Search results for ""Author Painters"

Notions of civilization and barbarism were intrinsic to Eugène Delacroix’s artistic practice: he wrote regularly about these concepts in his journal, and the tensions between the two were the subject of numerous paintings, including his most ambitious mural project, the ceiling of the Library of the Chamber of Deputies in the Palais Bourbon. Exiled in Modernity delves deeply into these themes, revealing why Delacroix’s disillusionment with modernity increasingly led him to seek spiritual release or epiphany in the sensual qualities of painting.While civilization implied a degree of control and the constraint of natural impulses for Delacroix, barbarism evoked something uncontrolled and impulsive. Seeing himself as part of a grand tradition extending back to ancient Greece, Delacroix was profoundly aware of the wealth and power that set nineteenth-century Europe apart from the rest of the world. Yet he was fascinated by civilization’s chaotic underbelly. In analyzing Delacroix’s art and prose, David O’Brien illuminates the artist’s effort to reconcile the erudite, tradition-bound aspects of painting with a desire to reach viewers in a more direct, unrestrained manner. Focusing chiefly on Delacroix’s musings about civilization in his famous journal, his major mural projects on the theme of civilization, and the place of civilization in his paintings of North Africa and of animals, O’Brien links Delacroix’s increasingly pessimistic view of modernity to his desire to use his art to provide access to a more fulfilling experience.With more than one hundred illustrations, this original, astute analysis of Delacroix and his work explains why he became an inspiration for modernist painters over the half-century following his death. Art historians and scholars of modernism especially will find great value in O’Brien’s work.

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2017 British Fantasy Award, Best Comic/Graphic Novel2018 Eisner Award winner, Best Writer2018 Eisner Award winner, Best Painter/Multimedia Artist2018 Eisner Award winner, Best Continuing Series2018 Eisner Award winner, Best Publication for Teens2018 Eisner Award winner, Best Cover Artist2018 Harvey Award winner, Book of the Year2018 Hugo Award winner, Best Graphic Story2018 Hugo Award Winner, Best Professional Artist2018 British Fantasy Award winner, Best Comic/Graphic Novel2018, 2016, 2015 Entertainment Weekly's The Best Comic Books of the Year"2018, Newsweek's Best Comic Books of the Year2018, The Washington Post's 10 Best Graphic Novels of the Year2018, Barnes & Noble's Best Books of the Year2018, YALSA's Great Graphic Novels for Teens2018, Thrillist's Best Comics & Graphic Novels of the Year2018, Powell's Best Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Graphic Novels of the Year2019, Hugo Award nomineeMaika and Corvin make their way through a warped and lethal land in search of Kippa, who is faced with her own terrible monsters. But when Maika comes face-to-face with a stranger from her deep past, startling truths are uncovered, and at the center of it all lurks a dangerous conspiracy that threatens the Known World. Maika is finally close to getting all the answers she ever wanted, but at what price? With war on the horizon-a war no one wants to stop-whose side will Maika choose? Collects MONSTRESS #19-24.

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“Each day of my life has been dedicated in part to drawing. I have never stopped drawing and painting, seeking, where I could find them, the secrets of form.”—Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (1887–1965), is famous for transforming 20th-century architecture and urbanism. Less attention has been paid to his artistic production, although he began his career as a painter. Le Corbusier indeed studied under Charles L’Éplattenier and, together with the artist Amédée Ozenfant, founded the Purist movement in the manifesto After Cubism. Even after Le Corbusier turned to architecture, he continued to paint and draw. His thousands of drawings, rarely exhibited but meticulously stored in two watch cabinets from his family home, were particularly significant; he considered his work as a draftsman to be fundamental to his creative process. Beautifully illustrated with more than 300 drawings that have never before been published for an English readership, this revealing book charts the evolution of Le Corbusier’s process from his youthful travels abroad to his arrival and maturation in Paris. Danièle Pauly shows how his drawings functioned within an intimate zone of private reflection and situates his work within the broader artistic and intellectual currents of Cubism, Purism, Primitivism, and Surrealism. In addition to providing a crucial new background against which to comprehend Le Corbusier’s architecture and urbanism, this important volume advocates for understanding him alongside leading modern artists including Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger.

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Born in 1830, Christina Rossetti began composing verse at the age of eleven and continued to write for the remaining fifty-three years of her life. Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, himself a poet and painter, soon recognised her genius and urged her to publish her poems. By the time of her death in 1894, Christina had written more than eleven hundred poems and had published over nine hundred of them. Although she is regarded as the greatest woman poet of the Victorian period, there has not been until now and authoritative edition of her poetry.In this second volume of the three-volume The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, R.W. Crump continues the editorial standards she established n Volume I, published in 1979. She gives the reader a comprehensive text with notes revealing Christina's process of composition and revision and her painstaking concern for the technical details of her work. The variant readings in the notes are taken from extant manuscripts, individual poems as published or privately printed before being incorporated into her published collections, and all the English and American editions of her poems through William Michael Rossetti's The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti (1904). A special feature of both Volumes I and II is a complete list of holographs and their locations.Volume II contains Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872), A Pageant and Other Poems (1881), and Verses (1893), as well as the poems added to these volumes after their original publication. Volume III contains poems Christina published but did not include in any of her collections as well as poems that have not previously appeared in print.

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The very best of Le Fanu’s supernatural fiction, including such classics as: ‘Schalken the Painter’, ‘Squire Toby's Will’, ‘Mr Justice Harbottle’, ‘The Familiar’, ‘Green Tea’, ‘Madam Crowl’s Ghost’ and ‘The Murdered Cousin’, introduced by genre expert Michael Cox. ‘Sheridan Le Fanu,’ wrote S.M. Ellis in 1916, ‘retains his own special place and fame as the Master of Horror and the Mysterious.’ Today, Le Fanu’s reputation is as high as ever amongst connoisseurs of supernatural and mystery fiction and well deserves the enthusiastic praise lavished on him by some of the most accomplished ghost fiction writers of the twentieth century – including E.F. Benson and M.R. James. Born in 1814, the son of an Anglo-Irish Protestant clergyman, Le Fanu single-handedly created a new kind of fictional ghost story. Gone are the sheeted spooks rattling rusty chains and the peripatetic headless ladies that infest Gothic fiction. In their place Le Fanu created formidably real supernatural presences that emerge from within, as well as invade from without. Le Fanu was the first writer to explore seriously the psychological dimensions of the ghost story; at the same time he was adept at invoking the physical presence of supernatural malevolence. The world in which his characters move is a hostile one, his stories surrounded by an infinity of outer darkness. Private anguish undoubtedly underlies these public fictions. And yet Le Fanu’s stories – be they of ghosts or tales of mystery – are also of the good old-fashioned type, best enjoyed in the sort of setting he himself described – ‘the old-fashioned parlour fire-side and its listening circle of excited faces, and, outside, the wintry blast and the moan of leafless boughs . . .’

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An authoritative look at William Blake's life and enduring relevance as a prophetic artist, poet, and printmakerWilliam Blake (1757–1827) created some of the most iconic images in the history of art. He was a countercultural prophet whose personal struggles, technical innovations, and revelatory vision have inspired generations of artists. This marvelously illustrated book explores the biographical, artistic, and political contexts that shaped Blake's work, and demonstrates why he was a singularly gifted visual artist with renewed relevance for us today.The book explores Blake's relationship with the art world of his time and provides new perspectives on his craft as a printmaker, poet, watercolorist, and painter. It makes sense of the profound historical forces with which he contended during his lifetime, from revolutions in America and France to the dehumanizing effects of industrialization. Readers gain incomparable insights into Blake's desire for recognition and commercial success, his role as social critic, his visionary experience of London, his hatred of empire, and the bitter disappointments that drove him to retire from the world in his final years. What emerges is a luminous portrait of a complicated and uncompromising artist who was at once a heretic, mystic, saint, and cynic.With an afterword by Alan Moore, this handsome volume features many of the most sublime and exhilarating images Blake ever produced. It brings together watercolors, paintings, and prints, and draws from such illuminated masterpieces as Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Europe a Prophecy, and apocalyptic works such as Milton and Jerusalem.Published in association with TateExhibition ScheduleTate Britain, LondonSeptember 11, 2019–February 2, 2020

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“I think in pictures. Poems help me with this. They are like buoys in the sea. I swim to them, from one to the other. In between, without them, I am lost. They are the handholds where something masses together in the infinite expanse.”—Anselm Kiefer The only visual artist to have won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, Anselm Kiefer is a profoundly literary painter. In the ten conversations with the writer and theologian Klaus Dermutz collected here, Kiefer returns to the essential elements of his art, his aesthetics, and his creative processes. Kiefer describes how the central materials of his art—lead, sand, water, fire, ashes, plants, clothing, oil paint, watercolor, and ink—influence the act of creation. No less decisive are his intellectual and artistic touchstones: the sixteenth-century Jewish mystic Isaac Luria, the German Romantic poet Novalis, Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Martin Heidegger, Marcel Proust, Adalbert Stifter, the operas of Richard Wagner, the Catholic liturgy, and the innovative theater director and artist Tadeusz Kantor. Kiefer and Dermutz discuss all of these influential thinkers, as well as Kiefer’s own status as a controversial figure. His relentless examination of German history, the themes of guilt, suffering, communal memory, and the seductions of destruction have earned him equal amounts of criticism and praise. The conversations in this book offer a rare insight into the mind of a gifted creator, appealing to artists, critics, art historians, cultural journalists, and anyone interested in the visual arts and the literature and history of the twentieth century.

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A monumental new biography of a pivotal yet poorly understood pioneer in modern philosophy. When a painter once told Goethe that he wanted to paint the most celebrated man of the age, Goethe directed him to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel worked from the credo: To philosophize is to learn to live freely. While he was slow and cautious in the development of his philosophy, his intellectual growth was like an odyssey of the mind, and, contrary to popular belief, his life was full of twists and turns, suspense and even danger. In this landmark biography, the philosopher Klaus Vieweg paints a new picture of the life and work of the most important representative of German idealism. His vivid portrait provides readers an intimate account of Hegel's times and the milieu in which he developed his thought, along with detailed, clear-sighted analyses of Hegel's four major works. What results is a new interpretation of Hegel through the lens of reason and freedom. Vieweg draws on extensive archival research that has brought to light a wealth of hitherto undiscovered documents and handwritten notes relating to Hegel's work, touching on Hegel's engagement with the leading thinkers and writers of his age: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hölderlin, and others. Combatting clichés and misunderstandings about Hegel, Vieweg also offers a sustained defense of the philosopher's more progressive impulses. Highly praised upon its release in Germany as having set the new biographical standard, this monumental work emphasizes Hegel's relevance for today, depicting him as a vital figure in the history of philosophy.

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This immersive dive into the life and work of Salvador Dalí unlocks the secret of this creative genius and reveals for the first time how his erotically charged paintings changed the world of modern art. In turns beloved and reviled, twentieth century art, painter, filmmaker, and designer Salvador Dalí set Europe and the United States ablaze with his uncompromising genius, sexual sadism, and flirtations with megalomania. His shocking behavior and work frequently alienated critics; his views were so outrageous, even prominent Surrealists tried to ostracize him. Still, every morning he experienced “an exquisite joy—the joy of being Salvador Dalí,” and, through a remarkable talent that invited bewilderment, anger, and adoration, rose to unprecedented levels of fame—forever shifting the landscape of the art world and the nature of celebrity itself. In this stunning volume, rich with more than 150 full-color images, noted art historians Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher Heath Brown discuss the historical, social, and political conditions that shaped Dalí's work, identify the impact of Modern as well as Old Master art, and present an unflinching view of the master's personal relationships and motivations. With their deeply compelling narrative, Isbouts and Brown uncover how Dalí's visual wit and enduring cult of personality still impacts fashion, literature, and art, from Andy Warhol to Lady Gaga, and seeks to answer why, in an age of shock and awe, Dalí's art still manages to distress, perplex, and entertain.

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Ringgold's most formative and influential political works are gathered in this beautifully designed clothbound volume Alongside reproductions of key works made between 1967 and 1981, Faith Ringgold: Politics / Power provides an overview of Ringgold's seminal artistic and activist work, and its historical context during these years, including accounts by the artist herself. During the 1960s and 1970s, Ringgold, a dedicated and impassioned civil rights advocate, established her voice as a feminist and within the Black Arts Movement. Her influential work expressed her in-depth knowledge of art history and contemporary art, as well as her activism. Spanning mediums such as painting, cut paper works, posters, collage and textile art, the works presented in this publication foreground the artist’s explicitly political pieces, for which she deployed new material and formal processes, and developed a radical aesthetics and vocabulary. Organized chronologically, the book allows readers to retrace the artist’s foundational creative approaches to contemporaneous social, political and artistic questions. It includes illustrations of individual artworks together with previously unpublished work and archival materials. Faith Ringgold (born 1930) is a painter, mixed-media sculptor, performance artist, teacher and writer best known for her narrative quilts. In 2020, the New York Times described her as an artist “who has confronted race relations in this country from every angle, led protests to diversify museums decades ago, and even went to jail for an exhibition she organized.” Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. Ringgold lives and works in Englewood, New Jersey.

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Early paintings and ephemera by Tabboo!, full of 1980s New York punk glamour This clothbound volume appraises the formative years, from 1982 to 1988, of legendary performer, painter, designer, puppeteer and muse Tabboo!’s career. The book displays historical ephemera—including homemade flyers for performances at iconic clubs—along with the artist’s paintings. Additionally, an essay on the “Glamorous Life” by Jarrett Earnest explicates the thematic concerns of the catalog. In a 1995 interview with Linda Simpson about his early work, Tabboo! observed: “the subject matter was drag, glamour, ladies’ shoes, lingerie, hairdos, vinyl—same as now.” Tabboo!: 1982–88 underscores the joy of creating and living, exuberantly. Tabboo! (Stephen Tashjian, born 1959) moved to New York City’s East Village in 1982 and quickly established himself as a fixture in its drag scene. In the style of fellow Boston School artists Nan Goldin, Jack Pierson and Mark Morrisroe, he chronicled the zeitgeist with a raw, diaristic approach. In his work, dizzying visuals of nightlife and its cast of characters accompany affectionate portraits of his friends; seedy glamour and high camp meet in a jubilant fusion of collage, paintings and photography. Not one to be an aloof observer, Tabboo! was often photographed himself—by Goldin, Morrisroe, Pierson, Steven Meisel, Steven Klein, David Armstrong and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Both creator and muse, chronicler and participant, he emblematizes the open experimentation central to the mythology of glamorous underground culture.

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In May 1950 Isamu Noguchi (1904–88) returned to Japan for his first visit in 20 years. He was, Noguchi said, seeking models for evolving the relationship between sculpture and society—having emerged from the war years with a profound desire to reorient his work “toward some purposeful social end.” The artist Saburo Hasegawa (1906–57) was a key figure for Noguchi during this period, making introductions to Japanese artists, philosophies, and material culture. Hasegawa, who had mingled with the European avant-garde during time spent as a painter in Paris in the 1930s, was, like Noguchi, seeking an artistic hybridity. By the time Hasegawa and Noguchi met, both had been thinking deeply about the balance between tradition and modernity, and indigenous and foreign influences, in the development of traditional cultures for some time. The predicate of their intense friendship was a thorough exploration of traditional Japanese culture within the context of seeking what Noguchi termed “an innocent synthesis” that “must rise from the embers of the past.” Changing and Unchanging Things is an account of how their joint exploration of traditional Japanese culture influenced their contemporary and subsequent work. The 40 masterpieces in the exhibition—by turns elegiac, assured, ambivalent, anguished, euphoric, and resigned—are organized into the major overlapping subjects of their attention: the landscapes of Japan, the abstracted human figure, the fragmentation of matter in the atomic age, and Japan’s traditional art forms. Published in association with The Noguchi Museum. Exhibition dates: Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan: January 12–March 21, 2019 The Noguchi Museum, New York: May 1–July 14, 2019 Asian Art Museum, San Francisco: September 27–December 8, 2019

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Genet…Beckett…Burroughs…Miller…Ionesco, Oe, Duras. Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Hubert Selby Jr. and John Rechy. The legendary film I Am Curious (Yellow). The books that assaulted the fort of propriety that was the United States in the 1950s and ’60s, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Tropic of Cancer. The Evergreen Review. Victorian “erotica.” The Autobiography of Malcolm X. A bombing, a sit-in, and a near-fistfight with Norman Mailer. The common thread between these disparate elements, a number of which reshaped modern culture, was Barney Rosset.Rosset was the antidote to the trope of the “gentleman publisher” personified by other pioneering figures of the industry such as Alfred A. Knopf, Bennett Cerf and James Laughlin. If Barney saw a crowd heading one way—he looked the other. If he knew something was forbidden, he regarded it as a plus. Unsurprisingly, financial ruin, along with the highs and lows of critical reception, marked his career. But his unswerving dedication to publishing what he wanted made him one of the most influential publishers ever.Rosset began work on his autobiography a decade before his death in 2012, and several publishers and a number of editors worked with him on the project. Now, at last, in his own words, we have a portrait of the man who reshaped how we think about language, literature—and sex. Here are the stories behind the filming of Norman Mailer’s Maidstone and Samuel Beckett’s Film; the battles with the US government over Tropic of Cancer and much else; the search for Che’s diaries; his romance with the expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, and more.At times appalling, more often inspiring, never boring or conventional: this is Barney Rosset, uncensored.Illustrated with black-and-white photographs; includes index

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A novel approach to biography, drawing on interview material and other sources, all extensively annotated. This book is a major source of information about one of the most influential British composers of the mid-twentieth century and the musicians he knew. It also provides details of the musical relationship between Paris and London before, during and after World War II. Berkeley had a ring-side seat when he lived in Paris, studied with Nadia Boulanger and wrote reviews about musical life there from 1929 to 1934. His little known letters to her reveal the mesmeric power of this extraordinary woman. Berkeley was an elegant writer, and it is fascinating to read his first-hand memories of composers such as Ravel, Poulenc, Stravinsky and Britten. The book also contains interviewswith Berkeley's colleagues, friends and family. These include performers such as Julian Bream and Norman Del Mar; composers Nicholas Maw and Malcolm Williamson; the composer's eldest son Michael, the composer and broadcaster; andLady Berkeley. Lennox Berkeley knew Britten well, and there are many references to him in this eminently readable collection. Peter Dickinson, British composer and pianist, has written and edited numerous books about twentieth-century music, including Cage Talk: Dialogues with and about John Cage as well as Samuel Barber Remembered (both with University of Rochester Press) and three books published by Boydell Press: The Music of Lennox Berkeley; Copland Connotations; and Lord Berners: Composer, Writer, Painter. Peter Dickinson's music is widely performed and recorded. Dickinson knew Berkeley from 1956 until the composer's death in 1989; performed many of the songs with his sister, the mezzo Meriel Dickinson; and has written and broadcast regularly about his music.

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Micky Flanagan is one of Britain's best-loved cheeky-chappy comedians, thanks to his stand-up routines about how he's gone from growing up in London's East End in the 1970s to his life now in middle-class suburbia. To date he has two sell-out tours under his belt, nominations from the British Comedy Awards and the Edinburgh Fringe (for Best Comedy Newcomer), not to mention regular stints on 8 Out of 10 Cats, Mock the Week and The Last Leg, as well as guest appearances on The Jonathan Ross Show, Alan Carr: Chatty Man, The Graham Norton Show and The One Show. Yet a career as a professional comedian was not something that he had ever dreamed of when, as a troublesome teen, he left school aged 15 to work in a fish market. Abi Smith looks at how Micky, who was laughed at by his teachers when he said he wanted to be a vet, has triumphed from his early days working as a fish porter in the East End and as a dishwasher in New York. In this page-turning biography you'll also discover why his mum labelled him a drama queen, and how he tried his hand at various professions - including trainee teacher and painter and decorator - before having the last laugh by becoming one of the country's most popular funny men. So, pour yourself a cup of Rosie Lee, take the weight off your plates and prepare for a right giraffe as you read this engaging tale of 'an East Boy done good'.

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"It works, we're in business, yeah Babe!" So begins this remarkable selection from a forty-year correspondence between two artists who survived their time as wives in the Beat bohemia of the 1960s and went on to successful artistic careers of their own. From their first meeting in 1960, writer Hettie Jones—then married to LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)—and painter and sculptor Helene Dorn (1927–2004), wife of poet Ed Dorn, found in each other more than friendship. They were each other's confidant, emotional support, and unflagging partner through difficulties, defeats, and victories, from surviving divorce and struggling as single mothers, to finding artistic success in their own right. Revealing the intimacy of lifelong friends, these letters tell two stories from the shared point of view of women who refused to go along with society’s expectations. Jones frames her and Helene's story, adding details and explanations while filling in gaps in the narrative. As she writes, "we'd fled the norm for women then, because to live it would have been a kind of death." Apart from these two personal stories, there are, as well, reports from the battlegrounds of women's rights and tenant's rights, reflections on marriage and motherhood, and contemplation of the past to which these two had remained irrevocably connected. Prominent figures such as Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary appear as well, making Love, H an important addition to literature on the Beats. Above all, this book is a record of the changing lives of women artists as the twentieth century became the twenty-first, and what it has meant for women considering such a life today. It's worth a try, Jones and Dorn show us, offering their lives as proof that it can be done.

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In the early twentieth century, Native American baskets, blankets, and bowls could be purchased from department stores, “Indian stores,” dealers, and the U.S. government’s Indian schools. Men and women across the United States indulged in a widespread passion for collecting Native American art, which they displayed in domestic nooks called “Indian corners.” Elizabeth Hutchinson identifies this collecting as part of a larger “Indian craze” and links it to other activities such as the inclusion of Native American artifacts in art exhibitions sponsored by museums, arts and crafts societies, and World’s Fairs, and the use of indigenous handicrafts as models for non-Native artists exploring formal abstraction and emerging notions of artistic subjectivity. She argues that the Indian craze convinced policymakers that art was an aspect of “traditional” Native culture worth preserving, an attitude that continues to influence popular attitudes and federal legislation.Illustrating her argument with images culled from late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century publications, Hutchinson revises the standard history of the mainstream interest in Native American material culture as “art.” While many locate the development of this cross-cultural interest in the Southwest after the First World War, Hutchinson reveals that it began earlier and spread across the nation from west to east and from reservation to metropolis. She demonstrates that artists, teachers, and critics associated with the development of American modernism, including Arthur Wesley Dow and Gertrude Käsebier, were inspired by Native art. Native artists were also able to achieve some recognition as modern artists, as Hutchinson shows through her discussion of the Winnebago painter and educator Angel DeCora. By taking a transcultural approach, Hutchinson transforms our understanding of the role of Native Americans in modernist culture.

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A unique insight into the life and art of Sean Scully, an internationally celebrated artist and creative practitioner at the height of his powers. Sean Scully’s paintings of brushy stripes and blocks of sumptuous colour are critically acclaimed and widely admired. Less well known is what a gifted storyteller and profound commentator on the history of art he is. In this fascinating book, the record of countless hours of conversations with Scully’s friend, the art critic Kelly Grovier, the painter reflects on his extraordinary journey – from homelessness on the streets of Dublin in the mid-1940s to his current position as one of the most important abstract artists working today. In these revealing conversations, Scully recalls with poignancy and wit his rough-and-tumble childhood in London (where his family moved when he was a toddler), his tenacity in the face of rejection from nearly every art school in England, and his rise to prominence in New York in the 1980s. Illustrated throughout with images that capture both the artist and his work, this volume explores Scully’s relationship with past masters, from Rembrandt to Rothko, and delves deep into his eventual rejection in the late 1970s of minimalism – the dominant force in abstract art at the time. Punctuated throughout by passionately recounted stories of struggle and loss, perseverance and triumph, the portrait that emerges from these pages is at once intimate and surprising. The book reflects the scope of Scully’s broad interests and opinions, with segments devoted not only to his attitudes towards the art world and his most significant works, but also culture, politics and philosophy. Scully communicates with a raw pugnacity that is every bit as hard-hitting as his big brushstrokes.With 146 illustrations in colour

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It is said that asphyxiation brings on a state of hallucinatory intoxication...in which case the 71 year old artist who lay in his sprawling Provencal villa died happy. In the early afternoon of Monday 4 October 1999, wracked with Parkinson's, and unable to paint because of a fall in which he had broken his wrist, Bernard Buffet calmly placed a plastic bag over his head, taped it tight around his neck and patiently waited the few minutes it took for death to arrive. Bernard Buffet:The Invention of the Modern Mega-artist tells the remarkable story of a French figurative painter who tasted unprecedented critical and commercial success at an age when his contemporaries were still at art school. Then, with almost equal suddenness the fruits of fame turned sour and he found himself an outcast. Scarred with the contagion of immense commercial success no leper was more untouchable. He was the first artist of the television age and the jet age and his role in creating the idea of a post-war France is not to be underestimated. As the first of the so-called Fabulous Five (Francoise Sagan, Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot and Yves Saint Laurent) he was a leader of the cultural revolution that seemed to forge a new France from the shattered remains of a discredited and demoralized country. Rich in incident Buffet’s remarkable story of bisexual love affairs, betrayal, vendettas lasting half a century, shattered reputations, alcoholism, and drug abuse, is played out against the backdrop of the beau monde of the 1950s and 1960s in locations as diverse as St Tropez, Japan, Paris, Dallas, St Petersburg and New York, before coming to its miserable conclusion alone in his studio.

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‘Satisfyingly replete with eye-popping stories’ Observer What was so dangerous about Queen Victoria’s artistic tempestuous sixth child, Princess Louise?When Lucinda Hawksley started to investigate, often thwarted by inexplicable secrecy, she discovered a fascinating woman, modern before her time, whose story has been shielded f from public view for years. Louise was a sculptor and painter, friend to the Pre-Raphaelites and a keen member of the Aesthetic movement. The most feisty of the Victorian princesses, she kicked against her mother’s controlling nature and remained fiercely loyal to her brothers – especially the sickly Leopold and the much-maligned Bertie. She sought out other unconventional women, including Josephine Butler and George Eliot, and campaigned for education and health reform and for the rights of women. She battled with her indomitable mother for permission to practice the ‘masculine’ art of sculpture and go to art college – and in doing so became the first British princess to attend a public school. The rumours of Louise’s colourful love life persist even today, with hints of love affairs dating as far back as her teenage years, and notable scandals included entanglements with her sculpting tutor Joseph Edgar Boehm and possibly even her sister Princess Beatrice’s handsome husband, Liko. True to rebellious form, she refused all royal suitors and became the first member of the royal family to marry a commoner since the sixteenth century. Spirited and lively, The Mystery of Princess Louise is richly packed with arguments, intrigues, scandals and secrets, and is a vivid portrait of a princess desperate to escape her inheritance.

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The Bargue-Gerome Drawing Course is a complete reprint of a famous, late nineteenth-century drawing course. It contains a set of almost two hundred masterful lithographs of subjects for copying by drawing students before they attempt drawing from life or nature. Consequently it is a book that will interest artists, art students, art historians, and lovers and collectors of drawings. It also introduces us to the work and life of a hitherto neglected master: Charles Bargue. The Drawing Course consists of three sections. The first consists of plates drawn after casts, usually of antique examples. Different parts of the body are studied in order of difficulty, until full figures are presented. The second section pays homage to the western school of painting, with lithographs after exemplary drawings by Renaissance and modern masters. The third part contains almost 60 academies, or drawings after nude male models, all original inventions by Bargue, the lithographer. With great care, the student is introduced to continually more difficult problems in the close observing and recording of nature. Charles Bargue started his career as a lithographer of drawings by hack artists for a popular market in comic, sentimental and soft-porn subjects. By working with Gerome, and in preparing the plates for the course, Bargue was transformed into a spectacular painter of single figures and intimate scenes; a master of precious details that always remain observation and never became self-conscious virtuosity, and colour schemes that unified his composition in exquisite tonal harmonies. The last part of the book is a biography of Bargue, along with a preliminary catalogue of his paintings, accompanied by reproductions of all that have been found and of many of those lost.

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A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy. THE ARTIST. Art by Thomas Kinkade Studios. Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of LightTM, emphasized simple pleasures and inspirational messages through his art – and the branded products created from that art. From textiles, to collectibles, to music and books, Thom believed that both the ability and the inspiration to create his paintings had been given to him as a gift. His goal as an artist was to touch people of all faiths and to bring peace and joy into their lives through the images he had created. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

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How artists from Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi to Whistler and Arthur Wesley Dow embraced and transformed Hokusai’s dynamic style and innovations The great painter, book illustrator and print designer Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become the best known of all Japanese artists and one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. He was a key figure for the Japonisme movement in late 19th-century Europe, and his iconic images—especially the color woodblock print nicknamed “The Great Wave”—are frequently referred to in present-day art in both serious and frivolous forms, from sculpture, printmaking and painting to anime and emojis. This book looks at Hokusai from the viewpoint of fellow artists who incorporated lessons learned from him into their own work, including Hokusai’s own students, his contemporary rivals and his many posthumous admirers working in a wide range of mediums, in Japan and around the world, from the late 19th century to the present. Lavishly illustrated and accompanied by illuminating and engaging texts, this publication invites readers to encounter the origins and enduring appeal of Hokusai’s delightful art. Artists include: Félix Bracquemond, John Cederquist, Arthur Wesley Dow, Hiroshige, Sori Hishikawa, Hokkei, Hokusai, Winslow Homer, Loïs Mailou Jones, Henri Gustave Jossot, Shun’ei Katsukawa, Shunsho Katsukawa, Oi Katsushika, Eisen Keisai, Korin, Kuniyoshi, Paul Legrand, Manjiro Hokuga, Ogata Korin, Odilon Redon, Henri Rivière, Hoitsu Sakai, Hokuju Shotei, Hokushu Shunkosai, Kogan Tobari, Hokkei Totoya, Toyoharu Utagawa, Utamasa, Édouard Vuillard, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Samuel Wilson and Shigenobu Yanagawa.

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Embrace Your Divine Feminine EnergyCreate new rituals and self-care habits with this oracle deck. These sacred inspirational cards inspired by land-based practises of the Métis people serve as a daily mental healer.Re-energize and connect to the Métis culture. These oracle cards are the perfect way to help you slow down and awaken to the energy around and inside you. Andrea Menard writes beautifully while invoking connections to the land and indigenous teachings; use these cards as friendly reminders to dive into your divine feminine energy. Andrea Menard is a Métis woman whose Michif ancestry originates from St. Laurent, Manitoba, Canada. She is deeply influenced by Sacred Elements and guided by the teachings of her ancestral Grandmothers.Enjoy colorful and beautifully layered art. These unique images bring emotional healing and a deep awakening to divine feminine energy. Sacred women, men, and gender-fluid individuals will find wisdom on every card. Enjoy 52 cards with beautiful images of original artwork by Métis painter, Leah Marie Dorion. Leah is an interdisciplinary Metis artist raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, who views her Metis heritage as a unique bridge connecting all people to a greater knowledge.Inside, you’ll find: Ancient wisdom and teachings from Andrea Menard set to transform you Beautifully layered art from Leah Marie Dorion on a deck of cards set to awaken you A handbook guide set to spark your divine feminine energy If you need a gift for the sacred woman in your life or if you liked The Sacred Forest Oracle, The Starseed Oracle, or Sacred Destiny Oracle, you’ll love Seeds of the Sacred Feminine.

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A Magical Year takes readers on an unforgettable journey through the seasons at Hogwarts. Jim Kay’s incredible illustrations, paired with much loved quotations from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, bring to life all of the magic, beauty and wonder of the wizarding world. This is an irresistible gift book for anyone who has ever been captivated by the Boy Who Lived. Each day features a favourite anniversary or meaningful memory from the Harry Potter novels. All around, Jim Kay’s scenic artwork and decorative painter’s marks bring that moment to life in breathtaking detail. His unique interpretation is both captivating and transporting – picture frozen icicles glinting on the snowy towers of Hogwarts, the dancing eyes of Professor Albus Dumbledore, or the infectious hustle and bustle of Diagon Alley. Inside, a selection of his most iconic illustrations are joined by previously unseen pencil sketches and preparatory pieces, offering a unique and fascinating insight into the artist’s sketchbook. Jim Kay’s dazzling depiction of the wizarding world has been enchanting readers since the publication of the groundbreaking Illustrated Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2015. Now, as he continues to illustrate the stories, both lifelong fans and new readers can explore that world further. The Kate Greenaway Medal winner’s bewitching character studies, sweeping landscapes and beautifully observed pencil details reveal the skill and process of an artist working at the peak of his powers. This is the perfect gift to give at birthdays and Christmas, to share at bedtime or to make a friend smile. A Magical Year brings together Harry, Ron, Hermione and a host of other beloved characters in a glorious illustrated compendium that readers everywhere will cherish for years to come.

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When a poet addresses a living person--whether friend or enemy, lover or sister--we recognize the expression of intimacy. But what impels poets to leap across time and space to speak to invisible listeners, seeking an ideal intimacy--George Herbert with God, Walt Whitman with a reader in the future, John Ashbery with the Renaissance painter Francesco Parmigianino? In Invisible Listeners, Helen Vendler argues that such poets must invent the language that will enact, on the page, an intimacy they lack in life. Through brilliantly insightful and gracefully written readings of these three great poets over three different centuries, Vendler maps out their relationships with their chosen listeners. For his part, Herbert revises the usual "vertical" address to God in favor of a "horizontal" one-addressing God as a friend. Whitman hovers in a sometimes erotic, sometimes quasi-religious language in conceiving the democratic camerado, who will, following Whitman's example, find his true self. And yet the camerado will be replaced, in Whitman's verse, by the ultimate invisible listener, Death. Ashbery, seeking a fellow artist who believes that art always distorts what it represents, finds he must travel to the remote past. In tones both tender and skeptical he addresses Parmigianino, whose extraordinary self-portrait in a convex mirror furnishes the poet with both a theory and a precedent for his own inventions. By creating the forms and speech of ideal intimacy, these poets set forth the possibility of a more complete and satisfactory human interchange--an ethics of relation that is uncoerced, understanding, and free.

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If you liked Sold on a Monday and Beautiful Exiles, you'll love this novel about strong-willed trailblazing photographer, Dorothea Lange, whose fame grew during World War II and the Great Depression. “Hooper excels at humanizing giants....seamlessly weaving together the time, places and people in Lange’s life...For photo buffs and others familiar with her vast body of work, reading the book will be like discovering the secret backstory of someone they thought they knew.” —The Washington PostIn 1918, a fearless twenty-two-year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange she is soon the celebrated owner of the city’s most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon.By the early 1930s, as America’s economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young sons single-handedly. Determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation’s poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform, and define the era. And when the United States enters World War II, Dorothea chooses to confront another injustice—the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans.At a time when women were supposed to keep the home fires burning, Dorothea Lange, creator of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, dares to be different. But her choices came at a steep price…

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Enchanted by the Hollywood movies she watched while growing up in affluent Tehran in the 1950s and 1960s, Shohreh Aghdashloo dreamed of becoming an actress, despite her parents more practical plans. When she fell in love with her husband, Aydin, a painter thirteen years her senior, she made him promise he'd allow her to follow her passion. Filled with hard work and extensive travel throughout Europe and the Middle East, the first years of her marriage were magical. As Shohreh began to build her acclaimed career, Aydin worked for the Minister of Art and Culture, exhibiting his art in Tehran. But in 1978 revolution swept across Iran, toppling the Shah and instilling a new religious regime under the Ayatollah Khomeini. Terrified of the stifling new restrictions on women and art, Shohreh realized that she, too, had to escape. Leaving the man she loved behind, she made her way to Europe and eventually to Hollywood. In this moving memoir, Shohreh shares her story: a tale of privilege and affluence, pain and prejudice, tenacity and success. She writes poignantly about her struggles as an outsider in a new culture - as a woman, a Muslim, and an Iranian - adopting to a new land and a new language. And she shares behind the scenes stories about what it's really like to be a Hollywood actress - including being snubbed by two of Tinseltown's biggest names on Oscar night. Lyrical and atmospheric, The Alley of Love and Jasmines is a powerful story of ambition, art, politics, terror, and courage - of an extraodinary woman determined to live her dreams.

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Creative genius, war artist, adventurer, lover. These are just some of the words that can be used to describe Aberdeenshire-born painter and printmaker James McBey (1883-1959). McBey was a Scottish superstar amongst the creative spirits that fuelled the Etching Revival of the late nineteenth century and Etching Boom of the early twentieth century, and in an historical context, was the acknowledged heir to Whistler and Rembrandt. But after his death in Tangier, Morocco, in 1959, his renown as one of Britain’s most accomplished artists – who took the art world by storm – faded from public consciousness. Born illegitimately in the tiny parish of Foveran, Aberdeenshire, in the late Victorian era, he was brought up by his blind mother and elderly grandmother amid the rigid Presbyterian confines of Scotland’s north-east. Tragedy, dreary work as a bank clerk and a craving for success on his own terms all precipitated his leaving Aberdeen to live the life of an artist in London where he quickly became one of the most-talked about creatives of his generation. At the heart of this biography – the first ever to be published on McBey – is his time as a war artist in the Middle East during the Great War – where he would meet and paint T. E. Lawrence – his many love affairs, marriage to the beautiful American, Marguerite Loeb, and his enduring passion for Morocco. Drawing on his many diaries and letters and artistic creations, this is the story of one man who – clever, kind, intrepid, dashing, insecure and flawed – triumphed against the odds.

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Stanley Greaves brings a painter's perceptions and a musician's ear to the writing of this substantial selection of his poetry written over the past forty years. He describes his painting as 'a kind of allegorical story-telling' and the same kind of connections between the concrete and the metaphysical, and the presence of the extraordinary in the ordinary are found in his poems.Greaves guesses at a background that includes African, Amerindian and European ancestry, but declines to relate to any of these in an exclusive way. Rather he writes out of a creole sensibility that celebrates Guyanese diversity: Afro-Guyanese folkways, Amerindian legend and Hindu philosophy. Nor does he reject Europe, and in his poetry and his painting explores connections between European Surrealism and the intuitive elements within Guyana's heterogeneous culture.To enter the collection is to discover a whole, self-created world of Blakean richness, one which is never static, but growing to encompass new elements. Greaves's is a dialectical vision, alert both to the movements of history and the minutiae of daily change.His themes include family, daily life, metaphysical speculation, the hard years of social collapse and political repression in Guyana, the strange visitations of inner imaginative life and his comradeship with the great Guyanese poet Martin Carter. His is a sensibility 'welcoming as the earth is/ for every floating seed/ on stairs of air and rain'.This collection won the 2002 Guyana Prize for the best first collection of poetry.Stanley Greaves was born in Guyana. He is one of the Caribbean's most distinguished artists and an accomplished classical guitarist. He currently lives in Barbados.

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German artist Neo Rauch, championed as “the painter of the zeitgeist” by The New York Times’s Roberta Smith, presents new paintings in PROPAGANDA.Rauch is widely celebrated for his captivating compositions that bring together figurative painting and surrealism into an entirely new kind of visual encounter. They often hint at broader narratives and histories—seemingly reconnecting with artistic traditions of realism—but they remain dreamlike and impossible to reduce to a single story. Though his art is highly refined and executed with great technical skill, Rauch himself stresses the intuitive, deeply personal nature of how he works. As the artist notes, “My process is far less a reflection than it is drawing from the sediments of my past, which occurs in an almost trance-like state.”Eight large-scale canvases and seven smaller, more intimately scaled works continue the artist’s exploration of figuration and the ambiguous nature of meaning in visual art. In some of the larger works, the saturation of the canvas with characters, objects, and, forms, all rendered at different scales and in conflicting arrangements, creates a collage-like quality—a figurative scrapbook of Rauch’s personal iconography. The publication features a short story by German novelist and playwright Daniel Kehlmann, which was inspired by the paintings in this book. The fantastical text moves between present-day New York and an unknown time of enchanted forests, knights, and witches, exploring the many layers found in Rauch’s canvases. Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong in 2019, Neo Rauch: PROPAGANDA is available in both English only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

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From award-winning writer David Park, an absorbing account of the lives of the women most important to three poets: William Blake, Osip Mandlestam and an imagined contemporary Irish poet 'An outstanding novel, written in luminous accessible prose, thoroughly enjoyable and much deeper even than the sum of its excellent parts' Irish Times 'The Poets’ Wives is a marvellous triptych: lyrical, respectful of creativity but also sharply sceptical' Sunday Times __________________ Three women, each destined to play the role of a poet’s wife: Catherine Blake, the wife of William Blake – a poet, painter and engraver who struggles for recognition in a society that dismisses him as a madman; Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, whose poetry costs him his life under Stalin’s terror; and the wife of a fictional contemporary Irish poet, who looks back on her marriage during the days after her husband’s death as she seeks to fulfil his final wish. Set across continents and centuries, and in very different circumstances, these three women confront the contradictions between art and life, contemplate their emotional and physical sacrifices for another’s creativity, and struggle with infidelities that involve not only the flesh, but ultimately poetry itself. They find themselves custodians of their husbands’ work, work that has been woven with love’s intimacies and which has shaped their own lives in the most unexpected of ways. Deeply insightful and beautifully wrought, The Poets’ Wives is David Park at his best – a novelist whose work has the power to bring the hidden from the shadows, into a delicate and shimmering light.

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Daniel O'Quinn investigates the complex interpersonal, political, and aesthetic relationships between Europeans and Ottomans in the long eighteenth century. Bookmarking his analysis with the conflict leading to the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz on one end and the 1815 bid for Greek independence on the other, he follows the fortunes of notable British, Dutch, and French diplomats to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire as they lived and worked according to the capitulations surrendered to the Sultan. Closely reading a mixed archive of drawings, maps, letters, dispatches, memoirs, travel narratives, engraved books, paintings, poems, and architecture, O'Quinn demonstrates the extent to which the Ottoman state was not only the subject of historical curiosity in Europe but also a key foil against which Western theories of governance were articulated. Juxtaposing narrative accounts of diplomatic life in Constantinople, such as those contained in the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the English ambassador, with visual depictions such as those of the costumes of the Ottoman elite produced by the French-Flemish painter Jean Baptiste Vanmour, he traces the dissemination of European representations and interpretations of the Ottoman Empire throughout eighteenth-century material culture. In a series of eight interlocking chapters, O'Quinn presents sustained and detailed case studies of particular objects, personalities, and historical contexts, framing intercultural encounters between East and West through a set of key concerns: translation, mediation, sociability, and hospitality. Richly illustrated and provocatively argued, Engaging the Ottoman Empire demonstrates that study of the Ottoman world is vital to understanding European modernity.

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Spain as a political entity can be traced to the joining of the two largest Iberian kingdoms through the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469. Over the course of the next centuries, Spain rose to European dominance, presided over the world's largest empire, and saw its power and wealth decline until it was finally conquered and occupied by Napoleon in the early nineteenth century. Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History, the first broad-ranging collection in English of writings from the entire period from 1469 to the end of the eighteenth century, comprises 61 documents carefully selected and introduced by Jon Cowans. Beginning with the marriage contract of Ferdinand and Isabella, the volume unveils the rich and turbulent history of early modern Spain through contemporary writings, including documents on the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, a narrative of the conquest of Mexico, accounts of the Inquisition, a profile of King Philip II, a cleric's primer on "the perfect wife," a sermon on the defeat of the "Invincible Armada" in 1588, reports of a bread riot in Seville, a royal investigation of the painter Velázquez, Benito Feijóo's "defense of women" of 1737, a 1790 denunciation of bullfighting, and Charles IV's declaration of war on revolutionary France in 1793. Covering political, cultural, social, and economic history, Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History provides a valuable opportunity to explore the history of Spain through primary sources, revealing the problems and experiences of Spain's empire, tensions among ethnic groups and across regions, the place of women and minorities in Spanish society, and the outlooks and roles of Spanish artists.

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Diego Rivera’s America revisits a historical moment when the famed muralist and painter, more than any other artist of his time, helped forge Mexican national identity in visual terms and imagined a shared American future in which unity, rather than division, was paramount. This volume accompanies a major exhibition highlighting Diego Rivera’s work in Mexico and the United States from the early 1920s through the mid-1940s. During this time in his prolific career, Rivera created a new vision for the Americas, on both national and continental levels, informed by his time in both countries. Rivera’s murals in Mexico and the U.S. serve as points of departure for a critical and contemporary understanding of one of the most aesthetically, socially, and politically ambitious artists of the twentieth century. Works featured include the greatest number of paintings and drawings from this period reunited since the artist’s lifetime, presented alongside fresco panels and mural sketches. This catalogue serves as a guide to two crucial decades in Rivera’s career, illuminating his most important themes, from traditional markets to modern industry, and devoting attention to iconic paintings as well as works that will be new even to scholars—revealing fresh insights into his artistic process. Published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with University of California Press Exhibition dates: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: July 16, 2022—January 1, 2023 Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas: March 11—July 31, 2023

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Set off on the eternal trail of the Beat experience in the city that inspired many of Jack Kerouac's best-loved novels including On the Road, Vanity of Duluoz, The Town and the City, and Desolation Angels. This is the ultimate guide to Kerouac's New York, packed with photos of the Beat Generation and filled with undercover information and little-known anecdotes. Eight easy-to-follow walking tours guide you to: Greenwich Village bars and cafes where Kerouac and his friends Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs, Diane di Prima, Gregory Corso, Hettie and LeRoi Jones, John Clellon Holmes, Joyce Johnson, and others read poetry, drank, turned-on, and talked all night long. The Chelsea-district apartment where Jack wrote On the Road. Midtown clubs where Beat poets mingled with artists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and listened to jazz and blues greats Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday. Times Square, a magnet for Kerouac and the Beats. Columbia University, where the original Beats first met and began a revolution in American literature and culture. Each tour includes a map of the neighborhood, subway and bus information, and an insider's angle on Jack Kerouac's life in New York. A must for Beat enthusiasts and critics. Bill Morgan is a painter and archival consultant working in New York City. His previous publications include The Works of Allen Ginsberg 1941-1994: A Descriptive Bibliography and Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Comprehensive Bibliography. He has worked as an archivist for Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Timothy Leary.

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Rain Later, Good is the award winning story of Peter Collyer's extraordinary journey around the Shipping Forecast areas. The Shipping Forecast is a national institution, relied upon by mariners but also strangely comforting and poetic to landlubbers. Published in 1998 to great acclaim, Rain Later, Good was chosen by the RNLI to celebrate their 175th anniversary, and has since sold over 25,000 copies. Fifteen years later, this gorgeous book will be available in paperback for the first time, completely revised and updated, with several new paintings. Peter Collyer's brilliant and detailed paintings offer a series of images which help conjure up the most mythical locations, whilst his delightful idiosyncratic text provides a wealth of fascinating insights. He introduces us to the people who live and work in these areas, and passes on snippets of tantalising information to give a powerful impression of the place and convey a real feeling of being there. The beautiful paintings from his travels truly capture the spirit of these wild and isolated spots, and this new edition includes new paintings, sketches and up to date text. This is a much-loved book celebrating an iconic broadcast, and its reissue will be welcomed by Peter's many admirers. 'A very remarkable painter. His work is simply stunning with an observed intensity which makes him very special indeed.' Chris Beetles in The Daily Telegraph 'The most delightful and unexpected book I've encountered this year... a wonderful book.' John Naughton, The Times 'He is not only a marvellous, delicate draughtsman and watercolourist...but a drily observant writer and amateur naturalist.' Libby Purves

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An appreciation of the life and art of Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomin books, which are adored by children and adults across the globe. This book provides fresh insights and a deeper appreciation of the life and art of Tove Jansson (1914-2001), one of the most original, influential and perennially enjoyed illustrators of the 20th century. Jansson’s flourishing Moomin books are examined in detail, as are her interpretations of such classics as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Born in Helsinki among the Swedish-speaking Finnish minority, Jansson was brought up with a love for making art and stories in a supportive artistic family. Her first illustrated tales were published when she was fourteen years old. From a year later until 1953, she drew humorous and political cartoons as well as striking front covers for the satirical magazine Garm, responding to the Second World War and its aftermath as she developed from art student to painter and muralist, bohemian and lesbian. This book also explores the emergence of her Moomin world, appearing in her first children’s book in 1945 and then in newspaper strips. These would lead to her being headhunted by the London Evening News, the world’s biggest-selling evening paper, to write and draw a daily Moomin newspaper cartoon. This body of work is one of her great achievements, expanding her stories, settings and cast and invigorating her drawing and writing. Jansson also wrote many novels, documented here along with personal commentaries from her own writings.

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Simon Schama brings Britain to life through its portraits, as seen in the five-part BBC series The Face of Britain and the major National Portrait Gallery exhibitionChurchill and his painter locked in a struggle of stares and glares; Gainsborough watching his daughters run after a butterfly; a black Othello in the nineteenth century; the poet-artist Rossetti trying to capture on canvas what he couldn't possess in life; a surgeon-artist making studies of wounded faces brought in from the Battle of the Somme; a naked John Lennon five hours before his death.In the age of the hasty glance and the selfie, Simon Schama has written a tour de force about the long exchange of looks from which British portraits have been made over the centuries: images of the modest and the mighty; of friends and lovers; heroes and working people. Each of them - the image-maker, the subject, and the rest of us who get to look at them - are brought unforgettably to life. Together they build into a collective picture of Britain, our past and our present, a look into the mirror of our identity at a moment when we are wondering just who we are. Combining his two great passions, British history and art history, for the first time, Schama's extraordinary storytelling reveals the truth behind the nation's most famous portrayals of power, love, fame, the self, and the people. Mesmerising in its breadth and its panache, and beautifully illustrated, with more than 150 images from the National Portrait Gallery, The Face of Britain will change the way we see our past - and ourselves.

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A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the Slimline Journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list and robust ivory text paper, printed with lines. THE ARTIST. The most notable period in Japanese ukiyo-e painter and printmaker Hokusai's artistic life was the latter part of his career, beginning in 1830 when he was 70 years old. He began the series of landscapes he is most famous for: 'Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji', which included The Great Wave, off Kanagawa, probably his most iconic image. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

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Barbara von Barghahn is Professor of Art History at George Washington University and a specialist in the art history of Portugal, Spain, and their colonial dominions, as well as Flanders (1400-1800). In 1993, she was conferred O Grão Comendador in the Portuguese Order of Prince Henry the Navigator. She has spent nearly a decade completing research about Jan van Eyck's diplomatic visits to the Iberian Peninsula. This manuscript investigates Van Eyck's patronage by the Crown of Portugal and his role as diplomat-painter of the Duchy of Burgundy following his first voyage to Lisbon in 1428-1429 when he painted two portraits of Infanta Isabella, who became the third wife of Philip the Good in 1430. New portrait identifications are provided in the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) and its iconographical prototype, the lost Fountain of Life. These altarpieces are analyzed with regard to King João I's conquest of Ceuta, achieved by his sons who were hailed as an"illustrious generation." Strong family ties between the dynastic houses of Avis and Lancaster explain Lusitania 's sustained fascination with Arthurian lore and the Grail quest. Several chapters of this book are overlaid with a chivalric veneer. A second "secret mission" to Portugal in 1437 by Jan van Eyck is postulated and this diplomatic visit is related to Prince Henrique the Navigator's expedition to Tangier and King Duarte's attempts to forge an alliance with Alfonso V of Aragon. Late Eyckian commissions are reviewed in light of this ill-fated crusade and additional new portraits are identified. The most significant artist of Renaissance Flanders appears to have been patronized as much by the House of Avis as by the Duchy of Burgundy.

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For many years, de Waal has observed chimpanzees soothe distressed neighbors and bonobos share their food. Now he delivers fascinating fresh evidence for the seeds of ethical behavior in primate societies that further cements the case for the biological origins of human fairness. Interweaving vivid tales from the animal kingdom with thoughtful philosophical analysis, de Waal seeks a bottom-up explanation of morality that emphasizes our connection with animals. In doing so, de Waal explores for the first time the implications of his work for our understanding of modern religion. Whatever the role of religious moral imperatives, he sees it as a “Johnny-come-lately” role that emerged only as an addition to our natural instincts for cooperation and empathy. But unlike the dogmatic neo-atheist of his book’s title, de Waal does not scorn religion per se. Instead, he draws on the long tradition of humanism exemplified by the painter Hieronymus Bosch and asks reflective readers to consider these issues from a positive perspective: What role, if any, does religion play for a well-functioning society today? And where can believers and nonbelievers alike find the inspiration to lead a good life? Rich with cultural references and anecdotes of primate behavior, The Bonobo and the Atheist engagingly builds a unique argument grounded in evolutionary biology and moral philosophy. Ever a pioneering thinker, de Waal delivers a heartening and inclusive new perspective on human nature and our struggle to find purpose in our lives.

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The modern artist strives to be independent of the public's taste--and yet depends on the public for a living. Petra Chu argues that the French Realist Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) understood this dilemma perhaps better than any painter before him. In The Most Arrogant Man in France, the first comprehensive reinterpretation of Courbet in a generation, Chu tells the fascinating story of how, in the initial age of mass media and popular high art, this important artist managed to achieve an unprecedented measure of artistic and financial independence by promoting his work and himself through the popular press. The Courbet who emerges in Chu's account is a sophisticated artist and entrepreneur who understood that the modern artist must sell--and not only make--his art. Responding to this reality, Courbet found new ways to "package," exhibit, and publicize his work and himself. Chu shows that Courbet was one of the first artists to recognize and take advantage of the publicity potential of newspapers, using them to create acceptance of his work and to spread an image of himself as a radical outsider. Courbet introduced the independent show by displaying his art in popular venues outside the Salon, and he courted new audiences, including women. And for a time Courbet succeeded, achieving a rare freedom for a nineteenth-century French artist. If his strategy eventually backfired and he was forced into exile, his pioneering vision of the artist's career in the modern world nevertheless makes him an intriguing forerunner to all later media-savvy artists.

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Gnostic poet, painter, writer, and magician Aleister Crowley arrived in Berlin on April 18, 1930. As prophet of his syncretic religion "Thelema," he wanted to be among the leaders of art and thought, and Berlin, the liberated future-gazing metropolis, wanted him. There he would live, until his hurried departure on June 22, 1932, as Hitler was rapidly rising to power and the black curtain of intolerance came down upon the city. Known to his friends affectionately as "The Beast," Crowley saw the closing lights of Berlin's artistic renaissance of the Weimar period when Berlin played host to many of the world's most outstanding artists, writers, filmmakers, performers, composers, architects, philosophers, and scientists, including Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Ethel Mannin, Otto Dix, Aldous Huxley, Jean Ross, Christopher Isherwood, and many other luminaries of a glittering world soon to be trampled into the mud by the global bloodbath of World War II. Drawing on previously unpublished letters and diary material by Crowley, Tobias Churton examines Crowley's years in Berlin and his intense focus on his art, his work as a spy for British Intelligence, his colorful love life and sex magick exploits, and his contacts with German Theosophy, Freemasonry, and magical orders. He recounts the fates of Crowley's colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowley's lost art exhibition--six crates of paintings left behind in Germany as the Gestapo was closing in. Revealing the real Crowley long hidden from the historical record, Churton presents "the Beast" anew in all his ambiguous and, for some, terrifying glory, at a blazing, seminal moment in the history of the world.

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The year's finest mathematics writing from around the world This annual anthology brings together the year's finest mathematics writing from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in the field, The Best Writing on Mathematics 2017 makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else--and you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday occurrences of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates. Here Evelyn Lamb describes the excitement of searching for incomprehensibly large prime numbers, Jeremy Gray speculates about who would have won math's highest prize--the Fields Medal--in the nineteenth century, and Philip Davis looks at mathematical results and artifacts from a business and marketing viewpoint. In other essays, Noson Yanofsky explores the inherent limits of knowledge in mathematical thinking, Jo Boaler and Lang Chen reveal why finger-counting enhances children's receptivity to mathematical ideas, and Carlo Sequin and Raymond Shiau attempt to discover how the Renaissance painter Fra Luca Pacioli managed to convincingly depict his famous rhombicuboctahedron, a twenty-six-sided Archimedean solid. And there's much, much more. In addition to presenting the year's most memorable writings on mathematics, this must-have anthology includes a bibliography of other notable writings and an introduction by the editor, Mircea Pitici. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in where math has taken us--and where it is headed.

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Cabdrivers and their yellow taxis are as much a part of the cityscape as the high-rise buildings and the subway. We hail them without thought after a wearying day at the office or an exuberant night on the town. And, undoubtedly, taxi drivers have stories to tell - of farcical local politics, of colorful passengers, of changing neighborhoods and clandestine shortcuts. No one knows a city's streets - and thus its heart - better than its cabdrivers. And from behind the wheel of his taxi, Dmitry Samarov has seen more of Chicago than most Chicagoans could hope to experience in a lifetime. An artist and painter trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Samarov began driving a cab in 1993 to make ends meet, and he's been working as a taxi driver ever since. In "Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab", he recounts tales that will delight, surprise, and sometimes shock even the most seasoned urbanite. We follow Samarov through the rhythms of a typical week, as he waits hours at the garage to pick up a shift, ferries comically drunken passengers between bars, delivers prostitutes to their johns, and inadvertently observes drug deals. There are long waits with other cabbies at O'Hare, vivid portraits of street corners and their regular denizens, amorous Cubs fans celebrating after a game at Wrigley Field, and customers who are pleasantly surprised that Samarov is white - and tell him so. Throughout, Samarov's own drawings - of his fares, of the taxi garage, and of a variety of Chicago street scenes - accompany his stories. In the grand tradition of Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Mike Royko, and Studs Terkel, Dmitry Samarov has rendered an entertaining, poignant, and unforgettable vision of Chicago and its people.

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Celebrating the groundbreaking life’s work of Stanislav Grof, MD, pioneer in psychedelic research and transpersonal psychology. Created in honour of his 90th birthday, this book celebrates the profound life’s work of Stanislav Grof, MD, pioneer in psychedelic research and transpersonal psychology. Featuring an extended interview between Stan and his wife, Brigitte, the book explores in depth the full arc of his research in his own words as well as the history of LSD. He discusses his early experiments with LSD in Czechoslovakia and the USA during the 1950s and ’60s and the cartography of the psyche that resulted. He describes his clients’ and his own experiences and the psychedelic approach he pioneered. He explains the four perinatal matrices, illustrated with the impressive paintings he made during high-dose LSD sessions. He discusses the creation of holotropic breathwork as a way to reach expanded states of consciousness without the use of drugs. He describes how he started work with LSD believing it was simply pharmacology and then went on to discover the perinatal, transpersonal, and archetypal levels of the psyche through his lifelong research. The book also features testimonies from a number of luminaries in the psychedelic, psychological, scientific, and spiritual communities, including Jack Kornfield, Rupert Sheldrake, Ervin Laszlo, Richard Tarnas, Rick Doblin, Roger Walsh, David Steindl-Rast, Fritjof Capra, and Cathy Coleman. Complete with captivating photos of Stan Grof with Albert Hofmann, Swiss painter H. R. Giger, Fritz Perls, Sasha Shulgin, as well as all of the book’s contributors, this special book presents an impressive overview of Stan Grof’s groundbreaking work and honors his importance as a psychedelic elder.

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Among his many captivating exploits, the French artist Yves Klein (1928 - 1962) invented his own brand of colour: the inimitable International Klein Blue. Denounced as a charlatan and feted as a mystic, Klein scandalized the art world with his enthusiastic embrace of the highs and lows of post-war mass culture and his exploitation of controversial publicity tactics. Today it is clear that Klein was not only one of the most radical artists of the post-war period but an iconic role model for contemporary practices: he reinvented abstract painting, conceived new horizons for performance art and was a trailblazer in the interdisciplinary realm of land, body and conceptual art. Nuit Banai examines the relationship between Klein's brief but incandescent life and his wide repertoire of artistic practices. The book establishes that Klein's brilliance was above all performative, as he created and inhabited a cast of public identities: avant-garde artist, bourgeois, judo expert, painter, charlatan, collaborator, politician, middle-class mystic, fascist and showman.With each persona, Klein invented new ways to communicate his paradoxical message of spiritual enlightenment and Dada iconoclasm to an unsuspecting, bemused and entranced audience. This new critical biography illuminates Klein's influential and multifaceted artistic career. Alongside contemporaries like Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys and postmodern chameleons like Cindy Sherman, Klein's protean performance of multiple roles stands as a landmark example of the artist's transformational status. An invaluable introduction to the life and work of this flamboyant individual, Yves Klein will appeal to students and scholars of Klein as well as those interested in contemporary art and twentieth-century culture.

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