For years, I have wanted to write a book about the relentless determination it takes to succeed in the arts. Whether as a young artist in New York City, as a music coordinator of a Broadway musical, or as a musician traveling through Europe, I will share with you excitement, acclaim, and culture. Onward and Upward is the true account of my pursuit of a dream; a career in music. In this around-the-world journey, I share my stories of culture, family, laughter, friendship, wisdom, and heartache, with a generous splash of the likes of Strauss, motorcycle chases, and Hollywood. Any aspiring artist, would-be world traveler, or entrepreneur, will benefit from reading this book. Learn from another's experience about dedication, passion, and culture. Partly by means of behind-the-scene memoirs, partly by means of journal entries, we will walk hand in hand on this most extraordinary journey through a life in the arts.

Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was fascinated by reading, and Goya's attention to the act and consequences of literacy-apparent in some of his most ambitious, groundbreaking creations-is related to the reading revolution in which he participated. It was an unprecedented growth both in the number of readers and in the quantity and diversity of texts available, accompanied by a profound shift in the way they were consumed and, for the artist, represented. Goya and the Mystery of Reading studies the way Goya's work heralds the emergence of a new kind of viewer, one who he assumes can and does read, and whose comportment as a skilled interpreter of signs alters the sense of his art, multiplying its potential for meaning. While the reading revolution resulted from and contributed to the momentous social transformations of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Goya and the Mystery of Reading explains how this transition can be tracked in the work of Goya, an artist who aimed not to copy the world around him, but to read it.

Warren Hahn inherited his family's German work ethic. He knows the meaning of grueling farm labor, the sweat and toil that come from tilling the land, and the endless hours of work that life on an old homestead demands. He's seen many changes in his life, but at the root of everything are the precious seeds of family and history.

In this autobiographical work, Warren honors his family and the many hardships they endured to start a new life in America in the mid-1800s. His family grew from hardy and hardworking German people who risked everything to create a better future for their children. Warren grew up on tales of the difficult and dangerous ocean crossings, love, adventure, ambition, death, disaster, hardship, and hope; he knew that these stories needed to be preserved and celebrated.

His ancestors settled in the harsh frontier lands of Texas and scrambled to create a future in a hostile, unforgiving environment and time. Now younger generations can come to know the price these strong-willed settlers paid for their family. Offering more than just a family history, he shares the story of his own life in modern-day Gillespie County, Texas.

Every person has a story worth telling. In honor of his family's rich history, Warren has gathered many lifetimes of those stories to inspire future generations.

Author Christos Tzanetakos adheres to the profound statement of Emile Zola: "Civilization will thrive when the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest." This memoir narrates the stories of Tzanetakos' lifelong adventures and presents his thoughts, philosophy, and work regarding atheism. Augmented with photos, "The Life and Work of an Atheist Pioneer" tells of Tzanetakos's childhood, growing up in Greece with his parents and four siblings, and of the seafaring career that took him around the world for ten years before finally settling in Miami, Florida, in 1969. Here he built his business, married, and started a family with his wife, Alice; he also immersed himself in activism for various social issues. "The Life and Work of an Atheist Pioneer" includes interesting and descriptive details from his life, but also discusses how he became a champion in the cause of the separation of church and state and the advancement of atheism.

"Martin Bailey has written some of the most interesting books on Vincent's life in France, where he produced his greatest work" - Johan van Gogh, grandson of Theo, the artist's brother Studio of the South tells the story of Van Gogh's stay in Arles, when his powers were at their height. For Van Gogh, the south of France was an exciting new land, bursting with life. He walked into the hills inspired by the landscapes, and painted harvest scenes in the heat of summer. He visited a fishing village where he saw the Mediterranean for the first time, energetically capturing it in paint. He painted portraits of friends and locals, and flower still life paintings, culminating in the now iconic Sunflowers. He rented the Yellow House, and gradually did it up, calling it 'an artist's house', inviting Paul Gauguin to join him there. This encounter was to have a profound impact on both of the artists. They painted side by side, their collaboration coming to a dramatic end a few months later. The difficulties Van Gogh faced led to his eventual decision to retreat to the asylum at Saint-Remy. Based on extensive original research, the book reveals discoveries that throw new light on the legendary artist and give a definitive account of his fifteen months in Provence, including his time at the Yellow House, his collaboration with Gauguin and its tragic and shocking ending.

Delve into the world of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his Glasgow School of Art-trained contemporaries who forged a unique and distinct vision in both art and architecture at the end of the Victorian era. The Glasgow Style is the name given to the work of a group of young designers and architects working in Glasgow from 1890-1914. At its centre were four young friends who had trained at Glasgow School of Art; two architects and two artists - Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Herbert MacNair, Margaret Macdonald and Frances Macdonald - who were simply known by their friends and contemporaries as 'The Four'. Their work was a personal vision in the new international style of the 1890s, Art Nouveau, and is perhaps best known for Mackintosh's architecture and furniture. But at the root of this new style was a graphic language which all four shared. Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Art of The Four presents the most coherent story to date of this important group, concentrating on the entirety of their artistic imagery and output, far beyond the best known work of the 1890s, and charting the constantly changing relationships between the artists and their work.

This new introduction to El Greco (1541-1614) follows the artist from his native island to Venice, Rome, Madrid, and then Toledo, the ecclesiastical capital of Spain. El Greco's ability to assimilate different artistic techniques and approaches to religion and philosophy enabled him to develop one of the most original styles of painting in the history of Europe. Despite his highly successful career he was unappreciated for centuries after his death, and this book examines how his genius was rediscovered in the nineteenth century.

William Morris's many-sided career placed him at the centre of an age and culture he both condemned and shaped. Hailed nowadays as a pioneer of modern design, he was best known to his contemporaries as a poet. A man of immense energy, charm and imagination, Morris learned to turn private grief to public purpose. Having failed as an architect and a painter, he succeeded as a weaver, dyer, calligrapher, printer, businessman, journalist and novelist.
Morris's dedication to making beauty an essential feature of daily life effected a revolution in public taste. A founding father of English socialism, William Morris has also belatedly been recognised as a far-sighted campaigner for conservation and environmental awareness. As Morris's first biographer asserted, he aimed at nothing less than the re-integration of human life itself.

Melanie Smith: Farce and Artifice is the publication that takes up the idea of the exhibition organised by the MACBA, jointly with the MUAC Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo and UNAM, in Mexico City, and the Museo Amparo, in Puebla, Mexico. It is the largest organised to date in Europe about the work of an artist who defies easy classification, born in England (Poole, 1965) but active on the Mexican art scene since the nineties.

Defining Decadence The legacy of Gustav Klimt A century after his death, Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) still startles with his unabashed eroticism, dazzling surfaces, and artistic experimentation. This monograph gathers all of Klimt's major works alongside authoritative art historical commentary and privileged access to the artist's archive with some 179 letters, cards, writings, and other documents. With top quality illustration, including new photography of the celebrated Stoclet Frieze, the book follows Klimt through his prominent role in the Secessionist movement of 1897, his candid rendering of the female body, and his lustrous "golden phase" when gold leaf brought a shimmering tone and texture to such beloved works as The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also known as The Woman in Gold. Through luminous spreads and carefully curated details, the monograph traces the repertoire of Japanese, Byzantine, and allegorical stimuli that informed Klimt's flattened perspectives, his symbolic vocabulary, and his mosaic-like textures. Drawing upon contemporary critics and voices, the book also examines the art world's polarized reception to Klimt's pictures as much as his own stylistic trajectory. From his landscape painting to erotic works to the controversial ceiling for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, we see how Klimt's admixture of tradition and daring divided the press and public, becried by some as a pornographer, hailed by others as a modern maestro.

A pictorial chronology of Professional Fine Artist Sandy Garnett's First 1000 Career Paintings.