Showing titles in Artists, Architects & Photographers

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.

The son of one of the greatest writers of our time - Nobel Prize winner and internationally best-selling icon Gabriel García Márquez - remembers his beloved father and mother in this tender memoir about love and loss.

William Morris was a giant of the Victorian age, and his beautiful creations and provocative philosophies are still with us today: but his wife, Jane, is too often relegated to a footnote. In truth, Jane and William's personal and creative partnership was the central collaboration of both their lives. The homes they made together were works of art in themselves, and the great labour of their lives was life itself: through their houses and the objects they filled them with, they explored how we all might live a life more focused on beauty and fulfilment.

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.

We have all seen, whether live, in photographs or on postcards, some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world and are among the most beloved works of art of the past century. Yet, ironically, these soothing images were created amid terrible personal turmoil and sadness.

Margaret Collyer's beautifully written autobiography describes her life as an artist and pioneer farmer in Kenya during the first half of the 20th century.

Ten years ago, an FBI investigation was about to expose a scandal in the art world that would have been front-page news in New York and London. After a trail of fake paintings of astonishing quality led federal agents to art dealers, experts, and major auction houses, the investigation inexplicably ended, despite an abundance of evidence. The case was closed and the FBI file was marked “exempt from public disclosure”. Now that the statute of limitations on these crimes has expired and the case appears hermetically sealed shut by the FBI, this audiobook, Caveat Emptor, is that artist, Ken Perenyi’s, confession.

Alessandro Barbero segue Dante nella sua adolescenza di figlio d'un usuraio che sogna di appartenere al mondo dei nobili e dei letterati; nei corridoi oscuri della politica, dove gli ideali si infrangono davanti alla realtà meschina degli odi di partito e della corruzione dilagante; nei vagabondaggi dell'esiliato che scopre l'incredibile varietà dell'Italia del Trecento, fra metropoli commerciali e corti cavalleresche.

In his acclaimed portraits, Richard Avedon captured the iconic figures of the twentieth century in his starkly bold, intimately minimal, and forensic visual style. What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary—an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story.

Tracey Emin is an internationally renowned artist. Here she discusses her life and achievements in a series of interviews from the BBC radio and TV archives.

Highly-regarded creative talent Milena Cifali is an award winning singer-songwriter and poet, who, along with her partner Jim Horvath, lost her home, instruments, and beloved parrots in the Mallacoota bushfires on New Year's Eve 2019. Out of adversity, Milena has written a heartfelt book, sharing her personal journey towards recovery, against the larger backdrop of an unprecedented bushfire season, and the coronavirus pandemic. The book showcases Milena's considerable talents of writing, poetry, lyrics, and photography to create a stirring and timely work.

Modern Man is a penetrating psychological portrait of a true genius and constant self-inventor, as well as a sweeping tale filled with exotic locales, sex and celebrity (he was a lover of Josephine Baker), and high-stakes projects. In Flint's telling, Corbusier isn't just the grandfather of modern architecture but a man who sought to remake the world according to his vision, dispelling the Victorian style and replacing it with something never seen before.

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.

Over more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has built some of the world's most influential and memorable structures. Safdie always refers to the "silent client" an architect must ultimately serve: the people who live in, work in, or experience a building. If Walls Could Speak takes listeners behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession to explain through Safdie's own experiences how an architect thinks and works.

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.

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.

Jim and Elaine Larison spent years studying, exploring, and living in wild places, making more than 30 environmental films, most for the National Geographic Society. These films won more than 40 international awards from leading environmental and broadcast organizations. This memoir tells the story behind the adventure and describes the rather substantial personal costs of this career.

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.

Born into the slums of Glasgow in the late '70s, a 4-year-old John's life is filled with the debris of alcoholism and poverty. Soon after witnessing a drowning, his mother's addictions take over their lives, leaving him starving in their flat, awaiting her return. A concerned neighbor reports her, and he is forcibly taken away from his mother and placed into the care system. There, he dreams of being reunited with her.

A self-professed "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist", the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller's creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car to a bathroom requiring neither plumbing nor sewage. Yet in spite of his brilliant mind and lifelong devotion to serving mankind, Fuller's expansive ideas were often dismissed, and have faded from public memory since his death.