art biography

Hardcover. Westport CT, Greenwood Press, reprint, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark red cloth, 371 pages, b&w illustrations. Originally published in 1949. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Abbeville, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 276 pages. Large format. Major monograph on one of the giants of 19th Century American art. Illustrated in color. In a bright dust jacket. 244 color plates, bibliography, chronology, notes. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 416 pages. In this definitive biography, Justin Wolff places Benton in the context of his tumultuous historical moment-as well as in the landscapes and cultural circles that inspired him. Thomas Hart Benton-with compelling insights into Benton's art, his philosophy, and his family history-rescues a great American artist from myth and hearsay, and provides an indelibly moving portrait of an influential, controversial, and often misunderstood man.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Benton (1889-1975) is a painter shrouded in paradox and misapprehension. Though pigeonholed as a regionalist chronicler of the Midwest, many of his finest on-site pictures are of Southern blacks and poor whites. Remembered best are his folksy rural scenes and aggressively three-dimensional murals, but the public tends to forget that he ran through the gamut of modernist styles (he was Jackson Pollock's teacher) and that his brilliant abstract color experiments ally him with the modernist movement. Some of Benton's crowded murals of the 1930s reflect his leftist sympathies, yet critics reviled him as politically conservative. These contradictions are illuminated in this catalogue of a touring exhibition curated by Adams. The text stands on its own as a wholly engaging biography, offering an unbuttoned look at a pugnacious, often reckless, artist who valiantly sought to preserve a rural America that was vanishing before his eyes. Clean copy.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 284 pages, color and b&w illustrations.Often featuring lighthouses, bridges, or quaint country homes, Thomas Kinkade's soft-focus landscapes have permeated American visual culture during the past twenty years, appearing on everything from Bibles to bedsheets to credit cards. Kinkade sells his work through his shopping-mall galleries, QVC, the Internet, and Christian stores. He is quite possibly the most collected artist in the United States. While many art-world and academic critics have dismissed him as a passing fad or marketing phenomenon, the contributors to this collection do not. Instead, they explore his work and its impact on contemporary art as part of the broader history of American visual culture. They consider Kinkade's imagery and career in relation to nineteenth-century Currier and Ives prints and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, the collectibles market and the fine-art market, the Thomas Kinkade Museum and Cultural Center, and "The Village at Hiddenbrooke," a California housing development inspired by Kinkade's paintings. The conceptual artist Jeffrey Vallance, the curator of the first major museum exhibition of Kinkade's art and collectibles, recounts his experiences organizing that show. All of the contributors draw on art history, visual culture, and cultural studies as they seek to understand Kinkade's significance for both art and audiences. Along the way, they delve into questions about beauty, class, kitsch, religion, and taste in contemporary art. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Norman, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 315 pages, b&w illustrations. Spine slightly cocked. Pictorial dust jacket with light sunfading to spine; edge wear and light rubbing near extremities. Clean text.

Hardcover. Glendale CA, Arthur H. Clark Co., 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark blue cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 340 pages. A biography of Thomas Pownall (1757 - 1760) who was governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony during the French and Indian War and later a member of Parliament (1767 - 1780). Pownall had sympathies for the colonial grievances and institutions. This biography is based on a study of widely scattered documentary materials and provides insight into a man of complex and contradictory ideas and actions during the pre-Revolutionary period. Includes bibliography and index. Stamping to endpapers, from an academic library.

Middlebury VT, Paul S. Eriksson, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. SIGNED AND DATED BY THE AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. Introduction by Malcolm Cowley. A memoir of the sculptor by his older sister. 300 pages, b&w photos. Previous owner's inscription on lower front fly leaf. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 430 pages. During America's Swing Era, no musician was more successful or controversial than Artie Shaw: the charismatic and opinionated clarinetist-bandleader whose dozens of hits became anthems for "the greatest generation." But some of his most beautiful recordings were not issued until decades after he'd left the scene. He broke racial barriers by hiring African-American musicians. His frequent "retirements" earned him a reputation as the Hamlet of jazz. And he quit playing for good at the height of his powers. The handsome Shaw had seven wives (including Lana Turner and Ava Gardner). Inveterate reader and author of three books, he befriended the best-known writers of his time. Tom Nolan, who interviewed Shaw between 1990 and his death in 2004 and spoke with one hundred of his colleagues and contemporaries, captures Shaw and his era with candour and sympathy, bringing the master to vivid life and restoring him to his rightful place in jazz history. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 265 pages illustrated in b&w. From Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody's Fool, comes Three Rocks, a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic strip Nancy. But this graphic novel is about more than a single comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception to 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers--a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve. Nancy is hailed as the "perfect" comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape--just enough to communicate environment to the reader. This distillation is exemplary of the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, a comic strip about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip--the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Boston/London, Walker Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Haunting and deeply moving - a beautifully illustrated, fictionalized account of a formative time in the life of the teenage girl who wrote our most enduring horror story. Long before Mary Shelley published her Gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein, in 1818, at the age of nineteen, she shared fireside ghost tales at the home of family friends in Scotland. It was there that the headstrong girl - orphaned by her mother, spurned by her stepmother, and sent away by her father - spent two of her happiest teenage years. The brooding Scottish landscape and warm family atmosphere so influenced the author's life and art that some believe her famous novel took root there. To illuminate this period in Mary Shelley's life, Sharon Darrow skillfully spins fiction from fact. Her words are masterfully matched by Angela Barrett's exquisite, atmospheric, authentically detailed illustrations. The result is a rich tapestry of stories within stories - those told, those written, and more extraordinary, those lived. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Franklin Center PA, The Franklin Library, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in decorated red leather. This limited first edition has been signed by Arthur Miller exclusively for members of the The Signed First Edition Society. All edges gilt, marbled endpapers, sewn-in silk bookmarker. Clean, fresh and bright. His aurobiography. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller tells his life story with humor, passion, and candor. Beginning with his childhood and continuing through his life and career telling of both successes and failures. Miller gives colorful portraits of those people who touched his life, such as Marilyn Monroe, Orson Wells, Lucky Luciano, Clark Gable, Tennessee Williams, John F. Kennedy, Mikhail Gorbachev, and many more. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st pbk, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 296 pages, b&w illustrations. The apt subtitle of this award-winning biography, Photographer & Revolutionary, sums up the creative tensions that characterized Tina Modotti's life and brief photographic career. Active as a photographer for only nine years, Modotti was pulled between formal and social concerns. Producing striking modernist compositions of everyday objects, photojournalism of poverty and conflict, and portraits of celebrities and common people alike, Modotti balanced political concerns with formal rigor.First published in 1993 and long out of print, Tina Modotti: Photographer & Revolutionary is the definitive portrayal of Modotti's life and work. Few photographers are more deserving of a biographical treatment than Modotti, whose work as an actress and artist's model introduced her to Edward Weston, who was to become her lover. Soon after she arrived in Mexico City with Weston, Modotti became increasingly politicized, working for the communist newspaper El Machete and establishing herself as the go-to photographer for the Mexican Muralist movement. The book includes extensive archival material, interviews with Modotti's contemporaries and many rare photographs. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boulder CO, Westview Press, 2nd pr., 1999, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 264 pages, color and b&w illustrations. This introduction to the life and works of one of the giants of Western painting also surveys the golden age of Venetian painting from Bellini to Veronese and its place in the history of Western art. Sometimes referred to as the founder of modern painting Titian's legacy and influence was immense and continuing?: Italian Baroque painting, El Greco, Rubens, Rembrandt and Dutch painting, French 18th century painting, Velazquez, and Picasso. There are 119 black and white illustrations integrated with the text and 8 plates in full color, a selected bibliography and index. Clean copy.

NY, G.P. Putnams, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Over 200 Illustrations, 218 pages includes a bibliography of the writer and illustrator's book

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnams, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Over 200 Illustrations, 218 pages includes a bibliography of the writer and illustrator's book bibliography. Previous owner's inscription on the front fly leaf, wrinkle to front flap of dj, otherwise bright and clean.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 3rd pr., 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 352 pages, b&w photos. The Autobiography pulls no punches: Curtis debunks myths of stardom and glamour with a raw, uncensored, street-honed New York bite. The scope of his memoirs includes: rooming with Marlon Brando in Hollywood in the late forties; a glamorous marraige to Janet Leigh in 1951, and the extraordianry days during his first flush of success.a fully detailed description of his descent into alcohol and cocaine addiction in the 1970s and 1980s; and his therapeutic, ongoing work as a visual artist. Clean, bright copy in a similar dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 370 pages. Index, illustrated with black and white plates. Has folding genealogical chart, bibliography and index. Declared as "the first complete biography in English" of the notorious French painter (1864-1901), with new material from letters, interviews with surviving contemporaries, etc. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dey Street Books/Morrow, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 437 pages. Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself. In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell's peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer's childhood battle with polio. She charts the course of Mitchell's musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell's collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Da Capo Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 245 pages, b&w photos. Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) was one of the most brilliant exponents of New Orleans jazz. A prodigy on the clarinet, he soloed with Bunk Johnson's orchestra at age eleven, was improvising cornet-clarinet duos with Buddy Petit at age fifteen. Leaving New Orleans in the 1920s, Bechet took his Creole sound and spirit to New York, where he adopted the soprano saxophone and soon developed the unique style that marked his special artistry.

Hardcover. New York, ATRIA BOOKS, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 324 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Some black and white pictures.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 220 pages. 176 b&w and color plates, fold outs. Biography of Ernst Trova, self-taught painter and contemporary sculpture artist, known especially for his series entitled Falling Man. White cloth, gilt lettering to spine, gilt design on front, Very nice, clean and well preserved copy. Looks as good as new.

Hardcover. NY, Crown, 2nd pr., 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with minor edgewear. 394 pages, color and b&w illustrations. Stan Lee was one of the most famous and beloved entertainers to emerge from the twentieth century. He served as head editor of Marvel Comics for three decades and, in that time, became known as the creator of more pieces of internationally recognizable intellectual property than nearly anyone: Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, Black Panther, the Incredible Hulk . . . the list goes on. His carnival-barker marketing prowess helped save the comic-book industry and superhero fiction. His cameos in Marvel movies have charmed billions. When he died in 2018, grief poured in from around the world, further cementing his legacy. But what if Stan Lee wasn't who he said he was? To craft the definitive biography of Lee, Abraham Riesman conducted more than 150 interviews and investigated thousands of pages of private documents, turning up never-before-published revelations about Lee's life and work. True Believer tackles tough questions: Did Lee actually create the characters he gained fame for creating? Was he complicit in millions of dollars' worth of fraud in his post-Marvel life? Which members of the cavalcade of grifters who surrounded him were most responsible for the misery of his final days?

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 214 pages. A follow up of Truitt's journal "Daybook." The author continues the exploration of her life as an artist, a woman, and a mother, focusing on the constant interplay between daily activities and choices and the broader context of history and ideas. Clean copy.