art portraits

Hardcover. Italy, Damiani, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Over 200 color illustrations throughout. Portraits of famous celebrities such as Jessica Alba, Gabriel Byrne, Sofia Coppola, Diane von Furstenberg, Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, Jack McCollough, Julianne Moore and Sting, as well as landscape photographs.

Softcover. Williamstown MA, Trustees of Williams College, 1st, 1979, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Cover features "Self Portrait," by Chuck Close. Features numerous black and white works from 39 artists. Complete with biographical and critical text. Slight wear and blemishes on cover. Interior is clean.

New York, Orchard Books, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 31 pages. Color illustrations by Ted Lewin.A hard-working doorman loves his job at the front of a big city apartment house, where he is especially dedicated to the elderly and young residents there, until the sad day when he is no longer there to greet his friends. The highlight of this affectionate tribute to a New York City doorman is Lewin's lifelike art. With nearly photographic clarity, his watercolors depict the comings and goings of an apartment house's residents and the daily routine of their beloved doorman, John. Setting the story in his own Upper West Side building, first-time children's author Grimm shapes a poignant portrait.

Hardcover. Westport CT, Greenwood Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy boards, 174 pages. B&w frontispiece portrait. Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) had something to say about virtually all her contemporaries among the literati, and they returned the favor in full measure. This well articulated primary and secondary bibliography covers the complete canon and its critical reaction, with illuminating annotations complemented by a biographical sketch. Included also are three personal views of Parker-- by Joseph Bryan, III, Richard Lauterbach, and Wyatt Cooper. The accumulated evidence suggests that Parker should be considered a major figure in American letters not just America's wittiest woman who happened to write. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Koln GDR, Walther Konig, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 242 pages 152 illustrations 87 in color. Text is in German and English Preface by Dietrich Karner. Introduction by Sabine Breitwieser. Published on the occasion of the exhibition from the Generali Foundation, Vienna 11 May-12 August 2001. List of Works in Exhibition. Biographies and Bibliography. To be able to take one's self off like a jacket and put on another self--who hasn't occasionally wished it were possible? Identity and transformation are among the central issues for contemporary art making, and Double Life pulls together a diverse selection of artists whose work embraces the possibilities of personality and appearance, racial and sexual stereotype, role-playing and reality. The artists in Double Life--from Marina Abramovic, Adrian Piper, and Andy Warhol to Ion Grigorescu, Eleanor Antin, Pierre Huyghe and Cindy Sherman--have all employed various strategies in their desire to assume different roles. Whether ironic, eccentric, utopian or critical, their methods have ranged from the subtle to the extreme. Zoe Leonard's pin-up calendar is filled with sexy portraits of her bearded self. Early black-and-white photographs by Cindy Sherman show the artist casually dressed as a random sampling of everyday people. Pierre Huyghe's Ann Lee is an anime extra, a digital character completely lacking any discernible identity. But artist Lynn Hershman perhaps best articulates the issue when she writes, "I always told the truth for the person who I was, but the person kept fluctuating."

Hardcover. London, Little, Brown UK , 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 352 pages, lavishly illustrated in color. This is a truly exceptional collection of drawings from one of our most revered cultural commentators. Gerald Scarfe began his career in the 60s working for PUNCH and PRIVATE EYE before taking a job as a political cartoonist for the DAILY MAIL. He then worked for TIME Magazine in New York before starting his long association with the SUNDAY TIMES that still exists today in the form of his weekly drawings. His varied career has seen him work with Pink Floyd (The Wall, Wish You Were Here), Roger Waters and Eric Clapton (The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking), Disney (Hercules), English National Ballet (The Nutcracker), Los Angeles Opera (Fantastic Mr Fox) as well as produce such iconic images as those for the titles of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. His work has featured in the New Yorker and various BBC TV films such as Scarfe on Sex and Scarfe on Class. Exhibitions of his paintings and drawings have appeared in the Tate Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. He is viewed by many as both a national treasure and a genius and this is the first collection of his work to appear for 20 years.

Hardcover. NY, Pointed Leaf Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The first monograph on the work of Kenneth Paul Block, one of the most influential fashion illustrators of the twentieth century. The oversize, lavishly illustrated book chronicles Block's lifetime of drawings, watercolors, and astute observations during the artist's over 30-year career at Women's Wear Daily, powerful fashion publication. A long awaited book of astonishingly vibrant fashion and portrait drawings of swan necked beauties by a much admired fashion-insider. Mr. Block studied at The Parsons school of Design and illustrated the work of the most influential fashion designers from about the mid 20th century to the nineties before unoriginal, mediocre photography (and unskilled illustrations) completely dominated how fashion was communicated to the celebrity obsessed, style challenged, uninformed masses. With seemingly effortless ease (the energy in the art looks like it could have been sketched yesterday!), Mr. Block drew the ever changing mood of fashion from London Mod to Italian Modern, Preppy Classic to Japanese Experimental, French couture to American casual and inspired many generations of fashion enthusiasts in the process. Mr. Block's portraits showcase a few of his favorite ladies. A rare and exquisite breed who set the standard for elegance and chic for most of the 20th century. Society beauties like Mrs. Guinness, Mrs. Paley, Mrs. Guest, Mrs. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Kennedy speak of a time when grace, poise and mystery mixed with a certain sense of knowing defined a chic, stylish lady. PLEASE NOTE: The book,while clean and bright, has a mild musty smell. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY due to size and weight.

Hardcover. Cleveland, Collins, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 96 pages. Illustrated with full color photographs and art by Tasha Tudor. Dust jacket worn with Short closed tears along edges - dust jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Knockabout Comics, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 264 pages. Hardcover, no dust jacket issued. Extensive b&w and color illustrations by the two Crumbs. Illustrated paste downs and end papers. Includes appendix of portraits. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2014, Hardcover, 176 pages. 83 color portraits by Friedman. Like new condition. No dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. NY, Blast Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 110 pages. Melvin Burkhart the Anatomical Wonder; Zip the Pinhead; Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins; Johnny Eck, the King of the Freaks; Koo Koo the Birdgirl; and 45 more fascinating sideshow freaks both famous and obscure are immortalized in Drew Friedman's color portraits.

Softcover. New York , Museum of Modern Art , 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Unpaginated (86 pages), maroon illustrated wrappers. This is an album of early photographs taken of the New York red light district around 1912 by Bellocq. Friedlander took prints from the original plates for this book and they provide a fascinating documentary on bordellos at this interesting time in history. Reputedly never taking 'dirty' pictures of the girls, Bellocq confined his endeavors to recording for posterity these ladies in both clad and unclad poses. The foreword takes the form of a conversation between Friedlander and Dan Leyrer, who was also a photographer and a contemporary of Bellocq.

Hardcover. New York, Benjamin Blom, reprint, 1972, Book: Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 65 pages. Reissue of rare 1930 first edition. Brown cloth covers with gilt titles to spine, illustrated profusely with over 50 b&w plates. Copy still packaged in original shrinkwrap, never opened; in excellent condition.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages, illustrated with color, b&w photos throughout. A visual biography of Edie Sedgwick, 60's fashion and film icon. Like new in an acetate dust jacket.Model, film star, socialite, friend, lover, addict, Edie Sedgwick was the first "it" girl of the Andy Warhol Factory scene and later muse to Bob Dylan. The arc of Edie's life traced the rise and fall of the 1960s from idyllic experimentation to dissolute recklessness. After being toasted by the whole of New York City, Edie died alone of a drug overdose in California at the age of 28. David Weisman (with John Palmer) filmed Edie for the last five years of her life in his cult film Ciao! Manhattan. When he recently uncovered lost footage of Edie, David was inspired to create Edie: Girl on Fire, a book and a documentary film that explores Edie's true story. He and coauthor Melissa Painter have tracked down and interviewed many of Edie Sedgwick's surviving intimates, including Danny Fields, Baby Jane Holzer, and Ultra Violet. They also unearthed hundreds of never-before-published photos portraits, professional ad shoots, and heartbreaking snapshots of the girl who won New York's heart and nearly burned down the Chelsea hotel. The book also features a CD with Edie's last interview ever, a riveting account of a rollercoaster life.

Hardcover. New York, Abbeville Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 276 pages illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Gray cloth with dark green title to spine. Pictorial dust jacket. Beautiful copy. Like new. Edward Hicks (1780-1849), itinerant Quaker preacher and painter of coaches, signs and his own pictures, viewed Paine and Spinoza as devils, considered slavery a moral but not a political issue, and abhorred the temperance movement. When not torturing himself with guilt for being an artist or for leaving his wife and children in order to preach, he produced some masterpiecesnotably The Peaceable Kingdom, whose 50 or so variants dramatize Isaiah's biblical prophecies. Fifty color plates and 100 halftones show Hicks's folk renditions of William Penn, Noah's ark, David and Jonathan, along with his pastoral landscapes.

Hardcover. NY, Merrell, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages. Over the course of his fifty-year career, American photographer Edward Weston (1886-1958) blazed a path into Photo-Modernism rendering portraits, landscapes, still-lifes and nudes. In 1902, a sixteen-year-old Weston took up photography in Highland Park, Illinois, where he worked as an amateur for five years. In 1907, at the age of twenty-one, Weston moved to Tropico, California, now the city of Glendale in Los Angeles County, where he constructed his first studio and set about with great purpose to become a photographic artist. Examining Weston's earliest sharp- and soft-focus photographs reveals that the young artist had already formed a perfect sense of composition that was to be the hallmark of his later work. Presenting Weston's earliest work from a recently discovered family album, Edward Weston: Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist compares the artist's naive first artistic efforts with his latest masterworks to show the persistence and evolution of his singular vision to find essential form in the vernacular with an ever-increasing intensity. As a young man deeply intuitive and original in his creative expression, Edward Weston demonstrates that his teenage work, beginning with his amateur snapshots, embrace the same significant form as the later work for which he is now considered a master.

Hardcover. Munich/NY, Prestel, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 296 pages, color illustrations and portraits throughout. Issued in conjunction with a 2014-2015 exhibition of portraiture rendered by Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918). "Despite a career that lasted less than a decade, Schiele is considered one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. A protege of Gustav Klimt, Schiele is celebrated for his singular style of draftsmanship, unusual use of color, and physically raw, often sexually provocative depictions of his sitters. Schiele's expressive style and controversial subject matter played an important role in the advancement of modernism in Europe. ... Both the catalogue and the exhibition are divided into six groupings of the artist's work: Family and Academy; Fellow Artists; Sitters and Patrons; Eros; Lovers; and Self-Portraits and Allegorical Self-Portraits. In addition, there is a section highlighting a traumatic and pivotal period in Schiele's life: his arrest and imprisonment during the spring of 1912. The color plates document the evolution of the artist's style, both pre- and post-imprisonment. Schiele's untimely death at the age of 28 adds a mythic quality to his abbreviated career." (dj) With five thematic and illustrated essays, and many illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , privately printed, 1st, 1882, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. large folio, maroon cloth with gilt stamping. Covers worn, especially corners. Internally clean. 187 pages plus 51 full-page plates: 32 artotypes, 18 engravings, 1 chromo-lithograph. Some plates with light foxing, small water stains to some margins.In 1879, Gorringe won the contract to move the obelisk of Thutmosis III from Alexandria to Central Park for $75,000. This book is about the expedition to retrieve the obelisk and a study of the other standing obelisks in Paris and London. Frontispiece portrait of William Vanderbilt who financed the acquisition of the monument. Scarce in original printing.

Hardcover. US, Glitterati, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 272 pages. In his debut book of photography, with a foreword by one of the luminaries of NYC culture and entertainment, Adrian Buckmaster's monograph presents a staggeringly beautiful collection of portraits - a cross-section of humanity in all of its glorious diversity, from the ordinary to the extraordinary and everything in-between. Having spent his early years shooting commercial beauty and fashion, Buckmaster soon shifted focus to more personal projects, challenging conventional notions of beauty and celebrating the eccentricities of those whom society might classify as "misfits." Echoes of Buckmaster's early career remain, in the form of exquisite costuming, make-up, and scenic design. Despite an element of performance, there is an undeniable rawness to these portraits, in which subjects are both aware of the camera's gaze and sympathetically self-conscious, robing and disrobing, revealing and concealing. Buckmaster's photographic genius is encapsulated in his uncanny ability to fastidiously art direct while simultaneously stripping away layers of formality and convention. Arranged in three movements: Imposing, Revealing, and Inventing, this collection progresses from traditional portraiture to increasingly intimate portrayals, as subjects expose, create, and invent themselves. Included in this endlessly varied spectrum of characters are Burlesque performers, families, brides, lovers, and all manner of tattoos and body piercings. There are classical reclining nudes, reminiscent of Edouard Manet's Olympia or Titian's Sleeping Venus, dancers with incredible physical strength and dexterity, women costumed as peacocks and geishas, a contortionist inside a trunk, even a green-skinned man, bejewelled like an Indian deity.

Hardcover. NY, Prestel, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher'd shrinkwrap. This volume, on a unique and wide-ranging collection of figural sculptures from sub-Saharan Africa, examines not only each distinctive piece, but also how these works of art express value systems and cultural relationships both inside and outside Africa. The Richard H. Scheller Collection, presented in this book and on display at the de Young in San Francisco, offers a diverse portrait of sub-Saharan African sculpture. More than 100 distinct ethnic groups from more than 20 present-day countries are represented by works of art spanning several centuries and encompassing a broad array of styles. These objects represent ancestors, express community values, and serve religious and ceremonial purposes. Beautifully photographed in natural light, the sculptures range in style from classic and iconic to rare and unusual. The geographical breadth of the collection and the variations in the depictions will allow readers to explore both the histories and formal qualities of the genre. Texts by leading scholars enhance the understanding of 122 objects, alongside essays on major sculptures and themes. Writings on the scientific testing of pieces and the process of photographing the works round out this volume that expands our understanding of African figurative art.

Hardcover. London, Hardie Grant Books, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Born into a wealthy New York family in 1898, Marguerite 'Peggy' Guggenheim was one of the greatest art collectors of the 20th century. Using her inheritance to open her first art gallery, Peggy's love of art lead her to eventually settle in Venice, where she relaunched her life after becoming the star of the 1948 Venice Art Biennale. For her, a life without the inspiration of her artist and writer friends would have been unthinkable. In Encounters with Peggy Guggenheim, renowned photographer stefan moses reveals his collection of photographs of Peggy, taken between 1969 and 1974, many of which have never been seen before. Striking, eccentric and dramatic, Moses photographed Peggy in her favourite places around Venice, as well as in her private palazzo at Canal Grande. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, WA, University of Washington Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 224 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. A tight copy. Contemporary portraits of key personalities aboard the ship, scale models and plans of the ship itself, scientific instruments taken on the voyage, commemorative medals and sketches, the objects (over 140) featured in this book tell the story of the Endeavour voyage and its impact ahead of the 250th anniversary in 2018 of the launch of this seminal mission. Artwork made both during and after the voyage will be seen alongside actual specimens. By comparing the voyage originals with the often stylized engravings later produced in London for the official account, Endeavouring Banks investigates how knowledge gained on the mission was gathered, revised, and later received in Europe. Items that had been separated in some cases for more than two centuries are brought together to reveal their fascinating history not only during but since that mission. Original voyage specimens are featured together with illustrations and descriptions of them, showing a rich diversity of newly discovered species and how Banks organized this material, planning but ultimately failing to publish it. In fact, many of the objects in the book have never been published before.

Hardcover. US, Prestel, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 128 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The first publication dedicated to Rose Mandel, a pioneering woman in photography, introduces her remarkable, if often overlooked, body of work to a wider audience. Born in Poland, Rose Mandel immigrated to California in 1942. A love of photography soon brought her into contact with Edward Weston, and then with Ansel Adams and Minor White, both of whom had a strong influence on Mandel's work. Including her important sequence The Errand of the Eye, this book presents the sensitivity and clarity of Mandel's vision. Images from natural and man-made environments, eloquent portraits, and abstract landscapes convey Mandel's delight in the compositions and patterns that can be found anywhere, whether walking along a city street or a country path. These photographs are the result of a highly refined sense of craftsmanship and a complex understanding of psychology and abstract expressionism that caused Mandel to be described as "a painter with a camera." The first monograph on the artist, this volume features an enlightening overview of Mandel's life and work, along with an illustrated chronology and exhibition history.

Softcover. Germany, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages. Softcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. For the last 50 years, Erro has been creating paintings that make equal use of art history, cartoons, comic books, politics, popular culture and social tableaux. This publication features Erro's series Scapes, and for the first time, presents the entire 1968 Monster cycle--double portraits that contrast the official likenesses of celebrities with monstrously distorted visages.