Search results for ""author mary gabriel""

Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times).Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting -- not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come.Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world's first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life.Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.

Read more less

Brilliantly researched and wonderfully written, LOVE AND CAPITAL is a heartbreaking and dramatic saga of the family side of the man whose works would redefine the world after his death. Drawing upon years of research, acclaimed biographer Mary Gabriel brings to light the story of Karl and Jenny Marx's marriage. We follow them as they roam Europe, on the run from hostile governments amidst a secret network of would-be revolutionaries, and see Karl not only as an intellectual, but as a protective father and loving husband, a visionary, a jokester, a man of tremendous passions, both political and personal. In LOVE AND CAPITAL, Mary Gabriel has given us a vivid, resplendent, and truly human portrait of the Marxes-their desires, heartbreak and devotion to each other's ideals.

Read more less

*A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR | A GUARDIAN MEMOIR OF THE YEAR | A TELEGRAPH BEST MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR *'Chronicles, in enthralling detail, Madonna Louise Ciccone's path from terrifyingly ambitious trainee dancer to pop colossus, all the while placing her in a wider social and cultural context.' GUARDIAN MAGAZINE'Gabriel charts her extraordinary life, right through to pop icon. She deserves a biographer as meticulous, intelligent and insightful as Gabriel.' DAILY MAIL'Madonna built the house in which nearly all female artists now live . . . A Rebel Life brings home not just her obvious willpower and strength, but her fearlessness and sheer intelligence' DAILY TELEGRAPH'A fascinating take on one of music's greatest icons' BELFAST TELEGRAPH'It's a mark of Gabriel's skill that she has managed to wrestle this complex, sprawling, eventful life into a book that rarely flags and conveys its subject's wider significance without tipping into hagiography. We come to understand Madonna the person as well as Madonna the concept: a woman who, for a generation, embodied female artistic, sexual and financial liberation.' GUARDIANIn this exceptional biography, Pulitzer Prize finalist Mary Gabriel chronicles the meteoric rise and enduring influence of the greatest female pop icon of the modern era: Madonna.With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion - as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles - taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanour of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever - and be whoever - they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative, visionary music, videos, films and live performances that changed culture globally. Deftly tracing Madonna's story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.

Read more less

*A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR | A GUARDIAN MEMOIR OF THE YEAR | A TELEGRAPH BEST MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR *'Chronicles, in enthralling detail, Madonna Louise Ciccone's path from terrifyingly ambitious trainee dancer to pop colossus, all the while placing her in a wider social and cultural context.' GUARDIAN MAGAZINE'Gabriel charts her extraordinary life, right through to pop icon. She deserves a biographer as meticulous, intelligent and insightful as Gabriel.' DAILY MAIL'Madonna built the house in which nearly all female artists now live . . . A Rebel Life brings home not just her obvious willpower and strength, but her fearlessness and sheer intelligence' DAILY TELEGRAPH'A fascinating take on one of music's greatest icons' BELFAST TELEGRAPH'It's a mark of Gabriel's skill that she has managed to wrestle this complex, sprawling, eventful life into a book that rarely flags and conveys its subject's wider significance without tipping into hagiography. We come to understand Madonna the person as well as Madonna the concept: a woman who, for a generation, embodied female artistic, sexual and financial liberation.' GUARDIANIn this exceptional biography, Pulitzer Prize finalist Mary Gabriel chronicles the meteoric rise and enduring influence of the greatest female pop icon of the modern era: Madonna.With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion - as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles - taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanour of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever - and be whoever - they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative, visionary music, videos, films and live performances that changed culture globally. Deftly tracing Madonna's story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.

Read more less

Margaret Randall reveals personal stories and profound insights about the artists who most influenced her life. Artists in My Life is a collection of intimate and conversational accounts of the visual artists that have impacted the renowned poet activist Margaret Randall on her own journey as an artist. Randall writes of each relationship through multiple lenses: as makers of art, social commentators, women in a world dominated by male values, and in solitude or collaboration with communities and the larger artistic arena. Each story offers insight into the artist’s life and work, and analyses the impact it had on Randall’s own work and its impact on the larger art community. The work strives to answer bigger questions about visual art as a whole and its lasting political influence on the world stage. Randalls describes her motivations: ”I go beneath the surface, asking questions and telling stories. I have wanted to answer questions such as: Why is it that visual art—drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, architecture—grabs me and, in particular instances, feels as if it changes me at the molecular level? How do art and memory interact? How do reason and intuition come together in art? Do women and men make art differently? Does great art change the viewer? Does it change the artist? How does art travel through time?”

Read more less

Burst! Abstract Painting After 1945 looks at the close, but previously unexplored relationship between Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel. Through texts and close to 100 illustrations, the book describes a vital creative exchange across the Atlantic that would entirely redefine painting. Big, expansive, paint-splattered surfaces; spontaneous actions captured on canvas; new ideas of freedom. A story of post-war recovery and Transatlantic dialogue. On both sides of the ocean, society was reacting to the horrors of the Second World War, the Holocaust and the coming of the atom bomb. The book shows how artists searched for new ways to deal with these shattering events. With works by Jean Dubuffet, Natalia Dumitresco, Helen Frankenthaler, Asger Jorn, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Georges Mathieu, Hedda Sterne and Clyfford Still, and more.

Read more less