"A career in music ... is a calling with such a strong pull; you'd think a tide was sucking you under. It becomes an intense obsession of such great intensity that you can almost think of nothing else, it drives you with a fever and fervor."

In the early 70s, an idealistic young man - Brian Torff - arrived in New York to pursue his passion for music. During an excursion to Long Island, Brian found his dream instrument: a 1775 re-built Nicola Galliano bass.

Such was the beginning of a career that led Torff from Cafe Carlyle to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the White House. He has toured worldwide with the greatest: from Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, George Shearing, and Erroll Garner to Stephane Grappelli, Benny Goodman, Mary Lou Williams, and Marian McPartland.

As Brian notes, "bass players do a lot of observing from the back of the bandstand." It is this supportive role that qualifies Torff to share his insight into jazz music, and its many personalities. Torff takes us beyond the music by adding depth with his vision of American music, and paints vivid portraits of the musicians with whom he played.

Torff's memoir is one of creativity, and determination mixed with timing, and plain good luck. His sharp narrative not only brings the legends of jazz to life, but reading about them here will certainly motivate you to add some music to your collection.

Text in German. There is a copious and wide-ranging body of literature on Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Germany's most important 19th-century architect. But there is not a single work that records and assembles material on buildings by Schinkel that are still standing today, one hundred and sixty years after his death, after two world wars and major political upheavals. This volume is intended to fill the gap by providing the fullest possible compilation. It is surprising how many buildings by Schinkel still exist. There are over 170 of them in 112 different places, 62 in Germany and 49 in Poland and Russia, with Berlin and Potsdam each counting as a single location. The picture is very varied as far as the individual buildings are concerned. The churches make up the greatest number: about 86 of them are still standing. Then come 34 museums, theatres, guardhouses, schools and similar buildings, 18 palaces, castles and manor houses, 12 memorials, 12 tombs, 6 interiors and 4 fonts. A glance at a map of the former state of Prussia shows clearly that the buildings are not distributed evenly. In the west, the Rhineland and Westphalia, there were and are relatively few buildings by Schinkel. There is a decided cluster, the first regional concentration, in the present Saxony-Anhalt, between Magdeburg and Weimar. Further to the east come major accumulations in Berlin and Potsdam, and then the Oderbruch in the east of Brandenburg as another cluster. There are also concentrations of buildings by Schinkel in the Posen area as well as in West and East Prussia. Pomerania and Silesia have far fewer. Heinz Schonemann provides an introductory essay about Schinkel in his day, Helmut Borsch-Supan has contributed accounts of the way in which Schinkel's legacy is being handled today. The catalogue texts are by Martina Abri, Elke Blauert, Eva Borsch-Supan, Bernd Evers, Hillert Ibbeken and Heinz Schonemann.

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Millions have visited the museums that bear her name, yet few know much about Madame Tussaud. A celebrated artist, she had both a ringside seat at and a cameo role in the French Revolution. A victim and survivor of one of the most tumultuous times in history, this intelligent, pragmatic businesswoman has also had an indelible impact on contemporary culture, planting the seed of our obsession with celebrity.

In "Madame Tussaud," Kate Berridge tells this fascinating woman's complete story for the first time, drawing upon a wealth of sources, including Tussaud's memoirs and historical archives. It is a grand-scale success story, revealing how with sheer graft and grit a woman born in 1761 to an eighteen-year-old cook overcame extraordinary reversals of fortune to build the first and most enduring worldwide brand identified simply by reference to its founder's name: Madame Tussaud's.

Fernando Romero graduated from architecture school in Mexico City in 1995, and then worked with Enric Miralles, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas before setting up his own firm in 1999, called Laboratorio de la Ciudad de Mexico. LCM soon became influential, as one of few offices--if not the only one--carrying out experimental projects in Mexico City's economically vulnerable environment. In 2005, Romero founded the Laboratory of Architecture, LAR. Translation divides LCM and LAR's projects into three categories. "Fluid Bodies" are long-lasting private projects, addressing specific situations with high-tech resources. The Modern Wetdream project from 2001, a villa with a view of the Pacific Ocean, is a perfect illustration of this. "Revised Boxes" are public buildings whose technology is based on industrial products. For example, at the Inbursa bank on Paseo de la Reforma, one of the most prestigious avenues in Mexico City, Romero used laminated glass which looks either opaque or transparent depending on where one stands. "Boxes," the third category of projects, create cheap, low-tech architecture and rapidly applicable designs from commercial wholesale products, the better to attain LAR's goal of addressing contemporary society via a process of architectural translation.

Digital Fabrications is a collection of essays and half-true stories about design software and hardware. Written from the perspective of architectural design, each piece expands on emerging trends, devices, foibles, and phenomena engendered by an increased reliance on interactions with interfaces in the discipline. The essays ask: how do we characterise our post-digital design labour? What are the politics of design software? How is architecture adapting to a world largely dependent on platforms and scripts? What are the spatial mechanisms of the internet and VR? Using storytelling techniques, this book accepts that software is everywhere, and narrows in on a few ways it has taken command of our cultural products. From the perspective of architectural design, a field traditionally associated with sketching and its own myths of creativity, computers are an essential workplace tool. Projects rely on a wide assortment of software packages and standalone applications, but rarely do architects reflect on the structure of those programs or how they have infiltrated our disciplinary conventions. PDFs and JPGs are as much a part of our vocabulary as plans, sections, and elevations. A drawing today might refer to a rendering, a CAD document, a proprietary BIM file, or anything that describes a project visually. While one way of examining this disciplinary shift might be to re-imagine what digital drawing can be, this collection of essays puts forth another way: to look at the behaviours, phenomena, collective trends, and oddities emerging as a result of global software proliferation. In other words, this book accepts that software is everywhere, and narrows in on a few ways it has taken command of our cultural products.

The first biography in English of the Japanese artist who was a central figure in the dazzling artistic milieu of 1920s Paris When we think of expatriates in Paris during the early decades of the twentieth century, certain names come to mind: Hemingway, Picasso, Modigliani--and Foujita, the Japanese artist whose distinctive works, bringing elements of Japanese art to Western oil painting, made him a major cultural figure in 1920s Montparnasse. Foujita was the only Japanese artist to be considered part of the "School of Paris," which also counted among its members such prominent artists as Picasso and Modigliani. Noteworthy, too, was Foujita's personal style, flamboyant even for those flamboyant times. He was best known for his drawings of female nudes and cats, and for his special white color upon which he could draw a masterful line--one that seemed to outline a woman's whole body in a single unbroken stroke.
With the advent of the Second World War, Foujita returned to Japan, where he allied himself with the ruling Japanese mili-tarists and painted canvases in support of the war effort. After Japan's defeat, he was scorned for his devotion to the military cause and returned to France, where he remained until his death in 1968. Acclaimed writer and translator Phyllis Birnbaum not only explores Foujita's fascinating, tumultuous life but also assesses the appeal of his paintings, which, in their mixture of Eastern and Western traditions, are memorable for their vibrancy of form and purity of line.

"Art is the signature of a civilization." (Beverly Sills) In times of heated discussions about the allocation of public money, the reduction of funds for cultural organizations in Germany is often demanded by critics and feared by numerous arts institutions. Whatever one's opinion may be, here, we are talking about the cultural identity of a people. Hence it is important to explore alternatives to raise money in order to ensure the financial basis for the promotion of the arts. In this context it suggests itself to look at successful financing models in foreign countries. Moreover, corporations are facing increasing difficulties in addressing their stakeholders effectively. Constant information overload by the media is a huge challenge for external corporate communications. Yet also internal communication strategies play a crucial role in order to reach the highest possible degree of staff satisfaction and consequently optimal output. In view of these aspects, this paper draws a comparison between arts financing and particularly arts sponsorship in Germany and the USA. It is focused on the political and social integration of the arts in society on the one hand and the promotion of the cooperation between the arts and the business world on the other hand. Three practical examples are presented: the Stuttgart State Opera, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the San Francisco Opera.

In the spring of 1970, artist Ralph Steadman went to America in search of work and found more than he bargained for when he met Hunter S. Thompson at the Kentucky Derby. Their remarkable collaboration resulted in the now-legendary Gonzo Journalism, which would document the civil rights movement, the Nixon administration, Watergate, and the many bizarre and great events that shaped the second half of the twentieth century. When Thompson committed suicide in 2005, it was the end of a unique friendship filled with both betrayal and understanding. A rollicking, no-holds-barred memoir, The Joke's Over is the definitive inside story of the Gonzo years.

Homeworks(R) is an approach to consumer-oriented townhouse development that reduces developers' risks, produces buildings that are change-ready, and provides a new framework for housing product and process innovation.

Everyone knows what modern architecture looks like, but few understand how this revolutionary new form of building emerged little more than a century ago or what its aesthetic, social, even spiritual aspirations were. Through illuminating studies of the leading men and women who forever changed our built environment, veteran architecture critic Martin Filler offers fresh insights into this unprecedented cultural transformation. From Louis Sullivan, father of the skyscraper, to Frank Gehry, magician of post-millennial museum, Filler emphasizes how their force of personality has had a decisive effect on everything from how we inhabit our homes to how we shape our cities.
Why was the sudden shift in architectural fashion that wrecked the career of the Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh not enough to destroy the indomitable spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright, who rose from adversity to become America's greatest architect? Why was Philip Johnson, "dean of American architecture" during the 1980s, so haunted by the superior talent of this less-fortunate contemporary Louis Kahn that he could barely utter his name even at the peak of his own success? How did Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum "Less is more" give way to Robert Venturi's "Less is a bore"?
Surveying such current urban design sagas as the reconstruction of Ground Zero and the reunification of Berlin, Filler also trains his sharp eye on some of the biggest names in architecture today, puncturing more than one overinflated reputation while identifying the true masters who are now building for the ages.

Acclaimed photographer, filmmaker, composer, novelist, and memoirist, Gordon Parks has participated in, been witness to, and documented many of the major events in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.
In "A Hungry Heart, " Parks reflects on the people and events that shaped him: from growing up poor on the Kansas prairie to crisscrossing the country on the North Coast Limited; documenting poverty and injustice in Chicago to doing fashion spreads for "Vogue;" photographing black revolutionaries to writing, composing the soundtrack for, and directing the Hollywood movie version of his novel "The Learning Tree." More than a self-portrait of the artist, "A Hungry Heart" is a striking account of an American era.

In this groundbreaking volume, conventional assumptions about one of England's greatest and most influential classical architects are turned on their head. Traditionally, Inigo Jones has been looked upon as an isolated, even old-fashioned, figure in European architecture, still espousing the Palladian ideals of the 16th century when European contemporaries were turning to the Baroque. Yet an investigation of contemporary European architecture and of Jones's buildings belies this impression, demonstrating that Jones must be viewed in the context of a European-wide, early-17th-century classicist movement. Giles Worsley examines the full range of Jones's architecture, from humble stable to royal palace. Worsley shows that key motifs that have been seen as proof of Jones's Palladian loyalties-particularly the Serliana, the portico, and the centrally planned villa-have a much older and deeper meaning as symbols of sovereignty. The book transforms our understanding not only of Inigo Jones but also of the architecture of his time. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Since the mid-1990s, when China allowed its architects to practice independently from government-run design institutes, a new kind of architecture, distinguished by unique regional characteristics, has emerged. China Dialogues is a rigorously selected collection of insightful interviews that the book's author Vladimir Belogolovsky has conducted with 21 leading Chinese architects during his extensive travels in China. At the time when so many buildings that are being built around the world are no longer rooted in their place and culture, the leading Chinese architects succeeded collectively in producing unique architectural body of work that could not be confused with any other regional school. The interviews are accompanied by over 120 photographs and drawings of beautifully executed projects built throughout China since early 2000s. China Dialogues opens up the thinking process of the country's top architects, as they share their ideas, insights, intentions, and visions in unusually revealing and candid ways.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Johannes Kister, Reinhard Scheithauer (until 2020) and Susanne Gross have been running their offices in Cologne since 1992 and Leipzig since 2007, as well as recently opening a Berlin branch. The three protagonists have produced remarkable, inspiring buildings, including the major, sculptural facility of the University of Applied Sciences Bremerhaven (2005), which impresses with its solid, haptic materiality. Text in English and German.

Calvin Tomkins first discovered the work of Robert Rauschenberg in the late 1950s, when he began to look seriously at contemporary art. While gazing at Rauschenberg's painting "Double Feature, " Tomkins felt compelled to make some kind of literal connection to the work, and it is in that sprit that "for the last forty years it's been his] ambition to write about contemporary art not as a critic or a judge, but as a participant." Tomkins has spent many of those years writing about Robert Rauschenberg, whom he rapidly came to see as "one of the most inventive and influential artists of his generation." So it seemed natural to make Rauschenberg the focus of "Off the Wall," which deals with the radical changes that have made advanced visual art such a powerful force in the world.
"Off the Wall" chronicles the astonishingly creative period of the 1950s and 1960s, a high point in American art. In his in his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and as a pivotal figure linking abstract expressionism and pop art, Rauschenberg was part of a revolution during which artists moved art off the walls of museums and galleries and into the center of the social scene. Rauschenberg's vitally important and productive career spans this revolution, reaching beyond it to the present day. Featuring the artists and the art world surrounding Rauschenberg--from Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning to Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, together with dealers Betty Parsons, and Leo Castelli, and the patron Peggy Guggenheim--Tomkins's stylish and witty portrait of one of America's most original and inspiring artists is fascinating, enlightening, and very entertaining.

At the turn of the 16th century, Italy was a turbulent territory made up of independent states, each at war with or intriguing against its neighbor. There were the proud, cultivated, and degenerate Sforzas in Milan, and in Rome, the corrupt Spanish family of the Borgia whose head, Rodrigo, ascended to St Peter's throne as Pope Alexander VI. In Florence, a golden age of culture and sophistication ended with the death of the greatest of the Medici family, Lorenzo the Magnificent, giving way to an era of uncertainty, cruelty, and religious fundamentalism.
In the midst of this turmoil, there existed the greatest concentration of artists that Europe has ever known. Influenced by the rediscovery of the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, artists and thinkers such as Botticelli and da Vinci threw off the shackles of the Middle Ages to produce one of the most creative periods in history - the Renaissance.
This is the story of twelve years when war, plague, famine, and chaos made their mark on a volatile Italy, and when a young, erratic genius, Michelangelo Buonarroti, made his first great statue - the David. It was to become a symbol not only of the independence and defiance of the city of Florence but also of the tortured soul who created it. This is a wonderful history of the artist, his times, and one of his most magnificent works.

A pioneer of Italian Renaissance architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi is most famous for his daring and original ideas, among them the magnificent dome of Florence's famed Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral. This comprehensive book describes how he created the structure, construction concepts, and other inventions. 28 halftones, 18 line illustrations.

Ideas for small bank buildings; store buildings; double or twin houses; and two-, four-, six- and nine-apartment buildings. Originally published in 1909, this was the first book showing popular designs in low-priced flats and store buildings, containing fifty-seven original and practical designs prepared by architects of the Radford Architectural Company. Constructions show are in stone, brick, cement, and wood.

"Palladio is the Bible," Thomas Jefferson once said. "You should get it and stick to it." With his simple, gracious, perfectly proportioned villas, Andrea Palladio elevated the architecture of the private house into an art form during the late sixteenth century -- and his influence is still evident in the ample porches, columned porticoes, grand ceilings, and front-door pediments of America today.

In The Perfect House, bestselling author Witold Rybczynski, whose previous books have transformed our understanding of domestic architecture, reveals how a handful of Palladio's houses in an obscure corner of the Venetian Republic should have made their presence felt hundreds of years later and halfway across the globe. More than just a study of one of history's seminal architectural figures, The Perfect House reflects Rybczynski's enormous admiration for his subject and provides a new way of looking at the special landscapes we call "home" in the modern world.