"He was history's most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us? The author of the acclaimed bestsellers Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography. Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history's most creative genius"--

In this memoir, singer-songwriter Patti Smith shares tales of New York City : the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's and Strand bookstores and her new life in Brooklyn with a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe--the man who changed her life with his love, friendship, and genius.

"A picture book biography of Leonardo da Vinci"--

The definitive biography of a fascinating and paradoxical figure, one of the most influential artists of his--or any--age. To this day, mention the name "Andy Warhol" to almost anyone and you'll hear about his famous images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. But though Pop Art became synonymous with Warhol's name and dominated the public's image of him, his life and work are infinitely more complex and multi-faceted than that. In Warhol, esteemed art critic Blake Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions. "The meanings of his art depend on the way he lived and who he was," as Gopnik writes. "That's why the details of his biography matter more than for almost any cultural figure," from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing as the child of immigrants to his early career in commercial art to his total immersion in the "performance" of being an artist, accompanied by global fame and stardom--and his attempted assassination. The extent and range of Warhol's success, and his deliberate attempts to thwart his biographers, means that it hasn't been easy to put together an accurate or complete image of him. But in this biography, unprecedented in its scope and detail as well as in its access to Warhol's archives, Gopnik brings to life a figure who continues to fascinate because of his contradictions--he was known as sweet and caring to his loved ones but also a coldhearted manipulator; a deep-thinking avant-gardist but also a true lover of schlock and kitsch; a faithful churchgoer but also an eager sinner, skeptic, and cynic. Wide-ranging and immersive, Warhol gives us the most robust and intricate picture to date of a man and an artist who consistently defied easy categorization and whose life and work continue to profoundly affect our culture and society today

A biography of the pop-art phenomenon discusses his work, homosexuality, and his coming to terms with his illness.

New York City, the 1960 Inside a ramshackle studio known as The Factory, the post-war art world encountered the industrial revolution. For more than two years, Nat Finkelstein was on the scene, documenting the explosive emergence of Pop Art, a subversive spectacle created by the constantly calculating Andy Warhol. Andy The Factory Years is an extraordinary photographic account of the twisted, the addicted, the nameless, and the famous. As a member of the club, Finkelstein discreetly captured icons in the making, including Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Allen Ginsberg, Edie Sedgwick, and Nico, along with such legends of another era as Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp—and, of course, Warhol himself. Engagingly sequenced by renowned design firm Pentagram, Andy The Factory Years features Finkelstein's seminal black-and-white photographs, in addition to several series of previously unpublished color photographs that were thought lost for the past three decades. Finkelstein accompanies these striking images with vivid memories, poetic recollections, and acerbic commentary, providing both visual and intellectual insight into the culture of The Factory.

Born in Holland, half Jewish, raised in Amsterdam, Brussels, Genoa, Philadelphia - Lionni is a man of many languages and cultures but no real home. His story is one of a constant search, a search that takes him from an ideal early childhood to a strict education in Italy that proved largely irrelevant to his future, and then to exile from Fascist Italy in America; from being a highly political aspiring artist to becoming a highly successful advertising director (he invented the famous "Never underestimate the power of a woman" campaign) and a powerful force in the world of graphics as the art director of Fortune magazine; from life in the affluent commuter world of Connecticut to a return to Italy and the life of an artist. After all this - a full life by any account - he finds yet another successful vocation as the author and illustrator of children's books that have sold millions of copies throughout the world.

"Political power," says Howard Zinn, "is controlled by the corporate elite, and the arts are the locale for a kind of guerilla warfare in the sense that guerillas look for apertures and opportunities where they can have an effect." In Artists in Times of War, Zinn looks at the possibilities to create such apertures through art, film, activism, publishing and through our everyday lives. In this collection of four essays, the author of A People's History of the United States writes about why "To criticize the government is the highest act of patriotism." Filled with quotes and examples from the likes of Bob Dylan, Mark Twain, e. e. cummings, Thomas Paine, Joseph Heller, and Emma Goldman, Zinn's essays discuss America's rich cultural counternarratives to war, so needed in these days of unchallenged U.S. militarism.

An in-depth look at the personal and artistic life of renowned artist Peter Max...in his own words. In this intimate visual memoir, artist Peter Max details his life journey as an artist, providing a stirring account of himself as a young boy and as a successful artist eager to return to the days of wonderment and inspiration found only in dreams and childhood. Max charts his ascension in the art world and pauses to reflect on the nature of creativity, the universe at large, his many loves, and his ability to see beauty in the everyday. Vibrantly illustrated with Max's signature work, including some never-before-seen pieces.

When this book first appeared in 1982, it introduced readers to Robert Irwin, the Los Angeles artist "who one day got hooked on his own curiosity and decided to live it." Now expanded to include six additional chapters and twenty-four pages of color plates, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees chronicles three decades of conversation between Lawrence Weschler and light and space master Irwin. It surveys many of Irwin's site-conditioned projects—in particular the Central Gardens at the Getty Museum (the subject of an epic battle with the site's principal architect, Richard Meier) and the design that transformed an abandoned Hudson Valley factory into Dia's new Beacon campus—enhancing what many had already considered the best book ever on an artist.

"Such painters as Larry Rivers, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Marisol, critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, composers Virgil Thomson and Ned Rorem, writers such as Jack Gelber and John Ashbery, and art dealers Sidney Janis and Betty Parsons all describe in ... interviews how they 'made the scene,' with whom, and why. Poet Bill Berkson talks about his close friend Frank O'Hara, Lee Krasner recalls her life with Jackson Pollock, and the late William Flanagan, composer and music critic, describes the early days of Edward Albee."

How a little-known industrial neighborhood in New York unintentionally became a nexus of creative activity for a brief burst of time. During the 1960s and 1970s in New York City, young artists exploited an industrial wasteland to create spacious studios where they lived and worked, redefining the Manhattan area just south of Houston Street. Its use fueled not by city planning schemes but by word-of-mouth recommendations, the area soon grew to become a world-class center for artistic creation indeed, the largest urban artists' colony ever in America--let alone the world. Richard Kostelanetz's Artists' SoHo not only examines why the artists came and how they accomplished what they did but also delves into the lives and works of some of the most creative personalities who lived there during that period, including Nam June Paik, Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Hannah Wilke, George Macuinas, and Alan Suicide. Gallerists followed the artists in fashioning themselves, their homes, their buildings, and even their streets into transiently prominent exhibition and performance spaces. SoHo pioneer Richard Kostelanetz's extensively researched intimate history is framed within a personal memoir that unearths myriad perspectives: social and cultural history, the changing rules for residency and ownership, the ethos of the community, the physical layouts of the lofts, the types of art produced, venues that opened and closed, the daily rhythm, and the gradual invasion of "new people." Artists' SoHo also explores how and why this fertile bohemia couldn't last forever. As wealthier people paid higher prices, galleries left, younger artists settled elsewhere, and the neighborhood became a "SoHo Mall" of trendy stores and restaurants. Compelling and often humorous, Artists' SoHo provides an analysis of a remarkable neighborhood that transformed the art and culture of New York City over the past five decades.

Probes beneath the mystique and deliberate affectations of pop artist Andy Warhol to reveal the troubled yet brilliant man behind the public persona.

"Judy Chicago is America's most dynamic living artist. Her works comprise a dizzying array of media from performance and installation to the glittering table laid for thirty-nine iconic women in The Dinner Party (now permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum), the groundbreaking Birth Project, and the meticulously researched Holocaust Project. She designed the monumental installation for Dior's 2020 Paris couture show and, in 2019, established the Judy Chicago Portal, which will help to accomplish her lifelong goal of overcoming the erasure that has eclipsed the achievements of so many women. The Flowering is her vivid and revealing autobiography, fully illustrated with photographs of her work, as well as never-before-published personal images and a foreword by Gloria Steinem. Chicago has revised and updated her earlier, classic works with previously untold stories, fresh insights, and an extensive afterword covering the last twenty years. This powerful narrative weaves together the stories behind some of Chicago's most significant artworks and her journey as a woman artist with the chronicles of her personal relationships and her understanding, from decades of experience and extensive research, of how misogyny, racism, and other prejudices intersect to erase the legacies of artists who are not white and male while dismissing the suffering of millions of creatures who share the planet. With the first career retrospective of her work forthcoming at the de Young Museum in 2021, Chicago reinforces her message of resilience for a new generation of artists and activists. The Flowering is an essential read for anyone interested in making change."--Publisher's description.

In 1906, Harriet Levy was talked into moving to Paris by her friend Alice B. Toklas and suddenly found herself immersed in a strange world peopled by artists who spoke a language she could not understand--a colorful world that she could only remotely observe in black and white. Paris Portraits is a short masterpiece. This sparkling manuscript, long hidden in the archives of the University of California's Bancroft Library, brings to life a vibrant and mythic time and place. Through Harriet's eyes, we circulate among the artists and patrons in the salons of Gertrude and Sarah Stein, overhear conversations between the up-and-coming Matisse and his students, and see Gertrude Stein's reaction when she learns of Picasso putting his hand on Toklas's knee. We're present when, while reading the poetry of Tagore, Harriet looks up and for the first time, sees--really sees and understands with the heart--what Matisse is doing.

Shows a variety of paintings and sculpture by Schnabel and shares his comments on his life, career, and works

An enduring fascination surrounds the indomitable Georgia O'Keeffe, but never before has this legendary artist been brought to more exuberant life than in this memoir by her lifelong friend, Anita Pollitzer. Coincides with the centennial exhibit of O'Keeffe's work touring major U.S. cities. 40 black-and-white photos.