Book Description
Since the 19th century, the women of Gee’s Bend in southern Alabama have created stunning, vibrant quilts. Beautifully illustrated with 110 color illustrations, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend includes a historical overview of the two hundred years of extraordinary quilt-making in this African-American community, its people, and their art-making tradition. This book is being·released in conjunction with a national exhibition tour including The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Customer Reviews:
exceptional.......2007-03-30
I remember the first time I saw photographs of the quilts of Gee's Bend in a magazine about seven years ago. I couldn't wait to learn about the amazing artists whose vision the quilts portray. This book is more outstanding than I imagined it could be. It is powerful, beautiful, sensitive, and historically accurate. I recommend The Quilts of Gee's Bend to anyone with an eye for artistic genius and a love for discovering a community of women willing to express themselves outside the box of convention. How refreshing and inspiring! Simply Exceptional!!
.........a superb keepsake of a memorable trip. .......2007-03-08
Who is more qualified to help provide us with a book about the quilts of Gee's Bend, but Mr. Bill Arnett who has championed the makers of these quilts and their works since 'discovering' them years ago in the tiny community of Gee's Bend about thirty miles southwest of Selma, Alabama?
The quilts first went on tour in 2002 and have been touring ever since. I learned of the ladies of Gee's Bend and their quilts from a PBS documentary first aired in 2003 and have anxiously hoped they would one day come to my part of the country. When, earlier this year, I found the quilts would indeed be coming to the Orlando Museum of Art, I purchased, The Quilts of Gee's Bend: Masterpieces from a Lost Place, documenting the quilts, and the lives of their various makers, with beautiful, full-color illustrations of the quilts.
In February, 2007, when I was finally able to enjoy the quilts in person, I was happy to discover the book had accurately depicted the quilts, and their makers, paralleling an exhibition that should be seen and appreciated by all.
I purchased a copy of The Quilts of Gee's Bend: Masterpieces from a Lost Place, for the art teacher of my children's school. This beautiful book encouraged her to take her middle and high school art students to the exhibition. The book helped the students to first see and read about what they were going to view and then became a superb keepsake of a most memorable trip.
The Quilts of Gee's Bend.......2007-03-08
This is a beautiful book about both the women and the quilts of Gee's Bend. The photos make me feel as if I am back at the Gee's Bend Quilt Show.
Memories which must be kept 'real'.......2007-03-08
This book is already a treasure and one I can love and then bequeath to another art and tradition and people lover...
At the end of October in 2003, I was in Milwaukee to see this Quilt exhibition. Friends of Art from Indiana University drove to Chicago and then on to the marvelous museum in Milwaukee to experience the Quilts. What an awakening! That day I bought a Video. Since that time I have purchased the DVD and (when I found it online) the hardback book The Quilts of Gee's Bend! What a treasure! I am overjoyed to have this book and to have had the viewing experience! [I also use the USPS stamps and the book of postcards!] --Sarah K. Robinson
The Heart and Souls...........2007-01-27
The heart and souls of women are exposed in this poignant book of quilts, along with their "stories" past and present---of slavery on through the civil rights era, and now, life as it is in rural Alabama. The quilts, made out of necessity for their warmth, have become acclaimed Objects d' Art throughout the Art World. Having seen the documentary on television and the Quilt exhibit in San Francisco, I was compelled to purchase this beautiful book containing a compilation of these quilts and self-expressed comments from the community of women who have kept their quilt-making alive. I have purchased this book for myself and several others as gifts.
Book Description
The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Third Edition Media Update features a new an effective learning program that uses chapter openers, headers, callouts in the text, and highly-visual chapter summaries to make learning goals more explicit and to tie together important astronomy concepts.
DEVELOPING PERSPECTIVE, Our Place in the Universe, Discovering the Universe for Yourself, The Science of Astronomy, KEY CONCEPTS FOR ASTRONOMY, Making Sense of the Universe -Understanding Motion, Energy and Gravity, Light - The Cosmic Messenger, LEARNING FROM OTHER WORLDS, Our Solar System and Its Origin, Earth and the Terrestrial Worlds, Jovian Planet Systems, Remnants of Rock and Ice: Asteroids, Comets, and Pluto, STARS, Our Star, Other Stars, Star Stuff, The Bizarre Stellar Graveyard, GALAXIES AND BEYOND, Our Galaxy, A Universe of Galaxies, Dark Matter and the Fate of the Universe, The Beginning of Time, LIFE ON EARTH AND BEYOND, Life in the Universe: Prospects for Microbes, Civilizations, and Interstellar Travel.
For all readers interested in important astronomy concepts.
Customer Reviews:
Good book but I believe there are better.......2006-11-27
The good: This book is easy to read and understand, assumes very little of the reader other than a general understanding of current science. Explainations are clear and build logically throughout the book. Very little math - any high school math would be enough to understand what little there is in this book. Information is up to date and the book has many good pictures and diagrams to aid in understanding.
The not as good: I would have liked more in depth detail. I know this is somewhat subjective the book still has nearly 500 pages, however the text often only covers 60% of a page. In comparison to the at least two compeating books "Astronomy Today" and "The Universe" have over 700 pages each and more like 90% of a text page coverage just to grossly compare them. Each of these books also are easy to read, have good pictures and diagrams too.
So all in all this book is good and covers the subject well, but if you wish more detail other books may be better choices.
Everything you want to know, plus a great CDRom!.......2003-04-07
This book is really good, especially for those interested in the universe and its formation. It also comes with a CDRom with video clips and a study guide for students. A useful, and interesting book!
Average customer rating:
- Beautiful people in a beautiful book
- A STUNNING PHOTO JOURNAL OF AFRICA
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ASIN: 3822816167 |
Book Description
If Leni Riefenstahl had done nothing but visit Africa and bring back her photographs, her place in history would be secure." -Kevin Brownlow, from the introduction
When she was in her early sixties, Leni Riefenstahl began traveling frequently to the African continent, where she has worked on various film and photography projects over the last half century. Her favorite destination was in Sudan, where she lived with and photographed the Nuba tribespeople, learning their language and becoming their friend. The Nuba were a loving and peaceful people who welcomed Riefenstahl as one of their own. Her images of the Nuba, as well as of the Dinka, Shilluk, Masai, and other tribes, are gathered in this monumental book. Riefenstahl remembers her experiences in Africa as the happiest moments in her life. Her beautiful, skilled photographs represent a landmark in the extraordinary career of the 20th century's most unforgettable artistic pioneer.
* Interview by Kevin Brownlow * Extensive bibliography and biography section
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful people in a beautiful book.......2006-03-16
When I first saw this book the first thing that came into my mind was that I need it badly. I was simply astonished by the amazing pictures Leni Riefenstahl composed. If someone wants to see the beginning of our civilization and feel it up, close and personal, then this book is a must. Other than having a picture about how man survives in harmony with Mother Nature, one can see how beautiful the human body is in itself.
A STUNNING PHOTO JOURNAL OF AFRICA.......2005-11-17
Leni Riefenstahl's book Africa is simply a huge compilation, a massive photo journal; page after page after page of full sized photographs depicting both the people / their culture and the land of Africa. (Other than the photos, the book is quite spare of words, chapter titles, that's it.) Riefenstahl's work is very strong but not particularly arty or glossy. True to her filmmaker's voice however, every picture tells a story. (*An important side note, it's ALL photographs. There is very little text to critique.)
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves similar photography as what you would see in National Geographic or Angela Fisher's books such as Africa Adorned and African Cermonies.
Book Description
Love it or hate it, create it or repeat it, America is obsessed with gossip. Here is a fascinating look at five decades of dish: a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the personalities that control what we read and see; the unholy and unchanging trinity of celebrity, publicist and reporter that has stoked the American appetite for gossip from the salad days of silver-screen magazines to the instantaneous communication of the scoop-filled Internet.
Insider Jeannette Walls delivers a tantalizing tell-all that features not only gossip itself, but its history, its movers and shakers (including quite a few tony Ivy Leaguers), high and low points, and the watershed events and personalities--like Elvis, Diana, Michael Jackson and O. J.--that altered it forever. Here is the famous formula for People, the astonishing magazine that began amid sneers and snipes but went on to become one of the publishing industry's greatest success stories. Here too is the incredible truth behind explosive material that didn't see the light of day.
From the humble beginnings of the National Enquirer, aided by the avuncular beneficence of crime kingpin Joe Costello, to the lurid Hollywood trial of Confidential magazine, where the "libeled" stars were proved more guilty than not of the salacious episodes the publication revealed, Jeannette Walls expertly traces the formation and development of the hush-hush industry. She shows us that tabloid TV shows are nothing new: they were preceded in the Fifties by the wildly successful Night Beat, hosted by none other than Mike Wallace, who turned the show into a forum for sex and scandal with his relentless prying and probing into the lives of celebrated figures.
Customer Reviews:
Tells ABOUT gossip...and includes some! GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!.......2001-09-17
This book completely EXCEEDED my expectations! As a former journalist (who is now a ventriloquist believe it or not) I've always been interested in how and why gossip has grown in our news media.
I got THAT answer in this wonderful book written in a breezy, solid style that made it hard for me to put -- plus a LOT MORE.
Starting with Matt Drudge's meteoric rise, DISH backtracks to trace the growth in gossip over the years. You'll also find new revelations in here. In the end our news media (what it printed and NEGLECTED to print over the years) will make sense to you. And it reads like a novel. Some tidbits:
1. The overnight rise of Matt Drudge, using a computer his dad gifted him. Everything you wanted to know and what you didn't want or need to know (i.e. his alleged sexual preferences; media suspicions that he got some scoops through hacking) about him and how his lively internet column took over, confounded mainstream media and made him a huge multi-media star.
2. How the Hollywood studios along with fawning California politicos crushed Confidential magazine, the 1950s gossip sheet which dared to undermine the carefully-constructed phoney public relations images of many stars (some stars are named in the book).
3. Mike Wallace's pioneering role in bringing show biz to news, his fall from grace and professional rebirth on 60 Minutes.
4. The birth of the National Inquirer and why it's located in Florida (fears of problems from the Mob).
5. Why there wasn't more MAJOR NEGATIVE published gossip on the Kennedy administration (they virtually destroyed one person dabbling in info about them and many journalists were intimidated.) JFK's other marriage.
6. The OJ case, Elvis Princess Diana case, the gossip columnists of the 40s and 50s and their replacements, the explanation of why Rona Barrett had such a sudden rise and fall. The birth of People Magazine and it's influence on pushing tabloids to another level...which pushed the national media to a new level (or low?).
7. Hardball-playing p.r. and private detectives who contolled their clients images and staved off major scandals -- and how they do it (bullying, getting the dirt on and confronting critics and making sought after clients inaccessible to offending journalists).
This is a highly ENTERTAINING book, with lots of facts, quotes and info that you haven't read elsewhere. It's solidly written but an EASY read and you'll REGRET it when you come to the last page. It answered a LOT of questions for me about what "really" went on and why our news media is the way it is today. SUPERB!!!
Good but feels like the author rushed to print.......2001-07-19
I found "Dish" very entertaining as well as educational. I think the historical aspect is very good. However, after reading another reader review that criticized sloppiness with names (spelled wrong, first and last names transposed), which now does make me wonder just how truly careful and thorough the research was. The way I feel right now is that fumbling the names was not due to the author not knowing what she was writing about, but just that her writing (editing, proofreading) wasn't great. I did get the feeling that this book was rushed to print, which might have led to the name fumbling. The different chapters read like separate articles, without much of a transition from chapter to chapter so there wasn't a real cohesive feel to the book as a whole. I wish I could rate this book higher, because I think there is good content but it's not presented as well as it could be.
The best book on the gossip industry.......2001-06-01
If you read The National Enquirer, The Globe or Star weekly or enjoy gossip columns or shows like Entertainment Tonight, this book is for you. Full of history and detail, you get the inside scoop on how gossip is made and reported, and how it's changed the face of "legitimate" news organizations. It's a great read and very informative. I couldn't put this book down. Sure, stars complain about the tabloids, but wait to you hear celebrities' true role in it all.
Try to put this one down!.......2001-05-12
I picked this book up on a whim and what a treat. Gossip, whether you like it or not, has definately altered the course of history. Dish definately introduced some concepts I would have brushed off as trivial in the past.
I couldn't put it down.
The growth of gossip provides entertainment.......2000-12-21
Not as lightweight as the title would have you believe, this overview of the growth of celebrity gossip is fascinating. The author chronicles the events which took gossip from a limited group of tabloids to the pages of some of the world's most prestigious newspapers as well as the surprising successful efforts of celebrities to control their public image.
Book Description
With the nation at war in the 1940s, twenty-two-year-old Jack Valenti flew fifty-one combat missions as the pilot of a B-25 attack bomber with the 12th Air Force based in Italy. In the 1960s, with the nation reeling from the assassination of a beloved president and becoming embroiled in a far different kind of war in Vietnam, he was in that fateful Dallas motorcade in 1963, flew back to Washington with the new president, and for three years worked in the inner circle of the White House as special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson. Then, for the next thirty-eight years, with American society and popular culture undergoing a revolutionary transformation, Valenti was the public face of Hollywood in his capacity as head of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Been there, done that, indeed. Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Valenti has led several lives, any one of which could have provided ample material for an unforgettable memoir. As it is, This Time, This Place is the gripping story of a man who saw the terrible face of war while fighting with skill and bravery for his country; who was in the room, listening, participating, and remembering, as political decisions were made that would benefit or devastate countless lives in this country and on the other side of the world; and who championed the interest of the vast and globally influential movie industry with tenacity and vision. The list of boldface names whom Valenti knew and with whom he worked is as varied as it is astonishing in number. Aside
from LBJ, there were Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Robert McNamara, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Julia Roberts, Cary Grant, Lew Wasserman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Warren Beatty, and Bill Clinton, to begin a very long list.
The life of a man who earned both the Distinguished Flying Cross and his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is inherently intriguing, but Valenti’s warm, sometimes rueful, always engaging account gives this memoir a depth of humanity and a taste of life’s unpredictability that will linger long after you turn the final page. From growing up poor but largely oblivious to that fact in a hardscrabble neighborhood of Greek and Italian immigrants in Houston to rising to the highest summits both of national government and Hollywood, This Time, This Place is a candid and clear-eyed reflection of the joys and sorrows, ambitions and disappointments, of a life fully recognizable in its extraordinary variety. It is also a sweeping and important historical record, written by a brilliantly successful man who helped to shape politics and entertainment in the second half of the twentieth century, and who always found himself in the center of the current storm.
Customer Reviews:
Saint Jack.......2007-09-21
One must be a very dedicated movie or Jack Valenti watcher to plough all the way through this tome. Apart from the timing which cannot be faulted - he died shortly after the book was published: the book is more a diary than a literary work. Except for the opening chapter on the assassination of JFK, which is good and compelling writing, the remainder stretched incredulity a little too far.
If we are to believe what Mr Valenti tells us about himself, we should not be surprised that at the books completion, the Almighty whisked him off to heaven to be at his right hand. A more Saintly man never lived beyond the Vatican.
We learn that he started life very poor - not even any shoes. We also learn that his close relatives were very rich. That confused me. I thought these old Sicilian families stuck together. Or is that only in the Mafia? One of these relatives who did not feel able to buy little Jack any shoes, did give him a job however. The salary was not sufficient for the future $1.3 million a year boss of MPAA, so he lied to take the time off to solicit work at Humble Oil which was successful. Little Jack clearly had a talent for ingratiating himself into the affections of those who could help him. First it was the HR lady who gave him his first job at Humble. Then it was the head of the advertising department who put him to work there. Work: I use the word loosely as he seems to have spent his time travelling around the country keeping his boss from being lonely. He must have been a very seductive little chap.
Then the war intervened. Now I thought, this is where it gets interesting. He reminds us frequently that he was a war hero, so I was very keen to learn more. Unfortunately modesty prevented him from sharing with us any daring-do that he was involved in. Other than telling us that the Luftwaffe fighters held no terrors for him - indeed, he actually says that they were no problem to him. Well that's a first. I must have more than 30 books on WWII aerial combat, and I never read that before. Could it be that all the others were spoofing? We do learn at great length his mile by mile journey back to America from Italy. The war was over by this time, but low cloud and rain was more formidable than the Luftwaffe it seems.
Once back to civilian life, he takes advantage of the GI Bill and goes to Harvard. If he goes on about his time at Harvard to his everyday listeners as he does in his book, there can be few American who don't know that Jack Valenti went to Harvard. Upon completion of his course he goes back to Humble Oil. This is the second time they have him back. He learns as much as he can from them, sets up a company with a partner and promptly leaves Humble Oil. Using what he learnt from Humble he solicits business from Humble competitors. This is a life long habit of Jack's. He ingratiates himself with people until they are of no more value; then he drops them. He did that with President Johnson after he learnt that Johnson was not going to seek re-election. He would have done it to MPAA and gone to Columbia Pictures, but his devoted wife of God knows how many years wouldn't go to Los Angeles with him. Washington was more important than Jack it seems. She did offer to let him commute once a week from DC to LA.
It is at this point in the book that one loses the will to live. It becomes a page after page catalogue of the rich and famous who Jack loved deeply, and they him. Pick at random any Name from the A List, and they - and of course their gorgeous spouses, were close personal friends of the Valenti's. There is not an enemy in sight - he even had a good word for the Luftwaffe! But then this is a work more interesting for what it doesn't say than for what it does. He never mentions that he lead a crusade to prevent VCRs being introduced into America. He takes full credit for the `original' introduction of a film rating system. He expects the readers not to notice that the British Board of Film Censors has been rating movies since 1912. It is also interesting that Jack never ever mentions the British film industry. He mentions, and praises British actors and directors, but never identifies them as such. He does every other country that has a film industry. Perhaps under the overcast skies of grey old London lurk a few skeletons that Jack would prefer to keep in the cupboard.
After one has waded through pages and pages of Hollywood's `Who's Who', the book is completed with the unsurprising information that all of his three children are `...movie star beautiful, and they are all outstandingly successful.' No kidding. He even tells us that his grandchildren are perfect.
Jack Valent's life story could have been an enthralling read had it been an `unauthorised version' by Kitty Kelly or similar. Instead, it is a very boring exercise in self aggrandisement. It is said that before one writes a book, one should identify your audience. The only audience for this book is the Hollywood Hoorays who will enjoy what is written about themselves, and think kindly about Jack - and of course his children.
Well done Jack. Not so much a book, more an advertising brochure for the Valenti dynasty.
Good Read but Lacks Bite .......2007-07-15
In a sense this is two books in one. Valenti (apart from his war years) had two very different careers - as a valued aide to President Lyndon Johnson and latterly as President Motion Picture Association of America. He did sterling work in both roles.
Almost anything written about Johnson is fascinating and Valenti keeps that legend going. The author never fails to see good in people and like other Johnson aides such as Joe Califano, seemed to have a genuine love for the towering Texan.
Valenti's opening chapter on the dreadful events of November 22nd 1963 is compelling reading. The author also writes well on the meetings and decision processes that encouraged LBJ to enlarge the war in Vietnam. For those with rose tinted glasses who believe JFK would have taken the US out of Vietnam before it became a quagmire, Valenti makes it quite clear that the bulk of LBJ's Vietnam advisors were Kennedy people. Overall the section on Johnson and the White House years is enjoyable reading. The same can not be said for his MPAA memoir.
Part of the problem is that Valenti is so gushing in his praise of everyone. The number of "radiantly beautiful" or "dazzling" wives he met with adorable offspring is mind-blowing. This man would have something good to say about the devil! He alludes very gingerly to the excesses of and infatuation with Hollywood, but never provides any depth.
Valenti - who wrote a book on communication - is a wonderful writer with a flowing style that is a joy to read. It is a pity that he did not bring greater depth and I think honesty to his MPAA career.
A Truly American Story.......2007-07-05
Jack Valenti's memoir "This Time, This Place: My Life in War, The White House, and Hollywood" tells an authentically American story. Valenti, the grandson of a Sicilian immigrant, rises from his working class roots to:
* win the Distinguished Flying Cross (WWII)
* attend Harvard Business School (Veterans Bill)
* start his own successful business
* become the aide de camp to a US President (Lyndon Johnson)
* and, become the chief lobbyist and defender of the motion picture industry for four decades.
Valenti's book opens with a flashback to Dallas, Texas on November 23, 1963 as he rode in the fateful Presidential motorcade that passed the Texas Book Depository with Lee Oswald's rifle pointed at President John Kennedy. Before the day was over, he was THE confident and consigliore to a new US President, Lyndon Johnson, overseeing the president's speeches, decided whom he would see and where he would go to speak. His chronicle of his White House years reads like a fast-paced novel and has plenty of detail to satisfy historians.
"This Time, This Place" provides important events in Valenti's early formation which were the underpinnings of a remarkable life. As a working class kid from Houston, he watched his grocer grandfather practice local politics and made his own first speech at the age of 10, advocating the reelection of the Sheriff. He worked as movie usher during high school, and got himself elected class president as a night student at the University of Houston.
In 1943, he joined the Army Air Corps, taking his first solo flight only after nine hours of instruction. He piloted 51 bombing missions over Europe in a B25 winning the Distinguished Flying Cross. His descriptions of these years are among the most vivid in this book. His prose throbs with memories of an experience that was simultaneously exhilarating, terrifying and "brutal."
The section on the Hollywood years is looser. Valenti's good-old-boy Texas story-telling comes out. He is more willing to tell tales, poking fun at some of the pompous behavior and trappings of the Motion Picture Industry's celebrities.
"This Time,This Place" is told straightforwardly, acknowledging debts, sketching people he knew and giving a not entirely flattering view of himself. His self-portrait is one of restlessness, and a strong commitment to advancement.
This is a man that senators, congressman and presidents readily took calls from. His formula was simple, "It is rooted in the ability to engage in courtship, to cosset talent, to understand the human condition and to make decisions fast." He exuded charm and was able to establish relationships by being everyone's pal but he never left empty-handed.
Jack Valenti died two years after his retirement from the Motion Picture Association of America in April, 2007.
Outstanding.......2007-07-04
Jack Valenti was both a witness to, and an instrument of, history and his autobiography presents the fascinating elements of his life and all those that he came across. Written in a very easy to read, yet eloquent, style (you can hear Valenti speaking these words)the book should be read by anyone interested in the Washington, the Great Society, and movie industry scenes.
Valenti's Life.......2007-06-27
A memoir of someone (now deceased) who -- after brave service in World War II -- spent time in two workplaces that most would find very interesting, The White House and Hollywood. While some stories within the book are interesting, especially the historical notes on the Johnson Administration, most are very shallow.
It is the life story of a bright, ambitious man from the hinterlands who happened to be in all the right places and took full advantage of his career opportunities. He is the type of person who always has his eye fixed on the main chance ... and toward the most important person in the room.
The prose drips with sincerity and soars with hyperbole. Mr. Valenti said about his friendship with Don Imus and Bernard McGuirk (whose own careers cratered after this book went to press), he had instant fame from being on Imus In the Morning "...however fleeting!" I think Mr. Valenti's fame indeed will be fleeting since it is primarily derived from the reflection of others.
Book Description
Neither art nor philosophy was kind to beauty during the twentieth century. Much modern art disdains beauty, and many philosophers deeply suspect that beauty merely paints over or distracts us from horrors. Intellectuals consigned the passions of beauty to the margins, replacing them with the anemic and rarefied alternative, "aesthetic pleasure." In Only a Promise of Happiness, Alexander Nehamas reclaims beauty from its critics. He seeks to restore its place in art, to reestablish the connections among art, beauty, and desire, and to show that the values of art, independently of their moral worth, are equally crucial to the rest of life.
Nehamas makes his case with characteristic grace, sensitivity, and philosophical depth, supporting his arguments with searching studies of art and literature, high and low, from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Manet's Olympia to television. Throughout, the discussion of artworks is generously illustrated.
Beauty, Nehamas concludes, may depend on appearance, but this does not make it superficial. The perception of beauty manifests a hope that life would be better if the object of beauty were part of it. This hope can shape and direct our lives for better or worse. We may discover misery in pursuit of beauty, or find that beauty offers no more than a tantalizing promise of happiness. But if beauty is always dangerous, it is also a pressing human concern that we must seek to understand, and not suppress.
Customer Reviews:
A Broken Promise.......2007-05-09
I kept on reading through this book hoping to find the message, but, except for the early implication that beauty was but a vapor in the vision of the beholder and real art was for those critics qualified to go on endlessly about the hidden meaning of the work, it was not there. Tom Wolfe nailed this in The Painted Word, and I should have been warned. I wonder if this book had an editor. If so, he or she might have noticed that while many of the paintings, especially Manet's, were repeated several times, many obscure ones critical to appreciation of the text, were left to the reader's imagination. The book was too wordy and lacked organization, which might be consistent with its message. Worse, it exuded the sniffy attitude of an academician anxious for you to know the extent of his knowledge while demeaning yours. If beauty, as the ancient philosopher once wrote, is the good so good it leads to nothing better, then we are not decived in the contemplation of it for its own sake, even if it be, as Plato described it, but the shadow of pure Beauty. Some of the art here, was, indeed, beautiful, but none of the writing, and the promise broken was that of the reviewer who implied the book was a good read.
Beauty and Ethics.......2007-03-15
With so much of today's art having been reduced to silly and trite political statements, it is refreshing to be reminded that the greatest of artists, and the greatest of thinkers, have always consider genuine art to serve the purpose of elevating the human spirit. Alexander Nehamas masterfully reminds us of the profound philosophical tradition that understands the concept and experience of beauty to be essential to moving one toward a fuller life, a life that is centered on its concern for the well-being of the other. Along with rich philosophical reflections of thinkers ranging from Plato to Mann, Nehamas leads his reader on a journey of discovery: a journey that helps one discover what Plato considered to be the one basic human instinct: the instinct to respond to beauty. After reading this text, take a look at E. Scarry's work: Beauty and the Just, or some of the essays by I. Murdoch. You will, in the end, no longer be taken-in by today's artists who pose as poets, painters, or musicians, but who in fact simply use the aesthetic medium to propagate some sort of shallow and thoughtless political agenda.
"To think of beauty as only a promise of happiness is to be willing to live with ineradicable uncertainty" (pg. 130)........2007-03-07
This book mixes the philosophy of art, ethics, and language in a very creative way. Although Nehamas covers much ground, he pursues throughout a creative discovery of the meaning of Edouard Manet's "Olympia" painting. He chases the inscrutable Olympia with the same fervor that Langdon chases Leonardo in "The Da Vinci Code" and the same intensity that Paul Harris chases the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in "The Rule of Four." Nehamas pursues Olympia as the moral virtue of happiness against a historical background where, "For Socrates, virtue was nothing but its own pursuit. And only the promise of happiness is happiness itself" (pg. 138). Beauty, for Nehamas, is the promise.
Modern art, as in modern Anglican philosophy, has placed "beauty" in a relegated, unimportant position. Instead, aesthetics, and objectivity, have become the marks of modern art criticism and modern philosophy (and science). Nehamas wants to restore beauty without giving transcendent features to it. He begins by posing 2 alternatives: Plato or Schopenhauer. Without agreeing with Plato all the way through the argument for the Forms and Pythagorean style objectivity, Nehamas does see in Plato an articulated expression of the power of beauty. In Plato's "Phaedrus" Nehamas sees the homosexual words of Plotinus as a muse on beauty. Nehamas connects the sexual nature of the philosophical ascent towards the form to arete (Greek word for moral virtue; but Nehamas sees the word fitting a context where the "older man was expected to provide him with the motivation and knowledge necessary for success and distinction in life" pg. 6). But Schopenhauer wants to "exclude passion and desire from the serious," according to Nehamas, who quotes Schopenhauer saying, "All amorousness is rooted in the sexual impulse alone" (pg. 8). Schopenhauer is following Kant's notion of the beautiful as what is known through contemplation or art that produces "a satisfaction without any interest" (pg. 3). And although the word aesthetics is from the Greek word "aesthesis," which means "perception," Kant's notion of a satisfaction without interest seems to separate the perceptual experience from aesthetics.
Nehamas sides with Plato against Kant and Schopenhauer. "Beauty...is part of the everyday world of purpose and desire, history and contingency, subjectivity and incompleteness" (pg. 35). As for progress in the arts, new art is not somehow closer to Truth than other art, according to Nehamas who almost likens period changes in art to Kuhnian science paradigm shifts: "No theoretical proof...will do: the only way to show that new and better art is possible is to create a work that some, at least, among its audience will at some time accept as new and better art" (pg. 40). Unlike Kant who denies interest as part of the mark of beauty, Nehamas invokes Plato again, "Our reaction to beautiful things is the urge to make them our own, which is why Plato called eros the desire to possess beauty" (pg. 55). "Beauty points to the future, and we pursue it without knowing what it will yield, and that makes it as difficult to say why we love someone as it is to say why someone else is our friend. My reasons for finding you beautiful include characteristics I feel you have not yet disclosed, features that may take me in directions I can't now foresee. Beauty inspires desires without letting me known what they are for, and a readiness to refashion what I already desire without telling me what will replace it.
When I say...that what I want is you, not anything from you, I am putting myself in your hands, assuring us both that I will be happy no matter what happens to me, if it is due to you. It is an overwhelming feeling, that sweeping sense that all will be well - and it is often wrong. Stendhal was right: beauty is only a promise of happiness" (pg. 63). We do not know what beauty will yield because beauty is "the emblem of what we lack" which "so frightened Schopenhauer instead of calming him" (pg. 76).
As far as agreement on art is concerned, "Aesthetic judgment must move away from a dogmatism that detects a difference in quality in ever divergence in taste without, at the same time, falling into a relativism that refuses to make any judgment at all" (pg. 84). Nehamas begins this difficult task by making distinctions between the value of morality, aesthetics, beauty, and style; "while the values of morality are the emblems of our commonalities, the values of aesthetics are the badges of our particularities" (pg. 86). "Universal aesthetic agreement would mark the end of aesthetics. Distinctions always denotes a necessity and, sometimes, a value" (Ibid). Thus good aesthetics carries varying styles along for the ride (Nietzsche says "To `give style' to one's character - a great and rare art!"). But since universality is the end of aesthetics, descriptions, and interpretations "depends in each case on how well we and our audience know a work of art and our purposes on that particular occasion" (pg. 123). Again, as far as interpretation is concerned, "there are no unexplained explainers" (pg. 124).
Nehamas has already written on Plato (in "The Art of Living") and Nietzsche (in Nietzsche: Life as Literature). Richard Rorty thinks that Nehamas is trying to bring Plato and Nietzsche's conception of beauty together in "Only a Promise of Happiness."
Book Description
This enlightening and browsable guide features more than 500 profiles of the lives, deaths, and final resting places of our most influential figures from sports, music, film, television, literature, and politics.
This unparalleled compilation of profiles of the deceased--from Abbott & Costello to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, from Arthur Ashe to Andy Warhol--offers all of the pertinent details on their lives, deaths, and grave sites, providing a pop-cultural road map for anyone fascinated by celebrity, history, and travel. Listings include Mark Twain, Sonny Bono, Dr. Seuss, Salvador Dali, Mickey Mantle, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, Ingrid Bergman, William Shakespeare, Andy Kaufman, Bob Crane, Louis Armstrong, Walt Disney, Errol Flynn, Al Capone, Ella Fitzgerald, Mae West, Gertude Stein, and hundreds more.
Fifty photos and a number of informative sidebars (on such topics as how to find the grave of anyone you choose) round out this entertaining look at the permanent addresses of our most significant late citizens. And each listing offers concise directions to both the cemetery and the grave itself, an added benefit for tombstone travelers.
Customer Reviews:
Just as the book's title said..............2007-06-28
Just as the title of this book said, this is a book about where famous persons are buried and also how they died.
I'm having so much fun reading this book because it gives a nice background about the famous person that died. Also, I did not know how 80% of the famous people in this book died, so those facts are a nice addition to the book (a sort of BONUS) .
There are other books out there that describe where famous people are buried, but I like this book the best because of the added BONUS of telling the reader how the persons died and some nice information about them,while they were still alive.
Very informative.
Every thing you needed to know..........2007-04-16
Short descriptions on the deaths of famous people. I would have liked a little more detail regarding the circumstances of the deaths, and less about the location of the graves. Still a great read and would recommend it to anyone!
Interesting facts I Never Knew..........2007-03-19
I love how I read about each person's career and accomplishments of their lives. And myths about their deaths and the real reason for their death exposed. Also where they are buried or perhaps they had their ashes scattered. Very interesting.
The title says it all........2007-01-10
A great book for those of us who are fascinated by the "permanent addresses" of famous people who have passed on.
The book was extensively researched and has many photos of famous grave sites.
"Graveyards are full of indispensible men." Charles de Gaulle.......2006-10-17
Tod Benoit has put together a wonderful little book that would be interesting to anyone.He tells us what happened to 450 well known people in their final years,how they died ,where they are buried and how to locate their graves.He covers people from all walks of life and no matter who picks up this book they are sure to find someone who they often wondered "what ever became of them"...and now they'll know.
I have been fascinated with Graveyards ever since I was a kid.Yes ,they can be macabre places,if you let them be;but if you are the curious type,they can be very interesting.
Tod tells us a bit about these people ,but the real interesting thing would be to visit these sites.Since they are scattered all over the country,that would be a monumental task.However; a visit to any graveyard can be an experience.
When I was a teen in the Army Cadets and on convoys,the popular place to set up the field kitchen was in the parking lot of small country churches. It was quiet,nobody aound and generally an old graveyard nearby.After eating, I would take a stroll,read some of the stones,and invariably find something of interest. You will find things like a whole family being wiped out by things like the Spanisk Flu in 1917. The grave of a soldier who sacrificed his life in some far off war or in the Civil War.Maybe a stone of some old fellow who reached the grand old age of 95 years,who had 5 wives along the way,and they are laying there by his side.
There is just no end to what you can stumble across;and whenever I get a chance and have a little time to spare ;I am never disappointed in what I come across.
I spend a lot of time Birdwatching all over the country and one often end up in a graveyard .It is those little ones way off on the back roads that hold the surprises.
For instance,when I was in Galway,Ireland,a few years ago,I had a morning to myself. I decided to check out an old graveyard in the center of town.I met up with a very popular sports figure who was on the cemetary restoration board of directors . He gave me a tour of the graveyard and showed me a plaque as a memorial to 300 sailors from the Spanish Armada who scrambled ashore after their ships had wrecked on the Irish coast.They were captured and all murdered by the British. The site was originally a monestary, but the British destroyed it and all the monk's graves had been covered up by a garbage dump,but now had been restored. He also pointed out a huge Celtic Cross that was made for the World's Fair in Chicago.After the fair it was shipped back to Ireland and erected as a family monument. I noticed that there was an iron bar,hasp and lock on one of those crypts a little larger than a coffin sitting on the ground. When I asked why the locked opening;he explained that there was not a body inside the crypt.Actually, there was a crypt for 6 below grade and this was an opening to the stairs.You learn something every day.
With the age of Internet,a search of many well known personalities will give their final demise and gravesites.Also many large cemetaries have books written by them covering gravesites and information of famous persons interred there.
Overall, a great book and shows how interesting graveyards and gravesites can be.
Average customer rating:
- Art-lovers for life
- A pleasure to read and a pleasure to see.
|
The Great Migration: An American Story
Manufacturer: HarperTrophy
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Harriet and the Promised Land
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Story Painter: The Life of Jacob Lawrence
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Jacob Lawrence (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)
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Me and Uncle Romie: A Story Inspired by the Life and Art of Romare Beardon
ASIN: 0064434281 |
Book Description
Around the time of WWI, large numbers of African Americans began leaving their homes in the rural South in search of employment in the industrial cities of the North. In 1940, Lawrence chronicled their journey of hope in a flowing narrative sequence of paintings."This stirring picture book brings together the sixty panels of Lawrence's epic narrative Migration series, which he created in 1940-1941. They tell of the journey of African-Americans who left their homes in the South around World War I and traveled in search of better lives in the northern industrial cities. Lawrence is a storyteller with words as well as pictures: his captions and introduction to this book are the best commentary on his work. A poem at the end by Walter Dean Myers also reveals [as do the paintings] the universal in the particulars." --BL.
Notable Children's Books of 1994 (ALA)
1993 Books for Youth Editors' Choices (BL)
1994 Teachers' Choices (IRA)
Notable 1994 Childrens' Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)
1994 Carter G. Woodson Outstanding Merit Book (NCSS)
1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
Customer Reviews:
Art-lovers for life.......2002-10-02
Parents hoping to introduce their children to modern American art could do worse than to buy this edition reproducing 60 paintings by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), one of the finest African American artists in U.S. history.
First published for children in a 1993 limited edition, with a poem by Walter Dean Myers, this volume reproduces the Great Migration series that Lawrence created in 1940 and 1941 to tell the story of the African American migration north, from the plantations and cotton fields of the antebellum era.
Begun within a year after Lawrence completed a magnificent Harriet Tubman series, these tempura colored, poster paint works made Jacob Lawrence's career. It's easy to see why. Bold and unforgiving, these vibrant works grew from Lawrence's own childhood migration--from Atlantic City, New Jersey to Easton, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia and finally, at 13, to Harlem--his exposure to African-American culture and his intensive training in the Utopia Children's House and New Deal-sponsored Harlem Art Workshop of the 1930s.
At that time, the WPA was still funding public art murals, but Lawrence was too young to gain a commission. Instead, he determined to show the African-American struggle for freedom in real-life stories that would tie the past to the present.
From 1938 to 1941, he used the New York public library for research, creating in swift succession five series of paintings telling the stories of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Tubman, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and The Migration of the Negro.
In the last of these, Lawrence hoped to speak artistically of a mass escape from the rural, discriminatory and unjust South--a region of poverty and illiteracy--into an anxious era of hope and expectation in the North. The paintings depicted passage, with railways, train cars, suitcases, and hordes of people constantly in motion. Their visages and body language spoke in terms of expectation and fear. Lawrence wove bold colors and themes throughout the series, thereby joining the paintings into a unit.
In a documentary shown in a museum tour of Lawrence's work, the artist said he "didn't think in terms of history in that series. ...It was like I was doing a portrait of something." Portraits were "a portrait of myself, a portrait of my family, a portrait of my peers."
Lawrence's extraordinary talent was recognized when he was only 24, with the 1941 exhibition of these paintings in the downtown gallery of art dealer Edith Halpert, who had beforehand exclusively shown the work of white artists. So breathtaking were the paintings (as they remain), they instantly transported Lawrence across the U.S. racial divide of that era, making him deservedly famous. The Philips Gallery in Washington D.C. purchased the odd-numbered paintings; the Museum of Modern Art in New York took the even ones.
Treat your kids to this triumph of the human spirit, and to the fine accompanying Myers poem. These paintings make children into art-lovers, for life. Alyssa A. Lappen
A pleasure to read and a pleasure to see........2000-06-13
I checked this book out from the library over a year ago and knew from the illustration that Jacob Lawrence was a special person. I was drawn to the illustration because it is soothing. His illustration style is flat, yet there is a world of depth. It is the kind of art that I could have on my wall and never tire of. I remember more the art than the story. The art told a story. This book is as much for adults as it is for children. Since hearing that Jacob Lawrence died...I instantly felt the need to get one of his books for my home library.
Average customer rating:
- Bountiful insight into a talented, sensitive artist
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Charles Burchfield's Journals: The Poetry of Place
Charles Burchfield
Manufacturer: State University of New York Press
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Charles Burchfield's Seasons (Essential Paintings Series)
ASIN: 0791409910 |
Customer Reviews:
Bountiful insight into a talented, sensitive artist.......1999-05-04
Organized by topic, this is a must-have if you wish to understand Burchfield. Beautiful production job.
Book Description
These newest works by Camille Rose Garcia examine ideas of decadence, deception, and denial explored within the context of Empire. It serves as a looking glass into the everyday violence that supports the current power structure and prescribes a glitter coated pill to ease the swallowing. The effect of the pill, once digested, depends upon the viewer. The Saddest Place on Earth is beautiful, the ballroom of an Empire, a forest of aquamarine jewels, a place where cream layered cakes, crystal castles, and opiate abundance serve to sedate the masses. But as the telescope retracts, the glossy veneer of privilege falls away to reveal another reality. Machine guns and machetes decorate the landscape alongside exploding poppies. Deer and Princesses hang suspensefully in a cloud of malaise, and disbelief becomes the ether of the living. The Saddest Place on Earth is opulent wallpaper of destruction that decorates our lives. Its surface is seductive, its layers complex, and its future uncertain.
Customer Reviews:
GREAT!.......2006-09-02
I love this book! Camille Rose Garcia is one of my favorite artists. I would highly recommend Everything That Creeps by Elizabeth McGrath.
Outstanding Art. Childish Politics.......2006-03-17
Nightmarish and beautiful. One of the most unique and hauntingly original artists of our time. Unfortunately the text that goes along with the art sounds like a stoned 16 year old punk talking about throwing a spanner into the "Republican War Machine". I will say that it made me laugh a little.
the disney apocalypse .......2006-01-25
She needs no introduction if you have any knowledge of the low brow art seen. This book is worth every penny! A beautiful collection of Camille Rose Garcia's amazing paintings as well as sketches and little insights into what inspired these works. Included are selected works from her shows "The Happiest Place on Earth", "The Soft Machine", "Operation Opticon", "Ultra Violence" and more. Camille's style, expression and use of colour to create a strong sense of happy anxiety bliss are what make her a genius in my opinion. This book is very high quality and an excellent production from last gasps. I just bought it a few days ago and have already determined that I shall never part with it. It's that nice of a book!!!!
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Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt
The Quilts of Gee's Bend: 30 Postcards
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Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts (2nd Edition)
Nancy Crow
