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Portrait of a Thief: One of the Most Anticipated Debuts of 2022
by Grace D. Li"This is as much a novel as a reckoning." NEW YORK TIMESThe characters are alluring and ... engaging. So too are the emotional struggles the crew endure as they try to balance duty to family with their love for China and the need to understand their own personalities." Literary Review"This is the heist novel we deserve. Brilliantly twisty and yet so contemplative [...] this book will continue to haunt you long after you've reached the end."-Jesse Q. Sutanto, author of Dial A for Aunties"Portrait of a Thief was everything I imagined and more. The writing felt close and intimate and the characters felt like portraits themselves, bursting with life and delicately human." -Morgan Rogers, author of Honey Girl"Grace D. Li is a virtuosic storyteller [...] the most exciting debut I've read this year [...] an intelligent page-turner that will keep you hooked until the very end." -Lauren Wilkinson, New York Times bestselling author of American Spy "In this slick, dazzling, debut, the stakes are high and the writing elegant. Here's a story that offers not just adventure or a reprieve from the everyday, but big dreams, big hearts, enduring friendships, and the multitudes of identities that can exist within each one of us." -Weike Wang, author of Chemistry "A beautiful examination of identity as children of the diaspora [...] This fast-paced heist leaves you clutching the pages and rooting for the thieves." -Roselle Lim, author of Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune "A lyrical and action-packed tale of yearning, connection, self-discovery, and righting wrongs, Portrait of a Thief is a unique vision of what it means to come home." -Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of The Violence___________________________________________________________________________________This was how things began: Boston on the cusp of fall, the Sackler Museum robbed of 23 pieces of priceless Chinese art. Even in this back room, dust catching the slant of golden, late-afternoon light, Will could hear the sirens. They sounded like a promise. Will Chen, a Chinese American art history student at Harvard, has spent most of his life learning about the West - its art, its culture, all that it has taken and called its own. He believes art belongs with its creators, so when a Chinese corporation offers him a (highly illegal) chance to reclaim five priceless sculptures, it's surprisingly easy to say yes. Will's crew, fellow students chosen out of his boundless optimism for their skills and loyalty, aren't exactly experienced criminals. Irene is a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything; Daniel is pre-med with steady hands and dreams of being a surgeon. Lily is an engineering student who races cars in her spare time; and Will is relying on Alex, an MIT dropout turned software engineer, to hack her way in and out of each museum they must rob. Each student has their own complicated relationship with China and the identities they've cultivated as Chinese Americans, but one thing soon becomes certain: they won't say no. Because if they succeed? They earn an unfathomable ten million each, and a chance to make history. If they fail, they lose everything . . . and the West wins again.
Portrait of a Thief: The Instant Sunday Times & New York Times Bestseller
by Grace D. LiA cinematic, entertaining and fast-paced debut novel that is part-Ocean's Eleven, part-The Social Network and part-Crazy Rich Asians, Portrait of a Thief is an addictive mix of heist and unlikely friendships by way of the politics of colonization.This was how things began: Boston on the cusp of fall, the Sackler Museum robbed of 23 pieces of priceless Chinese art. Even in this back room, dust catching the slant of golden, late-afternoon light, Will could hear the sirens. They sounded like a promise. Will Chen, a Chinese American art history student at Harvard, has spent most of his life learning about the West - its art, its culture, all that it has taken and called its own. He believes art belongs with its creators, so when a Chinese corporation offers him a (highly illegal) chance to reclaim five priceless sculptures, it's surprisingly easy to say yes. Will's crew, fellow students chosen out of his boundless optimism for their skills and loyalty, aren't exactly experienced criminals. Irene is a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything; Daniel is pre-med with steady hands and dreams of being a surgeon. Lily is an engineering student who races cars in her spare time; and Will is relying on Alex, an MIT dropout turned software engineer, to hack her way in and out of each museum they must rob. Each student has their own complicated relationship with China and the identities they've cultivated as Chinese Americans, but one thing soon becomes certain: they won't say no. Because if they succeed? They earn an unfathomable ten million each, and a chance to make history. If they fail, they lose everything . . . and the West wins again.(P) 2022 Penguin Random House Audio
Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry, and Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
by Bridget QuinnDiscover the story of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard—a long-ignored artist and feminist of eighteenth-century France—in this imaginative and illuminating biography from an award-winning writer.Born in Paris in 1749, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard rose from shopkeeper’s daughter to an official portraitist of the royal court—only to have her achievements reduced to ash by the French Revolution. While she defied societal barriers to become a member of the exclusive Académie Royale and a mentor for other ambitious women painters, she left behind few writings, and her legacy was long overshadowed by celebrated portraitist and memoirist Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.But Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s story lives on. In this engaging biography, Bridget Quinn applies her insightful interpretation of art history to Labille-Guiard’s life. She offers a fascinating new perspective on the artist’s feminism, her sexuality, and her vision of the world. Quinn expertly blends close analyses of paintings with broader context about the era and inserts delicately fictionalized interpersonal scenes that fill the gaps in the historical record. This is a compelling and inspiring look at an artist too long overlooked.INSPIRING HISTORICAL NONFICTION: Despite numerous setbacks, Labille-Guiard built a legacy as an accomplished royal portraitist and a mentor to other young women artists of her era. This tale of solidarity, self-belief, and true passion for painting is sure to inspire contemporary creatives and women today. CREATIVE AND COMPELLING ART HISTORY BOOK: Bridget Quinn is an award-winning author and art historian who has spent years researching Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s work and life. She vividly evokes both and weaves a compelling narrative at the intersection of art, gender, and politics. GORGEOUS ART REPRODUCTIONS THROUGHOUT: This biography features full-color images of artwork by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, her rumored rival Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, and other artists of the era, including portraits of key players in the narrative. These images, interspersed throughout the book, offer valuable visual references to illuminate the engaging text even further.AN ARTFUL GIFT BOOK: Uniquely crafted and thoroughly researched, this volume makes an outstanding gift for art history enthusiasts and readers who love exploring untold stories in women's history.Perfect for:Readers of memoirs and biographiesHistory buffs and fans of historical fiction and nonfictionArtists, art lovers, museumgoers, and art history studentsFeminists and readers seeking feminist booksFrancophiles and those interested in the French RevolutionFans of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and other historical dramas
Portrait of a Young Painter: Pepe Zúñiga and Mexico City’s Rebel Generation
by Mary Kay VaughanIn Portrait of a Young Painter, the distinguished historian Mary Kay Vaughan adopts a biographical approach to understanding the culture surrounding the Mexico City youth rebellion of the 1960s. Her chronicle of the life of painter Pepe Zúñiga counters a literature that portrays post-1940 Mexican history as a series of uprisings against state repression, injustice, and social neglect that culminated in the student protests of 1968. Rendering Zúñiga's coming of age on the margins of formal politics, Vaughan depicts midcentury Mexico City as a culture of growing prosperity, state largesse, and a vibrant, transnationally-informed public life that produced a multifaceted youth movement brimming with creativity and criticism of convention. In an analysis encompassing the mass media, schools, politics, family, sexuality, neighborhoods, and friendships, she subtly invokes theories of discourse, phenomenology, and affect to examine the formation of Zúñiga's persona in the decades leading up to 1968. By discussing the influences that shaped his worldview, she historicizes the process of subject formation and shows how doing so offers new perspectives on the events of 1968.
Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'keeffe
by Laurie LisleGeorgia O'Keeffe, one of the most original painters America has ever produced, left behind a remarkable legacy when she died at the age of ninety-eight. 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. O'Keeffe's personal mystique is as intriguing and enduring as her bold, brilliant canvases. Here is the first full account of her exceptional life -- from her girlhood and early days as a controversial art teacher...to her discovery by the pioneering photographer of the New York avant-garde, Alfred Stieglitz...to her seclusion in the New Mexico desert, where she lived until her death. And here is the story of a great romance -- between the extraordinary painter and her much older mentor, lover, and husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Renowned for her fierce independence, iron determination, and unique artistic vision, Georgia O'Keeffe is a twentieth-century legend. Her dazzling career spans virtually the entire history modern art in America.
Portrait of an Island: The Architecture and Material Culture of Gorée, Sénégal, 1758–1837 (Early Modern Cultural Studies)
by Mark HinchmanThe once famous trading center of Gorée, Sénégal today lies in the busy harbor of the modern city of Dakar. From its beginnings as a modest outpost, Gorée became one of the intersections which linked African trading routes to the European Atlantic trade. Then, as now, people of all nationalities poured into the island; Dutch, English, French, and Portuguese came to trade with the Mande, Moor, Tukor, and Wolf tribes. Trading parties brought gold, horses, firewood, mirrors, books, and more. They built houses of various forms, using American lumber, French roof tiles, freshly‑cut straw, and pulverized seashells, and furnished them in as cosmopolitan a fashion as the city itself. Mark Hinchman's Portrait of an Island: The Architecture and Material Culture of Gorée, Sénégal, 1758‑1837 considers the houses, portraits, and furnishings of the island's early modern inhabitants. Multiple features of eighteenth‑century Gorée‑‑its demographic diversity, the prominence of women leaders, the phenomenon of identities in flux, and the importance of commerce, fashion, and international trade‑‑argue for its place in the construction of an early global modernity. In an examination of the built and natural landscape, Portrait of an Island deciphers the material culture involved in the ever‑changing relationships amongst male, female, rich, poor, and slave.
A Portrait of Bowie: A tribute to Bowie by his artistic collaborators and contemporaries
by Brian HiattA strikingly unique tribute to David Bowie, comprising a collection of 40 visual portraits of the icon throughout his career, and text tributes by his artistic collaborators and contemporaries.
A Portrait of Bowie: A tribute to Bowie by his artistic collaborators and contemporaries
by Brian HiattHIS LIFE WAS A WORK OF ARTNow, artists and musicians who worked with David Bowie during his lifetime - or who were his contemporaries - pay tribute to the icon through their own words on what it was like to work in collaboration with a man whose fluid artistic genius repeatedly broke boundaries, right up until his death. Alongside these text tributes are 40 stunning illustrative and photographic portraits of Bowie throughout his career. The contributing artists and photographers include (alphabetically): Edward Bell, Derek Boshier, Anton Corbijn, Kevin Cummins, Chuck Connelly, Chalkie Davies, Stephen Finer, Greg Gorman, Derry Moore, Terry O'Neill, Mick Rock, Masayoshi Sukita, George Underwood, Justin de Villeneuve and more. Alongside these remarkable portraits are insightful, personal written pieces by his contemporaries, and musicians and artists who worked closely with Bowie, including Zachary Alford, Carlos Alomar, Toni Basil, Gail Ann Dorsey, Mike Garson, Dana Gillespie, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, Cyndi Lauper, and Nile Rodgers, among others. The book is curated by Brian Hiatt, of Rolling Stone magazine, as General Editor.** Newly revised and improved ebook edition, optimized for both small- and large-screen devices **
Portrait of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House
by Richard Reeves Harvey SawlerA revealing and intimate portrait of a president, husband, and father as seen through the lens of the first official White House photographer. Cecil Stoughton’s close rapport with President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave him extraordinary access to the Oval Office, the Kennedys’ private quarters and homes, state dinners, cabinet meetings, diplomatic trips, and family holidays. Drawing on Stoughton’s unparalleled body of photographs, most rarely or never before reproduced, and supported by a deeply thoughtful narrative by political historian Richard Reeves, Portrait of Camelot is an unprecedented portrayal of the power, politics, and warmly personal aspects of Camelot’s 1,036 days.“Reveals an intimate account of a very public figure…the rare archive of images features the president during state dinners and cabinet meetings at the White House to family holidays and vacations at their private homes.” —Vanity Fair
Portrait of Ivan
by Paula FoxThe compelling story of an unusual relationship between a sensitive young boy and an artist whose appearance in his life proves to be transformative.
A Portrait of Joan: The Autobiography of Joan Crawford
by Joan CrawfordOne of Hollywood’s greatest stars recalls her fabulous life: at nine, scrubbing floors in a Kansas City school; at twenty, motion picture stardom and marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; in 1945, the Academy Award for her sensational comeback-triumph in Mildred Pierce; and today, a glamorous “double life” as Hollywood star and corporation executive.Richly illustrated with photographs throughout.
A Portrait Of Leni Riefenstahl
by Audrey SalkeldLeni Riefenstahl will always be remembered for her brilliant film of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin - still rated as one of the best documentaries ever made. Before that she was acclaimed for her roles in silent feature films, when German cinema was in its artistic heyday in the 1920s. She pioneered the box office success of such classic mountaineering dramas as The White Hell of Piz Palu and then began to direct her own films. The Blue Light was admired by Hitler and led to her filming the Wagnerian Nuremberg Rally of 1934. After the war she was shunned by the film industry, despite a court in 1952 proclaiming her not guilty of supporting the Nazis in a punishable way. Her undoubted charisma led to many affairs and grandiose schemes - deep sea diving in her seventies and still filming wildlife in her nineties. Audrey Salkeld has sifted the fact from the legend and gives us a moving portrait of the great movie `star' who suffered more in the `wilderness' than her enduring fame suggests.
Portrait of Lies
by Dandi Daley MackallEncouraged by her close friends and a mystery supporter in cyberspace, Jamie decides to enter a contest to win an art camp scholarship despite her own lack of confidence in her artistic ability.
Portrait Of A Man
by Georges PerecGaspard Winckler, master forger, is trapped in a basement studio on the outskirts of Paris, with his paymaster's blood on his hands. The motive for this murder? A perversion of artistic ambition. After a lifetime lived in the shadows, he has strayed too close to the sun. Fittingly for such an enigmatic writer, Portrait of a Man is both Perec's first novel and his last. Frustrated in his efforts to find a publisher, he put it aside, telling a friend: 'I'll go back to it in ten years when it'll turn into a masterpiece, or else I'll wait in my grave until one of my faithful exegetes comes across it in an old trunk.' An apt coda to one of the brightest literary careers of the twentieth century, it is - in the words of David Bellos, the 'faithful exegete' who brought it to light - 'connected by a hundred threads to every part of the literary universe that Perec went on to create - but it's not like anything else that he wrote.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cat: Life and Times of Artistic Felines
by Nia GouldA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cat is a book of more than 20 influential artists reimagined as artistic felines.From Frida Catlo to Yayoi Catsama, Wassily Catdinski to Henri Catisse, each portrait of the artist as a young cat is accompanied by a clever tongue-in-cheek biography revealing the thrilling feline lives (all nine) behind their famed artwork.Loaded with clever cat puns, this playful romp through art history will twist the whiskers of any cat-loving creative, whether you're discovering the inspiration for Frida Catlo's renowned self-pawtraits to reflecting on the catmosphere that gave rise to Georgia O'Kitty's landscapes.• Features fantastic feline artists such as Mary Catsatt and Meow Weiwei• A cute and clever book that cat and art lovers alike will love• Packed with tons of real biographical info about each artist and plentiful cat punsFor cat lovers with an artistic purr-suasion, this is the ultimate celebration of their favorite artists.• A purrfectly smart and sweet book for cat lovers, art lovers, pun enthusiasts, and those who love them• Great for those who loved Fat Cat Art by Svetlana Petrova, Cats Galore by Susan Herbert, Of Cats and Men: Profiles of History's Great Cat-Loving Artists, Writers, Thinkers and Statesmen by Sam Kalda
A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises
by Anastasia Salter Mel StanfillIncreasingly over the past decade, fan credentials on the part of writers, directors, and producers have come to be seen as a guarantee of quality media making—the “fanboy auteur.” Figures like Joss Whedon are both one of “us” and one of “them.” This is a strategy of marketing and branding—it is a claim from the auteur himself or industry PR machines that the presence of an auteur who is also a fan means the product is worth consuming. Such claims that fan credentials guarantee quality are often contested, with fans and critics alike rejecting various auteur figures as the true leader of their respective franchises. That split, between assertions of fan and auteur status and acceptance (or not) of that status, is key to unravelling the fan auteur.In A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises, authors Anastasia Salter and Mel Stanfill examine this phenomenon through a series of case studies featuring fanboys. The volume discusses both popular fanboys, such as J. J. Abrams, Kevin Smith, and Joss Whedon, as well as fangirls like J. K. Rowling, E L James, and Patty Jenkins, and dissects how the fanboy-fangirl auteur dichotomy is constructed and defended by popular media and fans in online spaces, and how this discourse has played in maintaining the exclusionary status quo of geek culture. This book is particularly timely given current discourse, including such incidents as the controversy surrounding Joss Whedon’s so-called feminism, the publication of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and contestation over authorial voices in the DC cinematic universe, as well as broader conversations about toxic masculinity and sexual harassment in Hollywood.
Portrait Painting Atelier: Old Master Techniques and Contemporary Applications
by Domenic Cretara Suzanne BrookerThe art of portraiture approached its apex during the sixteenth century in Europe with the discovery of oil painting when the old masters developed and refined techniques that remain unsurpassed to this day. The ascendance of nonrepresentational art in the middle of the twentieth century displaced these venerable skills, especially in academic art circles. Fortunately for aspiring artists today who wish to learn the methods that allowed the Old Masters to achieve the luminous color and subtle tonalities so characteristic of their work, this knowledge has been preserved in hundreds of small traditional painting ateliers that persevered in the old ways in this country and throughout the world.Coming out of this dedicated movement, Portrait Painting Atelier is an essential resource for an art community still recovering from a time when solid instruction in art technique was unavailable in our schools. Of particular value here is a demonstration of the Old Masters' technique of layering paint over a toned-ground surface, a process that builds from the transparent dark areas to the more densely painted lights. This method unifies the entire painting, creating a beautiful glow that illuminates skin tones and softly blends all the color tones. Readers will also find valuable instruction in paint mediums from classic oil-based to alkyd-based, the interactive principles of composition and photograph-based composition, and the anatomy of the human face and the key relationships among its features. Richly illustrated with the work of preeminent masters such as Millet, Géricault, and van Gogh, as well as some of today's leading portrait artists--and featuring seven detailed step-by-step portrait demonstrations--Portrait Painting Atelier is the first book in many years to so comprehensively cover the concepts and techniques of traditional portraiture.From the Hardcover edition.
Portrait Pro
by Jeff SmithDroves of hobbyist photographers make a move to professional photography every year. They read a few books, watch rock star photographers shoot online, make business cards, and forge their path to a new career. When they book clients, work through the session, proof their images, and conduct a sales session, though, they encounter artistic, organizational, and financial problems they had not anticipated, and many stall out. In this book, Jeff Smith focuses on finding an audience and a target demographic, honing your posing and lighting skills, working with clients, and managing business and personnel concerns. Smith begins by taking a close look at the mind-set required for forging ahead as a professional photographer. He shows you how to define and target the clientele you want to work with and teaches you skillful approaches for creating and maintaining a strong photographer-client relationship. He notes that many photographers enter the business to create images that please them and explains that to be successful, photographers must instead learn to gain insight into just what the client wants to see in the final photos in order to maximize profits and keep clients coming back for more. With a clearly defined objective and approach outlines, Smith moves on to tackle common technical issues that new pros find daunting. He provides tips for creating perfect lighting in the studio and outdoors. He also discusses positioning for every part of the body, to create an ideal presentation to the camera. Next, he provides compositional tips-from where to position the subject in the frame, to selecting the best camera angle, to cropping for impact-in order to maximize image impact and present the best-possible image to your client. Finally, with the technical and artistic fields addressed, Smith turns to a discussion on the business side of the profession. He offers advice on acquiring equipment, understanding costs and pricing, creating new business opportunities, identifying an ideal studio location, and even managing your time.
Portrait Pro
by Jeff SmithDroves of hobbyist photographers make a move to professional photography every year. They read a few books, watch rock star photographers shoot online, make business cards, and forge their path to a new career. When they book clients, work through the session, proof their images, and conduct a sales session, though, they encounter artistic, organizational, and financial problems they had not anticipated, and many stall out.In this book, Jeff Smith focuses on finding an audience and a target demographic, honing your posing and lighting skills, working with clients, and managing business and personnel concerns.Smith begins by taking a close look at the mind-set required for forging ahead as a professional photographer. He shows you how to define and target the clientele you want to work with and teaches you skillful approaches for creating and maintaining a strong photographer-client relationship. He notes that many photographers enter the business to create images that please them and explains that to be successful, photographers must instead learn to gain insight into just what the client wants to see in the final photos in order to maximize profits and keep clients coming back for more.With a clearly defined objective and approach outlines, Smith moves on to tackle common technical issues that new pros find daunting. He provides tips for creating perfect lighting in the studio and outdoors. He also discusses positioning for every part of the body, to create an ideal presentation to the camera. Next, he provides compositional tips-from where to position the subject in the frame, to selecting the best camera angle, to cropping for impact-in order to maximize image impact and present the best-possible image to your client.Finally, with the technical and artistic fields addressed, Smith turns to a discussion on the business side of the profession. He offers advice on acquiring equipment, understanding costs and pricing, creating new business opportunities, identifying an ideal studio location, and even managing your time.
Portrait Revolution: Inspiration from Around the World For Creating Art in Multiple Mediums and Styles
by Julia L. KayBased on the popular international collaborative art project, Julia Kay's Portrait Party, this book features hundreds of portraits in multiple mediums and styles teamed with tips and insights on the artistic process. The human face is one of the most important subjects for artists, no matter their chosen medium. Pulling from 50,000 works of portraiture created by the artists of the international online collaborative project Julia Kay’s Portrait Party, Portrait Revolution presents a new look at this topic—one that doesn’t limit itself to one medium, one style, one technique, or one artist. By presenting portraits in pencil, pen, charcoal, oils, watercolors, acrylics, pastels, mixed media, digital media, collage, and more, Julia Kay and co. demonstrate the limitless possibilities available to aspiring artists or even to professional artists who are looking to expand creatively.Along with works in almost every conceivable medium, Portrait Revolution shines a spotlight on different portrait-making techniques and styles (featuring everything from realism to abstraction). With tips, insights, and recommendations from accomplished portrait artists from around the globe, this all-in-one inspiration resource provides everything you’ll need to kick-start your own portrait-making adventure.
Portrait Stories
by null Michal Peled GinsburgWhat makes stories about portraits so gripping and unsettling? Portrait Stories argues that it is the ways they problematize the relation between subjectivity and representation. Through close readings of short stories and novellas by Poe, James, Hoffmann, Gautier, Nerval, Balzac, Kleist, Hardy, Wilde, Storm, Sand, and Gogol, the author shows how the subjectivities of sitter, painter, and viewer are produced in relation to representations shaped by particular interests and power relations, often determined by gender as well as by class. She focuses on the power that can accrue to the painter from the act of representation (often at the expense of the portrait’s subject), while also exploring how and why this act may threaten the portrait painter’s sense of self. Analyzing the viewer’s relation to the portrait, she demonstrates how portrait stories problematize the very act of seeing and with it the way subjectivity is constructed in the field of vision.
The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World
by Steven NadlerA biography of the great portraitist Frans Hals that takes the reader into the turbulent world of the Dutch Golden Age. Frans Hals was one of the greatest portrait painters in history, and his style transformed ideas and expectations about what portraiture can do and what a painting should look like. Hals was a member of the great trifecta of Dutch Baroque painters alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer, and he was the portraitist of choice for entrepreneurs, merchants, professionals, theologians, intellectuals, militiamen, and even his fellow artists in the Dutch Golden Age. His works, with their visible brush strokes and bold execution, lacked the fine detail and smooth finish common among his peers, and some dismissed his works as sloppy and unfinished. But for others, they were fresh and exciting, filled with a sense of the sitter’s animated presence captured with energy and immediacy. Steven Nadler gives us the first full-length biography of Hals in many years and offers a view into seventeenth-century Haarlem and this culturally rich era of the Dutch Republic. He tells the story not only of Hals’s life, but also of the artistic, social, political, and religious worlds in which he lived and worked.
The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World
by Steven NadlerA biography of the great portraitist Frans Hals that takes the reader into the turbulent world of the Dutch Golden Age. Frans Hals was one of the greatest portrait painters in history, and his style transformed ideas and expectations about what portraiture can do and what a painting should look like. Hals was a member of the great trifecta of Dutch Baroque painters alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer, and he was the portraitist of choice for entrepreneurs, merchants, professionals, theologians, intellectuals, militiamen, and even his fellow artists in the Dutch Golden Age. His works, with their visible brush strokes and bold execution, lacked the fine detail and smooth finish common among his peers, and some dismissed his works as sloppy and unfinished. But for others, they were fresh and exciting, filled with a sense of the sitter’s animated presence captured with energy and immediacy. Steven Nadler gives us the first full-length biography of Hals in many years and offers a view into seventeenth-century Haarlem and this culturally rich era of the Dutch Republic. He tells the story not only of Hals’s life, but also of the artistic, social, political, and religious worlds in which he lived and worked.
Portraits
by John Berger Tom OvertonA major new book from one of the world's leading writers and art criticsJohn Berger, one of the world's most celebrated art writers, takes us through centuries of drawing and painting, revealing his lifelong fascination with a diverse cast of artists. In Portraits, Berger grounds the artists in their historical milieu in revolutionary ways, whether enlarging on the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves or Cy Twombly's linguistic and pictorial play. In penetrating and singular prose, Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about artists both canonized and obscure, from Rembrandt to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. The result is an illuminating walk through many centuries of visual culture, from one of the contemporary world's most incisive critical voices.From the Hardcover edition.
Portraits and Philosophy (Routledge Research in Aesthetics)
by Hans MaesDespite its huge popularity, portraiture hasn’t received much philosophical attention. While there are countless art historical studies of portraiture, including self-portraiture and group-portraiture, contemporary philosophy has largely remained silent on the subject. This book brings together philosophers and philosophically minded art historians with different areas of expertise to discuss this enduring and continuously fascinating genre. The essays in this volume are grouped into thematic sections, each of which is guided by numerous research questions relevant to the genre of portraiture. Part I explores the boundaries of portraiture. What makes something a portrait? In what way is it similar to and different from other genres? How have artists pushed the limits and conventions of the portraiture? How does the recent vogue of selfies relate to the tradition of self-portraiture? Part II responds to questions about empathy and emotion in portraiture. How do artists express attitudes and emotions towards sitters of their portraits? Why are we moved by certain portraits and not so much by others? In Part III, the contributors address questions about fiction and depiction. Do portraits fall within the domain of non-fiction? Can authenticity in portraiture be achieved if portraits necessarily involve posing? Finally, Part IV grapples with the following question: What are the moral dimensions of the relation between artist, sitter, patron, and audience?