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Touching the Art
Par Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. 2023
A daringly observant memoir about intergenerational trauma, fine art, and compartmentalization from a returning Soft Skull author and Lambda Literary…
Award winnerA mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is queer icon and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore&’s interrogation of the possibilities of artistic striving, the limits of the middle-class mindset, the legacy of familial abandonment, and what art can and cannot do.Taking the form of a self-directed research project, Sycamore recounts the legacy of her fraught relationship with her late grandmother, an abstract artist from Baltimore who encouraged Mattilda as a young artist, then disparaged Mattilda&’s work as &“vulgar&” and a &“waste of talent&” once it became unapologetically queer.As she sorts through her grandmother Gladys&’s paintings and handmade paperworks, Sycamore examines the creative impulse itself. In fragments evoking the movements of memory, she searches for Gladys&’s place within the trajectories of midcentury modernism and Abstract Expressionism, Jewish assimilation and white flight, intergenerational trauma and class striving.Sycamore writes, &“Art is never just art, it is a history of feeling, a gap between sensations, a safety valve, an escape hatch, a sudden shift in the body, a clipboard full of flowers, a welcome mat flipped over and back, over and back, welcome.&”Refusing easy answers in search of an embodied truth, Sycamore upends propriety to touch the art and feel everything that comes through.The Real Hergé: The Inspiration Behind Tintin
Par Sian Lye. 2020
&“If you are looking to understand a bit more about the circumstances that inspired The Adventures of Tintin—this book will provide…
a good snapshot.&” —The BookBuff Review Hergé created only twenty-four Tintin books which have been translated into more than seventy languages and sold 230 million copies worldwide.The Real Hergé: The Inspiration Behind Tintin takes an in-depth look at the man behind the cultural phenomenon and the history that helped shape these books. As well as focusing on the controversies that engulfed Hergé, this biography will also look at his personal life, as well as the relationships and experiences that influenced him.&“Tintin is more famous now than when Hergé was actually writing and illustrating his adventures. Sian Mye&’s book is another in the excellent series about the real lives of our most famous authors, and is well worth a look. Brilliant!&” —Books Monthly&“It is certainly possible to enjoy the Tintin books without knowing Hergé. But they are more interesting after learning about this complex, sometimes frustrating, man. We can learn from him, even if we learn from his mistakes.&” —Rose City ReaderAll Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin
Par Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. 2010
The New York Times–bestselling author of Yarn Harlot returns with more witty stories about knitting, motherhood, friendship, and more.In this…
all-new collection of yarns, New York Times–bestselling author and self-proclaimed yarn Harlot Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is all wound up about life, motherhood, losing her beloved washing machine, and, of course, knitting.With trademark humor and wit that have sustained her through thick and thin, including a few misshapen sweaters and an indoor water balloon fight among her otherwise darling daughters, Pearl-McPhee deftly examines knitting, parenting, friendship, and—gasp!—even crocheting in essays that are at times touching, often hilarious, and always entertaining.Praise for Yarn Harlot“A sort of David Sedaris-like take on knitting—laugh-out-loud funny most of the time and poignantly reflective when it’s not cracking you up.” —Library Journal“Pearl-McPhee turns both typical and unique knitting experiences into very funny and articulate prose.” —Meg Swansen, Schoolhouse Press“I laughed until my stitches fell helplessly from my needles!” —Lucy Neatby, author of Cool Socks Warm FeetMargaret Wise Brown: Awakened By The Moon
Par Leonard Marcus. 1999
"Leonard S. Marcus... has masterfully written about a fascinating woman who in her short life changed literature for the very…
young. I was throroughly enchanted."--Eric CarleNearly fifty years after her sudden death at the age of forty-two, Margaret Wise Brown remains a legend and an enigma. Author of Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and dozens of other children's classics, Brown all but invented the picture book as we know it today. Combining poetic instinct with a profound empathy for small children, she understood a child's need for security, love, and a sense of being at home in the world. Yet, these were comforts that had eluded her. Her sparkling presence and her unparalleled success as a legendary children's book author masked an insecurity that left her restless and vulnerable.In this authoritative and moving biography, Leonard S. Marcus, who had access to never-before-published letters and family papers, portrays Brown's complex character and her tragic, seesaw life. Colorful, thoughtful, and insightful, Margaret Wise Brown is both a portrayal of a woman whose stories still speak to millions and a portrait of New York in the 1930s and 1940s, when the literary world blossomed and made history.Artistic Circles: The Inspiring Connections Between the World's Greatest Artists
Par Susie Hodge. 2019
Discover the fascinating connections between the world's greatest artists. Artistic Circles introduces some of the most inspirational stories of friendship, love, creativity and…
shared passions in the world of art. Whether through teaching, as in the case of Paul Klee and Anni Albers; a mutual muse, as seen in the flowers of Georgia O&’Keeffe and Takashi Murakami; or an inspirational romantic coupling like that of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock. In telling the tales of these creatives lives and achievements – each extraordinary and oftentimes ground-breaking – Susie Hodge exposes the fascinating web of connections that have fostered some of the world&’s art masterpieces. Some are well-known, whereas others span both time and place, linking pioneers in art in fascinating and unexpected ways. Illustrated in colourful tribute to each artists&’ unique style, Artistic Circles is an illuminating and celebratory account of some of the art world&’s most compelling visionaries. A perfect introduction for students, and a source of new and surprising stories for art lovers.Darling Days: A Memoir
Par Io Wright. 2016
Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the…
intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers, ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO’s mother’s. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic glamazon. She was iO’s fiercest defender and only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life. At the center of Darling Days is the remarkable relationship between a fiery kid and a domineering ma—a bond defined by freedom and control, excess and sacrifice; by heartbreaking deprivation, agonizing rupture, and, ultimately, forgiveness.Darling Days is also a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience it takes to listen closely to your deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old, female-born iO play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky—a choice iO’s parents support and celebrate. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years, and the beginning of a life invented and reinvented at every step. Alternating between the harrowing and the hilarious, Darling Days is the candid, tough, and stirring memoir of a young person in search of an authentic self as family and home life devolve into chaos.Don't Try This at Home: A Year in the Life of Dave Navarro
Par Neil Strauss, Dave Navarro. 2004
Step into the booth. Check your judgments at the curtain. Close your eyes. Listen: you can hear the voices of…
the visitors who sat here before you: some of the most twisted, drug-addled, deviant, lonely, lost, brilliant characters ever to be caught on film. What do you have to offer the booth?“Stunning and stirring.”—Boston GlobeIn The Last of His Kind, renowned adventure writer David Roberts gives readers a spellbinding history of…
mountain climbing in the twentieth century as told through the biography of Brad Washburn, legendary mountaineering pioneer and photographer. Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, has praised David Roberts, saying, “Nobody alive writes better about mountaineering”—and nowhere is that truth more evident than in this breathtaking account of the life and exploits of America’s greatest mountain climber.Drawing Blood
Par Molly Crabapple. 2015
Art was my dearest friend.To draw was trouble and safety, adventure and freedom.In that four-cornered kingdom of paper, I lived…
as I pleased.This is the story of a girl and her sketchbook.In language that is fresh, visceral, and deeply moving—and illustrations that are irreverent and gorgeous—here is a memoir that will change the way you think about art, sex, politics, and survival in our times.From a young age, Molly Crabapple had the eye of an artist and the spirit of a radical. After a restless childhood on New York's Long Island, she left America to see Europe and the Near East, a young artist plunging into unfamiliar cultures, notebook always in hand, drawing what she observed.Returning to New York City after 9/11 to study art, she posed nude for sketch artists and sketchy photographers, danced burlesque, and modeled for the world famous Suicide Girls. Frustrated with the academy and the conventional art world, she eventually landed a post as house artist at Simon Hammerstein's legendary nightclub The Box, the epicenter of decadent Manhattan nightlife before the financial crisis of 2008. There she had a ringside seat for the pitched battle between the bankers of Wall Street and the entertainers who walked among them—a scandalous, drug-fueled circus of mutual exploitation that she captured in her tart and knowing illustrations. Then, after the crash, a wave of protest movements—from student demonstrations in London to Occupy Wall Street in her own backyard—led Molly to turn her talents to a new form of witness journalism, reporting from places such as Guantanamo, Syria, Rikers Island, and the labor camps of Abu Dhabi. Using both words and artwork to shed light on the darker corners of American empire, she has swiftly become one of the most original and galvanizing voices on the cultural stage.Now, with the same blend of honesty, fierce insight, and indelible imagery that is her signature, Molly offers her own story: an unforgettable memoir of artistic exploration, political awakening, and personal transformation.Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer
Par Arthur Lubow. 2016
The definitive biography of the beguiling Diane Arbus, one of the most influential and important photographers of the twentieth century,…
a brilliant and absorbing exposition that links the extraordinary arc of her life to her iconic photographs.Diane Arbus brings to life the full story of one of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century, a visionary who revolutionized photography and altered the course of contemporary art with her striking, now iconic images. Arbus comes startlingly to life on these pages, a strong-minded child of unnerving originality who grew into a formidable artist and forged an intimacy with her subjects that has inspired generations of artists. Arresting, unsettling, and poignant, her photographs stick in our minds. Why did these people fascinate her? And what was it about her that captivated them?It is impossible to understand the transfixing power of Arbus’s photographs without understanding her life story. Arthur Lubow draws on exclusive interviews with Arbus’s friends, lovers, and colleagues, on previously unknown letters, and on his own profound critical understanding of photography, to explore Arbus’s unique perspective. He deftly traces Arbus’s development from a wealthy, sexually precocious free spirit into first a successful New York fashion photographer, and then a singular artist who coaxed hidden truths from her subjects. Lubow reveals that Arbus’s profound need not only to see her subjects but to be seen by them drove her to forge unusually close bonds with these people, helping her discover the fantasies, pain, and heroism within each of them.Diane Arbus is the definitive biography of this unique, hugely influential artist. This magnificently absorbing, sensitive treatment of a singular personality brushes aside the clichés that have long surrounded Arbus and her work to capture a brilliant portrait of this seminal artist whose work has immeasurably shaped art and modern culture.Lubow’s Diane Arbus finally does justice to Arbus, and brings to life the story and art of one of the greatest American artists in history.Diane Arbus includes a 16-page black-and-white photo insert.Lee Krasner: A Biography
Par Gail Levin. 2011
Perhaps best known as the long-suffering wife of Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner is now, finally, being recognized as one of…
the 20th century’s modernist masters. In Lee Krasner, author Gail Levin gives us an engrossing biography of the painter—so memorably portrayed in the movie Pollack by actor Marcia Gay Harden, who won an Academy Award for her performance—a firebrand and trailblazer for women’s rights as well as an exceptional artist who led a truly fascinating life.Empress of Fashion: A Life of Diana Vreeland
Par Amanda Stuart. 2012
“The first comprehensive bio of legendary magazine editor Diana Vreeland is a can’t-put-down read. Stuart separates facts from “faction” (Vreeland’s…
term for her dramatic exaggerations) and gets to the core of the fashion pioneer.” — PeopleDiane von Furstenberg once called Diana Vreeland a "beacon of fashion for the twentieth century." Now, in this definitive biography by acclaimed biographer Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, is the story of the iconic fashion editor as you've never seen her before.From her career at the helms of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, to her reign as consultant to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vreeland had an enormous impact on the fashion world and left a legacy so enduring that must-have style guides still quote her often wild and always relevant fashion pronouncements.With access to Vreeland's personal material and photographs, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart has written the ultimate behind-the-scenes look at Diana Vreeland and her world—a jet-setting social scene that included Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta, Lauren Bacall, Penelope Tree, Lauren Hutton, Andy Warhol, Mick and Bianca Jagger, and the Kennedys. Filled with gorgeous color photographs of her work, Empress of Fashion: A Life of Diana Vreeland is an intimate and surprising look at an icon who made a lasting mark on the world of couture.Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White
Par Michael Tisserand. 2016
In the tradition of Schulz and Peanuts, an epic and revelatory biography of Krazy Kat creator George Herriman that explores…
the turbulent time and place from which he emerged—and the deep secret he explored through his art.The creator of the greatest comic strip in history finally gets his due—in an eye-opening biography that lays bare the truth about his art, his heritage, and his life on America’s color line. A native of nineteenth-century New Orleans, George Herriman came of age as an illustrator, journalist, and cartoonist in the boomtown of Los Angeles and the wild metropolis of New York. Appearing in the biggest newspapers of the early twentieth century—including those owned by William Randolph Hearst—Herriman’s Krazy Kat cartoons quickly propelled him to fame. Although fitfully popular with readers of the period, his work has been widely credited with elevating cartoons from daily amusements to anarchic art. Herriman used his work to explore the human condition, creating a modernist fantasia that was inspired by the landscapes he discovered in his travels—from chaotic urban life to the Beckett-like desert vistas of the Southwest. Yet underlying his own life—and often emerging from the contours of his very public art—was a very private secret: known as "the Greek" for his swarthy complexion and curly hair, Herriman was actually African American, born to a prominent Creole family that hid its racial identity in the dangerous days of Reconstruction. Drawing on exhaustive original research into Herriman’s family history, interviews with surviving friends and family, and deep analysis of the artist’s work and surviving written records, Michael Tisserand brings this little-understood figure to vivid life, paying homage to a visionary artist who helped shape modern culture.Camille Pissarro: The Audacity of Impressionism
Par Anka Muhlstein. 2023
From the acclaimed biographer and author of Balzac&’s Omelette, an engaging new work on the life of &“the father of…
Impressionism&” and the role his Jewish background played in his artistic creativity.The celebrated painter Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) occupied a central place in the artistic scene of his time: a founding member of the new school of French painting, he was a close friend of Monet, a longtime associate in Degas&’s and Mary Cassatt&’s experimental work, a support to Cézanne and Gauguin, and a comfort to Van Gogh, and was backed by the great Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel throughout his career. Nevertheless, he felt a persistent sense of being set apart, different, and hard to classify. Settled in France from the age of twenty-five but born in the Caribbean, he was not French and what is more he was Jewish. Although a resolute atheist who never interjected political or religious messages in his art, he was fully aware of the consequences of his lineage.Drawing on Pissarro&’s considerable body of work and a vast collection of letters that show his unrestrained thoughts, Anka Muhlstein offers a nuanced, intimate portrait of the artist whose independent spirit fostered an environment of freedom and autonomy.Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver: His Art and His World
Par Rebecca Valette. 2023
Rebecca Valette&’s Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver is the first biography of artist Clitso Dedman (1876–1953), one of the most important…
but overlooked Diné (Navajo) artists of his generation. Dedman was born to a traditional Navajo family in Chinle, Arizona, and herded sheep as a child. He was educated in the late 1880s and early 1890s at the Fort Defiance Indian School, then at the Teller Institute in Grand Junction, Colorado. After graduation Dedman moved to Gallup, New Mexico, where he worked in the machine shop of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway before opening his first of three Navajo trading posts in Rough Rock, Arizona. After tragedy struck his life in 1915, he moved back to Chinle and abruptly changed careers to become a blacksmith and builder. At age sixty, suffering from arthritis, Dedman turned his creative talent to wood carving, thus initiating a new Navajo art form. Although the neighboring Hopis had been carving Kachina dolls for generations, the Navajos traditionally avoided any permanent reproduction of their Holy People, and even of human figures. Dedman was the first to ignore this proscription, and for the rest of his life he focused on creating wooden sculptures of the various participants in the Yeibichai dance, which closed the Navajo Nightway ceremony. These secular carvings were immediately purchased and sold to tourists by regional Indian traders. Today Dedman&’s distinctive and highly regarded work can be found in private collections, galleries, and museums, such as the Navajo Nation Museum at Window Rock, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and the Arizona State Museum in Tucson. Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver, with its extensive illustrations, is the story of a remarkable and underrecognized figure of twentieth-century Navajo artistic creation and innovation.Falling Rocket: James Whistler, John Ruskin, and the Battle for Modern Art
Par Paul Murphy. 2023
The untold story of the artistic battle between James Abbot MacNeill Whistler and John Ruskin over Whistler&’s controversial, ground-breaking Nocturne…
in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket.In November 1878, America&’s greatest painter sued England&’s greatest critic for a bad review. The painter won—but ruined himself in the process. The painter: James Abbot MacNeill Whistler, whose combination of incredible talent, unflagging energy, and relentless self-promotion had by that time brought him to the very edge of artistic preeminence. The critic: John Ruskin, Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University, whose four-decades&’ worth of prolific and highly respected literary output on aesthetics had made him England&’s unchallenged and seemingly unchallengeable arbiter of art. Though Whistler and Ruskin both lived in London and moved in the same artistic world, they had, until June, 1877, managed to remain entirely clear of one another. This was unusual because Whistler had a mercurial temperament, a belligerent personality, and seemed to thrive on opposition: he once challenged a man to a duel because the man accused the painter of sleeping with his wife. (Whistler had, in fact, slept with the man&’s wife.) That November, John Ruskin walked into the Grosvenor Gallery&’s new exhibition of art and gazed with horror upon Whistler&’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. The painting was Whistler&’s interpretation of a fireworks display at a local pleasure garden. But to Ruskin it was nothing more than a chaotic, incomprehensible mess of bright spots upon dark masses: not art but its antithesis—a disturbing and disgusting assault upon everything he had ever written or taught on the subject. He quickly channeled that anger into a seething review. The internationally-reported, widely discussed, and hugely-entertaining trial that followed was a titanic battle between the opposing ideas and ideals of two larger-than-life personalities. For these two protagonists, Whistler v Ruskin was the battle of a lifetime—or more accurately, a battle of their two lifetimes. Paul Thomas Murphy&’s Falling Rocket also recounts James Whistler&’s turbulent but triumphant development from artistic oblivion in the 1880s to artistic deification in the 1890s, and also Ruskin&’s isolated, befogged, silent final years after his public humiliation. The story of Whistler v Ruskin has a dramatic arc of its own, but this riveting new book also vividly evokes an artistic world in energetic motion, culturally and socially, in the last decades of the nineteenth century.Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather
Par Benjamin Taylor. 2023
A tender biography of one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century and an elegant exploration of artistic endurance,…
as told by a lifelong lover of Willa Cather&’s workThe story of Willa Cather is defined by a lifetime of determination, struggle, and gradual emergence. Some show their full powers early, yet Cather was the opposite—she took her time and transformed herself by stages. The writer who leapt to the forefront of American letters with O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918) was already well into middle age. Through years of provincial journalism in Nebraska, brief spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines, she persevered in pursuit of the ultimate goal—literary immortality.Unlike Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, her idealism was unironic, and she stood alone among the great modern authors—at odds with the fashionable attitudes of her time. Combining intricate analysis with an empathetic, lyrical voice, Benjamin Taylor uncovers the reality of Cather&’s artistic development, from modest beginnings to the triumphs of her mature years. His book is simultaneously an homage to her character, a warm consideration of her work, and a case being made to read Cather with renewed vigor.Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry
Par Akiane, Foreli Kramarik. 2006
Experience the wonder of child prodigy Akaine Kramarik&’s divinely inspired artwork firsthand.Akiane&’s nonreligious parents were bewildered when their four-year-old daughter…
started sharing her dreams of angels, heaven, and Jesus. Her spiritual insight quickly expressed itself through impressive sketches, drawings with oil crayons, paintings, and eventually poetry, and her artwork began a conversation that brought her whole family to Christianity and to the attention of national media. Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry shares the young artist&’s story in rich detail, includingher mother&’s firsthand account of Akiane&’s emerging faith and artistic talent;a collection of full-color paintings created by Akiane from ages 4 to 10, along with the amazing stories that surround each piece of art; andselected poems of profound beauty and insight, authored by Akiane in her childhood.This book will encourage any who believe in the spiritual nature of art and reinvigorate the faith of those who call Jesus their savior.Andy Warhol: 21 Segi Changjojeok Injaeeui Rolmodel = [andy Warhol] (Icons of America #12)
Par Arthur Danto. 2009
&“Astutely traces the ripple effects of Warhol&’s blurring of the lines between commercial and fine art, and art and real…
life…masterful.&”—Booklist (starred review) Art critic, philosopher, and winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award Arthur Danto delivers a compact, masterful tour of Andy Warhol&’s personal, artistic, and philosophical transformations. Danto traces the evolution of the pop artist, including his early reception, relationships with artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the Factory phenomenon. He offers close readings of individual Warhol works, including their social context and philosophical dimensions, key differences with predecessors such as Marcel Duchamp, and parallels with successors like Jeff Koons. By drawing on subject matter understandable to the ordinary American, Warhol revolutionized the way we look at art. In this book, Danto brings to bear encyclopedic knowledge of Warhol&’s time and shows us Warhol as an endlessly multidimensional figure—artist, political activist, filmmaker, writer, philosopher—who retains permanent residence in our national imagination.Bay Area Iron Master Al Zampa: A Life Building Bridges
Par John Robinson, Isabelle Maynard. 2015
Alfred Zampa didn't know what he was getting into when he took a construction job in 1925 on the Carquinez…
Bridge, one of the first to cross San Francisco Bay. Despite the risk, Zampa relished the challenge and embarked on an illustrious career that made him a local legend. His impressive feats of iron craft are evident in numerous spans, including the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate, as well as others across the country. He was one of the first to survive a fall from the Golden Gate Bridge, making him a founding member of the Halfway to Hell Club in 1936. The Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge, named to honor the man after his death, replaced the first bridge he had worked on nearly eighty years earlier. This remarkable story of skill, grit and enduring spirit is told through oral histories collected by John Robinson and Isabelle Maynard.