art biography

Hardcover. Solana Beach CA, Santa Monica Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 231 pages. Illustrated in color. "I Say, I Say . . . Son!" offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the work of the McKimson brothers, three of the most accomplished and influential animators in history. Tracing the brothers' careers from the 1920s onward, this beautifully illustrated book details how Bob McKimson created such beloved characters as Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, Sylvester Jr., and the original Speedy Gonzales, and explores Chuck and Tom McKimson's voluminous body of work at Warner Bros. Cartoons, Dell Comics, and Golden Books. Featuring original art from the Golden Age of Animation, "I Say, I Say . . . Son!" includes a wealth of material from the top animation archives--original drawings, reproductions of animation cels, comic book illustrations, lobby cards, and screen captures--along with never-before-seen photographs and other memorabilia from author Robert McKimson Jr.'s personal collection."I Say, I Say . . . Son!" is a vibrant tribute to three groundbreaking animators whose long careers included work on the Looney Tunes, Pink Panther, and Mr. Magoo series, as well as many other animation classics.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages. This stylish book re-creates the charmed life of two American expatriates in France at the turn of the 20th century-the noted artist Walter Gay and his wife, Matilda, whose glittering social circle included John Singer Sargent, Edith Wharton, Henry James, and many other artists and aristocrats. Narrated by witty excerpts from Matilda Gay's recently discovered journal, and richly illustrated with Walter Gay's remarkable, sought-after paintings of the rooms in which they and their friends lived, in Paris, Fontainebleau, Venice, and elsewhere, A Charmed Couple offers an intimate glimpse of a long-gone social milieu whose hold on the popular imagination continues to this day. WILLIAM RIEDER is a curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Author of numerous articles, most on European furniture, in such journals as Architectural Digest, Connoisseur, and Antiques, he lives in New York City. 128 illustrations, 55 in full color, 81/2 x 101/2".

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 272 pages, b&w illustrations. Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnes Varda (19282019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era, from her tour de force Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), a classic of modernist cinema, to the beloved documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) four decades later. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, former Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey explores the "complicated passions" that informed Varda's charmed life and indelible work. Rickey traces Varda's three remarkable careers-as still photographer, as filmmaker, and as installation artist. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 2nd pr., 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 388 pages, b&w illustrations. A revealing biography of Florence Gould, fabulously wealthy socialite and patron of the arts, who hid a dark past as a Nazi collaborator in 1940's Paris.Born in turn-of-the-century San Francisco to French parents, Florence moved to Paris at the age of eleven. Believing that only money brought respectability and happiness, she became the third wife of Frank Jay Gould, son of the railway millionaire Jay Gould. She guided Frank's millions into hotels and casinos, creating a luxury hotel and casino empire. She entertained Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Joseph Kennedy, and many Hollywood stars-like Charlie Chaplin, who became her lover. While the party ended for most Americans after the Crash of 1929, Frank and Florence stayed on, fearing retribution by the IRS. During the Occupation, Florence took several German lovers and hosted a controversial Nazi salon. As the Allies closed in, the unscrupulous Florence became embroiled in a notorious money laundering operation for Hermann Goring's Aerobank.Yet after the war, not only did she avoid prosecution, but her vast fortune bought her respectability as a significant contributor to the Metropolitan Museum and New York University, among many others. It also earned her friends like Estee Lauder who obligingly looked the other way. A seductive and utterly amoral woman who loved to say "money doesn't care who owns it," Florence's life proved a strong argument that perhaps money can buy happiness after all.

Hardcover. London, Thames and Hudson, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 144 pages. With 73 illustrations. Foreword by Tim Walker. Red cloth with white titles to spine and turquoise papers with photographs and white titles to board. No dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday & Co., reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Imaginative, artistic photography and stunning b&w photographs of luminaries such as Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper, Therese Duncan, The Sandburgs, Katherine Cornell, Gallant Fox and countless more. Despite having a 1963 date on the title page this is a later reprint with an ISBN number and no color images (as were in the first printing). Also the initials A.L.I.P. where flap price should be. Still, in beautiful condition with a nice dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 20, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Drawing on original and exhaustive research from interviews and never-before-seen material in the Picasso family archives, this book opens with a visit by the Hungarian-French photographer Brassai to Picasso's chateau in Normandy, Boisgeloup, where he would take his iconic photographs of the celebrated plaster busts of Marie-Therese, Picasso's mistress and muse. Picasso was contributing to Andre Breton's Minotaur magazine and he was also spending more time with the likes of Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Lee Miller, and the poet Paul Eluard, in Paris as well as in the south of France. It was during this time that Picasso began writing surrealist poetry and became obsessed with the image of himself as the mythic Minotaur--head of a bull, body of a man--and created his most famous etching, Minotauromachie. Richardson shows us the artist is as prolific as ever, painting Marie-Therese, but also painting the surrealist photographer Dora Maar who has become a muse, a collaborator and more. In April 1937, the bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War inspires Picasso's vast masterwork of the same name, which he paints in just a few weeks for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World's Fair. When the Nazis occupy Paris in 1940, Picasso chooses to remain in the city despite the threat that his art would be confiscated. In 1943, Picasso meets Francoise Gilot who would replace Dora, and as Richardson writes, "rejuvenate his psyche, reawaken his imagery and inspire a brilliant sequence of paintings." As always, Richardson tells Picasso's story through his work during this period, analyzing how it shows what the artist was feeling and thinking. His fascinating and accessible narrative immerses us in one of the most exciting moments in twentieth century cultural history, and brings to a close the definitive and critically acclaimed account of one of the world's most celebrated artists.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 500 pages, b&w illustrations. In this second volume of his definitive biography of Pablo Picasso, John Richardson draws on the same combination of lively writing, critical astuteness, exhaustive research and personal experience that made a bestseller out of the first volume and vividly re-creates the artist's life and work during the crucial decade of 1907-1917--a period during which Picasso and Georges Braque invented cubism. Clean copy in a bright dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 272 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. David Dawson was Lucian Freud's assistant, companion, and model. Freud moved in rarefied, powerful circles and was tenacious about protecting his privacy. Dawson, however, was in a unique position, and as Freud became comfortable in the presence of his camera, photographing became part of the daily ritual of the studio. These photographs reveal in a most intimate way the subjects and the stages of paintings in progress. Few artists, if any, have had their lives and their work recorded over such a length of time.

Softcover. UK, Watford Borough Council, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Original card covers. 12 b/w plates, essays, biography. Sir Hubert von Herkomer was a Bavarian-born British painter, pioneering film-director, and composer. Though a very successful portrait artist, especially of men, he is mainly remembered for his earlier works that took a realistic approach to the conditions of life of the poor. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Garden Press, 1st, 1910, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 143 pages, b&w frontispiece. INSCRIBED BY BAYLEY on front fly leaf. Maroon and gray cloth with gilt lettering on front cover.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 592 pages, b&w illustrations. Samuel Fuller, independent director-producer extraordinaire, tells the story of his life, a life that spanned most of the twentieth century. His twenty-nine tough, gritty pictures made from 1949 to 1989 set out to capture the truth of war, racism, and human frailties, and incorporate some of his own experiences. He writes of his years in the newspaper business--selling papers as a boy on the streets of New York, working for Hearst's New York Journal American, first as a copyboy, then as personal runner for the famous Hearst editor in chief Arthur Brisbane. His film Park Row was inspired by his years as a reporter for the New York Evening Graphic, where his beat included murders, suicides, state executions, and race riots--he scooped every other New York paper with his coverage of the death by drug overdose of the legendary Jeanne Eagels. Fuller talks about directing his first picture (he also wrote the script), I Shot Jesse James . . . and how, as a result, he was sought after by every major studio, choosing to work for Darryl Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox. We see him becoming one of the most prolific, independent-minded writer-directors, turning out seven pictures in six years, among them Pickup on South Street, House of Bamboo, and China Gate. He writes about making Underworld U.S.A., a movie that shows how gangsters in the 1960s were no longer seen as thugs but as "respected" tax-paying executives . . . about the making of the movie Shock Corridor--about a journalist trying to solve a murder in a lunatic asylum--which exposed the conditions in mental institutions . . . and about White Dog (written in collaboration with Curtis Hanson), a film so controversial that Paramount's then studio heads, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, refused to release it. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 310 pages, 250 b&w illustrations. The life of one of America's major literary artists, Henry David Thoreau: , born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts: a schoolmaster, tutor, surveyor, mason, gardener, farmer, house painter, carpenter, day-laborer, abolitionist, pencil-maker. lecturer, naturtalist, writer. Small name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, E. P. Dutton , 1st, 1946, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, beige cloth covers stamped in red and gilt. 450 pages, b&w illustrations. Ione Robinson (1910 - 1989) was an American artist, writer and socialite. She is most known for her reporting of the Mexican muralist movement. in the 1920s and early 30s she worked on Diego Rivera's murals at the National Palace in Mexico City. The first 3 pages with small holes to pages, the rest of text is clean. Light shelf wear.

Hardcover. NY, Phaidon Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, translucent dust jacket, 240 pages. In late 1964 Andy Warhol commissioned young fashion photographer David McCabe to document his daily activities for one year. During the course of this project, whenever the artist called McCabe would come to meet him at The Factory, an opening, a party, a coffeeshop or any place where Warhol would decide that he wanted to be accompanied by the photographer and his camera. In the end, these images were never published, perhaps because they revealed more than the increasingly-famous Warhol was willing to share with the public. Hidden away for almost 40 years, the significant majority of these 400 duotone photos are now presented together for the first time to fulfill their original intention in an astounding tour de force of dynamic and often poignant realism: A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol. These images not only represent unique documentation of one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century, but also provide a rare behind-the-scenes look at the New York art world at a time when Pop art was at its peak. McCabe's photographs are accompanied by the entertaining descriptions and reminiscences of Factory insider David Dalton, one of Warhol's first assistants.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth, 262 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs. Clean, tight copy. This portrait of Disderi and the carte de visite he patented in Paris in 1854 is far more than a biography. The c-d-v, or photographic calling card, was a relatively inexpensive product that made the photographic portrait available to the middle class . McCauley's carefully documented work explores Disderi's career and oeuvre , the impact of mass-produced celebrity cartes on the social and cultural life of mid-19th-century France, and aesthetics in c-d-v portraiture. The final third of the book is an art historical evaluation of the importance of the c-d-v for portrait painting of the period . The fine bibliography, generous illustrative matter, and detailed notes add to the value of this work for the avid student of photohistory or 19th-century studies.

Hardcover. NY, First Second, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This riveting graphic novel biography chronicles Vladimir Putin's rise from a mid-level KGB officer to the autocratic leader of Russia and reveals the truth behind the strongman persona he has spent his career cultivating. In the West's collective imagination, Vladimir Putin is a devious cartoon villain, constantly plotting and scheming to destroy his enemies around the globe and in Ukraine. But how did an undistinguished mid-level KGB officer become one of the most powerful leaders in Russian history? And how much of Putin's tough-guy persona is a calculated performance? Two-color art throughout by Brian "Box" Brown. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven , Yale University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 120 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. A glimpse inside the mind and artistic process of a fascinating contemporary cartoonist. Born to working-class parents in a small town in Italy, and reared in Chicago, Ivan Brunetti (b. 1967) was drawn to cartoons and comic strips from an early age. Finding inspiration in Spider-Man and Peanuts, he began crafting his own stories and gradually developed a unique style that he applied to imaginative, sometimes shocking subjects. The dark humor of his graphic novels earned him a cult following, yet his illustrations have had broad appeal. Now recognized as an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, Brunetti has published his work in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 120 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. A glimpse inside the mind and artistic process of a fascinating contemporary cartoonist. Born to working-class parents in a small town in Italy, and reared in Chicago, Ivan Brunetti (b. 1967) was drawn to cartoons and comic strips from an early age. Finding inspiration in Spider-Man and Peanuts, he began crafting his own stories and gradually developed a unique style that he applied to imaginative, sometimes shocking subjects. The dark humor of his graphic novels earned him a cult following, yet his illustrations have had broad appeal. Now recognized as an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, Brunetti has published his work in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others.

Hardcover. NY, Arcade, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 96 pages, profusely illustrated in color and b&w with the author/artist's drawings and photographs. Bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Arcade, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 96 pages, profusely illustrated in color and b&w with the author/artist's drawings and photographs. Bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury USA, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages. More than thirty years have passed since Al Capp's death, and he may no longer be a household name. But at the height of his career, his groundbreaking comic strip, Li'l Abner, reached ninety million readers. The strip ran for forty-three years, spawned two movies and a Broadway musical, and originated such expressions as "hogwash" and "double-whammy." Capp himself was a familiar personality on TV and radio; as a satirist, he was frequently compared to Mark Twain. Though Li'l Abner brought millions joy, the man behind the strip was a complicated and often unpleasant person. A childhood accident cost him a leg-leading him to art as a means of distinguishing himself. His apprenticeship with Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, started a twenty-year feud that ended in Fisher's suicide. Capp enjoyed outsized publicity for a cartoonist, but his status abetted sexual misconduct and protected him from the severest repercussions. Late in life, his politics became extremely conservative; he counted Richard Nixon as a friend, and his gift for satire was redirected at targets like John Lennon, Joan Baez, and anti-war protesters on campuses across the country. With unprecedented access to Capp's archives and a wealth of new material, Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen have written a probing biography. Capp's story is one of incredible highs and lows, of popularity and villainy, of success and failure-told here with authority and heart.

Hardcover. New Havn CT, Yale University Press, 1st , 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 333 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Illustrated in color, B&W. Clean, tight copy. Few painters lived the intellectual adventures of the early twentieth century as intensely as Albert Gleizes. At the centre of the public scandal over Cubism that broke out in Paris in 1911, he was with Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia in New York during the war and was one of the first European avant-garde artists to respond to the scale and vigour of New York life. Gleizes was also one of the few French painters of the 1920s to recognise nonrepresentational painting as the logical development of Cubism. His work as a painter is accompanied by an immense body of theoretical work, addressing the question posed so starkly by Duchamp and Picabia: why should we paint? What is the justification for the work of art? Over his life he touches on many spheres of human activity - religious, political and cultural history, physics and the philosophy of work.This book follows Gleizes' argument as it evolves, drawing on painting, and both published and unpublished writings. It reveals Gleizes, not just as a significant historical personality, but as a man whose work and thinking remains surprisingly fresh and relevant to the needs of our own time.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 176 pages. Albert Renger-Patzsch, together with August Sander and Karl Blossfeldt, was one of the undisputed pioneers of twentieth-century German photography. Indeed, what Sander achieved in portrait photography and Blossfeldt in plant photography, Renger-Patzsch achieved in his renderings of objects and the material world. As a protagonist of the movement that came to be known as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), he wanted to record, phenomenologically as it were, the exact appearance of objects -- their form, material, and surface. Thus he rejected any kind of artistic claim for himself. Believing that the photographer should strive to capture the "essence of the object," he called for documentation rather than art.