A year of weekly interviews (1949-1950) with artist Diego Rivera by poet Alfredo Cardona-Pena disclose Rivera's iconoclastic views of life and the art world of that time. These intimate Sunday dialogues with what is surely the most influential Mexican artist of the twentieth century show us the free-flowing mind of a man who was a legend in his own time; an artist who escaped being lynched on more than one occasion, a painter so controversial that his public murals inspired movements, or, like the work commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, were ordered torn down. Here in his San Angelin studio, we hear Rivera's feelings about the elitist aspect of paintings in museums, his motivations to create public art for the people, and his memorable, unedited expositions on the art, culture, and politics of Mexico. The book has seven chapters that loosely follow the range of the author's questions and Rivera's answers. They begin with childlike, yet vast questions on the nature of art, run through Rivera's early memories and aesthetics, his views on popular art, his profound understanding of Mexican art and artists, the economics of art, random expositions on history or dreaming, and elegant analysis of art criticisms and critics. The work is all the more remarkable to have been captured between Rivera's inhumanly long working stints of six hours or even days without stop. In his rich introduction, author Cardona-Pena describes the difficulty of gaining entrance to Rivera's inner sanctum, how government funtionaries and academics often waited hours to be seen, and his delicious victory. At eight p. m. the night of August 12, a slow, heavy-set, parsimonious Diego came in to where I was, speaking his Guanajuato version of English and kissing women's hands. I was able to explain my idea to him and he was immediately interested. He invited me into his studio, and while taking off his jacket, said, "Ask me..." And I asked one, two, twenty... I don't know how many questions 'til the small hours of the night, with him answering from memory, with an incredible accuracy, without pausing, without worrying much about what he might be saying, all of it spilling out in an unconscious and magical manner. A series of Alfredo Cardona-Pena's weekly interviews with Rivera were published in 1949 and 1950 in the Mexican newspaper, El Nacional, for which Alfredo was a journalist. His book of compiled interviews with introduction and preface, El Monstruo en su Laberinto, was published in Spanish in 1965. Finally, this extraordinary and rare exchange has been translated for the first time into English by Alfredo's half-brother Alvaro Cardona Hine, also a poet. According to the translator's wife, Barbara Cardona-Hine, bringing the work into English was a labor of love for Alvaro, the fulfillment of a promise made to his brother in 1971 that he did not get to until the year before his own death in 2016.

Handsome and collectible, the books are produced to the highest standards. Each volume contains full-page reproductions printed in superb duotone, together with a critical introduction and a full bibliography. Now back in print, the series was awarded the first annual prize for distinguished photographic books by the International Center of Photography. Elliott Erwitt (b. 1928), an American by adoption, has a humorous outlook that is reflected in his always elegant work. His photographs take advantage of the sudden coincidence, the fortuitous conjunction of objects and events, to reveal the ridiculous or comical sides of everyday life. Dogs are a favorite subject for Erwitt, often serving as a witty metaphor for human foibles.

In his joint capacities of Premier peintre du roi, director of the Gobelins manufactory and rector of the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Le Brun exercised a previously unprecedented influence on the production of the visual arts - so much so that some scholars have repeatedly described him as 'dictator' of the arts in France. The Sovereign Artist explores how Le Brun operated in his diverse fields of activities, linking and juxtaposing his portraiture, history painting and pictorial theory with his designs for architecture, tapestries, carpets and furniture. It argues that Le Brun sought to create a repeatable and easily recognizable visual language associated with Louis XIV, in order to translate the king's political claims for absolute power into a visual form. How he did this is discussed through a series of individual case studies ranging from Le Brun's lost equestrian portrait of Louis XIV, and his involvement in the Querelle du coloris at the Academie, to his scheme for 93 Savonnerie carpets for the Grande Galerie at the Louvre, his Histoire du roy tapestry series, his decoration of the now destroyed Escalier des Ambassadeurs at Versailles and the dramatic destruction of the Sun King's silver furniture. One key theme is the relation between the unity of the visual arts, to which Le Brun aspired, and the strong hierarchical distinctions he made between the liberal arts and the mechanical crafts: while his lectures at the Academie advocated a visual and conceptual unity in painting and architecture, they were also a means by which he attempted to secure the newly gained status of painting as a liberal art, and therefore to distinguish it from the mechanical crafts which he oversaw the production of at the Gobelins. His artistic and architectural aspirations were comparable to those of his Roman contemporary Gianlorenzo Bernini, summoned to Paris in 1665 to design the Louvre's East facade and to create a portrait bust of Louis XIV. Bernini's failure to convince the king and Colbert of his architectural scheme offered new opportunities for Le Brun and his French contemporaries to prove themselves capable of solving the architectural problems of the Louvre and to transform it into a palace appropriate "to the grandeur and the magnificence of the prince who [was] to inhabit it" (Jean-Baptiste Colbert to Nicolas Poussin in 1664). The comparison between Le Brun and Bernini not only illustrates how France sought artistic supremacy over Italy during the second half of the 17th century, but further helps to demonstrate how Le Brun himself wanted to be perceived: beyond acting as a translator of the king's artistic ambition, the artist appears to have sought his own sovereign authority over the visual arts.

Over the course of his career, Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) created altarpieces rich in theological complexity, elegant in formal execution, and dazzlingly brilliant in chromatic impact. This book investigates the spiritual dimensions of those works, focusing on six highly-significant panels. According to Steven J. Cody, the beauty and splendor of Andrea's paintings speak to a profound engagement with Christian theories of spiritual renewal-an engagement that only intensified as Andrea matured into one of the most admired artists of his time. From this perspective, Andrea del Sarto - Splendor and Renewal in the Renaissance Altarpiece not only shines new light on a painter who has long deserved more scholarly attention; it also offers up fresh insights regarding the Renaissance altarpiece itself.

This fascinating memoir by a Holocoust survivor who went onto become a ajor New York art dealer, provides an inside look at the post-war modern art world. Weintraub's account of his experience in the Warsaw Ghetto is gripping, and he pulls no punches in describing the "high and mighty" on the New York museum scene and the lessons he has learned about business success in America.

BRICE MARDEN

The American artist Brice Marden (b. 1938) is one of the great contemporary painters.

Brice Marden's first works were the Minimalist monochrome panels of the 1960s, large, austere, 'implacable' oil and wax paintings characterized by a precise coolness. In 1975 Marden had a one-man show at the Guggenheim Museum.

Laura Garrard looks at Marden's artistic career, from the early works, the multi-panel works of the 1970s, the Sea Paintings, Grove Group, Greek and landscape works, and the 'Annunciation Series' and Thira.

In the 1980s, Brice Marden developed a 'calligraphic' or 'Oriental' art, which appeared in many prints as well as large canvases.

Brice Marden studied at Florida Southern College, Lakeland, and Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts, receiving aBachelor of Fine Arts in 1961. That year, he worked at Yale NorfolkSummer School in Connecticut. In 1963 he was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Yale University at New Haven.He moved to New York City, and worked as a guard in the JewishMuseum. At this time he was married to Pauline Baez, the sister ofJoan Baez, the singer, and had a son, Nicholas.

In the mid-1960s, Marden began to have one-man exhibitions (typically at Bykert Gallery, where he had many shows). In 1966 he became an assistant to Robert Rauschenberg. In the late 1960s, Marden began making multi-panel paintings. He worked as a painting instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1969-74. He had solo shows and group shows in Europe (Milan, Turin, Paris, Dusseldorf). In 1975 there was the ten-year retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York, unusual for so young an artist. From 1973, Marden visited Greece every year.

Other major shows included a one-man exhibition of drawings (1964-74) at Contemporary Arts Museum, a drawing retrospective at Kunstraum Munich, and the Whitechapel and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam one-man shows of 1981. An exhibition of prints 1961-91 travelled to the Tate Gallery, London, Baltimore Museum of Art and the Musee d'art moderne de la ville de Paris.

This is the only full-length appraisal available. Fully illustrated, with new illustrations. This book has been revised. ISBN 9781861713728. 200 pages. www.crmoon.com

*A National Bestseller* From the internationally bestselling artist Kerby Rosanes, an extraordinary coloring book celebrating some of the incredible animals and landscapes that are disappearing around the globe Fragile World is a coloring book to savor, exploring fifty-six endangered, vulnerable, and threatened animals and landscapes-from the Tapanuli orangutan to the hawksbill turtle, from Philippine bat caves to the Baltic Sea. The illustrations are intricate, detailed, and unforgettable, both magisterial and whimsical. And the result is a stunning tribute to Mother Nature. Fragile World is a coloring experience that is at once vintage Kerby and unlike any other.

Here is the story of a Confederate Major who built the first suspension bridge across the Hudson River in 1871. How and why a Southerner came to the Adirondacks only a year after Appomattox to build a bridge is recounted.

Francis Bacon was one of most elusive and enigmatic creative geniuses of the twentieth century. However much his avowed aim was to simplify both himself and his art, he remained a deeply complex person. Bacon was keenly aware of this underlying contradiction, and whether talking or painting, strove consciously towards absolute clarity and simplicity, calling himself 'simply complicated'. Until now, this complexity has rarely come across in the large number of studies on Bacon's life and work. Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait shows a variety of Bacon's many facets, and questions the accepted views on an artist who was adept at defying categorization. The essays and interviews brought together here span more than half a century. Opening with an interview by the author in 1963, the year that he met Bacon, there are also essays written for exhibitions, memoirs and reflections on Bacon's late work, some published here for the first time. Included are recorded conversations with Bacon in Paris that lasted long into the night, and an overall account of the artist's sources and techniques in his extraordinary London studio. This is an updated edition of Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait (2008), published for the first time in a paperback reading book format. It brings this fascinating artist into closer view, revealing the core of his talent: his skill for marrying extreme contradictions and translating them into immediately recognizable images, whose characteristic tension derives from a life lived constantly on the edge. With 14 illustrations, 7 in colour