A firsthand account of the 1980s Los Angeles art scene by groundbreaking artist Ulysses Jenkins Written in 1990 and published as a limited-edition artist’s book in collaboration with Rosanna Albertini in 2018, this memoir by vi...

Ernest Hemingway has enjoyed a rich legacy as the progenitor of modern fiction, as an outsized character in literary lore who wrote some of the most honest and moving accounts of the twentieth century, set against such grand backdrops...

This fascinating exploration of Leonardo da Vinci's life and work identifies what it was that made him so unique, and explains the phenomenon of the world's most celebrated artistic genius who, 500 years on, still grips and inspires u...

An intimate depiction of the visionary who revolutionized the art worldA man who created portraits of the rich and powerful, Andy Warhol was one of the most incendiary figures in American culture, a celebrity whose star shone as brigh...

Although his popularity is eclipsed by Rembrandt today, Peter Paul Rubens was revered by his contemporaries as the greatest painter of his era, if not of all history.  His undeniable artistic genius, bolstered by a modest disposition...

James Dean was a mystery, a nocturnal recluse who wandered the streets of Times Square at all hours, pursuing his constant observation and study of individuals, characters and street life of the American 50s. Roy Schatt was a well-kno...

The Artist, The Genius, The LegendLeonardo da Vinci's legacy is everywhere: from bridges to helicopters, fashion to fiction, flying machines, human anatomy, not to mention some of the most compelling artworks ever created by man. Leon...

From an acclaimed musician comes an inside look at one of the most controversial and influential civil rights movements of our time.Nights in Tents is a memoir of the profoundly moving, and often hysterical, circumstances a fifty-one-...

The definitive biography of the beguiling Diane Arbus, one of the most influential and important photographers of the twentieth century, a brilliant and absorbing exposition that links the extraordinary arc of her life to her iconic p...

This book is an exploration. By means of words, signs, drawings. Mescaline, the subject explored.' In Miserable Miracle, the great French poet and artist Henri Michaux, a confirmed teetotaler, tells of his life-transforming first enco...

The most important scientist of the twentieth century and the most important artist had their periods of greatest creativity almost simultaneously and in remarkably similar circumstances. This fascinating parallel biography of Albert ...

An icon of avant-garde art in the 1920s, Margarett Sargent is nearly unknown today. In a haunting and evocative weave of biography and memoir, her granddaughter unearths for the first time the life of this spirited and brilliant woman...

A National Book Critics Circle finalist• One of Vogue's Best Books of the Year A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwa...

Eisner and Harvey Award-winner Paolo Rivera grew up in his parents' art store, so it's no wonder his life's path is that of an artist. And not just your run-of-the-mill comic book artist, but a painter, penciler, inker, colorist, and ...

Lives of Velázquez brings together two seminal early accounts of the great seventeenth-century Spanish painter (ca. 1599–1660). These texts, written by his contemporaries Francisco Pacheco and Antonio Palomino and newly translated ...

Gordon Parks (1912–2006)—the groundbreaking photographer, writer, composer, activist, and filmmaker— was only sixteen in 1928 when he moved from Kansas to St. Paul, Minnesota, after his mother's death. There, homeless and hungry...

American Brad Washburn had an impact on his protÉgÉs and imitators as profound as that of any other adventurer in the twentieth century. Unquestionably regarded as the greatest mountaineer in Alaskan history and as one of the fines...

Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, today astonishing sums are paid for their paintings. Their dazzling works are familiar to even the most casual art lovers—but how well does the world know the Imp...

Everett Ruess, the young poet and artist who disappeared into the desert canyonlands of Utah in 1934, has become widely known posthumously as the spokesman for the spirit of the high desert. Many have been inspired by his intense sear...

In a brilliant collaboration between writer and subject, Witold Rybczynski, the bestselling author of Home and City Life, illuminates Frederick Law Olmsted's role as a major cultural figure at the epicenter of nineteenth-century Ameri...

Here’s the first-person story of a talented artist who freelanced as an assassin. If this sounds somewhat like Gong Show host Chuck Barris’s “unauthorized autobiography,” Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, there’s good reason....

In Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tamara Shopsin takes the reader on a pointillist time-travel trip to the Greenwich Village of her bohemian 1970s childhood, a funky, tight-knit small town in the big city, long before Sex and the City tours a...

A Pictorial Companion to "MY DARLING OLGA", my Swedish grandfather's love letters to my American grandmother 1909-1961

Vanessa Bell is central to the history of the Bloomsbury Group, yet until this authorised biography was written, she largely remained a silent and inscrutable figure. Tantalising glimpses of her life appeared mainly in her sister, Vir...

An incisive biography of the prolific photo-essayist W. Eugene SmithFamously unabashed, W. Eugene Smith was photography's most celebrated humanist. As a photo essayist at Life magazine in the 1940s and '50s, he established himself as ...

The famous American architect's fascinating look at the early years of his pioneering work, which led to his being called the "father of the skyscraper." Includes a wealth of projects, insights, and evaluations, as well ...

Conducting Matters is the true story of a tiny, sparkling, tree-climbing, Southern girl with a deep love of music who rose to a highly respected, professional position that allowed her to dynamically touch the lives of others along he...

Renowned American artist Anne Truitt kept this illuminating and inspiring journal over a period of seven years, determined to come to terms with the forces that shaped her art and life. Her range of sensitivity—moral, intellectual, ...

Van Gogh's brother Theo was his confidant and companion, and, in his letters to him, Van Gogh reveals himself as artist and man. Even more than if he had purposely intended to tell his life story, Van Gogh's letters lay bare his deepe...

The prodigious talent of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (ca. 1606–1669), along with his disregard for many of the artistic conventions of his day, astonished, delighted, and dismayed his contemporaries. The full gamut of their reaction...