Individual Artist category: 1922 books

What drives an artist to create? And are there common traits that successful artists possess? In The Making of an Artist, Kristin G. Congdon draws on her years of studying and teaching art at all levels – from universities to correctional settings – to identify three traits that are regularly...

Few who appreciate the visual arts or the American Southwest can behold the masterpieces Sangre de Cristo Mountains or Haystack, Taos Valley, 1927 or Bend in the River, 1941 and come away without a vivid image burned into memory. The creator of these and many other depictions of the Southwest and...

Seeking adventure and inspiration in western Colorado, artist Jack Roberts masterfully captured frontier characters in secluded cow camps and boisterous saloons. His flamboyant personality and zest for life became topics of local stories. But sobriety and commitment offered new themes and goals. Indians,...

“An extraordinary record of a great artist in his studio, it also describes what it feels like to be transformed into a work of art.” —ARTnews Lucian Freud (1922-2011), widely regarded as the greatest figurative painter of our time, spent seven months painting a portrait of the art critic...

“Girst elegantly unravels the skeins of Duchamp’s thinking. . . . An essential compendium for puzzling out an essential artist.” —Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation Among the most influential artists of the last hundred years, Marcel Duchamp...

Portraiture is a demanding art requiring the artist to capture a likeness and render it revealing some hint of the personality behind the image. A two-pronged task, it requires great technical skill and an intuitive eye. In both these respects, John Singer Sargent stands out as a portrait artist of...

Egon Schiele’s work is so distinctive that it resists categorisation. Admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at just sixteen, he was an extraordinarily precocious artist, whose consummate skill in the manipulation of line, above all, lent a taut expressivity to all his work. Profoundly convinced...

In his Foreword to this edition, Jean Charlot says: "An unusual feature of Orozco's letters is the great deal that he has to say about art. That one artist writing to another would emphasize art as his subject seems normal enough to the American reader. Yet, within the context of the Mexico of...

Drawing on unpublished documents and oral histories, an illustrated examination of an iconic artwork of an artist who has made a lifework of tactical evasion. One wintry day in 1983, alongside other street sellers in the East Village, David Hammons peddled snowballs of various sizes. He had...

Wendy Rodrigue's book, "The Other Side of the Painting," derives from her popular blog, Musings of an Artist's Wife. "She's the other side of my hit record," joked Wendy's husband, artist George Rodrigue, the impetus for the original online project, as it began in 2009. In the book, Wendy reveals for...

The first full-scale biography of one of the most elusive and enigmatic painters of our time -- the self-proclaimed Count Balthus Klossowski de Rola -- whose brilliantly rendered, markedly sexualized portraits, especially of young girls, are among the most memorable images in contemporary art. The...

What was your earliest childhood artwork that received recognition? When did you first consider yourself a professional artist? How has your studio's location influenced your work? How do you choose titles? Do you have a favorite color? Joe Fig asked a wide range of celebrated artists these...

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV and one of the most important painters of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important...

In this book, leading art experts, art historians, and critics review the life, career, and artistic development of New York based Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu. A pioneer in contemporary Chinese art, Zhang created the first example of "China Pop" art, and his oeuvre is as diverse, intellectually...