Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PROSE on the title page. In a brilliant, wry, and provocative book, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose explores the complex relationship between the artist and his muse. In so doing, she illuminates with great sensitivity and intelligence the elusive emotional wellsprings of the creative process. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2nd pr, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 312 pages, color and b&w illustrations. A bristling and brilliant memoir of the mid-twentieth-century New York School of painters and their times by the renowned artist and critic Edith Schloss, who, from the early years, was a member of the group that shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York. Schloss was born in Germany and moved to New York City during World War II. She became part of a thriving community of artists and intellectuals that included Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, John Cage, and Frank O'Hara. She married the photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt. She was both a working artist and an incisive critic, and was a candid and gimlet-eyed witness of the close-knit community that was redefining the world of art. In Italy she spent time with Giorgio Morandi, Cy Twombly, Meret Oppenheim, and Francesca Woodman. Remainder dot to top edge otherwise clean.
Softcover. Cambridge, Komatik Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, oblong format. In 1917, while still in art school, Edward Shenton joined Company B, 103rd Engineers of the Pennsylvania National Guard. He stocked up on art materials, including many canvas-bound sketchbooks and a watercolor set, and went off to train and fight. Much of the war he witnessed made their way into his sketchbooks. When Ed returned home, no one wanted to hear about the war, much less see images of the horrors of battle. He went back to art school and his sketches were put away and forgotten. He had a brilliant career as an illustrator. His drawings graced the cover of Scribner's Magazine for ten years and embellished books by, among others, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolf.Edward Shenton had a long career as an outstanding illustrator, author, and teacher and, after a very full life, died at the age of eighty-two. Nine decades after they were put away, his son came across Ed's sketchbooks and he and I decided that they, along with his father's wartime story, had to be shared with the world.
Hardcover. University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 512 pages. Historians, biographers, and scholars of John James Audubon and natural history have long been mystified by Audubon's 1843 Missouri River expedition, for his journals of the trip were thought to have been destroyed by his granddaughter Maria Rebecca Audubon. Daniel Patterson is the first scholar to locate and assemble three important fragments of the 1843 Missouri River journals, and here he offers a stunning transcription and critical edition of Audubon's last journey through the American West. Patterson's new edition of the journals--unknown to Audubon scholars and fans--offers a significantly different understanding of the very core of Audubon's life and work. Readers will be introduced to a more authentic Audubon, one who was concerned about the disappearance of America's wild animal species and yet also loved to hunt and display his prowess in the wilderness. This edition reveals that Audubon's famous late conversion to conservationism on this expedition was, in fact, a literary fiction. Maria Rebecca Audubon created this myth when she rewrote her grandfather's journals for publication to make him into a visionary conservationist. In reality the journals detail almost gratuitous hunting predations throughout the course of Audubon's last expedition.
Softcover. Greenwich CT, Fairview Printers, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, glossy pictorial stiff wraps, softcover; 187 pages plus index; black and white illustrations and photographic illustrations; very good.
Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 3rd pr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Tojiro, a nine-year-old orphan, sells rice cakes on the streets of 19th-century Edo, the bustling city we now call Tokyo. One of his customers is the grumpy, eccentric octogenarian Hokusai. The old man takes a liking to Tojiro, and soon employs him as his assistant. The boy's ignorance provides a convenient vehicle for introducing the artist's life and work. Much of the dialogue and action is written for the purpose of conveying information about Hokusai, as well as the technique of woodblock printing and the social customs of Edo. The book's greatest strength is not the text, but the art that enlivens every page. A combination of the author's watercolors and reproductions of Hokusai's drawings and woodblock prints, the illustrations are arranged in enticing and varied page designs.
Softcover. Rochester NY, George Eastman House, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 127 page book with 40 black & white and color images by Stieglitz. Essays by Eugenia Parry, Laura Downey and Therese Mulligan. A complete illustrated catalog in rear of the collection O'Keeffe left to George Eastman House in 1951.
Yorkshire UK, White Owl, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An in-depth look at the history that shaped the much beloved Herge and the Tintin books. Herge created twenty-four Tintin books which have been translated into more than seventy languages and sold 230 million copies worldwide. The author takes an in-depth look at the man behind the cultural phenomenon and the history that helped shape these books. As well as focusing on the controversies that engulfed Herge, this biography will also look at his personal life, as well as the relationships and experiences that influenced him.
Hardcover. NY, The Century Company, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 381 pages, b&w illustrations. VOLUME 2 ONLY of a scarce set on the life and works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), an American Beaux-Arts sculptor who is best known for his statues commemorating Abraham Lincoln and Union officers of the Civil War, including Robert Gould Shaw, William Tecumseh Sherman, and John Logan. Edited by his only child, Homer (1880-1953), an artist and museum administrator in his own right. Owner's bookplate on front fly leaf otherwise clean.
Hardcover. London, Phaidon Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 286 pages. 120 plates and 106 B&W text illustrations. Portrait frontispiece. Light brown cloth cover. Foxing to edges. Otherwise, a clean, tight copy.
Softcover. London, Virago, reprint, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 321 pasges, color illustrations. During childhood, Joanna Moorhead heard about a wild cousin called Prin who had fled their suffocatingly respectable family. When Joanna travelled to Mexico to find her, it was the start of a life-changing friendship, for her relative was none other than Leonora Carrington, the last surviving Surrealist. This book tells how, over tea and tequila, Leonora recalled her extraordinary life, her relationship with Max Ernst, her incarceration in an asylum, and her friendships with Picasso, Dali and Frida Kahlo.
Softcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 110 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition. The "nasty, negative, misanthropic" comic genius proves he has a sweet side.Cute little kittens, angels, and babies? Flowers, ice cream cones, and German boy bands? Coming from, supposedly, the creepiest and most pessimistic artist of his generation? Yes indeed, there is a "sweeter side" to R. Crumb. These delectable illustrations-whether depicting Bernie the Cat pawing for his master's affection, the timeworn beauty of a French village cul-de-sac, or a quiet night chez Crumb-wonderfully exemplify the many tender moments that have, until now, played second fiddle to the cult icon's more raunchy sketches. Now Crumb harkens back to his humble American beginnings as a Cleveland greeting card illustrator, when his innate knack for the grotesque had to be suppressed for the perennial appeal of "cute." The result is this cheery and blue-skied world, where readers of every conceivable personality type, age group, even sexual persuasion can finally enjoy the artist's momentary lapse from naughty to nice. Color and black-and-white illustrations throughout
Softcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2010-11-01, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 110 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition. The "nasty, negative, misanthropic" comic genius proves he has a sweet side.Cute little kittens, angels, and babies? Flowers, ice cream cones, and German boy bands? Coming from, supposedly, the creepiest and most pessimistic artist of his generation? Yes indeed, there is a "sweeter side" to R. Crumb. These delectable illustrations-whether depicting Bernie the Cat pawing for his master's affection, the timeworn beauty of a French village cul-de-sac, or a quiet night chez Crumb-wonderfully exemplify the many tender moments that have, until now, played second fiddle to the cult icon's more raunchy sketches. Now Crumb harkens back to his humble American beginnings as a Cleveland greeting card illustrator, when his innate knack for the grotesque had to be suppressed for the perennial appeal of "cute." The result is this cheery and blue-skied world, where readers of every conceivable personality type, age group, even sexual persuasion can finally enjoy the artist's momentary lapse from naughty to nice. Color and black-and-white illustrations throughout
Hardcover. NY, Basic Books, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 275 pages. Translated from the French by Olivier Bernier. Preface by Virgil Thomson. The autobiography of a Jewish painter who fled from Bolshevik Russia to Spain, moved to France and who was imprisoned during WWWII by the Germans and who moved eventually to the U.S.
Softcover. London, Tate Publishing, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 224 pages illustrated in color. J.M.W. Turner was a fascinating and enigmatic figure. Both astonishingly prolific and extraordinarily innovative, he is widely seen as the greatest British landscape painter of them all, anticipating and surpassing the Impressionists in his dramatic interpretations of the effects of light and color. "The Turner Book" goes beyond the usual interpretations of the artist, revealing the extraordinary self-belief and ambition that allowed him to continue steadfastly with his experimentation in the face of hostile critical attack. The book examines in detail key works and the techniques by which Turner realized them and features revealing extracts from his notebooks, travel journals and poetry. Beautifully illustrated with both famous and unknown works and ranging over the entire course of the artist's career, this is the essential guide to Turner's life and work. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Carroll & Graf, Softcover, 500 pages. A twentieth-century photographer, artist, writer and designer for more than fifty years, Cecil Beaton was at the center of the worlds of fashion, society, theater and film. This book brings together for the first time the never-before-published diaries from 1970 to 1980 and, unlike the six slim volumes of diaries published during his lifetime, these have been left uniquely unedited. Hugo Vickers, the executor of Beaton's estate and the author of his acclaimed biography, has added extensive notes that are as lively as the diary entries themselves. Here is the photographer for British and American Vogue, designer of the sets and costumes for the play and film My Fair Lady and the film Gigi, with a cast of characters from many worlds, at shooting parties in the English countryside, on yachts, at garden parties at Buckingham Palace, at costume balls in Venice, Paris or London. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Carroll & Graf, Softcover, 500 pages. A twentieth-century photographer, artist, writer and designer for more than fifty years, Cecil Beaton was at the center of the worlds of fashion, society, theater and film. This book brings together for the first time the never-before-published diaries from 1970 to 1980 and, unlike the six slim volumes of diaries published during his lifetime, these have been left uniquely unedited. Hugo Vickers, the executor of Beaton's estate and the author of his acclaimed biography, has added extensive notes that are as lively as the diary entries themselves. Here is the photographer for British and American Vogue, designer of the sets and costumes for the play and film My Fair Lady and the film Gigi, with a cast of characters from many worlds, at shooting parties in the English countryside, on yachts, at garden parties at Buckingham Palace, at costume balls in Venice, Paris or London. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Washington DC, National Gallery of Art , 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with blue cloth spine. In 1860 James McNeill Whistler and Joanna Hiffernan met and began a significant professional and personal relationship. Hiffernan posed as a model for many of Whistlers works, including his controversial Symphony in White paintings, a trilogy that fascinated and challenged viewers with its complex associations with sex and morality, class and fashion, academic and realist art, Victorian popular fiction, aestheticism and spiritualism. This luxuriously illustrated volume provides the first comprehensive account of Hiffernan's partnership with Whistler throughout the 1860s and 1870s a period when Whistler was forging a reputation as one of the most innovative and influential artists of his generation. A series of essays discusses how Hiffernan and Whistler overturned artistic conventions and sheds light on their interactions with contemporaries, including Gustave Courbet, for whom she also modeled. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. London, Methuen, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 256 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Ernest Howard Shepard was an English artist and book illustrator, best remembered for his charming illustrations of the beloved anthropomorphic animals in The Wind in the Willows and Winnie-the-Pooh. This fascinating study of Shepard, detailing his childhood, education and artistic development, is richly illustrated throughout with his works. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Wisconsin, Stanton & Lee Publishers, Inc., 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 240 pages. SIGNED BY OWEN GROMME. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. "SIGNED" sticker on front cover. Dust cover shows wear: some chipping on spine and edges, small tears along edges, light fading. Boards in great shape, only very light fading along bottom edges. From the dust jacket front flap: "...presents the life and art of a man who through eight decades of accomplishment as a naturalist and artist has provided us with a link between the 19th and 21st centuries."
Hardcover. New York, Artisan, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 207 pages. Black & white and color illustrations by William Steig. Introduction by John Updike. A study of the life and work of the eminent cartoonist, New Yorker cover artist, and humorist. Steig also served as art director of the New Yorker.
Hardcover. New York, Artisan, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 207 pages. Black & white and color illustrations by William Steig. Introduction by John Updike. A study of the life and work of the eminent cartoonist, New Yorker cover artist, and humorist. Steig also served as art director of the New Yorker.
Hardcover. New York, Artisan, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 207 pages. Black & white and color illustrations by William Steig. Introduction by John Updike. A study of the life and work of the eminent cartoonist, New Yorker cover artist, and humorist. Steig also served as art director of the New Yorker.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 736 pages. A rich and revelatory biography of one of the crucial cultural figures of the twentieth century. Lincoln Kirstein's contributions to the nation's life, as both an intellectual force and advocate of the arts, were unparalleled. While still an undergraduate, he started the innovative literary journal Hound and Horn, as well as the modernist Harvard Society for Contemporary Art--forerunner of the Museum of Modern Art. He brought George Balanchine to the United States, and in service to the great choreographer's talent, persisted, against heavy odds, in creating both the New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet. Among much else, Kirstein helped create Lincoln Center in New York, and the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut; established the pathbreaking Dance Index and the country's first dance archives; and in some fifteen books proved himself a brilliant critic of art, photography, film, and dance. This stunning biography, filled with fascinating perceptions and incidents, is a major act of historical reclamation. Utilizing an enormous amount of previously unavailable primary sources, including Kirstein's untapped diaries, Martin Duberman has rendered accessible for the first time a towering figure of immense complexity and achievement.