The Body Artist

A stunning novel by the bestselling National Book Award–winning author of White Noise and Underworld. Since the publication of his first novel Americana, Don DeLillo has lived in the skin of our times. He has found a voice for the forgotten souls who haunt the fringes of our culture and for its larger-than-life, real-life figures. His language is defiantly, radiantly American. In The Body Artist his spare, seductive twelfth novel, he inhabits the muted world of Lauren Hartke, an artist whose work defies the limits of the body. Lauren is living on a lonely coast, in a rambling rented house, where she encounters a strange, ageless man, a man with uncanny knowledge of her own life. Together they begin a journey into the wilderness of time, love and human perception. The Body Artist is a haunting, beautiful and profoundly moving novel from one of the finest writers of our time.

The Body Artist opens with a breakfast scene in a rambling rented house somewhere on the New England coast. We meet Lauren Hartke, the Body Artist of the title, and her husband Rey Robles, a much older, thrice-married film-director. Through their delicate, intimate, half-complete thoughts and words DeLillo proves himself a stunningly unsentimental observer of marriage, and of the idiosyncrasies that both isolate and bind us. Rey says he's taking a drive and he does, all the way to the Manhattan apartment of his first wife. Lauren is left alone, or so she thinks . . . 'A poised, individual ghost story for the twenty-first century' Observer 'Inspiring . . . a beautiful book' Independent on Sunday

The first book to celebrate the beautiful and provocative ways artists have represented, scrutinized and utilized the body over centuries. Body of Art is the first book to explore the various ways the human body has been both an inspiration and a medium for artists over hundreds of thousands of years. Unprecedented in its scope, it examines the many different manifestations of the body in art, from Anthony Gormley and Maya Lin sculptures to eight-armed Hindu gods and ancient Greek reliefs, from feminist graphics and Warhol's empty electric chair to the blue-tinted complexion of Singer Sargent's Madame X. It is the most expansive examination of the human body in art, spanning western and non-western, ancient to contemporary, representative to abstract and conceptual. Over 400 artists are featured in chapters that explore identity, beauty, religion, absent body, sex and gender, power, body's limits, abject body and bodies & space. Works range from 11,000 BC hand stencils in Argentine caves to videos and performances by contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovic, Joan Jonas and Bruce Nauman? Its fresh, accessible and dynamic voice brings to life the thrilling diversity of both classical and contemporary art through the prism of the body. More than simply a book of representations, this is an original and thought provoking look at the human body across time, cultures and media.

"With great originality and scholarship, Amelia Jones maps out an extraordinary history of body art over the last three decades and embeds it in the theoretical terrain of postmoderism. The result is a wonderful and permissive space in which the viewer...can wander"...-Moira Roth, Trefethen professor of art history, Mills College.

Janet is caught between care work and caring. Her life revolves around Sean, a talented art student, living and working with cerebral palsy. Both Janet and Sean are new to London, living at a distance from their families. Both are finding a means of escape through pushing their bodies to new limits. When Sean is faced with an unexpected and deeply personal tragedy, Janet has to let her guard down and discover what she's prepared to fight for. The Art of the Body is a novel about dignity, intimacy, faith and sacrifice, unafraid to explore uncommon bodies in unusual ways.

Tattoos as art, work, decoration and defiance.

A survey of the use of the artist's body in 20th-century art.

Does everyone have a certain "type" they end up with...whether they want to or not? If Ray Carlucci's ex is anything to go by, Ray likes his men gorgeous, rebellious, and chock-full of issues. But now that Ray is single again, he has a shot at a fresh starta very fresh start, since his tattoo shop was gutted by repo men and he can fit all his belongings in the trunk of a cab.Ray's shiny new chauffeur's license lands him a job as a driver for an elderly couple on Red Wing Island. It's a cold fall, and since the Michigan island is the summer home to snowbirds who fly south for the winter, it's practically desertedsave for Ray's new household and a sculptor named Anton Kopec, who works day and night twisting brambles and twine into the distorted shapes of macabre creatures. Compelling, bizarre, and somewhat disturbing...not just the sculptures, but the artist, too. Ray has a feeling Anton is just his "type."Despite their scorching chemistry, when a dead body is unearthed by some workers and a freak ice storm traps them all on the island, Ray can't say for certain that his new flame isn't capable of murder.