Showing titles in Artists, Architects & Photographers

They were modern-day pirates, banding together with creative revolutionaries who became the voice of a generation. They are the Knights of Rock, regular guys who had the honor and privilege of working with some of the greatest rock stars during an amazing time in history: the Classic Rock era. Leo Rossi is one of those Knights. A young Italian Catholic boy from the blue-collar Los Angeles port town of San Pedro, he tripped into an impossible dream and helped mega stars such as Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks, The Beach Boys, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan, Billy Idol, and many more.

The celebrated painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) occupied a central place in the artistic scene of his time: a founding member of the new school of French painting, he was a close friend of Monet, a longtime associate in Degas's and Mary Cassatt's experimental work, a support to Cezanne and Gauguin, and a comfort to Van Gogh, and was backed by the great Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel throughout his career. Nevertheless, he felt a persistent sense of being set apart, different, and hard to classify.

To get a sense of the kind of prestige that Claude Monet enjoys within the art world, one need only learn that his Le Bassin Aux Nympheás (1919) - from his series of paintings featuring water lilies - sold for the equivalent of more than $70 million. This is a staggering price, especially considering that early in his life, Monet had been so poor and debt-ridden that some of his paintings were taken from him by creditors.

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, more commonly known as Beyoncé, is a name everyone has heard. When we read something about her, listen to her music or hear someone speak her name, we automatically think about all of the things she’s come to represent: success, wealth, glamour and much more. In fact, it’s often easy to focus solely on this present-day prosperity that we see and read about in the news.

We have all seen, whether live, in photographs or on postcards, some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world and are among the most beloved works of art of the past century. Yet, ironically, these soothing images were created amid terrible personal turmoil and sadness.

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school - in her 60s - to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful, demands of a life fully lived.

Celia Paul has felt a lifelong connection to the artist Gwen John. There are extraordinary parallels in their lives and work. Both have always made art on their own terms. Both were involved with older male artists. Both worked hard to keep themselves and the sacred flame of their creativity from being extinguished by others. Letters to Gwen John is Paul's imagined correspondence with Gwen John, whose life and work have loomed so large in hers.

Introducing Jiri Trnka: Stop Motion Animation, Puppets, and Political Change–a captivating exploration of the life and artistic brilliance of Jiří Trnka, the visionary animator who revolutionized the world of animation. Within this audiobook, listeners will embark on a mesmerizing journey through Trnka's remarkable career, discovering the magic of his stop-motion animation, the enchantment of his puppets, and the profound impact of his artistic contributions.

Controverso, rivoluzionario, emozionante, sorprendente... È impossibile elencare tutti gli aggettivi che potrebbero descrivere la figura di Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio. Non basterebbe lo spazio. Eppure, in poco meno di vent'anni anni di carriera artistica, Caravaggio ha lasciato un segno indelebile nella storia dell'arte mondiale. Ha emozionato i suoi contemporanei del XVI secolo, così come ogni suo quadro lascia a bocca aperta ancora oggi tutti noi.

Che cosa vuol dire creare? Cosa è un'opera d'arte? Cos'è la musica? Il processo creativo è spiegabile? Vera e propria icona dell'industria musicale, Rubin è noto per tirare fuori il meglio dagli artisti con cui lavora grazie alla sua capacità di sviluppare un rapporto di fiducia reciproca che porta i musicisti ad accedere alle più profonde sorgenti della loro fonte creativa e scoprire la musica che desiderano fare.

This combination of serious artistic engagement with warmth and clarity of prose revels in the experiences and pleasures of art and the body, identity, and community.

Frank Lloyd Wright, designer of some 800 buildings, is widely regarded as the twentieth century's greatest architect - an unconventional genius who transformed both residential and commercial building design with his concept of "organic" architecture. In this charming memoir, Wright the architect and father, "a rebel" and "a jolt to civilization," comes to life through the vivid recollections and firsthand knowledge of his son.

Chris Rush was born into a prosperous, fiercely Roman Catholic New Jersey family. But underneath the gleaming mid-century house, the flawless hostess mom, and the thriving businessman dad ran an unspoken tension that, amid the upheaval of the late 1960s, was destined to fracture their precarious facade. His older sister, Donna, introduces him to the charismatic Valentine, who places a tab of acid on 12-year-old Rush’s tongue, proclaiming: “This is sacrament. You are one of us now.”

Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible.

Margarett Sargent was an icon of avant-garde art in the 1920s. In an evocative weave of biography and memoir, her granddaughter unearths for the first time the life of a spirited and gifted woman committed at all costs to self-expression.

The name Giotto di Bondone may not be as well-known as Leonardo da Vinci, but it was Giotto who made da Vinci and his contemporaries of the Renaissance possible. Giotto, born in the late 13th century, was the first painter to escape the artistic chains of the Dark Ages and revive the natural art of Ancient Greece. Instead of creating flat, expressionless figures, as was the custom of the Middle Ages, Giotto painted characters with personalities and emotions.

With lips slightly parted and eyes fixed on a point in the distance, a breathtaking marble portrait of Costanza Piccolomini appears alive. Carved by Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1636 - 37 for his own pleasure, the portrait of Costanza is one of his most captivating works, but until now little has been known about its subject. For centuries Costanza was identified only as Bernini's mistress, who later incited his rage by betraying him for his brother. Author Sarah McPhee corrects and expands this story in her remarkable biography of a sculpture and its subject.

Keith Haring is synonymous with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980s. His artwork - with its simple, bold lines and dynamic figures in motion - filtered in to the world's consciousness and is still instantly recognizable, 20 years after his death.

Pablo Picasso, born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain, was one of the 20th century’s most prolific and successful artists. A natural-born prodigy, he began painting at the age of two and never stopped until his death at the age of 91. From a young age, Picasso oozed defiance against formal authority. This was reflected not only in his personal life, which was a tangle of mistresses and wives, but especially in his art.

I Always Knew is an intimate and vivid portrait of Chase-Riboud’s life as told through the letters she wrote to her mother, Vivian Mae, between 1957 and 1991. In candid detail, Chase-Riboud tells her mother about her life in Europe, her work as an artist, her romances, and her journeys around the world, from Western and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, Africa, the Soviet Union, China, and Mongolia.