Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, this luxurious week-to-view pocket diary has a foil and embossed cover with magnetic closure. Featuring on its cover a charming design based on Vincent van Gogh's stunning Wheatfield with Cypresses, this diary makes a perfect gift or a special treat just for you.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The definitive biography for decades to come.”—Leo Jansen, curator, the Van Gogh Museum, and co-editor of Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Letters Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, who galvanized readers with their Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Jackson Pollock, have written another tour de force—an exquisitely detailed, compellingly readable portrait of Vincent van Gogh. Working with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Naifeh and Smith have accessed a wealth of previously untapped materials to bring a crucial understanding to the larger-than-life mythology of this great artist: his early struggles to find his place in the world; his intense relationship with his brother Theo; and his move to Provence, where he painted some of the best-loved works in Western art. The authors also shed new light on many unexplored aspects of Van Gogh’s inner world: his erratic and tumultuous romantic life; his bouts of depression and mental illness; and the cloudy circumstances surrounding his death at the age of thirty-seven. Though countless books have been written about Van Gogh, no serious, ambitious examination of his life has been attempted in more than seventy years. Naifeh and Smith have re-created Van Gogh’s life with an astounding vividness and psychological acuity that bring a completely new and sympathetic understanding to this unique artistic genius. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • The Wall Street Journal • San Francisco Chronicle • NPR • The Economist • Newsday • BookReporter “In their magisterial new biography, Van Gogh: The Life, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith provide a guided tour through the personal world and work of that Dutch painter, shining a bright light on the evolution of his art. . . . What [the authors] capture so powerfully is Van Gogh’s extraordinary will to learn, to persevere against the odds.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Brilliant . . . Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith are the big-game hunters of modern art history. . . . [Van Gogh] rushes along on a tide of research. . . . At once a model of scholarship and an emotive, pacy chunk of hagiography.”—Martin Herbert, The Daily Telegraph (London)
“A story of excruciating power.”—The New York Times The classic, bestselling biographical novel of Vincent Van Gogh Since its initial publication in 1934, Irving Stone’s Lust for Life has been a critical success, a multimillion-copy bestseller, and the basis for an Academy Award-winning movie. The most famous of all of Stone’s novels, it is the story of Vincent Van Gogh—brilliant painter, passionate lover, and alleged madman. Here is his tempestuous story: his dramatic life, his fevered loves for both the highest-born women and the lowest prostitutes, and his paintings—for which he was damned before being proclaimed a genius. The novel takes us from his desperate days in a coal mine in southern Belgium to his dazzling years in the south of France, where he knew the most brilliant artists (and the most depraved whores). Finally, it shows us Van Gogh driven mad, tragic, and triumphant at once. No other novel of a great man’s life has so fascinated the American public for generations.
Pink castles, talking sofas, and objects coming to life: what may sound like the fantasies of Hollywood dream-maker Walt Disney were in fact the figments of the colorful salons of Rococo Paris. Exploring the novel use of French motifs in Disney films and theme parks, this publication features forty works of eighteenth-century European design—from tapestries and furniture to Boulle clocks and Sèvres porcelain—alongside 150 Disney film stills, drawings, and other works on paper. The text connects these art forms through a shared dedication to craftsmanship and highlights references to European art in Disney films, including nods to Gothic Revival architecture in Cinderella (1950);bejeweled, medieval manuscripts in Sleeping Beauty (1959); and Rococo-inspired furnishings and objects brought to life in Beauty and the Beast (1991). Bridging fact and fantasy, this book draws remarkable new parallels between Disney’s magical creations and their artistic inspirations.
Anthropology is a disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life. Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern. Being Alive ranges over such themes as the vitality of materials, what it means to make things, the perception and formation of the ground, the mingling of earth and sky in the weather-world, the experiences of light, sound and feeling, the role of storytelling in the integration of knowledge, and the potential of drawing to unite observation and description. Our humanity, Ingold argues, does not come ready-made but is continually fashioned in our movements along ways of life. Starting from the idea of life as a process of wayfaring, Ingold presents a radically new understanding of movement, knowledge and description as dimensions not just of being in the world, but of being alive to what is going on there.
Among the great figures of the Italian Renaissance, Raphael (1483-1520) is unarguably the artist who has been most widely and consistently admired across the centuries. He had an extraordinary and perhaps unrivaled capacity for self-reinvention--as he progressed from Umbria to Florence and Rome--and an ability to draw strength from the other great artists around him, seemingly growing in stature the more daunting the competition became. This insightful, impeccably researched, and comprehensive volume, published to mark the 500th anniversary of Raphael's death, chronicles the progress of his career in all its richness and complexity. Sumptuous production values and generous illustrations go hand in hand with its rigorous and wide-ranging scholarship. The essays explore Raphael's paintings and drawings, his frescoes in the Vatican Stanze, his designs for tapestries, sculptures, and prints, and his engagement with architecture, art theory, and archaeology. Detailed and authoritative catalogue entries examine many of the finest of Raphael's individual paintings and drawings alongside prints, tapestries, and sculpture.
Thirty nights. Two hearts. One fate. American Beauty, Book 1 After her parents' tragic deaths, Elisa Snow wanted nothing more than to escape her past. Eighteen and alone, she fled her quaint English village and moved to the United States. A starving science student by day and an artist's muse by night, Elisa has slowly built a new life. She never dreamed she would lose everything again. She's one week from graduation when her visa is unexpectedly denied. Given thirty days to leave the country, she must face the one thing she cannot survive again-saying goodbye and leaving her home. Yet within minutes of her world shattering, she meets a man with the power to piece it back together. After finishing his tour of duty in Iraq, Aiden Hale traded battlefields for boardrooms, becoming one of the most successful venture capitalists in the nation. But all his wealth can't buy him reprieve from the horrific memories of war. The only thing that gives him peace is a painting of Elisa. Drawn together by their invisible wounds, they begin a passionate affair as they race against the clock to defy their pasts-and fight for their future. Earlier versions of this book were posted on the author's blog under the titles of The Master's Muse and 30 Nights of Snow, using the pen name Ani Surnois, and the book has since been extensively edited.
Produced in partnership with the National Gallery, this gorgeous and practical month-to-view year planner features on its cover a design based on Vincent van Gogh's A Wheatfield, with Cypresses. It's a perfect gift or special treat just for you. Printed on FSC-certified paper.
