Synopses & Reviews
andquot;I believe in the absolute necessity of a new art of colour, of drawing andandmdash;of the artistic life,andquot; Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in 1888. andquot;And if we work in that faith, it seems to me that thereand#39;s a chance that our hopes wonand#39;t be in vain.andquot; His prediction would come true. In his brief and explosively creative lifeandmdash;he committed suicide a few years later at the age of thirty-sevenandmdash;Van Gogh made us see the world in a new way. His shining landscapes of Provence and somber portraits of workers shattered the relationship between light and dark, and his hallucinatory visions were so bright they nearly blinded the world.
He was a great writer as well. In his six hundredandndash;plus letters to Theo he chronicled with heartbreaking urgency his mental breakdowns, acrimonious family relations, and struggles with art dealers, who largely ignored him until the last years of his life. Shading this dark story is the artistandrsquo;s acquaintance with prostitutes and penury, stormy scenes with his friend Paul Gauguin, and dissipated Parisian nights with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Julian Bellandrsquo;s passion for his subject brings the painter to life. Bell writes with slashing intensity, at once scholarly and defiantly partisan. andldquo;I have written this book out of my love for Vincent van Gogh, the uniquely exciting painter, and Vincent van Gogh, the letter writer of heart-piercing eloquence,andrdquo; he declares. For Bell, Van Gogh was an artistic genius and more: he was a wonder of the world.
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“Combines astute examination of his work with just a plain good yarn about a street tough who painted transcendent pictures.” Entertainment Weekly
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“Tautly written and insightful.” Seattle Times
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“In this engaging and informative short biography . . . Prose vividly brings [Caravaggios] paintings to life.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
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“Proses concentrated interpretation... clearly and descriptively explicates the pioneering painters unique perception of the miraculous in everyday life.” Booklist
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“Fine biography--and a study of why revolutionary art can be reviled in its own time and revered in another.” Kirkus Reviews
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“Racy, intensely imagined, and highly readable . . . Prose brings to Caravaggio a fresh and unflinching eye.” New York Times Book Review
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“Elegant . . . [Prose] fills out the intrigue of Caravaggios own life and writes terrifically about the paintings.” Hartford Courant
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“Everything a casual reader needs to know about flamboyant Baroque artist Caravaggio... Makes you want to go to the museum.” U.S. News & World Report
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“Matching gorgeous prose to gorgeous artworks, Prose responds to each image as a moment of theatrical revelation, sensual or spiritual.” Boston Sunday Globe
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and#8220;
The Art of Youth is a brilliant book about the power of youth to make great art, itself suffused with youthfulness, with wisdom and diligence and hopeand#8230;Dazzling in detail and amazingly well-informed.and#8221;
and#8211;Paul Theroux, author of The Lower River
and#160;
and#160;"Elegant and enlightening, The Art of Youth invites us to ask the timeless question of how artistic vitalityand#8212;its energy, originality, and enthusiasmand#8212;can be maintained beyond youth into the blessing of a productive old age."
and#8211;Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage
and#160;
and#8220;What truly distinguishes this work is his empathic understanding of his subjects' situation: the blessings and burdens of prodigy. The final pages offer a lovely reflectionand#8212;at once rueful and wryand#8212;on his own precocious gift. The result is a book filled with knowledge to be sure but also wisdom.and#8221;
and#8211; Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
and#160;
Synopsis
Matching gorgeous prose to gorgeous artworks, Prose responds to each image as a moment of theatrical revelation, sensual or spiritual, and frequently both. Boston Sunday Globe
In Caravaggio, New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose (Goldengrove, Reading like a Writer) offers an enthralling account of the life and work of one of the greatest painters of all time. Called racy, intensely imagined, and highly readable by the New York Times Book Review, Caravaggio includes eight pages of color illustrations, and is sure to appeal to art enthusiasts interested in one of history s true innovators. Caravaggio is another engaging entry in the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures. "
Synopsis
"Matching gorgeous prose to gorgeous artworks, Prose responds to each image as a moment of theatrical revelation, sensual or spiritual, and frequently both." -- Boston Sunday Globe
In Caravaggio, New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose offers an enthralling account of the life and work of one of the greatest painters of all time. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed--street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged--was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, made him an artist who speaks across the centuries to modern day.
Called "racy, intensely imagined, and highly readable" by the New York Times Book Review, Caravaggio includes eight pages of color illustrations, and is sure to appeal to art enthusiasts interested in one of history's true innovators. Caravaggio is part of the "Eminent Lives" series from HarperCollins, a selection of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures.
Synopsis
Caravaggio was a brilliant artist who defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his realistic portraits of the poor, the aged, criminals, and ordinary people would have a profound effect on generations of painters. Possessed of an equally defiant temperament, Caravaggio was on the run from the law at the time of his mysterious death. In Caravaggio, New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose offers an enthralling account of the life and work of one of the greatest painters of all time.
Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) was a successful artist, protected by his many wealthy and influential patrons. But he was also a man of the streets and fled Rome in 1606, after apparently killing another man. He spent his last years in exile, at once celebrated for his art and tormented by his enemies. In 1610 he received a pardon from the Pope, only to die on his way back home. With passion and sensitivity, Prose tells the story of this brilliant yet flawed man who was a true artistic innovator.
Francine Prose is the author of fifteen books of fiction, including the highly acclaimed Goldengrove. The novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. The nonfiction work Reading Like a Writer was a New York Times bestseller. She lives in New York City.
"Matching gorgeous prose to gorgeous artworks, Prose responds to each image as a moment of theatrical revelation, sensual or spiritual, and frequently both." -- Boston Sunday Globe
--Hartford Courant
Synopsis
Francine Prose's life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed—street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged—was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time.
Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) moved to Rome when he was twenty-one years old. He became a brilliant and successful artist, protected by the influential Cardinal del Monte and other patrons. But he was also a man of the streets who couldn't seem to free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In 1606 he fled Rome, apparently after killing another man in a dispute. He spent his last years in exile, in Naples, Malta, and Sicily, at once celebrated for his art and tormented by his enemies. Through it all, he produced masterpieces of astonishing complexity and power. Eventually he received a pardon from the Pope, only to die, in mysterious circumstances, on the way back to Rome in 1610.
Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters with passion and acute sensitivity.
Synopsis
A passionate account of the tortured life and tragic death of the greatest artist of the nineteenth century, by renowned critic and painter Julian Bell. and#160; Vanand#160;Gogh is a vivid portrait of the great Impressionist painter that traces his life from the Netherlands, where he was born into a family of art dealers, through his years in England, the Hague, andand#160;Paris, to his final home in Arles, where he discovered the luminous style of his late paintings before his suicide at the age of thirty-seven. and#160; Vanand#160;Gogh struggled to find his way as an artist:and#160;Well into his mid-twenties he had achieved virtually nothing except a few charcoal drawings of coal miners. Afflicted by mental illness and a mercurial temper, he was institutionalized several times toward the end of his life. Julian Bell conveys this tragic story with great compassion, depicting van Gogh in all his anguished vigor, a genius for whom the greatest challenge was to stay alive until he had completed his most fully realized and magnificent works.
Synopsis
Portraits of three artistic prodigies who died youngand#8212;Stephen Crane (writer), Dora Carrington (painter), and George Gershwin (composer)and#8212;that form the centerpiece of a beautiful and fascinating inquiry into creation, mortality, and the enigma of promise: What would they have done had they lived longer?
Synopsis
The Art of Youth is a moving inquiry into the nature of artistic prodigies who did their major work at an early age. Renowned novelist Nicholas Delbanco gives us a triptych of indelible portraits: the Ameriandshy;can writer Stephen Crane (immortalized by
The Red Badge of Courage); British artandshy;ist Dora Carrington (called and#8220;the most neandshy;glected serious painter of her timeand#8221;); and the legendary composer George Gershwin (
Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess).
and#160;
All three lived colorful, productive lives before dying early, at an average age of thirty-five. In this learned and elegant book, Delbanco discovers what it is we mourn in authors who pass away so young, and muses on his own lifeand#8212;one marked by both early success and longevity.
About the Author
Francine Prose is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent book is Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. She lives in New York City.