Still Life with Oysters and Lemon

Author: Mark Doty
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807066096
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description
Mark Doty's prose has been hailed as "tempered and tough, sorrowing and serene" (The New York Times Book Review) and "achingly beautiful" (The Boston Globe). In Still Life with Oysters and Lemon he offers a stunning exploration of our attachment to ordinary things-how we invest objects with human store, and why.

Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl

Author: Diane Seuss
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555979963
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Diane Seuss’s brilliant follow-up to Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Still life with stack of bills phone cord cig butt and freezer-burned Dreamsicle Still life with Easter Bunny twenty caged minks and rusty meat grinder Still life with whiskey wooden leg two potpies and a dead parakeet Still life with pork rinds pickled peppers and the Book of Revelation Still life with feeding tube oxygen half-eaten raspberry Zinger Still life with convenience store pecking order shotgun blast to the face —from “American Still Lives” Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl takes its title from Rembrandt’s painting, a dark emblem of femininity, violence, and the viewer’s own troubled gaze. In Diane Seuss’s new collection, the notion of the still life is shattered and Rembrandt’s painting is presented across the book in pieces—details that hide more than they reveal until they’re assembled into a whole. With invention and irreverence, these poems escape gilded frames and overturn traditional representations of gender, class, and luxury. Instead, Seuss invites in the alienated, the washed-up, the ugly, and the freakish—the overlooked many of us who might more often stand in a Walmart parking lot than before the canvases of Pollock, O’Keeffe, and Rothko. Rendered with precision and profound empathy, this extraordinary gallery of lives in shards shows us that “our memories are local, acute, and unrelenting.”

The Art of Still Life

Author: Todd M. Casey
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
ISBN: 1580935486
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
A must-have reference book for today's artists and art students. Every artist needs to learn and master the still life. Written by a well-known artist and expert instructor, The Art of Still Life offers a comprehensive, contemporary approach to the subject that instructs artists on the foundation basics and advanced techniques they need for successful drawing and painting. In addition to Casey's stunning paintings, the work of over fifty past and present masters is included, so that the book will do double duty as a hardworking how-to manual and a visual treasure trove of some of the finest still life art throughout history and being created today.

Looking at the Overlooked

Author: Norman Bryson
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780232527
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
In this, the only up-to-date critical work on still life painting in any language, Norman Bryson analyzes the origins, history and logic of still life, one of the most enduring forms of Western painting. The first essay is devoted to Roman wall-painting while in the second the author surveys a major segment in the history of still life, from seventeenth-century Spanish painting to Cubism. The third essay tackles the controversial field of seventeenth-century Dutch still life. Bryson concludes in the final essay that the persisting tendency to downgrade the genre of still life is profoundly rooted in the historical oppression of women. In Looking at the Overlooked, Norman Bryson is at his most brilliant. These superbly written essays will stimulate us to look at the entire tradition of still life with new and critical eyes.

Optic Nerve

Author: Maria Gainza
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1948226170
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
"In this delightful autofiction―the first book by Gainza, an Argentine art critic, to appear in English―a woman delivers pithy assessments of world–class painters along with glimpses of her life, braiding the two into an illuminating whole." ―The New York Times Book Review, Notable Book of the Year and Editors' Choice The narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her. In these pages, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo’s bodies. The mystery of Rothko’s refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator’s husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Géricault’s workshop; Gustave Courbet’s devilish seascapes incite viewers “to have sex, or to eat an apple”; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau’s honor . . . All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator’s life in Buenos Aires―her family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments. The effect is of a character refracted by environment, composed by the canvases she studies. Seductive and capricious, Optic Nerve marks the English–language debut of a major Argentinian writer. It is a book that captures, like no other, the mysterious connections between a work of art and the person who perceives it.

Paul Klee

Author: Michael Baumgartner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500239155
Category : Exhibitions
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A new retrospective survey that reveals the complexities of this popular artist best known for his playful and colorful aesthetic

Fire to Fire

Author: Mark Doty
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061856630
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Book Description
“Fire to Fire should solidify Doty’s position as a star of contemporary American poetry. . . . The poems combine close attention to the fragile, contingent things of the world with the constant, almost unavoidable chance of transcendence.” — Publishers Weekly A landmark collection of new and published works by one of our finest poets that is a testament to the clarity and thoughtful lyricism of his poems Fire to Fire collects the best works from seven books of poetry by Mark Doty, acclaimed poet and New York Times bestselling author of two memoirs, Firebird and Dog Years. Doty’s subjects—our mortal situation, the evanescent beauty of the world, desire’s transformative power, and art’s ability to give shape to human lives—echo and develop across twenty years of poems. His signature style encompasses both the plainspoken and the artfully wrought; here one of contemporary American poetry’s most lauded, recognizable voices speaks to the crises and possibilities of our times.

A Swarm, a Flock, a Host

Author: Mark Doty
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
ISBN: 9783791347578
Category : Animals in art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A collaboration between a contemporary painter and an award-winning poet, this 21st-century bestiary is a spellbinding artistic meditation on the mysteries and diversity of the animal kingdom. Originating in the Middle Ages, bestiaries were illustrated volumes that described various animals--some real, some mystical. The natural history and illustration of each beast were usually accompanied by a moral lesson. In this beautifully illustrated book, respected painter Darren Waterston and distinguished poet Mark Doty come together to breathe new life into the medieval genre. Waterston's precise and haunting silhouettes depict species from insect to bird to mammal, captured in motion as they hunt their prey, build their nests, or protect their young. Accompanying these illustrations are Doty's poetic observations on the wonders of the animal world--its panoply of sounds and shapes, its dignity and its cruelty. Lovers of art, animals, and poetry will delight in this elegant volume that captures nature's exquisite and terrible beauty.

Citrus

Author: Pierre Laszlo
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226470288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
Laszlo traces the spectacular rise and spread of citrus across the globe, from southeast Asia in 4000 BC to modern Spain and Portugal, whose explorers inroduced the fruit to the Americas. This book explores the numerous roles that citrus has played in agriculture, horticulture, cooking, nutrition, religion, and art.

Taste

Author: Jehanne Dubrow
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231554249
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 94

Book Description
Taste is a lyric meditation on one of our five senses, which we often take for granted. Structured as a series of “small bites,” the book considers the ways that we ingest the world, how we come to know ourselves and others through the daily act of tasting. Through flavorful explorations of the sweet, the sour, the salty, the bitter, and umami, Jehanne Dubrow reflects on the nature of taste. In a series of short, interdisciplinary essays, she blends personal experience with analysis of poetry, fiction, music, and the visual arts, as well as religious and philosophical texts. Dubrow considers the science of taste and how taste transforms from a physical sensation into a metaphor for discernment. Taste is organized not so much as a linear dinner served in courses but as a meal consisting of meze, small plates of intensely flavored discourse.