Lives of the Artists

Author: Giorgio Vasari
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141919973
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto in the thirteenth century, Vasari traces the development of Italian art across three centuries to the golden epoch of Leonardo and Michelangelo. Great men, and their immortal works, are brought vividly to life, as Vasari depicts the young Giotto scratching his first drawings on stone; Donatello gazing at Brunelleschi's crucifix; and Michelangelo's painstaking work on the Sistine Chapel, harassed by the impatient Pope Julius II. The Lives also convey much about Vasari himself and his outstanding abilities as a critic inspired by his passion for art.

Lives of the Artists

Author: Calvin Tomkins
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1429946415
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Whether writing about Jasper Johns or Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman or Richard Serra, Calvin Tomkins shows why it is both easier and more difficult to make art today. If art can be anything, where do you begin? For more than three decades Calvin Tomkins's incisive profiles in The New Yorker have given readers the most satisfying reports on contemporary art and artists available in any language. In Lives of the Artists ten major artists are captured in Tomkins's cool and ironic style to record the new directions art is taking during these days of limitless freedom. As formal technique and rigorous training continue to fall away, art has become an approach to living. As the author says, "the lives of contemporary artists are today so integral to what they make that the two cannot be considered in isolation." Among the artists profiled are Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, the reigning heirs of deliberately outrageous art that feeds off the allegedly corrupting influences of capitalist glut and entertainment; Matthew Barney of the pregenital obsessions; Cindy Sherman, who manages multiple transformations as she disappears into her own work; and Julian Schnabel, who has forged a second career as award-winning film director. Tomkins shows that the making of art remains among the most demanding jobs on earth.

Secret Lives of Great Artists

Author: Elizabeth Lunday
Publisher: Quirk Books
ISBN: 1594747458
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
Take a tour through the wilder side of art history, and discover true tales of murder, forgery, and trickery—featuring jaw-dropping profiles over 30 iconic artists like Leonardo Da Vinci and Salvadori Dalí. With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. Here, you’ll learn that Michelangelo’s body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn’t stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O’Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you’ll never forget!

The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art

Author: Noah Charney
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393248399
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
“Readers curious about the making of Renaissance art, its cast of characters and political intrigue, will find much to relish in these pages.” —Wall Street Journal Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was a man of many talents—a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar—but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari’s extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari’s visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift. Lauded by Sarah Bakewell as “insightful, gripping, and thoroughly enjoyable,” The Collector of Lives reveals how one Renaissance scholar completely redefined how we look at art.

Vasari's Lives of the Artists

Author: Giorgio Vasari
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486441806
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
One of the principal resources for study of Italian Renaissance art and artists, Vasari's Lives offers colorful, detailed portraits of the era's most representative figures. This single-volume edition spotlights 8 prominent artists.

The Life of Michelangelo

Author: David Hemsoll
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606065653
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
The fame and influence of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) were as immediate as they were unprecedented. It is not surprising, therefore, that he was the only living artist Giorgio Vasari included in the first edition of Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550. Revised and expanded in 1568, Vasari’s monumental work comprises more than two hundred biographies; for centuries it has been recognized as a seminal text in art history and one of the most important sources on the Italian Renaissance. Vasari’s biography of Michelangelo, the longest in his Lives, presents Michelangelo’s oeuvre as the culminating achievement of Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture. He tells the grand story of the artist’s expansive career, profiling his working habits; describing the creation of countless masterpieces, from the David to the Sistine Chapel ceiling; and illuminating his relationships with popes and other illustrious patrons. A lifelong friend, Vasari also quotes generously from the correspondence between the two men; the narrative is further enhanced by an abundance of colorful anecdotes. The volume’s forty-two illustrations convey the range and richness of Michelangelo’s art. An introduction by the scholar David Hemsoll traces the textual development of Vasari’s Lives and situates his biography of Michelangelo in the broader context of Renaissance art history.

Art Without an Author

Author: Marco Ruffini
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 082323455X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
"Why is the history of art so often construed as a history of artists, when its alleged focus is art? This book responds to this question by examining Giorgio Vasari's Lives and the artist it features most centrally, Michelangelo. More than any other artist in the Lives, Michelangelo exemplifies art as an expression of the individual. Yet at the same time, as this book aims to show, the Lives fashions Michelangelo as the founder of a new academic era in which art develops collectively as a discipline. Paradoxically, Vasari's celebration of Michelangelo mobilizes a conception of art as teachable and transmissible that is antithetical to Michelangelo's aesthetic ideals and unique style."--Page 4 of cover.

Lives of the Great Artists

Author: Charlie Ayres
Publisher: Thames and Hudson
ISBN: 9780500238530
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
An original and delightful approach: imagined visits to artists' studios bring art vividly to life for children. Through the pages of this book, young readers step into a famous artist's studio in medieval Germany, Renaissance Italy, or nineteenth-century France. As the making of a particular work is described, the child smells the paint, hears the chisel chipping into marble, or experiences the wonders of a working printing press. The twenty artists are featured in easy-to-follow chronological order: Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Hans Holbein the Younger, El Greco, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bernini, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Goya, Jacques-Louis David, Turner, Delacroix, Manet, Monet, and van Gogh. All have remarkable life stories that will entrance any child. Beautifully produced illustrations include an introductory portrait or self-portrait of each artist, followed by reproductions of some of their greatest works. Both paintings and sculptures are represented, offering children an inspiring insight into the visual arts. The artworks—Michelangelo's colossal statue of David, van Gogh's self-portrait with bandaged ear, Velázquez's Las Meninas with little Infanta at center stage, Delacroix's dramatic Liberty Leading the People—have all been chosen specifically to appeal to a young audience. Extended picture captions offer further information, focusing on key details or telling memorable anecdotes, and the book includes a listing of where the artworks can be seen.

Lives of Tintoretto

Author: Giorgio Vasari
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606066005
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Born Jacopo Comin, Tintoretto (ca. 1519–1594) was one of the great painters of the late Renaissance. This book presents the first biographies of Tintoretto, by Giorgio Vasari and Carlo Ridolfi, as well as accounts from individuals who knew the artist personally. This volume also includes a translation of the marginal notes El Greco wrote in his copy of Vasari’s Life of Tintoretto, which have never before been published. Richly illustrated, with an introduction by the scholar Carlo Corsato that reconstructs Tintoretto’s career and contextualizes the contemporary sources, Lives of Tintoretto enhances our understanding of this influential Renaissance artist, who helped establish the Mannerist style.

Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects

Author: Hans Ulrich Obrist
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141976640
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 607

Book Description
A unique opportunity to learn about the lives and creativity of the world's leading artists Hans Ulrich Obrist has been conducting ongoing conversations with the world's greatest living artists since he began in Switzerland, aged 19, with Fischli and Weiss. Here he chooses nineteen of the greatest figures and presents their conversations, offering the reader intimacy with the artists and insight into their creative processes. Inspired by the great Vasari, Lives of the Artists explores the meaning of art and artists today, their varying approaches to creating, and a sense of how their thinking evolves over time. Including David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Gerhard Richter, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois, Rem Koolhaas, Jeff Koons and Oscar Niemayer, this is a wonderful and unique book for those interested in modern art. Hans Ulrich Obrist is a curator and writer. Since 2006 he has been co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, London. He is the author, with Ai Wei Wei, of Ai Wei Wei Speaks.