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Few artists in the history of the world have attained the mythic status of Michelangelo--painter of the heavenly Sistine Chapel and sculptor of the nearly divine David. And it is his towering presence that makes it so difficult to imagine the artist as a man. Art historian James Beck helps unlock the mystery of Michelangelo by opening the doors of the three very different worlds to which he belonged. Michelangelo's father, his famous and influential patron Lorenzo de Medici, and Pope Julius II who, according to Beck, forced the Sistine Chapel commission onto its now-famous painter, divided the rule of these worlds between them and held powerful sway over the artist. Michelangelo left behind a fair amount of correspondence, upon which Beck heavily relies. But beyond that, there is a dearth of reliable information about the subject. Michelangelo himself carefully oversaw the contemporary biographies--selling 16th-century writers on the notion that he was divinely preordained to become a renowned artist. Beck is clearly a careful researcher and he skillfully combines the facts at hand and collateral information about the era to recreate the artist's world. He freely draws on this information to form opinions about his subject's sexuality, passion for his art, and relationships to the powerful men in his life. He evokes, too, a strong visual sense of Michelangelo's environment--the Medici palace where he lived for a time, the Vatican of the Renaissance, the artist's own work. This is definitely a compelling story, but bear in mind that because of the distinct lack of reliable source material, this biography falls somewhere between fact and well-informed historical fiction. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

The Divine Mr. M
To start off, I can't believe this book is out of print already! I'd still like to write a review, because this is a very good book and perhaps the publisher will do a new hardcover print run or come up with a paperback edition..... Mr. Beck is a professor of art history at Columbia University in New York City. One of the nice things about this book, though, is that it is written for the layperson. It is not full of technical terms and art world jargon. Even better, it is well written. Professor Beck has a very good style of writing so the book flows along very smoothly. I think the author's intention was to balance out the popular picture of Michelangelo as a tortured, ill-mannered genius. Professor Beck shows him to be, in some respects, a pretty regular fellow. For example, we find out that Pope Julius appreciated him for his ironic, sarcastic and apparently typically Tuscan sense of humor. Michelangelo also was always very much a person concerned with the well-being of his family. Although he never married and never had any children he was deeply attached to his father and his brothers. Once he started to earn some money he was always very good about helping his family financially. One of the strong suits of this book is that Professor Beck constantly shows us the humanity behind the artist. Although Michelangelo loved his father it is also true that his father never approved of his choice of career. An artist was not highly regarded back in those days and when Michelangelo decided to become a sculptor, well, that was even worse. Imagine going around with your clothes full of marble dust all the time! Michelangelo was always looking for approval from his father and he never got it. The book also covers Michelangelo's relationship with Lorenzo The Magnificent and Pope Julius II. We get an especially nicely rounded portrait of Julius as a warrior pope who was more interested in power and politics and women than in culture, but who nevertheless appreciated the talent of Michelangelo. He also had a fierce temper and when Michelangelo answered the question, "When will the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel be finished?" with "It'll be done when it is done..." threatened to have some lackeys go up and have Michelangelo thrown off of the scaffolding! My only complaint with this book is that perhaps Professor Beck goes a little too far trying to portray Michelangelo as a "nice" guy and basically somebody that really had no faults whatsoever. But as I wrote near the start of this review I think the intent was to try to swing the pendulum the other way..... Still, this book is very good and well worth reading.

very informative look at artists life
James Beck has written a wonderful and easy read about the life of Michelangelo. By not focusing on details about Michelangelo's sex life, Beck has put a much needed focus back on the actual art work of the artist. Regardless of whether he was gay or straight, Michelangelo is a gifted and talented artist who will be remembered for eternity.

Spoiled by homophobia
This biography might have been wonderful to me if it had not been spoiled by the author's foolish attempts to cast doubt on Michelangelo's homosexuality. This puts Beck into the same category with Irving Stone and Charlton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy. On the verge of the 21st Century to get yet another book denying that there were any great gay men in history is simply not acceptable. ... Read more

Book Description

Henri Cartier-Bresson and Alberto Giacometti became friends in the mid-1930s in Paris. Both were seeking a way out of Surrealism that would lead them back to reality. Giacometti returned to life studies; Cartier-Bresson exchanged his brush for a camera. The content of this volume revolves around the many mutual resonances in the work of these two great artists.

The book opens with photographs of Giacometti taken by Cartier-Bresson over a period of three decades. The inner workings of the artists' friendship is illuminated by a comparison between their respective work as draughtsmen, their search for the "decisive moment," and the question of how the photographs of one and the paintings and drawings of the other are used in portraiture. The result is a unique encounter between two giants of 20th-century art and photography.

In his in-depth essay, Tobia Bezzola, Curator at the Kunsthaus Zurich, not only follows the traces of this exceptional friendship with accuracy, but also places their work and visual dialogue within the frame of Surrealism and modern art.

This book is produced in collaboration with Henri-Cartier Bresson, the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. Edited and with an Essay by Tobia Bezzola. Hardcover, 8 x 10 in. / 192 pgs / 84 tritones. ... Read more

Book Description

Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) was one of the most significant sculptors of the 20th century and one of the most successful woman artists of her time. Published to accompany two exhibitions marking the centenary of Hepworth's birth, this is the first book to focus on specific themes in her work rather than offering a chronological survey. The generous color illustrations feature not only her best-known and most popular works, but also a selection never before photographed in color. ... Read more

Book Description

ALBERTO:Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was one of the most significant artists of the 20th century.He became obsessed with the idea of representing reality in his painting and, mainly, sculpture at the same time the Surrealists reached their peak.Facing excommunication from the Surrealist movement, Alberto had the courage to return to working from the model in 1935.The evolution of Albert's work was fueled by his relentless pursuit of reality until his death in 1966.He introduced a new concept to rendering distance:His ethereal figures and heads are immediately seen from a frontal point of view.Alberto Giacometti caputres the spirit of the artist and explores the work of a man who was constantly striving for more.There will be an exhibition on his work this fall at the Museum Of Modern Art, New York.DIEGO:In 1925, Diego Giacometti (1902-1985) joined his brother Alberto in Paris, where he helped carve stone and make plaster and bronze casts.After assisting with his brother's commissions for the interior decorator Jean-Michel Frank in the 1930s, Diego began to create his own body of work.Whimsical and light, Diego quickly established a style all his own.Diego's rich personality and unique vision shine through in the world he created, a fabulous world where cats, birds and plants are posed on furniture like fairy-tale characters.Interest in Diego's art has increased over the years, and his work has influenced an entire generation of young artists and collectors. ... Read more

Book Description

The only biography of this important American sculptor, Louise Nevelson is the story of an artist who became a legend in her time. Born in a Russian village, she grew up in Maine and married a wealthy New Yorker. As her dedication to art grew, she abandoned her husband and neglected her son. She found inspiration in old wood, creating a rich iconography of blackened images. After achieving success at the age of sixty, she adopted an exotic persona while continuing to add to the magnificent body of work that is today found in public parks and major museums throughout the world. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Where's the art?
Not the book to read if you are looking for a critical analysis of Nevelson's art, this biography, while interesting, also fails to make any serious analysis of the connections between her work & her art. I don't know how you can discuss an artist's life apart from her art. ... Read more

Book Description

This is the most thorough and revealing study ever of one of Michelangelo's most beautiful, dramatic, and debated works of art: the Florence Pietà. The artist designed the monumental statue late in life for his own tomb, but after a decade of intermittent labor he badly damaged the work, which was later repaired by an assistant. Jack Wasserman, the book's editor and main author, enlists the expertise of scholars Timothy Verdon and Franca Trinchieri Camiz, sculptor Peter Rockwell, and three teams of scientists to understand a work of extraordinary emotional power. By examining all aspects of the statue's depiction of Christ and of his physical relationship to the other figures, especially the Virgin, this book brings to life Michelangelo's great struggle to give conclusive form to his own relationship to God--a relationship unmistakably reflected in the artist's representation of himself as the bearded man supporting Christ.

Through an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that combines technical, historical, archival, and interpretive analysis, the book clarifies and revises the history of the Pietà from its inception to its reception through the centuries. For the first time ever, a computer-generated virtual model is used to study a major work of art by revealing previously unimaginable detail and perspectives, including the extent of the initial repairs and subsequent alterations made to the sculpture. Numerous illustrations reveal the Pietà in rich detail and an accompanying CD-ROM provides access to the digital imagery while expanding the book's technical and scientific content.

Wasserman reaches a striking conclusion about why Michelangelo mutilated the statue, a conclusion sure to inspire lively debate. He seeks to resolve a host of other questions such as: What religious message did Michelangelo seek to convey? Is the Pietà a "pietà" at all? As all lovers of art will appreciate, this book, by providing a fresh, systematic, and comprehensive investigation of this magnificent work, represents a vital key to understanding Michelangelo's entire oeuvre.

... Read more

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A Must-Have for Michelangelo fans
...or actually art fans in general. If you have even a passing interest in art, or Michelangelo, this book is a must.

For starters, it is an amazing book. The photography is beautiful (if you ever wanted to view this sculpture from every conceivable angle, this is your book!) and the essays are well-written and informative.

If that wasn't enough, we get treated to an amazing CD-ROM which details the "virtual" sculpture project. Its fascinating and a very well-put-together multimedia item.

I had the distinct fortune of seeing this sculpture with my own eyes, and while absolutely nothing can compare to seeing the original, this book comes very close.

Jack Wasserman and the staff from IBM Research have done a great service to this masterpiece. I'm sure Michelangelo would've approved. Here's hoping they apply this to other treasures from the art world.

Highly recommended. ... Read more

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A clear look into the mind of a great artist and philosopher
I have been a fan of Richard Serra's from the moment I first viewed the torqued elipses. I looked for his work and information about him all over the place, all of which sparked my interest. I saw this book and I was incredibly curious to read what an artist who does so much head work has to say, and whether it would be clear and understandable. I was so pleased to find that Serra was incredibly open, direct, honest, well-expressed, with an even humorous turn-of-phrase at times, which was refreshing. I highly recommend the essays and interviews 'Extended Notes From Sight Point Road,' 'About Drawing: An Interview,' and 'An Opinionated Museum Goer.' I personally found myself agreeing with much of what Serra said and wrote, in fact, to my surprise, he was able to articulate many of my thoughts better than I ever had. A great, influential man, and I highly recommend this book by and about him. ... Read more

Book Description

This volume includes all of Michelangelo's paintings, as well as a selection of his work in sculpture and architecture. Numerous full-color details capture the works' staggering depth of meaning and magnificent beauty. Frederick Hartt, the great scholar of Italian Renaissance art, provides a fascinating account of Michelangelo's titanic genius. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

not much more than a train reading
this a very modest summary on brancusi's works. it's rather superficial and at times it's wasted on tangents of little value--such as the reference to brancusi's sexuality.

i gave it 2 stars mostly for the photo reproductions.

Not much meat to this book.
I was looking forward to receiving this book but was disappointed. It did not provide any more than a few visual cues on the artist's best known pieces. I had hoped for notes on his start, inspirations, and other less known pieces of artwork. ... Read more

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A great book for all, academic and passing interest
This is an excellent book out of the 12 I've consulted for my final year dissertation, when I ordered if from Amazon I was torn between this one and the Adriana "felt hat: A life told" but the costumer reviews put me off. Having read Adrianas "JB the art of cooking" from the library, buying this book from editor Gene Ray was certainly the best way to go. The book is similar to, but more accessible than, the Critique of Beuys from the tate series. It contains however, the vital "Twilight of the Idols" by benjamin Buchloh which, if nothing else reveals some of the misconceptions and horrors that beuys provoked...but it offers another article by Buchloh, written 20 years later that acts almost as a retraction. the presentation and the much needed balance of argument makes this book an absolute must for anyone, from any level of understanding to purchase. A great, essential read on Joseph Beuys. ... Read more

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As an American whose heart belongs to Florence (Firenze)...
Having attended the Florida State University Study Program "a Firenze" from June to December 1976 and having returned nearly ten times since, Giambologna became one of my most favorite Renaissance-Mannerist-Baroque sculptors and this book very well summarizes his life and works. Giambologna so captured my aesthetics that I purchased several lost-wax process bronzes from his originals -- in particular the Hermes statue, one of which is under the National Gallery of Art dome in Washington, D.C. However my version is about three feet tall. Please enjoy learning more about Giambologna! ... Read more

Book Description

The art of Louise Bourgeois stages a dynamic encounter between modern art and psychoanalysis, argues Mignon Nixon in the first full-scale critical study of the artist's work. A pivotal figure in twentieth-century art, Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911, France) emigrated to New York in 1938 and is still actively working and exhibiting today. From Bourgeois's formative struggle with the "father figures" of surrealism, including Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp, to her galvanizing role in the feminist art movement of the 1970s, to her subsequent emergence as a leading voice in postmodernism, this book explores the artist's responses to war, dislocation, and motherhood, to the predicament of the "woman artist" and the politics of sexual and social liberation, as a dialogue with psychoanalysis.

Convinced that she could express "deeper things in three dimensions," Bourgeois abandoned painting for sculpture in the 1940s, founding her art in one of the twentieth century's most radical and controversial accounts of subjectivity, the object relations psychoanalysis of Melanie Klein. Rejecting the Oedipal narratives of Freud and the dream imagery of surrealism for the object world of the infantile drives, Bourgeois turned to the child analysis pioneered by Klein, the figure Julia Kristeva has called "the boldest reformer in the history of modern psychoanalysis." With Klein, Bourgeois thinks the negative -- fragmentation, splitting, and formlessness -- where we might least expect to find it, in the corporeal fantasies of mother and child. This turn to the mother and the death drive at once in child psychoanalysis, Nixon contends, not only finds powerful expression in Bourgeois's art, but is echoed in the work of other artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama, and Eva Hesse, and in a return to Klein in recent art.

"Fantastic reality," Bourgeois calls the condition of her art. Starting from Bourgeois's investigation, through a multiplicity of forms and materials, of the problem of subjectivity on the very threshold of emergence, this book argues for a new psychoanalytic story of modern art. ... Read more

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Famous for massive public art projects, including "Wrapped Coast, One Million Square Feet" in Australia and "Running Fence" in Northern California, Christo Javacheff and his wife Jeanne-Claude were used to dealing with intransigent bureaucracies. But they hadn't reckoned with New York City. The couple's 1979 project--temporarily placing thousands of saffron-colored banners across the walkways of 843-acre Central Park--did not receive the city's blessing until 2003. Published in advance of the 16-day installation in February 2005, Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates is a picture book that moves briskly from photographs of early presentations and hearings to numerous shots of workers assembling the steel, aluminum, vinyl and rip-stop nylon components of the piece.

Book Description

Like no other sculptor today, Donald Judd has informed our understanding of art and its relationship to space. The Panoramas Gallery organized his first solo exhibition in 1957, at a time in which he was still focused on painting, yet moving from the flat picture plane towards the third dimension. His cadmium red pictures cut through with stripes or incisions led the viewer to perceive space as self-evident. From there Judd moved toward a complete abandonment of painting, recognizing, in the early 60s, that "actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface." His switch from painting to sculpture was coincident with a growing interest in architecture and in industrial processes and materials, such as galvanized steel, concrete, plywood, and aluminum, which he used to create large, hollow, Minimalist sculptures. Documented here for the first time is this very crucial development, from the early work of the 1950s to 1968, the point at which Judd's artistic vocabulary reached its complete formation.
Numerous works, including previously unrecorded paintings, sculptures, sketches, and works on paper, appear here alongside unpublished documents and texts by Judd himself.

Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, or popularizing of abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist's artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all. --Donald Judd, 1965

Edited and with an essay by Thomas Kellein. Texts by Donald Judd.

Hardcover, 184 pages, 80 color ... Read more