The first biography of America's greatest twentieth-century sculptor, Alexander Calder: an authoritative and revelatory achievement, based on a wealth of letters and papers never before available, and written by one of our most renowned art critics.Alexander Calder is one of the most beloved and widely admired artists of the twentieth century. Anybody who has ever set foot in a museum knows him as the inventor of the mobile, America's unique contribution to modern ...

Experience the creative explosion that transformed American art—in the words of the artists, writers, and critics who were thereIn the quarter century after the end of World War II, a new generation of painters, sculptors, and photographers transformed the face of American art and shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York. Signaled by the triumph of abstraction and the ascendancy of painters such as Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and Kline, this revo...

In this landmark work, Jed Perl captures the excitement of a generation of legendary artists–Jackson Pollack, Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ellsworth Kelly among them–who came to New York, mingled in its lofts and bars, and revolutionized American art. In a continuously arresting narrative, Perl also portrays such less well known figures as the galvanic teacher Hans Hofmann, the lyric expressionist Joan Mitchell, and the adventuresome realist Fairfield Porter, as well the writer...

The true story of the nineteenth century’s so-called “Wild Boy of Aveyron”—an abandoned French child who lived for years alone in the wilderness before being brought under the care of an innovative young physician.“Before dawn on January 9, 1800, a remarkable creature came out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France.” So begins Roger Shattuck’s book about the so-called Wild Boy of Aveyron—a child abandoned by his caretakers and captured, ye...

From one of our most widely admired art critics comes a bold and timely manifesto reaffirming the independence of all the arts—musical, literary, and visual—and their unique and unparalleled power to excite, disturb, and inspire us.As people look to the arts to promote a particular ideology, whether radical, liberal, or conservative, Jed Perl argues that the arts have their own laws and logic, which transcend the controversies of any one moment. “Art’s relevance,” ...

A Painter’s Lifeis a rare glimpse into the mind of an uncompromising painter. Mari Lyons was a life-long “every-day” painter and from an early journal she kept for a short time she reveals the heartbreaks, the pain of rejection, the intense and abiding love of her work, and the quiet triumphs of a painter juggling the demanding life of a mother of four, a busy husband, constant financial pressure; she had a fierce desire to make ever-better work, and for her work to become more vi...

Soul Mates of the Lost Generation recovers for contemporary readers one of the last great collections of letters of the Jazz Age. It is the correspondence between the pioneering novelist John Dos Passos and a young woman named Crystal Ross, to whom he was engaged and who reveals herself as one of the truly daring, vivacious spirits of that extraordinary time. Before his passing in 2015, Ross’s son, the esteemed literary scholar Lewis M. Dabney, completed a dual biography of the co...

Antoine Watteau, one of the most mysterious painters who ever lived, is the inspiration for this delightful investigation of the tangled relationship between art and life. Weaving together historical fact and personal reflections, the influential art critic Jed Perl reconstructs the amazing story of this pioneering bohemian artist who, although he died in 1721, when he was only thirty-six, has influenced innumerable painters and writers in the centuries since—and whose work continues to de...

John Richardson's riveting memoir about growing up in England and, at twenty-five, beginning his twelve-year adventure with the controversial art collector Douglas Cooper.With a new introduction by Jed Perl, here is John Richardson's richly entertaining memoir of his life with the brilliant but difficult British art expert Douglas Cooper--a fiendish, colorful, Evelyn Waugh-like figure who single-handedly assembled the world's most important private collection of Cubist paintings. J...

This brilliant blend of history, biography, and criticism explores the seminal figures of twentieth-century French art-Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Léger, Dufy, Braque, Giacometti, Balthus, and Hélion-and the vital art world in which they thrived.The ten interlocking essays in this important book include radical new evaluations of Derain, Léger, and Dufy, and penetrating studies of the final works of Picasso and Braque. Paris Without End, Jed Perl’s first book, is now celebra...

Alexander Calder was one of the most original artists of the twentieth century and a major figure in American art. Renowned for his mobiles and stabiles, he also created the beloved Calder Circus, an early performance piece now preserved at the Whitney Museum. He was a contemporary and friend of Marcel Duchamp and Joan Miró and collaborated with Martha Graham. His wife, Louisa, was a grandniece of Henry and William James, a liberal society girl from Boston who loved to entertain. Both were...

The concluding volume to the first biography of one of the most important, influential, and beloved twentieth-century sculptors, and one of the greatest artists in the cultural history of America--is a vividly written, illuminating account of his triumphant later years.The second and final volume of this magnificent biography begins during World War II, when Calder--known to all as Sandy--and his wife, Louisa, opened their home to a stream of artists and writers in...