Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820-1909

Request this title!!!

In Sanctified Landscape, David Schuyler recounts the story of America's idealization of the Hudson Valley in art and literature during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Breakthrough!: Proven Strategies to Overcome Creative Block and Spark Your Imagination

Request this title!!!

Breakthrough! is a lively compilation of strategies for combating creative block offered by a who's who of leading graphic designers, typographers, cartoonists, photographers, illustrators, musicians, writers, and other creative professionals. Because every block is different, they offer a wide variety of solutions-from cleaning the house and eating spicy food to making a plaster cast of your hands and feet-that are surprising, amusing, at times weird, but always inspiring. Breakthrough! is rocket fuel for any creative individual in need of a catalyst to get ideas flowing again.

Banksy.: You Are an Acceptable Level of Threat

Request this title!!!

The single best collection of photographs of Banksy's street work. Period. It concentrates on this singular artist's iconic imagery, spanning the late '90s up until the end of 2011. The locations are from around the world, and many images have never been seen before.

Photography Changes Everything

Request this title !!!

Photography Changes Everything" offers a provocative rethinking of photography's impact on our culture and our daily lives. Compiling hundreds of images and responses from leading authorities on photography, it offers a brilliant, reader-friendly exploration of the many ways in which photographs package information and values, demand and hold attention, and shape our knowledge of and experience in the world. The volume draws on the extraordinary visual assets of the Smithsonian Institution's museums, science centers and archives to launch an unprecedented interdisciplinary dialogue on photography's capacity to shape and change our experience of the world.

The Art Life: On Creativity and Career

Request this title.

What compels a person to become an artist, actor or singer, and to make the financial and comfort sacrifices that so often precede success, or accompany failure? A new book offers myriad, unscientific answers. The Art Life: On Creativity and Career is "as much curated as written," says author Stuart Horodner, artistic director of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center . Inspirations, muses, personal motivators and observations are provided by such figures as film directors Woody Allen and Werner Herzog, writers Wayne Koestenbaum and Orhan Pamuk, singers Johnny Cash and Lady Gaga, and artists Vito Acconci, Francis Bacon, Dana Schutz and Leon Golub, who notes: "There are three things: your work, your livelihood, and your personal life. If any two are going well at the same time consider yourself lucky."--Stephanie Cash"Art In America" (01/18/2012)

The Art of Not Making: The New Artist/Artisan Relationship

Using examples from a wide range of media, Michael Petry presents art by more than 115 contemporary artists who have one thing in common: they do not make their own work. Instead, they either employ others to produce it on their behalf or appropriate objects made by someone else. Master craftsmen, artisans, and fabricators are just some of the technical specialists who help realize the creative vision of these artists. But when an artist does not make his or her own work, what does it mean for the nature of art and for the status of the artist? What is the relationship between creativity and production?
The book explores these and other questions about authorship, artistic originality, skill, craftsmanship, and the creative act. Beginning with a historical overview and continuing through the history of modern art, it highlights the vital role that skills from craft and industrial production play in creating some of today 's most innovative and highly sought-after works of art. Organized by the materials from which the works are made, five chapters examine the relationships between many of the world 's most important artists and the artisans and fabricators they work with.
Request The Art of Not Making from the catalog. 

Robert Capa: The Paris Years 1933-1954

Publishers Weekly (03/12/2012):
Perhaps best known for his iconic photo of a Spanish soldier as he is being shot known as "Death of Loyalist Militiaman," which hangs in New York's Museum of Modern Art,  Robert Capa (born Endre Erno Friedmann) was one of the progenitors of modern-day war photojournalism, covering the Spanish Civil War, D-Day, the beginnings of the Vietnam conflict, and many other momentous occasions during his tenure behind the lens.
Though these milestones and others are addressed in war correspondent Lebrun (Normandie 44) and Le Monde journalist Lefebvre's biography of Capa, their primary focus here is the work he and his colleagues produced while based out of an apartment in Paris' fourteenth arrondissement.
 Led largely by Capa, the collective's commitment to immersing themselves in the moments they sought to document had serious consequences as Capa's longtime collaborator and girlfriend Gerda Taro was crushed and killed by a tank while covering the Spanish Civil War but their commitment to documenting life in a war zone, from both a military and civilian perspective, revolutionized reporting and brought the battles home. Historians and photographers alike will be rewarded by the authors' excellent blend of narration and academic analysis, coupled with a generous helping of groundbreaking photos, many of which have never been published before. Photos & illus. (Mar.) Copyright 2012 Reed Business Information.
Request Robert Capa : the Paris Years from the catalog.