Collection: Art

The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner--creator of one of America's most stunning museums--an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella's world, museum, and the art she collected.

Isabella Stewart Gardner's museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston's Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.

An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella's wishes in the exact placements she initially curated.

Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston's insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old.

But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace--all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent--whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal--came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer.

From award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty is the story of the complex and singular woman behind one of the most fascinating museums in the nation and the world--a tale of beauty and loss, grit and American self-invention.

"Retro Sinners" by gay Canadian artist Astra Zero invites you to explore a whimsical, provocative, and slightly mischievous world of vintage-inspired art.

This unique 60-page collection showcases a delightful mismatch of artistic styles, moods, and themes centered around the male body, all with a darkly humorous and sometimes even eerie twist.

Within its pages, you'll encounter a diverse array of handsome supernatural men, each brought to life through a variety of art styles.

Astra Zero's art is both a celebration of the male form and an exploration of queer identity. This book presents a playful and adult-themed journey through an unconventional mix of retro aesthetics and modern influences.

Some pages will tickle your funny bone with male pin-up style faux advertisements for whimsical, made-up products, while others will simply transport you to the vintage realms of artistic expression. Astra Zero's artistic prowess shines through in every piece, combining nostalgia with a modern sensibility, creating a unique fusion that's both visually captivating and thought-provoking.

But it doesn't stop there - "Retro Sinners" also delves into the realms of the supernatural, the occult, vampires, the satanic, and horror, offering a fresh perspective on familiar themes. These artistic interpretations add a thrilling and unexpected dimension to the collection, making it a truly unforgettable journey into the queer and artistic imagination.

Experience the bold and unapologetic celebration of the male body in all its forms, as "Retro Sinners" takes you on an artistic exploration that's bound to entertain, provoke, and inspire. Astra Zero's art isn't just a reflection of his LGBTQ+ experience; it's an invitation to immerse yourself in a world of retro-inspired wonder, with a twist that's both dark and playful.

"Sesali Bowen is poised to give Black feminism the rejuvenation it needs. Her trendsetting writing and commentary reaches across experiences and beyond respectability. I and so many Black girls still figuring out who they are in this world will gain so much from whatever she has to say."--Charlene A. Carruthers, activist and author of Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements

"Sesali perfectly vocalizes the inner dialogue, and daily mantras needed to be a Bad Bitch."--Gabourey Sidibe, actor, director, and author of This is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare

"A powerful call for a more inclusive and 'real' feminism."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Bowen writes from an authentic space for Black women who are often left out of feminist conversations due to respectability politics, but who are just as deserving of the same voice and liberation."--Booklist (starred review)

From funny and fearless entertainment journalist Sesali Bowen, Bad Fat Black Girl combines rule-breaking feminist theory, witty and insightful personal memoir, and cutting cultural analysis for an unforgettable, genre-defining debut.

Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Sesali Bowen learned early on how to hustle, stay on her toes, and champion other Black women and femmes as she navigated Blackness, queerness, fatness, friendship, poverty, sex work, and self-love.

Her love of trap music led her to the top of hip-hop journalism, profiling game-changing artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae. But despite all the beauty, complexity, and general badassery she saw, Bowen found none of that nuance represented in mainstream feminism. Thus, she coined Trap Feminism, a contemporary framework that interrogates where feminism meets today's hip-hop.

Bad Fat Black Girl offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience.

Bad bitches: this one's for you.

One hundred of the most evocative modern poems on joy, selected by an award-winning contemporary poet
"Bursting with energy and surprising locutions. . . . Even the most familiar poets seem somehow new within the context of Joy."--David Skeel, Wall Street Journal "Wiman takes readers through the ostensible ordinariness of life and reveals the extraordinary."--Adrianna Smith, The Atlantic
Christian Wiman, a poet known for his meditations on mortality, has long been fascinated by joy and by its relative absence in modern literature. Why is joy so resistant to language? How has it become so suspect in our times? Manipulated by advertisers, religious leaders, and politicians, joy can seem disquieting, even offensive. How does one speak of joy amid such ubiquitous injustice and suffering in the world?

In this revelatory anthology, Wiman takes readers on a profound and surprising journey through some of the most underexplored terrain in contemporary life. Rather than define joy for readers, he wants them to experience it. Ranging from Emily Dickinson to Mahmoud Darwish and from Sylvia Plath to Wendell Berry, he brings together diverse and provocative works as a kind of counter to the old, modernist maxim "light writes white"--no agony, no art. His rich selections awaken us to the essential role joy plays in human life.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is hailed as the most important proponent of the Pop art movement. A critical and creative observer of American society, he explored key themes of consumerism, materialism, media, and celebrity. Drawing on contemporary advertisements, comic strips, consumer products, and Hollywood's most famous faces, Warhol proposed a radical reevaluation of what constituted artistic subject matter. Through Warhol, a Campbell's soup can and Coca Cola bottle became as worthy of artistic status as any traditional still life. At the same time, Warhol reconfigured the role of the artist. Famously stating "I want to be a machine," he systematically reduced the presence of his own authorship, working with mass-production methods and images, as well as dozens of assistants in a studio he dubbed the Factory. This book introduces Warhol's multifaceted, prolific oeuvre, which revolutionized distinctions between "high" and "low" art and integrated ideas of living, producing, and consuming that remain central questions of modern experience.

A Wall Street Journal and Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year Long-listed for the Plutarch Award

A bold new biography of the legendary painter John Singer Sargent, stressing the unruly emotions and furtive desires that drove his innovative work and defined the transatlantic, fin de siècle culture he inhabited.

A great American artist, John Singer Sargent is also an abiding enigma. While dressing like a businessman and crafting a highly respectable persona, he scandalized viewers on both sides of the Atlantic with the frankness and sensuality of his work. He charmed the nouveaux riches as well as the old money, but he reserved his greatest sympathies for Bedouins, Spanish dancers, and the gondoliers of Venice. At the height of his renown in Britain and America, he quit his lucrative portrait-painting career to concentrate on allegorical murals with religious themes--and on nude drawings of male models that he kept to himself.

In The Grand Affair, the historian Paul Fisher offers a vivid life of the buttoned-up artist and his unbuttoned work. Sargent's nervy, edgy portraits exposed illicit or dark feelings in himself and his sitters--feelings that high society on both sides of the Atlantic found fascinating and off-putting. Fisher traces Singer's life from his wandering trans-European childhood to the salons of Paris, and the scandals and enthusiasms he caused, and on to London. There he mixed with eccentrics and aristocrats, and the likes of Henry James and Oscar Wilde, while at the same time forming a close relationship with a lightweight boxer who became his model, valet, and traveling partner. In later years, Sargent met up with his friend and patron Isabella Stewart Gardner around the world and devoted himself to a new model, the African American elevator operator and part-time contortionist Thomas McKeller, who would become the subject of some of Sargent's most daring and powerful work.

Illuminating Sargent's restless itinerary, Fisher explores the enigmas of fin de siècle sexuality and art, fashioning a biography that grants the man and his paintings new and intense life.

Celebrated around the world as a literary monument, The Divine Comedy, completed in 1321 and written by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), is widely considered the greatest work ever composed in the Italian language. The epic poem describes Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, representing, on a deeper level, the soul's path towards salvation. In the last few years of his life, Romantic poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827) produced 102 illustrations for Dante's masterwork, from pencil sketches to finished watercolors. Like Dante's sweeping poem, Blake's drawings range from scenes of infernal suffering to celestial light, from horrifying human disfigurement to the perfection of physical form. While faithful to the text, Blake also brought his own perspective to some of Dante's central themes. Today, Blake's illustrations, left in various stages of completion at the time of his death, are dispersed among seven different institutions. This TASCHEN edition brings these works together again, alongside key excerpts from Dante's masterpiece. Two introductory essays consider Dante and Blake, as well as other major artists who have been inspired by The Divine Comedy, including Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Doré, and Auguste Rodin. With an intimate reading of Blake's illustrations, and many close-ups to allow the most delicate of details to dazzle, this is a breathtaking encounter with two of the finest artistic talents in history, as well as with such universal themes as love, guilt, punishment, revenge, and redemption.

Dust off your mic and learn all about the history of pop music in this adorable board book!

From Elton John and Madonna to Beyoncé and Prince--pop music breathes life into melodies and makes us want to dance! Hit the high notes along with the greats in this delightful baby book that introduces little ones to the pop stars that started it all!
Parental Advisory: May cause toddlers to start putting on living room concerts.

From the Los Angeles riots to the Columbine High School massacre, Americans witnessed events and purchased items that reflected the best and worst of the decade. Bill Clinton's presidency was in jeopardy, the digital age had erupted, and Silicon Valley was affecting everyone on the planet. Meanwhile nudity and sex ruled the pages of magazines, selling everything from haute couture to fragrances and microwave ovens. Nirvana entertained Generation X while the "Greatest Generation" considered purchasing a Probe and something called a Hummer.

Super Soakers and the game consoles Game Boy and PlayStation were the new toys, as Super Mario World, Gran Turismo, and Sonic the Hedgehog were warping the minds of young people everywhere. Luxury brands were in demand: shoppers coveted a Gucci bag, a Louis Vuitton tote, a Hermes scarf, or a Prada frock. TWA and Continental Airlines still flew the airways and Volkswagen reimagined the Beetle. It was a decade that seemed safely benign, but was jammed with events and consumption on a grand scale, setting the stage for the 21st century.

Featuring six chapters that cover a range of advertising, from food and fashion to entertainment and cars, a Desert Storm's worth of advertising highlights makes All-American Ads of the '90s a must-have compendium for every Beanie Babies-collecting, Simpsons-watching, pog-hoarding, and Harry Potter-loving citizen of 1990s consumerism.

Closely based on Haring's own concept for the monograph he wanted to publish before his untimely death, this volume represents more than a decade of research and contains a wealth of unpublished photographic and written material including drawings, studio photographs, and journal entries. From chalk drawings deep in the New York City subways to murals in Pisa and Berlin; collaborations with William Burroughs and the famous body painting of Grace Jones, this book follows the incredible trajectory of Keith Haring's artistic career: how a young man from a small town in rural Pennsylvania came to revolutionize the art world--and the course of art history--within little more than a decade. An incredibly prolific artist, Keith Haring created countless bold, provocative, endearing, and unforgettable images that continue to inspire artists--and delight children--worldwide. Tracing the arc from his early subway "tags" to his poignant work on social issues as diverse as AIDS, illiteracy and apartheid, this visually stunning book is the definitive work on Keith Haring.

Iconic pop artist Keith Haring comes to life for young readers in this picture book biography lovingly written by his sister

This one-of-a-kind book explores the life and art of Keith Haring from his childhood through his meteoric rise to fame. It sheds light on this important artist's great humanity, his concern for children, and his disregard for the establishment art world. Reproductions of Keith's signature artwork appear in scenes boldly rendered by Robert Neubecker. This is a story to inspire, and a book for Keith Haring fans of all ages to treasure.

From award-winning musician and composer Warren Ellis comes the unexpected and inspiring story of a piece of chewing gum. Featuring an introduction from Nick Cave.

On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone's piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, growing in significance with every passing year.

In 2019, Cave - his collaborator and great friend - asked Warren if there was anything he could contribute to display in his Stranger Than Kindness exhibition. Warren realised the time had come to release the gum. Together they agreed it should be housed in a glass case like a holy relic. Worrying the gum would be damaged or lost, Warren decided to first have it cast in silver and gold, sparking a chain of events that no one could have predicted, one that would take him back to his childhood and his relationship to found objects.

Nina Simone's Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love.

From the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of How to Be an Artist a deliciously readable survey of the art world in turbulent times

Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists, and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary readers to fine art as few critics have. An early champion of forgotten and overlooked women artists, he has also celebrated the pioneering work of African American, LGBTQ+, and other long-marginalized creators. Sotheby's Institute of Art has called him, simply, "the art critic."

Now, in Art Is Life, Jerry Saltz draws on two decades of work to offer a real-time survey of contemporary art as a barometer of our times. Chronicling a period punctuated by dramatic turning points--from the cultural reset of 9/11 to the rolling social crises of today--Saltz traces how visionary artists have both documented and challenged the culture. Art Is Life offers Saltz's eye-opening appraisals of trailblazers like Kara Walker, David Wojnarowicz, Hilma af Klint, and Jasper Johns; provocateurs like Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, and Marina Abramovic; and visionaries like Jackson Pollock, Bill Traylor, and Willem de Kooning. Saltz celebrates landmarks like the Obama portraits by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, writes searchingly about disturbing moments such as the Ankara gallery assassination, and offers surprising takes on figures from Thomas Kinkade to Kim Kardashian. And he shares stories of his own haunted childhood, his time as a "failed artist," and his epiphanies upon beholding work by Botticelli, Delacroix, and the cave painters of Niaux.

With his signature blend of candor and conviction, Jerry Saltz argues in Art Is Life for the importance of the fearless artist--reminding us that art is a kind of channeled voice of human experience, a necessary window onto our times. The result is an openhearted and irresistibly readable appraisal by one of our most important cultural observers.

National Bestseller

"A landmark and long-overdue cultural history." --Vogue

The stylish, wild story of the marriage of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward--a tale of love, art, Hollywood, and heartbreak

"Those years in the sixties when I was married to Dennis were the most wonderful and awful of my life." --Brooke Hayward

Los Angeles in the 1960s: riots in Watts and on the Sunset Strip, wild weekends in Malibu, late nights at The Daisy discotheque, openings at the Ferus Gallery, and the convergence of pop art, rock and roll, and the New Hollywood. At the center of it all, one inspired, improbable, and highly combustible couple--Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward--lived out the emblematic love story of '60s L.A.

The home these two glamorous young actors created for themselves and their family at 1712 North Crescent Heights Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills became the era's unofficial living room, a kaleidoscopic realm--"furnished like an amusement park," Andy Warhol said--that made an impact on anyone who ever stepped into it. Hopper and Hayward, vanguard collectors of contemporary art, packed the place with pop masterpieces by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and Warhol, and welcomed a who's who of visitors, from Jane Fonda to Jasper Johns, Joan Didion to Tina Turner, Hells Angels to Black Panthers. In this house, everything that defined the 1960s went down: the fun, the decadence, the radical politics, and, ultimately, the danger and instability that Hopper explored in the project that made his career, became the cinematic symbol of the period, and blew their union apart--Easy Rider.

Everybody Thought We Were Crazy is at once a fascinating account of the Hopper and Hayward union and a deeply researched, panoramic cultural history. It's the intimate saga of one couple whose own rise and fall--from youthful creative flowering to disorder and chaos--mirrors the very shape of the decade.

Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry.

This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project--including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, and Layli Long Soldier, among others--to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. The chosen poems reflect on the theme of place and displacement and circle the touchpoints of visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. Each poem showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship." In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than five hundred living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.

This new edition of the wildly popular cocktail book features revised and updated texts and a bold new cover.

Sixty of the world's coolest and most influential women are the inspiration for this refreshing and fun collection of drink recipes that are sure to bring extra zest to your cocktail shaker.

Free the Tipple pays tribute to a brilliant range of diverse women from the 20th century to today who have made waves in entertainment, the arts, politics, fashion, literature, sports, and science, including Frida Kahlo, Rihanna, Serena Williams, Virginia Woolf, Yoko Ono, Zaha Hadid, Marlene Dietrich, Zadie Smith, and more.

Each double-page spread features a recipe crafted to reflect its namesake's personality, style, or legacy. This ranges from The Gloria Steinem, which uses a complex liquor with a radical twist, to The Beyoncé, made, of course, with lemonade. The cocktails are simple to make, kitchen-tested, and incorporate easy-to-find ingredients. Snappy, informative biographies, illustrated with vibrant portraits, offer revealing insights into the women's lives.

This highly original guide to delicious beverages is a perfect gift for those in your life who encourage and inspire you.