Christo and Jeanne-Claude are renowned above all for their ephemeral yet monumental interventions in landscapes and cities. Fabric is a defining feature of their projects; they use it to wrap, conceal and otherwise manipulate our visual perception of the world. They have created numerous oil barrel sculptures and installations since the beginning of their careers, though these are less well known. This book is dedicated to these barrel creations, a niche portion of two great artists' ouevre. In the late 1950s, Christo started to wrap used oil drums which he had found on scrapyards or bought cheaply at recycling sites. Later, he began piling the untreated oil drums to form ever larger structures. The largest project of this kind to date is a giant sculpture made up of 410,000 oil barrels in the desert of the United Arab Emirates. The project has been developing since 1977; ever since the death of Jeanne-Claude in 2009, Christo has continued it on his own. This book, published to accompany a large exhibition at Fondation Maeght in the south of France, shows many photos as well as images of drawings and collages, some of which have never been published before. They offer a comprehensive insight into Christo and Jeanne-Claude's oil barrel projects. Significantly, it contains a detailed documentation of a sculpture specially created by Christo for the famous Giacometti courtyard at Fondation Maeght. Exhibition: 4 June - 27 November 2016, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Sartre accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture ("Existentialism Is a Humanism") was to expound his philosophy as a form of "existentialism," a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity.
The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre's doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence--his self, his being--through the choices he freely makes ("existence precedes essence"). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind.
This edition of "Existentialism Is a Humanism" is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaim-Sartre's introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. Paired with "Existentialism Is a Humanism" is another seminal Sartre text, his commentary on Camus's "The Stranger," In her foreword, intended for an American audience, acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal offers an assessment of both works.

A fascinating exploration of the life and work of one of America's most famous and enigmatic postwar visual artists Mark Rothko, one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century, was born in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in 1903. He immigrated to the United States at age ten, taking with him his Talmudic education and his memories of pogroms and persecutions in Russia. His integration into American society began with a series of painful experiences, especially as a student at Yale, where he felt marginalized for his origins and ultimately left the school. The decision to become an artist led him to a new phase in his life. Early in his career, Annie Cohen-Solal writes, "he became a major player in the social struggle of American artists, and his own metamorphosis benefited from the unique transformation of the U.S. art world during this time." Within a few decades, he had forged his definitive artistic signature, and most critics hailed him as a pioneer. The numerous museum shows that followed in major U.S. and European institutions ensured his celebrity. But this was not enough for Rothko, who continued to innovate. Ever faithful to his habit of confronting the establishment, he devoted the last decade of his life to cultivating his new conception of art as an experience, thanks to the commission of a radical project, the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. Cohen-Solal's fascinating biography, based on considerable archival research, tells the unlikely story of how a young immigrant from Dvinsk became a crucial transforming agent of the art world-one whose legacy prevails to this day.

The first volume in the Lives of the Left series, Annie Cohen-Solal's Sartre is a remarkable achievement. "A sensation" upon its initial publication in France, as the New York Times reported, Sartre was subsequently translated into sixteen languages and went on to become an international bestseller, appealing to the broadest audience. First published in the United States in 1987, it is the definitive biography of a man and an age, an intimate portrait of a complex life. A major accomplishment of this biography is that it places Sartre in the context of history while at the same time reassessing the full import of his literary and political accomplishments. Discovering untold aspects of Sartre's private and political life, Cohen-Solal weaves together all the elements of an exceptional career. From the fascinating description of his hitherto-unknown father to the painful last moments of Sartre's own declining years, this is biography on the grandest scale, fully deserving of the praise it has received.