art portraits

Hardcover. US, Library of Congress/Musee d'Art Giverny, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 250 pages. An exhibition held in Paris a century ago demonstrated the key role American women photographers played in the international pictorialist movement. The accomplishment of these professional and amateur photographers clearly demonstrated a mastery of the medium and made a strong impression on those in attendance. Ambassadors of Progress explores this largely unknown event. Each of the 29 artists, including such well-known figures as Gertrude Kaesebier, Amelia van Buren and Zaida Ben-Yusuf, is represented in a selection of approximately 70 breathtaking color plates drawn from the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection at the Library of Congress and the National Museum of American History. The photographs include landscapes, portraiture, genre scenes, and still-lifes, all of which are evocatively composed and delicately toned using a variety of photographic techniques.The book contains essays by Verna Curtis (Curator of Photography, Library of Congress -- on Frances Benjamin Johnston as photographer and curator), Michel Poivert (President, Societe Francaise de Photographie -- on the French critical reception), Derrick R. Cartwright (Director, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College -- on the relationship of pictorialist photography to contemporary American painting), and Andrew Robb (Senior Photograph Conservator, Library of Congress -- on the conservation processes surrounding these works).

Softcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 224 pages. Warhol's career as an artist has been a love affair with the United States. Culled from his photographic archives, "America" is a lavishly illustrated selection of Warholian images of people and places and a photographic portrait of modern life from Warhol's camera's eye. 1st edition in paperback. Clean, bright copy, like new.

Softcover. NY, Dover, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 160 pages. Harrison Fisher's portraits of healthy, poised, active, and confident women set the standard for the concept of American beauty during the early years of the twentieth century. The artist enjoyed enormous popularity from 1905 to 1920, serving as a judge in nationwide beauty contests and maintaining a celebrity status that was unparalleled for an illustrator. This original publication recaptures the images that made Fisher famous, compiling his very best black-and-white and color illustrations for Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Ladies Home Journal as well as for books and other publications. The successors to the stylish Gibson Girls created by Charles Dana Gibson, Fisher's idealized women reflect an aspirational degree of wealth and social ease. They ride horses, play tennis, swim, go motoring in newfangled automobiles, and graciously bask in the admiration of attractive young men. These century-old images from a moment in our country's cultural history will appeal to enthusiasts of graphic art and illustration as well as to students of American art and popular culture.

Hardcover. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 272 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. A tight copy. Christopher Felver has collected over 240 photographs from tours and encounters with musicians over the past 25 years. From Doc Watson to John Cage and Mavis Staples to Sonny Rollins, this collection celebrates the tapestry and diversity of musical styles that make up the American sonic landscape.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Page and Company, 1st, 1927, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue boards with black cloth spine with label. One Hundred and Seventy-Three Portraits Selected with a Descriptive Account. With A Biographical Dictionary of the Artists. 127 pages including index. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on front page: "For Frances with love from Henry B.W. 1927." Illustrated throughout in black and white with a color frontis. Discoloration on edges of front boards, light shelf wear. Interior very good.

Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 520 pages. Whitney Balliett's long-awaited 'big book.' In it are all the jazz profiles he has written for The New Yorker during the past 24 years. These include his famous early portraits of Pee Wee Russell, Red Allen, Earl Hines, and Mary Lou Williams, done when these giants were in full flower; his recent reconstructions of the lives of such legends as Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Jack Teagarden, Zoot Sims, and Dave Tough; His quick but indelible glimpses into the daily (or nocturnal) lives of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus; and his vivid pictures of such on-the-scene masters as Red Norvo, Ornette Coleman, Buddy Rich, Elvin Jones, Art Farmer, Michael Moore, and Tommy Flanagan. Also included are such lesser known but invaluable players as Art Hodes, Jabbo Smith, Joe Wilder, Warne Marsh, Gene Bertoncini, Joe Bushkin, and Marie Marcus. Clean, like new.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages. For more than a half century, David Levine has taken on the most powerful men of the free world with only his pen and a bottle of India ink. That pen has proved to be mightier than the sword as Levine skewered, illuminated, satirized and condemned every president of the 20th century, as well as the most significant presidents from colonial times and the Civil War era. His drawing of Lyndon Johnson revealing a scar in the shape of Vietnam is considered one of the most recognized (and most copied) of the Vietnam era. His devastating wit and delicately cross hatched drawing have exposed the venality of the Nixon administration, the phoniness of the Reagan years, the duplicity of the Clinton era, and the evil of the Bush cabal. Nine administrations have come and gone during Levine's tenure, and with a new one on the horizon, the artist remains, unbowed, unfazed, and unrelenting. Now for the first time, the best of Levine's five decades of portraits of American Presidents and their administrations are gathered in a comprehensive and visually dynamic book. From John Adams to George Bush; from John Quincy Adams to George W. Bush; from the Great Emancipator to the Great Society, Levine has captured them all including newly elected Barack Obama. 

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2017, Hardcover, 352 pages. As well-known as Robert Frank the photographer is, few can say they really know Robert Frank the man. Born and raised in wartime Switzerland, Frank discovered the power and allure of photography at an early age and quickly learned that the art meant significantly more to him than the money, success, or fame. The art was all, and he intended to spend a lifetime pursuing it.American Witness is the first comprehensive look at the life of a man who's as mysterious and evasive as he is prolific and gifted. Leaving his rigid Switzerland for the more fluid United States in 1947, Frank found himself at the red-hot social center of bohemian New York in the '50s and '60s, becoming friends with everyone from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky to photographer Walker Evans, actor Zero Mostel, painter Willem de Kooning, filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Bob Dylan, writer Rudy Wirlitzer, jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus, and more. Frank roamed the country with his young family, taking roughly 27,000 photographs and collecting 83 of them into what is still his most famous work: The Americans. His was an America nobody had seen before, and if it was harshly criticized upon publication for its portrait of a divided country, the collection gradually grew to be recognized as a transformative American vision.

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 352 pages. As well-known as Robert Frank the photographer is, few can say they really know Robert Frank the man. Born and raised in wartime Switzerland, Frank discovered the power and allure of photography at an early age and quickly learned that the art meant significantly more to him than the money, success, or fame. The art was all, and he intended to spend a lifetime pursuing it. American Witness is the first comprehensive look at the life of a man who's as mysterious and evasive as he is prolific and gifted. Leaving his rigid Switzerland for the more fluid United States in 1947, Frank found himself at the red-hot social center of bohemian New York in the '50s and '60s, becoming friends with everyone from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky to photographer Walker Evans, actor Zero Mostel, painter Willem de Kooning, filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Bob Dylan, writer Rudy Wirlitzer, jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus, and more. Frank roamed the country with his young family, taking roughly 27,000 photographs and collecting 83 of them into what is still his most famous work: The Americans. His was an America nobody had seen before, and if it was harshly criticized upon publication for its portrait of a divided country, the collection gradually grew to be recognized as a transformative American vision.

Softcover. Paris, Chene, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Four softcover books in a cardboard slipcase. 64 pages each, all with 64 b&w plates by Kertesz. Books are clean and tight, very good. Slipcase has rubbing, edgewear.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 368 pages. To many, Andres Serrano is the man responsible for "Piss Christ" and a national debate over government funding of controversial art. For those who look deeper, he's a highly-accomplished, ever-evolving photographic artist. This collection reveals three years of work that produced over 100 portraits of cultural diversity in America, as filtered through the critical lens of one of America's most mythologized contemporary artists.

Hardcover. Bologna, Italy, Damiani, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, White cloth covers with gilt lettering and color picture on front. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Holy Works is the culmination of Andres Serrano's vision of Christian iconography, reinterpreted photographically for the present. Serrano's intention with these works is not to recreate specific medieval or renaissance religious paintings, nor to invest them with the iconoclasm that made his name in the 1980s, but rather to renew the genre of sacred portraiture: "Rather than destroy sacred icons," says the artist, "I reinvent and reinforce them." Serrano's subjects for this series are selected from among his friends and acquaintances, emphasizing (like Caravaggio before him) the ordinariness of human features. The genres and themes are familiar, and Holy Works includes a "Last Supper" and a "Stations of the Cross" (rendered as a triptych panel), as well as bolder portrayals typical of Serrano--a "Blood Madonna" and a "Chinoise Madonna," for example. This volume is Serrano's major statement of his religious and artistic belief.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages. With 294 illustrations, including 96 plates in full color. Bound in the publisher's original red cloth with the front cover and spine stamped in gilt. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. London, Thames and Hudson/Anthony d'Offay Gallery , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth stamped in blue. This book documents Warhol's 'archive' of living and dead celebrities from the worlds of film, show biz, art, literature & politics. 20 b&w, 90 color plates. Among the best-known images shown here are those of Truman Capote, David Hockney, John Lennon, Judy Garland, Rudolph Nureyev, Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Characteristic of Warhol's unique style of portraiture is the use of silkscreens made from Polaroid photographs - some of which were taken by the artist during encounters with his `sitters' at the notorious Factory. Great condition but MINUS the dust jacket. Clean, bright copy, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Koln GR, Walther Konig, 1st, 2008, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 118 pages, no dust jacket issued. English and French text. On the occasion of what would have been Andy Warhol's eightieth birthday, in 2008, this exquisitely produced volume examines one essential but miraculously under-studied element of the artist's work: The shadow. Beginning with photographic still lifes of skulls and taxidermied animals, then moving on to male nudes, tabletops and table settings, celebrity portraits, gems, fruits and many amazing still lifes of hammers, sickles, shoes and other ordinary objects that presage Fischli & Weiss' Equilibres by several years, Shadows and Other Signs of Life concludes with Warhol's photographs of actual shadows and an outstanding selection of abstract silkscreens, stenciled works and piss paintings. Published to accompany the eponymous exhibition at Paris' Galerie Chantal Crousel, this volume contains illuminating short texts--Anniversary Notes for Andy Warhol--by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.

Hardcover. Koln GR, Walther Konig, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 118 pages, no dust jacket issued. English and French text. On the occasion of what would have been Andy Warhol's eightieth birthday, in 2008, this exquisitely produced volume examines one essential but miraculously under-studied element of the artist's work: The shadow. Beginning with photographic still lifes of skulls and taxidermied animals, then moving on to male nudes, tabletops and table settings, celebrity portraits, gems, fruits and many amazing still lifes of hammers, sickles, shoes and other ordinary objects that presage Fischli & Weiss' Equilibres by several years, Shadows and Other Signs of Life concludes with Warhol's photographs of actual shadows and an outstanding selection of abstract silkscreens, stenciled works and piss paintings. Published to accompany the eponymous exhibition at Paris' Galerie Chantal Crousel, this volume contains illuminating short texts--Anniversary Notes for Andy Warhol--by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.

Hardcover. Camden, SC, The Sporting Heritage Collection/Live Oak Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 184 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Limited edition, #142/2300. Green leather with gilt decoration, lettering to front and spine with top edge gilt and ribbon marker. No dust jacket issued. Color frontispiece of tiger, 35 color plates (from paintings) and some color photos, 137 black-and-white plates (etchings and engravings). Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition.

Hardcover. US, Angelika Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 304 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Anna Bauer's Backstage is a comprehensive portrait of the protagonists of fashion in the twenty-first century's first decade: not just the designers but the entire cast of PR agents, photographers, make-up artists, art directors, editors and, of course, the models. Photographing at shows in Paris, Milan, London and New York, using a large-format camera and black-and-white Polaroid, Bauer decided to portray the diversity of the talent at work behind the scenes. "I got totally addicted to the backstage," Bauer says in the preface to this volume. "I wanted to show how much is involved." Elegantly designed by Fabien Baron, Backstage is divided into eight themed sections.

Softcover. Aspen CO, Aspen Art Museum, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 34 pages,15 color plates by Gaskell. Introduction by Dean Sobel.

Boston, N.Y. Graphic Society, BC Ed., 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Black & white photos. 400 pages. Flap has price, (C) page with First Edition statement but actually Book Club edition. Edited by Mary Street Alinder & Andrea Gray Stillman. In his early years in Yosemite, Adams formed the habit of writing letters at every opportunity. His correspondence, therefore, virtually provides the full record of his life. Through the years, wherever he went, from the Southwest to Maine to Alaska, he wrote literally thousands of letters and postcards. Among the family, friends, fellow photographers, environmentalists, and politicians with whom he corresponded rank such eminent names as Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Paul Strand, jimmy Carter, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Garry Trudeau, and Edward Weston. Including both sides of continuing dialogues with these people and others, this book revels the growth of the artist and the whole man, as well as the development of the art of photography through the voices of the masters. A companion volume to his best-selling autobiography, ANSEL ADAMS: LETTERS AND IMAGES is illustrated with over 100 of his photographs from monumental landscapes to family snapshots. This combination of images with the highlights of a lifetime of letter writing creates a compelling portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest artists and conservationists and one of the most personable and memorable of men.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 256 pages. Philosophical and biographical accounts of Antonin Artaud's late visual work, all reproduced in color. Antonin Artaud (1896-1948)-stage and film actor, director, writer, and visual artist-was a man of rage and genius. Expelled from the Surrealist movement for his refusal to renounce the theater, he founded the Theater of Cruelty and wrote The Theater and Its Double, one of the key twentieth-century texts on the topic. Artaud spent nine years at the end of his life in asylums, undergoing electroshock treatments. Released to the care of his friends in 1946, he began to draw again. This book presents drawings and portraits from this late resurgence, all in color. Accompanying the images are texts by by Artaud's longtime friend and editor Paule Thevenin and the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Softcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 176 pages. An unparalleled virtuoso, he captured the pulse of style from the 1960s to the 1980s, and is still revered as the most inspiring illustrator by today's practitioners. Recording and predicting contemporary style trends, Antonio also used his immense versatility to adopt a broad range of art movements, from Pop Art to Surrealism. The man himself, his life and friendships, particularly with Juan Ramos, his constant collaborator, define his oeuvre. For Antonio, life-bestial and sublime-surpassed any fiction. His illustrations and photographs capture the beautiful people who are part of celebrity folklore, and who were more often than not his friends: Jerry Hall (to whom he was engaged), Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol (with whom he worked on Interview magazine), Paloma Picasso and Marlene Dietrich. Packed with previously unpublished material, this is a thrilling retrospective about an artist who is represented in major collections from the Metropolitan to the Louvre. Even posthumously, Antonio has not relinquished his grip on the fashion world: his style and quest for beauty live on. 230 illustrations, 155 in color

Softcover. New York , Aperture Book, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Fall 1897. Includes work by: Sebastiao Salgado, Susan Meiselas, David Goldblatt, Bill Burke. Also writing by Arthur Miller, William Shawcross, Frances Hodgson, Nadine Gordimer.

Softcover. New York , Aperture Book, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Spring 1988. Contains photographs from: John Baldessari, Bill Burke. David Levinthal, Barbara Kruger, Annette Lemieux. There is also an article on the Starn Twins written by Bruce Chatwin. A clean, tight copy.