art biography

Hardcover. Southport, CT, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. A companion book to Mathews' definitive biography of Cassett. 357 pages, Comprehesive retrospective of the American artist Mary Cassatt, which includes a scholarly introduction, a wealth of texts and letters by Cassatt as well as by her contemporaries (including Zola, Degas, Pissarro), a chronology and genealogy, detailed bibliography, hundreds of archival photos, and 118 color plates of her paintings. Still in shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. Washington, DC, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 352 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Tight copy with minor wear to edges. Previous owner's notes in pencil near rear end paper.

Hardcover. New York, Vendome Press, 1st US, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 384 pages. Black & white illustrations. Clean, tight copy in an unclipped dust jacket. In this beautiful volume, the glorious life of the incomparable Coco Chanel shines again through hundreds of illustrations and the lively prose of Edmonde Charles-Roux, her official biographer and close friend.

Hardcover. London, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 207 Pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Slight curling along top dust jacket edge. Very light scratches across front dust jacket. Otherwise tight copy. Black and white and color photographs throughout.

Hardcover. NY, McGraw-Hill, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 792 pages, b&w illustrations. David Robinson who was given unbridled access to Chaplin's records documents Chaplin's life from his childhood in London to his death in Switzerland. Great attention is given to his film making methods especially the great classics. The book contains many photos and over a hundred pages of appendices.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 382 pages, b&w illustrations. Like new in a bright dust jacket. In this first biography of the great cartoonist, written with exclusive access to Addams's intimates and his private papers, we finally meet the man behind the famed cartoons and circling rumors. Here is his surprising childhood in New Jersey, the cartoon that offended the Nazis, the friend whose early death Addams long mourned. Here are his wives, the stories behind his most famous-and some of his most private-cartoons, and the Addams whom even his closest friends didn't know. With wit, humor, poignancy, and insight-enhanced by rare family photographs, classic and previously unpublished cartoons, and private drawings-Linda H. Davis paints an engaging and endearing portrait of a marvelous American original.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 382 pages, b&w illustrations. Like new in a bright dust jacket. In this first biography of the great cartoonist, written with exclusive access to Addams's intimates and his private papers, we finally meet the man behind the famed cartoons and circling rumors. Here is his surprising childhood in New Jersey, the cartoon that offended the Nazis, the friend whose early death Addams long mourned. Here are his wives, the stories behind his most famous-and some of his most private-cartoons, and the Addams whom even his closest friends didn't know. With wit, humor, poignancy, and insight-enhanced by rare family photographs, classic and previously unpublished cartoons, and private drawings-Linda H. Davis paints an engaging and endearing portrait of a marvelous American original.

Hardcover. US, Prestel USA, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 304 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to boards. Color and black and white pictures throughout. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, this vivid book captures the movement and pace of Charles Atlas's celebrated and highly collaborative time-based art. Looking back at a career that has spanned four decades, this beautiful volume profiles over 75 projects by Charles Atlas-including works recently exhibited at Tate Modern and the 2012 Whitney Biennial. As one of the first artists to explore the possibilities of video as a genre of expression, and especially through his long-lasting collaboration with Merce Cunningham, Atlas has teamed with numerous dancers and artists to create projects that range from feature-length documentaries to shorter media works, transforming the way performance is viewed by its audiences and the art world. In this inventive publication, Atlas's own commentary accompanies exquisite images that capture the structure and flow of his work in film, video, dance, and performance. The volume also includes interviews between Atlas and a number of writers and collaborators who have played a critical role in the development and reception of his oeuvre, as well as an array of fascinating ephemera from the artist's personal archives.

Hardcover. SUNY Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 768 pages. The personal journals of Charles Burchfield reveal the unique vision and approach to life that established him as America's preeminent watercolorist and painter of nature. When he died in 1967 at the age of seventy-three, Burchfield had filled sixty-seven bound notebooks with his personal entries, comprising some 10,000 pages. He included sketches, doodles, quotations, clippings, weather notes, and other marginalia and insertions offering a rare glimpse into the artist's life. Presented here in book form, the edited journals are organized thematically. The editor's introductions place each section in biographical and art historial context. The material is annotated and informed by the previously unpublished archives of the Burchfield Art Center, and complemented by 41 color plates of Burchfield's paintings and 131 black and white illustrations. Due to size and weight, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press , 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 238 pages. b&w and color illustrations. Pictorial dust jacket. Decorative endpapers. Minor edge wear. A very nice. clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Assouline, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 80 pages. Exploring the career of designer Charles James, this work looks at the way in which he revolutionized the fashions of the 1940s and 1950s with his designs, and above all his sculpted dresses.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1st Edition, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 155 pages. Hardcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. Cover boards bound in orange cloth, gilt title on spine, all excellent. Dust jacket unclipped, has small puncture near spine on front cover (patched from inside a with tape, see image), otherwise very good. Binding tight. Spine straight. In beautiful condition. Hassrick's illuminating discussion of Russell's work, based on much new research, is set against the backgrond of the artist's experiences in the West.

Hardcover. Grand Rapids MI, Eerdmans Publishing , 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 199 pages. A brief account of Williams' life and examination of his early poems, the criticism, biographies and plays, the novels, the Arthurian poems and his theological writings. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 272 pages. 189 illustrations, including 98 plates in full color. Light brown cloth. Clean, bright copy. As good as new. Peale painted thousands of canvases and that provided a superb record of colonial and federal society. In mid-life Peale turned to the study of nature and assembled a museum in Philadelphia that was, at its time, the most important institution of its kind in the country.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, The American Philosophical Society, 1st, 1939-47, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two hardcover volumes. 293+468 pages. B&w illustrations throughout both volumes. Blue cloth, gilt lettering to spine and front cover. Dust jackets in protective mylar cover, some pieces missing from spine and some dark age stains on vol. 2. Both copies excellent shape, volume 1 looks almost new, while volume 2 has aged gracefully. A very nice, tight and clean set.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 284 pages, color illustrations. Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager. He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration, survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent seven years on chain gangs. During that time he met the undaunted Patsy, who would become his wife. Years later, at the age of fifty-one and with Patsys encouragement, he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather tooling skills he learned in prison. Chasing Me to My Grave presents Remberts breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert calls forth vibrant scenes of Black life on Cuthbert, Georgias Hamilton Avenue, where he first glimpsed the possibility of a life outside the cotton field. Pulitzer Prize sticker on dj. Foreword by Bryan Stevenson. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 606 pages. In this definitive biography of Chester B. Himes (1909-1984), Lawrence P. Jackson uses exclusive interviews and unrestricted access to Himes's full archives to portray a controversial American writer whose novels unflinchingly confront sex, racism, and black identity. Himes brutally rendered racial politics in the best-selling novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, but he became famous for his Harlem detective series, including Cotton Comes to Harlem. A serious literary tastemaker in his day, Himes had friendships-sometimes uneasy-with such luminaries as Ralph Ellison, Carl Van Vechten, and Richard Wright. Jackson's scholarship and astute commentary illuminates Himes's improbable life-his middle-class origins, his eight years in prison, his painful odyssey as a black World War II-era artist, and his escape to Europe for success. More than ten years in the writing, Jackson's biography restores the legacy of a fascinating maverick caught between his aspirations for commercial success and his disturbing, vivid portraits of the United States. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Small paper scar on front fly leaf where tape pull left dime-size white spot. Otherwise like new. 256 pages. Childe Hassam's impressive career as one of America's foremost Impressionists is celebrated and illuminated in this dazzlingly beautiful volume.No other American Impressionist ever surpassed the quality and variety of Hassam's output as a painter and draftsman. Equally talented in oils, watercolors, and prints, he explored rain-swept city scenes, glorious gardens, exquisite women, and stirring flag-lined streets. Many of these irresistible pictures are hidden in private collections and are rarely, if ever, accessible to the public; others are on view at major museums across the country, from the Metropolitan Museum to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. By approaching Childe Hassam (1859-1935) from different angles, the three authors reveal this multitalented artist's many facets and uncover previously unknown aspects of his life and work. The authoritative essays are illustrated with a brilliant array of color illustrations that represent all of Hassam's styles, from Barbizon-inspired Tonalism to Impressionism to Post-Impressionism. The book concludes with an invaluable illustrated chronology and an annotated bibliography.

Hardcover. France, Editions Artlys, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 256 pages. Hardcover no dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. At once Dior scrapbook, survey and autobiography, this magnificent compendium offers a panorama of the life and art of one of the twentieth century's most influential fashion designers. It reprints Dior's 1956 autobiography Christian Dior et moi--in which the designer contrasted his reputation as both an individual and as a company with his own sense of himself--alongside eight articles by Dior first published in Elle magazine in 1951, which were then collected as Je suis couturier. Throughout, the volume takes as its thematic anchor the designer's beautiful childhood home in Granville, elaborating his lifelong attachment to the house (now the Christian Dior Museum) and its gardens, and showing how his work was influenced by these resplendent environs--a theme that especially preoccupied Dior himself, who once affirmed his "tender and wonderful memories of my childhood home," declaring that "my life and my style owe everything to its location and architecture." Many of the copious illustrations that accompany these writings are supplied by the Christian Dior Museum collection, and reproduce family albums and archival photographs, fashion sketches and formal presentations of classic Dior dresses, hats, shoes and jewelry. Dior scholar Jean-Luc Dufresne conducts a tour of the Dior house and garden, narrating its long and fascinating history.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 525 pages, in a bright unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Hachette, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 415 pages, b&w illustrations. In Chuck Berry, biographer RJ Smith crafts a comprehensive portrait of one of the great American entertainers, guitarists, and lyricists of the 20th century, bringing Chuck Berry to life in vivid detail. Based on interviews, archival research, legal documents, and a deep understanding of Berry's St. Louis (his birthplace, and the place where he died in March 2017), Smith sheds new light on a man few have ever really understood. By placing his life within the context of the American culture he made and eventually withdrew from, we understand how Berry became such a groundbreaking figure in music, erasing racial boundaries, crafting subtle political commentary, and paying a great price for his success. While celebrating his accomplishments, the book also does not shy away from troubling aspects of his public and private life, asking profound questions about how and why we separate the art from the artist. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The director Michael Cimino (1939-2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven's Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino's sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era.Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton's Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker. Based on extensive interviews with Cimino's peers and collaborators and enemies and friends, most of whom have never spoken before, it unravels the enigmas and falsehoods, many perpetrated by the director himself, which surround his life, and sheds new light on his extraordinary career. This is a story of the making of art, the business of Hollywood, and the costs of ambition, both financial and personal.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The first biography of critically acclaimed then critically derided filmmaker Michael Cimino--and a reevaluation of the infamous film that destroyed his career. The director Michael Cimino (1939-2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven's Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino's sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton's Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker.

Hardcover. New York , Norton , 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 190 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. Cipe Pineles was art director for leading fashion magazines between 1930 and 1960. Tracing Pineles's career from young immigrant to "ranking" female in the design world, Martha Scotford chronicles a time when few women were involved in design and assesses Cipe's brilliant contributions to graphic design and magazine design in particular.