Showing titles in Artists, Architects & Photographers

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 Cezanne 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.

Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other major buildings. When the Pope handed Michelangelo control of the St. Peter’s project in 1546, it was a study in architectural mismanagement, plagued by flawed design and faulty engineering.

'The pages sing in this beautiful book.' Bono 'Moving and lyrical, The Forest is the Path is an imaginative and deeply personal journey of self-discovery.' The Irish Times ‘[An] astoundingly poetic book’ Pandora Sykes You’re falling through time so all I can do is fall with you. The...

Much attention has been paid to so-called late style—but what about last style? When does last begin? How early is late? When does the end set in? In this endlessly stimulating investigation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians who've mattered to him throughout his life.

New York Times Notable Book “A smart, crackling chronicle of fast game, the ’80s art market, [and] the attraction of destruction.”— Village Voice A bold and vivid biography that chronicles the dazzling rise and tragic death of Neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. In less than a...

All my life, I have been looking for a man who has discovered the universal law which lies back of the Sermon on the Mount, and who consciously uses that law with full awareness of its meaning and full obedience to its principles. Walter Russel Clark found this man.

Discover the many sides of Pablo Picasso - a brilliant painter and sculptor, a sexual sadist, a loyal Communist, a seducer, a father, and, ultimately, a tragic figure. Audio portraits of him and other creative geniuses are collected in Lives of the Artists.

A mix of narrative, music, poems, reflections, and historic interviews narrated by me about all the influences that led to the ultimate recording of my 1978 album Mugs Game.

G. Eric Kuskey, former colleague of Thomas Kinkade and close friend until the artist's death in 2012, tells Kinkade's story for the first time, from his art's humble beginnings on a sidewalk in Carmel, California, to his five-house compound in Monte Sereno. It's a tale of addiction and grief, of losing control, and ultimately, of the price of our dreams.

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic. 

We've heard the name "Condoleezza Rice" over and over again as the spokesperson for President George W. Bush in matters of national security and foreign affairs. She presented a balanced, firm, unafraid presence to the country after the terrible events of September 11, 2001, as she spoke to the media and the public on behalf of the President. And, when the President has something to say about our friends and foes overseas, "Condi," as she is known to her friends, is usually standing in the background.

“(Garcia) now honors his parents in this brief yet profound memoir rendered all the more intimate in García's own voice.”—Booklist (starred review) “This is a beautiful farewell to two extraordinary people. It enthralled and moved me, and it will move and enthrall anyone who has ever...

With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy, and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. You'll learn that Michelangelo's body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn't stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O'Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you'll never forget!

The Moog synthesizer "bent the course of music forever" Rolling Stone declared. Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Einstein hair and pocket protectors. He walked into history in 1964 when his homemade contraption unexpectedly became a sensation-suddenly everyone wanted a Moog. The Moog's gamechanging sounds saturated sixties counterculture and burst into the disco party in the seventies to set off the electronic dance music movement. Bob had singlehandedly founded the synth industry and became a star.

A classic work for artists of all kinds, about reconciling the call of creative work with the demands of daily life and narrated by Anne Truitt herself. Renowned American artist Anne Truitt kept this illuminating and inspiring journal over a period of seven years, determined to come to terms with the forces that shaped her art and life. Within its beautifully written pages, you will come to know a woman whose range of sensitivity - moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and spiritual - is remarkably broad.

Halfway into the 19th century, Spain's Catalonia underwent a sweeping transformation when it was thrust into not one, but two golden eras - the Renaixença and the Industrial Revolution. It was during this explosive period of creativity, thriving prosperity, and invigorated patriotism that a steadfastly nonconforming and fascinatingly eccentric icon was born, one that was about to take Catalonia by storm with his brilliant eye for unorthodox art and his legendary - or as some would say, notoriously - out-of-the-box ideas.

Hugo Vickers's adventures in the world of Cecil Beaton: an unputdownable portrait of a vanishing age, featuring untold anecdotes and thrilling titbits of royal gossip 'A fascinating document, a window on to a lost world of glamour, grandeur and snobbery . . . an elegy, sad and comical, to a...

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realised portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies he encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the world of the Henrician court, Holbein was a protean and multi-faceted genius.

What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own," but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge. With fierce empathy and vivid prose, Phillips evokes the intimate struggles of brilliant artists and writers, including Doris Lessing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde, and Alice Neel. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, Phillips illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary women's lives. 

'The portrait of a fascinating, eccentric, and indomitable woman . . . an incandescent novel' Elle 'No author has yet captured Frida's tragic life in words as sensually and passionately as this' Grazia 'Like wandering through a painting - riotous with colour, overflowing with imagery... it...