Artist Architect

Wedgwood's pottery, such as his celebrated light-blue jasperware, is famous worldwide. But the life of Josiah Wedgwood is far richer than just his accomplishments in ceramics. He was a leader of the Industrial Revolution, a pioneering businessman, a cultural tastemaker, and a tireless scientific experimenter whose inventions made him a fellow of the Royal Society. He was also an ardent abolitionist. Drawing on a rich array of letters, journals, and historical documents, The Radical Potter brings us the story of a singular man.

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.

Desde sus humildes comienzos hasta convertirse en un reconocido cantante, actor, productor, político y activista, Mayer comparte sus experiencias, desafíos y triunfos con una gran honestidad. Explora los momentos de duda y superación, las lecciones aprendidas y las decisiones valientes que lo llevaron a reinventarse una y otra vez.

Their names are iconic: Eugene O’Neill, Willem de Kooning, Josef and Anni Albers, Emma Goldman, Mary McCarthy, Edward Hopper, Walter Gropius—the list goes on and on. Scorning the devastation that industrialization had wrought on the nation’s economy and workforce in the early decades of the twentieth century, they gathered in the streets of Greenwich Village and on the beachfronts of Cape Cod. John Taylor “Ike” Williams, who married into the Cape’s artistic world and has spent half a century with these luminaries, renders the lives and careers of a staggering generation.

A self-professed "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist", the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller's creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car to a bathroom requiring neither plumbing nor sewage. Yet in spite of his brilliant mind and lifelong devotion to serving mankind, Fuller's expansive ideas were often dismissed, and have faded from public memory since his death.

To get a sense of the kind of prestige that Claude Monet's reputation has 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 an incredibly 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.

In his acclaimed portraits, Richard Avedon captured the iconic figures of the twentieth century in his starkly bold, intimately minimal, and forensic visual style. What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary—an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story.

A mediados del siglo XIX, la Cataluña española experimentó una profunda transformación cuando fue empujada no en una, sino en dos épocas doradas: la Renaixença y la Revolución Industrial. Fue durante este período explosivo de creatividad, prosperidad floreciente y patriotismo vigorizado que nació un icono inconformista y fascinantemente excéntrico, uno que estaba a punto de asaltar Cataluña con su brillante ojo para el arte no ortodoxo y sus ideas legendarias -o como algunos dirían, notoriamente- descabelladas.

The story of Willa Cather is defined by a lifetime of determination, struggle, and gradual emergence. Some show their full powers early, yet Cather was the opposite—she took her time and transformed herself by stages. The writer who leapt to the forefront of American letters with O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918) was already well into middle age. Through years of provincial journalism in Nebraska, brief spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines, she persevered in pursuit of the ultimate goal—literary immortality.

Donna Seaman brings to dazzling life seven forgotten artists, among the best of their day: Gertrude Abercrombie, with her dark, surreal paintings and friendships with Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins; Bay Area self-portraitist Joan Brown; Ree Morton, with her witty, oddly beautiful constructions; Loïs Mailou Jones of the Harlem Renaissance; Lenore Tawney, who combined weaving and sculpture; Christina Ramberg, who drew on pop culture and advertising; and Louise Nevelson, an art-world superstar.

An unprecedented, intimate portrait of Frank Gehry, one of the world's most influential architects. Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations she has had with Gehry over the last 20 years, Barbara Isenberg provides new and fascinating insights into the man and his work. Gehry's subjects range from his childhood - when he first built cities with wooden blocks on the floor of his grandmother's kitchen - to his relationships with clients and his definition of a "great" client.

Vincent van Gogh is one of the world’s most famous artists, and his paintings are among the world’s most valuable. The archetypal starving artist, Vincent died aged just 37 years by his own hand, poor, isolated, and, in his eyes, a failure. Yet, in Vincent’s life story we can see the evolution of a boy becoming a man becoming a great artist, whether his contemporaries could see it at the time or not.

From Life tells the story of the greatest portrait photographer of the Victorian age, Julia Margaret Cameron. Born in Calcutta in 1815, she married and settled down to the life of a typical Victorian colonial matron; but, beneath this conventional exterior, she was increasingly interested in photography. After moving to England, Cameron acquired her first camera in 1863, ultimately emerging as the leading portrait photographer of the Victorian art world.

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.

Harvey Kurtzman created Mad, and Mad revolutionized humor in America. Kurtzman was the original editor, artist, and sole writer of Mad, one of the greatest publishing successes of the twentieth century. But how did Kurtzman invent Mad, and why did he leave it shortly after it burst, nova-like, onto the American scene? For this heavily researched biography, Bill Schelly conducted new interviews with Kurtzman’s colleagues, friends, and family, including Hugh Hefner, R. Crumb, Jack Davis, and many others, and examined Kurtzman’s personal archives.

Written between 2015-16, with color images of well-known old masters and contemporary art as well as some of the Bergers’ own drawings and watercolors, Over to You is an informal back and forth not unlike the ping-pong games father and son used to play in the barn of their house. It begins when John—who is in a Parisian suburb—sends Yves—who is in Haute Savoie—an envelope of reproductions of art that have moved him. And so they begin to reveal their thoughts looking at a Goya, Watteau, Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Durer, Caravaggio, Manet, and Euan Uglow, among many others.

Sir Nigel Thompson walked to school around the bomb craters of the London Blitz—it made him want to build things, rather than knock them down. After studying structural engineering in Africa, he worked on hospitals and theaters in London, and later headed the team that designed University of Qatar. He went on to design Embankment Place, a massive office complex built over London’s Charing Cross railway station. Turning from building to rebuilding, he explored construction opportunities for British firms during the Gulf War, in Kuwait’s still-burning oil fields.

In diesem Audiobuch erfahren Sie alles über den venezianischen Maler Tizian, der mit seinen leuchtenden Farben und meisterhaften Kompositionen die Kunstwelt revolutionierte. Anne Leforts Neuübersetzung bringt Dumas' kraftvolle Erzählung in einem modernen, zugänglichen Deutsch zur Geltung und lässt die Hörer die Dramatik und den Glanz von Tizians Leben und Schaffen hautnah miterleben. Von seinen Anfängen in Venedig über seine Aufträge für Könige und Päpste bis hin zu seinen letzten Jahren – Dumas zeichnet ein lebendiges und eindringliches Porträt dieses genialen Künstlers.

Ferocious Love is about Latimer Bowen’s journey from a wounded artist struggling with depression to a prophetic artist and seer who partners with the Holy Spirit to transfer God’s message and vision onto canvas.

Winner of the 2010 COSTA Biography Award. A total of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his Great Uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined.…