Showing titles in Artists, Architects & Photographers

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...

Read by the author, Rose Boyt. ‘Hypnotic and propulsive’ - The Sunday Times ‘Thrilling’ - The TLS ‘Compulsive’ - The Observer In Naked Portrait Rose Boyt explores her complicated relationship with her beloved father, Lucian Freud, drawing on a diary she kept while sitting for him and...

The Times Art Book of the Year 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022 ‘Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon … A biography that no Bacon fan – or indeed foe – can afford to overlook … Mesmerising’ THE TIMES ‘A magnificent triumph … I was captivated by every...

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.

'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...

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...

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 with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians who've mattered to him throughout his life. 

An Italian Mannerist architect and painter, Giorgio Vasari was acquainted with many of the most famous artists of his day. He is best-known today for his biographies of artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian and Giotto. This recording is read with clarity and authority by Neville Jason.

When Roxana Robinson’s definitive biography of O’Keeffe was first published in 1989, it received rave reviews and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This new edition features a new foreword by the author, setting O’Keefe in an artistic context over the last thirty years since the book was first published, as well as previously unpublished letters of the young O’Keeffe to her lover, Arthur MacMahon. This book also relates the story of Robinson’s own encounter with the artist.

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. 

Eye-opening and candid, David Bailey's Look Again is a fantastically entertaining memoir by a true icon. 'Rollicking . . . with roguish tales as vivid as his era-defining photos' – Daily Mail 'Brilliant' – Telegraph David Bailey burst onto the scene in 1960 with his revolutionary photographs...

Joe Tucker's Uncle Eric was a beloved yet unconventional figure throughout Joe's life. A shambolically dressed man who lived with his mother for almost eighty years, he had an almost compulsive need to charm strangers with working men's club comedy routines, and appeared to exist only for daily trips to the bookie - and yet had also amassed over five hundred of his own remarkable paintings without anyone ever realising his achievements.

Tracey Emin is an internationally renowned artist. Here she discusses her life and achievements in a series of interviews from the BBC radio and TV archives.

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...

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realised portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies he encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the world of the Henrician court, Holbein was a protean and multi-faceted genius.

*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...

Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman! “J. Michael Straczynski is, without question, one of the greatest science fiction minds of our time.” -- Max Brooks (World War Z) For four decades, J. Michael Straczynski has been one of the most successful writers in Hollywood, one of the few to...

The enthralling biography of the shepherd boy who changed the world with his revolutionary engineering and whose genius we still benefit from today. Thomas Telford's name is familiar, his story less so. Thomas was born in 1757 in the Scottish Borders; his father died in Thomas' infancy, plunging the family into poverty. Telford's life soared to span almost eight decades of gloriously obsessive, prodigiously productive energy. Few people have done more to shape our nation.

The life of the world’s greatest modern artist by one of Britain’s greatest artists. 'Positive, original, diverting and highly effective.’ – Sunday Times ‘This biography achieves that rare distinction of never having a dull page.’ – Independent on Sunday Everything about Picasso...

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. Hailed as 'the most important artist working today' by the Financial Times and as 'an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom' by the New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process.