Art Memoirs

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Bell, Vanessa - Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell (edited by Regina Marley)
(759.13 Bel) Sister of Virginia Woolf, wife of critic Clive Bell, lover of painter Duncan Grant, and an accomplished artist herself, Vanessa Bell was a mainstay of the Bloomsbury group. As expected from this unconventional little group, Vanessa's personal life was a tangle of soap-opera proportions

Bosworth, Patricia - Diane Arbus
(770.924 Bo) Photographer Arbus had a history of severe depression and a crumbling marriage by the time she began to take controversial, technically innovative pictures of dwarfs, nudists and drag queens that won her a reputation as "a photographer of freaks." This is a fascinating appraisal of an artist whose images captured the uneasy mood of the ‘60s.

Burke, Carolyn - Lee Miller: a Life
(770.92 Mil) Miller (1907–1977) began her career as a fashion model, and soon decamped for Paris, where she became Man Ray's muse and student. After they split, she returned to Manhattan for a brief stint as a studio photographer, then returned to Europe where she took stunning photos of the London Blitz, and her most memorable and disturbing images as a war correspondent accompanying American troops from Paris to Dachau. A chronicle of a dramatic life in meticulous detail.

Delacroix, Eugene - Journal of Eugene Delacroix (edited by Hubert Wellington)
(759.13 Del) A well-edited, surprisingly accessible account of Delacroix's life (1798-1863) in which the artist discusses his own paintings, his life, his sorrows and hope, other artists of his day, and the events of his time. Figuratively and literally this is a beautiful little book.

Eisler, Benita - O'Keeffe and Stieglitz: an American Romance
(759.13 Oke) Packed with personal revelations, this enthralling portrait of the painter and the photographer demythologizes the American art world's iconic couple.

Gilot, Francoise - Life with Picasso
(759.13 Pic) Francoise Gilot met Picasso during the German occupation of Paris; she was twenty-one, he was sixty-two. For nearly a decade, Gilot shared her life with this giant of the art world, giving birth to two of his children, working as his model, and sharing his world. This candid and vivid memoir takes readers behind the Picasso legend to meet the man.

Kahlo, Frida - Letters of Frida Kahlo (compiled by Martha Zamora)
(759.13 Kah) Collected for the first time, some 80 letters written by Mexican artist Kahlo (1907-1954) to friends, collectors, doctors, family, politicians and lovers provide a glimpse of a vivid and tragic life that no biographer could capture.

Lipton, Eunice - French Seduction
(921 Lip) Art historian Lipton left New York for Paris with her husband, a painter, in 2000. Here she weaves together her feelings of love and fury toward her father, a Jew who immigrated to the U.S. from Latvia, and toward her adopted country. The author’s knowledge and love of French art will seduce readers. Includes reproductions of some of her favorite paintings and sculpture.

Moore, Honor - White Blackbird: a Life of the Painter Margaret Sargent
(759.13 Sar) From a prosperous upper-class Boston family and well-known in avant-garde circles in the 1920s, Sargent abruptly stopped painting at age 40, plagued by alcohol addiction and manic depression, and spent 20 years in and out of sanitariums. This swings between straightforward biography and wistful memoir in recounting the turbulent life of a woman whose friends included Alexander Calder, Ziegfeld star Fanny Brice and Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum.

Stevens, Mark and Annalyn Swan - De Kooning: an American Master
(759.13 De) More gossipy than any tabloid yet intelligent, and illuminating as a lightning bolt, Stevens' and Swan's landmark biography is a masterpiece that explains how the Dutchman De Kooning became the master painter of the American century.

Tomkins, Calvin - Off the Wall: a Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg
(759.13 Rau) A stylish and witty portrait of one of America’s most original artists, and a simultaneous chronicle of the 1950’s and 1960s when artists moved art off the walls of museums and galleries and into the center of the social scene.

Wilson, Charis - Through Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston
(770.92 Wes) The passionate twelve-year relationship (1934-1946) between the famous photographer and the intellectual beauty is recounted in hindsight half a century later. Just 19 when she met 48-year old Weston, Charis Wilson is most famous for her face and body; she posed for many of Weston's nude studies, which are among his most memorable photographs.

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