A Brush With Passion

Brush with Passion charts the career of Dave Stevens, one of the most beloved and influential of all comic illustrators. He discusses his beginnings as a comic artist, the struggle to bring The Rocketeer to the big screen, his work as a storyboard artist for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, and other career highlights. Equally renowned as a pin-up artist, Stevens also recounts his friendship with reclusive model Bettie Page. Along with a wealth of iconic paintings and previously unpublished artwork, the book features commentary by comic book greats Todd Schorr, Richard Hescox, Michael William Kaluta, and William Stout.

Her new job at Whitman Art Foundation takes Nina Ashton to Paris and Switzerland in search of a valuable stolen painting and into the beds of the men she suspects may have acquired it.

Diamonds and Sand Adele Bloch-Bauer (1882-1925) did not seek fame—but acclaimed and passionate artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) thrust her into the public’s eye by painting two portraits that assured her lasting admiration and speculation. Both portraits were commissioned by her wealthy industrialist husband—and each illustrated different, almost contradictory views of the intellectually curious, mysterious woman. As a child, Adele escaped the rules of a repressive Vienna in the last decades of the 19th century, by conjuring a secret tunnel that gave life to her fantasies. Only when she began sitting for Klimt’s portrait of her did her fantasies slide into reality, bringing both blinding ecstasy and paralyzing guilt. Her journey is intriguing... Join her...

Whether the canvases of Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918) celebrated the exquisite landscapes of Austria’s Attersee region or caressed the cheek of a lovely young laundress, his appreciation of his subjects was sensitive, sensual and strong. No other painter in Vienna at the close of the 19th century was as revered—and often reviled—as this outrageous artist wearing only a knowing expression and a long blue smock. One of the women who found her way onto his canvas and into his bed was Mizzi Zimmermann (the subject of this book, Dirty Linen), whom he would cherish, in his way, until his death. Mizzi, and the subjects of Book One—Vienna Patterns (Emilie Flöge) and Book Two—Diamonds and Sand (Adele Bloch-Bauer) enjoy everlasting admiration, thanks to Klimt’s brush—A Brush with Passion.

Onto the stage of Vienna in the late 19th Century strides virile, charismatic painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). Standing center stage is a talented and independent fashion designer and businesswoman, Emilie Flöge (1874 -1952). For the next 27 years, the famous and infamous Klimt bears criticism, censure and fame with Flöge by his side. The tempestuous love and fierce friendship of this talented couple – opposites in so many ways –deepens until Klimt’s death . . . and beyond. Vienna Patterns happens during a Time and in a City never equaled for fashion, fabulous art and fascinating personalities. The story of Klimt and Flöge is very theatrical . . . very Vienna.

A scintillating glimpse into the lives of acclaimed writers and artists and their inspiring, often surprising convergences, from the author of Monsieur Proust's Library With the wit and penetration well known to readers of Anka Muhlstein’s work, The Pen and the Brush revisits the delights of the French novel. This time she focuses on late 19th- and 20th-century writers--Balzac, Zola, Proust, Huysmans, and Maupassant--through the lens of their passionate involvement with the fine arts. She delves into the crucial role that painters play as characters in their novels, which she pairs with an exploration of the profound influence that painting exercised on the novelists' techniques, offering an intimate view of the intertwined worlds of painters and writers at the time. Muhlstein's deftly chosen vignettes bring to life a portrait of the nineteenth century's tight-knit artistic community, where Cézanne and Zola befriended each other as boys and Balzac yearned for the approval of Delacroix. She leads the reader on a journey of spontaneous discovery as she explores how a great painting can open a mind and spark creative fire.

Describes the life and work of Ted Harrison, who is best known for his colorful paintings depicting everyday life in the Yukon.

"Susan Vreeland set a high standard with Girl in Hyacinth Blue.... The Passion of Artemisia is even better.... Vreeland's unsentimental prose turns the factual Artemisia into a fictional heroine you won't soon forget." —People A true-to-life novel of one of the few female post-Renaissance painters to achieve fame during her own era against great struggle. Artemisia Gentileschi led a remarkably "modern" life. Vreeland tells Artemisia's captivating story, beginning with her public humiliation in a rape trial at the age of eighteen, and continuing through her father's betrayal, her marriage of convenience, motherhood, and growing fame as an artist. Set against the glorious backdrops of Rome, Florence, Genoa, and Naples, inhabited by historical characters such as Galileo and Cosimo de' Medici II, and filled with rich details about life as a seventeenth-century painter, Vreeland creates an inspiring story about one woman's lifelong struggle to reconcile career and family, passion and genius.