art biography

Hardcover. Albany, CA, Rowena Godding Ruggles, 2nd, 1972, Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on second front end-paper. 96 pages of text. Includes 213 plates of b&w illustrations of Kewpies. Biography of Rose O'Neill and her work, including the development of the Kewpie dolls. In very good condition. The pages are clean and book neatly and tightly cloth-bound in red covers. dust jacket clean, with minor edge-wear.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Charles M. Schulz believed that the key to cartooning was to take out the extraneous details and leave in only what's necessary. For 50 years, he wrote and illustrated Peanuts, the single most popular and influential comic strip in the world. Renowned designer Chip Kidd was granted unprecedented access to the extraordinary archives of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California. Only What's Necessary reproduces the best of the Peanuts newspaper strip, all shot from the original art by award-winning photographer Geoff Spear, and features exclusive, rare, and unpublished original art and developmental work--much of which has never been seen before.

Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, b&w photos. Ornette Coleman's career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the African-American composer and musician was zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Texas blues tradition, he and jazz grew up together, as the brassy blare of big band swing gave way to bebop--a faster music for a faster, postwar world. At the luminous dawn of the Space Age and New York's 1960s counterculture, Coleman gave voice to the moment. Lauded by some, maligned by many, he forged a breakaway art sometimes called "the new thing" or "free jazz." Featuring previously unpublished photographs of Coleman and his contemporaries, this book tells the compelling story of one of America's most adventurous musicians and the sound of a changing world. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Collins, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Illustrated with numerous photographs and reproductions of Lancaster's cartoons. Remarkable biography of the multi-talented, multi-careered man, who was political diplomat, a satirical cartoonist, an author, an artist, an illustrator, a poet, a stage designer, and more. Lancaster's most famous cartoon characters are Mrs. Rajagojollibarmi, and Maudie Littlehampton.

Hardcover. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 222 pages, 125 b&w illustrations and 8 plates in full color. The first comprehensive study of Oscar Bluemner's life, art, and intellectual development. Cream cloth boards with gilt lettering to spine. Gray pictorial dust jacket with minor wear to edges, in protective brodart cover. Beautiful copy. Like new.

Hardcover. Boston, Massacusetts, D. Lothrop & Co., 1st, 1879, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Unpaginated. Green cloth covers with black titles and gilt illustration, all edges gilt, beveled edges, multiple full page b&w tissue-protected plates, 12 chapters on different American artists. Very light foxing to tissue paper, mild wear to cover edges and spine; overall a very clean, tight copy in great condition.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press , 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 438 pages, profusely illustrated in color and b&w. An intimate glimpse into the professional and romantic relationship between Harriet Pattison and the renowned architect Louis Kahn. On a winter day in 1953, a mysterious man in a sheepskin coat stood out to Harriet Pattison, then a theater student at Yale. She would later learn he was the architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974). This chance encounter served as preamble to a fifteen-year romance, with Pattison becoming the architect's closest confidante, his intellectual partner, and the mother of his only son. Here for the first time, Pattison recounts their passionate and sometimes searing relationship. Married and twenty-seven years her senior, Kahn sent her scores of letters--many from far-flung places--until his untimely death. This book weaves together Pattison's own story with letters, postcards, telegrams, drawings, and photographs that reveal Kahn's inner life and his architectural thought process, including new insight into some of his greatest works, both built and unbuilt. What emerges is at once a poignant love story and a vivid portrait of a young woman striving to raise a family while forging an artistic path in the shadow of her famous partner. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Rutland VT, Chas. E. Tuttle Co., reprint, 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket. Fine green textured cover with gilt to front and spine. Foreword by Arthur Schomburg, Robinson biography by Mary Robinson Perkins. A collection of tales capturing the essence of 19th-century rural life, primarily set in Vermont. These stories explore themes of freedom, community, and the challenges of everyday existence with a distinct American voice. Robinson's vivid descriptions and engaging characters provide a window into a bygone era, making this collection a valuable contribution to American literature. Clean copy.

Softcover. New York , Fireside Book/Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 223 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. Inspired by the twenty-three 'tales', Matthew Dennison takes a selection of quotations from Potter's stories and uses them to explore her multi-faceted life and character: repressed Victorian daughter; thwarted lover; artistic genius; formidable countrywoman. They chart her transformation from a young girl with a love of animals and fairy tales into a bestselling author and canny businesswoman, so deeply unusual for the Victorian era in which she grew up. Embellished with photographs of Potter's life and her own illustrations, this biography will delight anyone who has been touched by Beatrix Potter's work. Clean copy.

Hardcover. University of Washington Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 285 pages. Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence includes essays by eight distinguished art historians examining the ways in which Jacob Lawrence's art speaks so powerfully to different audiences. It is the first multi-author, in-depth probe of the artist's entire career: the nature of his work, his education, the critical climate in which he worked, and his use of materials and techniques. It reproduces, in full color, more than 200 works, most of which have not been published in color, or at all, in other books on the artist.

Hardcover. NY, Thomas Y Crowell, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 193 pages including index, illustrated with 34 reproductions, some in color. George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) who painted his world as it really was, everyday people in their everyday lives. His family was one of the early pioneer settlers, moving to the frontier in 1819. George began is art career painting tavern signs, later graduating to portraits, views of everyday life and "river paintings". He also was a Missouri politician, holding several important offices. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2009, Hardcover, 384 pages. Ronsequist writes about growing up in a tight-knit community of Scandinavian farmers in North Dakota and Minnesota in the late 1930s and early 1940s; about his mother, who was not only an amateur painter but, along with his father, a passionate aviator; and about leaving that flat midwestern landscape in 1955 for New York, where he had won a scholarship to the Art Students League. George Grosz, Edwin Dickinson, and Robert Beverly Hale were among his teachers, but his early life was a struggle until he discovered sign painting. He describes days suspended on scaffolding high over Broadway, painting movie or theater billboards, and nights at the Cedar Tavern with Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and the poet LeRoi Jones. His first major studio, on Coenties Slip, was in the thick of the new art world. Among his neighbors were Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, and Jack Youngerman, and his mentors Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Hardcover. London, Jupiter Books, First Edition, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 31 pages text followed by 130 plates. Hardcover. Blue cloth boards with gilt titles to spine. Frontis photograph of the artist, L. S. Lowry, Stockport, Winter 1962. Full page, full color & bw plates throughout. Dust jacket with wear & toning to edges. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Italy, Massimiliano Boni, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 128 pages, plus plates. ITALIAN TEXT. INSCRIBED. Color frontispiece, B/w illustrations/plates throughout. Dust jacket unclipped, has some age wear. Covers good, bound in blue fabric. Foxing on edges and endpapers, but pages clean. In very good condition.

Softcover. University of Washington Press, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 335 pages. "Known for his blending of philosophy, spirituality, humor, and a rollicking good story, Charles Johnson is one of the most important novelists writing today. From his magical first novel, Faith and the Good Thing, to his decidedly philosophical Oxherding Tale; from his swashbuckling indictment of the slave trade in the National Book Award-winning Middle Passage, to his more recent imaginative treatment of Martin Luther King Jr. in Dreamer, Johnson has continually surprised, instructed, and entertained his many avid readers. As this collection of interviews suggests, the novelist is as multifaceted and complex as his novels. Trained in cartooning and philosophy, martial arts and meditation, and producing teleplays, photobiographies, and literary criticism in addition to fiction, Charles Johnson represents a model of what he calls "life as art." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1st ed., 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 292 pages. Blue cloth boards. Pictorial dust jacket is tinted with light fading to spine. Otherwise, tight clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Liveright Publishing , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Published on the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith's diaries "offer the most complete picture ever published" of the canonical author. Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of "our greatest modernist writers" (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks -- posthumously discovered behind Highsmith's linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta -- traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who "[worked] like mad to be something." Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating "atmosphere of nameless dread" (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise like new.

Hardcover. NY, Liveright Publishing , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Published on the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith's diaries "offer the most complete picture ever published" of the canonical author. Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of "our greatest modernist writers" (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks -- posthumously discovered behind Highsmith's linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta--traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who "[worked] like mad to be something." Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating "atmosphere of nameless dread" (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise like new.

Hardcover. New York, New York Review Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 448 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Black and white photos in center. Two pages wrinkled and stuck together in the middle of picture pages. Otherwise tight.

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Derrydale Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 149 pages. Hardcover. Extensive b&w and color illustrations throughout. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. The definitive book on an artist who is widely regarded as the preeminent American illustrator of equestrian subjects. Based on extensive interviews with Brown's family, friends, and artistic contemporaries, Paul Brown includes a biography of the man and contains a complete listing of all the published works that include Brown's art as well as listings of all of Brown's prints, items sometimes attributed to Brown, and methods of identifying first editions of Paul Brown's art. Although Brown is primarily known for his wonderful paintings, drawings and sketches of horses and equestrian sports, he is also well known for his elegant and prolific illustrations for Brooks Brothers catalogs over three decades.

Hardcover. NY, Albert & Charles Boni , 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, original light gray cloth hardcover with gilt & green lettering on the spine and the front cover. 340 pages, 8 b&w plates including frontis self-portrait. No dust jacket, otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Montreal , Drawn & Quarterly, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non paginated. Softcover. Extensive b&w illustrations by Michel Rabagliati throughout. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. Rabagliati`s strip "Paul: Apprentice Typographer" was one of the highlights of 1999`s Drawn & Quarterly anthology, and his first comic book Paul in the Country won the 2000 Harvey award for Best New Talent. This, his first graphic novel, is a sweet, unsentimental story about being a teenager and Rabagliati's crisp retro-modern 1950s drawing style. Paul Has a Summer Job continues the story of Paul, a Quebecois teenager in the 1970s, as he experiences the first conflicts of responsibility with his desire to be free.

Softcover. New York, Museum of Modern Art, First Edition, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 344 pages. Softcover published on occasion of the exhibition by the same title, touring various locations including the Museum of Modern Art, February 12 - May 5, 1987. Full page, full color and bw illustrations throughout. Frontis illustration, Twittering Machine, 1922. Light toning to spine. Otherwise clean, unmarked copy.