Showing titles in Biographies of Artists, Architects & Photographers

With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy, and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. You'll learn that Michelangelo's body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn't stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O'Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you'll never forget!

In 1900, an 18-year-old Spaniard named Pablo Picasso made his first trip to Paris. It was in this glittering capital of the international art world that, after suffering years of poverty and neglect, he emerged as the leader of a bohemian band of painters, sculptors, and poets. Fueled by opium and alcohol, inspired by raucous late-night conversations at the Lapin Agile cabaret, Picasso and his friends resolved to shake up the world.

Georgia O'Keeffe, one of the most original painters America has ever produced, left behind a remarkable legacy when she died at the age of 98. Her vivid visual vocabulary, sensuous flowers, bleached bones against red sky and earth, had a stunning, profound, and lasting influence on American art in this century.

The compelling story of how Vincent van Gogh developed his audacious, iconic style by immersing himself in the work of others, featuring paintings by Van Gogh as well as the artists who inspired him—from the New York Times bestselling co-author of Van Gogh: The Life Vincent van Gogh’s...

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.

Keith Haring is synonymous with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980's. His artwork-with its simple, bold lines and dynamic figures in motion-filtered in to the world's consciousness and is still instantly recognizable, twenty years after his death. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition...

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. Hailed as 'the most important artist working today' by the Financial Times and as 'an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom' by the New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process. 

Bloomsbury presents The Longing for Less by Kyle Chayka, read by Christopher Ragland. New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice "More than just a story of an abiding cultural preoccupation, The Longing For Less peels back the commodified husk of minimalism to reveal something surprising and...

Bloomsbury presents The Lives of Lucian Freud: YOUTH 1922–1968 by William Feaver, read by Jonathan Keeble. SELECTED AS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND SPECTATOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE...

We have all seen, whether live, in photographs or on postcards, some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world and are among the most beloved works of art of the past century. Yet, ironically, these soothing images were created amid terrible personal turmoil and sadness.

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.

Vincent Van Gogh arrived in the French capital on the last day of February 1886, a month short of his thirty-third birthday. He was a man beaten down by life, half-starved, and nearly broken psychologically. He was saved by his brother Theo, who provided him with room, board, and, most crucially, emotional support while he attempted to master the difficult craft of painting. Thus far, Vincent's crude scenes of peasant life rendered in murky shades of brown and gray were both hackneyed and amateurish.

Bringing together the author’s written reflections and his paintings, drawings, and photographs, Art Is invites us to see the world in prismatic and diverse lights, helping us navigate the fractured, divisive times we live in.

Brought to you by Penguin. Simultaneously heart-breaking and darkly hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. Mark Haddon's parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing...

"A compelling biography of one of our nation's greatest journalists. Outstanding."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University "Well-reported and -researched."—Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk A definitive...

Bloomsbury presents Wigs, Hair and Make-up by Helen Casey, read by Paula Masterton Written by the former Deputy Head of Make-Up and Wigs at the National Theatre, this book opens up a process that very few people will otherwise be privy to, giving perspectives on the preparation before a...

Brought to you by Penguin. An illuminating new essay collection from one of the most distinctive, exciting and acclaimed writers of her generation, Zadie Smith In this keenly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects which have...

Brought to you by Penguin. The hilarious and piercing memoir about growing up gay in a not-so-gay world. I’m just a man, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a cake. What do you do when you’re too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America and you’re ashamed of your body...

Andy Warhol claimed that he loved being outside a party—so that he could get in. But more often than not, the party was at his own studio, The Factory, where celebrities—from Edie Sedgwick and Allen Ginsberg to the Rolling Stones and the Velvet Underground—gathered in an ongoing bash.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers.