Softcover. New York, W. W. Norton, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 509 pages. Softcover with minor wear to edges. Otherwise clean, unmarked copy. Color and black & white images throughout. Heavily illustrated throughout. Chapters explore Edward Hopper's career as an illustrator and his mature style. Much of the catalogue comprised of color plates. Includes magazine covers, short story illustrations and advertisements. xii, 54 pages plus 110 leaves of plates.
Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt and Co. , 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, SIGNED BY AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR on half title page. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. As a boy, Edward Hopper knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up: on the cover of his pencil box, he wrote the words EDWARD HOPPER, WOULD-BE ARTIST. He traveled to New York and to Paris to hone his craft. And even though no one wanted to buy his paintings for a long time, he never stopped believing in his dream to be an artist. He was fascinated with painting light and shadow and his works explore this challenge. In this striking picture book biography, Robert Burleigh and Wendell Minor invite young readers into the world of a truly special American painter (most celebrated for his paintings "Nighthawks" and "Gas").
Hardcover. NY, Rizzoli, Revised Ed., 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 777 pages. In the art of Edward Hopper (1882-1967), tense, unhappy men and women, in whom we recognize something of our neighbors and ourselves, play out mysterious dramas in silent, stripped-down spaces - stages raked by an unrelenting and revealing light. These paintings, and Hopper's equally evocative landscapes and houses, make us wonder: what kind of man had this haunting vision, and what kind of life engendered this art? No one is better qualified to answer these questions than the art historian Gail Levin, author of the major studies of Hopper's work (including the catalogue raisonne) and curator of many exhibitions that explored his development and cultural context. Delving deeply into his art and into a rich archive of unpublished letters and diaries, she now constructs "An Intimate Biography, " which reveals the true nature and personality of the man himself - and of the woman who shared his life and helped to shape his art. Jo Hopper's diaries permit an intimate look at the interactions of an indissolubly bonded couple, revealing for the first time the personal tensions that lie behind some of Hopper's most haunting works. Lacks dust jacket but a clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 306 pages. Green cloth hardcover with gilt illustration of lighthouse on front cover and gilt lettering on spine. In a lightly worn dust jacket. Green endpapers and color frontispiece. Edited by Milton S. Fox, book design by Nai Y. Chang. Numerous b/w and color plates (246 reproductions of Hopper's work, 88 in full color).
Softcover. London, Unicorn Press Ltd, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Softcover. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Over 100 drawings and paintings in black & white and color, many of which are published for the first time in this book.
Softcover. Northampton, Mass., Smith College Museum of Art, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 170 pages, b&w and color illustrations. Light edge wear, rubbing to wrappers. Else a clean, tight copy.
Softcover. Milwaukie OR, Dark Horse, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 346 pages, trade paperback with french flaps. It would be hard to imagine any creators who have more greatly affected their chosen medium than Will Eisner and Frank Miller have influenced the world of comics and graphic novels. Often misunderstood, but enduringly enjoyed by people from all walks of life, the comic book has in recent years been recognized as a "legitimate" art form by cultural institutions ranging from Harvard University to the Smithsonian, from The New Yorker to the Art Institute of Chicago. Now, culture-curious readers and life-long fans of the comics medium are invited to read along as two of the medium's greatest contributors-legendary innovator and godfather of sequential art Will Eisner, and the modern master of cinematic comics storytelling, Frank Miller-discuss one on one in an intimate interview format, the ins-and-outs of this compelling and often controversial art form. Eisner/Miller is profusely illustrated and features rare, behind-the-scenes photos of Eisner, Miller, and other notable creators.
Softcover. New York, MOMA, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 127 pages, b&w and color illustrations. Light edge wear to wrappers; yellowing to spine. Else a clean, tight copy. Illustrated with eighty-four reproductions, eighteen of which are in color, as well as fifty-one reference illustrations. Bibliography. Index.
Softcover. New York, MOMA, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 127 pages, b&w and color illustrations. Light edge wear to wrappers; yellowing to spine. Else a clean, tight copy. Illustrated with eighty-four reproductions, eighteen of which are in color, as well as fifty-one reference illustrations. Bibliography. Index.
Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 419 pages, photos in color and b&w. Remainder mark to bottom edge, else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Harper, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 419 pages, photos in color and b&w. Remainder mark to bottom edge, else a clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition.
Hardcover. US, Harper, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 419 pages, photos in color and b&w. Remainder mark to bottom edge, else a clean, tight copy.
Softcover. Madrid, La Fabrica, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 256 pages. Softcover. Very clean, unmarked copy with minor wear to wrapper edges. Over 250 full page black and white photographs. Includes photographs of iconic figures such as, John and Jackie Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammed Ali, Alfred Hitchcock, Joan Baez, and Salvador Dali.
Hardcover. New York, E. P. Dutton, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 240 pages illustrated throughout with 156 plates including 74 in full color. Remainder mark on bottom edge. Large folio. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. Follows the artist from his birth in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1892, through the 1980's. Beautiful color plates include costume design, magazine covers (Harper's Bazar), sculpture, vases, mirrors, medallions, jewelry, labels, bottles, playing cards, watches.
Hardcover. Indianapolis, Indiana, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Hardcover no dust jacket. Color pictures throughout. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to boards. Decoding Robert Indiana's work for a new generation, this revelatory book explores previously unknown autobiographical elements in the work of the Pop artist and printmaker. Famously proclaiming himself to be "an American painter of signs," Robert Indiana has created an enormous body of work, much of it boldly colored abstractions. In this incisive new examination of the artist, based on ongoing conversations with Indiana, art historian Martin Krause sifts through autobiographical clues within the artist's work and finds a wealth of affecting and affectionate references to Indiana's childhood, literary heroes, and the cultural icons of his generation. In addition, a penetrating essay by Pop art scholar John Wilmerding deconstructs Indiana's use of geometric shapes, making unexpected connections that enhance Krause's thesis. Accompanied by reproductions of more than 50 prints from the period 1960-2010--and focusing specifically on series such as Decade: Autoportraits, Vinalhaven Suite, and The Hartley Elegies as well as the "Love" and "Hope" images and studies of Marilyn Monroe, Picasso, and the Brooklyn Bridge--Krause's decryption of Indiana's visual language provides telling insight into the work of this quintessentially American artist.
Hardcover. Clarkson N. Potter, inc, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 236 pages. b&w and color illustrations and photographs. Red cloth spine. Dust jacket edgewear, otherwise in good shape. Everett Shinn (1876 - 1953) was an American realist painter and member of the Ashcan School. He also exhibited with the short-lived group known as "The Eight," who protested the restrictive exhibition policies of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design. He is best known for his robust paintings of urban life in New York and London, a hallmark of Ashcan art, and for his theater and residential murals and interior-design projects. His style varied considerably over the years, from gritty and realistic to decorative and rococo.
Softcover. NY, Berry-Hill Galleries, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 176 pages. 5 b&w, 55 color plates. Issued in conjunction with an exhibition featuring the work of Ashcan artist Everett Shinn (1876-1953). A tremendous presentation of text and richly printed color illustrations. Clean copy
Hardcover. NY, Ecco, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 454 pages, b&w, color illustrations. Los Angeles in the 1960s: riots in Watts and on the Sunset Strip, wild weekends in Malibu, late nights at The Daisy discotheque, openings at the Ferus Gallery, and the convergence of pop art, rock and roll, and the New Hollywood. At the center of it all, one inspired, improbable, and highly combustible couple--Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward--lived out the emblematic love story of '60s L.A. The home these two glamorous young actors created for themselves and their family at 1712 North Crescent Heights Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills became the era's unofficial living room, a kaleidoscopic realm--"furnished like an amusement park," Andy Warhol said--that made an impact on anyone who ever stepped into it. Hopper and Hayward, vanguard collectors of contemporary art, packed the place with pop masterpieces by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and Warhol, and welcomed a who's who of visitors, from Jane Fonda to Jasper Johns, Joan Didion to Tina Turner, Hells Angels to Black Panthers. In this house, everything that defined the 1960s went down: the fun, the decadence, the radical politics, and, ultimately, the danger and instability that Hopper explored in the project that made his career, became the cinematic symbol of the period, and blew their union apart--Easy Rider.
Hardcover. NY, Ecco, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 454 pages, b&w, color illustrations. Los Angeles in the 1960s: riots in Watts and on the Sunset Strip, wild weekends in Malibu, late nights at The Daisy discotheque, openings at the Ferus Gallery, and the convergence of pop art, rock and roll, and the New Hollywood. At the center of it all, one inspired, improbable, and highly combustible couple--Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward--lived out the emblematic love story of '60s L.A. The home these two glamorous young actors created for themselves and their family at 1712 North Crescent Heights Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills became the era's unofficial living room, a kaleidoscopic realm--"furnished like an amusement park," Andy Warhol said--that made an impact on anyone who ever stepped into it. Hopper and Hayward, vanguard collectors of contemporary art, packed the place with pop masterpieces by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and Warhol, and welcomed a who's who of visitors, from Jane Fonda to Jasper Johns, Joan Didion to Tina Turner, Hells Angels to Black Panthers. In this house, everything that defined the 1960s went down: the fun, the decadence, the radical politics, and, ultimately, the danger and instability that Hopper explored in the project that made his career, became the cinematic symbol of the period, and blew their union apart--Easy Rider.
Hardcover. Leicestershire, England, Matador, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 262 Pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light edgewear to dust jacket. Previous owner's bookplate on front fly leaf, otherwise, clean, tight copy. Black and white pictures throughout.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 311 pages, color illustrations. Jean Strouse captures the dramas, mysteries, intrigues, and tragedies surrounding John Singer Sargent's portraits of the Wertheimer family. Her account looks at twelve portraits of one English family painted by the expatriate American artist at the height of his career...and at the intersections of all these lives with the sparkle and strife of the Edwardian age. In commissioning this grand series of paintings, Asher Wertheimer, an eminent London art dealer of German-Jewish descent, became Sargent's greatest private patron and close friend. The Wertheimers worked with Rothschilds and royals, plutocrats and dukes--as did Sargent. Asher left most of his Sargent portraits to the National Gallery in London, a gift that elicited censure as well as praise: it was a new thing for a family of Jews to appear alongside the Anglo-Saxon aristocrats and dignitaries painted by earlier masters. Strouse's account, set primarily in England around the turn of the twentieth century, takes in the declining fortunes of the British aristocracy and the dramatic rise of new power and wealth on both sides of the Atlantic. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1st US, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Non-Paginated. Hardcover. Full color and black & white illustrations by Carl Larsson. Dust jacket with rubbing along edges, areas of darkening. Clean, tight copy. A beautiful book featuring the full color watercolor artwork by Carl Larsson of his family in Sweden.
Hardcover. San Diego/NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 274 pages, b&w photos. "A shy, bald, myopic, gay albino from an ethnic Pittsburgh suburb and a beautiful, convent-educated heiress from France: This is the story of Andry Warhol and 'the girl in Andy's soup,' Isabelle Collin Dufresne, also known as Ultra Violet. It is suggested that Dali, Dufresne's companion for five years, introduced her to Andy Warhol in 1963. 'Leave Dali', said Andy. 'He's too old'. Soon after, Isabelle metamorphosed into Ultra Violet becoming an intimate of Warhol's underground scene, here recollected. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Macmillan Company , 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 122 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Illustrations by Ed Fisher. Blacka nd white. Dust jacket has light fraying and rubbing. Cover boards have edge wear. clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Pegasus Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 184 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Laminated covers. Illustrated in color. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Atria Books, 1st Hardcover, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 416 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark to bottom edge of textblock. Otherwise a very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear to dust jacket. Black and white photographs. Tracing the highs and lows of fashion photography from the late 1940s to today, Gross vividly chronicles the fierce rivalries between photographers, fashion editors, and publishers like Conde Nast and Hearst, weaving together candid interviews, never-before-told insider anecdotes and insights born of his three decades of front-row and backstage reporting on modern fashion. An unprecedented look at an eccentric and seductive profession and the men and women who practice it on the treacherous shifting sands of pop and fashion culture, Focus depicts--perhaps most importantly--the rewards and cost, both terribly high, of translating an artist's vision of beauty for an often cold and cruel commercial reality.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, A captivating, spirited account of the intense relationship among four artists whose strong personalities, passionate feelings, and aesthetic ideals drew them together, pulled them apart, and profoundly influenced the very shape of twentieth-century art. Rear of dj has a crimp at top and a short trar at spine edge.
Hardcover. Bethlehem, Lehigh Univ. Press, 1st , 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a very good dust jacket. Black & white illustrations, 298 pages. This work presents Di Giorgio's codex of machine and fort drawings for the Duke of Urbino, his sketchbook of machines, and archeological sketches in the Uffizi.
Hardcover. Washington DC, Decatur House Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue-gray cloth with gilt lettering, 100 pages of text, plus 48 pages with 107 b&w illustrations. Includes the essay: The Problem of Francesco Traini; and two particular studies: A Madonna, and An Illuminated Inferno and Trecento painting in Pisa. Edited and with Introduction by Hayden B. J. Maginnis. Mild musty odor, otherwise a clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. New York , Crown, 1st US, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 354 pages, color & black and white plates. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Traces the development of the painter's art and the course of his life, discussing his earliest memories, Sinn Fein uprisings in Ireland, World War I, Paris of the surrealists, and England during World War II.
Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 224 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, like new copy still in publishers shrink wrap. Over 200 duotone images throughout. Tight copy. Born in Cork, Ireland, Frank Browne (1880-1960) was both a distinguished Jesuit and an accomplished photographer. At age 17, before commencing his studies for the priesthood, he embarked on a tour of Europe armed with a camera. Browne quickly discovered a strong affinity for photography, and continued to take photographs throughout his life. It was not until 1985, however-when Father Edward O'Donnell SJ discovered a large trunk in the Irish Jesuit Provincial's House and found it packed with negatives and photographs-that Browne was catapulted to international fame. Father Browne's remarkable life is recorded in the superb selection of images presented in this book. With wit and a sharp eye, he observed 20th-century Ireland; life as a Jesuit priest; his experience as a passenger on the first leg of the voyage of the Titanic in 1912; and his later travels throughout Europe, Egypt, Yemen, Ceylon, and Australia. This handsome, copiously illustrated volume offers a complete survey of the photographic work of an exceptional man.
Hardcover. D Giles Ltd, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher's shrinkwrap. This is the first major publication in more than 30 years devoted to Duveneck, one of the most influential and widely respected late-nineteenth century American artists.Beloved to his students, Duveneck was lauded by many Gilded Age luminaries such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Henry James. Yet a century after his death, he is largely known only for asingle, brilliant painting, The Whistling Boy. By contextualizing his work in the artistic, cultural and social milieus of the time, this publication offers diverse perspectives on Duveneck's life, work, subjects and reputation. The essays span his beginnings as a painter of dark realism to his later impressionistic work and examine his significance as a printmaker and draftsman. The lavishly illustrated volume includes a chronology and selected bibliography. irst half of the book consists of essays which detail the artists uneven life. Numerous photos, drawings and a few great close ups. The second half of the book consists of the catalog. 128 catalog images, mostly paintings with some drawings and pastels. All in color.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with light sun-fade along spine. Green cloth boards, color-illustrated dust jacket. 236 pages, 66 color illustrations, 43 BW illustrations. Frederic Church (1826-1900), the most celebrated painter in the United States during the mid-19th century, created monumental landscapes of North and South America, the Arctic, and the Middle East. These paintings were unsurpassed in their attention to detail, yet the significance of this pictorial approach has remained largely unexplored. In this important reconsideration of Church's works, Jennifer Raab offers the first sustained examination of the aesthetics of detail that fundamentally shaped 19th-century American landscape painting. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. , 1st Edition, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 160 pages. Hardcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. Dust jacket unclipped, excellent. Cover boards bound in red cloth, gilt title on spine, all excellent. Binding tight. Spine straight. Pages and edges clean and unmarked. In beautiful condition. More than one hundred reproductions--58 in full-color--bring to life this quintessentially American artist and the dramatic and colorful imagery that has become part of America's epic story.
Hardcover. Garden City, Duobleday & Company Inc., First Edition, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 537 pages. Hardcover. Black cloth covered boards with white titles to spine. Black & white illustrations. Dust jacket with light, marginal wear, now protected with a plastic cover. Tight binding, clean & unmarked pages throughout.
Hardcover. NY, Abbeville Press, 1st thus, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Illustrated with drawings. Index. Bibliography. 487 pages. Remington, a prolific letter writer, was also an inveterate doodler. Many of these previously unpublished drawings are a part of this collection. Correspondence includes notes to his family and correspondence with President Theodore Roosevelt, Owen Wister, Poultney Bigelow, Francis Parkman, Elizabeth Custer and others. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Flagstaff, AZ, Northland Press, 1st, 1972, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 115 pages. 30 color reproductions throughout. Beautifully illustrating the skills of this remarkable man, accompanying each of his paintings with notes describing techniques employed, many with revealing comments by the artist himself. Dark blue cloth, gilt lettering to spine and front cover, color slightly faded at edges. Pictorial dust jacket with light edge wear and faint smudges to front cover. Tight binding.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 216 pages. The color-drenched gardens and sun-dappled nudes by Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874-1939) have long been loved by admirers of American Impressionism, and his paintings are treasured in museum collections across the country. This beautiful and comprehensive volume--with more than one hundred color and almost eighty black-and-white plates--is the most ambitious ever devoted to his work. It is being published in conjunction with a major retrospective of the artist's work.A biographical overview and a detailed chronology by the artist's grandson, including charming vintage photographs, provide much new information and correct several misconceptions about Frieseke's life and career. Three invaluable essays by leading scholars discuss the diverse stages of his work and place it in art historical context, detailing his experience as a student at Whistler's atelier in Paris and as a central member of the group of American expatriates who settled in Giverny, France, near the French master Monet. The book's groundbreaking scholarship casts new light on Frieseke, American Impressionism, and the art world at the turn of the last century.
Hardcover. Syracuse University Press, 3rd. Ed., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 276 pages. Color and b&w illustrations. Harold Weston's Freedom in the Wilds brings an informal history of the rugged Adirondack wilderness together with Weston's own adventures there as an artist. The vivid and spirited stories he gathered from guides, lumbermen, and visionaries continue to make the case for preserving the wild lands of the region. First published in 1971, the book became a classic of Adirondack literature notable for its exploration of the dynamic relationship between wilderness and creativity and its ever more relevant appeal to protect an area within ourselves forever wild. In this third edition, Rebecca Foster brings Weston's fascinating personal story to the foreground. A new section of the book with excerpts from Weston's rich storehouse of letters and diaries will be a revelation to fans of Weston's work or for anyone interested in the growth of an impassioned, artistic mind. Here too are new illustrations, explanatory notes, and an introduction tracing the irrepressible energy behind Weston's accomplishments, including the writings in this book.
Hardcover. D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers,Schirmer/Mosel, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 280 pages. The first 38 pages of this oversized book are devoted to a biography of Frida Kahlo's life and a discussion of some of her most famous paintings. Several vintage color and black & white photos are also included in this section. The remaining pages of this book are the plates...large full page images of her paintings reproduced in full color and detail. Each painting is titled and dated, the medium used and the current whereabouts of the original piece.
Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, pages. In his beautifully illustrated survey of Frida Kahlo's work, Lozano (art history, Iberoamerican Univ., Mexico City) explores her life and paintings in a series of essays that range from a poetic study by noted Mexican cultural critic Carlos Monsiv is to a short, prosaic piece written in 1943 by her husband, Diego Rivera, to an academic essay by Lozano himself. The common thread is how Kahlo's pre-Columbian background helped her find her own identity in the world and in the artist circles she frequented. To create a portrait of a woman so talented yet so tortured, Lozano uses Kahlo's own stunning images, offering high-quality reproductions of some of Kahlo's most famous works as well as some of her lesser-known pieces. Previously unseen photos of Kahlo at work in her studio are also included. The detail and clarity of the images is incredible, allowing the reader to explore each painting thoroughly.
hardcover. NY, Knopf , 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 448 pages. Black & white photos and illustrations. Like new. Purely out of artistic ambition, Armenian-American abstract painter Gorky (1895-1948; born in Turkey as Vostanig Adoian) fabricated a new identity, complete with an Ivy League education and personal histories with master artists, on arriving in the United States. Spender (Within Tuscany), who is married to Gorky's oldst daughter, unhesitatingly exposes the painter's many "tall tales." He also assesses Gorky's difficulty in arriving at his own aesthetic until late in life in terms of both the artist's ties to the artistic patriarchs of the previous generation, the Surrealists (including Breton, Duchamp and Brancusi) and his complex status as a forerunner who eventually became alienated from the New York Abstract Expressionists (particularly de Kooning and Rothko). Spender derives much information from anecdotal sources, including an interview with de Kooning, and assumes a chatty tone in dealing with other artists. But he becomes increasingly less sympathetic to Gorky, whose last years are presented from the perspectives of Spender's wife and her mother. Nonetheless, painting constantly despite failing health, family problems and critical indifference, Gorky's frustrations are heartbreaking. Equally compelling is the window opened on New York's art scene when it was still a small clique. Gorky was so in love with the "artist" archetype that he not only lied about himself but also plagiarized anecdotes, artistic statements, love letters and possibly even his own suicide note. Spender preserves the personal dimensions of his subject while demonstrating that the painter should have adopted a youthful declaration. "I shall be a great artist or if not a great crook"as his motto. 90 b&w illustrations.
Hardcover. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 398 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Cloth covers with stamped decoration on spine. Light soil, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, W.W. Norton, 2nd, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 627 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with minor wear to edges. Color pictures in center.
Softcover. US, Somogy Art Publishers , 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 320 pages. Softcover with little to no wear on edges. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. Bringing the famed Parisian illustrator to light, this biography centers on Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, who studied at the prestigious Royal Academy but failed to win the coveted Prix de Rome. The study relates that the subject reacted to this disappointment by throwing aside all hopes of a traditional artistic career and hastening out into the thoroughfares of Paris to sketch everything in sight, living an errant, bohemian existence and succumbing increasingly to an obsession with drawing. Detailed and engaging, this recollection demonstrates that, despite his personal eccentricities, Saint-Aubin was employed as an artist all his life.
Hardcover. New York, Stewart Tabori & Chang, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages. Oversized. Green cloth cover with some bumping to edges and corners. Dust jacket has slight wear to edges. Color and b&w illustrations and photographs throughout. A clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. New York, Beaufort Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 375 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout.
Hardcover. New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1st , 1983, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 312 pages, illustrated throughout with drawings in b&w. Black blind-stamped boards, brown cloth spine with gilt title. White pictorial dust jacket. Light wear to covers and spine, else a very nice, tight copy.
Softcover. New York, Abbeville Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Volume of the definitive work of George Segal. Softcover, 128 pages, 118 b&w and color illustrations. In very good condition, shows some rubbing on cover. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. Discusses the full range of Segal's work. Includes photographs of the artist at work. Topics include early cast sculpture, fragments and painted plasters, public commissions, and more. George Segal (1924-2000) was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement.