Download or read book The True History of Art written by Sylvain Coissard and published by SelfMadeHero. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of hilarious parodies, Sylvain Coissard and Alexis Lemoine answer the nagging questions of art history: what caused The Scream? Why is Van Gogh's Yellow Bedroom so suspiciously tidy? Why is Cezanne wearing a bandage in his famous self-portrait? This book is for anyone who wants to know what happened before the Mona Lisa smiled. Or, rather, what might have happened.
Download or read book True Colors written by Anthony Haden-Guest and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Colors covers the past three decades of the American art scene, a period during which the prevailing artistic fashion has shifted as often as the focus of the Whitney Biennial, when art and money, talent and celebrity have often been confused. During this period, figures such as Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring have crossed over from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture, and art dealers, like Hollywood power agents, have often claimed as much attention as those they represented. Anthony Haden-Guest has moved within this world, known the players, and delivers here an authoritative and deliciously inside account.Focusing on the lives and personalities of the art world's main players, and with a sure critical component, Haden-Guest gives us vivid portraits of the period's key artists as they strive to fulfill their ambitions. He does justice as well to the machinations of those who have come to control the larger drama -- the dealers, collectors, and museum curators. Filled with incredible anecdotes, dramatically told stories, and subtle critical assessments, True Colors tells the story of the art world that we have never heard before.
Download or read book Eccentric Modernisms written by Tirza True Latimer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if we ascribe significance to aesthetic and social divergences rather than waving them aside as anomalous? What if we look closely at what does not appear central, or appears peripherally, or does not appear at all, viewing ellipses, outliers, absences, and outtakes as significant? Eccentric Modernisms places queer demands on art history, tracing the relational networks connecting cosmopolitan eccentrics who cultivated discrepant strains of modernism in America during the 1930s and 1940s. Building on the author’s earlier studies of Gertrude Stein and other lesbians who participated in transatlantic cultural exchanges between the world wars, this book moves in a different direction, focusing primarily on the gay men who formed Stein’s support network and whose careers, in turn, she helped to launch, including the neo-romantic painters Pavel Tchelitchew and writer-editor Charles Henri Ford. Eccentric Modernisms shows how these “eccentric modernists” bucked trends by working collectively, reveling in disciplinary promiscuity and sustaining creative affiliations across national and cultural boundaries.
Download or read book The Art Thief written by Michael Finkel and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2023-06-27 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century: the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser. • “The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing."—The New Yorker "Enthralling." —The Wall Street Journal In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down. This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.
Download or read book The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives written by Diane Johnson and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic of alternative biography and feminist writing, this empathetic and witty book gives due to a "lesser" figure of history, Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith, who was brilliant, unconventional, and at odds with the constraints of Victorian life. “Many people have described the Famous Writer presiding at his dinner table. . . . He is famous; everybody remembers his remarks. . . . We forget that there were other family members at the table—a quiet person, now muffled by time, shadowy, whose heart pounded with love, perhaps, or rage.” So begins The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives, an uncommon biography devoted to one of those “lesser lives.” As the author points out, “A lesser life does not seem lesser to the person who leads one.” Such sympathy and curiosity compelled Diane Johnson to research Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith (1821–1861), the daughter of the famous artist Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) and first wife of the equally famous poet George Meredith (1828–1909). Her life, treated perfunctorily and prudishly in biographies of Peacock or Meredith, is here exquisitely and unhurriedly given its due. What emerges is the portrait of a brilliant, well-educated woman, raised unconventionally by her father only to feel more forcefully the constraints of the Victorian era. First published in 1972, Lesser Lives has been a key text for feminists and biographers alike, a book that reimagined what biography might be, both in terms of subject and style. Biographies of other “lesser” lives have since followed in its footsteps, but few have the wit, elegance, and empathy of Johnson’s seminal work.
Download or read book The True History of Chocolate Third Edition written by Sophie D. Coe and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2013-06-28 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A beautifully written . . . and illustrated history of the Food of the Gods, from the Olmecs to present-day developments.”—Chocolatier This delightful tale of one of the world’s favorite foods draws on botany, archaeology, and culinary history to present a complete and accurate history of chocolate. It begins some 4,000 years ago in the jungles of Mexico and Central America with the chocolate tree, Theobroma Cacao, and the complex processes necessary to transform its bitter seeds into what is now known as chocolate. This was centuries before chocolate was consumed in generally unsweetened liquid form and used as currency by the Maya and the Aztecs after them. The Spanish conquest of Central America introduced chocolate to Europe, where it first became the drink of kings and aristocrats and then was popularized in coffeehouses. Industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made chocolate available to all, and now, in our own time, it has become once again a luxury item. The third edition includes new photographs and revisions throughout that reflect the latest scholarship. A new final chapter on a Guatemalan chocolate producer, located within the Pacific coastal area where chocolate was first invented, brings the volume up-to-date.
Download or read book A Killing Art written by Gillis, Alex and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eagerly anticipated updated return of a bestselling martial arts classic The leaders of Tae Kwon Do, an Olympic sport and one of the worldÍs most popular martial arts, are fond of saying that their art is ancient and filled with old dynasties and superhuman feats. In fact, Tae Kwon Do is as full of lies as it is powerful techniques. Since its rough beginnings in the Korean military 60 years ago, the art empowered individuals and nations, but its leaders too often hid the painful truths that led to that empowerment „ the gangsters, secret-service agents, and dictators who encouraged cheating, corruption, and murder. A Killing Art: The Untold History of Tae Kwon Do takes you into the cults, geisha houses, and crime syndicates that made Tae Kwon Do. It shows how, in the end, a few key leaders kept the art clean and turned it into an empowering art for tens of millions of people in more than 150 countries. A Killing Art is part history and part biography „ and a wild ride to enlightenment. This new and revised edition of the bestselling book contains previously unnamed sources and updated chapters.
Download or read book Shaping Humanity written by John Gurche and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the process by which the author uses knowledge of fossil discoveries and comparative ape and human anatomy to create forensically accurate representations of human beings' ancient ancestors.
Download or read book The Secret History of Magic written by Peter Lamont and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pull back the curtain on the real history of magic – and discover why magic really matters If you read a standard history of magic, you learn that it begins in ancient Egypt, with the resurrection of a goose in front of the Pharaoh. You discover how magicians were tortured and killed during the age of witchcraft. You are told how conjuring tricks were used to quell rebellious colonial natives. The history of magic is full of such stories, which turn out not to be true. Behind the smoke and mirrors, however, lies the real story of magic. It is a history of people from humble roots, who made and lost fortunes, and who deceived kings and queens. In order to survive, they concealed many secrets, yet they revealed some and they stole others. They engaged in deception, exposure, and betrayal, in a quest to make the impossible happen. They managed to survive in a world in which a series of technological wonders appeared, which previous generations would have considered magical. Even today, when we now take the most sophisticated technology for granted, we can still be astonished by tricks that were performed hundreds of years ago. The Secret History of Magic reveals how this was done. It is about why magic matters in a world that no longer seems to have a place for it, but which desperately needs a sense of wonder.
Download or read book Magritte the True Art of Painting written by René Magritte and published by Abradale Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Rescue Artist written by Edward Dolnick and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-11-16 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective. The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries readers deep inside the art underworld -- and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.
Download or read book The True History of Tea written by Erling Hoh and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2009-03-24 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and beautifully illustrated history of one of the world's favorite beverages and its uses through the ages. World-renowned sinologist Victor H. Mair teams up with journalist Erling Hoh to tell the story of this remarkable beverage and its uses, from ancient times to the present, from East to West. For the first time in a popular history of tea, the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian annals have been thoroughly consulted and carefully sifted. The resulting narrative takes the reader from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the splendor of the Tang and Song Dynasties, from the tea ceremony politics of medieval Japan to the fabled tea and horse trade of Central Asia and the arrival of the first European vessels in Far Eastern waters. Through the centuries, tea has inspired artists, enhanced religious experience, played a pivotal role in the emergence of world trade, and triggered cataclysmic events that altered the course of humankind. How did green tea become the national beverage of Morocco? And who was the beautiful Emma Hart, immortalized by George Romney in his painting The Tea-maker of Edgware Road? No other drink has touched the daily lives of so many people in so many different ways. The True History of Tea brings these disparate aspects together in an entertaining tale that combines solid scholarship with an eye for the quirky, offbeat paths that tea has strayed upon during its long voyage. It celebrates the common heritage of a beverage we have all come to love, and plays a crucial part in the work of dismantling that obsolete dictum: East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.
Download or read book True Colors written by and published by Stampington & Company. This book was released on 2003 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History of art.
Download or read book Of Arms and Artists written by Paul Staiti and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vibrant and original perspective on the American Revolution through the stories of the five great artists whose paintings animated the new American republic. The images accompanying the founding of the United States--of honored Founders, dramatic battle scenes, and seminal moments--gave visual shape to Revolutionary events and symbolized an entirely new concept of leadership and government. Since then they have endured as indispensable icons, serving as historical documents and timeless reminders of the nation's unprecedented beginnings. As Paul Staiti reveals in Of Arms and Artists, the lives of the five great American artists of the Revolutionary period--Charles Willson Peale, John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, Benjamin West, and Gilbert Stuart--were every bit as eventful as those of the Founders with whom they continually interacted, and their works contributed mightily to America's founding spirit. Living in a time of breathtaking change, each in his own way came to grips with the history they were living through by turning to brushes and canvases, the results often eliciting awe and praise, and sometimes scorn. Their imagery has connected Americans to 1776, allowing us to interpret and reinterpret the nation's beginning generation after generation. The collective stories of these five artists open a fresh window on the Revolutionary era, making more human the figures we have long honored as our Founders, and deepening our understanding of the whirlwind out of which the United States emerged.
Download or read book Finding Florida written by T. D. Allman and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a comprehensive look at the history of the state of Florida, from its discovery, exploration, and settlement through its becoming a state, to notable events in the early twenty-first century.
Download or read book Story of Art written by Ernst Hans Gombrich and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 1995-09-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most famous and popular book on art ever published, this quintessential "introduction to art," now in its sixteenth edition, has been a worldwide bestseller for over four decades.
Download or read book True Perception written by Chogyam Trungpa and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genuine art has the power to awaken and liberate. The renowned meditation master and artist Chögyam Trungpa called this type of art "dharma art"—any creative work that springs from an awakened state of mind, characterized by directness, unselfconsciousness, and nonaggression. Dharma art provides a vehicle to appreciate the nature of things as they are and express it without any struggle or desire to achieve. A work of dharma art brings out the goodness and dignity of the situation it reflects—dignity that comes from the artist’s interest in the details of life and sense of appreciation for experience. Trungpa shows how the principles of dharma art extend to everyday life: any activity can provide an opportunity to relax and open our senses to the phenomenal world. An expanded edition of Trungpa's Dharma Art (1996), this book includes a new introduction and essay.
