Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Artists, Architects & Photographers

He was the original 20th-century enfant terrible with the looks of a Greek god who blazed like a comet across the worlds of art, photography, and fame. The scion of several old WASP fortunes, he was by instinct an adventurer, and the more dangerous the escapade, the better. Journalist and author Graham Boynton was a friend for more than 30 years, spending time with Beard at his bush camp in Africa, in London, and at his Long Island home. From hundreds of Boynton’s interviews with Beard’s closest friends, former lovers, and fellow artists comes this intimate portrait.

Les jeunes Patti Smith et Robert Mapplethorpe se rencontrent par hasard à New York à la fin des années 1960. "Just Kids", roman d'initiation bohème, retrace les débuts de ces enfants terribles, jusqu'au moment où la chanteuse enregistre son premier album, "Horses", et voit décoller sa carrière. Cette épopée mythique, histoire d'amour et d'amitié, qui s'ouvre et s'achève avec la mort du photographe, immortalise les instants incandescents d'une période décisive dans ces deux vies d'artistes et dans l'histoire de la musique américaine.

Pierre-August Renoir, leader of the 19th-century Impressionist movement, spent his entire life perfecting his style. Rejected for decades, he depended on friends for a place to stay and money for painting supplies. Renoir lived in poverty until his 40's, and when he was finally discovered and hailed as a great artist, his health began to fail him. Still, Renoir never gave up his passion for painting. His need to create beauty was the driving force of his life, and throughout rejections and deteriorating health, Renoir retained an optimism that is reflected in his paintings.

Here is Jon Krakauer's portrait of the iconoclastic architect Christopher Alexander, whose revolutionary human-centered approach has shaken the foundations of modern architecture. Krakauer delves into Alexander's life and career, from his theories on a timeless "pattern language" that could be used to create buildings and towns that were simultaneously more livable and more beautiful, to his belief that architecture is correctly viewed as a powerful social instrument; from his on-site drafting techniques to his design process that, like a cocoon, shapes a building from the inside out.

To get a sense of the kind of prestige that Claude Monet enjoys within the art world, one need only learn that his Le Bassin Aux Nympheás (1919) - from his series of paintings featuring water lilies - sold for the equivalent of more than $70 million. This is a staggering price, especially considering that early in his life, Monet had been so poor and debt-ridden that some of his paintings were taken from him by creditors.

Diane Arbus was one of the most brilliant and revered photographers in the history of American art. Her portraits, in stark black and white, seemed to reveal the psychological truths of their subjects. But after she committed suicide at the age of 48, the presumed chaos and darkness of her own inner life became, for many viewers, inextricable from her work. In the spirit of Janet Malcolm's classic examination of Sylvia Plath, The Silent Woman, William Todd Schultz's An Emergency in Slow Motion reveals the creative and personal struggles of Diane Arbus.

Award-winning architectural critic and biographer Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. A roller-coaster tale of the perils of wealth, privilege, and ambition, this book probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful and tells the story of the built environment in modern America.

Everything about Picasso, except his physical stature, was on an enormous scale. His appetite for sex and money, eating and drinking, friends and quarrels, comedy and tragedy, are legendary. No artist of the first rank has been so aw-inspiringly productive. No artist of any rank has made so much money. A few artists have rivalled his life-span of ninety years, but none has attracted so insatiable a public interest. Patrick O’Brian, author of the famous Aubrey-Maturin novels, was a near neighbour of Picasso’s in the south of France for many years and knew him well.

Man Ray (1890-1976), a founding father of Dada and a key player in French Surrealism, is one of the central artists of the 20th century. He is also one of the most elusive. In this new biography, journalist and critic Arthur Lubow uses Man Ray’s Jewish background as one filter to understand his life and art.

The definitive, authorized, and first-ever biography of Terry Allen, the internationally acclaimed visual artist and iconoclastic songwriter who occupies an utterly unique position straddling the disparate, and usually distant, worlds of conceptual art and country music.

Fiona Foley Provocateur provides insights into the life of one of Australia’s most influential urban Aboriginal and activist artists. From her beginnings in Hervey Bay, Queensland, it follows her young adult life in Sydney where she co-founded Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-Operative in 1986, to her rise through the art world and, most recently, into an academic life.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers.

Это история простого деревенского мальчишки. Внебрачного сына нотариуса и рабыни, сильной, юной женщины, чужестранки из дальних краев. Леонардо, имя, означающее свободу, вероятно, дала сыну именно она.

In 1940, with the Nazis sweeping through France, Henri Matisse found himself at a personal and artistic crossroads. His marriage had ended, he was gravely ill, and after decades at the forefront of modern art, he was beset by doubt. As scores of famous figures escaped the country, Matisse took refuge in Nice, with his companion, Lydia. By defiantly remaining, Matisse was a source of inspiration for his nation.

Arthur Fellig’s ability to arrive at a crime scene just as the cops did was so uncanny that he renamed himself “Weegee”, claiming that he functioned as a human Ouija board. Weegee documented better than any other photographer the crime, grit, and complex humanity of midcentury New York City. In Flash, we get a portrait not only of the man (both flawed and deeply talented, with generous appetites for publicity, women, and hot pastrami) but also of the fascinating time and place that he occupied....

Leonardo welcomes Mona Lisa Ghirardini into his studio in the city of Florence to paint a portrait that was never delivered to the owner. Da Vinci kept the painting and started a long romance with Mona Lisa that lasted over 20 years. The portrait accompanied Leonard during all his traveling and through different homes. This dramatic fiction recreates the relationship of Leonardo with the Gioconda, with his assistants Salai, and with the world and his relentless search for truth and beauty.

Andy Warhol's work and personality changed American visual culture forever, making him an international superstar. His rise to global fame, his entanglement with the seedy New York sexual underground, and the shocking assassination attempt that almost ended his life are chronicled in Stephen Koch's indispensible classic, Stargazer.

Today's high-flying, high-rolling conglomarateurs and corporate raiders are a tame lot compared to their immediate predecessors. The most notorious of these is Robert Vesco, the Kingfish himself, who in 1973 fled the United States accused of looting $250 million from Investors Overseas Services. Now, in this riveting account, noted author Arthur Herzog tells the astounding story of this high school dropout from Detroit, who parlayed cunning, ambition, a brilliant mind, and above all, other people's gullibility and money into a vast financial empire.

With lips slightly parted and eyes fixed on a point in the distance, a breathtaking marble portrait of Costanza Piccolomini appears alive. Carved by Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1636 - 37 for his own pleasure, the portrait of Costanza is one of his most captivating works, but until now little has been known about its subject. For centuries Costanza was identified only as Bernini's mistress, who later incited his rage by betraying him for his brother. Author Sarah McPhee corrects and expands this story in her remarkable biography of a sculpture and its subject.

In 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.