Biographies of Artists, Architects & Photographers

In this stunningly original memoir, Edmund de Waal travels the world to stand in the great buildings his forebears once inhabited....

Scott Adams has probably failed at more things than anyone you've ever met. So how did he go from hapless office worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the world's most famous comic strips, in just a few years....

A dazzling biography of one of the 20th century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, Fierce Poise is an exhilarating ride through New York's 1950s art scene and a brilliant portrait of a young artist through the moments that shaped her....

In this brilliantly listenable autobiography - his book of books - one of India’s greatest writers shows us the roots of everything he has written.... 

 An intimate peek into the life of the soldier-turned-lyricist Anand Bakshi, from his formative years in undivided Punjab to eventually moving to Bombay and landing his first film Bhala Aadmi in 1958....

Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling chops, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it....

The world’s most renowned art forger reveals the secrets behind his decades of painting like the masters—exposing an art world that is far more corrupt than we ever knew while providing an art history lesson wrapped in sex, drugs, and Caravaggio....

This combination of serious artistic engagement with warmth and clarity of prose revels in the experiences and pleasures of art and the body, identity, and community....

During the course of her extraordinary journey, from abject poverty to a new kind of glamour, Coco Chanel would help forge the idea of the modern woman....

Modern Man is a riveting biography of Le Corbusier - a man who invented new ways of building and thinking....

Leonardo's Brain uses Da Vinci as a starting point for an exploration of human creativity....

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art....

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet.... 

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the Rhode Island School of Design....

When Picasso became Picasso: the story of how an obscure young painter from Barcelona came to Paris and made himself into the most influential artist of the 20th century....

Based on years of archival research and on interviews with hundreds of Warhol's surviving friends, lovers and enemies, Warhol traces the artist's path from his origins through his early success as a commercial illustrator and his ground-breaking pivot into fine art....

Diane Arbus was one of the most brilliant and revered photographers in the history of American art....

A profound meditation on accepting and celebrating one's solitude....

Vincent van Gogh’s paintings look utterly unique - his vivid palette and boldly interpretive portraits are unmistakably his. Yet however revolutionary his style may have been, it was actually built on a strong foundation of paintings by other artists....

Virtually everyone would agree that Leonardo da Vinci was the most important artist of the High Renaissance. It was Leonardo who singlehandedly created the defining features of Western art....

A passionate account of the tortured life and tragic death of the greatest artist of the nineteenth century, by renowned critic and painter Julian Bell....

Françoise Gilot was in her early 20s when she met the 61-year-old Pablo Picasso in 1943. Brought up in a well-to-do, upper-middle-class family, who had sent her to Cambridge and the Sorbonne and hoped that she would go into law, the young woman defied their wishes....

The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. This book probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful and tells the story of the built environment....

Donna M. Lucey illuminates the lives of four extraordinary women painted by the iconic high-society portraitist John Singer Sargent....

Master Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for his magnificent autobiography....

'Thoughts On Art and Life' by Leonardo Da Vinci is a fascinating collection of writings from the great polymath of the Italian Renaissance. There are sections covering the great man's thoughts on life, art, and science. The translator, Maurice Baring trawled the available manuscripts to distil da Vinci's writings on these subjects into a single, accessible tome, which will be of interest to students of da Vinci, the Renaissance, and the history of both art and science.

In this stunning volume, noted art historians Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher Heath Brown discuss the historical, social, and political conditions that shaped Dali's work, identify the impact of Modern as well as Old Master art, and present an unflinching view of the master's personal relationships and motivations.

Antony Armstrong-Jones, photographer, designer and film-maker, gained worldwide attention when he married Queen Elizabeth II's younger sister, Princess Margaret in 1960—the first non-aristocrat to marry into the Royal Family for 400 years. How did a "commoner" come to marry a princess, a woman whom he had long admired from afar? In fact, "Tony" descended from Welsh gentry, the son of a barrister and a society hostess. His family shared a long-established link with the Mountbatten arm of the Royal Family.

Peter Rabbit, a mischievous bunny, sneaks into Mr. McGregor's garden to snack on lettuce and radishes. When Mr. McGregor finds Peter near his cucumbers, a chase begins. This beloved children's story by Beatrix Potter is full of suspense and delight.

10歳で建築家を志し、国内外で多数のプロジェクトをてがける今もっとも注目の建築家が建築知識満載で綴る10代へのメッセージ。建築家とは、そしてこれからの建築とは――。

When Roxana Robinson’s definitive biography of O’Keeffe was first published in 1989, it received rave reviews and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This new edition features a new foreword by the author, setting O’Keefe in an artistic context over the last thirty years since the book was first published, as well as previously unpublished letters of the young O’Keeffe to her lover, Arthur MacMahon. This book also relates the story of Robinson’s own encounter with the artist.

Berna González Harbour firma una deslumbrante narración biográfica sobre el artista que mejor supo retratar nuestro país: Francisco de Goya.

Un memoir privato e insieme un racconto corale, un'incursione autentica nella vita di Paolo Villaggio e poi un'altra, inedita e fitta di testimonianze di prima mano, nel dietro le quinte del suo personaggio più memorabile: Ugo Fantozzi.

"J'ai toujours eu un cœur excentrique." Bono a grandi dans le nord de Dublin entre un père catholique et une mère protestante, alors que les violences sectaires se multipliaient en Irlande. Il n'avait que quatorze ans lors du décès de sa mère, perte qui va façonner sa recherche d'une famille. Il a commencé sa vie avec le sentiment d'être quelconque, pourtant toute son existence sera consacrée à combattre l'idée que quiconque puisse l'être. En quatre décennies, U2 passe d'une bande d'adolescents ambitieux au plus grand groupe au monde.

Anni cinquanta. In mezzo a una strada di Parigi sono raccolte alcune persone, ferme, come in attesa di qualcosa o qualcuno. Uno di loro ha i capelli ispidi e brizzolati, un altro è quasi calvo, parlotta con un uomo baffuto, le mani incrociate sul petto; un altro ancora sputa in aria il fumo di una sigaretta, assorto in chissà quale pensiero. Qualcuno è lì di fronte con una Leica in mano, preme il pulsante, clic.