Artist Architect

The lives of many famous artists have been shrouded in mystery and conjecture, but none have been more controversial than the life of Vincent van Gogh. Remembered for his swirling brushstrokes and burning colors, Vincent van Gogh is today one of the best-known painters. Though his career as a painter spanned less than ten years, he produced a body of work that remains one of the most enduring in all of modern art. In his lifetime, however, he received little recognition. Today his paintings sell for countless millions, yet during his lifetime, van Gogh managed to sell just one painting.

Summer in Paris, 1783. The Louvre steps, too hot and no breeze, the air electric with the heady anticipation of a coming storm: the year's Royal Salon. Men and women of every estate are united under art: to love it, to despise it, to gossip endlessly about it. Exhibiting at the Royal Salon was not for the faint of heart, and it was never intended for women. Enter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard . . . Born in Paris in 1749, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard rose from shopkeeper's daughter to an official portraitist of the royal court—only to have her achievements reduced to ash by the French Revolution

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.

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.

Double take: a rapid or surprised second look, either literal or figurative, at a person or situation whose significance has not been completely grasped at first. Kevin Michael Connolly is a 23-year-old man who has seen the world in a way most of us never will. Whether swarmed by Japanese tourists at Epcot Center as a child or holding court at the X Games on his mono-ski, Kevin Connolly has been an object of curiosity since the day he was born without legs.

In questo ritratto, racconteremo la vita di Van Gogh a partire dai primi anni, dalla nascita a un anno esatto dalla morte del fratello maggiore suo omonimo. Conosceremo la famiglia Van Gogh, una famiglia patriarcale, molto religiosa e chiusa. All'interno di questo contesto, Vincent sviluppò una forte propensione verso la missione religiosa fino a decidere di dedicare la sua vita a Dio. Contemporaneamente, durante il periodo di fervore mistico, nel giovane Vincent comparvero i tratti della ribellione e i primi malesseri psichici.

Julia Cameron has transformed the creative lives of millions, showing them that creativity is their uniquely human birthright. But long before the tools of The Artist’s Way changed the conversation around creativity, Julia developed and used them in her own life. Floor Sample is the story behind an artistic life—detailing Julia's years in New York, her time as a writer for Rolling Stone, her turbulent marriage to Martin Scorsese, and her painful struggle with alcohol, which ultimately led her to recovery and the methods that would form the backbone of The Artist’s Way.

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.

Born to a Jewish family in Estonia in 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia; by the time of his death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last 15 years of his life.

His father conceived of the Brooklyn Bridge, but after John Roebling's sudden death, Washington Roebling built what has become one of American's most iconic structures - as much a part of New York as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Yet, as recognizable as the bridge is, its builder is too often forgotten - and his life is of interest far beyond his chosen field. It is the story of immigrants, of the frontier, of the greatest crisis in American history, and of the making of the modern world.

Arthur Fellig’s ability to arrive at a crime scene just as the cops did was so uncanny that he renamed himself “Weegee”, claiming that he functioned as a human Ouija board. Weegee documented better than any other photographer the crime, grit, and complex humanity of midcentury New York City. In Flash, we get a portrait not only of the man (both flawed and deeply talented, with generous appetites for publicity, women, and hot pastrami) but also of the fascinating time and place that he occupied....

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.

The inspiring stories of five people who changed history, including Leonardo da Vinci, who painted the Mona Lisa; Christopher Wren, who rebuilt London; Antoni Gaudí, who built the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona; Pablo Picasso, the famous Spanish painter; and Frida Kahlo, the famous Mexican female artist.

Anne Neilson believes that each of us begins our life as a blank canvas: clean and fresh and ready to find texture in our experiences. Each trial, each joy, each heartache, and each hope leaves an explosion of color and sweeping brushstrokes that shape us. When we allow God to take over as the Master artist, we will find that He carefully adds dimension and highlights to create a beautiful masterpiece in us. Often, though, it's hard to find the beauty when we are wading through mess. Anne shares personal stories about why her faith is so important to her and resonates in all her work.

Before Instagram was an art form, fashion photographers were pop culture royalty. From the postwar covers of Vogue until the triumph of the digital image, the fashion photographer sold not only clothes but ideals of beauty and fantasies of perfect lives. Even when they succumbed to temptation and excess, the very few photographers who rose to the top were artists above all.

Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women—women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room.

"Welcome to Rockwell Land," writes Deborah Solomon in the introduction to this spirited and authoritative biography of the painter who provided 20th-century America with a defining image of itself. As the star illustrator of The Saturday Evening Post for nearly half a century, Norman Rockwell mingled fact and fiction in paintings that reflected the we-the-people, communitarian ideals of American democracy. But who was this man who served as our unofficial "artist in chief" and bolstered our country's national identity?

Renowned art conservator Rosa Lowinger spent a difficult childhood in Miami among people whose losses in the Cuban revolution, and earlier by the decimation of family in the Holocaust, clouded all family life. After moving away to escape the “cloying exile’s nostalgia,” Lowinger discovered the unique field of art conservation, which led her to work in Tel Aviv, Philadelphia, Rome, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Charleston, Marfa, South Dakota, and Port-Au-Prince.

Capturing history was Jonathan Alpeyrie's job, but he never expected to become a news story himself. For a decade, the French-American photojournalist weaved in and out of over a dozen conflict zones. But, during his third assignment to Syria, Alpeyrie was betrayed by his fixer and handed over to a band of Syrian rebels. For 81 days, he was bound, blindfolded, and beaten. Over the course of his captivity, Alpeyrie kept his spirits up and strived to see, without his camera lenses, the humanity in his captors.

This intimate account offers a new, unexpected understanding of the artist’s work and of the vibrant 1930s surrealist scene.