Twelve years a slave

Sample

Harriet S. Bee and Michelle Elligott

"This volume chronicles the Museum's story from its opening, ten days after the stock market crash of 1929, in a few rented rooms in a midtown office building, up to the present day, in its new building on West Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth streets. The book presents a pictorial and documentary review of each year, and each important period, of the Museum's history. It tells the story of how The Museum of Modern Art, New York, began as a small set of art galleries inaugurated by three ladies of means who had a passion for modern art. Through a selection of photographs, official documents, letters, quotations, newspaper clippings, cartoons, and other ephemera, the complex and multilayered history of the Museum unfolds in a visual march through time, revealing the extraordinary vision of a determined group of individuals who had the ability and courage to translate their vision into reality."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Giorgio Vasari

In his Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance, Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect. Through character sketches and anecdotes he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in his derelict house, living only to paint; Giulio Romano's startling painting of Jove striking down the giants; and his friend Francesco Salviati, whose biography also tells us much about Vasari's own early career. Vasari's original and soaring vision plus his acute aesthetic judgements have made him one of the most influential art historians of all time.

Sample

Terry Bisson

A biography of the slave and preacher who, believing that God wanted him to free the slaves, led a major revolt in 1831.

Sample

Annie Cohen-Solal

"Mark Rothko was not only one of the most influential American painters of the twentieth century; he was a scholar, an educator, and a deeply spiritual human being. Born Marcus Yakovlevich Rotkovitch, he emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United States at age ten, already well educated in the Talmud and carrying with him bitter memories of the pogroms and persecutions visited upon the Jews of Latvia. Few artists have achieved success as quickly, and by the mid-twentieth century, Rothko's artwork was being displayed in major museums throughout the world. In May 2012 his painting Orange, Red, Yellow was auctioned for nearly $87 million, setting a new Christie's record. Author Annie Cohen-Solal gained access to archival materials no previous biographer had seen. As a result, her book is an extraordinarily detailed portrait of Rothko the man and the artist, an uncommonly successful painter who was never comfortable with the idea of his art as a commodity"--