Download or read book Spellbound by Marcel written by Ruth Brandon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1913 Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase exploded through the American art world. This is the story of how he followed the painting to New York two years later, enchanted the Arensberg salon, and—almost incidentally—changed art forever. In 1915, a group of French artists fled war-torn Europe for New York. In the few months between their arrival—and America’s entry into the war in April 1917—they pushed back the boundaries of the possible, in both life and art. The vortex of this transformation was the apartment at 33 West 67th Street, owned by Walter and Louise Arensberg, where artists and poets met nightly to talk, eat, drink, discuss each others’ work, play chess, plan balls, organise magazines and exhibitions, and fall in and out of love. At the center of all this activity stood the mysterious figure of Marcel Duchamp, always approachable, always unreadable. His exhibit of a urinal, which he called Fountain, briefly shocked the New York art world before falling, like its perpetrator, into obscurity. Many people (of both sexes) were in love with Duchamp. Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood were among them; they were also, briefly, and (for her) life-changingly, in love with each other. Both kept daily diaries, which give an intimate picture of the events of those years. Or rather two pictures—for the views they offer, including of their own love affair, are stunningly divergent. Spellbound by Marcel follows Duchamp, Roché, and Beatrice as they traverse the twentieth century. Roché became the author of Jules and Jim, made into a classic film by François Truffaut. Beatrice became a celebrated ceramicist. Duchamp fell into chess-playing obscurity until, decades later, he became famous for a second time—as Fountain was elected the twentieth century’s most influential artwork.
Download or read book I Shock Myself written by Beatrice Wood and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2006-03-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebellious, radical and romantic, Beatrice Wood's life was extraordinary in every way, from her childhood in San Francisco to bohemian life in Paris to becoming one of the major ceramicists of the 20th century. Here she candidly shares the details of her unconventional life and offers rare glimpses into the lives of significant innovators such as Isadora Duncan, Anais Nin and Marcel Duchamp, the iconoclastic Dadaist.
Download or read book The DrugTech Trilogy written by Marcel Victor Sahade and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-11-12 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The DrugTech Trilogy Book 1: Spellbound - The Workings of DrugTech A clandestine pharmaceutical company will stop at nothing in its quest for power and profit. When Benjamin Jones, an average university science student with girl-problems, is secretly given access to the breathtaking breakthroughs of DrugTech by his parents, his life will never be the same. Meanwhile, William Hunter Barrister-at-Law has never lost a case in his 15 years of practice. But things are not as they seem as his work-experience student Jennifer is soon to find out. And DrugTech's involvement forever lurks in the shadows. Book 2: DrugTech - The Deep State Deepens DrugTech's influence grows in the political, judicial and administrative spheres. Its breakthroughs in science lead to the possession of the "Finger of God". But three university students with the help of the Dominican Order of Priests plot its ultimate downfall. Book 3: DrugTech - The Final Dose The mystical powers of the Dominican Order of Priests, and a Dominican Nun, Sister Jennifer, help three university students bring DrugTech to its knees, and save the life of an innocent person from a wrongful murder conviction. Flashbacks and analogies to the great Battle of Lepanto culminate in the DrugTech Empire crashing down, as the Managing Director of DrugTech is replaced, and its former Managing Director brought to justice.
Download or read book Lives of the Artists written by Kathleen Krull and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1995 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lives of the Artists masterpieces, bibliographical references.
Download or read book Kaltenburg written by Marcel Beyer and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A story loosely based on the life and work of Konrad Lorenz follows the experiences of a brilliant zoologist's student, whose work at a newly established research institute reveals disturbing aspects about the zoologist's past.
Download or read book Jena 1800 written by Peter Neumann and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An exhilarating account of a remarkable historical moment, in which characters known to many of us as immutable icons are rendered as vital, passionate, fallible beings . . . Lively, precise, and accessible.” —Claire Messud, Harper’s Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had dealt a one-two punch to the dynastic system. Confidence in traditional social, political, and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets, philosophers, translators, and socialites who gathered in this Thuringian village of just four thousand residents. Jena became the place for the young and intellectually curious, the site of a new departure, of philosophical disruption. Influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, then an elder statesman and artistic eminence, the leading figures among the disruptors—the translator August Wilhelm Schlegel; the philosophers Friedrich "Fritz" Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling; the dazzling, controversial intellectual Caroline Schlegel, married to August; Dorothea Schlegel, a poet and translator, married to Fritz; and the poets Ludwig Tieck and Novalis—resolved to rethink the world, to establish a republic of free spirits. They didn’t just question inherited societal traditions; with their provocative views of the individual and of nature, they revolutionized our understanding of freedom and reality. With wit and elegance, Peter Neumann brings this remarkable circle of friends and rivals to life in Jena 1800, a work of intellectual history that is colorful and passionate, informative and intimate—as fresh and full of surprises as its subjects.
Download or read book Animalia written by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “lyrically descriptive [novel] traces the terrible evolution of rural ways of life into cruelty and abuse via the history of one unhappy family.” —Kirkus Reviews 1898: In the small French village of Puy-Larroque, Éléonore is a child living with her father, a pig farmer whose terminal illness leaves him unable to work, and her God-fearing mother, who runs both farm and family with an iron hand. Éléonore passes her childhood with little heat and no running water, sharing a small room with her cousin Marcel, who does most of the physical labor on the farm. When World War I breaks out and the village empties, Éléonore gets a taste of the changes that will transform her world as the twentieth century rolls on. In the second part of the novel, which takes place in the 1980s, the untamed world of Puy-Larroque seems gone forever. Éléonore has aged into the role of matriarch, and the family is running a large industrial pig farm, where thousands of pigs churn daily through cycles of birth, growth, and death. Moments of sublime beauty and powerful emotion mix with the thoughtless brutality waged against animals that makes the old horrors of death and disease seem like simpler times. A dramatic and chilling tale of man and beast that recalls the naturalism of writers like Émile Zola, Animalia traverses the twentieth century as it examines man’s quest to conquer nature, critiques the legacy of modernity and the transmission of violence from one generation to the next, and questions whether we can hold out hope for redemption in this brutal world. From a Goncourt Prize winner, this “lyrical novel depicting a century on a French family farm emphasizes the earthy and the cruel [and] provocatively dissects our conflicted relationship with the rest of the living world”(Booklist). “[Animalia] invites readers to connect the tangled web of violence, against people and animals—and face the brutality in which all of us are complicit.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Download or read book Chasing Francis written by Ian Morgan Cron and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when the pastor of a mega church loses his faith? Pastor Chase Falson has lost his faith in God, the Bible, evangelical Christianity, and his super-sized megachurch. When he falls apart, the church elders tell him to go away: as far away as possible. Join Chase on his life-changing journey to Italy where, with a curious group of Franciscan friars, he struggles to resolve his crisis of faith by retracing the footsteps of Francis of Assisi, a saint whose simple way of loving Jesus changed the history of the world. Read this riveting story and then begin your own life-changing journey through the pilgrim’s guide included in this powerful novel. Hidden in the past lies the future of the church When his elders tell him to take some time away from his church, broken pastor Chase Falson crosses the Atlantic to Italy to visit his uncle, a Franciscan priest. There he is introduced to the revolutionary teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi and finds an old, but new way of following Jesus that heals and inspires. Chase Falson’s spiritual discontent mirrors the feelings of a growing number of Christians who walk out of church asking, Is this all there is? They are weary of celebrity pastors, empty calorie teaching, and worship services where the emphasis is more on Lights, Camera, Action than on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit while the deepest questions of life remain unaddressed in a meaningful way. Bestselling author Ian Morgan Cron masterfully weaves lessons from the life of Saint Francis into the story of Chase Falson to explore the life of a saint who 800 years ago breathed new life into disillusioned Christians and a Church on the brink of collapse. Chasing Francis is a hopeful and moving story with profound implications for those who yearn for a more vital relationship with God and the world.
Download or read book Proust s Overcoat written by Lorenza Foschini and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-07-18 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A rare and wonderfully written book of literary detection that is heartbreaking as well as thrilling.” —Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient In the tradition of Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman comes Proust’s Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini—the charming, endlessly intriguing story of a collector’s obsessive search for the personal effects of legendary author Marcel Proust. This fascinating true story introduces readers to a truly delightful character—Jacques Guérin, owner of a perfume company in France—and enthralls them with his relentless lifelong pursuit of all things Proustian, even the author’s most mundane possessions.
Download or read book In Montparnasse written by Sue Roe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Describes with plenty of colour how surrealism, from Rene Magritte's bowler hats to Salvador Dali's watches, was born and developed." - The Times (UK) As she did for the Modernists In Montmartre, noted art historian and biographer Sue Roe now tells the story of the Surrealists in Montparnasse. In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafés of that vibrant neighborhood. Sue Roe is both an incisive art critic of these pieces and a beguiling biographer with a fingertip feel for this compelling world. Beginning with Duchamp, Roe then takes us through the rise of the Dada movement, the birth of Surrealist photography with Man Ray, the creation of key works by Ernst, Cocteau, and others, through the arrival of Dalí. On canvas and in their readymades and other works these artists juxtaposed objects never before seen together to make the viewer marvel at the ordinary—and at the workings of the subconscious. We see both how this art came to be and how the artists of Montparnasse lived. Roe puts us with Gertrude Stein in her box seat at the opening of The Rite of Spring; with Duchamp as he installs his famous urinal; at a Cocteau theatrical with Picasso and Coco Chanel; with Breton at a session with Freud; and with Man Ray as he romances Kiki de Montparnasse. Stein said it best when she noted that the Surrealists still saw in the common ways of the 19th century, but they complicated things with the bold new vision of the 20th. Their words mark an enormously important watershed in the history of art—and they forever changed the way we all see the world.
Download or read book The Artist s Journey written by Travis Elborough and published by White Lion. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Artist's Journey, follow in the footsteps of some of the world’s most famous painters, and the journeys which inspired some of their greatest works.
Download or read book Marcel Proust written by William C. Carter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 998 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reissued with a new preface to commemorate the publication of "A la recherche du temps perdu" one hundred years ago, this title portrays in abundant detail the life and times of literary voices of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Dirty Snow written by Georges Simenon and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book The World in Miniature written by Rolf Alfred Stein and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume of three related essays, the reader will encounter a system of interlocking images and symbols that lies at the core of the Far Eastern view of the universe - a system that informs cosmology, ritual, ethics, aesthetics, and many aspects of everyday life. The first essay, 'miniature Gardens in the Far East', summarizes the complex cultural significance of the gardens of fantastic rocks and dwarfed trees placed in basins, of Chinese origin but transmitted to other Far Eastern cultures. The author demonstrates that these gardens are icons whose components and forms not only symbolize but replicate paradise realms important in ancient Chinese religion and folk beliefs. He shows that by replicating such realms, the gardens both manifest and bestow on their possessor the magical powers associated with them, and he details exactly how the gardens accomplished this. Many subtle mutations of the miniature garden, such as subterranean worlds equipped with their own sun and moon and populated with aspirants of eternity, are revealed.
Download or read book Ugly Beauty written by Ruth Brandon and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thanks to a combination of business savvy, breathtaking chutzpah, and lucky timing, Helena Rubinstein managed to transform herself from a poor Polish emigrant to the world's first self-made female tycoon. She went from selling homemade "Crème Valaze" out of her house in Australia to becoming an international cosmetics magnate. Tiny and plump, wearing extravagant jewels and spiked heels, she was a fixture of upper-crust New York for many years. She was larger than life, and never took no for an answer: when she was refused from a New York City apartment on the grounds that she was Jewish, she went ahead and bought the whole building and promptly moved in. The story of Eugène Schueller and L'Oréal begins in 1907, in a dingy working-class part of Paris, where a young Schueller sat at his family's kitchen table trying to develop the first harmless artificial hair dye. The tale of how L'Oréal went from that point to the world's largest cosmetics company is fascinating and full of intrigue, with a little of everything: fascist assassins, bitter unmaskings, political scandals. In 1988, although Schueller and Rubinstein had long since passed away, their worlds collided when L'Oréal bought Rubinstein's company — leading to a series of scandals that threw a new and sinister light on L'Oréal. For starters, Rubinstein was Jewish, but Schueller and many other top L'Oréal executives had been active Nazi collaborators. What came to light threatened the reputations of some of France's most powerful men - up to and including its president. This is a powerful, dramatic, and largely untold story about the ugly truth behind a beauty empire.
Download or read book An American Lens written by Jay Bochner and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A close reading of photography yieldls a grounndbreaking cultural biography; reveals photography's impresario, Alfred Stieglitz, as he has never been revealed before and looks at his photographs as they have never been looked at before. In An American Lens, Jay Bochner looks at a series of milestones in the development of the American avant-garde that capture a pivotal period in artistic consciousness. He focuses on the multiple roles of Alfred Stieglitz--as influential gallery owner, photographer, and impresario of the emerging art scene--at a series of significant moments in his career. These close-ups offer a more intense and expanded understanding of the subject than the familiar long view. Bochner uses these scenes to recreate for today's readers the birth of modernism in America--what it was like to be an audience for the art of the early avant-garde. Moving from frame to frame, he shows us, for example, a single photograph by Stieglitz of a snowy night in 1893 and a short description by Stephen Crane of just such a snowfall; the preparation, the reception, and the aftermath of the famous Armory Show of modern art in 1913; Gertrude Stein's portraits in prose; New York at the dawn of Dada, with Paul Strand, Francis Picabia, and others; and the intersecting paths of Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, and Marcel Duchamp in 1917. Bochner also examines Stieglitz's three great photographic series: his photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe, of clouds, and of skyscrapers. These sections of the book include many Stieglitz photos, including some rarely seen portraits of O'Keeffe. Stieglitz as impresario and artist achieved an almost mythical status, which some recent critics have worked to deflate--casting him, for example, as Svengali to Georgia O'Keeffe's spellbound Trilby. Engaging in neither idolatry nor demolition, Bochner looks instead for the truth about the man and the myth. The scenes from American art in An American Lens create a new version of Stieglitz's biography, allowing us to reread his life and the life of his times by focusing intently on what is visible and not so visible in the art he left behind.
Download or read book The Reckoning written by Eleanor Heartney and published by Prestel Verlag. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of After the Revolution return with an incisive study of the work of contemporary women artists. In After the Revolution, the authors concluded that "The battles may not all have been won . . . but barricades are gradually coming down, and work proceeds on all fronts in glorious profusion." Now, with The Reckoning, authors Heartney, Posner, Princenthal, and Scott bring into focus the accomplishments of 24 acclaimed international women artists born since 1960 who have benefited from the groundbreaking efforts of their predecessors. The book is organized in four thematic sections: "Bad Girls" profiles artists whose work represents an assault on conventional notions of gender and racial difference. "History Lessons" offers reflections on the self in the context of history and globalization. "Spellbound" focuses on women’s embrace of the irrational, subjective, and surreal, while "Domestic Disturbances" takes on women's conflicted relationship to home, family, and security. Written in lively prose and fully illustrated throughout, this book gives an informed account of the wonderful diversity of recent contemporary art by women. "An indispensable contribution to the literature on contemporary art by women." (Whitney Chadwick, author of Women, Art and Society) "In the 2007 book After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art, [the authors] set a new standard in documenting and evaluating the work of a dozen key women artists, spanning generations between the 1960s to the 2000s. . . The beat goes on with the appearance of The Reckoning, written by the same authors in the same accessible scholarly style, but reflecting important historical changes over the past decade and more. In line with the increased presence of women in mainstream art, the book includes twice as many artists as its predecessor. And its global reach has expanded vastly, stretching from Europe and the Americas to Africa and China." (Holland Cotter, The New York Times)
