Artist Architect

Written with exclusive access to Snowdon and the people closest to him, this book uncovers the real man and his times. Addressing the facts behind the myths - the secret courtship of Margaret, the love child born just weeks after the royal marriage, the affairs on both sides, the suicide of one mistress, and the birth of an illegitimate son to another - this balanced yet no-holds-barred account of Snowdon's life is essential for fans of The Crown and Ma'am Darling.

In freewheeling 1920s Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse was once the symbol of bohemian Paris. But if she is remembered today, it is only for posing for several now-celebrated male artists, including Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Calder, and especially photographer Man Ray. Kiki and Man Ray met in 1921 during a chance encounter at a cafe. What followed was an explosive decade-long connection, both professional and romantic, during which the couple grew and experimented as artists, competed for fame, and created many of the shocking images that cemented Man Ray's reputation.

Elizabeth Bishop's friend James Merrill once observed that "Elizabeth had more talent for life - and for poetry - than anyone else I've known." This new biography reveals just how she learned to marry her talent for life with her talent for writing in order to create a brilliant array of poems, prose, and letters - a remarkable body of work that would make her one of America's most beloved and celebrated poets. In Love Unknown, Thomas Travisano, founding president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society, tells the story of the famous poet and traveler's life.

"Welcome to Rockwell Land," writes Deborah Solomon in the introduction to this spirited and authoritative biography of the painter who provided 20th-century America with a defining image of itself. As the star illustrator of The Saturday Evening Post for nearly half a century, Norman Rockwell mingled fact and fiction in paintings that reflected the we-the-people, communitarian ideals of American democracy. But who was this man who served as our unofficial "artist in chief" and bolstered our country's national identity?

The Post-Impressionist artist and writer Paul Gauguin led an extraordinary, troubled and restlessly itinerant life; he came late to painting and spent most of his last decade in the Pacific islands of Tahiti and the Marquesas, where he produced paintings loosely based on Polynesian tradition that heralded the emergence of primitivism and would exert a profound influence on modernist artists from Picasso and Matisse to Jackson Pollock. But his art, despite its growing popularity following Gauguin’s death in 1903, has provoked mixed responses.

Francine Prose's life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed - street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged - was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time.

Extraordinary new nonfiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and best-selling international sensation The Hare with the Amber Eyes. In The White Road, best-selling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold".

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.

His father conceived of the Brooklyn Bridge, but after John Roebling's sudden death, Washington Roebling built what has become one of American's most iconic structures - as much a part of New York as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Yet, as recognizable as the bridge is, its builder is too often forgotten - and his life is of interest far beyond his chosen field. It is the story of immigrants, of the frontier, of the greatest crisis in American history, and of the making of the modern world.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realized portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, his advisors Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, his wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the age, Holbein was a multifaceted genius: a humanist, satirist, and political propagandist, and a deft man whose work was rich in layers of symbolism and allusion.

Alessandro Barbero segue Dante nella sua adolescenza di figlio d'un usuraio che sogna di appartenere al mondo dei nobili e dei letterati; nei corridoi oscuri della politica, dove gli ideali si infrangono davanti alla realtà meschina degli odi di partito e della corruzione dilagante; nei vagabondaggi dell'esiliato che scopre l'incredibile varietà dell'Italia del Trecento, fra metropoli commerciali e corti cavalleresche.

Born to a Jewish family in Estonia in 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia; by the time of his death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last 15 years of his life.

Creativity is in our bones. It is found in our very DNA, something not known to Leonardo da Vinci or anyone else who lived in his day and time. All he did was to uncover the hidden genius which lay within himself, and he used that inner genius to the very best of his abilities. Leonardo da Vinci is best known for some of the world's most masterful paintings, but he was so much more than merely another artist with paints and brushes. Born to a peasant woman in 1452, Leonardo would go on to astound the world he lived in with his artistry and his inventions.

Halfway into the 19th century, Spain's Catalonia underwent a sweeping transformation when it was thrust into not one, but two golden eras - the Renaixença and the Industrial Revolution. It was during this explosive period of creativity, thriving prosperity, and invigorated patriotism that a steadfastly nonconforming and fascinatingly eccentric icon was born, one that was about to take Catalonia by storm with his brilliant eye for unorthodox art and his legendary - or as some would say, notoriously - out-of-the-box ideas.

In this fascinating tour of a celebrated city during one of its most trying, significant, and ultimately triumphant eras, Agnes Poirier unspools the stories of the poets, writers, painters, and philosophers whose lives collided to extraordinary effect between 1940 and 1950. She gives us the human drama behind some of the most celebrated works of the 20th century, along with the origin stories of now legendary movements, from Existentialism to the Theatre of the Absurd, New Journalism, bebop, and French feminism.

Vivienne Westwood is one of the icons of our age. Fashion designer, activist, cocreator of punk, global brand, and grandmother--a true living legend. Her career has successfully spanned five decades, and her work has influenced millions of people across the world. For the first and only time, Vivienne Westwood has written a personal memoir, collaborating with award-winning biographer Ian Kelly, to describe the events, people, and ideas that have shaped her extraordinary life.

Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is one of the most influential figurative painters of the 20th century. His paintings are in every major museum and many private collections here and abroad. William Feaver's daily calls from 1973 until Freud died in 2011, as well as interviews with family and friends, were crucial sources for this book. Freud had ferocious energy, worked day and night, but his circle was broad, including not just other well-known artists but writers, bluebloods, royals in England and Europe, drag queens, fashion models gamblers, bookies, and gangsters like the Kray twins.

He was the original 20th-century enfant terrible with the looks of a Greek god who blazed like a comet across the worlds of art, photography, and fame. The scion of several old WASP fortunes, he was by instinct an adventurer, and the more dangerous the escapade, the better. Journalist and author Graham Boynton was a friend for more than 30 years, spending time with Beard at his bush camp in Africa, in London, and at his Long Island home. From hundreds of Boynton’s interviews with Beard’s closest friends, former lovers, and fellow artists comes this intimate portrait.

In this engaging, cradle-to-grave biography, award-winning author Todd James Pierce explores the life of Ward Kimball, a lead Disney animator who worked on characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Jiminy Cricket, and the Mad Hatter. Through unpublished excerpts from Kimball's personal writing, material from unpublished interviews, and new information based on interviews conducted by the author, Pierce defines the life of perhaps the most influential animator of the 20th century.

Leonardo da Vinci created the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and engineering. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history's most creative genius.