Download or read book The Pursuit of Art written by Martin Gayford and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our leading art critics and writers, Martin Gayford, recounts his travels and meetings with the world’s greatest artists. In the course of a career thinking and writing about art, critic Martin Gayford has traveled all over the world both to see works of art and to meet artists. Gayford’s journeys, often to fairly inaccessible places, involve frustrations and complications, but also serendipitous encounters and outcomes, which he makes as much a part of the story as the final destination. In chapters that are by turns humorous, intriguing, and stimulating, Gayford takes us to places as varied as Brancusi’s Endless Column in Romania; prehistoric caves in France; the museum island of Naoshima in Japan; the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas; and an exhibition of Roni Horn’s work in Iceland. Interwoven with these tales are journeys to meet artists—Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, Marina Abramovic´ in Venice, Robert Rauschenberg in New York—and travels with artists, such as a trip to Beijing with Gilbert & George. These encounters not only provide fascinating insights into the way artists approach and think about their art, but reveal the importance of their personal environments. A perceptive, amusing, and knowledgeable companion, in The Pursuit of Art Gayford takes readers on a tour of art that is immensely entertaining, informative, and eminently readable.

Download or read book The Pursuit of Art Travels Encounters and Revelations written by Martin Gayford and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our leading art critics and writers, Martin Gayford, recounts his travels and meetings with the world’s greatest artists. In the course of a career thinking and writing about art, critic Martin Gayford has traveled all over the world both to see works of art and to meet artists. Gayford’s journeys, often to fairly inaccessible places, involve frustrations and complications, but also serendipitous encounters and outcomes, which he makes as much a part of the story as the final destination. In chapters that are by turns humorous, intriguing, and stimulating, Gayford takes us to places as varied as Brancusi’s Endless Column in Romania; prehistoric caves in France; the museum island of Naoshima in Japan; the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas; and an exhibition of Roni Horn’s work in Iceland. Interwoven with these tales are journeys to meet artists—Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, Marina Abramovic´ in Venice, Robert Rauschenberg in New York—and travels with artists, such as a trip to Beijing with Gilbert & George. These encounters not only provide fascinating insights into the way artists approach and think about their art, but reveal the importance of their personal environments. A perceptive, amusing, and knowledgeable companion, in The Pursuit of Art Gayford takes readers on a tour of art that is immensely entertaining, informative, and eminently readable.

Download or read book Sacred Decay The Art of Lauren Marx written by and published by Dark Horse Comics. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fungus blooms and dies, bones weather, and moths form halos around dismembered animals in this darkly exquisite collection from acclaimed artist Lauren Marx. With an impressive eye for detail, Marx brings her uncanny subjects to life - or death - with awe-inspiring texture and intensity. Birds, beasts, fish, plants, and more blossom radiantly on the page in their cycle of birth and destruction. Celebrated artist Lauren Marx's first collection highlights work from her latest gallery show and more, with over 120 pages of full-color art. Don't miss this stunning hardcover!

Download or read book Rendez vous with Art written by Philippe de Montebello and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fruits of a lifetime of experience by a cultural colossus, Philippe de Montebello, the longest-serving director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its history, distilled in conversations with an acclaimed critic Beginning with a fragment of yellow jasper—all that is left of the face of an Egyptian woman who lived 3,500 years ago—this book confronts the elusive questions: how, and why, do we look at art? Philippe de Montebello and Martin Gayford talked in art galleries or churches or their own homes, and this book is structured around their journeys. But whether they were in the Louvre or the Prado, the Mauritshuis of the Palazzo Pitti, they reveal the pleasures of truly looking. De Montebello shares the sense of excitement recorded by Goethe in his autobiography—"akin to the emotion experienced on entering a House of God"—but also reflects on why these secular temples might nevertheless be the "worst possible places to look at art." But in the end both men convey, with subtlety and brilliance, the delights and significance of their subject matter and some of the intense creations of human beings throughout our long history.

Download or read book The Sense of an Ending written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Download or read book Modernists and Mavericks Bacon Freud Hockney and the London Painters written by Martin Gayford and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Gayford’s masterful account of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s, illustrated by documentary photographs and the works themselves The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s has never before been told before as a single narrative. R. B. Kitaj’s proposal, made in 1976, that there was a “substantial School of London” was essentially correct but it caused confusion because it implied that there was a movement or stylistic group at work, when in reality no one style could cover the likes of Francis Bacon and also Bridget Riley. Modernists and Mavericks explores this period based on an exceptionally deep well of firsthand interviews, often unpublished, with such artists as Victor Pasmore, John Craxton, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj, Euan Uglow, Howard Hodgkin, Terry Frost, Gillian Ayres, Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Frank Bowling, Leon Kossoff, John Hoyland, and Patrick Caulfield. But Martin Gayford also teases out the thread weaving these individual lives together and demonstrates how and why, long after it was officially declared dead, painting lived and thrived in London. Simultaneously aware of the influences of Jackson Pollock, Giacometti, and (through the teaching passed down at the major art school) the traditions of Western art from Piero della Francesca to Picasso and Matisse, the postwar painters were bound by their confidence that this ancient medium could do fresh and marvelous things, and explored in their diverse ways, the possibilities of paint.

Download or read book The Secret Place written by Dale A. Fife and published by Whitaker House. This book was released on 2001-11-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You hunger to live in the presence of God, and you yearn to know the Father’s heart in an intimate way. You desire revelation and passionate encounters with the Almighty, and you long to spend time in The Secret Place, getting to know the Father in a deeper way. This book will lead you into that place of revelation, the place that will satisfy your hunger for more of God. If you long to experience a greater intimacy with the Father, The Secret Place will draw you in and change your life!

Download or read book Man with a Blue Scarf On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud written by Martin Gayford and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2013-09-09 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An extraordinary record of a great artist in his studio, it also describes what it feels like to be transformed into a work of art.” —ARTnews Lucian Freud (1922-2011), widely regarded as the greatest figurative painter of our time, spent seven months painting a portrait of the art critic Martin Gayford. The daily narrative of their encounters takes the reader into that most private place, the artist’s studio, and to the heart of the working methods of this modern master—both technical and subtly psychological. From this emerges an understanding of what a portrait is, but something else is also created: a portrait, in words, of Freud himself. This is not a biography, but a series of close-ups: the artist at work and in conversation at restaurants, in taxis, and in his studio. It takes one into the company of the painter for whom Picasso, Giacometti, and Francis Bacon were friends and contemporaries, as were writers such as George Orwell and W. H. Auden. The book is illustrated with many of Lucian Freud’s other works, telling photographs taken by David Dawson of Freud in his studio, and images by such great artists of the past as van Gogh and Titian who are discussed by Freud and Gayford. Full of wry observations, the book reveals the inside story of how it feels to pose for a remarkable artist and become a work of art.

Download or read book The Pursuit of Happiness written by Bianca C. Williams and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Pursuit of Happiness Bianca C. Williams traces the experiences of African American women as they travel to Jamaica, where they address the perils and disappointments of American racism by looking for intimacy, happiness, and a connection to their racial identities. Through their encounters with Jamaican online communities and their participation in trips organized by Girlfriend Tours International, the women construct notions of racial, sexual, and emotional belonging by forming relationships with Jamaican men and other "girlfriends." These relationships allow the women to exercise agency and find happiness in ways that resist the damaging intersections of racism and patriarchy in the United States. However, while the women require a spiritual and virtual connection to Jamaica in order to live happily in the United States, their notion of happiness relies on travel, which requires leveraging their national privilege as American citizens. Williams's theorization of "emotional transnationalism" and the construction of affect across diasporic distance attends to the connections between race, gender, and affect while highlighting how affective relationships mark nationalized and gendered power differentials within the African diaspora.

Download or read book Baxter s Explore the Book written by J. Sidlow Baxter and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2010-09-21 with total page 1846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the Book is not a commentary with verse-by-verse annotations. Neither is it just a series of analyses and outlines. Rather, it is a complete Bible survey course. No one can finish this series of studies and remain unchanged. The reader will receive lifelong benefit and be enriched by these practical and understandable studies. Exposition, commentary, and practical application of the meaning and message of the Bible will be found throughout this giant volume. Bible students without any background in Bible study will find this book of immense help as will those who have spent much time studying the Scriptures, including pastors and teachers. Explore the Book is the result and culmination of a lifetime of dedicated Bible study and exposition on the part of Dr. Baxter. It shows throughout a deep awareness and appreciation of the grand themes of the gospel, as found from the opening book of the Bible through Revelation.

Download or read book Spring Cannot be Cancelled written by Martin Gayford and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life. DAVID HOCKNEY ***PRE-ORDER NOW*** Praise for David Hockney and Martin Gayford's previous book, A History of Pictures: 'I won't read a more interesting book all year ... utterly fascinating' AN Wilson, Sunday Times 'A magic flight of a book... It's a measure of Hockney's vividness of perception that he can always put a cap on Gayford's knowledge ... fabulous' Clive James, Guardian Elegant and often surprising Hockney flags up a topic and Gayford gives the critical armature: it makes for a refreshing double act Michael Prodgers Books of the Year, Sunday Times 'An eloquent conversational testimony to the vividness of life lived through intelligent looking. You will see Caravaggio and Citizen Kane with fresh eyes' Daily Telegraph '[Hockney] asks big questions about the nature of picture-making and the relationship between painters and photography in a way that no other contemporary artist seems to do ... enormously good-humoured and entertaining ... On almost every page, there is an interesting provocation' Andrew Marr, New Statesman On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms arts capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockneys new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live.

Download or read book The Celestine Prophecy written by James Redfield and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 bestselling phenomenon with millions of copies sold around the world -- now with a guide to creating your own Celestine Prophecy experience. You have never read a book like this before--a book that comes along once in a lifetime to change lives forever. In the rain forests of Peru, an ancient manuscript has been discovered. Within its pages are 9 key insights into life itself -- insights each human being is predicted to grasp sequentially; one insight, then another, as we move toward a completely spiritual culture on Earth. Drawing on ancient wisdom, it tells you how to make connections among the events happening in your life right now and lets you see what is going to happen to you in the years to come. The story it tells is a gripping one of adventure and discovery, but it is also a guidebook that has the power to crystallize your perceptions of why you are where you are in life and to direct your steps with a new energy and optimism as you head into tomorrow. Praise for The Celestine Prophecy "A gripping adventure story filled with intrigue, suspense, and spiritual revelations." - Commonwealth Journal "A spiritual classic...a book to read and reread, to cherish, and to give to friends." - Joan Borysenko, PhD, author of Fire in the Soul "In his inimitable style of great storytelling, Redfield opens us up to a world of insight, inspiration, synchronicity, and power." - Deepak Chopra

Download or read book A Bigger Message Conversations with David Hockney Revised Edition written by Martin Gayford and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Sumptuously illustrated, this radiant volume encapsulates what it truly means to be a visual artist.” —Booklist David Hockney’s exuberant work is highly praised and widely celebrated—he is perhaps the world’s most popular living painter. But he is also something else: an incisive and original thinker on art. This new edition includes a revised introduction and five new chapters which cover Hockney’s production since 2011, including preparations for the Bigger Picture exhibition held at the Royal Academy in 2012 and the making of Hockney’s iPad drawings and plans for the show. A difficult period followed the exhibition’s huge success, marked first by a stroke, which left Hockney unable to speak for a long period, followed by the vandalism of the artist’s Totem tree-trunk, and the tragic suicide of his assistant shortly thereafter. Escaping the gloom, in spring 2013 Hockney moved back to L.A. A few months later, Martin Gayford visited Hockney in the L.A. studio, where the fully-recovered artist was hard at work on his Comédie humaine, a series of full-length portraits painted in the studio. The conversations between Hockney and Gayford are punctuated by surprising and revealing observations on other artists—Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Picasso among them—and enlivened by shrewd insights into the contrasting social and physical landscapes of Yorkshire, Hockney’s birthplace, and California.

Download or read book Otherworld Journeys written by Carol Zaleski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1988-11-03 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dozens of books, articles, television shows, and films relating "near-death" experiences have appeared in the past decade. People who have survived a close brush with death reveal their extraordinary visions and ecstatic feelings at the moment they died, describing journeys through a tunnel to a realm of light, visual reviews of their past deeds, encounters with a benevolent spirit, and permanent transformation after returning to life. Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys offers the most comprehensive treatment to date of the evidence surrounding near-death experiences. The first to place researchers' findings, first-person accounts, and possible medical or psychological explanations in historical perspective, she discusses how these materials reflect the influence of contemporary culture. She demonstrates that modern near-death reports belong to a vast family of otherworld journey tales, with examples in nearly every religious heritage. She identifies universal as well as culturally specific features by comparing near-death narratives in two distinct periods of Western society: medieval Christendom and twentieth-century secular America. This comparison reveals profound similarities, such as the life-review and the transforming after-effects of the vision, as well as striking contrasts, such as the absence of hell or punishment scenes from modern accounts. Mediating between the "debunkers" and the near-death researchers, Zaleski considers current efforts to explain near-death experience scientifically. She concludes by emphasizing the importance of the otherworld vision for understanding imaginative and religious experience in general.

Download or read book Shaping the World written by Antony Gormley and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pairing one of the world’s greatest sculptors with one of today’s greatest writers on art, Shaping the World tells the story of human culture from prehistory to the present through the medium of sculpture. Practiced by every culture throughout the history of the world, sculpture is a universal art form that’s deeply rooted in the human psyche and may even predate the advent of language. In this wide-ranging book, internationally renowned sculptor Antony Gormley and distinguished art critic Martin Gayford consider sculpture as an art form related to humanity’s potential for thought and feeling, as well as to our urge to build, make pictures, practice religion, and develop philosophical thought. They take into account materials and techniques and consider overarching themes, such as space, light, and darkness. Drawing on examples from around the globe—ranging from the standing stones at Stenness, Orkney, dating from around 3100 BCE, and the Terracotta Army in China to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Richard Serra’s steel structures—Shaping the World explores sculpture as a form of physical thought capable of altering the way people feel.

Download or read book A Year in the Art World written by Matthew Israel and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider’s detailed chronicle of the inner workings of the contemporary art world. The world of contemporary art has become more globalized and transparent in the last few decades, yet it is still perceived as closed-off and obscure. In A Year in the Art World, Matthew Israel takes the reader on a cross-continental journey through a year in the field of art, lifting the veil on a culture that emerges as diverse, adventurous, nuanced, and meaningful. From Los Angeles and New York to Paris and Hong Kong, Israel encounters artists, curators, critics, gallerists, and institutions, uncovering the working lives of these art-world figures from the renowned to the unseen. Drawing on exclusive interviews and expertly researched content, Israel ventures into the inner workings of the art industry to ask: What is it that people in the art world actually do? What drives interest in working with art? How do artworks acquire value? And how has technology transformed today’s art world? Anchoring the narrative in the history, economics, and cultural dynamics of the field, this fascinating story reveals how “the art world” describes a realm that is both surprisingly vast and deeply interconnected.

Download or read book Art Day by Day 366 Brushes with History written by Alex Johnson and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A daily almanac that presents a selection of art historical events for every day of the year, from momentous and headline-grabbing to intimate, amusing, and illuminating. Taking a novel approach to the history of art, Art Day by Day aims to change the pace at which the story is told. Presenting snapshots of the most exciting, unusual, and noteworthy art events from around the world and throughout history through direct testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and contemporary chroniclers, this volume is a unique look at the past. Drawing on articles, diaries, interviews, letters, speeches, transcripts, and more, Art Day by Day offers an important event that happened on that day in the history of art. Here are the stories of famous paintings, ancient sculptures, comic strips, photographs, murals, manifestos, and marriages, from terracotta soldiers to a self-shredding Banksy. Each day has its own section, starting with an extended quote giving artists, critics, and commentators their voice to speak directly to us, followed by a brief explanatory text, and ending with other important events in art on that day such as births, deaths, and exhibition openings. Not every entry is momentous, but each one is significant. Yes, there are thefts, murders, artistic mishaps, and eureka moments, but there are also episodes such as President Theodore Roosevelt’s doodles, Michelangelo writing to his nephew about his kidney stones, and Monet getting the green light for his water garden. Every day has a story to tell. An informative overview of culture throughout the ages, Art Day by Day is as enlightening as it is entertaining: the perfect armchair companion and reference for art lovers everywhere.