Художники, архитекторы, фотографы

Book DescriptionRay Charles (1930-2004) led one of the most extraordinary lives of any popular musician. In Brother Ray, he reveals his story unsparingly, from the chronicle of his musical development to his heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life. Overcoming poverty, blindness, the loss of his parents, and the pervasive racism of the era, Ray Charles was acclaimed worldwide as a genius by the age of thirty-two. By combining the influences of gospel, jazz, blues, and country music, he invented, almost single-handedly, what became known as "soul." And throughout a career spanning more than a half century, Ray Charles remained in complete control of his life and his music, allowing nobody to tell him what he could or couldn?t do.

Book DescriptionEach chapter of this inventive consideration of American culture evokes an actual meeting between American writers and artists, from Henry James and Mathew Brady, to Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant, to Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore,to Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell. The accumulation of these pairings draws the reader into the mysterious process by which creativity has been sparked and passed on, from the Civil War through the civil rights movement.

Book Description The cityscapes presented in this collection of paintings by Bernardo Bellotto feature 23 exceptional views of Warsaw. Detail and aesthetic value distinguish Belloto's celebrated cycle of landscape panoramas. The breadth and depth of the paintings provide such a comprehensive picture of the city that they were used at the end of World War II to help rebuild Warsaw. The moment in Poland's history is rendered with such incredible accuracy and specificity that it will be of interest to historians as well as art devotees.

Book Description Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), admired for his grand society portraits and sumptuous pastoral landscapes, is the most perennially popular of British artists. In his life as in his art, Gainsborough sought to project an image of effortless accomplishment, demonstrated by a dazzling painting technique and immense personal charm. He was also competitive, opinionated, and financially astute. Because he was among the most innovative and enigmatic artists of his age, the true nature of hisachievement is at once greatly appreciated and insufficiently understood. This illustrated introduction to the artist and his work traces Gainsborough's career from his boyhood in rural Suffolk to the pinnacle of commercial success at the court of George III. Martin Postle examines the tremendous impact on Gainsborough's career of the Royal Academy and the Court of St. James. Postle also reassesses the artist's attitudes toward the central aspects of his art: portraiture (which...

Language Notes Text: Spanish

Book Description"You can't make art by making art," David Ireland once said, and this statement can be understood as one of the guiding principles in his life and work. Sculptor, architect, installation artist, urban archeologist, and much, much more, Ireland is impossible and unnecessary to label. Why label something that aspires to include most everything--or at least to not exclude the possibility of something? Mid-life, Ireland, who was born in 1930, decided to pursue his passion for art, and he wenton to produce a body of work so idiosyncratic that it defies definition. Like his life, his working methodology is paradoxical, absurd, ironic, and uniquely enriched by humor and humanity. The result of some 80 interviews with the American artist and hisfriends, family, collaborators, and art world colleagues, Touching Time and Space offers an engrossing portrait of a deeply private but unfailingly generous iconoclast. His art practice, teaching, and wry philosophy have...

Book Description1929. In the middle of the 16th century, the great Renaissance was drawing toward its close, but a new genius, Domenicos Theotocopoulos, to be known as El Greco, was born. His youth gathered and expressed Byzantine and Renaissance art. His maturity founded our modern school. Many painters, from Velasquez on, have recognized him as their master. Often the recognition seems a boast, but the fact remains that progressive art always reaches toward him. He is more than the source of Cezanne and Picasso. He is, in Cossio's phrase, "the prophet of every rebirth of individualism."

Book DescriptionWith the same seriousness of purpose and profound humanity that permeates his paintings, Josef Herman provides a vivid evocation of the places and people that inspired his artwork in this memoir. His childhood in the colorful Yiddish-speaking quarter of Warsaw and his fruitful years working in London, Scotland, and Wales are described in detail with vibrancy and eloquence. The places that he traveled to and lived in, such as Israel, Mexico, and New York, are given special attention as sources of learning and artistic inspiration. His discussions of the artists that inspired his work, including Derain, Klee, Millet, and Rivera, offer an insightful look into Herman's artistic process. Herman's own illustrations throughout provide a stunningvisualization of this artistic genius's life.