art biography

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University, 1st, 1986, Hardcover, 523 pages. Flam, who translated Matisse's writings in Matisse on Art (Phaidon, 1973), presents a thorough and scholarly examination of the artist's life and stylistic development. Each painting is given a complete analysis, revealing Matisse's encounters with the prevailing styles and theories of art to arrive at work distinctly his own. Glimpses of his personal life combined with discussions of his paintings show the inner turmoil with which he struggled to find a style that would satisfy both his instinct and his intellect. Flam provides new documentary material, corrects earlier misconceptions, and redates several paintings. Heavily illustrated, often with fine color reproductions, this volume is an excellent successor to Alfred Barr's Matisse .

Hardcover. US, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 224 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The preeminent children's book artist of the twentieth century, Maurice Sendak and his sixty-year career are celebrated in this full-color catalog of more than two hundred images being exhibited at the Society of Illustrators in New York City from June 11-August 17, 2013. Accompanied by twelve essays by such noted scholars and historians as Leonard S. Marcus, Iona Opie, Steven Heller, and Paul O. Zelinsky, Maurice Sendak: A Celebration of the Artist and His Work showcases the collection of Justin G. Schiller and Dennis M. V. David, prominent authorities on Sendak's artwork, and is a deeply personal and thoughtful tribute to a seminal artist whose singular vision has captured the imaginations of countless children and grown-ups throughout the world.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics , 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 214 pages. Perverted, Insane, Degenerate, Brilliant. Artist Drew Friedman pays tribute to the great underground comix creators from Z (Zap) to A (Arcade).With the publication of R. Crumb's debut issue of Zap in 1968, the Underground Comix revolution exploded, creating a major paradigm shift and blowing the lid off the traditional comic book. Maverix and Lunatix features 101 full page portraits (and more) by a cartooning icon in his own right, Drew Friedman, spotlighting the essential artists, writers, and editors who defined one of the great art and countercultural movements of the 20th century. Featuring R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson, Melinda Gebbie, Art Spiegelman, Vaughn Bode, Trina Robbins, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, Sharon Rudahl, Larry Gonick, Rick Veitch, Joyce Farmer, Justin Green, "Grass" Green, George DiCaprio, Diane Noomin, Harvey Pekar, Robert Williams, Howard Cruse, Dan O'Neill, Spain Rodriguez, Shary Flenniken, Richard Corben, and so many others... all of whom helped to reinvent an entire artistic medium and became icons of underground comix.Featuring a foreword by Marc Maron (WTF with Marc Maron) and an afterword by historian Patrick Rosenkranz (Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975), each portrait in Maverix and Lunatix is also accompanied by a short biography of its subject by Friedman, making the book both a gorgeous art book and a valuable historical resource.

Softcover. Munich, Germany, Saint Louis Art Museum, 1st, 1984, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover exhibition catalog, 482 pages, many illustrations, over 100 in color. Extensive survey of paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints. Includes biography, bibliography and the index of names and paintings. Published on the occasion of the exhibition from the Haus der Kunst, Munich February 25-April 23, 1984 which moved on to St. Louis and Los Angeles. Clean. bright copy.

Hardcover. Saint Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum/Prestel-Verlag, 1st US, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 482 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. illustrated throughout with 297 plates in full color and black & white. Light wear. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Philip Wilson Publishers, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 136 pages. Oversized. Blue cloth cover, light wear to edges. Dust jacket has minor wear to corners. Many full color plates throughout. Inside is bright and clean. A nice copy.

Hardcover. New York, Watson-Guptill Publications, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. This is a volume with detailed chapters pertaining to Maxfield Parrish's work, including book and magazine illustration, posters and advertisements, as well as paintings and murals often depicting fantastical or mythological creatures. 224 pages, with over 100 b&w illustrations and 64 full color plates. Includes catalog of selected works, chronology, bibliography, and index. Bound in blue cloth, tight and clean. Clean dust jacket with full color reproduction of painting.

Hardcover. New York, Watson-Guptill Publications, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. This is a volume with detailed chapters pertaining to Maxfield Parrish's work, including book and magazine illustration, posters and advertisements, as well as paintings and murals often depicting fantastical or mythological creatures. 224 pages, with over 100 b&w illustrations and 64 full color plates. Includes catalog of selected works, chronology, bibliography, and index. Bound in blue cloth, tight and clean. Clean dust jacket with full color reproduction of painting.

Hardcover. New York, Watson-Guptill Publications, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. This is a volume with detailed chapters pertaining to Maxfield Parrish's work, including book and magazine illustration, posters and advertisements, as well as paintings and murals often depicting fantastical or mythological creatures. 224 pages, with over 100 b&w illustrations and 64 full color plates. Includes catalog of selected works, chronology, bibliography, and index. Bound in blue cloth, tight and clean. Clean dust jacket with full color reproduction of painting.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 952 pages. Traces Caniffs life from the cradle to the grave, marking the milestones in the development of the comic strip (Steve Canyon, and Terry and the Pirates) that Caniff established. Caniff reshaped the medium and set standards by which all storytelling strips were subsequently judged. Although Caniff adapted to changing fashions, he is best known for innovations such as his impressionistic chiaroscuro drawing style that suggested reality economically with shadow rather than with detail. The book examines the artistic innovations and work routines of a nationally distributed cartoonist whose career was central the development of the artform, marking along the way the milestones in the development of comic strip artistry that Caniff established. B&w illustrations.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Studio, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 175 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap, though part of shrink-wrap is slightly torn. A collection of photographs taken in Memphis brings to life the legends of blues, jazz, rock and roll, and soul, including W.C. Handy, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, and others.

Hardcover. NY, Abbeville, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages. Hank Ketcham, the self-styled "Merchant of Dennis," passed away in 2001 at the age of 81, but not before writing this engaging memoir. In this volume, the Dennis the Menace creator charmingly tells his own colorful story, starting when he was about "five-ana-half" and first picked up the "magic pencil." A child of the Great Depression from Seattle, Ketcham abandoned college for Hollywood, to pursue a dream of making drawings for Walt Disney films. Initially rebuffed at Disney, he persisted in huffing and puffing at the Mouse Factory door (all the while drawing "Andy Pandas, rabbits, squirrels, and monkeys" at Walter Lantz studio) until finally he was let inside to labor happily on Pinocchio, Bambi, Fantasia and a host of Donald Duck shorts. World War II intervened, but Photographer's Mate Ketcham was, nevertheless, able to resume his artistic career in the Navy, where, in Washington, D.C., he created cartoons for the War Bond program. Following the war, Ketcham developed into a successful freelancer, placing cartoons in The New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post and Collier's.Then one fateful day, his harried wife screamed at him that his son Dennis was a menace! That, of course, sparked an idea that subsequently was sold to a newspaper syndicate in the fall of 1950. Within a year, Dennis the Menace was up to a hundred daily subscribers-a figure that climbed steadily.The Merchant of Dennis the Menace not only traces the humorous adventures of Hank Ketcham-with copious illustrations of his artistic development from a kid with an early knack for copying cartoon characters to a mature and masterful artist of everyday life in the Mitchell and Wilson households-it also offers a special insight into the life and times of the half-pint "Menace." In one unique section, Ketcham takes us behind the scenes of Dennis and provides complete backgrounds for all the major characters, including their genealogies. We are also treated to official model sheets, in-depth analysis of each character's personality and motivations, and an exclusive peek at the private sketches that Ketcham referred to of rooms in the Wilson and Mitchell homes, their backyards, and the neighborhood. To top it all off, the book includes a dozen of Ketcham's hand-picked, all-time favorite strips.

Hardcover. NY, Free Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. No artist looms so large in Western consciousness and culture as Michelangelo Buonarroti, the most celebrated sculptor of all time. And no place on earth provides a stone so capable of simulating the warmth and vitality of human flesh and incarnating the genius of a Michelangelo as the statuario of Carrara, the storied marble mecca at Tuscany's northwest corner. It was there, where shadowy Etruscans and Roman slaves once toiled, that Michelangelo risked his life in dozens of harrowing expeditions to secure the precious stone for his Pieta, Moses, and other masterpieces. Many books have recounted Michelangelo's achievements in Florence and Rome. Michelangelo's Mountain goes beyond all of them, revealing his escapades and ordeals in the spectacular landscape that was the third pole of his tumultuous career and the third wellspring of his art. Eric Scigliano brings this haunting place and eternally fascinating artist to life in a sweeping tale peopled by popes and poets, mad dukes and mythic monsters, scheming courtiers and rough-hewn quarrymen. In showing how the artist, land, and stone transformed one another, Scigliano brings fresh insight to Michelangelo's most cherished works and illuminates his struggles with the princes and potentates of Carrara, Rome, and Medici Florence, who raised intrigue to a high art.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 438 pages, illustrations in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. Swan Isle Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 180 pages. Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel (1900-83), known for his surrealist themes and unflinching social criticism, was an artist defined by intellectual ambition and controversy. An exile who produced some of his most famous work in Mexico and France during Franco's dictatorship, he left a complicated imprint on the creative landscape of the twentieth century and on generations of younger filmmakers--including his Mexican friend Claudio Isaac. Drawn from Isaac's personal papers, Midday with Bunuel: Memories and Sketches, 1973-1983 is an intimate and unconventional portrait of this cinematic icon--and memoir of Isaac's own artistic development.The text includes sketches, vignettes, and anecdotes from Isaac's notebooks, revealing his perspective first as a precocious boy and then as a young man. Isaac reflects on Bunuel's presence among a community of exiles, artists, actors, writers, and intellectuals in Mexico City. These are at once touching, perceptive, and critical glimpses into Bunuel's roles as husband and father, friend and colleague, surrealist, philosopher, and iconoclast during his last years. Throughout, Isaac's words reveal his deep admiration and affection for an older friend full of contradictions. Intimate photographs from the Isaac family archive complement the writing, and Bryan Thomas Scoular's careful translation makes this text available for the first time in English.

Softcover. Surrey UK, FAB Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 352 pages, b/w illustrations. The essential subterranean tract of 2005, Midnight Mavericks is a rollicking tour through the hearts and minds of today's most uncompromising artists from the lower depths of entertainment culture. Profiled are controversial underground icons, angry stand-up comedians, exploitation filmmakers, hardcore crime novelists and controversial cartoonists, including Abel Ferrara, John Waters, Andrew WK, Chris D, Mike Diana, Lydia Lunch and Jim Goad. Includes Sounds from the Underground, a bonus 70minute CD of interview excerpts and songs from the musicians featured in the book.

Hardcover. NY, Back Stage Books, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 320 pages. Foreword by Frank Rich. Henderson (curator of the White Barn Theater Museum in Westport, Connecticut, she's lectured and written extensively on theater), using the substantial archive of his writings, has assembled a suitable tribute to one of America's most influential creators of theater design. The book proceeds chronologically through Mielziner's life and long career, richly supplemented with photos and high quality color reproductions of the designer's watercolor and pencil drawings, and excerpts from his writings. He designed the original sets for A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, and Carousel and operas such as Don Giovanni. NOTE: While this book is bright and clean, it has a light musty odor.

Hardcover. New York, McGraw-Hill , 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 547 pages. Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR 0N PRELIMINARY PAGE. Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. Illustrated with 8 pages of black & white photographs. Related article laid-in. No dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 312 pages. In this collection of more than a dozen interviews one of the giants of American comic strips talks about his life and his craft. The years spanning 1937 to 1986, when the interviews were conducted, embrace almost all of Caniff's career as he was producing the legendary Terry and the Pirates and his post-World War II masterpiece Steve Canyon. In long talks with such comics luminaries as Jules Feiffer and Will Eisner, Caniff (1907-1988) discusses his signature chiaroscuro style, his passion for realism in every detail, and his relationships with such other cartooning greats as Al Capp (Li'l Abner), Noel Sickles (Scorchy Smith), and Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon) As Caniff speaks earnestly about his art, his techniques, and his intentions, he discloses his inspirations. He based his characters on real persons and his material on contemporary politics and military issues. He gives candid opinions about the effects of the marketplace, business, and sales upon his art. "I would have created Blondie if I'd known that I could have sold it, you can be damn sure." He notes that the cause for terminating his association with Terry and the Pirates and his creation of Steve Canyon was neither lack of interest nor censorship but the opportunity to exert full creative control over his work.

Softcover. Seattle WA, University of Washington Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. A biography of the celebrated documentary photographer, Milton Rogovin, and catalogue that accompanied an exhibition at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, in 2006. Rogovin (1909-2011) was an optometrist in Buffalo, NY, who turned to photography as a means of expression when he was discredited -- and thereafter lost his business -- by the HUAC committee in 1952. For the rest of his life he documented the lives of the working class around the world. Photographs by Milton Rogovin; text by Melanie Anne Herzog; foreword by Douglas R. Nickel; afterword by Catherine Linder Spencer. 176 pages; 126 duo-toned b&w plates + 21 text illustrations; 9 x 11 inches. Bibliography.

Hardcover. Essex, Pequot Press, First Edition, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 69 pages. Hardcover. Gray cloth boards with gilt titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Frontis illustration, The Harpist, A Portrait of Miss Florence by Alphonse Jonghers, tipped-in & in full color. Dust jacket with same full color image on bright blue background. Dj has age related wear to edges. Clean, unmarked. A nice copy.

Hardcover. NY/Cambridge MA, The Architectural History Foundation/The MIT Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. This is the first complete biography of the inimitable society architect Addison Mizner, whose Spanish Revival buildings created a new style of resort architecture for Palm Beach and south Florida during the boom years of the 1920s. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Bobbs-Merrill, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 529 pages. Material for this novel based on the life of Amedeo Modigliani is based on letters, family papers and interviews with the Modigliani family by the author. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Gibbs Smith, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages. Thomas Molesworth, were he alive today, would be both proud and amazed at the influence his Shoshone Furniture Company and the Cody artists' colony he inspired would have on his old hometown and the Western Design movement seventy-two years after he started producing furniture. Based on nearly two decades of buying, selling, pursuing, and researching Molesworth furniture, Terry Winchell has created a definitive book that covers all spectrums of Molesworth's work, including the influence of the other artists who made his style unique, as well as stylistically and financially successful. The fact that Molesworth's furniture career spanned thirty-plus years speaks for itself. An excellent guide for collectors of Molesworth's work, this book is also an invaluable resource for fans of the Western Design movement.