Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli , 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 280 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Valentina was the twentieth century's first American fashion designer celebrity, working and living on equal social footing with the clientele she dressed (Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Katharine Hepburn, Millicent Rogers, and Audrey Hepburn, among others). One of the few designers who proved that America could live without the Parisian haute couture, her career is a much needed missing link in the history of American fashion. Beyond merely turning out show-stopping evening gowns, Valentina's exotic beauty, dramatic personality, and incomparable style earned her a legendary reputation. Kohle Yohannan explores the carefully constructed persona and lore of this designer who helped define American Couture. Published in association with the Museum of the City of New York's exhibition Valentina: New York Couture and the Cult of Celebrity, this book includes photographs, never-before-seen personal ephemera, sketches, and original platinum prints from master photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, and George Hoyningen-Huene.
Hardcover. New York, Alfred van der Marck, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 176 pages. Profusely illustrated with full color reproductions (including one fold-out) of pin-up art and paintings by Alberto Vargas. Foreword by Kurt Vonnegut. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Taschen, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 416 pages, color illustrated, large format. This catalog raisonne brings together Velazquez's complete works--jaw-dropingly reproduced in extra-large format with a selection of delicious enlarged details--with insightful commentary on how his paintings give equal attention to all that they contain. To him, an old woman frying eggs or a buffoon was as important as a Pope or a King. For him, form was subservient to light and color; the brushstrokes were markers to help the viewers reconstruct each picture mentally--concepts adopted vehemently by the Impressionists. Velazquez's greatest talent was creating beauty from the grotesque, imbuing each subject with a human liveliness rarely seen on canvas. In its extensive detail and comparisons, Jose Lopez-Rey's book reveals the development of this vision. NOTE: DUE TO SIZE AND WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. London, National Gallery , 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket with small scratch on front cover. Clean, tight copy. With over 150 illustrations and an in-depth chronology, this beautifully produced and comprehensive book surveys Velazquez's entire career and explores his universal popularity. Fascinating essays by world-class Velazquez scholars address the artist's life and technique, examining his studies in Seville and Italy to his final great works at the court of Philip IV.
Softcover. London, Art/Books Hastings Contemporary, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps, 128 pages illustrated in color. The husband of Paula Rego and a visionary artist in his own right, Victor Willing (1928-1988) creates work that is characterized by dreamlike and hallucinatory imagery. Published to accompany the first major retrospective of his career, this volume traces his life decade by decade, charting his history of creative block and ill health, and analysing his paintings, drawings and sculptures.
Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two volume set. Hardcovers with dust jackets. Both in beautifully illustrated slipcase. Minor fraying to slipcase edges. Hardcovers both clean and unmarked. Color illustrations throughout.
Softcover. New York, Guggenheim Museum, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 147 pages. Softcover. Full color illustrations. Light bump to top right corner. Clean, unmarked copy.
Hardcover. London, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Nonpaginated. Hardcover. Color illustrations throughout. Clean inside and out. From the back cover: "The images in Vital Signs, Harvey Benge's fourth book of photographs, have been made in Paris, London, Prague, Hong Kong and beyond. They engage both the eye and the mind, inviting viewers to examine their own experience of urban life and what that means to them."
Hardcover. Brooklyn, NY, PowerHouse Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 123 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Black and white photographs throughout.
Rome, Franca May, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Black cardboard slip-case is VG with some wear. This is a written essay by the Italian author, Soavi of the art and world of Jean-Michel Folon. There are many full page full-color plates of the artist's paintings and serigraphs. This is also a visual essay (via color photos) of the farm in Burcy, near Paris, where the artist has his home and atelier. In all, twenty-eight of the artist's works are reproduced, most either taking up a full page, and some as two-page spreads.
Hardcover. New York , Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 352 pages. A balanced assessment of this talented and troubled figure. The 350 photographs are richly reproduced and reflect the scope of Smith's work.
Softcover. New York, St. Martins Press , 1st US, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 122 pages. Softcover. Small marking to front cover. Otherwise clean copy with minor edgewear. 107 illustrations, including 16 in color. Walter Crane, artist of Kensington, was a man of many talents, but is possibly best known for his original and charmingly executed designs which made him the leading illustrator of children's books of the Aesthetic Movement period. In the face of the commercial vulgarity and ugliness of Victorian industrialised society, he created a delicate and escapist fairy world which, with its emphasis on spontaneity and mobility of line, and its clever use of background and colour, popularised a completely new style of tasteful book designs, and brought them within reach of everyone. The influence of Crane's work and his highly novel theories of design make him an important figure in nineteenth century art history. Rodney Engen, American-born painter and lecturer, discusses Crane's style and ideas in a study delightfully arranged after Crane's own rules and book design.
Hardcover. Cologne, M. DuMont Schauberg, 2nd pr., 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 428 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. Indexed, TEXT IN GERMAN. Illustrated with 41 color plates, 100 fullpage b/w plates. In-depth monograph on the life and work of Kandinsky. Mild edgewear to dust jacket spine. Scratch to rear dust jacket. Dust jacket front flap creased. Tape stains to front and rear flyleaf. Light bumping to spine. First major retrospective monograph. Unmarked. A bright and tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Rizzoli/Aquavella Gallery, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Famous for his lush early '60s paintings of cakes and other sweets, this retrospective of Wayne Thiebaud is the definitive book on the seminal American artist. Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same title, Wayne Thiebaud: A Retrospective is the first major survey in twelve years of the work of one of the most original and accomplished American artists. This large-format book is a retrospective of his work from the 1960s to today, with numerous works coming from the artist's collection. Like many artists, Thiebaud has held on to some of the best examples of his work from every period. The book also includes his most recent work up to 2012--at 91, Thiebaud is still working from his studio in Sacramento.With more than ninety color illustrations, this book and the exhibition it documents--put together by noted art historian John Wilmerding--reveal the painter to be preoccupied with a larger slice of American life.
Hardcover. New York, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 160 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Best known for his luscious paintings of pies and ice-cream cones, American artist Wayne Thiebaud (born 1920) has been an avid and prolific draftsman since he began his career in the 1940s as an illustrator and cartoonist. This book of 116 drawings-compiled with the full cooperation of the artist to accompany a major new exhibition at the Morgan Library Museum-explores the wide range of Thiebaud's production on paper, including early sketches, luminous pastels, and watercolors, and charcoal drawings made in connection with his teaching. In subjects ranging from deli counters and isolated figures to dramatic views of San Francisco's plunging streets, Thiebaud's drawings endow the most banal, everyday scenes with a sense of poetry and nostalgia.
Hardcover. NY, Rizzoli Electa, 1st thus, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher's shrinkwrap. In remembrance of revered American artist Wayne Thiebaud who passed away in 2021 at the age of 101, the definitive monograph of Wayne Thiebaud's work is now available in a reformatted, accessibly priced edition, including his last paintings.This is the most comprehensive monograph to date on Wayne Thiebaud, with new works added, in a reformatted size. Spanning the length of his career from the 1950s to the present, the book has been made in close collaboration with the artist. Thiebaud selected the works himself, making the book an act of autobiography in a sense. At age 100, he looks back over his life and his work, rich with breakthroughs in painting and masterful individuality.
Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover with illustrated dust jacket. 358 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The most comprehensive and deluxe monograph on Wayne Thiebaud, a celebrated and active American artist, spanning the length of his career, from the mid-1950s to the present. Wayne Thiebaud is one of the world's most popular and respected painters. Born in 1920, he has lived for most of his life in Sacramento, with much of his youth spent in Long Beach; Southern California, in particular Laguna Beach, remains an area of great sentimentality. For this book he has selected the works himself, an act of autobiography in a sense. At age 94, he looked back over his life and his work, rich with breakthroughs in painting and masterful individuality. This deluxe volume, with more than 200 illustrations, covers Thiebaud's career as a painter and draftsman from 1959 to 2014. It features many of the still lifes of pies, cakes, desserts, candies, and other objects--lusciously painted, brightly colored, perfectly composed, and gently comic--for which he is best known. Such works brought national recognition in 1962 with a seminal exhibition at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York, attracting rave reviews and, to the discomfort of the artist himself, leading critics to see him as part of the Pop Art movement. The other artistic genres that he cultivated most avidly since then are landscape and cityscape, with special interests in the Sacramento River valley and San Francisco. New essays by a wide range of writers give a fresh perspective on his life and work.
Hardcover. US, Kerber, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to boards. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Dual language English and German. Spanning a half-century of painting, this comprehensive catalogue is published on the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of Werner Koch (born 1937), who lived for many years in the legendary Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. Koch is known for his works based on newspapers and pop imagery, and his drawings done on colorful backgrounds.
Hardcover. Indianapolis IN, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 212 pages with 129 color plates. Foreword by James K. Ballinger. Wonderful work by the Arizona artist who started his career as an illustrator in New York for magazines like the Saturday Evening Post. The subject is primarily the American Indian. Clean copy.
Hardcover. US, Memory/Cage, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Text in English and German. Previous owner's signature on front end paper. Faint foxing to edges and slight warping to front board, else a clean, tight copy. No dust jacket as issued. Paintings by Christoph Hansli. Text (in German and English) by John Berger. Designed by Barbara Erb. Unpaginated (40 pp.), with 9 four-color plates. 8-1/8 x 12-5/8 inches. This first edition was limited to 1,500 copies.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 286 pages. A focused investigation of Whistlers watercolors that introduces readers to a rarely seen aspect of the artists creative output In the 1880s, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) reinvented himself through the medium of watercolor. At the time, excellence in watercolor was most often associated with British artists, and most notably with the work of J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851). Whistlers embrace of watercolor allowed the expatriate artist to present himself as an heir to the great Turner, while at the same time creating easily portable works that could supply an American market and, the artist hoped, help secure his art-historical legacy in his home country. Indeed, it was the American Gilded Age industrialist Charles Lang Freer who would amass the largest collection of Whistlers watercolors, eventually bequeathing them to the Smithsonian in 1906. This publication is the first systematic study of Freer's amazing treasure trove of more than 50 watercolors by Whistler and includes figures, landscapes, nocturnes, and interiors. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. DUE TO WEIGHT DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. New York, Crown Publishers, 1st, 1942, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 112 pages. 75 b&w illustrations and 8 plates in full color. Red cloth, gilt lettering to spine and front cover, edges lightly worn. Pictorial dust jacket, spine and back cover slightly stained and worn, otherwise a very nice, tight and well preserved copy.
Hardcover. Santa Fe, Arena Editions, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 168 pages. Hardcover. Bright purple fabric covered covers with gilt title on spine. B/w illustrations throughout. Mylar covered dust jacket in good shape. Very clean inside. Former bookseller price tag on front flap. "Out of print". From the front flap: "This definitive retrospective monograph encompasses the period 1972 though 1997, and includes images from every genre Cratsley has pursued."