Search results for ""Author Painters"
Thames & Hudson Ltd Out of the Cage: The Art of Isabel Rawsthorne
“I love this book! Brilliant biography of the…utterly fascinating artist Isabel Rawsthorne” Jennifer Higgie “Every page is gripping, fascinating, forcefully and excitingly written, and sad.” Andrew Motion “Isabel Rawsthorne’s life reads like a ready-made screenplay… – a poverty stricken upbringing, world wars, espionage, affairs, addiction, politics … all set to a series of evocative cinematic backdrops. And that’s before any mention of her career as one of the most hidden but influential artists of the 20th century.” Interiors and Home “Jacobi’s bigger project here, seems to be to reimagine what an artist biography… can be.” The Art Newspaper “Highlights how talented women have often missed out on the recognition they deserved” Observer Isabel Rawsthorne’s painting career at the centre of the Parisian and London avantgardes was eclipsed by the many occasions on which her friends made her the subject of their art, notably Epstein, Derain, Giacometti, Picasso and Bacon. This pioneering painter exhibited from the early 1930s, was influential in the 1940s and well known in the 1960s, but in her later years Giacometti’s and Bacon’s blockbuster biographies made her famous as a muse. Rawsthorne’s work is now in major collections, and this beautifully illustrated book re-writes the pre- and post-war art history of which she was a part: it is traced through the upheavals of the 20th century and her singular relationships with some of its most fascinating figures. A decade of research into the period, Rawsthorne’s art and archives, and the memories of friends, has revealed for the first time her role in a rebel group at Liverpool School of Art; success and tragedy in the 1930s when she was studio assistant to Jacob Epstein; her life-long collaborations with Alberto Giacometti; and, after the war, with Francis Bacon and with African Modernism in the 1960s, as well as her exceptional late work. It also tells the full story of her break from art during the second world war, when she worked for the government in black propaganda.
£27.00
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Life and Letters of Emma Hamilton: The Story of Admiral Nelson and the Most Famous Woman of the Georgian Age
Emma, Lady Hamilton, rose from poverty to become a media celebrity, and her relationship with Admiral Nelson, and her renowned beauty, made her the most instantly-recognisable woman of her era, with the press following her every move. She was a friend of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, longed-after by the Prince of Wales, and was a high society fashion icon. Born in 1765, Emma was the daughter of the village blacksmith in Neston, Cheshire, who died just two months later, leaving the family in difficult circumstances. After failing to find a permanent position locally, Emma took the stagecoach to London and the start of her remarkable journey to international fame. Emma worked for various actresses at Dury Lane theatre, before becoming a dancer, a model and, later, a hostess. Her beauty brought her to the attention of Charles Grenville, the second son of the Earl of Warwick, who took her as his mistress, and became the model for the painter George Romney. These paintings thrust Emma into the social spotlight and she soon became London's top celebrity. When Grenville needed to find a rich wife, Emma was passed onto Sir William Hamilton, British Envoy to Naples. The couple fell in love and were married in September 1791. When in Naples, Lady Hamilton, as she now was, became a close friend of Queen Maria Carolina, sister of Marie Antoinette. It was also in Naples that she met Admiral Nelson - and the great love affair began. Much has been written about this later period of her life, but with Hugh Tours making full use of the letters Emma wrote as well as those she received throughout her life, the fascinating story of her early years is also revealed. This is history as moving as a great tragic novel; most moving of all, being the return, after Trafalgar, of Emma's last letter to Nelson, unopened.
£19.99
Princeton University Press The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders
Isamu Noguchi, born in Los Angeles as the illegitimate son of an American mother and a Japanese poet father, was one of the most prolific yet enigmatic figures in the history of twentieth-century American art. Throughout his life, Noguchi (1904-1988) grappled with the ambiguity of his identity as an artist caught up in two cultures. His personal struggles--as well as his many personal triumphs--are vividly chronicled in The Life of Isamu Noguchi, the first full-length biography of this remarkable artist. Published in connection with the centennial of the artist's birth, the book draws on Noguchi's letters, his reminiscences, and interviews with his friends and colleagues to cast new light on his youth, his creativity, and his relationships. During his sixty-year career, there was hardly a genre that Noguchi failed to explore. He produced more than 2,500 works of sculpture, designed furniture, lamps, and stage sets, created dramatic public gardens all over the world, and pioneered the development of environmental art. After studying in Paris, where he befriended Alexander Calder and worked as an assistant to Constantin Brancusi, he became an ardent advocate for abstract sculpture. Noguchi's private life was no less passionate than his artistic career. The book describes his romances with many women, among them the dancer Ruth Page, the painter Frida Kahlo, and the writer Anais Nin. Despite his fame, Noguchi always felt himself an outsider. "With my double nationality and my double upbringing, where was my home?" he once wrote. "Where were my affections? Where my identity?" Never entirely comfortable in the New York art world, he inevitably returned to his father's homeland, where he had spent a troubled childhood. This prize-winning biography, first published in Japanese, traces Isamu Noguchi's lifelong journey across these artistic and cultural borders in search of his personal identity.
£31.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Fifteenth-Century Studies Vol. 24
15th-c. adaptations of Chrétien de Troyes, the use of motifs, and standard features including current state of research and book review section. Setting the tone for volume 24 is a trio of articles on 15th-century French adaptations of Chrétien de Troyes's Arthurian romances. Norris Lacy examines adaptation and reception in Cligés,Jane Taylor writes on the importance of cultural details to reception studies of both Erec and Cligés, and Maria Timelli on structural aspects of Erec. Other studies of romance include MaryLynn Saul's article on courtly love and patriarchal marriage institutions in Malory, and Anne Caillaud's piece on gender conventions of courtly love as a vehicle for misogyny in Antoine de la Sale's Petit Jehan de Saintre. Hans-Joachim Behr deals with an adaptation of the 12th-century historical figure of Heinrich von der Löwe in his article on the poetic workof Michel Wyssenherre. Roxana Recio's article on Spanish "amplifications and glosses" draws connections between translation, reception, and interpretation.Moving from romance to legend, Peter De Wilde, in his article on the legendary matter of St. Patrick's journeys to Purgatory, relates a 15th-century account of one Englishman's "visionary pilgrimage" to that destination.A second area of concentration in the volume is the thematic and structural use of motifs. Rainer Goetz discusses archery in Spanish poetry of love and death; Georg Roellenbleck courtly pastimes and the term passe temps inFrench poetry. James Wilkins focuses on the "body as currency" in French passion plays. Kristine Patz moves into art history, examining the importance of the Pythagorean ypsilonin the work of the Italian painter Mantegna.Dealing with the turn to Renaissance humanism are articles by Grady Smith on the short literary career and Latin dramas of Titus Livius Frulovisi, and by Christiane Raynaudon humanism and good government in the Latin Romuleon. Franco Mormando investigates a darker moment: the 1426 witch trial in Rome and the role of Bernardino of Siena as its instigator and chronicler. Rouben Choulakian writes on the poetry of Charles d'Orlean
£89.10
Temple Lodge Publishing The East in the Light of the West: The Birth of Christian Esotericism in the Twentieth Century and the Occult Powers That Oppose it: Pt. 1-3
This major work comprises a comprehensive study of Eastern and Western esoteric streams and the occult powers that stand behind them. In Part 1 Prokofieff discusses the spiritual movement of Agni Yoga, presented to the world by Helena Roerich and her husband, the painter Nicholas Roerich. Part 2 focuses on the teachings developed by Alice Bailey, whilst Part 3 considers the relationship between Eastern and Western spiritual masters and the occult streams they represent. The first two Parts of the book give descriptions of both the Roerichs' and Alice Bailey's philosophy, based on their own perspective, together with anthroposophical commentaries that give an understanding of these two streams in the light of modern Christian esotericism. As Prokofieff points out, both the Roerichs and Bailey were convinced that the occult teachers who inspired them were the same as those referred to by the founder of Theosophy, Helena Blavatsky. Part 3 deals directly with the mystery of the Eastern teachers, or mahatmas, and their relationship to Christian esotericism. On the basis of extensive research, Prokofieff comes to the startling conclusion that the occultists whom both the Roerichs and Alice Bailey named as their leaders actually have nothing in common with Blavatsky's Eastern mahatmas. In Prokofieff's words: 'Hence...one has to do not with the Eastern mahatmas but with quite different occultists who had illicitly appropriated their names and then tried - while deliberately misleading their followers - to attain their highly dubious occult political aims with the help of the occult movements which had already been initiated.' Prokofieff argues that this appropriation led to a distortion of the age-old Eastern philosophies, giving them an anti-Christian character, and led to phenomena such as 'occult materialism', insidious political goals, and prophecies of a physically incarnating 'Messiah'. Previously available only in German as three separate books, with just an early version of Part 1 published in English, this long-awaited translation of Prokofieff's incisive study offers a fine schooling in discernment, judgement and spiritual insight.
£40.00
DK The Art Book
Learn about key movements like impressionism, cubism and symbolism in The Art Book.Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Art in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Art Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Art, with:- More than 80 of the world’s most remarkable artworks- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understandingThe Art Book is a captivating introduction to painting, drawing, printing, sculpture, conceptual art, and performance art - from ancient history to the modern day - aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you’ll discover more than 80 of the world’s most groundbreaking artworks by history’s most influential painters, sculptors and artists, through exciting text and bold graphics.Your Art Questions, Simply ExplainedThis fresh new guide examines the ideas that inspired masterpieces by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Klimt, Matisse, Picasso, and dozens more! If you thought it was difficult to learn about the defining movements, The Art Book presents key information in an easy to follow layout. Find out about subject matters, techniques, and materials, and learn about the talented artists behind the great works, through fantastic mind maps and step-by-step summaries.The Big Ideas SeriesWith millions of copies sold worldwide, The Art Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.
£20.64
DK The Art Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained
Learn about key movements like impressionism, cubism and symbolism in The Art Book.Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Art in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Art Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Art, with:- More than 80 of the world’s most remarkable artworks- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understandingThe Art Book is a captivating introduction to painting, drawing, printing, sculpture, conceptual art, and performance art - from ancient history to the modern day - aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you’ll discover more than 80 of the world’s most groundbreaking artworks by history’s most influential painters, sculptors and artists, through exciting text and bold graphics.Your Art Questions, Simply ExplainedThis fresh new guide examines the ideas that inspired masterpieces by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Klimt, Matisse, Picasso, and dozens more! If you thought it was difficult to learn about the defining movements, The Art Book presents key information in an easy to follow layout. Find out about subject matters, techniques, and materials, and learn about the talented artists behind the great works, through fantastic mind maps and step-by-step summaries.The Big Ideas SeriesWith millions of copies sold worldwide, The Art Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.
£25.56
Basic Books Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century
In 1916, as World War I raged around them, a group of bohemians gathered at a small cabaret in Zurich, Switzerland. After decorating the walls with art by Picasso and other avant-garde artists, they embarked on a series of extravagant performances. Three readers simultaneously recited a poem in three languages a monocle-wearing teenager performed a spell from New Zealand another young man sneered at the audience, snapping a whip as he intoned his Fantastic Prayers." One of the artists called these sessions both buffoonery and a requiem mass." Soon they would have a more evocative name: Dada.In Destruction Was My Beatrice , modernist scholar Jed Rasula presents the first narrative history of Dada, showing how this little-understood artistic phenomenon laid the foundation for culture as we know it today. Although the venue where Dada was born closed after only four months and its acolytes scattered, the idea of Dada quickly spread to New York, where it influenced artists like Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray to Berlin, where it inspired painters George Grosz and Hannah Höch and to Paris, where it dethroned previous avant-garde movements like Fauvism and Cubism while inspiring early Surrealists like André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Paul Éluard. The long tail of Dadaism, Rasula shows, can be traced even further, to artists as diverse as William S. Burroughs, Robert Rauschenberg, Marshall McLuhan, the Beatles, Monty Python, David Byrne, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, all of whom,along with untold others,owe a debt to the bizarre wartime escapades of the Dada vanguard.A globe-spanning narrative that resurrects some of the 20th century's most influential artistic figures, Destruction Was My Beatrice describes how Dada burst upon the world in the midst of total war,and how the effects of this explosion are still reverberating today.
£25.00
University of Minnesota Press Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson
An expansive and revelatory study of Robert Smithson’s life and the hidden influences on his iconic creations This first biography of the major American artist Robert Smithson, famous as the creator of the Spiral Jetty, deepens understanding of his art by addressing the potent forces in his life that were shrouded by his success, including his suppressed early history as a painter; his affiliation with Christianity, astrology, and alchemy; and his sexual fluidity. Integrating extensive investigation and acuity, Suzaan Boettger uncovers Smithson’s story and, with it, symbolic meanings across the span of his painted and drawn images, sculptures, essays, and earthworks up to the Spiral Jetty and beyond, to the circumstances leading to what became his final work, Amarillo Ramp.While Smithson is widely known for his monumental earthwork at the edge of the Great Salt Lake, Inside the Spiral delves into the arc of his artistic production, recognizing it as a response to his family’s history of loss, which prompted his birth and shaped his strange intelligence. Smithson configured his personal conflicts within painterly depictions of Christ’s passion, the rhetoric of science fiction, imagery from occult systems, and the impersonal posture of conceptual sculpture. Aiming to achieve renown, he veiled his personal passions and transmuted his professional persona, becoming an acclaimed innovator and fierce voice in the New York art scene.Featuring copious illustrations never before published of early work that eluded Smithson’s destruction, as well as photographs of Smithson and his wife, the noted sculptor Nancy Holt, and recollections from nearly all those who knew him throughout his life, Inside the Spiral offers unprecedented insight into the hidden impulses of one of modern art’s most enigmatic figures. With great sensitivity to the experiences of loss and existential strife that defined his distinct artistic language, this biographical analysis provides an expanded view of Smithson’s iconic art pilgrimage site and the experiences and works that brought him to its peculiar blood red water.
£29.99
The University of Chicago Press The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture
Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert were three of America’s most revered and widely read film critics, more famous than many of the movies they wrote about. But their remarkable contributions to the burgeoning American film criticism of the 1960s and beyond were deeply influenced by four earlier critics: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler. Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler scrutinized what was on the screen with an intensity not previously seen in popular reviewing. Although largely ignored by the arts media of the day, they honed the sort of serious discussion of films that would be made popular decades later by Kael, Sarris, Ebert and their contemporaries. With The Rhapsodes, renowned film scholar and critic David Bordwell—an heir to both those legacies—restores to a wider audience the work of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, critics he calls the “Rhapsodes” for the passionate and deliberately offbeat nature of their vernacular prose. Each broke with prevailing currents in criticism in order to find new ways to talk about the popular films that contemporaries often saw at best as trivial, at worst as a betrayal of art. Ferguson saw in Hollywood an engaging, adroit mode of popular storytelling. Agee sought in cinema the lyrical epiphanies found in romantic poetry. Farber, trained as a painter, brought a pictorial intelligence to bear on film. A surrealist, Tyler treated classic Hollywood as a collective hallucination that invited both audience and critic to find moments of subversive pleasure. With his customary clarity and brio, Bordwell takes readers through the relevant cultural and critical landscape and considers the critics’ writing styles, their conceptions of films, and their quarrels. He concludes by examining the profound impact of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler on later generations of film writers.The Rhapsodes allows readers to rediscover these remarkable critics who broke with convention to capture what they found moving, artful, or disappointing in classic Hollywood cinema and explores their robust—and continuing—influence.
£20.61
Cornell University Press Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820–1909
The Hudson River Valley was the first iconic American landscape. Beginning as early as the 1820s, artists and writers found new ways of thinking about the human relationship with the natural world along the Hudson. Here, amid the most dramatic river and mountain scenery in the eastern United States, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper created a distinctly American literature, grounded in folklore and history, that contributed to the emergence of a sense of place in the valley. Painters, led by Thomas Cole, founded the Hudson River School, widely recognized as the first truly national style of art. As the century advanced and as landscape and history became increasingly intertwined in the national consciousness, an aesthetic identity took shape in the region through literature, art, memory, and folklore—even gardens and domestic architecture. In Sanctified Landscape, David Schuyler recounts this story of America’s idealization of the Hudson Valley during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Schuyler’s story unfolds during a time of great change in American history. At the very moment when artists and writers were exploring the aesthetic potential of the Hudson Valley, the transportation revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism were transforming the region. The first generation of American tourists traveled from New York City to Cozzens Hotel and the Catskill Mountain House in search of the picturesque. Those who could afford to live some distance from jobs in the city built suburban homes or country estates. Given these momentous changes, it is not surprising that historic preservation emerged in the Hudson Valley: the first building in the United States preserved for its historic significance is Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh. Schuyler also finds the seeds of the modern environmental movement in the transformation of the Hudson Valley landscape. Richly illustrated and compellingly written, Sanctified Landscape makes for rewarding reading. Schuyler expertly ties local history to national developments, revealing why the Hudson River Valley was so important to nineteenth-century Americans—and why it is still beloved today.
£23.39
Oxford University Press Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
On 18 April 1947, British forces set off the largest non-nuclear explosion in history. The target was a small island in the North Sea, fifty miles off the German coast, which for generations had stood as a symbol of Anglo-German conflict: Heligoland. A long tradition of rivalry was to come to an end here, in the ruins of Hitler's island fortress. Pressed as to why it was not prepared to give Heligoland back, the British government declared that the island represented everything that was wrong with the Germans: 'If any tradition was worth breaking, and if any sentiment was worth changing, then the German sentiment about Heligoland was such a one'. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, Jan Rüger explores how Britain and Germany have collided and collaborated in this North Sea enclave. For much of the nineteenth century, this was Britain's smallest colony, an inconvenient and notoriously discontented outpost at the edge of Europe. Situated at the fault line between imperial and national histories, the island became a metaphor for Anglo-German rivalry once Germany had acquired it in 1890. Turned into a naval stronghold under the Kaiser and again under Hitler, it was fought over in both world wars. Heavy bombardment by the Allies reduced it to ruins, until the Royal Navy re-took it in May 1945. Returned to West Germany in 1952, it became a showpiece of reconciliation, but one that continues to wear the scars of the twentieth century. Tracing this rich history of contact and conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War, Heligoland brings to life a fascinating microcosm of the Anglo-German relationship. For generations this cliff-bound island expressed a German will to bully and battle Britain; and it mirrored a British determination to prevent Germany from establishing hegemony on the Continent. Caught in between were the Heligolanders and those involved with them: spies and smugglers, poets and painters, sailors and soldiers. Far more than just the history of a small island in the North Sea, this is the compelling story of a relationship which has defined modern Europe.
£15.99
Oxford University Press Inc The Harlem Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural awakening among African Americans between the two world wars. It was the cultural phase of the "New Negro" movement, a social and political phenomenon that promoted a proud racial identity, economic independence, and progressive politics. In this Very Short Introduction, Cheryl A. Wall captures the Harlem Renaissance's zeitgeist by identifying issues and strategies that engaged writers, musicians, and visual artists alike. She introduces key figures such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer, along with such signature texts as "Mother to Son," "Harlem Shadows," and Cane. In examining the "New Negro," she looks at the art of photographer James Van der Zee and painters Archibald Motley and Laura Wheeler and the way Marita Bonner, Jessie Fauset, and Nella Larsen explored the dilemmas of gender identity for New Negro women. Focusing on Harlem as a cultural capital, Wall covers theater in New York, where black musicals were produced on Broadway almost every year during the 1920s. She also depicts Harlem nightlife with its rent parties and clubs catering to working class blacks, wealthy whites, and gays of both races, and the movement of Renaissance artists to Paris. From Hughes's "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" to W.E.B. Du Bois's novel Dark Princess, black Americans explored their relationship to Africa. Many black American intellectuals met African intellectuals in Paris, where they made common cause against European colonialism and race prejudice. Folklore - spirituals, stories, sermons, and dance - was considered raw material that the New Negro artist could alchemize into art. Consequently, they applauded the performance of spirituals on the concert stage by artists like Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson. The Harlem Renaissance left an indelible mark not only on African American visual and performing arts, but, as Cheryl Wall shows, its legacies are all around us.
£9.67
Thames & Hudson Ltd The Van Gogh Sisters
The lively and revealing correspondence that Vincent van Gogh maintained with his art-dealer brother Theo is famous as a source of insight into the mind of one of the most celebrated artists of all time. But what of Anna, Lies and Willemien van Gogh, with whom Vincent had intimate and sometimes turbulent relationships? It was an argument with his oldest sister, Anna, in the aftermath of their father’s death that provoked Vincent to leave the Netherlands and never return. The Van Gogh siblings grew up at a time when long-distance travel by train first became possible. As each went their own way, following work and study to London, Paris, Brussels and beyond, they maintained the close relationships forged in their youth in the Netherland’s idyllic countryside by sending candid and personal letters. In this thoughtful and unprecedented biographical history, Willem-Jan Verlinden delves into previously unpublished correspondence in the Van Gogh family archives to bring Vincent’s three sisters out from their brothers’ shadow, poignantly portraying their dreams, disappointments and grief. The oldest sister, Anna, worked as a governess in England as a young woman before marrying a Dutch industrialist. The second sister, Lies, fell into poverty in spite of her literary aspirations and was forced to sell many of her brother’s paintings. Willemien, the third sister, was an active participant in the first feminist wave. She visited the studio of Edgar Degas in Paris with Theo and discussed art enthusiastically with her painter brother. She and Vincent also shared their struggles with mental health, which for Willemien resulted in institutionalization for the second half of her life. With great clarity and empathy, The Van Gogh Sisters captures a moment of profound social, economic and artistic change. The sisters’ intimate discussions of poetry and books, love, personal ambition and the opportunities afforded them broaden our understanding of this dramatic era in European history when the feminist movement was emergent and idealists of all stripes climbed the barricades in pursuit of revolution. With 132 illustrations, 21 in colour
£22.50
BAI NV Chagall, Picasso, Mondrian and others: Migrants in Paris
At the beginning of the last century, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian and other acclaimed and unknown artists moved to Paris, the art capital of the world. They learnt to survive in a society that was becoming increasingly polarised, nationalistic, xenophobic and anti-Semitic. This exhibition and accompanying publication tells the story of artists in a foreign country who, despite adverse conditions, had the courage to take art to new heights. The show is an incredible chance to see the work of the great modern masters in a new light, and to discover new artists. Today, Chagall, Picasso and Mondrian are known as Masters of Modern Art, but behind their role as artistic pioneers lay struggle - all three, from different backgrounds, were migrants. In spite of their success and achievement, they faced the same insurmountable obstacle: they were not French. Picasso, born in Spain, arrived in Paris penniless, where he flourished as a creative genius. And yet he remained loyal to his Spanish roots, and often identified with being 'different', a sentiment he frequently explored in his work. As a Jewish-Russian in exile, Chagall faced loneliness, exclusion and outright anti-Semitism. Often packed with Jewish-Russian imagery like rabbis and synagogues, his paintings convey a sense of deep nostalgia. In his early years, the Dutchman Kees van Dongen also encounterd difficulties. He eventually became one of Paris' celebrated society painters, but in 1906 he complained that the newspapers consistently portrayed him as the sale étranger, or 'the dirty foreigner'. The exhibition Chagall, Picasso, Mondrian and Others: Migrant Artists in Paris shows work of, amongst others: Emmy Andriesse, Karel Appel, Eva Besnyö, Marc Chagall, Sonia Delaunay, Kees van Dongen, Gisèle Freund, Natalia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, Germaine Krull, Wifredo Lam, Jacques Lipchitz, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Piet Mondriaan, Marlow Moss, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Diego Rivera, Gino Severini, Jan Sluijters, Chaim Soutine, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Nicolaas Warb (Sophia Warburg), and Ossip Zadkine.
£15.57
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Van Gogh. Self-Portraits
The myth of Van Gogh today is linked as much to his extraordinary life as it is to his stunning paintings. His biography has often shaped the way that his self-portraits have been (mis)understood. Van Gogh. Self-Portraits reconsiders this aspect of his production and places the artist’s self-representation in context to reveal the role it plays in his oeuvre. It also explores the power and profound emotion of these highly personal paintings.Van Gogh. Self-Portraits is the first time this theme has been exclusively addressed. Self-portraits painted during Van Gogh’s time in Paris (February 1886 – February 1888) have been the subject of two exhibitions (in 1960 at Marlborough Fine Arts in London and in 1995 at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg) but never has the full chronological range been explored. The exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, which this volume accompanies, features paintings from both the Parisian and Provençal periods. It brings together half of Van Gogh’s thirty-five known self-portraits to examine the ways the artist approached this particular subject-matter. On a practical level, painting himself provided Van Gogh with the cheapest and most patient of models and represented an important conduit for stylistic experimentation. He also used self-portraiture as an homage to his illustrious Dutch predecessor Rembrandt, as well as a way of fashioning his own identity and presenting himself to the outside world. Of particular interest is the striking way the evolution of Van Gogh's self-representation over the short years of his artistic activity can be seen as a microcosm of his development as a painter.In addition to the world-famous Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear in The Courtauld’s collection, the exhibition showcases a group of major masterpieces brought together from international collections, including the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Muse d’Orsay in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others. This beautifully illustrated catalogue includes detailed entries on each work, an appendix illustrating all of Van Gogh’s self-portraits and three insightful essays on the theme.
£36.84
Hodder & Stoughton Voices of Rome: Four Stories of Ancient Rome
Lindsey Davis has received the Crime Writer's Association Lifetime Achievement Award for her two immortal series of detective novels featuring Marcus Didius Falco and his adopted daughter, Flavia Albia. She is regarded as the finest living novelist of Ancient Rome. Here, for the first time in book form, are four novella-length stories written to illuminate her unparalleled output of the last 30 years.The Bride from Bithynia tells the story of Aelia Camilla who travels 1000 miles to Britain to marry Gaius Flavius, a Roman officer. But their relationship struggles, then the province explodes in the Boudican Revolt. Now, it will be up to Aelia to save herself from the conflagration. The Spook Who Spoke Again. Marcus Didius Alexander Postumus is an odd boy who has known two families. That of Marcus Didius himself and his actual birth mother, Thalia the Snake Dancer. Things begin to unravel quickly when he decides to emulate his adopted father and investigate a death in Thalia's troupe of exotic performers.Vesuvius by Night. Two men share a room but seldom meet. Nonius is a pimp and part time thief who operates at night, Larius is a fresco painter who dreams of artistic greatness by day. When the volcano erupts, one will begin looting hastily abandoned villas, the other will do anything he can to save himself and his family.Invitation to Die. When the Emperor Domitian invites the entire senatorial class to a banquet to honour the recent war dead, many think he intends to take revenge on his enemies. When the Camillus brothers enter the black-painted hall where the feast is being held and see their names engraved on monumental stones, they fear they will not survive the night...Four pivotal events, fact and fiction. Four stories which allow Davis's much-loved characters new space and the opportunity to take personal roles in tense situations, with moving results. They face villainy, tragedy, accident, confusion and fear - but each story is told with the wry humour, and underpinned by human wisdom, courage and love.
£20.00
Flame Tree Publishing Vincent van Gogh: Almond Blossom (Foiled Quarto Journal)
A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the Foiled Quarto Journals combine high-quality production and FSC pages with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, list-makers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. A NEW SERIES. The Quarto format is named after the earliest form of European printed publication, dating back to the 1400s when Gutenberg invented the first moveable-type printing press, heralding a revolution in mass communication, spreading ideas of literature, science and philosophy of the Renaissance. We celebrate this with our range of fine art and contemporary illustrations. 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, table, in the hand and in your bag. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: the high-quality, 120-gsm lined pages are FSC, Acid Free and Bleed Proof – suitable for all pen types, such as gel and rollerball. 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 a magnetic side flap helps keep everything neat and tidy. THE ARTIST. Vincent van Gogh is considered one of the world's greatest painters, his work having had a huge and far-reaching influence on 20th-century art as well as remaining visually and emotionally powerful to this day. Van Gogh painted Almond Blossom as a gift in celebration of the birth of his nephew. He had previously been greatly inspired by flowering trees, and appreciated their power as symbols of rebirth. 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."
£14.99
University of California Press Beverly McIver: Full Circle
This survey exhibition captures the arc and continued ascent of contemporary artist Beverly McIver. This exhibition catalog accompanies a survey exhibition of contemporary artist and painter Beverly McIver. Curated by Kim Boganey, this exhibition represents the diversity of McIver’s thematic approach to painting over her career. From early self-portraits in clown makeup to more recent works featuring her father, dolls, Beverly’s experiences during COVID-19 and portraits of others, Full Circle illuminates the arc of Beverly McIver’s artistic career while also touching on her personal journey. McIver’s self-portraits explore expressions of individuality, stereotypes, and ways of masking identity; portraits of family provide glimpses into intimate moments, in good times as well as in illness and death. The show includes McIver’s portraits of other artists and notable figures, recent work resulting from a year in Rome with American Academy’s Rome Prize, and new work in which McIver explores the juxtaposition of color, patterns, and the human figure. Full Circle also features works that reflect on McIver’s collaborations with other artists, as well as her impact on the next generation of artists. The complementary exhibition, In Good Company, includes artists who have mentored McIver, such as Faith Ringgold and Richard Mayhew, as well as those who have studied under her. This catalog includes a conversation with Beverly McIver by exhibition curator Kim Boganey, as well as two essays: one by leading Black feminist writer Michele Wallace, daughter of Beverly’s graduate school mentor Faith Ringgold, and another by distinguished scholar of African American art history Richard Powell. Published in association with the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Exhibition dates: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art February 12—September 4, 2022 Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art December 8, 2022–March 26, 2023 The Gibbes Museum April 28–August 4, 2023
£34.20
David Zwirner Yun Hyong-keun / Paris
A contemplative exploration of the work of Yun Hyong-keun, a renowned Korean abstract painter, during a transformative period in the early 1980s. 'His brushstrokes bled naturally across the linen or cotton raw canvas -appearing light brown as its fabric was not bleached - reminiscent of traditional East Asian calligraphy or ink and wash paintings.' — The Korea Times From 1980 to 1982, Yun Hyong-keun resided in Paris, seeking both peace from the violent political turmoil that exploded in South Korea and a new, artistic center in which to create work. His brief but illuminating stay in the city became the locus of his freedom of expression, which had been subject to political repression he had experienced in his home country. Yun's signature abstract compositions engage and transcend Eastern and Western art movements and visual traditions, establishing him as one of the most significant Korean artists of the twentieth century. He is the most prominent figure associated with the Dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) movement, the name given to a group of influential Korean artists from the 1960s and 1970s. Using a restricted palette of ultramarine and umber, Yun created his compositions of monolithic swathes by adding layer upon layer of paint onto raw canvas or linen, and hanji (Korean mulberry paper), often applying the next coat before the last one had dried. Published on the occasion of the artist's exhibition at David Zwirner, Paris, in 2023, this limited-run cloth-bound catalogue focuses on his paintings and works on hanji. In an accompanying text, the art critic Oh Gwangsu considers Yun's work prior to his move to Paris, particularly the artist’s shift toward his signature works in the 1970s. The writer Mara Hoberman then reflects on Yun’s practice and influences upon his arrival in the European capital, including an examination of his more nuanced understanding of the color black, which takes on different meanings in France and Korea.
£54.00
Johns Hopkins University Press Putting Modernism Together: Literature, Music, and Painting, 1872–1927
How do you rationally connect the diverse literature, music, and painting of an age? Throughout the modernist era-which began roughly in 1872 with the Franco-Prussian War, climaxed with the Great War, and ended with a third catastrophe, the Great Depression-there was a special belligerence to this question. It was a cultural period that envisioned many different models of itself: to the Cubists, it looked like a vast jigsaw puzzle; to the Expressionists, it resembled a convulsive body; to the Dadaists, it brought to mind a heap of junk following an explosion. In Putting Modernism Together, Daniel Albright searches for the center of the modernist movement by assessing these various artistic models, exploring how they generated a stunning range of creative work that was nonetheless wound together aesthetically, and sorting out the cultural assumptions that made each philosophical system attractive. Emerging from Albright's lectures for a popular Harvard University course of the same name, the book investigates different methodologies for comparing the evolution and congruence of artistic movements by studying simultaneous developments that occurred during particularly key modernist years. What does it mean, Albright asks, that Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, appeared at the same time as Claude Debussy's Nocturnes-beyond the fact that the word "Impressionist" has been used to describe each work? Why, in 1912, did the composer Arnold Schoenberg and the painter Vassily Kandinsky feel such striking artistic kinship? And how can we make sense of a movement, fragmented by isms, that looked for value in all sorts of under- or ill-valued places, including evil (Baudelaire), dung heaps (Chekhov), noise (Russolo), obscenity (Lawrence), and triviality (Satie)? Throughout Putting Modernism Together, Albright argues that human culture can best be understood as a growth-pattern or ramifying of artistic, intellectual, and political action. Going beyond merely explaining how the artists in these genres achieved their peculiar effects, he presents challenging new analyses of telling craft details which help students and scholars come to know more fully this bold age of aesthetic extremism.
£26.50
Johns Hopkins University Press Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum
A fascinating account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from best-selling historian and critic Kathryn Hughes.In Victorians Undone, renowned British historian Kathryn Hughes follows five iconic figures of the nineteenth century as they encounter the world not through their imaginations or intellects but through their bodies. Or rather, through their body parts. Using the vivid language of admiring glances, cruel sniggers, and implacably turned backs, Hughes crafts a narrative of cinematic quality by combining a series of truly eye-opening and deeply intelligent accounts of life in Victorian England.Lady Flora Hastings is an unmarried lady-in-waiting at young Queen Victoria's court whose swollen stomach ignites a scandal that almost brings the new reign crashing down. Darwin's iconic beard provides important new clues to the roles that men and women play in the great dance of natural selection. George Eliot brags that her right hand is larger than her left, but her descendants are strangely desperate to keep the information secret. The poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, meanwhile, takes his art and his personal life in a new direction thanks to the bee-stung lips of his secret mistress, Fanny Cornforth. Finally, we meet Fanny Adams, an eight-year-old working-class girl whose tragic evisceration tells us much about the currents of desire and violence at large in the mid-Victorian countryside. While 'bio-graphy' parses as 'the writing of a life,' the genre itself has often seemed willfully indifferent to the vital signs of that life—to breath, movement, touch, and taste. Nowhere is this truer than when writing about the Victorians, who often figure in their own life stories as curiously disembodied. In lively, accessible prose, Victorians Undone fills the space where the body ought to be, proposing new ways of thinking and writing about flesh in the nineteenth century.
£18.55
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Boyce Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Joanna Boyce, Henry Wells and George Price Boyce: 2-volume set
The first full edition of the correspondence, between three artists Joanna Boyce, her brother George P. Boyce and Henry Wells, who she eventually married. It dates from the period 1845 to 1861, and covers artistic life in both Paris and London, including the Pre-Raphaelites. This correspondence, between three artists Joanna Boyce, her brother George P. Boyce and Henry Wells, whom she eventually married, dates from the period 1845 to 1861. They were all friends of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite circle, but in addition Henry and Joanna both studied in Paris, and Joanna wrote extensively about her time there, training with Thomas Couture. She wrote for The Saturday Review as well as painting a small number of very interesting and much admired pictures. Her brother George established himself as a successful watercolourist and member of the Old Watercolour Society, having been encouraged both by David Cox on his Welsh sketching expeditions,and by Ruskin, whose letters advising him what to paint in Venice are included here. Henry Wells was primarily a portrait painter. At first he specialised in miniatures, and was commissioned to paint Mary, princess of Cambridge byQueen Victoria. There are vivid accounts of visits to country houses to carry out commissions from their owners. The three wrote constantly about techniques of painting and about the new colours that became available at this period, and about their visits to exhibitions both in Paris and London. They all contributed to the Royal Academy and other exhibitions. In addition, there is the extraordinary story of Joanna's and Henry's courtship and marriage, at first encouraged and then viciously opposed by Joanna's recently widowed mother. The correspondence survives only in an unpublished transcript made in the 1940s, as the originals were all destroyed in a bombing raid on Bath during the second world war. Excerpts from George P. Boyce's diaries were published in the 1930s, but the present edition contains a considerable amount of new material.
£117.33
Duke University Press My Butch Career: A Memoir
During her difficult childhood, Esther Newton recalls that she “became an anti-girl, a girl refusenik, caught between genders,” and that her “child body was a strong and capable instrument stuffed into the word ‘girl.’” Later, in early adulthood, as she was on her way to becoming a trailblazing figure in gay and lesbian studies, she “had already chosen higher education over the strongest passion in my life, my love for women, because the two seemed incompatible.” In My Butch Career Newton tells the compelling, disarming, and at times sexy story of her struggle to write, teach, and find love, all while coming to terms with her identity during a particularly intense time of homophobic persecution in the twentieth century. Newton recounts a series of traumas and conflicts, from being molested as a child to her failed attempts to live a “normal,” straight life in high school and college. She discusses being denied tenure at Queens College—despite having written the foundational Mother Camp—and nearly again so at SUNY Purchase. With humor and grace, she describes the influence her father Saul's strong masculinity had on her, her introduction to middle-class gay life, and her love affairs—including one with a well-known abstract painter and another with a French academic she met on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Mexico and with whom she traveled throughout France and Switzerland. By age forty, where Newton's narrative ends, she began to achieve personal and scholarly stability in the company of the first politicized generation of out lesbian and gay scholars with whom she helped create gender and sexuality studies. Affecting and immediate, My Butch Career is a story of a gender outlaw in the making, an invaluable account of a beloved and influential figure in LGBT history, and a powerful reminder of just how recently it has been possible to be an openly queer academic.
£26.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Broken Landscapes: Selected Letters from Ernie O'Malley, 1924-57
Ernie O’Malley was a revolutionary republican and writer. One of the leading figures in the Irish independence and civil wars, he survived wounds, imprisonment and hunger strike, before going to the USA in 1928 to fundraise on de Valera’s behalf. Broken Landscapes tells of his subsequent journeys, through Europe and the Americas, where O’Malley moved in wide social circles that included Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Hart Crane and Jack B. Yeats. Back in Mayo he took up farming. In 1935 he married Helen Hooker, an American heiress, with whom he had three children, Cathal, Etain and Cormac, before a bitter separation. His literary reputation was established with a magnificent memoir, On Another Man’s Wound (1936). In later years he was close to John Ford, and worked on The Quiet Man (1952). This vibrant new collection of letters, diaries and fragments opens up the broad panorama of his life to readers. It enriches the history of Ireland’s troubled independence with reflections on loss and reconciliation. It links the old world to the new – O’Malley perched on the edge of the Atlantic, a folklore collector, art critic and radio broadcaster; autodidact, modernist and intellectual. It conducts a unique conversation with the past. In Broken Landscapes, we travel with O’Malley through Italy, the American Southwest, Mexico and points inbetween. In Taos, he mingled wiht the artistic set around D. H. Lawrence. In Ireland, he drank with Patrick Kavanagh, Liam O’Flaherty and Louis MacNiece. The young painter Louis le Brocquy was his guest on his farm in Burrishoole, Co. Mayo. These places and people remained with O’Malley in his private writing, assembled for the first time from family and institutional archives. Reading these letters, dairies and fragments is to see Ireland in the tumultuous world of the twentieth century, as if for the first time, allowing us to view the intellectual foundations of the State through the eyes of its leading chronicler.
£35.00
Penguin Books Ltd The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
A new selection of post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gough's letters, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh put a human face on one of the most haunting figures in modern Western culture. In this Penguin Classics edition, the letters are selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw, and translated by Arnold Pomerans in Penguin Classics.Few artists' letters are as self-revelatory as Vincent van Gogh's, and this selection, spanning his artistic career, sheds light on every facet of the life and work of this complex and tortured man. Engaging candidly and movingly with his religious struggles, his ill-fated search for love, his attacks of mental illness and his relation with his brother Theo, the letters contradict the popular myth of van Gogh as an anti-social madman and a martyr to art, showing instead a man of great emotional and spiritual depths. Above all, they stand as an intense personal narrative of artistic development and a unique account of the process of creation. The letters are linked by explanatory biographical passages, revealing van Gogh's inner journey as well as the outer facts of his life. This edition also includes the drawings that originally illustrated the letters.Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) was born in Holland. In 1885 he painted his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, a haunting scene of domestic poverty. A year later he began studying in Paris, where he met Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, who became very important influences on his work. In 1888 he left Paris for the Provencal landscape at Arles, the subject of many of his best works, including Sunflowers.If you enjoyed The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, you might also like 100 Artists Manifestos, available in Penguin Modern Classics.'If there was ever any doubt that Van Gogh's letters belong beside those great classics of artistic self-revelation, Cellini's autobiography and Delacroix's journal, this excellent new edition dispels it'The Times
£12.99
Quarto Publishing PLC ArtQuake: The Most Disruptive Works in Modern Art
Discover art that dared to be different, risked reputations and put careers in jeopardy. This is what happens when artists take tradition and rip it up. ArtQuake tells the stories of 50 pivotal works that shook the world, telling the fascinating stories behind their creation, reception and legacy. The books begin with the rebels who struck out against Victorian conformism, daring painters and sculptors like Manet and Rodin, Van Gogh and Courbet, who experimented with expressionist and realist art styles as well as controversial subjects. Moving into the fin de siècle and the 20th century, we study the truly iconic works and turbulent lives of artists like Munch and Klimt, Picasso and Egon Schiele, whose work into abstraction, surrealism and cubism shocked and scandalized, but ultimately changed the course of western art forever. Moving into the second half of the 20th Century, we see spectacular works of conceptual rebellion, absurdity and political protest, from Andy Warhol and the Pop Art movement to Marina Abramovic, whose often visceral and violent works of performance art laid bare the savagery of the patriarchy and the human condition. In the 21st century, we see how iconoclastic creators have pushed the boundaries of art even further, from Banksy to Louise Bourgeoise, from self-destructing paintings to experimental works of computerized art. Complete with beautiful reproductions of their iconic works, as well as a glossary of terms and movements at the back, meet the huge egos, uncompromising feminists, gifted recluses, spiritualists, anti-consumerists, activists and satirists who have irrevocably carved their names into the history of art around the world. In telling the history of modern and contemporary art through the works that were truly disruptive, and explaining the context in which each was created, ArtQuake demonstrates the heart of modern art, which is to constantly question and challenge expectation. This book is from the Culture Quake series, which looks into iconic moments of culture which truly created paradigm shifts in their respective fields. Also available is FilmQuake, which tells the stories of 50 key films that consciously questioned the boundaries, challenged the status quo and made shockwaves we are still feeling today.
£11.69
Johns Hopkins University Press Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum
A fascinating account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from best-selling historian and critic Kathryn Hughes.In Victorians Undone, renowned British historian Kathryn Hughes follows five iconic figures of the nineteenth century as they encounter the world not through their imaginations or intellects but through their bodies. Or rather, through their body parts. Using the vivid language of admiring glances, cruel sniggers, and implacably turned backs, Hughes crafts a narrative of cinematic quality by combining a series of truly eye-opening and deeply intelligent accounts of life in Victorian England.Lady Flora Hastings is an unmarried lady-in-waiting at young Queen Victoria's court whose swollen stomach ignites a scandal that almost brings the new reign crashing down. Darwin's iconic beard provides important new clues to the roles that men and women play in the great dance of natural selection. George Eliot brags that her right hand is larger than her left, but her descendants are strangely desperate to keep the information secret. The poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, meanwhile, takes his art and his personal life in a new direction thanks to the bee-stung lips of his secret mistress, Fanny Cornforth. Finally, we meet Fanny Adams, an eight-year-old working-class girl whose tragic evisceration tells us much about the currents of desire and violence at large in the mid-Victorian countryside. While 'bio-graphy' parses as 'the writing of a life,' the genre itself has often seemed willfully indifferent to the vital signs of that life—to breath, movement, touch, and taste. Nowhere is this truer than when writing about the Victorians, who often figure in their own life stories as curiously disembodied. In lively, accessible prose, Victorians Undone fills the space where the body ought to be, proposing new ways of thinking and writing about flesh in the nineteenth century.
£25.56
University of Minnesota Press Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson
An expansive and revelatory study of Robert Smithson’s life and the hidden influences on his iconic creations This first biography of the major American artist Robert Smithson, famous as the creator of the Spiral Jetty, deepens understanding of his art by addressing the potent forces in his life that were shrouded by his success, including his suppressed early history as a painter; his affiliation with Christianity, astrology, and alchemy; and his sexual fluidity. Integrating extensive investigation and acuity, Suzaan Boettger uncovers Smithson’s story and, with it, symbolic meanings across the span of his painted and drawn images, sculptures, essays, and earthworks up to the Spiral Jetty and beyond, to the circumstances leading to what became his final work, Amarillo Ramp.While Smithson is widely known for his monumental earthwork at the edge of the Great Salt Lake, Inside the Spiral delves into the arc of his artistic production, recognizing it as a response to his family’s history of loss, which prompted his birth and shaped his strange intelligence. Smithson configured his personal conflicts within painterly depictions of Christ’s passion, the rhetoric of science fiction, imagery from occult systems, and the impersonal posture of conceptual sculpture. Aiming to achieve renown, he veiled his personal passions and transmuted his professional persona, becoming an acclaimed innovator and fierce voice in the New York art scene.Featuring copious illustrations never before published of early work that eluded Smithson’s destruction, as well as photographs of Smithson and his wife, the noted sculptor Nancy Holt, and recollections from nearly all those who knew him throughout his life, Inside the Spiral offers unprecedented insight into the hidden impulses of one of modern art’s most enigmatic figures. With great sensitivity to the experiences of loss and existential strife that defined his distinct artistic language, this biographical analysis provides an expanded view of Smithson’s iconic art pilgrimage site and the experiences and works that brought him to its peculiar blood red water.
£112.50
The University of Chicago Press The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture
Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert were three of America’s most revered and widely read film critics, more famous than many of the movies they wrote about. But their remarkable contributions to the burgeoning American film criticism of the 1960s and beyond were deeply influenced by four earlier critics: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler. Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler scrutinized what was on the screen with an intensity not previously seen in popular reviewing. Although largely ignored by the arts media of the day, they honed the sort of serious discussion of films that would be made popular decades later by Kael, Sarris, Ebert and their contemporaries. With The Rhapsodes, renowned film scholar and critic David Bordwell—an heir to both those legacies—restores to a wider audience the work of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, critics he calls the “Rhapsodes” for the passionate and deliberately offbeat nature of their vernacular prose. Each broke with prevailing currents in criticism in order to find new ways to talk about the popular films that contemporaries often saw at best as trivial, at worst as a betrayal of art. Ferguson saw in Hollywood an engaging, adroit mode of popular storytelling. Agee sought in cinema the lyrical epiphanies found in romantic poetry. Farber, trained as a painter, brought a pictorial intelligence to bear on film. A surrealist, Tyler treated classic Hollywood as a collective hallucination that invited both audience and critic to find moments of subversive pleasure. With his customary clarity and brio, Bordwell takes readers through the relevant cultural and critical landscape and considers the critics’ writing styles, their conceptions of films, and their quarrels. He concludes by examining the profound impact of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler on later generations of film writers.The Rhapsodes allows readers to rediscover these remarkable critics who broke with convention to capture what they found moving, artful, or disappointing in classic Hollywood cinema and explores their robust—and continuing—influence.
£80.00
George Braziller Inc Imagery of Chess
The Imagery of Chess Revisited recovers a celebrated and extraordinary moment in art history: the 1944-45 exhibition The Imagery of Chess, held at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. The exhibit was a legend in its own time and has been considered a singular event in the history of art exhibitions ever since. The show's organizersthe influential art dealer Julien Levy, the Surrealist painter Max Ernst, and Dada leader Marcel Duchamp, himself a serious chess playerinvited a virtual "who's who" of artists and members of the cultural avant-garde to redesign the standard chess set or otherwise explore chess imagery and its symbolism in bold new ways. Participants included famous European expatriates and soon-to-be famous American modernists: Andre Breton, Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Ernst, Man Ray, Isamu Noguchi, and Yves Tanguy are among those who contributed chess sets; John Cage and Vittorio Rieti created original musical scores; and Dorothea Tanning, Arshile Gorky, David Hare, Man Ray, Matta, Robert Motherwell, and others produced pivotal chess-related paintings, sculptures, and photographic works. Featuring new color photographs as well as rarely seen archival images, recollections by participants and their descendants, and period reviews, The Imagery of Chess Revisited includes previously unpublished works. Among them are Andre Breton and Nicolas Calas's wine-glass chess set and Alexander Calder's chess set made of found materials, in addition to thirty-five of Calder's chess-related drawings. An essay by Larry List explores the chess designs as visual objects and pivotal creations in the context of participating artists' lives and work. Lowell Cross and Paul B. Franklin examine the two musical scores included in the show; and Ingrid Schaffner provides an introduction to the art-world milieu in which The Imagery of Chess took place. 50 illustrations in color, 80 in black and white.
£35.82
Meta4Books vzw Correspondances #2 - Ronny Delrue
"Through the format of the letter and the correspondence, Delrue implements his stance with regard to the role of contemporary drawing as a valid generator of artistic languages and as a humble, yet effectively poetic alternative to the virtual circulation of digital images between the communication systems that surround us." - Ory Dessau, art critic "The unique character and strength of Ronny Delrue's work are the result of his intense search for the essence of Being. [...] In a highly meticulous, almost obsessive way, he explores the sensitive fault line between control and loss of control. The process, the path, the quest is of fundamental importance to this exploration. The quest is not idiosyncratic, it is not inward, it allows room for dialogue with others, like a mirror image in which the encounter occurs, as in a crossover of minds." - Carine Fol, artistic director CENTRALE for Contemporary Art, Brussels "What is more beautiful than the circle left on a piece of paper by a coffee cup, even if an algorithm can produce a lifelike imitation? What is even lovelier is the artists' ideas, the exchange, the noise, the geographical and cultural differences, the slowness, the simplicity, the banality, the trace, the moment, the text, the language, the distance, the ideas, the powerlessness." - Philippe Van Cauteren, artistic director S.M.A.K., Ghent In recent years, Ronny Delrue (*1957) corresponded with six artists namely: Martin Assig (Germany), Salam Atta Sabri (Iraq), Roger Ballen (South Africa), Sanjeev Maharjan (Nepal), Mithu Sen (India) and Christine Remacle (Belgium). Through exchanges in the form of drawings, letter fragments and collages, among other things, this publication not only explores the encounters between artists with different geographical backgrounds and cultural attitudes; it also looks at Delrue's own oeuvre from a new angle. Ronny Delrue is a painter, but first and foremost an artist for whom drawing is a core activity. For him, drawing is a way of thinking, a state of being. For this project a conscious decision was made to send the letters by post, as opposed to the swift exchange of digitally scanned documents. Correspondances is an ode to slowness and a tribute to human acts, in which representation becomes the language of the encounter. Text in English, French and Dutch.
£31.50
Charco Press Puertas demasiado pequeñas
Un juego intertextual que atraviesa la Ciudad de México con el espíritu de Juan Rulfo y Gabriela Cabezón Cámara.José Federico Burgos es un pintor frustrado devenido falsificador, atrapado en un esplendor surrealista y algo alarmante que involucra una obra maestra flamenca, un vagabundo pícaro y dos hermanos mellizos tan intimidantes como ingeniosos. Él bebe demasiado alcohol, deambula por la zona y, cada día que pasa sin lograr copiar la pintura, se acerca un poco más hacia lo que realmente sucede tras los altos muros del jardín.En homenaje a grandes como Juan Rulfo y Luis Barragán, Puertas demasiado pequeñas de Ave Barrera recorre la Guadalajara de fines del siglo XX con la exuberancia y excentricidad de una novela picaresca del siglo XVIII. Una travesura magnífica y lúdica que se adentra en asuntos como la identidad, el arte y la amistad; un retrato audaz, divertido e íntimo del México contemporáneo digno de El Bosco. The Spanish language edition of The Forgery_. A failing artist turned forger, an architectural masterpiece hidden behind high walls, an impish vagabond, and some very resourceful, very intimidating twins—Forgery pays homage to greats like Juan Rulfo and Luis Barragán, traversing late 20th Century Guadalajara with the exuberance and eccentricity of an 18th Century picaresque._An artist races to finish his forgery of a masterpiece while held captive in surreal, menacing splendor.José Federico Burgos is a failed painter turned forger trapped in surreal, an architectural masterpiece hidden behind high walls, an impish vagabond, and some very resourceful, very intimidating twins—Forgery pays homage to greats like Juan Rulfo and Luis Barragán, traversing late 20th Century Guadalajara with the exuberance and eccentricity of an 18th Century picaresque.
£9.99
John Murray Press The Year Without Summer: 1816 - one event, six lives, a world changed - longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize 2021
'A STRIKINGLY SHARP AND SUBTLE WRITER' Guardian'SUPERB...BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN...UNFORGETTABLE' FT Weekend'SKILFUL' Sunday Times 'RICH, INTRICATE, IMPRESSIVELY REALISED' Observer 'VIVIDLY REALISED' The Times'A VISION OF THE PAST AND A VISION OF THE FUTURE' Irish Times'A VIVID SLICE OF HISTORICAL FICTION' Sunday Express1815, Sumbawa Island, IndonesiaMount Tambora explodes in a cataclysmic eruption, killing thousands. Sent to investigate, ship surgeon Henry Hoggcan barely believe his eyes. Once a paradise, the island is now solid ash, the surrounding sea turned to stone. But worse is yet to come: as the ash cloud rises and covers the sun, the seasons will fail.1816In Switzerland, Mary Shelley finds dark inspiration. Confined inside by the unseasonable weather, thousands of famine refugees stream past her door. In Vermont, preacher Charles Whitlock begs his followers to keep faith as drought dries their wells and their livestock starve.In Suffolk, the ambitious and lovesick painter John Constable struggles to reconcile the idyllic England he paints with the misery that surrounds him. In the Fens, farm labourer Sarah Hobbs has had enough of going hungry while the farmers flaunt their wealth. And Hope Peter, returned from the Napoleonic wars, finds his family home demolished and a fence gone up in its place. He flees to London, where he falls in with a group of revolutionaries who speak of a better life, whatever the cost. As desperation sets in, Britain becomes beset by riots - rebellion is in the air.The Year Without Summer is the story of the books written, the art made; of the journeys taken, of the love longed for and the lives lost during that fateful year. Six separate lives, connected only by an event many thousands of miles away. Few had heard of Tambora - but none could escape its effects.'VIVID, VIBRANT, HARD TO PUT DOWN' Hilary Spurling'THOUGHT-PROVOKING, BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN AND VERY COMPELLING' Harriet Tyce'INGENIOUS AND ABSORBING' Kirsty Wark 'ASTONISHING, RIVETING, MASTERFUL, POETIC' Emily Rapp Black 'A WORLDWIDE CANVAS BROUGHT TO LIFE IN VIVID, HEARTBREAKING DETAIL' Marianne Kavanagh
£13.99
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen
This important publication accompanies a major exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, London, of paintings by Edvard Munch, one of the world’s greatest modern artists. The exhibition and catalogue showcase 18 major works from the collection of KODE Art Museums in Bergen. The works span the most significant part of Munch’s artistic development and have never before been shown as a group outside of Scandinavia. KODE houses one of the most important collections of paintings by Edvard Munch (1863–1944) in the world. The collection was assembled at the beginning of the 20th century by the Norwegian industrialist, mill owner and philanthropist Rasmus Meyer (1858–1916), who was one of the first significant early collectors of Munch’s work. Meyer knew Munch personally and was astute in acquiring major canvases by the artist that chart his artistic development.Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen explores this group of remarkable works in detail and considers the important role of Rasmus Meyer as a collector. The exhibition and publication include seminal paintings from Munch’s early ‘realist’ phase of the 1880s, such as Morning (1884), which was made when the artist was just twenty years old, and Summer Night (1889), a pivotal work that shows the artist’s move towards the expressive and psychologically charged work for which he became famous. These paintings launched Munch’s career and set the stage for his renowned, highly expressive paintings of the 1890s when his compositions became powerful projections of his emotions and imaginative states. Such works are a major feature of the exhibition that includes remarkable canvases from Munch’s famous ‘Frieze of Life’ series, such as Evening on Karl Johan (1892), Melancholy (1894-96) and At the Death Bed (1895). Through his ‘Frieze of Life’ works, Munch intended to address profound themes of human existence, from love to death. The artist used his own experiences as source material to make visceral depictions of the human psyche, which he hoped would help others understand their own life. Munch’s powerful use of colour and form to convey his subjects marked him out as one of the most radical painters at the turn of the 20th century.This fully illustrated publication includes a catalogue of the works, with contributions by leading experts in their fi eld from KODE and The Courtauld.
£25.00
Enitharmon Press Poetry Out of My Head and Heart
An astonishing discovery was made in 1995 during the British Library's removal from the British Museum. Thirty-four letters and eighteen draft poems, including "Break of Day in the Trenches", "Dead Man's Dump", and "Returning, We Hear the Larks" by the poet and artist Isaac Rosenberg were found in a bundle of papers stored by former museum keeper Laurence Binyon, himself a poet and Rosenberg's mentor. After his death as a private soldier on the Western Front on 1 April 1918, Isaac Rosenberg, now regarded as a major poet of the First World War, was largely forgotten, and only the devotion of his family and the support of his fellow poets rescued his work for posterity. Binyon and another older poet, Gordon Bottomley, encouraged and corresponded with Rosenberg until his death, and then edited his poems and extracts from his letters for publication. The newly discovered papers include all Rosenberg's complete letters and draft poems to Binyon and Bottomley, together with material about Rosenberg from family, friends and mentors such as his sister Annie, Whitechapel librarian Morley Dainow, schoolteacher Winifreda Seaton, and patron Frank Emmanuel. All are published here, most for the first time. At first overshadowed by the more acceptably English war poets, Rosenberg's poetry did not fit the poetic ideals of the time, just as he, an East End Jew born of immigrant parents, did not present the accepted public image of the heroic soldier poet. The originality and strength of his poetry were rooted in the struggle with the opposing elements of his life, which did not follow the conventions of any role he played: East End Jew, poet, painter or soldier. In one unpublished letter from the trenches he reveals his difficulties, 'I don't suppose my poems will ever be poetry right and proper until I shall be able to settle down and whip myself into more expression. As it is, my not being able to get poetry out of my head & heart causes me sufficient trouble out here.' (Letter to Bottomley, postmarked 11 July 1917)
£15.00
Vanderbilt University Press Jack Spencer: Beyond the Surface
A resident of Nashville whose work has been exhibited and collected internationally, Jack Spencer alters the surfaces of his photographs with techniques suggestive of painting - rich patinas and luminous colours, softly-focused or veiled forms, and traces of the artist's hand: imperfections, marks, and painterly textures. The exhibition catalog consists of an essay by Susan Edwards and 70 full-page colour plates selected from such series as ""Native Soil,"" ""Apariciones,"" ""This Land,"" and ""Portraits and Gestures"" to exemplify the relationship between these compelling surfaces and Spencer's interest in myth, mystery, and the ephemeral nature of existence that is implied by and beyond the surface. Each of six sections includes works from various series in which the language of photography is expanded to convey narratives inspired by other art forms, especially literature and painting. ""Portraits and Figures"" reveals Spencer's capacity to define the psychological complexity of the people he photographs, who often occupy the periphery of society. Further exploring the theme of hidden narratives, but as suggested by the altered face, ""Disguise/Perform"" includes photographs - primarily taken in Mexico - featuring masked and painted figures often associated with ancient rituals and alternative life styles. ""Beautiful Lies"" includes new work in which the exposed skin of subjects has been painted or otherwise altered by the artist and then photographed with luminous props and mysterious settings to underscore the sense of artifice, as if the body itself is shown to be an imaginative construction. ""Day into Night"" continues Spencer's consideration of transitions from one state of being to another, this time through the use of ephemeral plays of light and shadow, often suggesting dawn or dusk as signifiers of change. The final two sections focus on the symbolic meaning and phenomenological experiences of the landscape. Inspired by such regionalist painters as Grant Wood, ""This Land"" includes works that convey dreamlike views of rural and small-town America. ""Colour as Light"" features landscapes in which the limpid atmosphere merges land, trees, animals, and sky into a palpable gestalt - landscapes of the mind's eye that evoke the limitless quality of Mark Rothko's colour-saturated canvases.
£36.47
Duke University Press Architecture at the End of the Earth: Photographing the Russian North
Carpeted in boreal forests, dotted with lakes, cut by rivers, and straddling the Arctic Circle, the region surrounding the White Sea, which is known as the Russian North, is sparsely populated and immensely isolated. It is also the home to architectural marvels, as many of the original wooden and brick churches and homes in the region's ancient villages and towns still stand. Featuring nearly two hundred full color photographs of these beautiful centuries-old structures, Architecture at the End of the Earth is the most recent addition to William Craft Brumfield's ongoing project to photographically document all aspects of Russian architecture.The architectural masterpieces Brumfield photographed are diverse: they range from humble chapels to grand cathedrals, buildings that are either dilapidated or well cared for, and structures repurposed during the Soviet era. Included are onion-domed wooden churches such as the Church of the Dormition, built in 1674 in Varzuga; the massive walled Transfiguration Monastery on Great Solovetsky Island, which dates to the mid-1550s; the Ferapontov-Nativity Monastery's frescoes, painted in 1502 by Dionisy, one of Russia's greatest medieval painters; nineteenth-century log houses, both rustic and ornate; and the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Vologda, which was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in the 1560s. The text that introduces the photographs outlines the region's significance to Russian history and culture.Brumfield is challenged by the immense difficulty of accessing the Russian North, and recounts traversing sketchy roads, crossing silt-clogged rivers on barges and ferries, improvising travel arrangements, being delayed by severe snowstorms, and seeing the region from the air aboard the small planes he needs to reach remote areas.The buildings Brumfield photographed, some of which lie in near ruin, are at constant risk due to local indifference and vandalism, a lack of maintenance funds, clumsy restorations, or changes in local and national priorities. Brumfield is concerned with their futures and hopes that the region's beautiful and vulnerable achievements of master Russian carpenters will be preserved. Architecture at the End of the Earth is at once an art book, a travel guide, and a personal document about the discovery of this bleak but beautiful region of Russia that most readers will see here for the first time.
£34.20
Flame Tree Publishing Katsushika Hokusai: The Great Wave (Foiled Quarto Journal)
A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the Foiled Quarto Journals combine high-quality production and FSC pages with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, list-makers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. A NEW SERIES. The Quarto format is named after the earliest form of European printed publication, dating back to the 1400s when Gutenberg invented the first moveable-type printing press, heralding a revolution in mass communication, spreading ideas of literature, science and philosophy of the Renaissance. We celebrate this with our range of fine art and contemporary illustrations. 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, table, in the hand and in your bag. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: the high-quality, 120-gsm lined pages are FSC, Acid Free and Bleed Proof – suitable for all pen types, such as gel and rollerball. 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 a magnetic side flap helps keep everything neat and tidy. THE ARTIST. The most notable period in printmaker and painter Katsushika 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 woodblock print 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."
£14.99
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Italian Maiolica and Other Early Modern Ceramics in the Courtauld Gallery
This is the first catalogue of the collection of early modern ceramics in the Courtauld. The pieces in the collection showcase brilliantly the skill of potters and pottery painters working at the time of Raphael and Titian.Maiolica is one of the most revealing expressions of Renaissance art. Its extraordinary range of colours retain the vividness that they had when they left the potter's kiln. Italian potters absorbed techniques and shapes from the Islamic world and incorporated ornament and subject matter from the arts of ancient Rome. This new approach to pottery making, combined with the invention of printing, woodcut and engraving, resulted in an extraordinary type of painted pottery, praised by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists for 'surpassing the ancient with its brilliance of glaze and variety of painting'.The collection boasts a magnificent group of vessels made during the high Renaissance, the golden age of Italian maiolica. It includes precious and delicate Deruta lustreware with imagery deriving from Perugino and Raphael, as well as vessels painted in a narrative style of pottery painting known as istoriato. Highlights include vessels depicting episodes taken from the first printed Bibles of the Renaissance. Istoriato maiolica flourished particularly in the lands of the Dukes of Urbino, who promoted this craft by sending painted pottery to prestigious patrons across Europe.Emblems and devices painted on the pottery help us understand that they were meant to be used and enjoyed by the elites in Renaissance society, such as the Medici and other great Tuscan families. The catalogue will include two recent gifts to the Courtauld, a rare tile of the famous patroness of the arts Marchioness Isabella D'Este, and a refined dish painted with the story of Diana and Actaeon.All major Renaissance pottery centres are represented in the collection, including Siena, Faenza and Venice, as well as splendid examples of the mysterious pharmacy jars made at the foot of the mountain of Gran Sasso in the town of Castelli d'Abruzzo. These achievements of the art of pottery in the early modern period are completed by fine examples of Ottoman pottery, as well as examples of Valencian lustreware.Sani's introductory essay on the Victorian collector Thomas Gambier Parry will shed new light on the development of this fascinating collection, making links between Gambier Parry's artistic practice and his collecting and revealing new insights into his taste as a collector. Each detailed entry uncovers a wealth of new information on the provenance of the pieces.
£50.00
Peeters Publishers Noli Me Tangere Mary Magdalene: One Person, Many Images
"Noli me tangere," these are the words of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalene in the Latin Bible translation of John 20:17. Few expressions from the Bible have stimulated so much interest among artists and theologians alike as these three intriguing words. The "Noli me tangere" motif serves as the basis of an interdisciplinary research programme supported by the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders, and entitled "Mary Magdalene and the Touching of Jesus: An Intra- and Interdisciplinary Investigation of the Interpretation of John 20:17 in Exegesis, Iconography and Pastoral Care." In cooperation with the Centre for Women's Studies Theology of the Faculty of Theology of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the research team organised an exhibition in the Maurits Sabbe Library under the title "Noli me tangere: Mary Magdalene: One Person, Many Images (Maria Magdalena in veelvoud)" (23 February to 30 April 2006). In the first part of the present volume, the four members of the research team , Sabine Van Den Eynde, Reimund Bieringer, Karlijn Demasure and Barbara Baert explore the significance of the "Noli me tangere" motif each from the perspective of their own particular discipline. The second part of the volume contains a catalogue of the exhibited works with a colour photograph and a short description. The artworks stem from a number of historical periods, running from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries. A variety of genres and artistic media are also represented in this exhibition: graphics, paintings, sculpture and miniatures side by side with devotional art. The research team also invited contemporary artists to contribute their interpretation of the "Noli me tangere" motif to the exhibition. The painting of the Indian artist Lucy D'Souza represents the fine line between Christianity and Hinduism. The photographer Malou Swinnen photographed a woman from the Philippines while the calligrapher Brody Neuenschwander created a sculpture covered with a veil of letters. The painter Claire Vanden Abbeele was found willing to make her already existing "Noli me tangere" available for the occasion. The exhibition thus combines artistic periods, artistic media and the various continents of the world. "Noli me tangere: Mary Magdalene: One Person, Many Images" hopes to provide a glimpse of Mary Magdalene that unites both past and present.
£30.71
Harvard University Press The Passion of Emily Dickinson
"How tame and manageable are the emotions of our bards, how placid and literary their allusions!" complained essayist T. W. Higginson in the Atlantic Monthly in 1870. "The American poet of passion is yet to come." He was, of course, unaware of the great erotic love poems such as "Wild Nights--Wild Nights!" and "Struck was I, nor yet by Lightning" being privately written by his reclusive friend Emily Dickinson.In a profound new analysis of Dickinson's life and work, Judith Farr explores the desire, suffering, exultation, spiritual rapture, and intense dedication to art that characterize Dickinson's poems, and deciphers their many complex and witty references to texts and paintings of the day. In The Passion of Emily Dickinson the poet emerges, not as a cryptic proto-modern or a victim of female repression, but as a cultivated mid-Victorian in whom the romanticism of Emerson and the American landscape painters found bold expression.Dickinson wrote two distinct cycles of love poetry, argues Farr, one for her sister-in-law Sue and one for the mysterious "Master," here convincingly identified as Samuel Bowles, a friend of the family. For each of these intimates, Dickinson crafted personalized metaphoric codes drawn from her reading. Calling books her "Kinsmen of the Shelf," she refracted elements of Jane Eyre, Antony and Cleopatra, Tennyson's Maud, De Quincey's Confessions, and key biblical passages into her writing. And, to a previously unexplored degree, Dickinson also quoted the strategies and subject matter of popular Hudson River, Luminist, and Pre-Raphaelite paintings, notably Thomas Cole's Voyage of Life and Frederic Edwin Church's Heart of the Andes. Involved in the delicate process of both expressing and disguising her passion, Dickinson incorporated these sources in an original and sophisticated manner.Farr's superb readings of the poems and letters call on neglected archival material and on magazines, books, and paintings owned by the Dickinsons. Viewed as part of a finely articulated tradition of Victorian iconography, Dickinson's interest in the fate of the soul after death, her seclusion, her fascination with landscape's mystical content, her quest for honor and immortality through art, and most of all her very human passions become less enigmatic. Farr tells the story of a poet and her time.
£26.96
HarperCollins Publishers Francis Bacon: Revelations
The Times Art Book of the Year 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022 ‘Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon … A biography that no Bacon fan – or indeed foe – can afford to overlook … Mesmerising’ THE TIMES ‘A magnificent triumph … I was captivated by every line’ OBSERVER A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait – rich, complex, and subtle – of a commanding modern figure. Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women – women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room. Bacon worked no less hard or ambitiously as a painter, at first with little success. Throughout the 1930s and early ’40s he suffered ongoing failures, growing isolated and often ill. His health issues throughout his life were far more significant than he revealed. Then came his astonishing breakthrough in 1944, with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. In the following decades, he emerged as one of the great iconoclasts and bon vivants of his time, a Wildean figure whom one friend called ‘a terrific grandee.’ Bacon was typically celebrated as a sexual adventurer who liked rough trade, but he never stopped longing for a serious committed relationship, however painful. He continued to make disturbing images of the strangeness within, but developed into a more varied artist than has been recognised, creating in particular an extraordinary series of self-portraits. He was an artist who believed in chance and paradox: the iconoclast eventually became an icon. This is a story, deeply researched and masterfully told, of a sickly boy who became one of the great figures of his time. The twentieth century does not know itself without Bacon.
£18.00
Associated University Presses Professions Of A Lucky Jew
In 1932, Benno Weiser Varon was a student of medicine in Vienna. During a brawl at the Anatomic Institute he rescues a Jewish fellow student, when he cracked the skull of a huge Nazi with two outsized metal keys, while some thirty Nazis watched from an upper floor. He considered this event his rite of passage, in which he proved to himself that “Jews are no cowards.” Life would give him many an opportunity to prove it again. A Jewish Rambo? Not at all. Fellow Viennese remember him for making them laugh. He wrote, directed, and performed in literary cabarets. Gerhard Bronner, Vienna’s foremost entertainer, claims that watching Weiser perform inspired his choice of career. “All I could take along from Nazi Vienna,” says Weiser Varon, “was my accent.” But he also exported his fighting spirit. As Ecuador’s first syndicated columnist, blending drama with satire, he dispensed faith to those who rooted for the Allies and heartburn to the powerful Nazi colony. The Axis powers sponsored seven weeklies to counteract his influence, there was an interpellation in parliament, a “promise” by the minister of the interior to silence him, an op-ed dual with a Vichy diplomat. The New York Times, reporting on his struggle, called him one of Latin America’s best known columnists. In 1946 the World Zionist Organization drafted him into its campaign to convince the nations of Latin America of the justice of the Jewish fight for statehood. Varon’s niche in history is the U.N. Palestine Partition Resolution of 1947. The Encyclopedia Judaica credits him and a colleague with the decisive Latin American votes. In 1964 Golda Meir appointed him ambassador to a succession of Latin American countries. In 1970 Baron survived an assassination attempt by Palestinian terrorists. In 1972 he retired from diplomacy and returned to journalism. Varon met Albert Einstein and Aleksandr Kerensky as well as the Who’s Who of Latin-American writers, painters, intellectuals, and statesmen, such as Perón, Castro, the Somozas, Stroessner. He also placed second-best in a joke contest with Bob Hope and, together with his actress-wife, wrote a play, “A Letter to the Times,” which was produced in both English and Spanish.
£54.00
Fordham University Press Prang's Civil War Pictures: The Complete Battle Chromos of Louis Prang
During the 1880s, a German-born, Boston-based picture publisher successfully commissioned the most ambitious series of battle prints ever published. Louis Prang, best known as the "father of the Christmas card," hired noted military and marine artists to create original scenes of combat, and then reproduced their works in a wildly popular portfolio of chromolithographs. He called the set Prang's War Pictures. They were offered to an eager public accompanied by "descriptive texts" that told the story of each engagement through eyewitness recollection by the heroes of each action. The set proved both appealing and influential, selling vigorously in various editions for a generation, and elevating the stature of military illustration in America. For 20 years, Civil War prints for the masses had featured uninspired, one-dimensional views of armies in hand-to-hand combat.Prang and his artists demonstrated genuine skill and imaginative perspective. They showed both real carnage and important technological advances, revealing both the broad sweep of panoramic battlefields and the intimate action of individual combatants. These famously sepia-toned chromos went on to become familiar illustrations in books and magazines-often offered as definitive examples of Civil War art. But until now, the complete set of 18 chromos has never been collected in a single volume. And the original "Descriptive Texts" first offered Prang's customers as marketing brochures to boost sales-a priceless historical archive in and of themselves-have never been published since, anywhere.Holzer reunites pictures and texts in an authoritative, milestone volume orchestrating prints and descriptions that resurrect Prang's original conception of battle art for the masses for a new generation. The book also features reproductions of the original works of art that inspired the prints, created on commission by battle painter Thure de Thulstrup and naval specialist Julian Oliver Davidson-now housed in art collections around the country-but seldom seen since they were commissioned by Prang as models for his ambitious chromolithographs. This long-needed complete Prang portfolio will undoubtedly become an essential collectible for Civil War aficionados in the country, as well as for libraries and university collections increasingly aware of the importance of art and iconography in defining the Civil War experience and the impact of Civil War memory.
£70.40
Simon & Schuster Leonora in the Morning Light: A Novel
One of O, The Oprah Magazine’s “Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Novels That Will Sweep You Away” and LitHub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2021.” For fans of Amy Bloom’s White Houses and Colm Tóibín’s The Master, a page-turning novel about Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and the art, drama, and romance that defined her coming-of-age during World War II.1940. A train carrying exiled German prisoners from a labor camp arrives in southern France. Within moments, word spreads that Nazi capture is imminent, and the men flee for the woods, desperate to disappear across the Spanish border. One stays behind, determined to ride the train until he reaches home, to find a woman he refers to simply as “her.” 1937. Leonora Carrington is a twenty-year-old British socialite and painter dreaming of independence when she meets Max Ernst, an older, married artist whose work has captivated Europe. She follows him to Paris, into the vibrant revolutionary world of studios and cafes where rising visionaries of the Surrealist movement like Andre Breton, Pablo Picasso, Lee Miller, Man Ray, and Salvador Dali are challenging conventional approaches to art and life. Inspired by their freedom, Leonora begins to experiment with her own work, translating vivid stories of her youth onto canvas and gaining recognition under her own name. It is a bright and glorious age of enlightenment—until the shadow of war looms over Europe and headlines emerge denouncing Max and his circle as “degenerates,” leading to his arrest and imprisonment. Left along as occupation spreads throughout the countryside, Leonora battles terrifying circumstances to survive, reawakening past demons that threaten to consume her. As Leonora and Max embark on remarkable journeys together and apart, the full story of their tumultuous and passionate love affair unfolds, spanning time and borders as they seek to reunite and reclaim their creative power in a world shattered by war. When their paths cross with Peggy Guggenheim, an art collector and socialite working to help artists escape to America, nothing will be the same. Based on true events and historical figures, Leonora in the Morning Light is an unforgettable story of love, art, and destiny that restores a twentieth-century heroine to her rightful place in our collective imagination.
£18.00
Peepal Tree Press Ltd Joanstown and Other Poems
Between the title poem and other poems in the collection, Michael Gilkes sets up a dialogue about memory and experience through time. Joanstown celebrates, in the voice of both younger and older selves, the interweaving of a loved woman and a place. The elegant Georgetown of the 1940s, with its 'cross-stitching of avenues, bridges, canals' is transfigured by the presence of the beloved as she becomes the city's embodiment. The very concreteness of the recreation of a time when happiness came so easily, and of the genesis of a marriage whose seeming perfection leads to hubris, is made the more moving for the reader by the framing awareness of its evanescence.But there are other frames that transform the experience of loss into the consolations of art. In exploring the ancient hinterland of metamorphosis behind metaphor, Gilkes puts change at the heart of life. There is the transformation by love's fire of the lumpen boy, the class clown, 'a quasi-Quasimodo humped over a wooden desk', into the transfigured bridegroom whose 'body... floated towards the organ loft', or of the town's zinc roofs which 'curled like leaves' over the burning city, or of Joanstown's innocence inverted in the horror of Jonestown: 'carnage in paradise'. Another frame uses the base elements. In Guyana, fire and flood represent a constant cycle of destruction and renewal. This offers a rich source of visual metaphor but also brings to the poems a sense of time beyond the linearity of loss. The mud, rivers and rainforest of Guyana give birth, for instance, to the iridescent imagination of Wilson Harris, the 'steersman' whose example Gilkes so gracefully acknowledges.There are poems of lyric grace, intellectual playfulness and ironic wit; poems where Gilkes brings a painter's eye to his descriptions of both urban Guyana and its rainforests. Carefully sculpted sonnets, dramatic monologues, a pithy Creole letter and a calypso narrative show the range of Gilkes' voice, revealing him to be not only one of the Caribbean's most distinguished critics and dramatists, but a poet of major accomplishment. Joanstown won the 2002 Guyana Prize as the best collection of poetry.Michael Gilkes was born in Guyana in 1933 and left in 1961, but has never strayed far from Guyana and the Caribbean. He is one of the region's foremost literary critics and playwrights, as well as an actor, director, film-maker and university lecturer.
£8.23
Harvard University Press Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives
As she did in The Return of Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis here retrieves individual lives from historical obscurity to give us a window onto the early modern world. As women living in the seventeenth century, Glikl bas Judah Leib, Marie de l’Incarnation, and Maria Sibylla Merian, equally remarkable though very different, were not queens or noblewomen, their every move publicly noted. Rather, they were living “on the margins” in seventeenth-century Europe, North America, and South America. Yet these women—one Jewish, one Catholic, one Protestant—left behind memoirs and writings that make for a spellbinding tale and that, in Davis’ deft narrative, tell us more about the life of early modern Europe than many an official history.All these women were originally city folk. Glikl bas Judah Leib was a merchant of Hamburg and Metz whose Yiddish autobiography blends folktales with anecdotes about her two marriages, her twelve children, and her business. Marie de l’Incarnation, widowed young, became a mystic visionary among the Ursuline sisters and cofounder of the first Christian school for Amerindian women in North America. Her letters are a rich source of information about the Huron, Algonquin, Montagnais, and Iroquois peoples of Quebec. Maria Sibylla Merian, a German painter and naturalist, produced an innovative work on tropical insects based on lore she gathered from the Carib, Arawak, and African women of Suriname. Along the way she abandoned her husband to join a radical Protestant sect in the Netherlands.Drawing on Glikl’s memoirs, Marie’s autobiography and correspondence, and Maria’s writings on entomology and botany, Davis brings these women to vibrant life. She reconstructs the divergent paths their stories took, and at the same time shows us each amid the common challenges and influences of the time—childrearing, religion, an outpouring of vernacular literature—and in relation to men. The resulting triptych suggests the range of experience, self-consciousness, and expression possible in seventeenth-century Europe and its outposts. It also shows how persons removed from the centers of power and learning ventured in novel directions, modifying in their own way Europe’s troubled and ambivalent relations with other “marginal” peoples.
£26.96
