art biography

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 406 pages, Hardcover with dust jacket. B&w illustrations. Clean, tight copy. How Le Corbusier's first trip to the United States shaped his critique of the country and affected both his work and the diffusion of his ideas. Le Corbusier's first trip to the United States in 1935 is generally considered a failure because it produced no commissions. The experience nevertheless had a profound effect on him, both personally and professionally. Sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Le Corbusier promoted his ideas through a lecture tour, exhibition, and press conferences, as well as in meetings with industrialists, housing reformers, New Deal technocrats, and editors. His lectures were watershed events that advanced the cause of European modernism. Yet he returned to France empty-handed and published a bittersweet account, Quand les Cathedrales etaient blanches: Voyage au Pays des Timid Personnes (When the Cathedrals Were White: Journey to the Country of Timid People), which faulted America for lacking the courage to adopt his ideas.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 1st, 1868, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 287 pages plus publisher's ads. ...to Which are Prefixed and Added Extracts From the Same Journal Giving an Account of Earlier Visits to Scotland, and Tours in England and Ireland, and Yachting Excursions. B/w illustrations throughout, including two facing frontispieces with tissue guard. Binding still quite good. Tanning and foxing throughout with other agewear appropriate for a book this old. Previous owner's bookplate on front endpapers and ID stamp on preliminary page. Dark red cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine and design on front cover, agewear (see image). From Editor's Preface: "During one of the Editor's official visits to Balmoral, her Majesty very kindly allowed him to see several extracts from her journal relating to excursions to the Highlands of Scotland...It...occurred to her Majesty that these extracts, referring as they did, to some of the happiest hours of her life, might be made into a book,..."

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Algonquin Young Readers, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 113 pages. Hardcover. Extensive color illustrations by James McMullan throughout. Illustrated paste downs and end papers. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. McMullan explained, "In my late seventies I decided to organize my memories of my childhood before and during the Second World War into a coherent narrative. The tension of our lives when the Japanese army took over our town in China and the subsequent anxieties of traveling from country to country with my mother has imprinted the incidents of those years into my memory with an enduring lucidity that defies the otherwise fading recall of my aging mind."

Softcover. Prestel, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 96 pages. Roland Penrose met Lee Miller's lips a year before he met the rest of her - in a painting by Man Ray. It was a fitting introduction for two artists who were linked by an art movement that delighted in chance encounters. Together they forged a life joined by a common cause - surrealism. This illustrated joint biography tells the story of how a fashion model turned photographer and an English Quaker turned art collector and surrealist painter influenced modern art with their vision and passion, and created a life together that was in itself a work of art.

Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pale rose boards with photo label on front cover. Over one hundred of the most outstanding photographs taken by photographer, model, and surrealist muse Lee Miller, Introduced to photography at an early age, Lee Miller honed her craft in Paris, where she associated with the Surrealists and avant-garde artists including Jean Cocteau and Picasso. Together with Man Ray she accidentally discovered the distinctive technique of solarization to create mesmerizing halo effects. After establishing her own photographic studio in New York, where she became a prominent commercial photographer, she then moved to the Middle East and Europe before becoming the official war photographer for Vogue, a period during which she took many of her most iconic photographs. This evocative book collects Lee Miller's most famous documentary, fashion, and war works, as well as photographs of Miller, all carefully compiled by her son the photographer Antony Penrose, with a foreword by actress Kate Winslet, Cllean copy.

Hardcover. Koln GR, Taschen, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 336 pages. One remarkable woman, five remarkable careers: Leni Riefenstahl is the exception to the rule. From dancer to actress to film-maker to photographer to diver, she has excelled in each field and is one of the most important and controversial artists of the 20th century. Her contributions to the art and technique of film-making were vast, most notably in her epochal film "Olympia" (1938). Critically acclaimed during the 1930's for her work under the Hitler administration and harshly criticized after the war, Riefenstahl surged on, completing the famous "Tiefland" in 1954. In the 1960s and 70s she traveled to Africa and extensively photographed East Africa and the Nuba tribes in Sudan, publishing three books. Ready for yet another change, she took up deep-sea diving at the age of 71, beginning a new chapter as an underwater photographer.Though she has attracted much attention throughout her life and has been the subject of many books, articles, and films, Leni Riefenstahl Five Lives is the first book to showcase her entire career in pictures. Produced in collaboration with Riefenstahl herself, the book includes her most famous images as well as many previously unpublished pictures from her private archives.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 400 pages. The definitive biography of Leni Riefenstahl, the woman best known as "Hitler's filmmaker," one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities of the twentieth century. It is the story of huge talent and huger ambition, one that probes the sometimes blurred borders dividing art and beauty from truth and humanity. Relying on new sources--including interviews with her colleagues and intimate friends, as well as on previously unknown recordings of Riefenstahl herself--Bach gives us an exceptional work of historical investigation that untangles the past and is also an objective but unsparing appraisal of a woman of spectacular gifts corrupted by ruthless personal ambition.

Hardcover. Charlottesville, NC, University Press of Virginia, 1st, 1983, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 140 pages + 163 b&w prints. Monograph of a painter who carried the standard of realism through the 20th century while the artistic movement raced toward abstraction. Red cloth with gilt lettering to spine and white pictorial dust jacket. Like new, in shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster, First Edition, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 599 pages. Hardcover. Wine cloth boards with gilt titles to spine & illustrated, sepia toned endpapers. Profusely illustrated in full color & black & white, images beautifully presented to accompany text. Bright dust jacket with marginal wear. Clean & unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, First Edition, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 335 pages. Hardcover. Ivory boards with black printed titles to mustard cloth spine. Dust jacket with moderate toning & light wear to edges. Previous owner's signature to front flyleaf. Illustrations in bw throughout. Clean & unmarked copy.

Hardcover. NY, Johnson Reprint Corporation, reprint, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 192 pages, illustrated with 22 color plates and 177 in b&w. Contents: 1). Preface. 2). Major events in Leonardo's life. 3). The river. 4). The fiction. 5). Hercules. 6). Leda. 7). Bacchus. 8). Epilogue. 9). Bibliography. 10). Index. Smaller ownership sticker on inside front cover otherwise bright and clean.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Co., 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 144 pages. Lester Beall, who died in 1969, was the first graphic designer to receive a one-man exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (in 1937) and was awarded the 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Institute of Graphic Artists, a sign of his importance in American graphic design. In full color, this book documents the work of his pioneering 44-year career-advertising, corporate-identity programs, product styling, packaging, exhibits, murals, annual reports, posters, books, and magazines for a wide range of clients, including the U.S. government, the International Paper Company, Martin Marietta Corporation, and many others.

Softcover. London, Hamish Hamilton Ltd., Reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 454 pages. Softcover with moderate wear to edges, creases to cover & spine. Light foxing throughout & to top edge. Toning to edges. Includes drawings in bw by the author, decorating his letters, memoirs. Over 20 additional portraits in black & white. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , Clarkson N. Potter, Inc, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 216 pages, b&w illustrations. Dust jacket with slightly faded spine and small tear to uper edge of front cover. Previous owner's bookplate on front end paper. Clean, tight copy. "This collection of fifteen original essays, written especially for this occasion by distinguished Carrollian authorities from around the world, including Morton Cohen, Roger Henkle, Donald Rackin, Jean Gattegno, and Edward Guiliano, celebrates the many aspects of Carroll's life and art."

Hardcover. Charlottesville, University of Viginia, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 253 pages with index. This bibliography will fill the critical gap of intimation bout Carroll publications written during the significant post-1959 period. It attempts to include and annotate everything written by or about Lewis Carroll that has been published since 1959 in foreign languages, and it will provide collectors with information on the many fine translations of his work. The more than 1500 entries cover all aspects of Carroll's life and art, including his literary works, his photography, his work on logic and his relations with other Victorians. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1st, 1899, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 2 Hardcover Volumes. Covers are 3/4 leather with marbled sections. Spine with raised bands, title and decoration in gilt. Marbled endpapers. This set Previously owned by Charles B. Woodcock Savage who achieved notoriety as the lover of King Karl of Wurttemberg and features his signature at the top of preliminary page in each volume. Gift inscription to Savage from Nellie on front endpapers of both volumes. Top edges gilt. Features 316 black & white illustrations. Volume 1 - Light wear. Clean, tight. Volume 2 - front cover hinge cracked, with loosening to spine strip up to 1" from top - hinge tender. Light wear otherwise. Overall, very good.

Hardcover. New York, Da Capo Press, Reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None,

Hardcover. New York, Da Capo Press, Reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None,

Softcover. NY, St. Martins Griffin, 1st Wraps, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, Illustrated in color, black & white by Crumb, 182 pages. Accolades and Reflections on the Controversial R. Crumb: "Robert Crumb--lurid, pornographic, sexy, twisted, hilarious, and depraved. The greatest American satirist is also its finest draftsman." --Joe Coleman"God bless Crumb. I've always been happy that there was someone as sick and twisted as I am." --George Carlin"I can think of no one more unqualified to say anything about Robert Crumb's artwork than myself. In fact, it's useless for most cartoonists of my generation to do so; without him, there wouldn't "be" any cartoonists of my generation." --Chris Ware, "The Acme Novelty Library"

Hardcover. Boston, The Taylor Press, 1st, 1915, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 285 pages. Brown cloth covers, b&w frontispiece. Previous owner's bookplate to blank endpaper, light wear to covers, edges and spine; overall a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Doubleday and Co., reprint, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Photographs and text by Edward Steichen. Includes a biographical outline. Illustrated end pages. 249 black and white plates. Measures 11.5x10 inches. Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. Later he worked for Conde Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair. After World War II he became the Director of the Department of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Note: This book is the First edition, second printing (The book was originally published in 1963 with duotone and color plates, this second printing is in black and white only). In a very good dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An up close and personal portrait of a legendary filmmaker, theater director, and comedian, drawing on candid conversations with his closest friends in show business and the arts-from Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep to Natalie Portman and Lorne Michaels. The work of Mike Nichols pervades American cultural consciousness-from The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Angels in America, The Birdcage, Working Girl, and Primary Colors, not to mention his string of hit plays, including Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. If that weren't enough, he was also one half of the timelessly funny duo Nichols & May, as well as a founding member of the original improv troupe. Over a career that spanned half a century, Mike Nichols changed Hollywood, Broadway, and comedy forever. Most fans, however, know very little of the person behind it all. Since he never wrote his memoirs, and seldom appeared on television, they have very little sense of his searching intellect or his devastating wit. They don't know that Nichols, the great American director, was born Mikail Igor Peschkowsky, in Berlin, and came to this country, speaking no English, to escape the Nazis. They don't know that Nichols was at one time a solitary psychology student, or that a childhood illness caused permanent, life-altering side effects. They don't know that he withdrew into a debilitating depression before he "finally got it right," in his words, by marrying Diane Sawyer. Remainder dot to bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Jackson [Miss.], University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 284 pages, b&w illustrations. Minor edgewear to dust jacket else a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Cape Cod Museum of Art/Providencetown Museum, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 59 pages, exhibition catalog illustrated in color. Essays by Robert Henry, April Kingsley, Myra Harrison and Claire Sprague. Lillian Orlowsky painter, teacher, curator, critic and mentor (Born 1914 in New York City, died August 7, 2007 in Provincetown) I was fortunate to have taken part in one of the most important periods of art in this century. The 1930's through the 1950's saw a cultural upheaval where diverse concepts in painting went from one extreme to another: from realism to abstraction. In the forefront were the WPA (Works Projects Administration - Art Project) and in some measure the Provincetown Art Association. They promoted cultural awareness of the different pictorial concepts which were the beginning of the changing scene of plastic expression.