Showing titles in Artists, Architects & Photographers

A witty and beautifully written account of the lives of Gertrude Stein and her wife Alice B. Toklas and a fascinating look into early 20th century Paris and the development of modernist culture.

Brought to you by Penguin. Artists have learnt to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on auto-pilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvellous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But that doesn't have to be the case. In his typical...

'For myself/ I knew as soon as I could read and write/ That I must be a poet. Even today,/ When all the way from Cambridge comes a wind/ To blow the lamps out every time they're lit/ I know that I must light mine up again.' From his earliest boyhood memories of Highgate and Archibald, his old...

A short, inspirational audiobook from Henry Fraser, a young quadriplegic motivational speaker and artist. Henry Fraser was a 17-year-old sports enthusiast and senior prefect when he broke his spinal cord and was left paralysed from the shoulders down. Life as he knew it was over, and yet, through extraordinary determination and a positive attitude, he has forged a successful career as an inspirational speaker and an artist.

MADONNA. ANDY WARHOL. KEITH HARING. FAB 5 FREDDIE. DEBBIE HARRY. JULIAN SCHNABEL. Jean-Michel Basquiat's transition from the subways to the chic gallery spaces of Manhattan brought the artist into the company of many of New York's established and aspiring stars. Unable to deal with the...

Read by acclaimed actor Alfred Molina, star of The Da Vinci Code, An Education and Chocolat, this is the definitive biography of Leonardo Da Vinci. Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative...

Brought to you by Penguin. When critics attacked Andy Warhol's Marilyn paintings as shallow, the Pop artist was happy to present himself as shallower still: He claimed that he silkscreened to avoid the hard work of painting, although he was actually a meticulous workaholic; in interviews he...

The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas. On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two American movie theaters. Conceived, written, and directed by a little-known filmmaker named George...

Bloomsbury presents The Lives of Lucian Freud: YOUTH 1922–1968 by William Feaver, read by Jonathan Keeble. SELECTED AS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND SPECTATOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE...

Acclaimed best-selling author Francine Prose offers a listen of Guggenheim's life that will enthrall enthusiasts of 21st-century art as well as anyone interested in American and European culture and the interrelationships between them. The lively and insightful narrative follows Guggenheim through virtually every aspect of her extraordinary life, from her unique collecting habits and paradigm-changing discoveries to her celebrity friendships, failed marriages, and scandalous affairs.

*BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week* *Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2016* "The Vanishing Man is a riveting detective story and a brilliant reconstruction of an art controversy, but it is also a homage to the art of Velázquez, written by a critic who remains spellbound by his genius, as...

Brought to you by Penguin. Dame Zandra Rhodes has spent her life rallying against what was expected of her, both as a designer and a woman. Often perceived as too bold for the mainstream, she fought for creativity and individuality, and continues to achieve both in everything she does. In this...

'The pages sing in this beautiful book.' Bono 'Moving and lyrical, The Forest is the Path is an imaginative and deeply personal journey of self-discovery.' The Irish Times ‘[An] astoundingly poetic book’ Pandora Sykes You’re falling through time so all I can do is fall with you. The...

Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other major buildings. When the Pope handed Michelangelo control of the St. Peter’s project in 1546, it was a study in architectural mismanagement, plagued by flawed design and faulty engineering.

'Quite possibly the best living writer in Britain' Daily Telegraph Much attention has been paid to so-called late style - but what about last style? When does last begin? How early is late? When does the end set in? In this endlessly stimulating investigation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter...

Lee Miller, 1927 - New York: A classically beautiful young woman, she is discovered by Condé Nast. Lee Miller, 1929 - Paris: Protégé and lover of Man Ray, she invents with him the solarization technique of photography, develops into a brilliant Surrealist photographer, and plays the statue in Cocteau's film Blood of a Poet. Lee Miller, 1939-45 - Europe: Living at times with her future husband, the painter Roland Penrose, she becomes a US war correspondent and covers the siege of St Malo and the liberation of Paris. 

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance", was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael.

I, Lorna Tucker, have lived a life that most of you can't even begin to imagine... The unflinching true story of one woman's fight to survive living on the streets of London - from Britain's most exciting filmmaker 'You need to read this' MICK JAGGER 'Truly changes your perception of what the...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know written and read by Colm Tóibín. 'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W.B...

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and The New Yorker Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Eisner Award Nominee for Best Comics-Related Book “A definitive and ideal biography—pound for pound, one of the sleekest and most judicious I’ve ever...