The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

Carrie Li (Author)

The Window: Perceived

"The Window: Perceived" asked people from around the world to take a photograph of their favorite wi

Susan Owens (Author)

The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art

0,Winner of the Apollo Book of the Year Award 2024 Drawing is at the heart of human creativity. The most democratic form of art-making, it requires nothing more than a plain surface and a stub of pencil, a piece of chalk or an inky brush. Our prehistoric ancestors drew with natural pigments on the walls of caves, and every subsequent culture has practised drawing--whether on papyrus, parchment, or paper. Artists throughout history have used drawing as part of the creative process. While painting and sculpture have been shaped heavily by money and influence, drawing has always offered extraordinary creative latitude. Here we see the artist at his or her most unguarded. Susan Owens offers a glimpse over artists' shoulders--from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Hokusai to Van Gogh, K?the Kollwitz, and Yayoi Kusama--as they work, think, and innovate, as they scrutinise the world around them or escape into imagination. The Story of Drawing loops around the established history of art, sometimes staying close, at other times diving into exhilarating and altogether less familiar territory.

Robert W. Cherny (Author)

The Coit Tower Murals: New Deal Art and Political Controversy in San Francisco

5, Created in 1934, the Coit Tower murals were sponsored by the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first of the New Deal art programs. Twenty-five master artists and their assistants worked there, most of them in buon fresco, Nearly all of them drew upon the palette and style of Diego Rivera. The project boosted the careers of Victor Arnautoff, Lucien Labaudt, Bernard Zakheim, and others, but Communist symbols in a few murals sparked the first of many national controversies over New Deal art. Sixty full-color photographs illustrate Robert Cherny's history of the murals from their conception and completion through their evolution into a beloved San Francisco landmark. Cherny traces and critiques the treatment of the murals by art critics and historians. He also probes the legacies of Coit Tower and the PWAP before surveying San Francisco's recent controversies over New Deal murals. An engaging account of an artistic landmark, The Coit Tower Murals tells the full story behind a public art masterpiece.