ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Ever since its first publication, this book - with its subsequent revised and augmented editions - has been considered a classic of its kind, and that reputation has become worldwide. As a discussion of problems of making art today it has been widely influential not only among artists but among writers and musicians. It has also been seen as the most revealing portrait that exists of one of the most singular artistic personalities of our time. Bacon's obsessive thinking about how to remake the human form in pain finds unique expression in his encounters with the distinguished art writer David Sylvester over a period of twenty-five years. In these masterfully and creatively reconstructed interviews, Sylvester has provided unparalleled access to the thought, work, and life of one of the creative geniuses of our century. With Bacon's recent death, no other work will ever match this achievement.
Basquiat: The Life and Death of an Art Star
This first, unauthorized biography of the most monetarily successful black American artist'a master painter and wordsmith'is sorely needed. Jean-Michel Basquiat, initially known by the graffiti tag "SAMO," tragically lived a mere 27 years (1960-88). Son of a Haitian father and a mother of Puerto Rican extraction, he was recognized internationally as a young genius of the Eighties contemporary art scene. Hoban, a New York Times columnist, provides vivid material derived mostly from countless interviews conducted after the artist's death. Basquiat's mesmerizing charisma and sexuality accentuated a catastrophic lifestyle. Real creative talent overshadowed the fact that the enfant terrible was constantly high, fueled by massive quantities of drugs. Yet he remained able to produce dozens of masterpieces and hundreds of works with both strengths and weaknesses. A fine tale of a talented young man, this is also recommended for its commentary on the decade when art in New York was so wide-open a victim of commerce.'Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson Univ., MD
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
A new selection of Vincent Van Gough's letters, based on an entirely new translation, revealing his religious struggles, his fascination with the French Revolution, his search for love and his involvement in humanitarian causes.
Leonardo Da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind
Leonardo is the greatest, most multi-faceted and most mysterious of all Renaissance artists, but extraordinarily, considering his enormous reputation, this is the first full-length biography in English for several decades. Prize-winning author Charles Nicholl has immersed himself for five years in all the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts to produce an intimate portrait' of Leonardo. He uses these contemporary materials - his notebooks and sketchbooks, eye witnesses and early biographies, etc - as a way into the mental tone and physical texture of his life and has made myriad small discoveries about him and his work and his circle of associates. Among much else, the book identifies what Nicholl argues is an unknown portrait of the artist hanging in a church near Lodi in northern Italy. It also contains new material on his eccentric assistant Tomasso Masini, on his homosexual affairs in Florence, and on his curious relationship with a female model and/or prostitute from Cremona. A masterpiece of modern biography.
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again
The private Andy Warhol talks: about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, success; about New York and America; about himself- his childhood in McKeesprot, Pennsylvania, good times and bad times in the Big Apple, the explosion of his career in the sixties, and life among celebrities.
Matisse the Master: v. 2: A Life of Henri Matisse: 1909-1954
In this astounding book (winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year 2005) Hilary Spurling's fascinating exploration of Matisse's world uncovers the secret life of the artist, whose paintings shocked and infuriated his contemporaries while paving the way for modern art. This beautifully presented second volume tells the story of Matisse's growing artistic maturity and the relationship between his life and art from 1909 to 1954, his glory years.
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali
This startling early autobiography takes Dalí through his late 30s and "communicates the snobbishness, self-adoration, comedy, seriousness, fanaticism, in short the concept of life and the total picture of himself (Dalí) sets out to portray" — Books. Superbly illustrated with over 80 photographs and scores of Dalí drawings and sketches.
The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
The intimate life of artist Frida Kahlo is wonderfully revealed in the illustrated journal she kept during her last 10 years. This passionate and at times surprising record contains the artist's thoughts, poems, and dreams; many reflecting her stormy relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera, along with 70 mesmerising watercolour illustrations. The text entries in brightly coloured inks make the journal as captivating to look at as it is to read. Her writing reveals the artist's political sensibilities, recollections of her childhood, and her enormous courage in the face of more than thirty-five operations to correct injuries she had sustained in an accident at the age of eighteen.
Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art
Of all the giants of twentieth-century art, Wassily Kandinsky (18661944) was the most prolific writer. Here, available for the first time in paperback, are all of Kandinsky's writings on art, newly translated into English. Editors Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo have taken their translations directly from Kandinsky's original texts, and have included select interviews, lecture notes, and newly discovered items along with his more formal writings. The pieces range from one-page essays to the book-length treatises On the Spiritual in Art (1911) and Point and Line to Plane (1926), and are arranged in chronological order from 1901 to 1943. The poetry, good enough to stand on its literary merits, is presented with all the original accompanying illustrations. And the book's design follows Kandinsky's intentions, preserving the spirit of the original typography and layout. Kandinsky was nearly thirty before he bravely gave up an academic career in law for his true passion, painting. Though his art was marked by extraordinarily varied styles, Kandinsky sought a pure art throughout, one which would express the soul, or "inner necessity," of the artist. His uncompromising search for an art which would elicit a response to itself rather than to the object depicted resulted in the birth of nonobjective artand in these writings, Kandinsky offered the first cogent explanation of his aims. His language was characterized by its desire for vivification, of the infusion of life into mundane things. Considered as a whole, Kandinskys writings exceed all expectations of what an artist should accomplish with words. Not only do his ideas and observations make us rethink the nature of art and the way it reflects the aspirations of his era, but they touch on matters vital to the situation of the human soul.