger format. “There’s a tradition of celebrity portraiture that attempts to uncover the ‘real person’ behind the trappings of their celebrity. I am more interested in those trappings,” says LaChapelle. Indeed, he exaggerates the artificiality of fame and Hollywood culture in a head on collision of color, plastic, and whimsy. His photographs confront our visual taste and challenge our ideas of celebrity, all the while taking us on a roller coaster ride through his hyper-sensationalized galaxy. Lil’ Kim becomes the ultimate status symbol, tattooed in the Louis Vuitton pattern. Madonna rises from pink waters as a mystical dragon princess. Pamela Anderson hatches out of an egg; and Alexander McQueen burns down the castle dressed as the Queen of Hearts. David LaChapelle’s uncompromising originality is legendary in the worlds of fashion, film, and advertising. His images, both bizarre and gorgeous, have appeared on and in between the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Vibe and more. La Chapelle Land is fun park America gone surrealistically wrong — but in such an attractive way.

    It's a little bit like reading my diary -- with permission. Succulence is powerFull! and so are we as women.